That's My Nintai!

How to undermine sexism: an indie developer's guide.


Megadev is a small developing team from the South of England. Their latest game is a polished retro platformer with super tight controls. Its enigmatic protagonist has come with a mission, to discover what happened to the one armed ninja who previously made the trip. Armed with trusty katana and shurikens, and trussed head-to-toe in fabric, Nintai Ryoko covers up another subtle secret... her gender.


There was to be no surprising reveal. Without close examination of the mocked up box art, or perverse scrutiny of her chest area, one might never really register the fact that it's a curious girl who is taking the trip. Intrigued as to why the developers had chosen to develop a female protagonist and then barely lampshade it, I decided to ask what had motivated the team.

 At the base of it, it was due to us not having very many female protagonists in our games and we thought it would be more fair remedy [to] that, while at the same time [we decided] not fall into the blatant trope of "sexing it up" for more hits.

Where other developers assume that simply adding a female into their games is enough, Megadev  developed its female protagonist who is an exceptional fighter and, as the game's attached comic shows, hungry for a story.

After I asked whether the appearance of the protagonist was designed to be a homage to the Metroid series, the developers replied that: Despite the "classic videogame homage" nature of the game, she was not a direct reference to Samus Aran; however the comparisons are pretty fair as both games tackle the case of gender equality by obscuring the protagonists' appearances with cloth/armour. Simply by hiding her under layers of clothing Ryoko becomes an enigmatic figure. All we can know is that she is a competent fighter, whose motive is what we might use to conceptualize her character. 

Megadev commented further that outside of her interactions with Smither the skeleton, her gender is really a non-issue.  Smither is the disgusting NPC that sits on treasure levels, asking the player character if she wants "to touch my fibula" and stating that "Ancient evil lies below. My waistline that is." His catcalls ignore the clothes that cover every inch of her body.

Who are you callin' ninjette?

So the developers have created a complicated gender narrative by having the player internalise that gender is a "non-issue", and then using an NPC destroy this illusion by focusing only on the character's sexual body. For female gamers, who are so used to having their good gameplay undermined by the sexualised attacks, Smither's words are satirising an everyday reality.

But for those not used to being reduced to a sexual object whilst playing, I hope the SHODN's lascivious skelly provides a wake-up call. Just as they have cleaned up the controls of retro classics, the team have addressed outdated gender-stereotyping. Megadev give the uninformed a taste of what it feels like to be objectified without compromising on engaging gameplay.