5 Game-Changing Real and Fictional Women

This one’s a tribute to all the leading-ladies, real and fictional, who brought to life many-a-gamer’s vivid fantasies, by storming into this supposed Male-bastion and proving that the laws of the virtual land are equal for all.

Kim Swift: All gamers swear by the magic Portal brought into their gamer character-lives. Kim Swift made this puzzle-FPS a virtual reality, as she and her team were hired by Valve (creator of Half Life) to recreate her own Narbacular Drop that she had fashioned in college- as the game changer that was Portal.

Robin Hunicke:  Out of all the games that have been her brainchild, you know her best because she’s responsible for the way MySims looks on your Wii console. She’s also lauded for Boom Block, a game on the same system. Her brilliance got her the post of executive producer at thatgamecompany, where she also went on to develop ‘Journey’, a popular game on the PS3.

Brenda Brathwaite: This outspoken stalwart of gaming-women has had a pretty eventful career with quite the colorful portfolio. She’s as old a resident of the virtual world as the 1980s, when she made the classic Wizardry RPG series. And more recently, the wildly popular Playboy: The Mansion simulation. She’s still at it, through her own game design studio ‘Loot Drop’.

Carol Shaw: Meet the pioneer that opened the floodgates for women designers way back in 1978. As a part of the gaming Giant Atari, her creative juices were flowing through classics like 3D Tic-Tac-Toe, Video Checkers, and most importantly, River Raid that worked wonders for Activision- the world’s first third party console developer. She collaborated with them for a few more projects, until she quit the profession to pursue something else.

Jade Raymond: One cannot pay a tribute to Gaming icons, without mentioning the creator, producer, and gaming entrepreneur Jade Raymond. She is one of the executive producers of a game that has a following of historic proportions: Assassin’s Creed. She has also been producer on the team for mainstream games like The Sims Online, Watch Dogs and The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot.

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Lara croft: Lara Croft is the face of the Tomb Raider video game series published by Square Enix Europe. The action-adventure games feature the protagonist travelling the world in search of rare objects and mystical artefacts, and also show her anchoring a solo journey in pursuit of her lost mother. This rugged bombshell, as the perfect combination of dirt and leather, holds six Guinness World Records and has a strong fan following, that swear by her influence on the video game sphere, by making it less of a bunch of testosterone-driven-success-stories.

Chun Li: Chun Li is a player from the Street Fighter fighting game franchise created by Capcom. The first female fighter introduced into the Street Fighter canon, and Interpol officer who restlessly seeks revenge for the death of her father, and has to she has to her merit firebolt martial arts moves. Unlike Lara Croft who is an accidental fighter, Chun Li is trained for combat. Her massively positive reception has now not only made her a constant character in the game, but also gotten her two films and many anime and comic book productions.

Cate Archer: is a player character and the protagonist as covert operative for British-based counter-terrorism organization UNITY in the No One Lives Forever video game series. In 2007, Cate made it to Tom's Games on 50 greatest female characters in video game history list "As a delightfully retro 1960s British agent, Archer is the female equivalent of James Bond. She's irresistibly sexy, stubbornly headstrong and proficient with all sorts of Bond-like gadgets," as it says on her Wikipedia page.

Jill Valentine: The Resident Evil game revolves around this gutsy character, in which she is a member of the U.S. special police unit STARS, who hads found herself in a mansion along with her team partner Chris Redfield. This curvaceous cop with her armor strapped on at ALL times, is regarded as one of the most attractive woman characters and one of the best video game leads.

Kitana: Kitana is the most instant association one makes, when they hear Mortal Combat.  This “explicitly” adorned character has been widely sexualized, but she continues to wear her sexuality on her sleeves (or the lack of them, thereof.) Lik this assassin turned leader of good isn’t fatally irresistible anyway, she concludes the game with a “Kiss of doom,” which to me is symbolic of the power contained in women who are considered to be mere “objects of lust.”