Playing the Portal Games as a Girl

I just wanted to make a post about how much the Portal games mean to me as a girl gamer.

These are serious sci-fi puzzle adventures. When people in unrelated science videos talk about portals, half the time they use the orange and blue portals from Portal. On the cover of the Orange Box, Portal is represented by a stick figure. Beside it are Heavy and Gordon, two men. When I played Portal for the first time earlier this year, I just assumed the protagonist would be a man. I mean, Half-Life’s protagonist is a man, and TF2 is all men (shoutout to Ms. Pauling and the Administrator tho), and so when I saw that stick-figure I just unconsciously accepted the protagonist would be a man.

And then I lined up the portals just right and saw Chell. I can’t tell you how happy it made me. I was shocked, which is kind of crazy, since I only played Portal for the first time this year. It’s 2024 and I was ecstatic about having the protagonist be a woman. But I think part of what makes it so special is that the Portal games are so often represented by this stick figure. I know it’s just because that’s what the laboratory directions look like, but it also feels like a statement: a stick figure is neutral. Neutral does NOT mean men. Default does NOT mean men. Women are not “alternative” to anything. Chell is the protagonist. She’s also a woman. Nothing special about it. And that’s what makes it so special, somehow.

Also, Portal has two characters: Chell and GLaDOS. Both women. This is a serious, lauded, important, unforgettable game where the only two characters are women. And in Portal 2, the male characters (Cave Johnson, Wheatley) are bumbling fools, and seem to exist only to make things harder for our female characters. I mean, Wheatley was literally made to make GLaDOS less intelligent so she would be less dangerous. Obviously this is because GLaDOS is a genuinely dangerous robot, but you don’t have to look very hard to find feminist subtext.

Finally I just wanted to say how damn funny GLaDOS is. Letting a woman (ish, I know’s she a robot so bear with me) be powerful and crucial to the story is one thing. Letting a woman be powerful and crucial to the story and EXTREMELY funny is another. GLaDOS isn’t just tough and evil, she’s awesome. She’s delightfully devilish, and every time she speaks she’s a joy to listen to.

Also shoutout this subreddit for being awesome. So much of Reddit is filled with toxic misogynistic idiots. I feel so validated here. We are gamers. We are main characters. We are default.