Scriptwriters make Lara Croft one-dimensional, a posh heroine with a suite of one-liners and impractically skimpy clothing, when actually she’s kind of a big nerd at heart she loves archaeology and ancient civilisations, she pores over artefacts, she’s bright and aristocratic, self-sufficient and tough and brave. I believe that only a few of the various people who have been in charge of Tomb Raider and Lara Croft over the years – from movie-makers to developers – have actually understood why it is that people love it.
Mostly she was alone in tombs, trying to disarm ancient booby-traps and make tricky leaps of faith. Lara had two pistols, but she rarely used them. The games, meanwhile – the best of them – were actually kinda quiet and cerebral (and frustrating, to be honest). A lot of women and girls – hi! – loved Lara Croft because she was a badass action hero, and in the absolute diversity desert of late 1990s and early 00s pop culture, she was pretty much all we had (her, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) it’s not like we had a bunch of non-sexualised female characters to choose from instead. But I’ve always felt that Tomb Raider’s popularity is despite, rather than because of, the overt and deeply embarrassing sexualisation of Lara Croft.
TOMB RAIDER 2013 LARA SERIES
In the 1990s the series broke through because its star, Lara Croft, became a polygonal sex symbol, gracing the pages of lads’ mags and the cover of The Face. Tomb Raider is a game series that’s never really been what it should have been, if you ask me. You’d think Tomb Raider alone might at one point have been worth that much or more. But given the eyebrow-raising sums that have been flying around in the games industry lately – Sony paid $3.5bn for Bungie, a studio that currently has only one game (Destiny), and of course Microsoft is set to pay nearly $70bn for Activision-Blizzard and its suite of games – $300m seems quite the bargain.
Not too long ago, this would have felt like big news purely because of the money involved.
Swedish entrepreneur collective Embracer Group, a relative newcomer in gaming, is now the proud owner of studios in Montreal the US, and properties like Deus Ex, Thief and, of course, Tomb Raider. There’s been an interesting development in the games business this week: Square Enix, the Japanese company behind Final Fantasy, has sold off basically its entire North American business for $300m.
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