Brink : No Girls Allowed

[Treblaine]

*le snip*
but basically just this:

Solution: make it an all female cast.

Seriously, set it in a future where for whatever reason 99% to 100% of the population are female. I mean who would care? Women wouldn't feel left out and really are guys going to complain?

If this obstacle of dual-genders is such a challenge then why should developers so often give up on female characters and focus 100% on males?

I think for developers who have in the past decided to go 100% male cast for the simplicity of animation and interactions, then for each game they should take it in turns, one game go all male, then the next game go all female.

I'm no feminist, nor even female, I am just fed up of so many games being sausage-fests. I want to see more females in games even if it means to the exclusion of all male characters.

I don't expect nor particularly want them scantily clad, just distinctly women, warrioresses

 

[PhiMed]

The decision not to include female characters sadly echoes the long history of Western society trying to pretend that women don't exist and/or don't matter. I for one am really tired of seeing half of the people in the world left out or ignored. This sort of thing is really insidious because whether intentionally or not, the developers are saying that women don't matter. By simply excluding women all together, the message is simply that they are of no importance. 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.

Video games are serious business.

Why does everything have to be a comment on Western Society? And why Western Society? In what mythological fairyland have women experienced more equality in recent decades and centuries than in Western nations?

 

[Lt. Vinciti]

Good just like my tree fort.

Not every game has girl characters. Why is this so shocking?

These are the best statements ever!

OT: Because every 13yo perv would run around in their underwear.....

 

[i7omahawki]

snip

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I don't get how you guys can see it that way. Gender is a form of customization. It is half assed customizing because you can't even choose the most basic option, male or female.

The choice of what kind of hat you want is surely a microscopic choice compared to the gender you play as. At a time when the gaming community is expanding, it just doesn't make sense to exclude half the population.

If a game boasts customization, I'd expect gender to be the foremost choice given to the player, seeing as it's one of the quickest and easiest ways to feel like your avatar represents you.

Now, I'm a guy, and I doubt I'd play as a female in this game, but it sure would add a lot of immersion and depth to the game if it wasn't just dudes running around, no matter what trousers or socks they're wearing.

You kinda just proved why they did. It most of their target audience (we are talking over 70%) are male and will probably primarily play male (primarily being the important word there). So why would you spend half the time you have to do something on a feature that most of your playerbase won't use. Its counter productive. So they put it on things people would use.

It makes perfect sense WHY they did it, im not saying i wouldn't enjoy playing female, but i think i will probably enjoy having better customisation then the option of something i won't use most of the time.

Hmm, a fair point I suppose.

This takes me to something else I thought of though...why male? If you have to reduce your customization then fine, but why choose male when we know the industry is looked upon as a male pastime (when theres no reason it couldnt include females).

The argument you've posed is reasonable enough, but they could've avoided all of this if they'd gone with androgynous characters.

Might sound weird, but why do the characters have to be male? They have a pretty far-fetched story as it is (ark an all) so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that people were now androgynous. Then you could customize it to be as masculine or feminine as you pleased, and again greater variety would be available while sacrificing pretty much nothing.

The spartans in Halo, for instance, are completely androgynous, could be a girl or a guy in those suits, and it ceases to be an issue. Obviously harder to do without helmets and armor, but I bet it would've been achieveable.

Would've had balls to try and do it anyways, and so would have my respect.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Does thinking that this is good because I would feel bad shooting women make me sexist or outdated?

No, just chauvinistic.

Spoiler: Now THIS is sexist and outdated:

 

[AwesomeNinjaPowers]

Well my thought is I was gonna buy the game cause I was looking forward to cutomising my charatcer but as I can't play as a female I'm not buying it

 

[thelonewolf266]

Its a shame but will it really stop you from enjoying the game also its entirely possible that they could release female character customisation options after launch as free or paid for DLC
though I don't know if that will happen or not create enough of an uproar about it and you increase your chances of remedial action taking place.

 

[weker]

Did Halo have female charecters in IT'S multiplayer? What about Section 8? I don't know why Brink is the upset. Of course, it is a little more jaring since there isn't power armor for everyone. Despite Spartans in Multiplayer looking male, it doesn't take much to imigine one as a girl.

ummm halo does you can select sex.

 

[PurplePlatypus]

It?s a shame that a game that has such an amount of customization missed something out such as gender. The extra models, animations and audio I suppose would have taken up to much time and resources and they would have had to cut the customization in other places to make up for it.


Maybe they should see if they can keep working on it and add it in as DLC latter on.

 

[PhiMed]

*le snip*
but basically just this:

Solution: make it an all female cast.

Seriously, set it in a future where for whatever reason 99% to 100% of the population are female. I mean who would care? Women wouldn't feel left out and really are guys going to complain?

If this obstacle of dual-genders is such a challenge then why should developers so often give up on female characters and focus 100% on males?

I think for developers who have in the past decided to go 100% male cast for the simplicity of animation and interactions, then for each game they should take it in turns, one game go all male, then the next game go all female.

I'm no feminist, nor even female, I am just fed up of so many games being sausage-fests. I want to see more females in games even if it means to the exclusion of all male characters.

I don't expect nor particularly want them scantily clad, just distinctly women, warrioresses

Um... What, some sort of gender fairness doctrine? I don't think that's a very good solution. I don't think alternating back and forth between all male and all female would be conducive to inclusiveness or sales. I think the guy who said all the characters should be androgynous made more sense.

 

[Thespian]

Note that Brink is not the kind of game where that sort of customization matters. The customization is to make you look like a badass to your team-mates, not to create a unique character. If DA2 or ME3 did that, it would suck, but Brink is not an RPG, it's an FPS - You won't even see your model half of the time. And sadly, it's a lot better having incredibly detailed and focused choices than spread out and unrefined choices.

 

[PhiMed]

Does thinking that this is good because I would feel bad shooting women make me sexist or outdated?

No, just chauvinistic.

Spoiler: Now THIS is sexist and outdated:

If by sexist and outdated you mean hilariously sexist and outdated.

 

[Candidus]

Any company which reaches the crossroads of: inclusion and respect OR more hair and shirts for men, and decides on the latter...

Well, I'm not interested in Brink. Their mindset is not a mindset that I want to help perpetuate through purchase. I'm sure the game will do very well, but it won't do well because of me, and I'm satisfied with that.

 

[Macrobstar]

Do women honestly mind playing a male character in a game? Its an FPS so they'll hardly see it anyway and if they only play games where they can play female there choices are extremely limited, I mean the only good one i can think of at the minute is portal

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I'm a female gamer and I'm not really that bothered. It will put me off playing it a little but I can see why they did it. I totally understand the logic behind the desicion and to rail against it would be unreasonable.

Maybe I'll just make a hot looking guy...

Do women honestly mind playing a male character in a game? Its an FPS so they'll hardly see it anyway and if they only play games where they can play female there choices are extremely limited, I mean the only good one i can think of at the minute is portal

An instance where it was a ''problem'' for me was Amnesia. It totally broke the immersion for me and I was just bored with the game after a little while. After discussing it with a friend over why I couldn't get into it that's what we came up with.

 

[Macrobstar]

Lazy developers.

It's not like it would take that much work.

I hope thats sarcasm, as someone elsehas already stated in another very long post, it would take quite a lot of work actually

 

[blokrokker]

Honestly, I don't care if I have to play a transgendered Labrador Retriever with a tophat and Doc Martens, I care if it's a good game, and it would be awesome if people focused on that more than the incidentals.

I WOULD PLAY A GAME WITH THAT CHARACTER EVEN IF IT SUCKED.

 

[Treblaine]

Such a bad reason to whine. Seriously, female characters do not need to be represented in every single scenario because some scenarios simply would be unreasonable featuring them.

Mount and Blade Fire and Sword? No female commanders.

TF2? Only female character sitting safely in her office yelling out orders (Fine with that).

You may be fine with that, but have you any idea how many people are modding in female textures and sound packs for characters like Scout and Pyro? And how popular those texture mods are? How to spite no indication everyone is desperate to assume Pyro is a woman underneath all that fire-proof clothing.

I occurs to me the likely reason fighting games have much more varied genders is the quite simplistic hit-boxes, I believe most fighting games still retain 2D hit-boxes for the most elaborate character designs.

 

[captainwalrus]

Ahhh see now your confusing aesthetics with attractiveness. Generally people would want to play as something appealing to the eye no? just nice to look at. Not to jack off to. And nobodys saying they have to be just thin and sexy (i like a few curves on my women, not too many mind you) their just saying massively built women are scary rather than badass. Which i kind of agree with.

The bottom line is that the "big" stereotype probably wouldn't of been played the 16-17% of the playerbase needed to make the model worthwhile. (each model requires unique animations skins and facial customisation, a fair amount). Business decision snip snip, ka-ching

I feel like you're confusing attractiveness with aesthetics. Why is it impossible to have an aesthetically pleasing, large female character model? If you're arguing that aesthetics are separate from attractiveness (and I don't disagree), then why can't it be done? Look at Planescape: Torment, the PC model isn't pleasant to look at, in and of itself, but in the context of the game world, it's phenomenal. The model fits the game's mood and environment, and it embodies the character's own long, tragic past, perfectly.

 

[Guitar Gamer]

I agree it is quite annoying (like when the Tony Hawk franchise did the same thing) but I wouldn't get riled up about it.
Sure I'd LIKE the option, sure it may limit the custimization that was supposed to be nigh endless. But that's it........an annoyance.
Not a huge deal.