Jimquisition: Let's End the FPS Sausage-fest

[Kitsune Hunter]

Good point Jim, but actually in Call of Duty, they do show women, well actually, a woman in CoD4 as she's hear in the mission, Charlie Don't Surf, then you have to rescue her from a downed helicopter in the mission, Shock and Awe

And the LAST appearance of any female combatant in any COD games for the next half decade. And her role in the game was to get shot up and carried away by the big strong many player protagonist.

Yet when WORLD WAR 3 starts and they need as many people who can carry a rifle as possible, you still don't see any female... anywhere.

And yet the last time COD did a world war they had female combatants on the Eastern front, as was historically accurate.

That's one of the reasons why I wish CoD would return to WWII, there's still many things they could touch upon, playing as a female soldier in the Red Army being one

 

[Daveman]

That was... disturbing to say the least.

Goldeneye and Timesplitters both had female character models and I don't remember them sucking.

Halo Reach has female characters as well. Fuck it, they have two species fighting sometimes and nobody is moaning about the bloody hitboxes.

 

[Arawn]

Being male or female should be an option, but being a FPS most times you won't see much of the model. In regards to Multiplayer sessions could work better. According to Jim, it's not much trouble more so just abit more production time if anything. My theory why they have few female characters is to reduce voice actor costs. During vids and cut scenes, they probably have 1 or 2 guys voicing all the characters.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

Yes, women are generally weaker than men, and so too were the guerillas of the Viet-cong generally smaller and weaker than well fed American Marines in the Vietnam war yet they fought a stand up fight and inflicted heavy losses, so many battles were won by the Americans only thanks to the entire military force working in coordination such as artillery and air support. The battle of Khe Sanh was won by brilliant military planning of defences with artillery and carpet bombing with B52 bombers so that Khe Sanh didn't end up like Dien Bien Phu. There is a good case to be made that almost every battle is won by who has the best use of heavy artillery.

It's not about being the strongest.

I recall part of the standing orders for US Marines when they were in Iraq was "do not die". To make it clear that it was part of their mission to absolutely minimise casualties and fatalities in their ongoing battle against the many insurgency factions. Being protective is part of the deal of modern combat where missions are about minimising losses. A common creed is "no man left behind". America's involvement in the Battle of Mogadishu was all about trying to rescue a few pilots who'd crashed in enemy territory, didn't make a difference they were all men and open homosexuals were banned from service.

The thing was, it wasn't an issue for the Viet-cong or the Red army to have mixed gender units, they were highly effective against a much better trained force.

Women in frontline combat may not be realistic, but it is at least practical.

 

[Grimh]

Man, Blacklight: Retribution is so much fun. I gotta go play it now.
But yeah I pretty much agree with you on this one Jim(elina?). So I don't really have anything to add.

Except you should have said "Thank the Goddess for me."

.....


You sexist.

 

[CygnusMal]

To all the armchair generals using their vast military knowledge to claim that women can't serve in Special Operations, don't serve alongside infantry and imply that women only end up in combat situations accidentally, here are some counter points:
- SOCOM's Cultural Support Program http://www.soc.mil/swcs/cst/index.htm
- PSYOPS/MISO/Civil Affairs are also open to females
- Female Engagement Teams serve alongside infantryman all across Afghanistan everyday

Here's a some more info: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/in-new-elite-army-unit-women-serve-alongside-special-forces-but-first-they-must-make-the-cut/2011/10/06/gIQAZWOSMM_story.html

 

[Rainboq]

-snip as I'm pointing to the video's kicker-

Having tits is wonderful, am I right?

On Topic: I still love Reach for including the option to be female and I'd have loved it if TF2 had actually included the planned option for all classes to have the option to be either male or female but they removed it over worries about performance. Honestly, the change needs to happen, and I'd love for it to happen sooner than later.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Well Jim, once again, you sold me!

I went into this with a number of complaints and you rebuked all of them quite nicely!

Also, I think you finally out-creepied your gay Mass Effect 3 erotica.

 

[archvile93]

Its funny, I remember there being exactly ONE woman soldier in an FPS game. And that was COD 4, that helicopter pilot you tried to rescue. And that's it as far as I know. Every COD after that never had a female in any kind of combat role or even in a support role.

There were female soldiers in the Russian campaign in CoD 2. Most of the other militaries were very hesitant to send women to the front lines in real life, which is probably why they weren't seen in the American or British campaigns. I'm pretty sure that's still true today in most armies, though I could be wrong.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Ya would be nice if they sucked it up and made the models and hired the voice actors... and such ya know.... but I'd rather have that money put into depth and quality for the game...but then again I do not think they can afford it anymore....

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Yup. It sucks to have to play dudes when you aren't one. It's not that you're playing a dude, so much, it's that you have to, because they didn't give you any other option. My fiancé knows I have 'dibs' on any female toons when a game has them, because there are usually only a few and they are mine because I have spent years and years and years in a male avatar across so many titles that when the option to play my own gender comes up, I'm doing it. Even though that sometimes forces me to play character types I wouldn't normally favor, if they are the girl, that's me. It's a little ridiculous that we're still in this situation, as players, where we have to scavenge for our own gendered toons.

When you say toon do you refer to games that let you create your character (Bioware games) or that offer different premade characters of different sexes? (Dead Island)

I don't like the argument that game forces you to play as Nathan Drake or Kratos. It's like saying a movie forces its protagonist onto you. Since games are becoming more like movies and made with that mindset, and AAA games are risk averse we always get our Michael Bay protagonists.

Technologically it's not currently feasible to have the choice of playing as Nathan and Natalie Drake since the Uncharted games for instance are highly cinematic (Have plenty of pre-rendered cut scenes) and disc memory wouldn't be enough to fit all the content for the male and female protagonist plus the game's budget would skyrocket.

Of course this doesn't mean that there shouldn't be the choose your sex option in any game, only games that aren't highly cinematic, of which they are many.

Another option is doing it the JRPG way and have both men and women in the party without a clear protagonist among the group. Like Final Fantasy VI.

Good question. I meant pre-generated characters. In games that have multiple playable characters (toons). I realize that some stories are just about a person, and that's fine. If it's the story of Mario and his brother or Link or Cloud or whomever, then that's the story and I'm playing that person male or female. In something like, say, Borderlands for example, though you get a choice of 5 or 6 people and there's 1 who is a chick - that will be me, every time, by default, because it is THE ONLY female option of the handful we get. Same was true back in the day when Chun Li was the only female in a fighting game, then Cammie, etc. and so on. That's more what I am referring to.

I agree with your point that if the main character is the only playable character, then people know that going in and they either want to play that character's story or they don't - regardless of the gender. Then again, it would be nice if there were more of those that happened to be of the female persuasion, as it is, the vast majority are not. That is, though, a separate issue apart from what's under discussion here, which is having the option to have a female toon when the question is multiple choice.

As far as possible, I think the Mass Effect / Dragon Age games have shown that cinematic doesn't cut off the possibility of offering either or, and it is very nice to have been able to play those games as a female and be a female while doing it. They are some of my most replayed titles and that reason is certainly in the top 10 of why. I don't think that's something every single game should do - it is however a decent solution to the problem of the lack of games that center on a female protagonist's story without cutting out the considerably sized male audience or forcing them into playing chicks to play games (the way many girls for many years have been forced to play guys to play games throughout gaming's past and present).

 

[Metalrocks]

i agree. there should be more female characters in games and in MPs. in L4D i always try to play as the female character. and im a guy. even in ME i play as a female. miss hale sounds better anyway.

 

[Kiss my Axe]

My only thought so n the CM female avatars for multiplayer thing is how it will look. Seeing as Aliens has heavy... "undertones" of rape, how well is this going to go over? Its multiplayer. Its a festival for aliens to rape marines. Can't wait for it to launch & see the rage when they go nuts because of facehuggers.

 

[maxben]

To be fair to MW,BF and MOH most Western Special Forces unit's don't allow women to try out, outside of Delta Force's "Funny Platoon" and some British Intelligence unit's. Also how it is that Halo: Reach (Kat, Six can be female) is the most gender equal FPS I can think of?

While true, since my mom was a captain in the paratroopers of the Israeli army I will blame that on discrimination and not impossibility. We dont need equal representation necessarily, but at least give us one member of the team.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Team Fortress 2 has the Heavy and the Scout.

Any argument against scaling issues is invalid.

TF2 has a rock, paper, scissors class approach to it's game balance. Most shooters don't. Everybody is supposedly on the same level. your argument is invalid

Then their shouldn't be any problem at all in creating a female character model with the exact same hit scales. Again, invalid.

 

[xDarc]

I like Jim, but the past month it seems like he's been making shows out of things I wasn't aware were problems or even a big deal at all.

Wish he would talk about bigger things, like the discussion on Steam's monopoly as of late.

 

[Dangit2019]

I guess there was that one woman in COD4, yeah, though we can assume she was the last of her kind, made extinct in that terrible war.

Yeah, that one women who immediately got shot out of the sky and had to be valiantly saved by her burly male counterparts.

 

[MB202]

I just KNOW this is going to end up like all the other topics about "women in video games", namely, everyone throws one big hissy fit, trying to justify what is, at times, the unjustifiable, most of which usually boils down to "stop ruining our fun, you can't complain because it's not meant for your, BLAH!" Geez...