Today on Usenet, folks were discussing features that had been dropped from Ultima IX. The "No Female Option" feature had been dropped was brought up.  At least two posters (both male) had commented that the dropping of this feature 'didn't bother them much.'  Which is fine... don't get me wrong.  My feelings aren't hurt, and they are certainly entitled to their own opinions.

Their comments, however, prompted me to write an essay on the subject, which I will copy/paste in here.  I hope it will help some men to understand how and why it is important to have a Female Option (I love that term... as if being Female was an Option ;)).  Women alone will not be able to push for something in a game and get have it happen; we are too small of a minority.  But men could help... if they wanted. :)

I also feel I should note that this is not a plea for the Female Option to be added to UIX.  They will do what they will do, and neither because nor in spite of any essay that I write.  It is simply a story, and an explanation.

While the impetus of the essay was from Usenet, I don't think I'll post this there. I have been posting there too much lately... and I am fearful of losing my lurker status. ;)

Now that I am done with the disclaimers, here's my essay…

When I was about thirteen years old, my younger brother and I would go to ComputerLand (or other such store) with my father every few months. On these trips, we were each allowed to pick out one game to play on our family computer. One of my first purchases was Ultima IV. I remember seeing it there and thinking the box looked good. It looked heroic and epic and fun. So I handed it to my father for purchase, and we brought it home.

I loved the game. I remember playing it and playing it and then starting over and playing it again. I played for hundreds of hours. I never did finish. I could get about six of the eighths (watching my hangman-like ankh get bigger each time), and could never figure out how to get the last two. I began to wonder if there was an end to the game, or if I was just supposed to be six-eighths of an Avatar on purpose. After all, who could be that perfect? Certainly not me.

A year or so later, on another of our Saturday computer-store trips, I picked out Ultima V. Same deal. I never finished, but played hundreds of hours and had a blast doing it. Then I uneventfully quit playing computer games and did high school things (and later, college things).

In both Ultima IV and Ultima V, I named my character Lancelot. In any game, given the chance to name myself, I used Lancelot (or an asexual Cotelette de Porc, if it was a game like Microprose's Gunship). At age thirteen, Lancelot was the most sexy, dashing, and romantic guy I could think of besides Indiana Jones, but his name was too long, and heck if everybody was going to be calling me "Indiana" in a fairly Medieval setting. So I used Lancelot. I hope that's okay with Malory.

The thing is, though… and think about this, because it's pretty heavy: I never even considered giving my character a female name. It simply didn't occur to me. It was epic. It was heroic. Heroes are male. Was that what I was thinking? I don't know; I don't remember. I only remember knowing what I was going to name my character before I brought the game home.

It didn't bother me to play a male character. I enjoyed playing Lancelot. He was sexy and dashing and romantic, after all.

But he wasn't me.

I had pretty much forgotten about the Ultima games until 1995. I picked up The Complete Ultima VII at Sam's Club for $8.95 (I remember thinking: "They're still making these Ultima games??") I had to un-install Windows95, Install DOS, and then reinstall Windows95 to make it work... but I didn't mind (too much), because I knew it was going to be a great game.

And you know what else? There was even a Female Option. That was pretty cool. So I selected the Female Option in order to check her out. My brow scrunched, my eyes squinted, and my nose crinkled as I looked at this caricature on the screen. I looked at my monitor and said (out loud and laughing, even): "Are you nuts?? You have got to be kidding me!"

There she was -- all six-foot-three-inches of her. With blonde braids, huge breasts, and lots of make up -- she was Helga the Viking Chick! Not only that, but she hardly had any clothes on! I remembered the bad guys I went up against in Ultimas IV & V, and I knew that if I made Helga run out into Britannia in that mini-skirt she had on, she'd be dead before she had a chance to say "Name, Job, Bye."

Needless to say, I chose the male "Uber-Avatar" and named him Lancelot again (As an aside, Ultima VII was the first and only Ultima I ever finished). Again, I didn't mind playing a male character. It would have been nice to play a female, but since I didn't know what I was missing, I didn't mind. I certainly didn't want to be Helga, and had always played Lancelot, so I figured - why break tradition?

In November of 1996, I saw on the Sierra website that they had an Online game called The Realm. I came upon the site the day after they stopped accepting sign-ups for the beta test. I thought it would be neat to play this game with other people from all over the country--and the world. For these two reasons, I ordered it sight unseen.

Sierra had screen shots of battle scenes and characters on their website. Having always been a big Disney fan, I liked the cartoony-style characters. The women looked normal -- like real women (as real as cartoons can be, but you get my point). I knew what my name was going to be before I even ordered the game. I hoped nobody had taken it.

I was going to be Janey.

I knew what I was going to look like, too. I was going to be cute, but not froo-froo cute!, and I wasn't going to pick features that made me look like I was wearing a bunch of make-up. I was going to have long, plain straight brown hair (that part didn't come to be true - there is no long hair in Realm). And I was going to be an archer (that didn't come to be true either - there are no bows in Realm. Janey started as an Adventurer, turned into a Wizard, and then went back to being an Adventurer, before silently slipping off the face of the Realm).

Janey was good. She was a pacifist in an ocean of pvp-ers. She stood independent in a sea of guildfolk. She was friendly when many were mean. She held out her hand to new citizens while others would turn their backs, ignoring their pleas for assistance. She had a place in the Fields where she would stand: near a tree, with her toe in the mud. Her face looked good there. Friends would congregate there.

She was me.

This spring, I saw the first new screen shots of Ultima: Ascension. A few of them showed the Avatar talking to his old pal, Jaana. I looked at Jaana, and my mouth fell open. Somebody over at Origin had to have been playing Realm... because she looked almost exactly the way a non-cartoony Janey would. That they looked the same and had the same first initial had to be more than a coincidence. ;)

They had finally gotten women right. No ski-resort make-up. No buxom blonde Viking Chicks. It was a shoulders-up shot, so I couldn't see if she had breast implants and was wearing a mini-skirt and go-go boots, but the wonderfully detailed hood draped gracefully over her plain (straight? long?) hair made me think probably not.

I was excited to make Janey the Avatar... and finally be able to let her be an Archer, with a bit of magic thrown in. That was what I had always wanted for Janey. (The Fallout Janey had worn Hardened Power Armor and toted an Alien Blaster in one hand and a Turbo-Powered Laser Rifle in the other--it just didn't seem right. ;))

Then the Word came down from The Big Man: There would be no Female Option.

I'm not mad; I am disappointed. They have to do what they have to do. Most Ultima-players won't be affected by the fact that there will be no Female Option. Because most Ultima-players are male, most don't care. Most don't, can’t, or won’t see this from my point of view. Until 1996, I didn’t even see it from my point of view. I didn't realize that female characters could be good, interesting characters. Now I know. That knowledge won't go away. I have Janey to thank for that.

That there is no Female Option won't be a deciding factor in whether or not I will buy the game, however. I will continue my personal Ultima Tradition of playing the sexy, dashing, romantic Lancelot.

But he won't be me.