Nancy Drew: The Most Iconic Woman In Gaming
FIRST-PERSON SLEUTHER
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She may not wield badass dueling pistols like Lara, or rule over the Mushroom Kingdom like Peach, but this detective has made the transition from pages to pixels, and gathered a formidable online fandom in the process.​

We should all be a little more like Nancy Drew. It's a slogan that I believe in. So much so that it takes up 47 of the precious 160 characters allotted for my Twitter bio. And really, why shouldn't we all strive to be more like Nancy Drew? The titian-haired girl detective has been something of an icon for generations of girls and women: she's confident, cunning, and drives around River Heights in that snazzy blue roadster (during the Great Depression, no less).

As seen in Secret of the Old Clock, the only game in the series to actually take place in 1930. Image: Her Interactive 

My childhood included boxes of familiar yellow-spined novels gifted on birthdays or bleak rainy weekends, each of them eventually overtaking entire shelves of my bookcase. My sister and I would spend countless afternoons "playing Nancy Drew" in a grandparent's house, trying to solve The Case of the Can of Beans With an Expiration Date of Six Years Prior.

So you can imagine my unbridled excitement when at the age of ten, I discovered that my favorite fictional detective had added another bullet on her resume: video game protagonist. And I'm not talking about one or two low-budget titles met with mediocre sales and success, like a Detective Barbie knockoff for the girls who've always felt more like a Velma than a Daphne. Just last month saw the release of the 32nd game in the point-and-click series, each developed by the Washington-based Her Interactive.

 Pixel Art: Samantha Dupler

There's something scrappily defiant about the tone of the games, particularly present in the earlier titles, like the developers set out with something to prove but refused to bluntly acknowledge just what that is. Characters frequently remark on how clever Nancy is — and by default, the player1 — but it's never unexpected or followed up with a qualifying "…for a girl!"

A suspect compliments your wit in The Secret of the Scarlet Hand. Image: Her Interactive

The series is devoid of the usual feminist-lite tropes: Nancy doesn't need an older brother to teach her how to pick a lock or outsmart a baddie, nor does she throw out an "empowering" girl power one-liner every time she excels in a typically masculine task.2 Her arguments with longtime-boyfriend Ned Nickerson stem from the fact that she goes on adventures while he's left feeling inadequate at home, all without a hint of any wink-and-nudge overkill to point out the obviously subverted gender roles.

In The Captive Curse, Nancy arrives at a spooky German castle only to be greeted with a phone call from a frustrated Ned, who's feeling left behind in boring old River Heights. 

Even Nancy's personality is at odds with how most fictional women, especially those marketed to younger girls, usually behave. She's logical, stalwart, and well-meaning, but she can also lack a fair amount of tact and has a general aura of endearing uncoolness about her. Even Nancy's original voice actor, Lani Minella, once remarked that Nancy was not allowed to use slang or "pronounce foreign words very well."

Not pictured: Tact. Image: Her Interactive, Tumblr

Against every odd imaginable, Her Interactive (a developer with the original catchphrase "For girls who aren't afraid of a mouse") cracked the case of the most desired (yet unfairly maligned) demographic in the gaming industry: teenage girls. And when you can successfully sell a video game where Nancy Drew visits Scotland as an amateur spy investigating the conspiracy surrounding the death of her secret agent mother,3 it doesn't matter that she might not top (or even chart on at all) any "Badass Women in Video Games" listicles. Instead, Nancy's got something a far better than that: a tightly-knit online fandom known as The Clue Crew.

 

It's very cow. Image: Her Interactive


"I was 16 when I first started playing, and I'm 26 now. Wow, ten years!" says Cami, the creator of a Tumblr fan blog called iwantakokokringle, a reference to the brand of fictional Koko Kringle chocolate bars found throughout the majority of games in the series. Cami's long history with the games isn't unique: the overwhelming majority of the fandom members share some significant similarities, myself included.4

They're mostly female, and first started playing the games at a young age with a mother, sister or friend by their side. They're nearly all between the ages of 15 and 25, though any 30-plus fans are openly accepted by the community. YouTuber arglefumph (real name Michael Gray), famous for his video walkthroughs of the Nancy Drew games, is one of the most visible faces of the Clue Crew: Her Interactive's official Facebook even wished him well on his recent marriage.

 

The developer has seemingly acknowledged the amount of fans who are aging with the games, instead of out of them, by way of more mature plot elements; the most recent game, Sea of Darkness, saw the introduction of the first openly gay character in the history of the series. (Unfortunately, the developer was too busy with the release of the game to be able to provide a comment.)

This evolution of the games (a new direction made even more apparent with Her Interactive's recent announcements of a new voice actor and writer) only serves to strengthen the bond that fans share, allowing them to grow and change with the series. "The Clue Crew's inside jokes are literally the best thing ever," says Kristina, a 19 year-old who runs the fan blog franceshumber.5 "We all grew up viewing Nancy as this badass super sleuth, when she's actually a badass super sleuth with no fashion sense who's kind of inept at certain skills."

Hardly an upgrade from the infamous horse shirt. Image: Her Interactive

The memes come from a place of love, and the meta-humor encourages both a sense of creativity and camaraderie among the fans. One running gag in particular relates to Nancy's uncool wardrobe, including a shirt with a dorky horse on it and a pair of "mom jeans." "Seeing a joke that only a handful of people understand sometimes makes a joke even more funny and meaningful," Kristina adds.

 Image: Her Interactive, Tumblr

It's a kind of exclusivity that women don't often get to comfortably experience in video game-dedicated spaces, at least not from the side of the fandom gatekeepers. But as frustrating as it may be elsewhere — even the actresses who star in nerdy franchises aren't free from fan policing — it's nothing short of inspiring to see hundreds of young women share photo edits and fan theories of a computer game series that they all grew up with, like a digital sleepover born of a collective childhood.

 

Although Nancy Drew may be no stranger to inspiring girls to reach for their goals throughout generations, those aspirations have since taken on a decidedly modern feel. The impact she's had on so many young fans through her computer game appearances has led to a desire for some to enter a STEM field themselves, and give back to the industry that empowered them in the first place. Not bad for a detective who recently celebrated her 85th birthday.

Being more like Nancy Drew has been cool since 1930. It means solving the case and nabbing the baddie, all while wearing your dorkiest horse shirt (even if that horse shirt is of a more metaphorical sense). To quote Yumi Shimizu, a character from Shadow at the Water's Edge: "You pull off the old school thing Nancy Drew; some things don't go out of style."

1

This is intensified by the fact that you never see Nancy's face in the games, for the ultimate in self-projection.

2

See the belittling "I Have Brothers" trope.

3

Whose backstory the games have completely retconned: she was originally just the victim of a random tragic car accident.

4

Game number six, The Secret of the Scarlet Hand, was the first one I'd ever played. It confused me, frustrated me, and even terrified me with the final reveal of an ancient mummified corpse sealed up in a Mayan tomb. But above all, it enthralled me. For months on end, my sister and I would huddle up at the giant CRT monitor, a hand-me-down from our Dad's home office, and try our best to help Nancy crack the case, solving puzzles and interrogating 3D rendered suspects.

5

Named after Frances Humber, the fictional daughter of a sheriff from the 1880s and one half of a doomed couple featured in The Secret of Shadow Ranch.

<p>Samantha Dupler is an Editorial Intern at Digg.</p>

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