The reason american made AAA games have american or at least white, male leads is because the only thing americans even notice are things with attractive, white, male leads with attractive ladies all around. The stereotypical Duke Nukem archetype.
When americans wake up and start playing games with more depth and diversity I think I might have a heart attack.
The reason american made AAA games have american or at least white, male leads is because the only thing americans even notice are things with attractive, white, male leads with attractive ladies all around. The stereotypical Duke Nukem archetype.
When americans wake up and start playing games with more depth and diversity I think I might have a heart attack.
Oh right, because other countries never make games like that. Remind me where the makers of Grand Theft Auto, Heavy Rain, Killzone, Metal Gear Solid, Mass Effect, Dead Rising, and Alan Wake (just to pick out a few from that image in the post above yours) are from?
What's that? United Kingdom [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockstar_North] (Scotland specifically), France [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantic_Dream], the Netherlands [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Games], Japan [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami], Canada [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioware], Japan [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capcom] (DR1 & Frank West) and Canada [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Castle_Games] (DR2 & Chuck Greene), and Finland [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedy_Entertainment] respectively? Maybe it's you who should wake up and get off that stupid America hating bandwagon you seem to have fallen asleep on.
I think the list is a little unfair Young white Americans??. Batman was created in 1939 and any other character created outside the game industry shouldn't count. Sam Fisher is almost 60 years old age wise, Master Chief never takes off his helmet, and Ezio doesn't even speak English half the time. Just a few examples.
Stereotyping is not necessarily bad, it existentially how our brains store and organize information. Look at cultural things too, how many women do you see in the military special forces? A ton of these games are based where the main character is part of the military special forces. Maybe things have to change outside of games, before they are acceptable inside of games.
I'm currently playing Pokemon: Black/Portal 1/Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood/Final Fantasy XIII/Mincraft.
Hmm only one of those has a Male Character lead you can't change.
I personally would like to see a game where a female character has to act like the stereotype of women in games, and then as you get to know her the layers are slowly peeled back to reveal that she acts that way because it's the only way to make it in the man's world she operates in.
I know this won't be true for some, maybe a lot, of women, but I know some female mathematicians, scientists and engineers or mechanics, who seem to fall into three distinct categories.
1. They become sexless. Usually the scientists and mathematicians. They wear deliberately indistinct clothes, make no effort to clean up their appearance even as much as their male counterparts, and act as if they have no personality beyond that of their field. Usually they relax a little when outside the influence of their peers, but even then there's always a hint of guardedness, as if they can't quite be fully female or they won't be recognised as significant in their fields.
2. They become tomboys. Usually the mechanics and engineers, but a couple of the mathematicians I know as well. They start deliberately conforming to male stereotypes. They act crudely, talking about sex and men in the demeaning ways men would talk about them, they swear, they spit, they work out at the gym and have perpetually grease stained clothes. They wouldn't act feminine if their lives depended on it.
3. They become parodies of feminitity, applies to all. Some of the women I know in the above fields become absolute parodies of their gender to the point of being like a videogame character. They dress provocatively, make everything sound like it's dirty, do themselves up with makeup routines that must take hours.
And of course, when you really get to know them, all of the above three suddenly become people, and you realise that with very few exceptions they have adapted their personalities to fit into a male dominated field, just the same way that a lot of the men on my course (Creative Writing and English) have adopted feminine mannerisms to fit in with the 70-80% female cohort. Including me of course. I know I've started doing things I might not normally do because it helps you fit in with a predominantly female group.
That would be interesting to see. We find out that Samus Aran has deliberately made herself genderless in order to fit in, when really she'd like to wear something other than a suit of armour every once in a while, but doesn't feel she can because no one would take her seriously. Lara Croft actually slobs out in a baggy hoody and sweatpants at home, but knows that she has to dress up all sexy because then at least people will pay attention to her.
Worked right this could also be a jab at the player, sort of 'these women weren't just acting like this for the others in their field, they were acting like this for you.' Bring in that element that the player is part of the reason these women have been so constrained into their respective roles, which as far as I can see basically fit into the above three categories I've picked out of real life women-in-male-dominated-fields.
Just to clarify
1. Sexless: Samus Aran. Wears a deliberately concealing suit of armour. Doesn't talk so her female voice can't be heard, acts with utter professionalism and never gives anything anyway. (Ignoring Other M)
2. Tomboy: Pretty much any badass marine chick in any war game ever. Self explanatory. Any woman in a game who acts like Vasquez from Aliens
3. Parodies of feminine attributes: The one, the only, Lara Croft. Again pretty self-explanatory. And my idea about her lounging around in a hoody is one I would love to see so badly. Just for once, take her out of her skin tight clothes and show her lounging around eating cold pizza or something.
As a blond male of the Germanic peoples, the whole "brown haired 30-something male protagonist" is sort of fun to observe. And people I find talk alot less about it in regards to movies and tv, than games.
As for female characters, my favorite part of DA2 was probably Aveline, she is a great character. And I think Mass Effect generally is good at it, it's just the whole Miranda business thats ..unfortunate.
Portal 2 is coming soon, interesting to see if there's more focus on the player character this time around. And speaking of, I find it hard to believe that anyone can fault Alyx as a character. While L4D1 and 2 lets you play as females without making much fuzz about it. There it's more the fandom..
Funny how it turned from "More women, less men" to "less white men" Sorry, "Less generic white men".
I don't mind people getting on their soapbox if they just stay on topic. This felt like another diversty bashing exercise, ugh. Yes, we all get that you like to stand out and not be a part of the target market developers are pandering too. But if you shoehorn something in like "oh and not white too plx" it just makes you seem a bit too zealous about championing equality, and that makes the whole thing feel a tad disingenuous.
I find those sorts of commercials insulting too, as a man. (Buy this bottle of Lynx deoderant and women will suddenly lose all mental capacity and succumb to your sudden sexiness! Yeah. Right.) I agree that i'd like to see more female protagonists - and that's coming from a man, but that's partly because i've been terribly jaded by the douchebag MALE protagonists we've had so far. Just two off the top of my head, there's the SHIT YEAH, BRO one dimensional character that is Marcus Fenix (who is so ridiculously shallow and rooted in "alpha male" culture that it's almost sickening) and Nathan Drake, who is a suave prick, also shallow and one dimensional as you get this image of a Charlie Sheen-esque ragamuffin who really has no redeeming qualities beyond humorous one-liners and picking up chicks down the local bar. Ironically, women tend to be better developed as characters - ones that are protagonists, anyway - because they don't need to pander to an audience that fantasises about being that person. Every man supposedly wants to become an overly muscled Fenix or a smooth talking Drake, but i think every woman perhaps sees herself as that well-rounded and more human female protagonist, who isn't so flat and one dimensional, who looks at things more rationally, who grows through character development and what have you.
the thing i always annoyed by is that when we can play as a female character, its always a over-sexualized person. but really at the point that she isn't wearing anything else as underwear. is it so hard to make al believeable female character? adn when you have a good written character who is a female, most of the time its a character where the gender does not really matter. look at the mass effect games: almost every character is good written, but always are the characters replaceable with someone of the oppisite gender.
That would be interesting to see. We find out that Samus Aran has deliberately made herself genderless in order to fit in, when really she'd like to wear something other than a suit of armour every once in a while, but doesn't feel she can because no one would take her seriously.
I don't know if this is just me being male, me being practical, or a combination of the two, but maybe she goes out to her missions in a suit of armor every time because it provides good protection from all the hazards she has to deal with and lets her do neat tricks like that Morph Ball thing. It's not like we ever really see her lounging around at home to know what she'd wear then.
The only other thing she's ever really worn in a game for more than just an ending scene is that skintight blue suit thing, which basically turns her from #1 on your list to #3 as far as all the screenshots I've seen of her poses in it go. Of course, those shots were all from Smash Bros Brawl (although it's my understanding that she wears the blue suit in one of the actual Metroid games), so maybe those screenshots don't really count for much as far as what her actual character as intended in her own games would do.
Game Developers need to just snap a character creator toolkit with their games, and I'm sure everyone will be happy. So, you want your character to be male or female? Toph (Spelling mistake done on purpose <3), Idealist, or Sarcastic? What color of skin you want your character to be? Choice of accent?
Actually, I think that's possible, with the right technology, try to imagine playing as a black female Nico Bellic with an Indian accent and a sarcastic attitude
Really? That is not at all what I am experiencing in my social circle. Do you have the link to where you found these numbers?
Anyway, if the numbers are like that, than it is definitely a little bit crazy that women aren't served better (although on the other hand: apparently it barely matters in terms of sales). But if over 40% of gamers are already women, I think it is only a matter of time before the situation gets fixed, as more and more interested women enter the game development and publishing business.
I think you have a point here in that diversity is meaningless if it is just a bunch of stereotypes used to fill a diversity checklist. When they do try to include diversity they get punished for it not because demanding diversity are secretly hypocrites but because it is often done so very very badly.
That would be interesting to see. We find out that Samus Aran has deliberately made herself genderless in order to fit in, when really she'd like to wear something other than a suit of armour every once in a while, but doesn't feel she can because no one would take her seriously.
I don't know if this is just me being male, me being practical, or a combination of the two, but maybe she goes out to her missions in a suit of armor every time because it provides good protection from all the hazards she has to deal with and lets her do neat tricks like that Morph Ball thing. It's not like we ever really see her lounging around at home to know what she'd wear then.
The only other thing she's ever really worn in a game for more than just an ending scene is that skintight blue suit thing, which basically turns her from #1 on your list to #3 as far as all the screenshots I've seen of her poses in it go. Of course, those shots were all from Smash Bros Brawl (although it's my understanding that she wears the blue suit in one of the actual Metroid games), so maybe those screenshots don't really count for much as far as what her actual character as intended in her own games would do.
Samus and Lara aren't actually the best examples, I just chose them because they are the two biggest known along with Princess Peach. Even non-gamers have heard of Lara at least.
Also, I still can't think of any female characters who really fit stereotype 1, they usually fall under either 2 or 3, which I think is due to most writers being male, and if they aren't pandering to stereotypes they're trying to subvert them and going too far the other way.
PC is table-top shorthand (that has been adopted by cRPGs, especially MMORPGs) for "Player Character" - a character played by a player - as opposed to NPCs, "Non-Player Characters", which are all those people portrayed by the GM (or the computer).
Really what's wrong with females showing skin even as a main character. I find people complaining as much misoginistic as those who actually believe women=kitchen. Having freedom of choice means not beeing judged for what you do and not doing what it's supposed to be equal or special. So of course a woman won't feel ashamed by a women object as long as that's not an universal thought. On the same way as misoginist bigots will refuse to acknoledge that a free thinking women can choose to be an object woman.
PC == Player Character
NPC == Non-player Character
PC is an erroneous term but I defined it in terms of game development so I figured the term would be taken in that context but I guess not. Also, protagonist is not the best term to use because player characters are some times not the protagonist.
Oh right, because other countries never make games like that. Remind me where the makers of Grand Theft Auto, Heavy Rain, Killzone, Metal Gear Solid, Mass Effect, Dead Rising, and Alan Wake (just to pick out a few from that image in the post above yours) are from?
What's that? United Kingdom [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockstar_North] (Scotland specifically), France [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantic_Dream], the Netherlands [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Games], Japan [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami], Canada [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioware], Japan [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capcom] (DR1 & Frank West) and Canada [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Castle_Games] (DR2 & Chuck Greene), and Finland [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedy_Entertainment] respectively? Maybe it's you who should wake up and get off that stupid America hating bandwagon you seem to have fallen asleep on.
True, studios in other countries bang out the generic American male lead all the time. This is the easy option. America is a massive market, a game doing well in America has done well.
In the UK we have American TV shows, Baywatch has been around the world, Friends, 2 and a Half Men, ER, Seinfeld, Heroes, Boardwalk Empire, I could go on. We will accept other cultures and go with it. A good TV show is a good TV show, no matter where its made right?
Apparently not in America. When a British show is "good enough" for America it is remade with an all American cast like The Office, Shameless, Skins, Being Human, Who's Line is it Anyway?, Topgear, Dr Who... Even shows without British people in, like Teletubbies and Thomas the Tank Engine have the narrator replaced with an American. You missed out on Ringo by the way. Yes, Hugh Laurie is British and the lead in House but he has to pretend to be American, even during his audition to get the part. His accent is pretty good. House could have been any nationality, Medical Doctors find foreign work permits easy to come by, but they went with American. How refreshing.
So it appears Americans struggle with anything other than Americans in their media. As the rest of the world is not thrown off its axis by an American in the same way, a none offensive, bland, American male is the best way to alienate as few people as possible. Even for a European studio.
Please don't take this as an American bashing post. I lived in texas for over 2 years and found the people welcoming and hospitable. I do like the place but there are huge culture differences that are not right or wrong, just different. I for one would like to play a Prince of Persia who is actually Persian, I found it refreshing to be British in COD4 but only because it is so rare. A good game will work with an amorphous alien, woman, Elderly, ,Black, Arachnid, homosexual or even *gasp* Muslim lead if executed well.
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