Brink No Girls Allowed!!!!

[TehChuckles]

GAH! damn this thread is filled with so many opinions without solid evidence to back them up (I'd only expect this in a religious forum actually), Splash Damage thought the Customers would love to see a much more deeper customisation rather than to have maybe a third (if they were lucky) of the possibilities with a "female" option tacked on. Get over it, it's their decision, I thought James from Extra Credit already explained this quite thoroughly to be honest./thread

 

[Korten12]

People should stop caring whether or not the character they play is male or female. If a game has a male lead, I'll play it. If a game has a female lead, I'll play it. If someone refuses to play a game based on it not being one or the other, they are just plain ridiculous.

I remember a girl in my gym class at school said she would only play Heavnly Sword and not God of War because of the female lead in Heavnly.

Did she play Heavenly Sword? How about Bayonetta? Does she look like those women? Is she that kind of person? If so, she either has some horrible disease or she has had way too much surgery. I am a male who will play as anything, a man, a woman, a dog, a robot, an omnipotent invisible being represented by a cursor... Why do we need characters to be a certain something in order to play them?

I think your friend is being a little silly.

I don't know if she ever did play. I don't believe Batonetta was out during that time.

Also she isn't my friend, she was the friend of a friend.

 

[plugav]

GO moan at activision for no females in call Of duty, once you have done that for about a year then i will listen. And before you go "oh its not the same". Yes it is

Not exactly.
CoD is a military shooter in which character customisation is an entirely new and secondary feature. Also, most soldiers are male.
Brink is a futuristic shooter in which complex character customisation is presented as a major feature. I'd say it's techniacally closer to Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 than it is to CoD. Which all makes it a reasonable expectation to be able to play as a female.

That said, the developer's decision is neither surprising nor unreasonable. While I support gender equality, I do believe "shooting dudes in the face" is a genre that mostly appeals to males. It's understandable, if unfair, that Splash Damage would rather make a fully developed game for the majority of its audience than a half-arsed game "for everyone."

There's a good article by Shamus Young on why trying to make games that appeal to everyone is a noble effort, but really a dead end (Experienced Points: Something for the Ladies [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/6328-Experienced-Points-Something-for-the-Ladies]).

 

[Shoelip]

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE. I mean your picking on one dev for doing WHAT ALL FPS GAMES DO. Females are in NONE of the big titles, its taken gears of war 3 tries to put them in, the COD series still doesn't have a big female protagonist or enemy, bulletstorm doesnt, hell the last shooter i remember which does was timesplitters and that was on the ps2 so excuse me for giving BRINK a little leighway.

HELL the company even said they would like to put it in in the future as either dlc, an expansion or in a sequel. So just calm the hell down. Stupid to focus on one company for this considering how widespread it is.

*edit*
also note how much extra work that would require, it would make the customisation feel tacked on. They had finite development time and they chose the feature everyone loves and more power to them, thats how to run a business. They don't have the time or money benefits to fret away on this sort of thing given this is a new and untested IP.

GO moan at activision for no females in call Of duty, once you have done that for about a year then i will listen. And before you go "oh its not the same". Yes it is, its online multiplayer with customisable (if only slightly) avatars, and they could also waste a lot of money making female avatars (where did that 200 million go?).

The main difference is that CoD MW is about modern day warfare. Weapon are not allowed to be "combat soldiers" in most modern militaries. Certainly not the ones represented in the games. Since most of the time the games are about macho power fantasy in an action-movie-realistic warfare setting it makes sense that you play frontline troops or spec ops.

I personally think it'd be both extremely atmospheric and an awesome idea in general to have a female protagonist whose supply convoy gets ambushed. Finally representing the fact that female soldiers actually exist would go a long way towards making the CoD series actually worth it's own existence in my eyes.

Brink however is a sci fi game that focuses heavily on character customization. So really there's no good excuse to not allow female characters.

In the end they are just saying that they couldn't be bothered to take an entire sex into account because they didn't think it would be worth enough money.

theres several good excuses
COST
Publicity (yeah if they made the models "slightly" too big breasted there would be a big hoo-hah about it)
Time (yes given it's a new IP they do have a timescale and chose to cut it so as to focus on other things, more marketable things).

And the reason i bring up those other games, choosing to hold one game above another in regards to content like this is silly, if people are going to moan about this they should moan about all the rest. The only difference between this and all the other shooters is the customisability and as such your penalising a game because it decided to have this feature, rather than placing the blame across the board on all the genre(i might add that adding in several models which is all most modern shooters would need is whole magnitudes easier than the number of models and skins that brink has planned). All the rest could quite easily put females in but CHOOSE not to, I'd say established brands are more at fault here than New IP's which have a lot to lose.

And yet the reason they gave was that they would rather spend the time designing more clothes for their male characters than putting any effort into making female characters.

 

[dancinginfernal]

So?

I could care less, I'm still going to buy it .

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

Veeeeeery few women are gonna play this game, many more men will. It makes more sense that they polished it for the larger crowd that will be buying it rather than making the feature mediocre for both genders.

 

[notevenhere]

GAH! damn this thread is filled with so many opinions without solid evidence to back them up (I'd only expect this in a religious forum actually), Splash Damage thought the Customers would love to see a much more deeper customisation rather than to have maybe a third (if they were lucky) of the possibilities with a "female" option tacked on. Get over it, it's their decision, I thought James from Extra Credit already explained this quite thoroughly to be honest./thread

Gah! Damn this post is filled with so much dribble!

Solid evidence? Of what? I challenge you to scour through the 76 odd posts, or at least 1 per user, and find some evidence thats in favour of YOUR argument, rather than demanding that of other people. Fact is, we're not in any sort of environment to find out EXACTLY what everything is, and we shouldn't be criticised because of it. Opinion and speculation is the simplest way to get a discussion rolling, and that's exactly what we have here - I don't see you offering much else besides a "look at me I watch a show here, better argue that this topic is not one for debate and entirely decided by somebody with a show on t3h int3rn3ts".

 

[irishstormtrooper]

Think about how many first-person shooters let you customize to that level how you look. Now, think about how many FPSs there are total. Honestly, be thankful that they put in this level of customization at all, rather than ***** about how there isn't quite enough.

 

[notevenhere]

Veeeeeery few women are gonna play this game, many more men will. It makes more sense that they polished it for the larger crowd that will be buying it rather than making the feature mediocre for both genders.

When you can't appease everybody, appease the majority. I like you. Keep living.

 

[Cavan]

Do you want a valid reason why not?

Female chars are almost universally smaller and are thus harder to see/hit, and so used by people who do not want to be hit by bullets.
Unless you want to piss people off more by having girls but only letting them play as a certain class then you end up with people using the difference in size to get an advantage, or you use the female char with the male hitbox which can cause it's own problems.

Have seen this abused in shooting games before, so there ya go, a valid gameplay reason.

 

[migo]

Crying "sexism!" in regards to a form of entertainment that is overwhelmingly consumed by males is a bit silly. I realize in a perfect world you'd have male and female player characters, but the decision to cut the girls for budgetary reasons is completely reasonable, when you take into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of the people who play this game are going to be male.

As an aside, does anyone have a link to any sort of statistics on the gender breakdown of serious gamers? Or gender breakdown of gamers by genre?

I don't know about statistics, but anecdotal evidence does suggest female gamers who are serious gravitate towards games with female characters. One of my exes really liked Beyond Good & Evil, Bloodrayne, Heavenly Sword and Dead or Alive Xtreme, along side games with customisable characters such as KotOR.

My current girlfriend kind of enjoys Bayonetta thanks to her getting butterfly wings on a double jump.

Another one of my friends favourite KoF character is Mai Shiranui (no she doesn't look anything alike), and she considers Terry and Iori cheap.

What you might want to look at rather than breakdown of gender based on serious gamers is look at breakdown of lead character gender among female gamers, and see if there's a predisposition towards female characters. That would show if not having a female lead turns female gamers off of playing a game.

 

[migo]

I think that they should have girls in Brink.
Why not?
And girls are usually (and please, please don't tell me I'm stereotyping because generally, genetically) girls are lighter, faster, and more agile.
And in a game that has climbing and running as a core mechanic, I don't see why the developers couldn't just have made that extra push of effort to add girls.

Lighter yes, but not faster and not more agile. Speed and agility comes from muscle. There's a reason Marion Jones and Maurice Greene have the same build and can wear the same shoes.

Climbing requires upper body strength, something women are severely lacking in.

I know it's politically correct and all to say that girls are faster and more agile, but in reality the only physical advantage they've got over men is spreading their legs wider. Otherwise they're weaker (by a fair bit in lower body, and to a massive degree for upper body), slower, have less endurance, are less explossive... everything that matters for the type of situation people in Brink would be found in. In all likelihood if there were any women fighting, by the time it hits the point that Brink is set in, they'd all be KiA.

 

[TehChuckles]

GAH! damn this thread is filled with so many opinions without solid evidence to back them up (I'd only expect this in a religious forum actually), Splash Damage thought the Customers would love to see a much more deeper customisation rather than to have maybe a third (if they were lucky) of the possibilities with a "female" option tacked on. Get over it, it's their decision, I thought James from Extra Credit already explained this quite thoroughly to be honest./thread

Gah! Damn this post is filled with so much dribble!

Solid evidence? Of what? I challenge you to scour through the 76 odd posts, or at least 1 per user, and find some evidence thats in favour of YOUR argument, rather than demanding that of other people. Fact is, we're not in any sort of environment to find out EXACTLY what everything is, and we shouldn't be criticised because of it. Opinion and speculation is the simplest way to get a discussion rolling, and that's exactly what we have here - I don't see you offering much else besides a "look at me I watch a show here, better argue that this topic is not one for debate and entirely decided by somebody with a show on t3h int3rn3ts".

My argument in this is that Splash Damage made the decision and now it's our turn to reward them or punish them for it. so if you really don't like it, don't buy the game. or even better get into the development industry and make games that in fact have female avatars as an option. just don't put your energy to waste, don't go screaming out in agony within the unheard realms of the Internet. Do I need much research to say this is probably a good idea? I may have been a little less civil about it than I could of, but it was still the idea I was trying to put forward.

also. if I think what you're saying is what you're actually trying to say, How am I going to get solid evidence of what happened during this decision from only browsing this particular thread? there's surly a few people who agrees with me on here. but solid evidence of the truth? it's impossible. so in response I'll ask you, where is your source of information? If you present me with a couple of Reliable links or references to the source of your conclusions on this thread I will humbly back down. allowing you victory to this small quarrel. (common sense is not a reference, for your information.)

one more question before I go to bed for tonight. why pick on my post? did I offend you in some way? I simply stated there were some posts in this thread that claimed the possibly true to be completely true, that and one or two where the author must have thought s/he already knew all there is to be known (and possibly that his/er opinion is the only one that mattered).

 

[Alon Shechter]

The budget was chosen to be spent making the actual game instead of a bigger customization menu?

 

[Corkydog]

No one cared you couldn't play as female soldiers in any other multiplayer game...

Brink is now joining the list of all shooters that don't offer female avatars:

COD, Battlefield, Halo (unless pink armor counts as female), Team Fortress 2 (sorry, gents), Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, ect.

So, what's the problem again?

EDIT: It has come to my attention that Unreal Tournament has female avatars. My bad.

 

[Shoelip]

The budget was chosen to be spent making the actual game instead of a bigger customization menu?

According to the OP the budget was chosen to be spent on a bigger customization menu for male characters to the complete exclusion of female characters.

Look, even if I don't even talk about sexism, I personally like looking at weapons more than I like looking at men. If I'm going to dress up a dolly I rather it be visually appealing to me.

 

[gxs]

quote="Cavan" post="9.268436.10284211"]Do you want a valid reason why not?

Female chars are almost universally smaller and are thus harder to see/hit, and so used by people who do not want to be hit by bullets.[/quote]This

I usually pick a girl avatar for one of two reasons:
The first is that they are usually smaller and harder to hit.
And the second reason is that most guys usually think that if you're using a girl avatar that you're a girl and play worse because they want to be gentlemen. It doesn't matter if you're male as long as you have a girl avatar you'll be hit on by adolescent boys. Maybe it's not a fair thing to do but it's an interesting social experiment.

 

[migo]

No one cared you couldn't play as female soldiers in any other multiplayer game...

Brink is now joining the list of all shooters that don't offer female avatars:

COD, Battlefield, Halo (unless pink armor counts as female), Team Fortress 2 (sorry, gents), Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, ect.

So, what's the problem again?

UT has always had female avatars, and still does. You must be thinking of a different game.

 

[Shoelip]

No one cared you couldn't play as female soldiers in any other multiplayer game...

Brink is now joining the list of all shooters that don't offer female avatars:

COD, Battlefield, Halo (unless pink armor counts as female), Team Fortress 2 (sorry, gents), Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, ect.

So, what's the problem again?

Um, you do realize that unreal tournament has tons of female avatars right? No I guess not or you wouldn't have said that.

 

[Alon Shechter]

The budget was chosen to be spent making the actual game instead of a bigger customization menu?

According to the OP the budget was chosen to be spent on a bigger customization menu for male characters to the complete exclusion of female characters.

Look, even if I don't even talk about sexism, I personally like looking at weapons more than I like looking at men. If I'm going to dress up a dolly I rather it be visually appealing to me.

Oh, right. My bad.
Personally I think the whole customization stuff is useless when you can put it to, y'know, improving gameplay.