Tag: tomb raider

In an industry where female protagonists were rare, women gamers who rarely saw their gender portrayed as anything other than a hostage or background decoration had a real character they could relate to, even if the rebooted Lara Croft wasn’t perfect.

The new Tomb Raider sold a million copies in less than two days after it was released on March 5, 2013. It sold 3.4 million copies in total that month, coming in second only to BioShock Infinite, which was a monster of a release. According to a story published on Gamesindustry.biz on May 28, 2013, however, publisher Square Enix was not happy with the number of net sales of TR to customers.

If Rise of the Tomb Raider fails to perform to Square Enix’s sales expectations, will this be taken as an argument to bolster the “conventional wisdom” that games with female protagonists don’t sell? It is not hyperbole to suggest that the situation with female protagonists in video games is tenuous enough that this result could hold back efforts to increase representation of women in video games for years to come.