Yang Safia

The purpose of this ludonarratological analysis of the hero’s journey in Final Fantasy (FF) games is to analyse the efforts of game developers (devs) in trying to provide a fairer representation for women in the videogame medium. These efforts stem from the criticisms by the women in the community (devs, critics and gamers alike) who argue that female characters are often hypersexualized in the medium. Hence, my decision to analyse games that feature women as heroes is to determine whether game companies are successful in representing women fairly. I will be
comparing two female-led FF games with two male-led FF games that have similar ludonarrative designs. Their similarity will make it easier for me to detect any instances of double standards in its design due to the main character’s gender. The theoretical framework that I have adopted for this research is called Gendered Play (GP). It is an approach that I have created specifically for this dissertation due to the absence of a comprehensive framework that will allow researchers to study gender in the videogame medium. GP is a result of borrowing several ludic, narrative and feminist theories such as Real-Time Hermeneutics, Ludonarrative Dissonance and Monomyth. GP is defined as a situation where there is a difference in the game design when the avatar is male or female. As for my methodology, it is divided into two phases: free play and critical play. My findings reveal that GP indeed exists in these FF games which in turn affects how the player perceives the female characters as believable heroes. Firstly, it is found that heroines experience less monomyth tropes compared to the heroes. There are also certain design decisions in their
ludonarratives that impede the women’s agency as heroes, ergo affects how the player perceives them as believable heroes. While I believe that there are instances where the heroines are seen empowered, it is evident that the major portion of their games still uphold normative gender values and pander towards the interests of the presumed male audience.

Keywords: Ludonarrative, Gendered Play, Hero’s Journey, Real-Time, Ludonarrative Dissonance.

In 2009, popular game company Square Enix (SE) announced Final Fantasy's (FF) first femaleled videogame. The game is Final Fantasy 13 (FF13). Its game director, Motomu Toriyama boasts how FF13's heroine, Lightning, presents a different type of appeal than that of the usual hypersexualised women characters seen in videogames. While we can consider that this is a step forward for better representation in the medium, better representation should not stop at desexualising character designs. Instead, developers must be cognizant of how the game's ludonarrative design can affect the portrayal of female characters. Ludonarrative design combines game/ludic elements with narrative aspects to shape the player's experience. In this paper, we analyse the ludonarrative design of two FF games, one of which is female-led (see: FF13) and the other is male-led (see: Final Fantasy 15). We contend that there is gendered treatment in FF13's ludonarrative design. In order to validate this argument, we analyse the correlation between the game avatar function (ludic feature) with the number of monomyth tropes (narrative feature) present and how they affect our perception of Lightning as the hero.