Hmmm, here's one thing that never would have happened without the shift of the game industry from primarily male players to primarily female players: the reclamation of the "damsel in distress" trope as a feminine empowerment symbol.
"Escape" scenarios were, if you remember, very common in the early girl detective games: the protagonist would get trapped somewhere, locked in a room, tied up, etc., and the player would have to work through their escape. It was easy to do an escape scenario as a puzzle, so these were put into almost all the old games, often more than once. Of course, before this, the girl would frequently be captured and then rescued by the man, as was the case with Donkey Kong and Popeye, two of the last major pre-crash arcade hits. But now, the girl was rescuing herself, using her wits, determination, and strength to escape. Occasionally she'd have to be rescued, or rescue someone else, but almost always it would be another girl who would be the rescuer. Gradually, because of these games, the damsel in distress trope transformed from "Oh no, who's going to save the girl?" to "I wonder how she's going to get out of this, and when she does, what's she going to do to the person who put her in this situation?" Gradually over time, these female protagonists usually avoided getting captured in the first place (and even when they did, it wasn't because of any fault of their own but because the bad guys either outnumbered them or deceived them somehow, and these girls were NEVER fooled twice), but even still, the modern image that everyone thinks of when thinking of the "damsel in distress" is of a woman heroically escaping her captivity in a burst of strength and ingenuity, and never just calmly waiting to be rescued. I doubt that ever happens without the demographic shift in the video game industry which gradually seeped into other mediums in the 90s and 2000s.
"Escape" scenarios were, if you remember, very common in the early girl detective games: the protagonist would get trapped somewhere, locked in a room, tied up, etc., and the player would have to work through their escape. It was easy to do an escape scenario as a puzzle, so these were put into almost all the old games, often more than once. Of course, before this, the girl would frequently be captured and then rescued by the man, as was the case with Donkey Kong and Popeye, two of the last major pre-crash arcade hits. But now, the girl was rescuing herself, using her wits, determination, and strength to escape. Occasionally she'd have to be rescued, or rescue someone else, but almost always it would be another girl who would be the rescuer. Gradually, because of these games, the damsel in distress trope transformed from "Oh no, who's going to save the girl?" to "I wonder how she's going to get out of this, and when she does, what's she going to do to the person who put her in this situation?" Gradually over time, these female protagonists usually avoided getting captured in the first place (and even when they did, it wasn't because of any fault of their own but because the bad guys either outnumbered them or deceived them somehow, and these girls were NEVER fooled twice), but even still, the modern image that everyone thinks of when thinking of the "damsel in distress" is of a woman heroically escaping her captivity in a burst of strength and ingenuity, and never just calmly waiting to be rescued. I doubt that ever happens without the demographic shift in the video game industry which gradually seeped into other mediums in the 90s and 2000s.
