Because men get stories about being the hero, while women get stories about being the romantic lead. As much as I appreciate the female party members, it's still not the same as knowing you get to actually play the hero as a woman.BathorysGraveland2 said:Well, it's a neat story I suppose, but I'm of the opinion that games with custom character creation shouldn't have a default promoted. Can't they promote something else that is important to the game, that would make more sense? I didn't like the default for Skyrim or Mass Effect, and I think this is equally as silly. With a character creation, there is no need to promote a default character.
If they wanted to promote a female, why not an important female ally or party character? Or even a female antagonist?
Holy Moly, what does any of the giant wall of text have to do with what she said? She never mentioned a female character selling more, she just asked why cover characters always have to be men.ultreos2 said:Let's assume for just a moment that every single person claiming women in games sell more games is true, and that the reason women don't buy triple A games is in fact becauselady nuggins said:Because men get stories about being the hero, while women get stories about being the romantic lead. As much as I appreciate the female party members, it's still not the same as knowing you get to actually play the hero as a woman.BathorysGraveland2 said:Well, it's a neat story I suppose, but I'm of the opinion that games with custom character creation shouldn't have a default promoted. Can't they promote something else that is important to the game, that would make more sense? I didn't like the default for Skyrim or Mass Effect, and I think this is equally as silly. With a character creation, there is no need to promote a default character.
If they wanted to promote a female, why not an important female ally or party character? Or even a female antagonist?
I know what you're saying. Showing any default character seems pointless in a game where you can customize the protagonist. But if a default protagonist must be shown, why does it always have to be a guy?
1. Not enough representation.
2. Not enough female characters in advertizing campaigns.
Now never mind that society today rarely learns anything about any game from commercials that's not opinion. That's fact. People have adblocks for the internet, and devices that all but eliminate commercials from television viewing. Consumers avoids advertizements as often as possible. Whenever possible. So saying, you need to advertize females for me to buy a game is both petty and straight up lying. Because you will avoid 90% of any of their ad campaign simply based off how consumers have progressed away from ads.
And if you are correct, that gamers are such petty people by nature that they need representation to buy a game, then female representation in games devoid of male representation, eliminates the male half of the market. IE this assessment about needing representation is either wrong, or just completely misguided. Or perhaps the female gamer consumer is again, just to petty for this market.
Of course what do I know. I'm just an average white male. I mean all I did was grow up on an overweight italian plumber, two miniature dragons that had bubbles for attacks, an elf, and a woman in a cybernetically enhanced robotic suit, and bricks that dropped into place to be eliminated. I totally cared about self representation as opposed to whether the games were fun or not am I right?
Of course all of this can be counted as anecdotal really. Then again so can any evidence of female protagonists making a game sell better. Remember that new IP Remember Me? The one that the producers fought for a main female lead? The one that got advertizing here on the escapist? The one that scored 7s and 8s, and still managed to sell worse then Duke Nukem Forever and people to this day blame the creators because they didn't make the game good enough/advertizing campaign wasn't good enough, even though Tomb Raider did really well when it first launched and was really just an average game at best, and the sexualization of the character was not innate to the game, but rather Lara was simply sexualized by her fan base?
Here's my guess. This new Dragon Age will sell either
A. About the same number of copies it's been selling on it's new releases.
B. Less then the number of copies from it's last installment.
Why do I think this? Because female representation does not a game sell. A good game sells a good game, not the male to female representation.
Though you don't have to take my word for it. We will let the future tell it's story for itself when it comes.
Be that as it may, it's probably not a good idea to immediately assume someone always has an ulterior motive when they ask a question or give criticism. It really depends on who's saying it, which is not always easy to guess/interpret, especially if it's a stranger. It probably would've been more prudent to get an exact answer and understanding of what the person meant if you're not gonna go off the face text.ultreos2 said:Because asking why it is always a man being advertized is a criticism laced with the perceived need for female representation to get the female market involved.CpT_x_Killsteal said:Holy Moly, what does any of the giant wall of text have to do with what she said? She never mentioned a female character selling more, she just asked why cover characters always have to be men.ultreos2 said:Let's assume for just a moment that every single person claiming women in games sell more games is true, and that the reason women don't buy triple A games is in fact becauselady nuggins said:Because men get stories about being the hero, while women get stories about being the romantic lead. As much as I appreciate the female party members, it's still not the same as knowing you get to actually play the hero as a woman.BathorysGraveland2 said:Well, it's a neat story I suppose, but I'm of the opinion that games with custom character creation shouldn't have a default promoted. Can't they promote something else that is important to the game, that would make more sense? I didn't like the default for Skyrim or Mass Effect, and I think this is equally as silly. With a character creation, there is no need to promote a default character.
If they wanted to promote a female, why not an important female ally or party character? Or even a female antagonist?
I know what you're saying. Showing any default character seems pointless in a game where you can customize the protagonist. But if a default protagonist must be shown, why does it always have to be a guy?
1. Not enough representation.
2. Not enough female characters in advertizing campaigns.
Now never mind that society today rarely learns anything about any game from commercials that's not opinion. That's fact. People have adblocks for the internet, and devices that all but eliminate commercials from television viewing. Consumers avoids advertizements as often as possible. Whenever possible. So saying, you need to advertize females for me to buy a game is both petty and straight up lying. Because you will avoid 90% of any of their ad campaign simply based off how consumers have progressed away from ads.
And if you are correct, that gamers are such petty people by nature that they need representation to buy a game, then female representation in games devoid of male representation, eliminates the male half of the market. IE this assessment about needing representation is either wrong, or just completely misguided. Or perhaps the female gamer consumer is again, just to petty for this market.
Of course what do I know. I'm just an average white male. I mean all I did was grow up on an overweight italian plumber, two miniature dragons that had bubbles for attacks, an elf, and a woman in a cybernetically enhanced robotic suit, and bricks that dropped into place to be eliminated. I totally cared about self representation as opposed to whether the games were fun or not am I right?
Of course all of this can be counted as anecdotal really. Then again so can any evidence of female protagonists making a game sell better. Remember that new IP Remember Me? The one that the producers fought for a main female lead? The one that got advertizing here on the escapist? The one that scored 7s and 8s, and still managed to sell worse then Duke Nukem Forever and people to this day blame the creators because they didn't make the game good enough/advertizing campaign wasn't good enough, even though Tomb Raider did really well when it first launched and was really just an average game at best, and the sexualization of the character was not innate to the game, but rather Lara was simply sexualized by her fan base?
Here's my guess. This new Dragon Age will sell either
A. About the same number of copies it's been selling on it's new releases.
B. Less then the number of copies from it's last installment.
Why do I think this? Because female representation does not a game sell. A good game sells a good game, not the male to female representation.
Though you don't have to take my word for it. We will let the future tell it's story for itself when it comes.
The question, "why is it always men being advertized" is never the true intent of the question and criticism. The intent is to decry male characters being advertized and that to cater to a female audience a percieved need for female character representation is necessity.
Though you can believe the question is just "why always men" is just that if you really want. I've seen enough of this specific criticism in longer worded posts to know what it's really getting at.
And clearly the foil industry is pushing both sides so that people make double thickness tin foil hats. Those fiends!weirdee said:you could claim the same thing with fan dissent, except replace the conspiracy starter with a rival companyAdam Jensen said:I may be getting too cynical and jaded because my first thought is that they did this as some kind of PR maneuver. We're talking about it. And other gaming websites will too. It's free advertisement. Well, minus the cost to make the cupcakes. So yeah, I don't believe that fans were behind this.
The thing that somewhat bothers me about this, is it's praising Bioware for making a trailer, not a good game. Bioware haven't released an emphatically 'good', generally well received game since DA:O/ME2 (can't remember which one came out first). This fawning over them for a trailer suggests that they still have too many fans blinded by hope/the studio they used to be. It's an ego boost to a studio who should really still be on the humble pie until they've tucked away at least one solid, Bioware-quality release. But it looks like they won't need to, as their mistakes have already been forgiven.CpT_x_Killsteal said:Why have people suddenly lost their shit? This is supposed to be good news in the way of gender of equality, something that is VERY RARE for this site. The devs got a thankyou from some people who wanted to see a female character brought to the front and everyone loses their shit. What the effing hell guys...
[small]Edit: and I'm usually the voice of overreaction, and posts that aren't well thought out. I'm scared.[/small]