Are mainstream devs deliberately discouraging women from gaming?

[Tanner The Monotone]

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I think it's because females in games are often over-sexualized to bring in the sex factor in games and that most video gamers are male and like to visualize themselves as the main character, which can be hard when the main character is the opposite gender than you.

 

[Screamarie]

So those of you dreaming of how awesome it will be to have your girlfriends play games with you ... you are in for a rude surprise. If there are game ever made to cater to them, chances are you will fucking hate them.

Being a girlfriend who plays games I beg to differ.
Also, just wanted to point out MMO's are very popular with women too.

Don't assume that all women want the same thing or that we want the games industry to exclusively target to us. All we would like is for them to maybe tone down the sexist bullshit that still gets a pass.

This is one of the biggest disconnects for me, that despite all the evidence to contrary there is still a prevailing attitude that "women don't play games". Without addressing that misconception first, the over-sexualisation of female game characters is a lost cause! (although it doesn't mean both issues can't be tackled simultaneously).

Indeed. The misconception that women will only play something if you pinkify it to eye-searing level is one that gets right on my nerves. I try to be a loud-and-proud female gamer, in the hopes that people will realise we exist but it doesn't seem to be working. Honestly...

And then when you are loud and proud people holler than you're trying to be an attention hog or just doing it so guys will like you. It's a fucking no-win situation.

And if you point out to a guy that "yes, I like sims and final fantasy, but I also like Mass Effect and Fallout and just about anything you do" then they spout off that "you're the first I've met, so that doesn't disprove anything I said."

I swear it's like they're trying so damn hard not to believe it's true. It often makes me feel like I'm a little kid again wanting to play with the so-called "boy toys" and getting harassed for it. But it will get better, just gotta keep reminding myself of that.

As to the original topic as many people have pointed out I doubt it's deliberate. But while everyone tries to boil it down to one problem I think it's a whole shit storm of them.

Some of it's because Devs are mostly male, so they are either hesitant if not outright afraid to portray women because they don't know how.
It's the prevailing belief that even if there are more female gamers they only play casual games and therefore won't care about the next fantasy RPG.
It's money and time put in to have a seperate female main character. I'm certain on Mass Effect alone Bioware could have saved millions, billions if they'd only had a male shepard. (though that doesn't explain why there aren't just more games with a female lead).
It's a whole LOT of things.

But with time it will get solved as long as we call devs and fellow players out on their shit without getting overly upset about thing that doesn't really matter. Priorities people!

 

[LilithSlave]

Or are you gonna say who plays Nintendo in't a true gamer?!

This is a pathetically common assertion.

You know, male players aren't as common as you think(or female players aren't as uncommon... anyway!). Despite the fact the industry seems to like to pretend they don't exist. It's like when people assert that most comic book readers are male, but women(myself included) are buying so much manga that it's becoming huge competition for American comic book makers. Leading to the stereotype that "women like manga" and when women make criticisms about Western superhero comics, it often leads to "go back and read your manga. Superhero comics aren't for your kind."

Women play loads and loads of video games. Really, it's quite common. But it's less often the niche a lot of male gamers are entrenched in. For instance, you might be shocked, but Duke Nukem games don't sell super well among women. While games like Harvest Moon and Pokemon and the Sims do pretty well. And heck, of course even Portal is going to do much better than Duke Nukem. It stars a female character who isn't a piece of sexualized fanservice. And is generally one of the best first person games ever released.

 

[Jun_Jun]

Like your perfect game would be MLP, all nice pastel colours, everybody is always super happy, everything overly cute and rather sickening.

I'm sorry what? No it wouldn't :S

I love Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls, the fallout series, assassins creed, mass effect, Baldur's Gate. Hell my favorite games as a young lass was the Strike games flying a helicopter and blowing stuff up.

It's just this undercurrent of misogyny and neglect that scrapes away at you and then gets to you after a while...The things I mentioned in my OP were things that came up in the last few days and I've been gaming since 1984.

I think we're just asking for decent female portrayal in characters, just because we want a decent female character (or female representation for the large female gaming population) doesn't mean we want MLP the game. Hell some of the best female game characters don't necessarily have characteristics that would be considered inherently feminine, then again you can give them female characteristics without having to go all rainbow + butterfly + ponies all over the gaming industry. We still love our FPS + RPGs we don't need to change the entire premise and setting of all these genres , it's worked well so far with a few gems, there's no reason to swing the complete opposite direction with gaming just to appeal to a female audience who have enjoyed what they've had up until this point.
A few examples of good strong female game personalties would be:

Alyx Vance(Half-Life 2) I don't think I have to say much more about this character, she's a great typical female companion, all while not being 'girly' or vulnerable.

Zoey (left 4 dead)- what can I say? Valve knows how to write a good female character

Chell (Portal/2)- A great silent female protagonist, probably my personal favourite, She's obviously very stubborn and tenacious and and never willing to just give up when everything gets ridiculous, apparently the reason why she never speaks a word in the portal games is because she refuses to give GLaDOS the satisfaction of a response.

Spoiler

also I just love at the end of Portal 2 how she triggered the booby trap on the stalemate button, blown back, on the ground you just see the ground slightly out of focus with her hands , she pounds her fist on the ground while Wheatley shouts 'What? are you still alive? You've got to be kidding me!' For some reason I just love that scene it sums up her personality perfectly.

Bayonetta I love how guys love to jump on the white knight route with this game saying 'it's sexist women should find this offensive' yada yada yada. But hell even if her character is just a parody of all the overly sexualised characters in gaming history they manage to pull it off without victimising her in a sexual way, she's in control of the situation, she knows she's hot and she acts over the top and sexy because that's how she wants to act, not because she's clumsy and accidentally slips a panty shot into each cutscene. (that's what I mean by victimised sexually, not necesarily physical but shown to be vulnerable) A good example of this is in the opening scene of the game where she is fighting the 'angels' and he Nun costume gets ripped to shreds in some revealing places in a really over the top fashion, she then just rips her torn clothes off and conjures up her 'hair suit' and gets right back to fighting.

 

[Gatx]

Not having female main characters and not wanting females to play games are two different issues. Does Portal discourage males from playing the game?

 

[Starglider]

No sane developer would deliberately reduce their potential audience. The problem is more that they don't have staff who know how to design for universal appeal, or don't think implementing a female protagonist option properly is worth the time & money. It's a vicious circle of copying each other and assuming their genre won't appeal to women because existing games in the genre don't. As an indie dev myself all I can say is that I tried as hard as possible to include strong, interesting playable female characters in my game.

 

[Erttheking]

I haven't noticed it that much, probably because I've been playing games recently where you can swap back and forth between a man or a woman without anything changing that much, IE Halo Reach, Dark Souls, Fallout New Vegas.

 

[Fleetfiend]

I don't mean to go into tin foil hat territory here but as someone who has been gaming for a very long time it almost feels like we are going backwards with gender acceptance in games (outside of Bioware.) ...

I dunno about you, but I still got a bit of that feeling from Mass Effect (3 in particular), albeit to a smaller extent. For femshep, you are given six total romance options in the third game. Four of them are females, and you can't romance one of the males unless you romanced him in the second game.

 

[modularstar]

Just adding a small, alternate look to the debate; Guys tend to like thinking that games are their 'thing'. I mention playing anything reasonably 'hardcore' (as opposed to say, iOS games or facebook games, which seem to be what women are generally 'restricted' to) like the Elder Scrolls/Bioshock/Hitman, which are a few of my favourites, and I have genuinely scoffed at by male fans of those series. I don't know how averse guys are to thinking that girls enjoy the same games in general, but my experience hasn't been good.
I think that the industry would rather keep it's loyal male fanbase, rather than risk appearing to cater to the female aswell, because it seems weaker...

 

[Fappy]

Wow, I am surprised this thread is still going. Way to touch on a hot-button issue Jessica >.>

There are a lot of brand new posters cropping up in here.

 

[OneOfTheMichael's]

Well males are the main demographic when it comes to gaming. And at least we aren't as bad back when some games were just offensive and sexist interactive videos.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Wow, I am surprised this thread is still going. Way to touch on a hot-button issue Jessica >.>

There are a lot of brand new posters cropping up in here.

Unfortunately a lot of them seem to be using the old demographic excuse, which is really just a self perpetuating problem.

I think maybe I was a bit silly to put 'deliberate' in my title as I'm not sure that's what I was getting at. It just seems like devs always have some sort of excuse these days to get around pandering to men. They say things like 'Strong female characters don't fit the lore or the setting' when sometimes they are the ones who have decided that lore or setting. Sometimes these games aren't even set on Earth but somehow a medieval setting automatically means women are in the kitchen.

It's also annoying to have companies say you aren't important due to demographic when you have been gaming and buying their games since before some of their male customers were born...

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

I dont see why this is such a big deal with people lately, seems some wont rest until everything in the world is politicaly correct, and how dull it would be.

Actually, I think it would be a far more interesting world, (assuming that becoming politically correct wasn't just disguising underlying prejudice) since we'd get the benefit of a lot more perspectives on life and society.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

I can guess. I'm pretty certain female gamers wouldn't mind a female lead that is strong, intelligent and confident. It seems obvious to me but ultimately I'm just guessing. I'm guessing because I'm not a woman. It takes a woman to know and define women fantasies. The best I can do as a male is hypothesize and resist my base urge to give them triple Ds and as little clothing as possible.

Women need to become more involved in the industry. Build and show us what you want because, obviously, males are unable to deliver. And getting involved will be tough because of how male-dominated the field is, but it needs to be done if women want to be consistently well represented and catered to.

I don't think they need to guess, they can get a women-only focus group to advise on the matter surely.. Waiting for women to get more involved in the games industry (though they are a fast growing demographic apparently), sounds like yet another excuse for not putting in a little hard work now..

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

Before you say that being a Feminist is not a bad thing, perhaps you should look at the evidence that says,

Being a Feminist, -is- a bad thing.

and this isn't demonization, this is just plain and simple facts about what the Feminist Movement is about, and the people who follow them.

http://www.avoiceformen.com

Yeah, no bias there folks.. (/sarcasm)

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

I'vre always imagined an assasins creed with a kickass main charachter who happens to be female..who has to work TWICE as hard to prove her worth as an assasin, who has to endure the sexism of her era and the stress of..well being an assas..god that would be awsome

and inaccurate and unbelievable given the background [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin] of the first game.

 

[Vault101]

I'vre always imagined an assasins creed with a kickass main charachter who happens to be female..who has to work TWICE as hard to prove her worth as an assasin, who has to endure the sexism of her era and the stress of..well being an assas..god that would be awsome

and inaccurate and unbelievable given the background [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin] of the first game.

nah..I dont buy it

not when In brotherhood and revelations you have women running around in their white hoods...hell even ezios sister gets to join the secret club

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

I'vre always imagined an assasins creed with a kickass main charachter who happens to be female..who has to work TWICE as hard to prove her worth as an assasin, who has to endure the sexism of her era and the stress of..well being an assas..god that would be awsome

and inaccurate and unbelievable given the background [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin] of the first game.

nah..I dont buy it

not when In brotherhood and revelations you have women running around in their white hoods...hell even ezios sister gets to join the secret club

.....go back a read what I typed. I made no mention about the Italian sequel, just the first game that stared a Syrian character who belonged to a Shia Islamic group [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismailis] that followed a certain path [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizari].

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I'vre always imagined an assasins creed with a kickass main charachter who happens to be female..who has to work TWICE as hard to prove her worth as an assasin, who has to endure the sexism of her era and the stress of..well being an assas..god that would be awsome

and inaccurate and unbelievable given the background [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin] of the first game.

nah..I dont buy it

not when In brotherhood and revelations you have women running around in their white hoods...hell even ezios sister gets to join the secret club

.....go back a read what I typed. I made no mention about the Italian sequel, just the first game that stared a Syrian character who belonged to a Shia Islamic group [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismailis] that followed a certain path [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizari].

Isn't there a female assassin in the first game too? She's Altair's lover if I remember correctly.

(God that's weird to type I named one of my cats after him..)

Edit: Oh sorry she's a templar but she does seem to know assassin moves.

Also the fact that there are female assassins later in the series kind of negates your point sorry.

(Again the dev's decide what the lore is of their universe so if they decide that women can't be assassins it's down to them, no one else.

And therefore I find it irritating that yet again they are excluding women.)

 

[Vault101]

I'vre always imagined an assasins creed with a kickass main charachter who happens to be female..who has to work TWICE as hard to prove her worth as an assasin, who has to endure the sexism of her era and the stress of..well being an assas..god that would be awsome

and inaccurate and unbelievable given the background [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin] of the first game.

nah..I dont buy it

not when In brotherhood and revelations you have women running around in their white hoods...hell even ezios sister gets to join the secret club

.....go back a read what I typed. I made no mention about the Italian sequel, just the first game that stared a Syrian character who belonged to a Shia Islamic group [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismailis] that followed a certain path [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizari].

but Im not talking about the first game....I saw there were no female assasins in that one..which was fine

when they start being more eaqual opertunity later...even in ezios time..then I fail to see why it would be "that" much of an issue