“She was using Bayek for sex:” hegemonic femininity and the identity play in Assassin’s Creed Origins

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite recent trends toward introducing female characters with increasingly active roles in video games, there is still a noticeable conservatism regarding shaping central female protagonists in Ubisoft’s franchises. However, in Assassin’s Creed Origins, the trajectories of the protagonists, Bayek and Aya, are as different as possible. While Bayek’s gamic narratives are centered on family values aimed at avenging the death of his dead son, Aya’s story and scholarly origins revolve around direct cooperation with elite politicians like Cleopatra to achieve the same purpose. I show that Aya embodies hegemonic femininity based on her social location, not only in class and race but also in gender as a source of power superior to the masculinity of her husband, Bayek (the “intersectional domination” framework). Subsequently, analyzing relevant comments on Reddit, I argue that the ambivalent reactions to Aya’s femininity coincide with a postfeminist playerbase, with ambiguous and often contradictory attitudes towards Aya’s better intersectional location. Considering digitally mediated misogynist tensions exemplified by #Gamergate and other viralized communities via Reddit, I explore the inequalities between the two characters in Assassin’s Creed using a postfeminist lens and highlight potential implications for video games and gender studies.