Female heroes of dota 2

A conversation on female heroes in Dota 2

For some time there has been a debate on whether negative representation is better than no representation. For example, in order to have a stereotypical representation of a homosexual male, you must first admit that they make up a proportion of the population and by doing so they are no longer invisible. This is an important element as many countries flat-out deny the existence of homosexuals in their populations. Others argue that it is better to be invisible than to have a poor representation which is likely to cause harm by propagating negative stereotypes. Dota 2 has an issue with female heroes, but it’s more complex than most other games and doesn’t fit very neatly into this argument.

Sexualisation of Characters

Many believe it is completely viable to sexualise female heroes so long as the same is also done for male heroes. Thus a game with a busty female can be offset by a shirtless bloke with a six-pack. Some dislike this approach entirely and say any overt sexualizing is bad unless it is a core proponent of the character, as it too heavily favours reducing a character to sex and making them primarily a sex object. League of Legends does the former, where both male and female characters are overtly sexualised, often to insane degrees. Dota on the other hand takes the latter approach, where almost all characters are completely unsexualised within the game world.

The only exception in Dota would be Akasha, the Queen of Pain. Akasha is extremely sexualised but this does not detract from their stance. Akasha’s entire lore and backstory revolve around themes that lend themselves to sexualisation, and thus her suggestive voice lines complement her lore.

It would be a mistake to assume that this means the females in Dota 2 are a good example of positive female representation. While there is a number of sexless heroes, the bulk of heroes are male. There are 117 heroes in the game yet only 19 are female. Strength heroes tend to be more masculine and muscular, but even excluding all strength heroes there is still only 18 females out of the remaining 79. The core fact is that the amount of female characters is noticeably lower.

Additionally, heroes like Medusa and Naga Siren have to be female as both are also female in the Greek mythology they are adapted from. Likewise, Zeus would most logically be male.

Female Origins

However, Dota’s origin is more unique than most games as it primarily used pre-existing assets from Blizzard, most notably Warcraft 3. Drow Ranger and Windranger are both adaptions of Warcraft’s Sylvanas Windrunner, much like Crystal Maiden is Jaina Proudmoore. This could be the very core of the problem when it comes to the lack of female heroes in Dota. Female heroes of dota 2

Dota 2 has an origin unique to modern games. The hero roster is very limited by Warcraft 3 and the popularity or quality of certain characters there, along with the pre “Official Dota” mods that circulated before the most popular heroes were put into All-Stars.

The only female strength hero, Tresdin the Legion Commander, was male in the original mod. She was intentionally changed with the transition into Dota 2. This suggests the development team were acutely aware of the sex problem in the Dota 2 roster. This is a step up from Team Fortress 2, where none of the 9 playable classes are female. Perhaps this is where the diversity concern ended. Neither Grimstroke nor Pangolier had to be male, while viable arguments could be made for why Mars and Monkey King had to be. The five original Dota 2 heroes, and yet only one is female. This suggests that the problem still does exist. Only 16% of the roster are female, and while quota obsession is controversial even in professional contexts, the incredibly low percentage is noticeable. While many groups that have been historically under-represented in media change from country to country, we still by in large have a 50% split when it comes to sex. The evolutionary model Fisher’s principle explains why most species that reproduce sexually have a 1:1 ratio with sex. Assuming most Dota species follow this principle, then their universe would have a comparable ratio.

It’s probably a bit complicated and even unnecessary to use evolutionary biology to discuss sex ratio problems in a video game. Ultimately though, there’s a severe lack of female characters in the game, and this post also did not look much into how they were represented in both physical appearance and personality. Both of which can be a problem in games. The female characters are mostly fine in the areas addressed, but there just isn’t very many of them. Whether this is considered a problem will mostly depend on you. One would imagine most Dota players care very little about such things, but do note that the League of Legends team recently included homosexual heroes in their game. They said diversity wasn’t an explicit goal, but rather something that evolved naturally over time. So perhaps when designing future heroes, the development team should ponder on whether sex is something they should consider. Biological sex that is…