“There was a whole fake gamer girl witch hunt” - Ashly Burch on misogyny in the gaming community and the rise of women leading games
Voice of Aloy, Ashly Burch talked about the evolution of women in games and reflected on her career. She also shared her thoughts on how much things have changed.
Ashly Burch was a guest on a recent episode of The Sackhoff Show with Katee Sackhoff, where she opened up about how her career began, her work in voice acting, and her experiences in the gaming industry. The conversation also touched on misogyny in video game development scene, and Ash offered her take on the issue.
Ashly Burch on the shift toward female leads and misogyny in gaming
If you’re not familiar with Ashly Burch, here’s a quick recap: she started out with her comedy sketches Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’? back in 2008 alongside her brother Anthony (the lead writer for Borderlands 2). She’s also a writer and actress on Mythic Quest (I still haven’t emotionally recovered after it got cancelled). But in gaming world she’s best known as the voice of Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, Chloe in Life Is Strange, or Tiny Tina in the Borderlands series.
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But she’s not just working in the gaming world, she’s a gamer herself. So when Katee Sackhoff asked if there’s still a lot of misogyny in gaming, Ashly gave an honest answer:
I remember when I was coming up there was a whole fake gamer girl witch hunt. This idea that you would only play to get attention or something like that.
That seems to have fallen away a little bit more in my experience. I feel like there’s less of a “you don’t really play games, do you”? kind of energy.
That said, it definitely still exist.
Ashly then brings up the drama about Aloy’s design change in Forbidden West, the whole “peach fuzz face” thing. It totally blew up with memes and people roasting the complaint for being way out of touch with what real skin (and real women) actually look like.
I think the way that it’s improved is that it’s not exceptional as much anymore for there to be a female lead in a game, which is awesome.
When we started recording Zero Dawn in 2014 or 15, I was really nervous, cause I was used to people trying to put women as a lead in a game and then if it failed blaming the fact that there was a female lead.
I was just at the BAFTAs and there were a number of games that were nominated that had female leads. So there is a shift.
Lack of female representation? Not in my gaming world
Katee mentioned early on that she’s never really been part of the gaming community, so I get why there might still be some misconceptions if you're not in that space. Personally, I see that kind of thinking as a bit outdated. Sure, there are still a few corners of gaming where women might not always feel welcome, but that’s more like something leftover from the past than the norm now.
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Another thing is, after playing games for over three decades, I never really felt like there was a huge lack of female leads or characters, at least not for me. JRPGs especially had some solid female representation way back. Games like Valkyrie Profile, Breath of Fire II, and Chrono Trigger come to mind (and let’s be real, Marle and Lucca carried just as much weight in that story as Crono did).
And let’s not forget, character creation and picking your protagonist’s gender has been around for ages, it’s definitely not some new trend. I’ve always felt that assuming there weren’t great female characters mostly came down to not knowing the right games, rather than it being completely true.
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Author: Olga Racinowska
Been with gamepressure.com since 2019, mostly writing game guides but you can also find me geeking out about LEGO (huge collection, btw). Love RPGs and classic RTSs, also adore quirky indie games. Even with a ton of games, sometimes I just gotta fire up Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, KOTOR, or Baldur's Gate 2 (Shadows of Amn, the OG, not that Throne of Bhaal stuff). When I'm not gaming, I'm probably painting miniatures or admiring my collection of retro consoles.
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