Special Report
PCG INVESTIGATES
How TOMB RAIDER’s early marketing campaigns objectified an icon
As aprofessor who studies the politics of games, I’m fascinated by the late 1990s. This period of massive technological innovation was also the crucible in which modern gaming culture was forged. When researching the era I sometimes encounter such an odd piece of gaming ephemera that I can’t resist tracking it down – like Lara Croft: The Art of Virtual Seduction, a book published by Prima Games in 2000. “Everyone knows how to make this tomb raider jump, shimmy and swim,” the ad suggested, “but do you know what makes her tick?” I did not know what made Lara tick, so I rushed to eBay to purchase a tattered copy. What arrived at my doorstep is a fascinating window into gaming at the turn of the millennium.
It’s difficult to overstate the impact Tomb Raider had in 1996. Riding the wave of early 3D gaming, Tomb Raider helped redefine the action-adventure platformer and spawned numerous copycats. Tomb Raider had something going for it that its imitators couldn’t match: Lara Croft.
VIRTUAL SEX SYMBOL
Today asking “who is Lara Croft?” would sound almost as absurd as asking “who is Mario?” Lara remains one of the most iconic characters in gaming history. But when Lara debuted, female protagonists were still quite rare – especially female action heroes. As a quippy gun-toting lead, Lara Croft occupied a space typically reserved for the Duke Nukems of the world. While the team at Core Design initially envisioned a male protagonist, the decision to change their hero into a heroine ended up dramatically shaping how Eidos would market the series.
The mere existence of an officially licensed book titled Lara Croft: The Art of Virtual Seduction points to Lara’s dual legacy as a groundbreaking female protagonist and a male gaze-ified sex symbol. A page-one editorial actually lists some of Lara’s memorable physical traits, including her “imposingly voluptuous breasts”. Later a feature explores what makes Lara so hot, “She is tall, has sensational breasts, a small waist and a luscious rear end that she saucily flaunts when she crawls on all fours. There’s only one problem: she is not real.”
Elsewhere, the book refers to Lara’s “clear appeal to primal masculine instincts” and describes her as “a virtual woman who always does what you want her to do”. No one ever described Mario as a virtual plumber who always plumbs what you want him to plumb.
The Art of Virtual Seduction’s main selling point was its collection of centrefold-inspired 3D renders of Lara, provocatively posed and often wearing little to no clothing. The cover features a topless Lara with her arms wrapped around her breasts. Later in the book, she appears topless in bed, topless on the beach, topless on the floor of a tastefully decorated living r
