Cats sharpen their hunting instincts by chasing lizards and batting at balls of yarn. Similarly, playing Solitaire with cousins as a child won’t just hone one’s arithmetic skills-it will sharpen the subtle art of keeping a poker face, a skill just as useful in games as it is in real life.
Games are more than entertainment. They shape the way people think, train reflexes, and often reflect the world with all its biases and blind spots.
For the past twelve years, Clash of Clans has followed through changing phones, cities, and even governments.
For the past twelve years, Clash of Clans has followed through changing phones, cities, and even governments. Other games like Among Us and Call of Duty Mobile drifted in and out of fashion like seasons, but Clash of Clans, affectionately known as COC, stood its ground as a constant moon in the digital sky.
The game presents a gender enigma clad in medieval armour, P.E.K.K.A, one of its most mysterious characters, revealing insights into gender representation in gaming culture.
Clash of Clans (COC), a real-time strategy (RTS) game launched by Supercell in 2012, involves players building villages, training armies, and raiding enemy bases. As of February 2025, the game records nearly 65 million active players. More than a game, it represents a cultural force, reflecting the societal values embedded in its design.
Its troop lineup reads like the guest list at a medieval boys’ club: Barbarian, Goblin, Wizard, Dragon, Giant – almost all male. The female troops – Healer, Witch, Valkyrie, Electro Titan, Archer – are outnumbered 5 to 18. And then there’s P.E.K.K.A, a character so heavily armored that “her” gender itself becomes a riddle.
Driven largely by Generation Y players (born between 1981 and 1996), this digital landscape reinforces gender roles as rigid as medieval steel. Players often dedicate between 30 minutes to 6 hours daily, striving to earn virtual trophies, climb leaderboards, and engage in battle quests.
P.E.K.K.A: she is not a woman
A self-reflexive approach is adopted to examine the debate surrounding P.E.K.K.A’s gender, acknowledging that Indian gaming spaces remain predominantly male-dominated. This positionality allows for a critical analysis of how gender is imagined, dismissed, or exoticised within these communities. Insider status provides a perspective on what is considered “normal” in gaming spaces where gender discourse is often overlooked.
P.E.K.K.A is analysed as a cultural object rather than merely a game character.
The focus is not on defining P.E.K.K.A’s gender but on how cultural ideas of masculinity, femininity, or identity are projected onto the character. P.E.K.K.A is analysed as a cultural object rather than merely a game character.
The official game description states: ‘Is P.E.K.K.A a knight? A samurai? A robot? No one knows.’ Supercell employs feminine pronouns for P.E.K.K.A, yet the character’s appearance remains ambiguous. Encased in purple steel and wielding a pink sword, P.E.K.K.A’s identity resists easy classification. The robotic voice exclaiming “Destroy!” Upon deployment further complicates this, aligning with technological discourse in which robots are often referred to as “she.”
A final-year computer science student noted that this feminisation does not stem from inherent female traits in machines but rather from cultural habits of projecting femininity onto technology. From ships and artificial intelligence systems to voice assistants, the default gender of servitude in technology remains predominantly female.
In 2012, Supercell organised a Facebook contest asking players to decode P.E.K.K.A’s name. The winning entry “Perfectly Enraged Knight Killer of Assassins” remained gender-neutral. However, in-game loading screens casually refer to P.E.K.K.A as “she.” In one official advertisement, P.E.K.K.A pauses mid-battle to chase a butterfly, a peculiar display of tenderness for a mechanical war machine.
In a small player survey conducted at a technical institution, with a sample size of 25 players recruited through snowball sampling, all respondents were male. Not a single one could suggest even one female player from their clan of 50 members who could weigh in on P.E.K.K.A’s identity. Some confidently identified P.E.K.K.A female, citing the butterfly imagery that often surrounds P.E.K.K.A and the pink hue on her sword. Others argued that P.E.K.K.A must be male, pointing to the game’s Viking-era setting, which they believed meant that only men could be warriors-despite this being historically inaccurate.
Some confidently identified P.E.K.K.A female, citing the butterfly imagery that often surrounds P.E.K.K.A and the pink hue on her sword.
One respondent even remarked, ‘A woman can’t be this strong and well-built.‘ These responses revealed not only confusion about P.E.K.K.A’s identity but also the deeply ingrained gender biases that players bring into the game world.
The masculine mythology of COC
For male troops, ambiguity does not exist. The Barbarian’s muscular build and aggressive demeanor establish his role, while the Villager, a passive female non-player character wanders aimlessly and seeks cover at the first sign of conflict. The implicit message remains clear: men fight, women flee.
Judith Butler’s argument in Gender Trouble regarding gender as performance aligns with this dynamic. Female characters in Clash of Clans are typically caregivers, healers, or passive figures. Even dragons, mythical creatures without biological sex-are assumed male by default.
Players speak: ‘It’s a war game. Women can’t do much.’
Interviews revealed that players frequently invoked history to justify gender disparities. ‘It’s like Vikings,’ one player stated. ‘Women didn’t fight back then, so why bring feminism into this?‘
Some cited the Archer Queen’s presence as evidence of gender balance, though the Barbarian King was introduced first, with the Archer Queen added later as a reactive inclusion rather than an intentional statement on gender equity.
Only one out of 25 players acknowledged the imbalance. For the remainder, prolonged exposure to COC’s gender norms had rendered them invisible. As Simone de Beauvoir asserted in The Second Sex, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.‘ P.E.K.K.A’s identity is not inherent but constructed through color coding, pronouns, and player interpretations.
The way women are imagined within games, and how the gaming industry has become increasingly “boys’ club”-like, actively curtailing the voice of women and other marginalised identities, were precisely the concerns raised by Zoe Quinn during the GamerGate controversy.
The way women are imagined within games, and how the gaming industry has become increasingly “boys’ club”-like, actively curtailing the voice of women and other marginalised identities, were precisely the concerns raised by Zoe Quinn during the GamerGate controversy. The shockwaves triggered in 2014 have continued to reverberate even in 2025. As one respondent abruptly remarked, ‘Why bring feminism into this? It’s just a game.’
P.E.K.K.A: A door left slightly open
In the end, P.E.K.K.A is neither entirely male nor fully female. “Her” gender ambiguity offers a glimmer of the possibility of a crack in the rigid wall of digital patriarchy. This mirrors Butler’s concept that gender is ‘a copy without an original‘, a performance that can be subverted but is often reabsorbed into dominant frameworks.
Yet, despite P.E.K.K.A’s potential to rewrite the rules, the game’s overall design has remained largely unchanged. Later characters like the Electro Titan continue to follow the hegemonic gender binary, with female characters still occupying supportive of secondary combat roles. P.E.K.K.A represents a ‘door left slightly open‘, a fleeting moment of gender fluidity that has not yet sparked systemic change.
Supercell’s rallying cry to its players-‘Answer the call of the mustache! Join the international fray that is Clash of Clans.‘ stands in contrast to its stated dream: ‘to create great games that as many people as possible play for years and that are remembered forever.‘ While Supercell claims to believe in the power of games to unite people across the world and strives to create ‘new, innovative, memorable experiences no one has played before,‘ there remains an undercurrent of patriarchal and orientalist tendencies within its design choices.
The game’s celebration of hyper-masculine characters, alongside the exoticisation of characters of color-such as the Hog Rider, a Black man riding a pig, or the red-haired, brown-skinned character riding a root-suggests that these elements are not incidental but embedded in its aesthetic and narrative framework.
If COC is to truly function as a place in the Lefebvrian sense, it must evolve beyond being merely a conceived space-structured by game designers-to a lived space that reflects diverse identities and experiences.
If COC is to truly function as a place in the Lefebvrian sense, it must evolve beyond being merely a conceived space-structured by game designers-to a lived space that reflects diverse identities and experiences. A game world is not just remembered; it is inhabited. For COC to truly align with Supercell’s aspirations, it must not only be remembered but happily remembered. In game design, some things can be undone-and should be, when they hinder the creation of an inclusive and progressive digital space.
About the author(s)
Ritish is an independent journalist and reports on social and political affairs of Chandigarh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. He is currently based in Chandigarh and his works have been published in The Indian Express, Article-14, The Quint , Scroll, and Outlook India
