"We Don't Want It Changed, Do We?": Gender and Sexuality in Role-Playing Games

Arne Schröder's 2008 Eludamos article examines how gender and sexuality are represented in the Gothic role-playing game series, drawing on feminist and queer media theory, including the work of Laura Mulvey and Judith Butler, alongside a mixed narrative and ludological method. Its central thesis is that the series reproduces traditional gender dichotomies and compulsory heterosexuality rather than challenging them, and that its conception of masculinity operates as a compensatory fantasy built around a hypermasculine action-hero archetype.

The study's most striking quantitative finding concerns representation: only six of 101 named human characters in Gothic I (about 5.9%) are female, well below the roughly 20% average the author cites, and only 9.1% of named human characters are female in Gothic II. Female characters who do appear are largely confined to sexualized or domestic roles, such as serving male leaders or sweeping floors, are unavailable for conversation, and are sometimes framed for a voyeuristic male gaze. Female characters are also portrayed as less capable than male counterparts, and the author notes that Gothic 3 regresses further toward a male-dominated world.

The article's treatment of sexuality focuses on queer representation. The character Mud in Gothic I is coded negatively as a gay figure whom players can kill without consequence, while the optional farm storyline of Bengar in Gothic II offers a non-pejorative allusion to gay characters but remains peripheral to the main narrative. Overall, the author concludes that the series affirms rather than challenges traditional gender and sexual norms. The scope is deliberately narrow, limited to a single game series from the mid-2000s, so its conclusions speak to that corpus rather than to role-playing games or the wider industry as a whole.