Brink : No Girls Allowed

[xscapist]

I take it there is a bit of support for some kind of activist group? Not sure if it is done better elsewhere, or what it'd look like...

I have one suggestion (registered just to post in this thread). My other hobby aside from videogames is comics, and online discussions about gender and comics often receive the same sorts of toxic responses that have been posted throughout this thread (in fact, some of the responses I could just change a few words, and they'd sound exactly like things I've read a million times before on comics forums).

Anyways, to make a long story short: one day, two female comics fans started up a gender in comics linkblog [http://womenincomics.blogspot.com/]. Basically, they'd just post links to various articles or blog posts on the net related to gender in comics, organized by topic if there were multiple links about the same thing.

This blog ended up jump-starting gender/comics discussion by showing women that they weren't alone...it can feel kind of lonely when you post about some ridiculous thing that bothered you, and you get only a couple people who agree and then a bunch of people telling you to "deal with it." By compiling all these links and voices, it showed people that they weren't the only ones concerned about how gender is portrayed in comics, and people started to write/speak up more online. I always thought a similar blog related to games would be very beneficial, but don't have the time myself due to already running a different blog.

So, this might be an option, if it sounds interesting, and someone wants to do it. I'd offer some advice though: once things begin to pick up, avoid the temptation to blog daily. Compiling on a weekly basis at most is probably best...I think the original two creators of that linkblog got burned out doing posts too frequently, and they ended up stepping down and handing it over to some folks that are...doing okay, but not as great as the original creators.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Now who is being insulting?

You know...I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt. But when you go around accusing people of crying, whining, and being childish, then turn around and get upset over the assertion that gamers are complacent?

There is really point in arguing this any further the people who have decided it's an evil sexist conspiracy won't listen to any sort of reasonable logical explanation.

There you go again with the "evil sexist conspiracy" bit. No one thinks it's anything of the sort.

You can try to convince yourself that there's a "reasonable logical explanation" until Doomsday, but the fact of the matter is that there isn't one. Sure, it may not be sexism...but the alternative is that it's wanton apathy.

Maybe it was a bad desicion to cut female avatars rather than more customization options but I don't think it was done out of any sort of sexism merely expediancy. No where does splash damage say that they won't let women play thier game.

They were the ones who said female characters were harder to animate. And if it was a bad decision, how does "expediency" justify it?

People will look for unwarranted drama anywhere.

Last thing I'm going to say in this thread as clearly no one will listen to reason.

I'm just gonna leave this here for the sake of the irony.

So it isn't overt sexism, just apathy under the guise of the very phony, weak expediancy card?

Pretty much.

I have one suggestion (registered just to post in this thread). My other hobby aside from videogames is comics, and online discussions about gender and comics often receive the same sorts of toxic responses that have been posted throughout this thread (in fact, some of the responses I could just change a few words, and they'd sound exactly like things I've read a million times before on comics forums).

Anyways, to make a long story short: one day, two female comics fans started up a gender in comics linkblog [http://womenincomics.blogspot.com/]. Basically, they'd just post links to various articles or blog posts on the net related to gender in comics, organized by topic if there were multiple links about the same thing.

This blog ended up jump-starting gender/comics discussion by showing women that they weren't alone...it can feel kind of lonely when you post about some ridiculous thing that bothered you, and you get only a couple people who agree and then a bunch of people telling you to "deal with it." By compiling all these links and voices, it showed people that they weren't the only ones concerned about how gender is portrayed in comics, and people started to write/speak up more online. I always thought a similar blog related to games would be very beneficial, but don't have the time myself due to already running a different blog.

So, this might be an option, if it sounds interesting, and someone wants to do it. I'd offer some advice though: once things begin to pick up, avoid the temptation to blog daily. Compiling on a weekly basis at most is probably best...I think the original two creators of that linkblog got burned out doing posts too frequently, and they ended up stepping down and handing it over to some folks that are...doing okay, but not as great as the original creators.

There are actually quite a few blogs of that sort. I follow some of them.

And then, there's "Gamers Are Embarrassing." But that seems to have kind of mutated into something entirely different.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Okay so I've been sucked back in

And if it was a bad decision, how does "expediency" justify it?

Because the world works around money not fairy dust as you seem to believe. They made a business decision and then drew attention towards that desicion for the gamers. They didn't just ignore the issue. They said they were sorry there will be no female avatars but we had to make a call.
If getting upset about that isn't childish I don't know what is.

I'm not entirely sure where you get the fact that their argument is 'Phony' that was actually their difficulty and they made the decision. It's either a sexist conspiracy or they made a call on an actual issue. There isn't any other reason you can give for it. You can't have it both ways.

Acting irrationally and blowing up over the slightest non-issue isn't exactly going to endear female gamers to developers. What are we saying about ourselves when we complain about the lack of a female avatar over everything else in a game. We are just making ourselves look pathetic and encouraging them to say we only like games like The Sims 3 and Barbies' Day at the Mall.

 

[OutforEC]

Here's my problem with this. Lots of people are citing female body structure or narrative gender choices, when that isn't the issue here at all. The devs flat out stated that the only reason they didn't include females was to provide more options for the male avatars.

So essentially what they've said is that a couple extra t-shirt models are more important than an whole gender, and that's where I start to get a little worried by the whole thing.

Imagine, if you would, this logic was applied to other scenarios. "Sorry, the rogue class only has half the number of abilities because we found more people played fighters and we wanted to give them more options." People would be rightly a little confused or upset at that, and that's how I think people should be viewing this situation.

Cosmetics =/= functionality, so your it's quite a stretch to go from "we don't have female avatars" to "the abilities of your chosen profession are subpar."

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Okay so I've been sucked back in

Well, that was one of the briefest flounces I've ever seen.

Because the world works around money not fairy dust as you seem to believe.

...wat.

"Fairy dust," seriously? Where the hell did that accusation come from?

They made a business decision and then drew attention towards that desicion for the gamers. They didn't just ignore the issue. They said they were sorry there will be no female avatars but we had to make a call.
If getting upset about that isn't childish I don't know what is.

I'm just going to bite my tongue on that.

It's either a sexist conspiracy or they made a call on an actual issue. There isn't any other reason you can give for it. If the workload problem wasn't an issue as you so claim then they cut or left out the female avatars to be deliberately sexist which I very highly doubt was the case. You can't have it both ways.

That was a very nice false dichotomy, but the notion that anyone's accusing them of being "deliberately sexist" is all in your head.

Acting irrationally and blowing up over the slightest non-issue isn't exactly going to endear female gamers to developers. What are we saying about oursleves when we complain about the lack of a female avatar over everything else in a game. We are just making ourselves look pathetic and encouraging them to say we only like games like The Sims 3 and Barbies' Day at the Mall or somthing.

Just stop. If you were ever in any position to accuse anyone of irrationality to begin with, you certainly aren't now.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Okay so I've been sucked back in

Well, that was one of the briefest flounces I've ever seen.

Because the world works around money not fairy dust as you seem to believe.

...wait, what? Where the hell did that come from?

They made a business decision and then drew attention towards that desicion for the gamers. They didn't just ignore the issue. They said they were sorry there will be no female avatars but we had to make a call.
If getting upset about that isn't childish I don't know what is.

I'm just going to bite my tongue on that.

It's either a sexist conspiracy or they made a call on an actual issue. There isn't any other reason you can give for it. If the workload problem wasn't an issue as you so claim then they cut or left out the female avatars to be deliberately sexist which I very highly doubt was the case. You can't have it both ways.

That was a very nice false dichotomy, but the notion that anyone's accusing them of being "deliberately sexist" is all in your head.

Acting irrationally and blowing up over the slightest non-issue isn't exactly going to endear female gamers to developers. What are we saying about oursleves when we complain about the lack of a female avatar over everything else in a game. We are just making ourselves look pathetic and encouraging them to say we only like games like The Sims 3 and Barbies' Day at the Mall or somthing.

Just stop. If you were ever in any position to accuse anyone of irrationality to begin with, you certainly aren't now.

Nice non answer to the issues I've raised there you clearly can't come up with an intelligent argument so you resort to ''biting your tongue'' and personal insults.

- If you don't believe that Splash Damage is sexist then what is your issue with them leaving female avatars out?

-Do you believe there reason for doing it is phony? If so then why?

-Why can't you accept the reason of time and money constraints.

There I put it simply for you.

 

[OutforEC]

My philosophy on things is "don't do them half way". And leaving an entire gender out is certainly "half way" in my eyes. Bully for the boys who get more options, but I, for one, am tired of the idea that female gamers are only worth catering to "if there is time".

As far as I've heard, male gamers have the exact same number of options as female gamers. Oh! You're roleplaying as your avatar? Interesting choice in a first-person shooter, which is a point I believe a lot of people are brushing aside in the discussion.

I wasn't planning on buying Brink even if it had female characters. I was pointing out the awful reasoning for why they couldn't.

But no, I won't be buying any of their products, either.

I wasn't completely sold on the game as it was, but even if this were the greatest game ever created, I would refuse to buy it.

This is probably why the devs went in the direction that they did. Last study I read (on the internetz, so I'm positive it is accurate!) was that females were a minority in the FPS community, and while I agree with the devs and with some of the posters here when they said it was unfortunate that they weren't able to add female character models, it is what it is.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Nice non answer to the issues I've raised there you clearly can't come up with an intelligent argument so you resort to ''biting your tongue'' and personal insults.

I'm just going to let this speak for itself.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Nice non answer to the issues I've raised there you clearly can't come up with an intelligent argument so you resort to ''biting your tongue'' and personal insults.

I'm just going to let this speak for itself.

There you go again? Care to actually answer me properly? Avoiding the points I've raised and resorting to sarcastic retorts isn't exactly condusive to debate.

 

[Mr.SunShine]

You can have 2 cakes, one vanilla, and one chocolate, but they both taste bad.

Or you can have 1 cake, vanilla, that tastes REALLY GOOD.

It all boils down to quantity or quality, if you want female avatars, then you'll have to pay the price of less options for customization for either gender. The devs looked at this dilemna and said "This is the better choice, I'm sure that the fans will like that we chose quality over quantity." And then got swarmed by all the hateful people are complaining about the physical gender of an avatar that they will probably never see ingame.

And really, by cutting out one gender or the other, they get both quantity AND quality of the options for the single gender that they left in.

I'd rather be able to customize a single gender vs. picking what my gender is, if that makes any sense.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

There you go again? Care to actually answer me properly?

There you go again.

You've been "answered properly" over and over again in this thread. You brushed it off. Now, you're just getting all hurt and being insulting and condescending; and you're clearly just trying to bait me now.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

These are the issues I would like answered. Would you be so kind as to answer them? Please.

- If you don't believe that Splash Damage is sexist then what is your issue with them leaving female avatars out?

-Do you believe there reason for doing it is phony? If so then why?

-Why can't you accept the reason of time and money constraints.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

You can have 2 cakes, one vanilla, and one chocolate, but they both taste bad.

Or you can have 1 cake, vanilla, that tastes REALLY GOOD.

It all boils down to quantity or quality, if you want female avatars, then you'll have to pay the price of less options for customization for either gender. The devs looked at this dilemna and said "This is the better choice, I'm sure that the fans will like that we chose quality over quantity." And then got swarmed by all the hateful people are complaining about the physical gender of an avatar that they will probably never see ingame.

And really, by cutting out one gender or the other, they get both quantity AND quality of the options for the single gender that they left in.

I'd rather be able to customize a single gender vs. picking what my gender is, if that makes any sense.

It wasn't a matter of "gender versus customization." That's not even their excuse. Their customization options number in the quadrillions.

They decided that female avatars were less important than quadrillions more cosmetic items for male avatars. And yet, they're flinging around words like "infinite" in regards to their customization.

These are the issues I would like answered. Would you be so kind as to answer them? Please.

If they weren't answered to your satisfaction the first twenty times, why should I believe that the twenty-first is going to make a difference? Especially when you keep getting all hurt over imagined slights, insulting me, and making wild accusations?

 

[Kahunaburger]

These are the issues I would like answered. Would you be so kind as to answer them? Please.

- If you don't believe that Splash Damage is sexist then what is your issue with them leaving female avatars out?

-Do you believe there reason for doing it is phony? If so then why?

-Why can't you accept the reason of time and money constraints.

Well, I don't presume to speak for anyone else, but my answers to those questions are:

A. The decision may or may not have been made for sexist reasons. I was not in the room when it was made. But the results of the decision are to perpetuate an under-representation of women in fiction in general and video games in particular (see also: Bechdel test), which is at the very least a disappointment.

B. & C. The devs knew they had time and money constraints from the beginning. What they did within those constraints is a question of priorities. They chose to allocate resources away from having female characters and towards clothing choices. They could even have opted to portray a world entirely populated by female characters (think Y: The Last Man) which would have been a more interesting and original decision.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

These are the issues I would like answered. Would you be so kind as to answer them? Please.

- If you don't believe that Splash Damage is sexist then what is your issue with them leaving female avatars out?

-Do you believe there reason for doing it is phony? If so then why?

-Why can't you accept the reason of time and money constraints.

Well, I don't presume to speak for anyone else, but my answers to those questions are:

A. The decision may or may not have been made for sexist reasons. I was not in the room when it was made. But the results of the decision are to perpetuate an under-representation of women in fiction in general and video games in particular (see also: Bechdel test), which is at the very least a disappointment.

B. & C. The devs knew they had time and money constraints from the beginning. What they did within those constraints is a question of priorities. They chose to allocate resources away from having female characters and towards clothing choices. They could even have opted to portray a world entirely populated by female characters (think Y: The Last Man) which would have been a more interesting and original decision.

Thankyou for that very clear and consice answer. Earlier I though whether they could have made a female only game and whether that would have made it worse for them, people complaining about objectifiction etc. Splash Damage is a small company and perhaps thier reach overexceeded thier grasp as I said earlier, personally I think I can give them the benefit of the doubt on that.

I apologise for the slow answers btw escapist is being slow for me.

Here is an idea; what if the characters were androgynous like Magicka or Spore would that have been a more acceptable premise?

 

[Mr.SunShine]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa...
Slow down. What you said is basically "They didn't cut out gender for customization, they cut out gender for more customization"

I dont- what? I can't say that what you just said makes any sense, you just proved my point for me...

 

[Slycne]

Here's my problem with this. Lots of people are citing female body structure or narrative gender choices, when that isn't the issue here at all. The devs flat out stated that the only reason they didn't include females was to provide more options for the male avatars.

So essentially what they've said is that a couple extra t-shirt models are more important than an whole gender, and that's where I start to get a little worried by the whole thing.

Imagine, if you would, this logic was applied to other scenarios. "Sorry, the rogue class only has half the number of abilities because we found more people played fighters and we wanted to give them more options." People would be rightly a little confused or upset at that, and that's how I think people should be viewing this situation.

Cosmetics =/= functionality, so your it's quite a stretch to go from "we don't have female avatars" to "the abilities of your chosen profession are subpar."

I'm not talking about it being subpar or unbalanced though, and that's putting aside that there already are some games that broach these class disparities.

I further embellished the hypothetical to another poster. Imagine the situation that say at level 10 a fighter could specialize into a berserker, paladin or a weapon master. All the specializations unlock a certain number of new skills. However, the designers find that less of their players want to play rogues, so they instead only offer a single specialization - bard. The bard could still be perfectly balanced to those 3 other specializations, but ultimately the rogue end up with less depth because it was decided to a more popular class.

The analogy, if you could really call it that, was meant to be a little facetious to promote some people to look at the scenario in a way that might have a greater impact for them, but in this often game design by metrics industry that we current are in, I don't see that as being that outlandish of a scenario.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I further embellished the hypothetical to another poster. Imagine the situation that say at level 10 a fighter could specialize into a berserker, paladin or a weapon master. All the specializations unlock a certain number of new skills. However, the designers find that less of their players want to play rogues, so they instead only offer a single specialization - bard. The bard could still be perfectly balanced to those 3 other specializations, but ultimately the rogue end up with less depth because it was decided to a more popular class.

Hmm I have trouble with that anology becuase to me being a male or female in a game is cosmetic at best and although as a girl I prefer to play as a girl I don't really see it in the same light as if blizzard cut the discipline tree from priests for example. I can see what you are trying to get at though but to me to unbalance classes would be a much greater sin than a cosmetic difference.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that I can understand the direction that Splash Damage wanted to go in. Although obviously they have recieved alot of flak for making that call at the end of the day.

Something I do find puzzling however in the favour of those who are disgruntled is that Saints Row 2 a game released a few years ago has a similar system of customisation yet includes women. However, I assume Brink is alot more detailed clearly. I haven't been able to play yet being in the UK.

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

You see, there are these wacky things called deadlines.

Despite what many of this threads posters believe, they actually have to be adhered to. Total surprise, right?

 

[OutforEC]

You see, there are these wacky things called deadlines.

Despite what many of this threads posters believe, they actually have to be adhered to. Total surprise, right?

From accounts I've seen they actually had to push back their release date numerous times.

From Wikipedia, original source cited:

"Bethesda and Splash Damage originally planned to release the game sometime in spring 2010, then pushed it back to fall 2010[12], and then pushed it back again. They later announced a release date of May 17, 2011[13]. In April, a month before release, they pulled the release back a week to May 10[14], citing early completion of the game and a desire to get it in players? hands as soon as possible."