"After that I put the controller down and turned my PS4 off. I didn’t want to play anymore. I couldn’t believe Rocksteady would do such a thing. I still had a hint of doubt that they actually did it. I was so pulled out of the experience that I barely cared about the game anymore, so I went online and saw if Barbara actually was dead or if she came back later on. I found out that that scene was a hallucination caused by the fear toxin used on Batman. However, this is more of a plot convenience and doesn’t change much. For all intents and purposes regarding the player, Barbara was kidnapped and murdered and was “dead” for the majority of the game. Rocksteady wanted to have their misogynist cake and eat it too in the sense that they wanted to kill a female character to motivate the player to want revenge against Scarecrow but they didn’t want Barbara to actually be dead so that the player could feel the empowerment of saving her later on." Seriously... I don't get articles like this. If you want to write about issues with female representation in video games why not use examples and rhetoric that isn't setting up the video game for failure in any way. First he is upset they kill her off, then he is upset they didn't kill her off. Also, the whole time he is talking about damsels in distress and the issue of a man saving them. You are playing as Batman. Literally the entire city and everyone who isn't the villain (or thugs) you are going after is the damsel in distress in this game.

It's like the author of this article and many others I've been seeing are just reaching for anything they can spin into a social issue in gaming. They are out there, you don't need to write sensational stuff to prove it.

You can argue that female representation is not adequate in gaming, and I would also. But the way I see it is that representation isn't representative of the consumer demographic (there are more female gamers than games with female leads). However, I would also argue that gaming is a form of art and expression and the game devs are going to use this medium to express themselves, and that becomes an issue of the developer demographic not matching the gamer (the ratio of female gamers to female developers isn't equal). But that is definitely a speculation on my part and I don't know if that is the reality.