Brink : No Girls Allowed

[Kingpopadopalus]

Not getting a game just cause it doesn't pander to your gender is a very shallow approach to games. Just because a protaginast is not your gender doesn't mean you don't play the game, hell I play some games where girls are the protaginast. Stop whining, should they patch it later downn the road, great, if not, stop whining.

 

[Serenegoose]

The whole problem is that it's the attitude of women being treated as an other to the 'default' human experience which is male. I mean, male character models were a given, but women were lumped in with -character customisation- as an option. In fact, they were dumped when character customisation is kept.
That rings alarm bells to me in a pretty significant way.

That's not a new problem, sadly. I don't think it's something you take up with the developer of a video game that just wanted to put out a good/successful product. It's something you take up with the various institutions and social pressures that lead to (the US, at the very least) society being primarily male-centered, male-dominated, patriarchal, or in this specific case, male identified.

Videogame developers are part of society. Therefore sexist activity is their responsibility as much as it is everyone elses. When games fall from the sky from space, I will accept that they (har har) exist in a vacuum.

 

[Outright Villainy]

Not getting a game just cause it doesn't pander to your gender is a very shallow approach to games. Just because a protaginast is not your gender doesn't mean you don't play the game, hell I play some games where girls are the protaginast. Stop whining, should they patch it later downn the road, great, if not, stop whining.

You're completely missing the issue here. Protagonists are defined characters, telling a story. This is about attitudes towards catering to male audiences above all else, giving them the minutia of customisation without even considering that in character creation, choice of gender is the most basic aspect, and for several good reasons. I'll just quote myself from earlier, I'm way too lazy to write this again.

This isn't some crazy game breaking thing which ruins the game we're talking about, which the defenders seem to believe their strawman to be saying. It's less about the game itself, and more the trend it's steadfastly following, which at this stage is pretty silly.

The issue here I see, is the game touts extensive customisation as a selling point, that you can make the character you want. Well guess what, not representing half the population of planet earth isn't off to a great start. They said adding female characters would mean less customisation in other areas. So? Limited customisation with female models is far better than none at all, since female models are pretty distinct from males for bloody obvious reasons. The trend here is ignoring female players, as if women aren't important enough to cater for in the most basic way. For the male players, they make sure you have that hairstyle just right or some wrist band, which is much more important than giving anything to the female populace apparently.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I don't see it as sexist I see it as sensible. The fact that they were thinking about putting in females and then apologised when they couldn't is good enough for me.

To me their reasoning is logical enough.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

They clearly decided what they wanted to do with the character customiszation when they started. As time went on this became unrealistic with two sets of animations etc.

Again: character models are usually an early priority, especially in a game this sophisticated. (Before you mention TF2, specific characters who can be dressed differently are a separate matter.)

In this case, they're selling the game on customization, but inherently limited themselves in that regard by way of female models being, at most, a discarded afterthought. And in the name of making their customization less limited, to boot. Do you see the cognitive dissonance here?

And this isn't specific to Brink. It's an old, recurring excuse that comes up time and time again.

I have to disagree with that. There's no group meeting that goes on between the players of all shooter games.

Point taken. Doesn't change the fact that shooter communities have a notoriously bad reputation.

Some of those communities are hostile, some are not. I've never heard any female be treated with hostility on Source games such as TF2 or CS:S or Garry's Mod.

I certainly have, but anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.

But that still doesn't change the fact that they're about as rare as dodo birds. Shooters are not popular among female gamers, regardless of how they're treated. Otherwise, we'd see a huge influx of female gamers in source games, seeking refuge from the bullshit they have to deal with on games like Halo or Gears of War.

Look at it this way: if you'd heard that a specific genre was a bad community for people like you, would you particularly want to go there? The bad rep, unmerited or no, is a far more likely culprit than any aversion to the genre proper.

Now, me: if Trion made a shooter, I'd probably buy it in a heartbeat. Especially if it used a "gun" controller (although that'd probably mean getting a Wii).

Well, I've known a lot of women. Not all of them are like that, but the ones that aren't end up seeking solitude from other females because they tend to be aggressive towards them. It's rather sad, really, but it seems like in communities all over America women meet other women with a disposition starting at hostile that has to be repaired from the get-go. I blame Facebook for persisting the high school mentality well past high school.

Big can of worms, not touching it.

But yeah, Failbook is bad. And most of my friends are male, but that wasn't deliberate; it's just that most of the nerdy women have left town. (College towns draw a lot of nerds, but they tend not to stay there.)

Now who's misrepresenting a demographic? Who's to say there aren't more gay men interested in this game than female gamers? ;P

I didn't say anything about sexual orientation; I said they like to play with fashion dolls. There's a difference.

Videogame developers are part of society. Therefore sexist activity is their responsibility as much as it is everyone elses. When games fall from the sky from space, I will accept that they (har har) exist in a vacuum.

This.

 

[kikon9]

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.

Technically, you could change your character's death voice by gender in halo.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Technically, you could change your character's death voice by gender in halo.

Fairly sure I remember some smaller-framed models with the suggestion of hips, as well.

 

[Ian Caronia]

I apologize if this had been done before, I did take a look at the forums to see but I might not have looked back far enough.

The upcoming title Brink is based largely upon customization. You can be just about any race, with any style of clothing, hair, the works. But you cannot be female.

Now I?m sure we?ll see a lot of retaliation against what I?m about to say, such as adding in females would have taken time the devs didn?t have. Such as more males game then females. As true as they may be however they do not make the fact that a game, largely based on customization, is excluding half of the human race-

Spoiler: explanation, bro

Okay, hold on a minute. Are you telling me half of the human race is female? Seriously? You obviously have been reading WAY too many statistics, Brosister. Have you ever gone online? Yeah, mostly men. Have you ever walked outside? Men. There's so many men, in fact, there's a male overflow. Everywhere you go there's a penis two feet from your face! And that's not even getting into the places outside of prison!
Besides, what is it with all these games and women MCs? Some games have men main characters because you sex things! YEAH! I mean, you could change the sex of main character, but then how could I put my penis in something? A woman has, like, no penis. I'd be penis-less. Devoid of penile functionality!
A perfect example is the EPIC game Mass Effect 2 only for the PS3, bro. Shepard is a man and he can put his penis into places. And before you go all "but DUH Shepard can be a woman" I'm gonna tell you that's just stupid. I mean...yeah he can...but-but Shepard's a man, BRO! He's, like, a man in all the trailers and shit! Bioware could show trailers with an ambiguous silhouetted Shepard so that female gamers aren't excluded entirely which can easily break their immersion by making it harder for them to feel their Shepard is the real Shepard (for them) and leading to fucktards demeaning female Shepard as a character to be entirely retconned... But they don't! Because male Shepard has a penis! And that's how it should be!
...
Penis!

Spoiler: explanation SRS

If you didn't find my stereotypical rambling funny I apologize. It was a joke =3
I absolutely agree that if the main character is customizable, they should be able to be women also. Even before you could choose race or facial features and the like there was a golden rule for those types of games:
Choose between Male and Female, and both choices are very sexy

Even a game as under the radar as Divinity 2 for the 360 and PC lets you choose between the sexes, and that game was made by a much lesser known developer and published by a not-so-big name company! Unless the plot needs the MC to be male for some reason, it's inexcusable laziness.

...Also, I love Mileena and her special nudie outfit for MK9, but I think it really should not be the reward for the tower since plenty of straight female gamers play Mortal Kombat, a lovably gruesome fighting game that panders to both the sexes. : )

 

[Serenegoose]

Videogame developers are part of society. Therefore sexist activity is their responsibility as much as it is everyone elses. When games fall from the sky from space, I will accept that they (har har) exist in a vacuum.

I'm sure Splash Damage employs more than a few females. So you can't really say that a simple design choice like this is sexist, when it's likely to benefit those females and their families as much as anyone else. This is the entertainment industry. You don't start here and then go on about changing the world. As I said in another thread, I'd worry about getting more women into positions of political power and helping impoverished women long before I'd give a damn about adding some female-esque digital models to a video game. If I were invested in gender issues, that is. Which is why I find it funny that we've spent so much time discussing this, when all of it is time that could have been better spent actually improving the female station in life. You know, by campaigning for a female politician or helping out inner city mothers. This topic is a joke compared to the real issues. So if you're really going to take a strong stand against something, this is not that something, and this is not the place to do it.

Yeah, the "Why are you invested in this aren't there more important things to worry about" and the "women can't be sexist" fallacy in one package. Nothx.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

They aren't saying women can't play the game. They are just saying the characters they have are male.

I don't think there was any dark and evil plot to be sexist. The world just isn't that interesting. I think they just made an executive desicion about time constraints, funding and demographic.

Ironically I think if they made the characters all women you would get complaints about eye candy and objectification. Nobody is ever happy about anything.

Is this really constructive to the reputation of the female gamer when we can't even be reasonable when we have been given a valid excuse?

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

@ Ian: I chuckled.

Yeah, the "Why are you invested in this aren't there more important things to worry about" and the "women can't be sexist" fallacy in one package. Nothx.

Indeed.

Xzi, you said yourself that there's a lot of hostility between women. The other bit is just a false dichotomy.

I don't think there was any dark and evil plot to be sexist. The world just isn't that interesting. I think they just made an executive desicion about time constraints, funding and demographic.

There's a pretty big difference between "dark and evil plot to be sexist" and "female characters were an afterthought at best."

 

[duchaked]

ummm I think they shoulda done it regardless. don't see a reason why not except for laziness or someone who just really was against the idea for some strange reason lol

 

[ThePizzaGuy556]

maybe they'll add females as DLC *shrug* for now its whatever. Gears of war has no customization at all or playable females (yet) and its still a great game to me

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

"female characters were an afterthought at best."

I got the impression they started out making both but then they found it just got too complex so they cut the female avatars.

 

[The Axon Hillock]

Yeah... I was actually fairly excited about the game, and I can remember someone going "I'm sure there is a female choice in character customization. We just haven't seen it yet!" And then it never showed up.

The most powerful way to get around the "white boys club" aspect of video games is to have character customization include all different races and genders. It's worked well and contributed to the gameplay and fanbase size of every game it's been put in. I know women (and men) who wouldn't have bothered with Mass Effect or Fallout 3 or anything like that if their weren't a two gender option set.

Any game needlessly excluding half of the human race takes this medium a step backwards. It also loses money. I know I (and plenty of people I know) are boycotting the game for this very reason. Once there is a single game with deep customization that only includes female characters, The whole "why does it matter if the game is good" argument will fly. Until then, bad move, Splash Damage.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Thats whole set of new animation and models that have to be made.

Thats a lot of work, doubling the time they spent on that stage of production (probably to the extent where it would impact work in other areas such as level design, and weapon design.

They cut a feature a small percentage of their audience would use for a feature more people would use that was more time appropriate, simply a business decision.

Ah, yes, the good old "[a href=http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2027]a matter of resources[/a]" argument. Because everyone knows that game design companies only have one team that works on every aspect of the game, right? Also: wide customization is never wasted on gamers, and everyone knows girls don't play video games.

none of this rage has pointed at any other shooter that was female free so it seems a little mean to pick on this one.

I'm hearing a lot more "rage" from people defending this poor decision. And most shooters aren't being marketed on their customizable avatars. In fact, most shooters have you playing a specific character.

I got the impression they started out making both but then they found it just got too complex so they cut the female avatars.

Not the impression I got. And no more defensible, at any rate.