Another thread about sexism in video games.

[Agema]

It's not just all that however.

I'm aware that computer games are disproportionately about kicking arse, but the notion of a "strong man/woman" as merely one able to deal out and withstand large quantities of physical punishment is a painfully narrow idea of what strength is anyway.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I am suddenly not shocked by you opinions regarding romance novels, holy shit.

I went through a phase where I really liked vampires and most of the vampire fiction was romance-based. Even Anne Rice has her vampires getting very very gay throughout her books.

 

[Agema]

In what way?

Even if you want to talk about differences in men and women are treated in terms of sexualization, you then have to find a way to equate the difference between how men are found sexy, versus how women are found sexy. Look at the hottest men alive lists on any number of Cosmo magazines and you'll see the likes of Chris Hemsworth, Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman etc etc, all men with "superhero" bodies.

<cough>

Paul Rudd Is PEOPLE's 2021 Sexiest Man Alive: 'I'm Getting Business Cards Made'

Paul Rudd says he's 'going to lean into it hard' of being PEOPLE's Sexiest Man Alive.

people.com

 

[BrawlMan]

In what way?

Figure it out. I and many others gave you plenty of answers in the past. Start looking; that is all you get.

 

[Hawki]

Just to be clear, there isn't a "lack" of female characters in games. But on average, there's fewer than males, and they do tend to be more sexualized.

If there was actually someone saying stuff like "there were no good female characters prior to the 2010s" or some other nonsesnse, rest assured, I'd be arguing against them alongside you, but that isn't what's being discussed.

 

[BrawlMan]

Spider-Man studio Insomniac responds to sexual harassment allegations

Insomniac Games, developer of Marvel's Spider-Man and Ratchet & Clank, has responded to a former employee's allegations…

www.eurogamer.net

https://www.thegamer.com/insomniac-games-sexual-assault-allegations/

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I went through a phase where I really liked vampires and most of the vampire fiction was romance-based. Even Anne Rice has her vampires getting very very gay throughout her books.

So yeah, I'd recommend going to the romance section and getting some recommendations. Get something outside the very specific subset of genre fiction you picked up.

 

[meiam]

I though Aloy was by far the weakest part of the game. She's an orphan who's being kept away from other people her entire life and yet she has no problem interacting with other and is shown to be very charismatic... somehow she learned how to do all that by interacting with a single human being her whole life. She also somehow know how to use every piece of technology she comes across just because its plot convenient. She's just a Mary Sue, is that really want people want out of their good portrayal of female character? The game is also weird with sexism, you have a conversation with some female tribe leader who has a conversation that boil down to "Men are useless and only women can be in charge" and Aloy just agree with her, can you imagine if the sex had been reversed? A society is shown as evil because its patriarchal but Aloy society is equally matriarchal and that's just fine. Almost every male character is just a shadow of a female character, down to the evil AI being shown as male and the good AI being female. The reason why the world is fucked up is because of a male character and the only reason humanity wasn't completely destroyed was because of a female character. Take HZ and flip every sex and it would be decried as the most sexist game ever.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

We want more Abby's from TLOU2 in our games, then I want more Dwight Shroots as my male heroes. Let's diminish it on both sides and I'd be happy to call it fair. More donut Nathan Drakes!

So just to be clear, your counter example to a singular muscly woman is a shlubby guy? Like, isn't that 2/3rds of GTA 5's male cast?

Sounds like we need more Abby's to balance it out

 

[CriticalGaming]

Except the trope is almost always used for female characters. It's very rare to find a "dude in distress."

Look at almost every game where the playable character is female. The trope isn't any better when you swap the gender roles. I wouldn't even argue the trope is bad, there is a reason why it is highly effectly used in all manner of stories. It plays well into audience engagement. When the shit works and people enjoy it, then it'll keep happening.

But on average, I would maintain that female characters are better these days than they were decades ago. Which corresponds to games in general being better written as well.

Well yes that's the key here. It's the better writing. Or rather the fact that developers are taking the story more seriously as we've reached a point where video games can be quite effective vessels for great stories. With better stories, you will naturally just get better characters by and large.

By this logic we can argue that there never was a sexism issue in regards to the treatment of characters, there was a storytelling issue. The aforementioned damsel-trope was a simple basic device that made it easy for games to motivate the player to do a thing. "bad guys took your girl, go kill bad guys" easy enough.

Zelda, on the other hand, started off in a damsel in distress, whereas by Breath of the Wild, is a more capable, more fleshed out character, and I'd say she was one as early as Ocarina of Time.

She's still waiting for Link to come save her from her Gannon fight. That's still a damsel in distress, she's just distressed in a slightly different way to make her look more capable. But in reality she can't do shit without Link so....

. However, back to Resident Evil - why is Jessica, a BSAA agent, wearing high heels into a combat zone? Why is Ada Wong, a highly trained spy, wearing a red dress in rural Spain that she knows is infested by ganados? I'm not complaining about these characters wearing these clothes per se - Ada wearing a red dress in a ball? Sure. Go for it. She looks highly attractive in it. But why the hell is she going into a life or death situation in high heels? It would be like Leon going on the mission in a tuxedo.

I can't speak on Revelations because I never played the games. But Ada is usually a spy and as a result she would likely be involved in going to fancy parties or blending in when shit goes down and she gets stuck having to do shit in the games. She was spying on Umbrella undercover in RE2 as well,which the outbreak happened and she got stuck with the dress.

You can complain about the manner in which a character is dressed and there are surely stupid fucking examples like Quiet and Ivy as mentioned before. But they are more often outliers when compared to the rest of the female cast.

As for Lara Croft, let's be honest, Lara was on Playboy for a reason

A marketing gimmick nothing more. And let's be fair, that OG sexy Lara was a gaming icon for a long time.

Games can be like comic books and pulp fiction, but they can also be like other things as well.

They are starting to be that way yes. And you can see where problems tend to occur is when game's try to be too "realistic". People hated Abby's design because in the realistic world of TLOU2 (despite the zombies) her body builder shape made no fucking sense (of course there were other reasons people were upset by that game but that's a beaten horse). By leaving a bit of the "over the topness" in place you can more easily get away with shit like that, and even more.

I don't think female characters have had as good a run as male ones in games

Do you have any examples? I don't really know what you mean by this? Because funnily enough, I can think of far more female characters off the top of my head than I can of male characters.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

A marketing gimmick nothing more. And let's be fair, that OG sexy Lara was a gaming icon for a long time.

In the "video games are for boys" era, yeah

They are starting to be that way yes. And you can see where problems tend to occur is when game's try to be too "realistic". People hated Abby's design because in the realistic world of TLOU2 (despite the zombies) her body builder shape made no fucking sense (of course there were other reasons people were upset by that game but that's a beaten horse).

Lmao, still trying for that one?

 

[BrawlMan]

Aya Brea is one of my gaming icons. Before anyone starts, shut up! I know about the fan-service and marketing back when the first game came out. I did not care for any of it. I loved Aya for her soul and nothing more.

 

[Agema]

I thought I might share the first time I really started to think about the crappy portrayal of women in computer games. The year is 2003, and the game is Unreal 2: The Awakening. So, you're some sort of galactic commando/policeman with their own ship to scoot around dealing with miscreants, and because reasons you have on board the greatest military mind in the human race, who decided to pack up and abscond from their job as genius in residence at high command. And let's take a look at that person...



Are you fucking kidding me?

 

[Hawki]

Look at almost every game where the playable character is female. The trope isn't any better when you swap the gender roles. I wouldn't even argue the trope is bad, there is a reason why it is highly effectly used in all manner of stories. It plays well into audience engagement. When the shit works and people enjoy it, then it'll keep happening.

Except as I said, damsel in distress is much more common than dude in distress. It's so common that "dude in distress" doesn't really have a place in the English lexicon the same way that "damsel in distress" does. And I'm hard pressed to think of many examples.

Well yes that's the key here. It's the better writing. Or rather the fact that developers are taking the story more seriously as we've reached a point where video games can be quite effective vessels for great stories. With better stories, you will naturally just get better characters by and large.

By this logic we can argue that there never was a sexism issue in regards to the treatment of characters, there was a storytelling issue. The aforementioned damsel-trope was a simple basic device that made it easy for games to motivate the player to do a thing. "bad guys took your girl, go kill bad guys" easy enough.

Well, yes, better writing in general, and both male and female characters have gotten better. But still, as simple as a game like Super Mario Bros. is, the male character is still having a better run than the female one.

She's still waiting for Link to come save her from her Gannon fight. That's still a damsel in distress, she's just distressed in a slightly different way to make her look more capable. But in reality she can't do shit without Link so....

That's really not the case though. In many cases, if not for Zelda, Link wouldn't be able to succeed either.

For instance, in the first LoZ games, Zelda simply exists for Link to save her. She has no agency in the story. Cut ahead to something like Spirit Tracks (which I'd argue is the best version of Zelda ever - that I've played at least) where Zelda is by Link's side the entire time, where she's fundamental to both story and gameplay, and is actually a character, and at times, a pretty hilarious one at that. By extension, the little fist bump Zelda and Link give each other towards the end is worth far more than Link saving Zelda in earlier games.

Zelda's second fiddle to Link, true, but she's leagues better now than from where she started.

I can't speak on Revelations because I never played the games. But Ada is usually a spy and as a result she would likely be involved in going to fancy parties or blending in when shit goes down and she gets stuck having to do shit in the games. She was spying on Umbrella undercover in RE2 as well,which the outbreak happened and she got stuck with the dress.

Read my post again. I'm talking about Ada in RE4, not RE2.

Ada in RE2 is fine, because civilian gear makes sense in the circumstances. RE4? Not so much.

They are starting to be that way yes. And you can see where problems tend to occur is when game's try to be too "realistic". People hated Abby's design because in the realistic world of TLOU2 (despite the zombies) her body builder shape made no fucking sense (of course there were other reasons people were upset by that game but that's a beaten horse). By leaving a bit of the "over the topness" in place you can more easily get away with shit like that, and even more.

Didn't Abby specifically train as a soldier, and ergo, got the body to match?

 

[Hawki]

Do you have any examples? I don't really know what you mean by this? Because funnily enough, I can think of far more female characters off the top of my head than I can of male characters.

Alright, there's no hard way to prove this, but I'll play it this way. I'll look at the IP list on my homepage. For each game IP, I'll give a score of "male dominant," "female dominant," or "equal." This is based on the nature of the lead(s). If it's "equal," it's a rough approximation that male and female characters are relatively equal in number. So on that note:

Spoiler

MALE DOMINANT

-Ace Combat
-Alan Wake
-Another World
-Army Men
-Assassin's Creed
-Awesome Possum
-Battlefield
-BioShock
-Call of Duty
-Conker's Bad Fur Day
-Command and Conquer
-Commander Keen
-Crash Bandicoot
-Darksiders
-Doom
-Ecco the Dolphin
-Gears of War
-Grand Theft Auto
-Grey Goo
-Half-Life
-Halo
-Jet Force Gemini
-Killzone
-Legend of Zelda
-Lost Vikings
-Metal Arms
-Metal Gear
-Quake
-Red Faction
-Section 8
-Sonic the Hedgehog
-StarCraft
-Star Fox
-Super Mario
-Team Fortress
-Toy Commander
-Ultima
-Warcraft
-Wing Commander

FEMALE DOMINANT

-Homeworld?
-Metroid
-Mirror's Edge
-Perfect Dark
-Tomb Raider

EQUAL

-Advance Wars
-Anthem
-Banjo-Kazooie
-Battleborn
-Borderlands
-Brute Force
-Castlevania
-Dead Space
-Diablo
-Dragon Age
-Final Fantasy
-Fire Emblem
-Fuse
-Golden Sun
-Heroes of the Storm
-House of the Dead
-Kid Icarus
-Last of Us
-League of Legends
-Mass Effect
-Mortal Kombat
-Overwatch
-Paladins
-Path of Exile
-Pokemon
-Resident Evil
-Smite
-Spyro the Dragon
-Streets of Rage
-Torchlight
-Universe at War
-Xenoblade

So he have 39 "Male Franchises," 32 "Equal Franchises," and 5 "Female Franchises."

This isn't an exhaustive list, and is subjective, but with around 75 franchises sampled, it's clear, as far as I can tell, that there's far more male representation than female representation, on average. And yes, some of this has to do with personal taste, and I know there's more 'female franchises' out there (e.g. No-One Lives Forever), but again, female characters are, on average, much less abundant than male ones.

 

[Worgen]

I mean, you only found out Samus Aran was a girl after you beat Metroid well enough, then she showed up in her 8 bit bikini if you beat it the best. Then there's the whole Other M thing and the rocket heels.

You actually see her first without her helmet, I forget it you just have to beat it again after beating it once or you have to beat it in like under 2 hours to see the bikini.

But how does that diminish them as characters. What you are talking about is personal astetic preference and that's fine, but personal bias doesn't mean the character is sexualized because of an outfit choice. Remember real world women like wearing dresses, like heels, like make-up and shit like that. People like to be attractive when they can and they like to look at other attractive people.

Its more about context. High heels are stupid in any sort of a situation that those characters find themselves, plus, they are modeled characters, you can just make them taller and have a more prominent butt, you don't need high heels for any of the "real world benefits." I don't know about you, but I can't see high heels in a game without thinking about how much they would get stuck in cracks, or mud oar whatever weird thing your characters is running on next. There is a place for high heels in games... kinda, its silly tantalizing games like Tera Online, and that game has both sexes in ridiculous armor... mostly.

 

[Worgen]

Alright, there's no hard way to prove this, but I'll play it this way. I'll look at the IP list on my homepage. For each game IP, I'll give a score of "male dominant," "female dominant," or "equal." This is based on the nature of the lead(s). If it's "equal," it's a rough approximation that male and female characters are relatively equal in number. So on that note:

Ecco the Dolphin has a defined gender?

Command and Conquer and Star Craft(I guess) should be in the Equal category. In C&C you are just playing the commander, non gendered, in Star Craft I suppose you swap rolls between different characters depending on faction... Although I guess there are more male main characters then female.

Jet Force Gemini only has 1 game and you have 3 different characters you swap between, I don't think the dogs gender really matters so its more equal.

Spyro seems to just star Spyro so probably male dominated.

Dead Space really only stars a male so it should probably be under male dominated.

Also you really need Bayonetta in the female dominated.

 

[Hawki]

Ecco the Dolphin has a defined gender?

I've only ever seen Ecco referred to as a "he."

Command and Conquer and Star Craft(I guess) should be in the Equal category. In C&C you are just playing the commander, non gendered, in Star Craft I suppose you swap rolls between different characters depending on faction... Although I guess there are more male main characters then female.

CnC and StarCraft generally have more male than female characters, though not as far as you might think. For StarCraft, if we were just talking about SC2, it might fall under "equal," but in SC1? Across the game and all its expansions there's only two female protoss characters (the base game doesn't have a single one), and the only female terran character is Sarah Kerrigan, and by extension, the only female zerg one as well. That, and there isn't a single female-themed protoss unit.

Also doesn't help that in Red Alert 2/3, the females are eye candy.

Jet Force Gemini only has 1 game and you have 3 different characters you swap between, I don't think the dogs gender really matters so its more equal.

Vela is literally the only female character in the game. Every other playable character (Juno, Lupus, Floyd) are male, and every supporting character is male as well.

Spyro seems to just star Spyro so probably male dominated.

Spyro is a weird one. My first thought was to put it in male, but then I remembered how Cynder is playable, and how in most Spyro games, there's usually a female supporting character, such as Bianca or Elora. It's heavily male, and could easily go into male dominated, but it just about squeezed in.

Dead Space really only stars a male so it should probably be under male dominated.

Dead Space has had its share of female characters though. There's more male than female, but we have Carrie Norton (in the mobile), the female characters in Extraction, Ignition, and there's usually strong female supporting characters, such as Kendra and Ellie.

Also you really need Bayonetta in the female dominated.

Not on my homepage.

I mean, yeah, obviously it would count as female dominated, but it took me long enough to go through the IP list.

 

[Gordon_4]

It's not just all that however.

I'm aware that computer games are disproportionately about kicking arse, but the notion of a "strong man/woman" as merely one able to deal out and withstand large quantities of physical punishment is a painfully narrow idea of what strength is anyway.

While this is true, it’s also the easiest form of strength to quantify and represent in a video game. Emotional and psychological and intellectual resilience and applications are somewhat harder to make interesting in a video game. Not that people devs don’t try, but for a mainstream action ish game, the ability to deflect/absorb and dish out violence is much easier.

 

[Worgen]

Spyro is a weird one. My first thought was to put it in male, but then I remembered how Cynder is playable, and how in most Spyro games, there's usually a female supporting character, such as Bianca or Elora. It's heavily male, and could easily go into male dominated, but it just about squeezed in.

The first Spyro has no females in it at all.

CnC and StarCraft generally have more male than female characters, though not as far as you might think. For StarCraft, if we were just talking about SC2, it might fall under "equal," but in SC1? Across the game and all its expansions there's only two female protoss characters (the base game doesn't have a single one), and the only female terran character is Sarah Kerrigan, and by extension, the only female zerg one as well. That, and there isn't a single female-themed protoss unit.

My thinking was more player character for C&C. In sc2 you do have Kerrigan but you also have the Nova missions, I mean its skewed but they are there.

Also doesn't help that in Red Alert 2/3, the females are eye candy.

Pshaw, they wish they were as much eye candy as George Tikei and Tim Curry.

Dead Space has had its share of female characters though. There's more male than female, but we have Carrie Norton (in the mobile), the female characters in Extraction, Ignition, and there's usually strong female supporting characters, such as Kendra and Ellie.

I mean, kinda, even on the ones with female player characters there were still more male ones and even in 3 when they did do the stupid coop thing they stuck you with some idiot solder dude instead of Ellie.