Gender Role playing Games

How is gender portrayed in games? Stereotypical. Next question.
Examples of games where gender is handled properly. Let me think...

Red Dead Redemption takes very greatly into account the time and region that the game is set in when it comes to making the characters in the game. John Marston, the main character, is a man who is very tough, and fairly hardcore. Making a character in a modern setting and doing the same thing could be pointed at as stereotyping, but an adventurer, much less a gunslinger in the wild west requires a very tough, gritty character. Take a look at history, even female gunslingers had a very macho, tough attitude about them. But while John Marston is a big strong gunslinger, he still has some very humanizing features. He's motivated by the love of his family, and throughout the entire story-line, everything he does is for his wife and his son in the long run, and he eventually dies for them. I know that the man being the protector of the family can be a stereotype, but when as the game goes on, the back-story gets slowly explained, and very implicitly, the player sees a picture of a slightly younger John Marston struggling to make the right decision in the context of society, his peers (who happened to be outlaws), and his own personal feelings, and we see him become more of a victim of the game world rather than a character taking part in the game world. That, in and of itself, is what makes John Marston a believable male character.

Speaking of his wife and son, they themselves are two prominent examples of well developed characters. The relationship between Abigail Marston (his wife) and John is complicated, and explained in bits and pieces throughout the game. She was, presumably, a whore in (or a kidnapped rape victim that was captured by) Dutch's gang, which John used to be a part of. He had a sense of honor that led him to marry her. John's son is literate (which wasn't that common in that time and place), and distant from his father, destined to go on to college and away from the wild west atmosphere (at least until John died and he swore to avenge his father's death). Jack Marston struggles with gender roles in society in a different way, again, as revealed by implicit details and through dialogue. He struggles to prove to his father that he is a hard man like he is, because, after all, his father is a badass who took on several outlaw gangs, and the Mexican government. (It is also noteworthy that the U.S. Government is the only entity that John can't fight against. They kidnap his family and hold them hostage which spurs on the entire game. It could be an event that might make Marston feel like less of a man, since he couldn't protect his family from everyone.) What leads to this struggle is his being brought up mostly by his mother in his father's absence (oh, and a drunk good for nothing hillbilly "Uncle").

It doesn't stop there, every major character in the entire game is very multi-dimensional. But one of the best examples to talk about gender roles is Bonnie McFarlane. Bonnie is the daughter of a relatively wealthy rancher (relatively wealthy meaning his ranch was it's own town, which, again, in that day and age wasn't too uncommon). Being a woman of the west, and a ranch-hand herself, she does have a lot of that toughness to her. She's a high spirited cowgirl (cowgirl in the sense that she herded cattle, not that she was a part of the red-sash-wearing outlaw gang). But that's not all, the struggles she faces as a woman often taking on a man's role because of the stereotypes built around women in that time and region of the world. John Marston (you, the player) will make several comments about her alluding to the femininity of her gender and it's stereotypes. Bonnie's replies show us that she displays a mix of both opposing those gender roles set on her by society, and conforming to different gender roles for different reasons.

The list continues to go on. Dutch, the gang leader, runs away from a fight he knows he can't win, rather than fighting it out like a "real man" should have; he also has a love of nature. "Uncle" rejects honor and nobility in favor of self service and alcohol. A few of the Mexican Rebeldes are female, including a major character, and fight actively (with guns and bullets) against the Mexican Government. There's even a side-quest about a gay man, and another about a man who is in love (as in a romantic love with sexual connotations) with his horse.There's also a continuing list of those that conform more than not. The leader of the Mexican rebel group is a bastard and a complete womanizer. The Sheriff of Armadillo has constant 20/20 sight on his duty as an officer of the law. Landon Ricketts, a once famous gunslinger now (mostly) retired, is a hard man almost the whole way through.

So the game presents a vast array of characters of varying importance that are multi-dimensional. Even under the scope of gender roles the game excels by presenting a combination of characters that conform and/or reject different roles set on them by society. Not only do the developers do a good job with that, but they do it in a setting that is vastly different from today, which is brilliant.