A Male on Females on Female Characters

[DTWolfwood]

2 games i can think of off the bat that involve female leads that kick ass and isnt just male pandering or Lara/Samus.

Cliche i know lol​

both games scored on the average scale in terms of game play. Good but not great. Guess what they both tanked big time, sorry to say that gamer girls didn't all flock out to get these titles and bought them in enough quantities to warrant these developers to care about the audience.

Its great when everyone says "yes we need more female characters and leads that aren't doormats" but no one ever mentions that almost everyone (Bethesda Softworks and Replay Studios in this case) who tries to do that get nothing back on their investment. Until we see more buying power from hardcore women gamers, i would doubt the trend would ever change.

Plus i'm also for some mindless female pandering as well. Be a nice change of pace.

 

[GloatingSwine]

You know the reason you see this guy all the time?

-snip-

He's a Hollywood leading man. 20-40 years old, white, brownish hair, good looking. He's your Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Harrison Ford, et-motherfucking-cetera, but unlike the real hollywood male he won't get old and go nuts from drugs.

He's pretty enough that you can put him on a poster, but generic enough that you can throw him into just about any story in any genre and no-one thinks he's out of place.

If you look carefully, there's about 3 maybe 4 facial expressions between them.

That'll be the botox

 

[Xaositect]

You know what I would love to see? More negative potrayals of women in games. Not all that sexualised business that they are always whining about, I mean *REAL* negative portrayals: the ones almost completely reserved for men in gaming.

I want to see more women get their heads stomped into the ground. Get blown to piece, shot to pieces, torn to pieces, whatever. I want to see them be the scum bags everyone wants to kill, and who have no redeeming features about them whatsoever.

Instead of bitching about why you cant have your female Commander Shepard on the box so a pair of tits and a vagina can validate your entire gaming experience, or why in a male created, male run, male dominated industry you cant have equal treatment (instead of having to do what men do in female dominated areas: deal with it), why not go for all aspects of gaming, not just girl power ones that make you feel warm and fuzzy.

When its not just almost entirely my own gender resigned to the truly SHIT roles in gaming, I might have a bit more sympathy for the girl power whiners who want their kick-ass chicks paraded around everywhere.

 

[funkzillabot]

Thank you. As a female gamer, this whole situation really does talk down to you guys as well. Even if many of you can't see it. A marketing department or Dev team, sticks in a bounce boobies feature in some game, and you lot are just supposed to run to the store, throw down $60 buck for it, in order to see some virtual tits? Wake up guys. That is truly treating men as if you all are so stupid, you'd fall for anything and pay money as long it there's jugs. Come on, they are only using women in order to sell shit to you, because you're dumb. Is that what you want? Are you dumb? Do you really want the AAA gaming industry to continue to believe that you are?

See, because it is about diversity, just not the way that you THINK it is.

 

[funkzillabot]

You know what I would love to see? More negative potrayals of women in games. Not all that sexualised business that they are always whining about, I mean *REAL* negative portrayals: the ones almost completely reserved for men in gaming.

I want to see more women get their heads stomped into the ground. Get blown to piece, shot to pieces, torn to pieces, whatever. I want to see them be the scum bags everyone wants to kill, and who have no redeeming features about them whatsoever.

Instead of bitching about why you cant have your female Commander Shepard on the box so a pair of tits and a vagina can validate your entire gaming experience, or why in a male created, male run, male dominated industry you cant have equal treatment (instead of having to do what men do in female dominated areas: deal with it), why not go for all aspects of gaming, not just girl power ones that make you feel warm and fuzzy.

When its not just almost entirely my own gender resigned to the truly SHIT roles in gaming, I might have a bit more sympathy for the girl power whiners who want their kick-ass chicks paraded around everywhere.

Wow..... That is just.... so frightening. Really... just.... wow.

 

[Pinky09]

I don't really agree with Shamus's ideas. I mean, let's look at the games you listed:

Assassin's Creed series - First game had you as an Arab dude, and the second and third, as an Italian dude. and both of them actually looked like their part.

GTA - Two black protagonists (CJ and Luis) and one Chinese protagonist.

RE - Lots of female protagonists... Jill, Claire, that new African chick

STALKER - always a russian dude

The Witcher - Polish

Silent Hill - SH 3 had a female protagonist.

Of course those are only 5 games out of a big list, but it's how things are. and of course they all sound like american dudes, the voice actors are american! if you switch the game's language to Spanish or Portuguese, you'll always get Spanish actors and Portuguese actors! Why not Argentine or Puerto rican actors? why not Brazilian or Angolan actors?

 

[RedheadedKate]

I loved that panel. I feel like the comments here have gotten onto their own tangential topic (nothing wrong with that). I was thrilled that the panel members said they're nothing wrong with sexy characters. Guess what, women are sexy. I liked that they said androgyny isn't the answer. Our society as a whole tends to be in deep denial about the prevalence of the Madonna Whore message. Hence the fact that using the term "slut" is still acceptable among women.

What I took out of the panel was that there needs to be diversity WITHIN the female characters. Vulnerable, maternal, delicate, ass kicking, provocative...all qualities that different women possess, and one is not superior to another.

My favorite quotes from it were "I hate Princess Peach. I hate her because she's fully capable of getting herself out of trouble, she's just lazy!"

and "Why is her name Alex? Why not...Charlotte? Or Brenda?"

 

[SemiHumanTarget]

Interesting and valid points. Though, I think the lack of female characters also has something to do with the lack of women working in the industry. I am dubious a male story writer could create a female lead character that women are happy with.

The same goes with other races. When was the last time you saw a black character who wasn't a walking stereotype? In the few instances there is a black character in a game, they almost always use the same ignorant formula: Tall, jive talking, top with afro/corn rows. And even with Japan's huge influence on gaming, it's shocking that almost all Asians in games are either silent, deeply contemplative and reverent-to-a-fault of some outmoded culture, or they're the bumbling, buck-toothed ching-chang-chong type. Even Japanese games tend to portray their characters as vaguely Western, although I think that's another topic.

It pains me to say it, but I think until there is more diversity behind the scenes, games may be better off not broaching the subject.

 

[ChaosDemon]

Huh, I have a game idea swirling around in my head at the moment and I suddenly realize... why can't can't my PC be a woman?...

Are you talking about your computer? Or are you saying protagonist in some sort of shorthand unknown to me?

PC stands for Player Character. It's another phrase for protagonist.

 

[Requia]

I wonder how big the percentage of female gamers actually is (although it'd be even more interesting to know the figure in the hypothetical situation that more games would be targeted at them). Of the girls/women I know, exactly 0 are interested in gaming. And I have the feeling it doesn't really have anything to do with the usual gender of the protagonists. They just seem put off by the whole idea of sitting in front of a computer and playing. Now of course, the women I know might not be representative of the gender as a whole, so I'm wondering what the actual amount of female interest is.

And although I personally wouldn't mind seeing more games aimed at women, I don't know if it's immediately a sound business strategy to do so. Let's be very generous and say that the male/female gamer ratio is 60:40. It may seem intuitive that the best strategy is to make 60% of games for men and 40% for women (of course there's a middle ground, but I'm simplifying), but the simple fact of the matter is that the optimal (short term) strategy is to aim everything at the majority (search "matching vs maximizing").

On the other hand, if more women (and people in general) could be persuaded to take up gaming, it may very well help building a much bigger target audience to begin with. But that is probably more of a long term thing (i.e. if they'd put a female Hawke on the DA2 box, none of my female friends would have even noticed). I'm not saying this isn't a good time to start tapping into that market and hopefully changing some of the negative views that many people have of gaming. I'm just saying that if you're only looking at the short term (i.e. you want your game to succeed NOW), it might be safer to make a white American space marine game.

it's actually 47/53, but with the caveat there's a lot of segregation, IE most of the people buying FPSs are gonna be guys.

Though... it suddenly occurs to me that AAAs failure to sell on the Wii may have a lot to do with its failure to target non white men, given that the Wii had a much higher percentage of female owners than the other two consoles.