oreso said:
Art imitates life
There's a reason why most of the soldiers in modern FPSs are male; because most of the soldiers in real life are male. As are the overwhelming majority of combatants in every conflict since before recorded history.
Heck, if someone somewhere is doing something dangerous and exciting, they're probably male.
Now if every society on Earth has shared this trait, then I think it's fair to say it has some biological component. Successful societies have thrived just because women weren't willing to dive on enemy swords like men are (which is kinda obvious, a dude can father hundreds of children a year, a woman can mother maybe 1. If survival is an issue, we need more women than men).
Maybe at some point we can overcome this with society, once women start taking dangerous jobs and having adventures like some of our menfolk do, so then the idea of a female protagonist in a dangerous game might seem more reasonable to the gut instincts of the unwashed majority of gamers. Possibly. Eventually. But I'm not holding my breath.
Making women is HARD WORK
Stop making it a no-win for games designers. Female characters face ENORMOUS amounts of scrutiny for every single aspect of their design, compared to their male counterparts. Too much/little sexuality/femininity/violence/sexiness/dialogue/vulnerability/characterisation/etc. It's tedious. It's unfair.
If it wasn't such a minefield of offence, then maybe that'd mean more people would try.
Coercion is almost as bad as censorship
Complaining that you want more female characters in a game is totally fine. You're just saying what you want, after all.
However, saying that there's a moral obligation, and that we're somehow not good people if we don't have gender parity in our games, is not cool.
Games are already awesome for women
Saving anyone from a badguy's castle, princesses included, is actually a nice thing to do, so let's not demonise it unnecessarily.
And if you ever think that the gaming industry isn't doing enough to promote an image of strong capable women, just consider that with the invention of Lara Croft alone, there's been about a 1000% more tomb raiding women in games compared to female tomb raiders in real life. Ditto that (to a greater or lesser degree) for any other typical gaming profession (professional fighter, bounty hunter, soldier, etc). Games are already leading the charge on presenting the genders more equally, our so-called egalitarian society is far far behind.
Art imitates life
Which is the problem with the trend that has become far too entrenched of militarism in games. I get it that shooting is a very flexible game mechanic and the military both have a lot of guns and do a lot of shooting but there has just been too much damn focus on the military. We don't need to retell the same damn soldier's stroy over and over again.
And what makes a game or any good narrative work function is coming from the underdog. It's simple Rocky rules, it doesn't work if it looks like Rocky's opponent is a whimp that Balboa can easilly knock out and the film is nothing but a prelude to a slaughter. Far
And it's GOOD to have a female lead role in a game fighting mostly men as this makes them the underdog.
You look at the damage and health stats in games and the numbers, to spite how the lead role may be bigged up as some unstoppable badass they are very much the underdog. If they trade shot for shot, they'll never make it. Boss fights are always about the much weaker fighting the much stronger and how do they win? By the fates? By the developers making them more resistant and more powerful?
No, by what we value the most, the individual's guile and ability.
The point is victory in most games is not about attributes that can only be for men like sheer strength and toughness, being a tank, it's about having the faster and better aim than your numerous tougher opponents, it's about dodging their attacks and outflanking them. It's about everything other than being stronger and tougher.
Even paragon of toughness and power Duke Nukem or Doomguy, if you play the games without trying to avoid any hits, and take shots at the same rate and accuracy as them, you'll be lucky to make it past the first few scrub enemies on the higher difficulties.
Making women is HARD WORK
Maybe that should rather be
Making women is the same, but defending them from unreasonable attacks is HARD WORK. Because that's not a problem with developers or gamer, that's a problem with trolls, haters and buffoons causing trouble when there isn't any.
Coercion is almost as bad as censorship
Which is why it's important to resist this, keep having all sorts of female protagonist and damn the censors, they'll give up as ultimately they have no real interest in the games. They just want to feel they are doing something, when you can't do anything about the awful things you hear about in the news without another black hawk down in somalia, or another so called "illegal war", at least they can have "good censorship" for games.
Games are already awesome for women
Of course, a lead character being male no more excluded a female gamer than a female lead excluded a male gamer, But it's not just women who want female protagonists in games and when it is women who want it, it isn't always because they are women. We would all like to just see a bit more variety in lead roles, not because they need them to play the games at all, but for a bit of damn variety. We've all seen how cool it is to have a male lead in action games, we haven't see enough of how cool it would be having female leads.
And there aren't any Tomb Raiders in real life. They are nothing more than local scrap metal dealers who get a tip of some cave-in and load all the contents into the back of a truck in the middle of the nigh, those the the original Tomb Raiders. And that sucks.
Tomb Raider isn't about real life, it's about finding Atlantis and finding it is full of killer mutants that explode when you shoot them.
We already live in the real world. If you want to experience war in the most realistic way possible, most armies are happy to take eager recruits, give them a gun, and stand a bad chance of getting blown apart by a concealed bomb.
