Surely you’ve heard Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser’s take on Grand Theft Auto V’s three male protagonists by now: “The concept of being masculine was so key to this story.” And they can’t just shoehorn anything in, you know. It’s got to work with the narrative. They had a story they wanted to tell, see, the story of a retired gangster. “We liked the idea of a protagonist retiring with a family, and how awful that would be,” said Houser. “We’ve never done anything like that and you don’t really see it in games — to feed into these concepts of parenting and pseudo-parenting.”
Not to split hairs, but pseudo-parenting is kind of the new hotness right now, and female gangsters are perfectly capable of having kids. In fact, Houser, in order to do something really fresh? Really exciting? Something you don’t really see in games?
Make your pseudo-parent a woman.
Such a move would definitely cut away from the current grain. But let’s give Rockstar the benefit of the doubt. They’ve been working on the game a long time, and when they started, perhaps playing the virtual (male) parent was less ubiquitous. I’d say Rockstar’s done a fair job of keeping things fresh from GTAIII onward, or at least as fresh as can be with crime narratives, which are well-trodden tales. They’ve crossed racial and ethnic lines. They’ve even gone back in time, in a sense. But no women, not outside supporting characters and now, the GTA Online multiplayer character creator.
“But!” cry the naysayers, “female protagonists can ruin games! No one will buy it. Male protagonists are the best move for Rockstar.”
Do you really think the legions of GTA fans, all other things being equal, will skip a future GTA VI if it happens to feature a female lead? Chew on that a sec.
And women are no strangers to that world. There are so many notorious female gangster narratives that are not heavily tapped for media that Rockstar could draw from to create a fresh, different story, as they claim they want, and such a move has the potential to break the male-dominated world of games right open. Is this their job? No–Rockstar need only be in service to Rockstar, and their mission is to make games that sell. But a protagonist with a dash of Griselda Blanco, whose violent story is woefully undertold in mainstream media? Perfectly on par with the series’ darkest elements. Perhaps they could try something smaller-scale, like Estrella Hermila Ramos’s criminal-bootstraps story, a story of a Daddy’s Girl-type who only wanted to follow in her trafficking-father’s footsteps.
And by the way, Estrella Hermila Ramos? Reportedly retired… with a family to take care of, her mother and daughter. Exactly the goal of one of the GTA V stories, though less masculine. But I suppose now they’ve told that story, or one very like it.
Ramos and Blanco are only two examples. There are scores of female gangsters with dark stories, but all the Grand Theft Auto stories are dark, even with peppered with humor. There’s nothing pretty about climbing the criminal ladder, even if you’re doing it with rhinestone-tipped nails. Grand Theft Auto V is inherently masculine? Great. So are all the other games. So let’s do something fresh, Rockstar: let’s make Grand Theft Auto VI inherently feminine, Blanco-style. The game will be sexy. Violent. Potentially terrifying. And if someone like Blanco is used as a template, there might even be a good reason for some of those objectified females in the game’s media. Everybody wins.
