Interesting thing about the Alien franchise is that the character Ripley, from the original movie, was originally male. Some have speculated that the reason they did such a good job of providing a strong female character is that they didn't originally write the character with a bunch of preconceived notions of how a female character would act. They were writing for the default, a male.
Horror movies and games do draw the viewer or player to identify with or experience powerlessness. I've also heard it theorized that at least for games, the idea is that mostly males play horror survival type games and they are tapping into a protective instinct. I have never seen any data to back up who plays those games, and I'm not sure whether there is anything to this. I can say, as an anecdote, that when I played Bioshock I always saved the little sisters because I didn't like the idea of hurting the little girls, even in a video game, and even if they were creepy.
For another survival game, but one that is not horror per se, I though the newest Tomb Raider release did a pretty good job with a female protagonist. And thankfully they scaled back Laura Croft's breast size a few orders of magnitude and gave her a reasonable waistline.
Horror movies and games do draw the viewer or player to identify with or experience powerlessness. I've also heard it theorized that at least for games, the idea is that mostly males play horror survival type games and they are tapping into a protective instinct. I have never seen any data to back up who plays those games, and I'm not sure whether there is anything to this. I can say, as an anecdote, that when I played Bioshock I always saved the little sisters because I didn't like the idea of hurting the little girls, even in a video game, and even if they were creepy.
For another survival game, but one that is not horror per se, I though the newest Tomb Raider release did a pretty good job with a female protagonist. And thankfully they scaled back Laura Croft's breast size a few orders of magnitude and gave her a reasonable waistline.
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