Sunday, August 23, 2015

The healer is a woman

I'm a big video gamer.  I was just playing Act of Aggression today (pre-release beta) and thought it was interesting how the Dustoff unit (a medical helicopter that heals your infantry units) has a female voice on the radio communication, much like that from the Medivac from Starcraft.

Also in a lot of other games, mainly RPGs, women are depicted as healers and much less often in combat roles.  I've been gaming since the arcade Space Invader cabinets, and I think it's been a slow drift towards women being depicted as strong protagonists.

I just think it's interesting that a lot of healers in video games, characters that presumably require years of study, a profound understanding of pharmacology and physiology, often get relegated to be less interesting characters with little aptitude for self-defence.

It'd be interesting to see more video games with prominent physician/combat medic characters rather than all the glory going to the infantryman.  Band of Brothers actually has an episode taking place in Bastogne where a medic is featured extensively.  Needless to say, I rather enjoyed it.

It'd be nice to see games that take things further than Trauma Center did, as well as see a more equal number of male and female medic units in games that revolve around conflict.


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