Wives Die, Girlfriends Get Kidnapped (Spoiler Ahead)

Here is a classic video game set up. Someone has kidnapped your girlfriend and you have to save her. It could be a gang, the government, corporation, mad scientist, really anyone. It is now your job to save her, or forget her and get a new girlfriend. Basically it is the main theme of a lot of video games such as River City Ransom, Splatterhouse, Double Dragon, and especially the Super Mario Bros. series just to name a few. It s a simple enough set up to drive the narrative and give the players character a nominal personal stake in fighting the enemy. Usually the game ends with reunion of the two characters and a happy ending, albeit sometimes after many castles.

Here is another classic video game set up. Your wife is dead. This is the reason for your grim outlook on life and the driving force behind your anger/revenge. We see this in games such as God of War, Silent Hill series, the Gears of War series, and Max Payne among others. The dead wife theme is used to give the character a reason for their angst, and to represent the emotional baggage being drug around by the protagonist. A lot of games have dead wives that aren't even fully addressed such as in the Splinter Cell series and Silent Hill 1. There is the presence of loss to help explain the grim nature of the character, but unlike in Max Payne, it doesn't make for the driving force of the events that unfold.

There are plenty of exceptions to these themes, and many of them are mix and rearranged such as the girlfriend getting kidnapped and killed(The Darkness) or wives being kidnapped and also found dead(Gears of War 2). However, a lot of the time it seems that girlfriends get kidnapped and wives die. Why is this? Here are a few reasons I think why, and whether or not these themes are effective.

1. Girlfriends are used as sexual objects. When you beat up every thug and finally save your girlfriend, it is like waving a giant finger at everything you have done for her which can only guarantee sex. The girlfriend represents lust and sexuality in video games. At the end of the day, you aren't fighting necessarily because you want to spend your life with this woman but because you will more than likely sleep with her. The kidnapped girlfriend appeals to our sexuality, the thought of "Yeah if I rush in and save her we will definitely be knocking some pixel boots later!" There is no need for personality for the girlfriends character, or any development. She has been kidnapped. You want to take her to funky town. There are a lot of goons between you and her. Grab a damn bat.

2. Wives represent love and a real connection. Your wife is someone you are supposed to actually love enough to spend your life with them as your permanent partner. In real life, this is a rare occurrence. In the video game world, everyone's wife was their soul mate. Want to make a traumatized and gruff character? Easiest way is to kill the one he loves more than anything. Now you have someone that the player can begin to understand in all of their angry glory. Losing your wife would be a terrible and grievous event, and thus it is a great way to give your character personal drama and issues.

3. The girlfriend theme is more or less effective in that it is a disposable set up for the narrative. You don't know the girl, what she is like, or why your character likes her enough to run through a house full of zombies, the streets full of gang bangers, or save her during his mushroom trip. Yet, you don't care because it really doesn't matter. You are playing to beat the baddies, and the game just reminds you once and a while that someone's life is at stake.

4. The dead wife theme can be very effective or fairly pointless. Kratos from God of War was a jerk before his wife was dead and is still a jerk now. He bangs random broads and continues killing everything is sight even though that is what led to her demise. His wife being dead, essentially, doesn't matter. Now Silent Hill 2 has a similar narrative connection between husband and wife, and it makes all of the difference. The biggest issue with wives in games, and their deaths, is that they are often non-characters that are important to the plot. Many of these dead wives are dead before the game, so we never find a reason to care about them. It isn't that this is necessary, but in an entertainment medium where you act as the main character it certainly doesn't hurt to show why the protagonist loved her so much. At least Gears of War 2 tried to add something to the dead wife formula by having a single happy flashback of when the side character Dom and his wife were together. Most games follow the "She has been dead for a while, I am still sad" formula without showing any evidence of why we the players should care.

What are your thoughts on the dead wife and kidnapped girlfriend theme? Is it every actually a great driving force for narrative, or is it just a simple way to set up a story? Are there any games where these themes are used exceptionally well?

It's a shorthand for "Bad shit happened, time for <insert game here>".

It can be done well, it can be done poorly. It's simply a framing device. Heck, you could remove all guns from military shooters and replace them with soapy bubbles which you blow at amorphous blobs to make the blobs transform into flowers. It'd be confusing, but it'd still be fundamentally shooting target to apply an effect. But framing it as guns and terrorists is a shorthand to allow the audience to understand immediately: "Take this, shoot that." The crazy bubbles and blob-flower setup is surreal and confusing, the military shooter is not.

With respect to the dead girlfriend/wife thing, it's just setting up the conflict for the player. Good games will do a better job of making you give a damn when they run a giant sword through your love interest and set them afloat on an underground river. Other games will screw it up and leave you unsatisfied. It's a matter of execution, the dead love interest will continue to be a plot driving mechanic for centuries since it's so simple to grasp.

There needs to be lesbian or reverse role versions of these themes. If I remember, there were some examples of the latter in some games.

I give your paper a B- for the use of "taking her to funky town". That is all.

Reminds me of the Women in Refrigerators trope.

Violence toward women is consistently used as tools for the development of male characters, it's disturbing.

It depends how it's handled. The Max Payne games handled it beautifully, but then again, they didn't dwell it on the whole time.

Really interesting stuff. thanks for posting

Thank you for writing this. As a lady who likes to play games, this particular use of women in games is jarring - especially because of the frequently with which it is used.

A simpler explanation of this phenomenon, beyond all the specifics of wife versus girlfriend roles, is that being the savior is a very male fantasy. My evolutionary psychology professor would say that the men who demonstrated that he could protect and provide for a woman's babies got laid more and thus he had more kids, so that desire to do those things is ingrained in the minds of men as a result. My social psychology professor would say that men feel pressure from their peers and media outlets to be strong and unaffected by emotions at all times, and this unrealistic pressure is vented out through these sorts of power driven stories.

It's a perfectly valid desire. Everyone, regardless of gender, has fantasies where they have more control and more power in life. I mean, we live in a world where we are corralled into the school system for twenty years or so, and then corralled into the working environment, and then corralled into either retirement or more work, and then corralled into a sudden but inevitable betrayal death. Of course we would want something more grand than the blandness that is Western civilization. Where the issue gets tricky is when these themes, because of their sheer number and lack of any depth, start to carry underlying messages that women cannot defend themselves without the help of a man and that women are weak. There are only so many times I can stomach seeing a defenseless woman, devoid of any personality, getting abused or kidnapped or raped or killed or stuffed into a refrigerator or what the hell ever as a cheap, lazy, and offensive storytelling device to motivate the male protagonist to shoot some stuff that also doesn't really matter.

I can't be the only one getting tired of this, girl or not. It must be like a man watching Lifetime channel movies, where all the male characters are abusive, demonized, rapist dickbags so the female characters can play the martyrs or the noble victims. It's ridiculous and stupid and shallow. As a person who spends a lot of money on this industry, I don't think I am demanding too much when I say would I like to see original writing that isn't gender reversed, testosterone-injected Lifetime crap.

I've said it before forums and I will say it again. I would love to see a modern game explore long-term relationships, whether that's via marriage or just two very dedicated partners. You would need both partners together at all times to reflect the dedicated nature of the relationship, for all the good and bad that such a partnership brings. The boundaries of two people in this situation could be tested effectively and maturely by a disaster scenario. There could be a disagreement between the two that begins as cute banter at the start of the story before anything terrible happens, but then dissolves into a full-blown venom-laced argument at a low point in the story. A bit like how a couple might play around about someone not folding the laundry, then screaming over it twenty years later. The two split ways and try to make it alone to accomplish separate goals, but you find that the game is significantly harder and maybe even impossible without the partner there by your side. I'm just rambling. Anyway, this, motherhood, and homosexuality are some grounds I would like to see covered. I don't think that will happen any time soon but I hope it will happen someday.

I would argue that Kratos' continued behavior of boning across the world and ripping everything before him to shreds is supposed to be a point itself. I wouldn't say it doesn't matter. That would be like saying, because a soldier continues to be a soldier, even though he feels a certain way about his first kill, that the kills after that make those feelings invalid or simply non-existent.

As for the rest, I think people... well, ok, I think feminists mostly (mostly, so if you respond to me calling me a pig or something, well, have fun, I won't respond to that)... focus too much on the gender and not enough on the role. The gender is what it is because men play games and therefore most titles star a man. It's simple. The rest is A) a way to get the character started with motivation that anyone can understand, and B) a basic relationship that would be the same even with a reversal of gender. Many people who play games have experience a romantic relationship on some level, man or women, and understand the general concept of the lose or risk of lose of a loved one.

I'm not exactly saying it's a good or bad thing, because it can be used very poorly, and the lack of context can often lead to issues relating to the situation even when you understand the general concept.

I think an excellent, if not exactly verbatim, example of this dynamic is in Half Life 2. Over the course of the various chunks of that game, you spend a lot of time interacting with Alyx, the strong willed, capable daughter of an old friend. As time passes, many players experience a sense of connection, affection, even intimacy with the character Alyx. Not only is she in some cases responsible for your continued existence, but she resonates emotionally, as you witness her dealing with troubles with her father, or the player's character, or conflict with a character that nearly fits the "step mother" archetype. You really get to know Alyx's motivations and opinions and emotions, and I for one became very attached to her. So when this strong, capable character who I happened to be rather fond of was gravely injured and in need of medical attention, I felt greatly motivated to quickly and effectively carry out the simple tasks that the game was asking of me. I frequently found myself on the edge of impatience, not because the game was poorly paced, but rather because I was fretful. I was shaken by the events that lead to her wounds, shaken by the idea that I might lose a valuable relationship and that such a capable individual could have so easily been dispatched in the way she was.

Often the wife/girlfriend issue comes up at the beginning because it's an easy way to kick start the story. It puts things in motion. But I found the way that Valve used the players extensive prior experience to create most of the drama and tension of that section of the game all on it's own was more akin to the way that Condemned often built up to a good scare: such as encouraging you to search cabinets for weapons and often health items throughout a large chunk of the game, controlling the flow of these cabinets skillfully, slowly cutting you off for a while to remind you just how much you enjoy finding a cabinet when it's been a while and you're low on health. But then the game without warning changes that rule, and places an enemy within one of those cabinets. At that point, most gamers are likely to be well trained to investigate each and every such cabinet for items, and very confident that it will be a positive experience every time. It required set up, and time to really come to fruition, but by taking advantage of the player's experience such a tactic, or the plot device mentioned here, can be used very well.

I'd actually really like to see more of that in games these days, but at the same time I know it's hard to do it. Most relationships don't take place on the field. Sure, maybe they could have a buddy cop game but the twist is that the partners are more than just partners on the force, but even then, you'd be dealing with a very challenging dynamic. It's not easy to really set up these things. Video games in particular really struggle to make likable, relate-able characters, particular a romantic interest, and drawing that sub plot out even more is quite challenging. Half Life 2 managed to pull it off in part because of the formula that game follows, and in part from simply having an excellent writing team, but at the same time, you need just the right material to really go ahead with something like that and it's hard to find such a material. As a result, it often ends up that this method of motivation kicks off the tale of -insert duder here-, and often such relationship dynamics are seriously avoided or massively compressed if they exist at all.

@pixieface: I really like the idea of showing a dynamic and lasting relationship in a game. Part of the issue of the dead wife motivations, as I previously stated, is that the player has no reason to feel the impact of the loss of the character as the significant others are almost always already dead and have no development at all. While video game characters are represented much like film characters in that they have a characterization and development that are separate from the viewer or player, the fact that you are acting on the character's behalf should be developed as well. Being involved in a long term relationship where we see what makes the characters love one another would add a lot to the value and importance of such a relationship. Instead we are often made to remain as observers that are looking in on the character while they go through their emotions. It is a lot like attending the funeral of someone you don't know. You see the mourning and the way it has effected them, and can even compliment the somberness or atmosphere of such a situation, but your emotions are removed because you have no real personal ties to the loss. This isn't to say that entertainment and real life cannot elicit emotional responses although we are merely viewers, but often video games don't lead us to respond with emotion that is like that of the characters we play.

Men are often passive aggressive man-children and men like that are often willing to part with cash to express their unresolved desires.

That said, the only game I can think of which uses this theme appropriately is The Darkness because it's the trigger for the protag's descent into a destructive rage where he remains conflicted between his desire for vengeance and his need to retain his humanity. This resonates because it's his choices to deal with certain types which puts her in harm's way, so to speak. In that way, he's like the Kratos for less douchey types.

Maybe you should say WHAT you're spoiling so I know if I should read your post or not.

I often wondered.
Say the girlfriend/boyfriend/lover/whatever is saved.
What if you ever break up?
 
I mean, we all go through stuff in our relationships, but beating a firebreathing turtle, dodging death traps and fight the weirdest of creatures is just too much effort to have your lover one day say: "Yo I met someone new."

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

I often wondered. Say the girlfriend/boyfriend/lover/whatever is saved. What if you ever break up? I mean, we all go through stuff in our relationships, but beating a firebreathing turtle, dodging death traps and fight the weirdest of creatures is just too much effort to have your lover one day say: "Yo I met someone new."

Hence the Mario, Luigi and Peach triforce.

It is also fairly prominent in Action and Suspense movies.

I would actually venture to say that it is significantly more prominent in the movie industry.

Although I do agree with your idea that it is also prominent in games but I think its so common because it is something that illicits alot of emotion for people because it is a feeling that can be easily related to, to some degree.

@supermariobrah said:

@pixieface: I really like the idea of showing a dynamic and lasting relationship in a game. Part of the issue of the dead wife motivations, as I previously stated, is that the player has no reason to feel the impact of the loss of the character as the significant others are almost always already dead and have no development at all. While video game characters are represented much like film characters in that they have a characterization and development that are separate from the viewer or player, the fact that you are acting on the character's behalf should be developed as well. Being involved in a long term relationship where we see what makes the characters love one another would add a lot to the value and importance of such a relationship. Instead we are often made to remain as observers that are looking in on the character while they go through their emotions. It is a lot like attending the funeral of someone you don't know. You see the mourning and the way it has effected them, and can even compliment the somberness or atmosphere of such a situation, but your emotions are removed because you have no real personal ties to the loss. This isn't to say that entertainment and real life cannot elicit emotional responses although we are merely viewers, but often video games don't lead us to respond with emotion that is like that of the characters we play.

You're absolutely right. What it comes down to is just getting quality writers and allotting enough time, respect, and money towards the writing itself. It's hard to show a relationship but it's not impossible. I faced writing challenges when I tried to establish a bond that was already forged in a marriage and to make people care about it. A lot of what I did to connect a faceless third party I knew nothing about, the reader, to the characters came down to actions. How they acted around each other, how they acted when the other wasn't around, what they did to help each other, what they said or how they held back. Actions speak louder than flowery inner monologues, so they say. Unless this is Heavy Rain or a noir story, we just aren't privy to thoughts of characters. Video games can get inspiration from television and movies, mediums that also don't have access to thoughts and monologues, to see good characterization done through actions and dialogue alone.

A lot of the initial bond people form with characters is also due to a healthy amount of humor. If you make someone laugh but your story is just garbage, they will at least remember that fond moment when they laughed. They will hate you just a bit less, and isn't that what we all want in life? Think about Alyx and Barney. They made cute little comments within seconds of meeting you, and it made people instantly feel more comfortable in an otherwise uncomfortable situation. Even Kleiner had a sort of humor about him through his mannerisms, even if he was trying to be dead serious. I mean, Hedy Lamarr? Adorable.

The more I see of Bioshock Infinite, the more excited I get. Booker and Elizabeth are both fascinating characters. After just watching the trailers and developer walk-throughs I'm already attached to them. The developers purposely used visual cues to get you attached to Elizabeth, such as big eyes, a feminine face, and a cute figure to play to features we are biologically programmed to like. They also used a quality voice actress who portrayed fear and hurt very convincingly, which makes us want to help her. Then, her writing is just plain adorable. Considering the fantastical nature of the game, it's also fairly realistic. I think anyone would be terrified of a gigantic metal monster bird that haunts their every step, so we can relate to her fear. It's very smart in some ways and deviously subtle in others. And even though we haven't seen Booker (yet), I like him because his voice actor is good at his craft while his voice very stable and masculine. It's another thing we're programmed to like. Beyond all the rollercoaster combat and insane people and mechanical crows and massive zeplins, Booker is still relatable as a guy who's just trying to survive because of good writing. I don't know if anyone noticed, but I am psyched for this game.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

As for the rest, I think people... well, ok, I think feminists mostly (mostly, so if you respond to me calling me a pig or something, well, have fun, I won't respond to that)... focus too much on the gender and not enough on the role. The gender is what it is because men play games and therefore most titles star a man. It's simple. The rest is A) a way to get the character started with motivation that anyone can understand, and B) a basic relationship that would be the same even with a reversal of gender. Many people who play games have experience a romantic relationship on some level, man or women, and understand the general concept of the lose or risk of lose of a loved one.

It makes me kind of sad to see that raving mad, penis-hating feminists are expected to be the norm. I don't even like to identify myself as a feminist in public because I don't want people to think that I hate men or that I'm otherwise a crazy bitch. I mean, I love being a woman, I try to fight for issues that I think are important to women, such as pro-choice activism and sexual education, but I also really, really love dudes. Anytime I read the word Jezebel or the username of that livejournal chick who vehemently argues that Firefly is misogynistic, a piece of my soul dies.

Anyway, I would argue that issues of role are almost indivisible from issues of gender. Unless you're talking about roles within the context of a story, then of course I completely agree with you. I personally find it lazy and typical, but it's a device that has been used ever since the first fairy tales and oral stories. As other people have mentioned, it's also the crux of many movies, television shows, and comic books. It's not like I expect it to go away completely. I just wish it weren't used so often and so ineffectually.

@pixieface: The development of relationships can be done in great and often subtle ways. SeriouslyNow brought up a great example of an attempt at building a relationship within a game with the character of Jackie and his girlfriend Jenny in The Darkness. Talking to her over the phone, meeting here at the apartment, seeing her in the subway station, and the flash backs to her and Jackie at the orphanage built a relationship that felt more realistic than generic. The best moment is in the apartment when you sit on the couch with Jenny to watch a movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, and she rests her head on your shoulder. The way the whole sequence plays out is natural, and I remember sitting there wondering if the whole movie would continue to play if I sat there with her sleeping against Jackie. While I didn't actually finish the movie, knowing that I could have made the scene and the relationship feel that much more organic. This also made me have an attachment to the character that played a role in events later in the game that made me hate the villains. The Darkness is a great example of what games should strive for in term of building relationships between people in love.