The Electronic Software Association reported that women make up 47 percent of the game-playing population, according to its 2012 gaming industry report.

Donna Binns, an English professor who has studied the roles of women in science-fiction video games, said even though the numbers remain relatively balanced to those of male gamers, the portrayal of women in video games has slowly changed in the recent years.

“There has been some improvement lately,” Binns said. “That isn’t to say that every game represents women in a way we might like, but I think there has been quite a bit of improvement.”

A video game featuring a strong female lead, Binns said, is “Half-Life2.” The game’s supporting female character, Alyx Vance, plays a significant role in the effort to save the human race from the ruling alien race.

“She is a supporting character, but she is in the game quite a bit, and she challenges the male lead, which is fun to see,” Binns said.

Even a few female leads in the earlier days of video games took on more progressive roles, with some headlining games.

In the 1980s, the first game in the popular “Metroid” series featured a strong female lead, Samus Aran, whose identity was revealed at the very end of the game.

Because the character could be mistaken for a man during gameplay, Binns said the revelation of her identity “was kind of a big deal.”

Currently, Crystal Dynamics, the company designing the upcoming “Tomb Raider,” modified the lead character’s design, Lara Croft, turning her into a 16-year-old with a much younger physique.

“She has sort of gone through an evolution,” Binns said.

From what Binns saw at E3, the electronic entertainment expo in Los Angeles, which was streamed online this past summer, “she was a little more normally proportioned.”

Binns noted that the difference in the depiction of women within video games could be attributed to the different genres in the industry, which she said might explain why the previous incarnations of Lara Croft sported giant bosoms.

Role-playing games have provided gamers with the tools needed to mold a character to their liking.

“The Sims,” a life simulation video game series, has expanded its design options for players, giving them more control when customizing their avatars.

“So you’re seeing a little more variation, a little more pushing of the boundaries and maybe a little more reflection of actual culture than we saw early on,” she said.

Scott Walus, a communication studies professor who has done a study on the representation of females in video games over the last three decades, said the roles women have been cast into in video games have strayed from the typical “damsel in distress” narrative because the video game industry has changed story-wise.

He added that Princess Peach from the Mario Bros. series was one of the most famous damsels in distress.

“Gaming took on what I like to call a dude turn,” Walus said. “Shooting games became the trend when they used to be more about a quest.”

Walus said the latest developments in the gaming industry could be attributed to the people designing them, in a job force that is characterized as predominantly male.

The Los Angeles Times reported in a 2008 article titled “Women left on sidelines of video game revolution” that women make up fewer than one in five designers in the industry.

“That’s where you begin to see hyper-femininity—excess amount of skin and curves that are going to be unnatural—as well as hyper-masculinity,” Walus said.

He went on to say that female characters are still cast into a certain role even with new story lines and concepts.

“Even in the liberation that is Ms. Pac-Man, you’re still stuck to a normative life script,” Walus said.

Roles mattered less with earlier arcade games, Walus said.

When the video game industry was still in its state of emergence, Walus said consumers really had no need to worry about gender among characters because creators were technologically limited.

The original video game characters, like those featured in several Atari games, were little blocks on the screen that hardly resembled human beings.

Sometimes no humans were in games, like the “Galaga” game series, where all gamers played as a tiny spaceship that shot out at other ships.

“You could be the block or the spaceship,” he said.

He said target audiences have also limited the roles characters take on in video games.

“If you look at it, video games are targeted toward the middle, teenage boys, which comes from big companies in charge of these video games,” Walus said. “Maybe the representations of women would be different if independent developers had a little more control.”

However, Walus said gamers have found a way to break through limitations in characters with the inclusion of avatars in role-playing games.

“You’re no longer broken down into some image on the screen. You see yourself or what you think looks like you,” Walus said.

Jaime Lopez can be reached at 581-2812 or jlopez2@eiu.edu.