Masculinity in Gaming 2011 Edition

Recently, I checked out this interesting article called “Have Game Characters Become so Butch Their Cartoonish?” over at Tom of GameLand. I thought it was an interesting read on the way the male ideal in gaming has evolved and somewhat stagnant in recent years. I wanted to expand on the idea of the article, and I felt the only way to really do that was to examine the male characters we have seen this year. This is mostly a picture article, but worth checking out!

Isaac Clarke (Dead Space 2)

Grayson (Bulletstorm)

Cole Phelps (LA Noire) 

Cole MacGrath (inFamous 2)

Hawke (Dragon Age 2)

Sev (Killzone 3)

Marcus Fenix (Gears of War 3)

Adam Jensen (Deus Ex: Human Revolutions) 

Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem Forever)

Nathan Drake (Uncharted 3)

The Kid (Bastion) 

Link (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword) 

Vincent (Catherine)

Pokemon Trainer (Pokemon Black/White)

Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza 4) 

Joseph Capelli (Resistance 3)

Alcatraz (Crysis 2)

Hero (Outland)

Michael Ford (The Conduit 2)

Ezio (Assassin’s Creed: Revelations)

Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher 2)

Darius Mason (Red Faction: Armageddon) 

Call of Juarez: The Cartel 

Enoch (El Shaddai) 

Batman (Batman: Arkham City)

Super Mario (Super Mario 3D Land)

For the most part, I tried to hit all the major games released this year. Some don’t really offer many images of a main character or feature some customized character. In general, while there does seem to be a slant towards generic, bad-ass hero motifs, there are a lot of interesting models in between that for games. It seems like a decent amount of variety on display.