Luis Cunha

Luis Cunha was the founder of the first Tomb Raider news site, The Croft Times.

Extract from interview 06-24-2000 [1]

Luis Cunha, 36 and Portuguese, lives near Lisbon, owns a small computer company and created The Croft Times as a Web site three years ago. He said by e-mail that he's smitten with Lara for deeper reasons than her looks.

Lara is a beautiful character, wrote Cunha, and her most distinctive characteristics (no, not those!) are her independence and strength. I really don't care about her very exaggerated physical attributes, and I would prefer that they weren't so highlighted.

The Croft Times [2] started out as a site for showcasing Cunha's Web design skills to potential clients. Now the site averages about 20,000 visits per week, and he spends more than 20 hours a week working on it. He also has developed a theory - a fairly non-conformist one - about the attraction men feel to Croft and the Tomb Raider series.

Many male players, Cunha wrote, like to play with a female character because they feel, since they are 'in control', that they are protecting her. As you know, we males do like to 'protect' women; this is of course a chauvinistic attitude, but true nevertheless.

Since in real life we hardly get the chance to be a hero, and since in video games with a male character we 'are' the character, we do not identify ourselves with Lara because she's a girl. But then we can protect her by playing right, preventing her from dying and helping her achieve her goals.