NHN’s racy racing title Drift Girls is a game blatantly targeted at men

For the past few years, the games industry has been much more self-examining when it comes to the role and portrayal of women in games. Feminist Frequency’s Tropes versus Women in Video Games series of videos was backed by thousands around the world and raised nearly US$160,000 on Kickstarter. Yet Korean developer NHN has taken it upon itself to develop a racing game featuring all-female drivers. If you’re going to empower women, you might as well go for horsepower, right?

The Drift Girls teaser trailer has been making rounds on a few Korean websites, including game news site Inven). Inven’s news article’s headline reads essentially: “A real racing game for men! Drift Girls teaser announcement shows dizzying heroine.”

In the trailer, the driver starts by reassuring herself: “Don’t worry. You can do this. Understand?” After realizing “this is how it’s done” and getting the hang of her drive, she exclaims “I won! I won! Is there anything I can’t do? I’m so good at this.”

One assumes that this young woman, though not pictured in the video, was wearing a bit more when she accomplished her racing feats than the two girls featured in the concept art floating around for the game. At Korean site Gameshot, the same concept art includes details about two of the game’s characters, Joeun (which may be a play on the Korean word for “good”) and Shia. In particular, Shia’s physical measurements are available, but you can only know Joeun’s when you’ve “gotten close to her.” Joeun is the one wearing what I think are supposed to be shorts.

While it’s hard not to get behind the idea of a racing game with female heroes, it’s also pretty clear that this is not a game intended to appeal to female drivers. Developers in countries like Korea and Japan often lean heavily on sexualized imagery or tropes involving women that have come under scrutiny in the West. Games like the recently released Bayonetta 2 or many of the immensely popular games in China and Korea that include women with the proportions of ancient fertility statues hardly raise eyebrows in the East, while many members of the Western media and games industry are quick to call out such depictions in otherwise highly praised games.

While, particularly in Japan and Korea, women are well-organized and rival most Western countries in their political influence, there hasn’t been the same backlash against female representation in games, nor real attempts to get women in games, real or fictional, to put something on from time-to-time.

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“To seize the hearts of macho men, [the makers of Drift Girls] have released images of two beautiful heroines,” one article begins. Drift Girls is going to be just another game in Korea, and might even turn out to be a good one, but don’t mistake for a game targeted toward a female audience.

(Source: Inven)