Diamond Lobby teamed up with artist Hossein Kalantari in order to create a series of video game character depictions, re-imagining highly recognizable male characters and protagonists, from games such as Assassin's Creed, Halo and Cyberpunk 2077, as women.
The project stems from studies that analyzed the percentages of games that had male versus female protagonists. It cites two separate studies -- one from 1998 that showed that only 15 percent of games featured a female protagonist; 41 percent lacking female characters altogether, and another from 2020 that showed that 23 percent of main characters in games were male, versus 18 percent being female. The remaining percent consisted of protagonists that were either gender ambiguous, non-binary or had multiple main characters of differing genders. Based on this information, Diamond Lobby and Hossein Kalantari teamed up to re-imagine some of gaming's most memorable characters as women.
The reimagined characters are Captain Price from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Michelle De Santa (Michael De Santa) from Grand Theft Auto V, Alex Hunter from FIFA 17, Madam Chief (Master Chief) from Halo, Eva da Firenze (Ezio da Firenze) from Assassin's Creed II, Marcia Fenix (Marcus Fenix) from Gears of War and Jenny Silverhand (Johnny Silverhand) from Cyberpunk 2077.
Brittney Lin, who conceived the idea, talked about her thought process. "I've long been aware of the under-representation of female characters in games and was recently thinking to myself: 'I wonder what my favorite games would look like if their main characters were women,'" she stated. "I realized that I didn't need to just sit there imagining this, I could work with a designer to actually create these characters concepts."
"We devised a list of popular AAA games with highly recognizable male protagonists, then worked with artist Hossein Kalantari to create their female alternative, retaining identifiable characteristics or trademark clothing but ensuring to give each character a personality that's their own — badass female leads in their own right," she continued. "The outcome on all 7 characters was exactly as we'd hoped for: really strong designs that empower women and make the game look like they'll be just as good as the original, if not better."
The resulting project is a fun, creative take on representation on video games. More and more video games are allowing players to design their own character or swap the gender of a particular protagonist, but proper representation is something that continues to be an important subject in gaming communities. Lin has invited artists to send their own female protagonists to the publication via Twitter -- with the possibility that community designs might be featured in a later update.
Source: Diamond Lobby