Jimquisition: The Creepy Cull of Female Protagonists

[Treblaine]

So long as you write them properly and keep your game from being a steaming mass of misogyny you should be fine, I haven't seen people offend easily at female leads unless the developers went out of their way to make it that way.

You seriously think developers "went out of their way" to make Tomb Raider "a steaming mass of misogyny"?

Or are you just not aware of how offended people have been?

I don't think you realise quite how disingenuous and fallacious the "criticisms" have been, here games are being criticised for having a female character not being sexual and not long ago others were being attacked for being sexual. It's a false dilemma.

Boots talks of: "maybe it's possible to talk critically about the general representation of women in video games as a means for improving writing in the genre."

Yes it's possible, Yes. But is that always done?

No.

He even repeats the obvious and repeatedly refuted falsehood about a "beauty contest" for Mass Effect 3's adverts having the players vote how FemShep could look, which had nothing to do with beauty, it was vital statistics like skin colour, eye colour and hair colour. And it was appropriate as the decision to have femshep in advertising was to reflect how many player chose Shepard to be female, their choice could also follow through in her identifiable appearance.

This is just an example of how this is not criticism and it's not to improve anything, this is to contrive and concoct mal-intent where there is none, none at all.

We used to only have to deal with such tabloid assessments on places like Fox News, now they're here on the forums.

 

[Treblaine]

The original Tomb Raider was a runaway hit, not because of Lara Croft's inflated boobs, but because it was a good and new novel game with an astonishingly cool "female" protagonist.

And one can prove this.

Angel of Darkness had far more realistic Lara Croft, yet a terrible compromise in gameplay. The result was that sales tanked.

But as to "games with women on front covers don't sell" I fear that is a pure correlation statistics that is offset by how a few extremely popular games like Call of Duty do well and have men on the front covers skew that statistic. And it is not BECAUSE there are women on the cover. Marketing is not a peer reviewed science, it's may consume the products of scientific research but there is no rigour in application nor selection.

 

[CrystalShadow]

The Samus fanservice pisses me off to no end. Really, if we have to take her out of her power-armour can we leave her in "normal" clothing? No. Why? Because bullshit reasons about "sexy".

I understand the reasoning, and it disappoints me too that they've moved even further in that direction, but it's not a new thing by any means.

If you go back to Super Metroid, the completion bonuses all show Samus taking off her suit. If you get no bonus, you just get a shot of her in full suit, the smallest bonus she takes off the helmet, and the full bonus has her remove the whole suit.

That in itself raises a few questions, but what's underneath that suit? Why, underwear of course.
Same thing when she dies and her suit shatters.

Now, admittedly, that makes sense if you think about it, but I doubt that the reasons for her appearing that way are that innocent.

The Zero-suit is a more recent invention, but the seeds of this tendency towards fan-service have been visible for a very long time...

 

[Baresark]

Ugh, more of this tired subject. Contrary to popular belief, this isn't the most important thing in the world. As I said last time this issue came up regarding this very game. I'm glad they stuck to their guns. But what people call misogyny and sexism is just the the product of focus group testing. I don't think there is a bigger conspiracy out there that demands males lead the way. I don't mind playing as either, I am without preference.

 

[RicoADF]

Okay, fuck it!
I always play as a male in character creation RPGs because I like projecting myself into a character.
Next time though, I'm gunna try playing as a woman. MY SENSE OF SELF CAN TAKE IT!

Jim, call me! <3

An RPG where you can choose is one thing, I also play as male since thats what I am for the same reason. However for those story games where your given a character like in a movie with his/her own story there really needs to be more women. And I mean proper women characters not just sex objects.

The funny thing about the whole Bioshock coverart is that I don't get where their getting the crap that men on the box sell more, personally the box art has actually lost a sale from me, however its only now that enough info is coming out showing its not just another boring 'dude bro' game that I'm thinking of purchasing it.

Personally I take what the publishers say about women in games and what they think I want in a game as a bloody insult, I'm not some sexist anti-social pig that only wants to play as muscular men that gork at sexy women. I want to play good games with stories I can get immersed with, regardless of who the player character is.

 

[Uhura]

The video was great and I'm happy too see that the conversation has remained pretty civil.

I'm somewhat surprised how controversial the whole 'ME3 beauty contest' remark seems to be though. To me it definitely seemed like a beauty contest because
a) most of the comments left on the facebook poll were about the hotness/prettiness of the designs
b) all the femshep designs look considerably younger and fresher than sheploo

So the community (at least on facebook) seemed to view it as a beauty contest and all the designs made femshep look young and pretty (vs. the older and rugged sheploo). So I'm not sure why calling the poll a 'beauty contest' would be that far off. To be clear, I understand why some people appreciate the whole 'Bioware wanted to hear the fans' aspect of it and I didn't think it was a huge issue (but I did roll my eyes when I read about it).

 

[-Dragmire-]

I don't really project myself into characters, I play RPGs to see the story unfold and characters interact with each other but I don't view myself in that role. This is probably why I never feel put off by playing a character regardless of sex.

That being said, I can't really see myself being put off even if I were to project myself into a female character pursuing a male interest.

 

[Baresark]

I always wonder about the supposed marketing data that gamers won't buy games with female characters on the cover, or don't identify with female characters? I've heard the argument a lot, but I have never seen any real supporting data,a nd I have long suspected that it is in truth an absolute myth. I mean really some of the biggest juggernauts in gaming sold themselves via (albeit attractive) female characters. Does anybody remember the original World of Warcraft box art? How about Everquest I and II? The original Tomb Raider was a runaway hit, not because of Lara Croft's inflated boobs, but because it was a good and new novel game with an astonishingly cool "female" protagonist. (Albeit one with some truly spine chillingly horrific death animations. I seem to recall that that was the only thing that bothered my friends and I about a female protagonist. Hearing her scream as she was killed or worse the drowning. I like to think that we would have had something psychologically wrong with us if that didn't bother us. Some minor misogyny is hard wired in for good reason. Being bothered by the death of the womenfolk is a good one.)

So once again, why is this even a controversy? (I'd also like to know where exactly they do these marketing test surveys? Baghdad?)

Well, there is an extreme amount of evidence outside the scope of videogames that support this argument, and for companies like publishers that only counts in focus group testing. It's called implicit egotism. If you google search that, you will find a lot of articles citing names as what implicit egotism is, it's rather annoying. But, in Psychological sciences, implicit egotism is the natural inclination to favor things that are similar to yourself. Since more guys play video games then the theory states that it makes more sense to have a male lead. Why? All people will favor things they find most familiar in a given situation. In the situation of an action game, we don't want to imagine our wives, sisters, mothers, etc., in the action, we want to imagine ourselves. So it follows to reason that we may in fact be more comfortable with a male lead in game. This is of course, not explicitly true, it's only speaking in statistical terms which do not apply to individuals. As a matter of fact, there are many situations where terms like racist and sexist come up when it's only implicit egotism at work. That is not to say these things do not exist, they certainly do. There are people out there that hate people with a different skin color, gender, ethic background or religion. But people who are going out of their way to find these things will often cite things like racism and sexism in a given situation that it may not apply to. It's why white folks mostly marry other white folks, and why a lot of men want to play a male role in an action game. I'm glad the develop stuck to it's guns, but I'm annoyed on how incredibly blown out of proportion this whole subject is quickly becoming.

 

[CrystalShadow]

The Samus fanservice pisses me off to no end. Really, if we have to take her out of her power-armour can we leave her in "normal" clothing? No. Why? Because bullshit reasons about "sexy".

I understand the reasoning, and it disappoints me too that they've moved even further in that direction, but it's not a new thing by any means.

If you go back to Super Metroid, the completion bonuses all show Samus taking off her suit. If you get no bonus, you just get a shot of her in full suit, the smallest bonus she takes off the helmet, and the full bonus has her remove the whole suit.

That in itself raises a few questions, but what's underneath that suit? Why, underwear of course.
Same thing when she dies and her suit shatters.

Now, admittedly, that makes sense if you think about it, but I doubt that the reasons for her appearing that way are that innocent.

The Zero-suit is a more recent invention, but the seeds of this tendency towards fan-service have been visible for a very long time...

I never really saw the ZS as fan service till Other M. Sure it's formfitting but not until Brawl did she even have Boob socks

And what doesn't make sense about a second layer of protection in a suit of armour? That's how I've always saw it if anything if you think about it in Sci-fi terms it could be the way her body connects to the armour.
Every time I hear the armour for the suits existence it never made sense to me. However what the suit has become over the years i do get the grievances, i mean heels? Really? Huh.

XD. - Yes, the heels do kind of make things a little ridiculous.
Then again they redesigned that pretty quickly. Most games I can think of show the zero-suit without heels.

Still, although it kind of makes sense in a way, I think part of the reason that form-fitting bodysuits get the reactions they do is because firstly, if your body isn't perfect, it'd show if you wore something like that, and second, the real-world equivalent of such a suit is, more often than not, incredibly uncomfortable to wear.

But then, I don't know. The suit itself isn't nessesarily the issue (some aspects of it's design being slightly questionable maybe though), but rather the way things get presented at times.

 

[dfphetteplace]

I usually project myself into a character, and as being a male, I usually pick a male character when I have the choice (like Fallout, Skyrim, ect). I have nothing against female characters though. That footage from Remember Me looks amazing, and I can't wait to play it. I liked Metroid, Portal, Mirrors Edge, and some others that I can't remember right now. There is nothing wrong with a strong female lead! Please, put more of them into games!

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I'm surprised how Jim pointed out how some of the attempts to portray a strong female lead have been... tenuous at best.

Sure, we've hit some really solid female leads recently with Lara Croft in the the new Tomb Raider, and Faith from Mirror's Edge kicked ass, but then we think back to Samus in the appalling Metroid: Other M and realize that some people don't do female leads because they can't do female leads.

While gender-neutral stories like Mass Effect tend to be some of the best things to create female protagonists, like FemShep, it would be nice to see stories tackle female leads without... you know... playing on all of the damn stereotypes of female characters.

*cough*someonetellthesegamedevstoplayff6andlearnhowtowriteaproperfemalelead*cough*

 

[vasiD]

I think it's the publishers who are to blame. I mean they're rich, and selling quality titles that are GUARANTEED to sell, they should be taking some risks.

Bioshock Infinite was destined to sell an absurd number of copies no matter what. I mean honestly you could have probably put a swastika on the cover, front and center with a fat hairy naked old man wrapped in a creepy-sexy way around it and (suspending the disbelief of the very natural ban that would naturally follow such art) it would have still sold an absurd number of copies so long as the game play still looked that absurdly fucking good. When you're establishing yourself it's not a bad idea to play in to marketing, and when your game is shit it's a great idea, but when you've got the goods, know it, and have appropriately shown it off creating a solid buzz, maybe it might be time to take some risks with that lovely crowd you've built up, yeah?

If any thing these big series should be taking MASSIVE risks, because they can easily afford to do so based on the quality of their product, in fact it seems only when they wet themselves taking no risks that they seem to garner fan disgust.


Publishers just don't have any balls, plain and simple. They know they have no talent except for that of seeing obvious trends in purchases, and as such they nervously beg us for our money while they walk on egg shells for stupid children who would honestly buy whatever shiny bullshit you put in front of them anyway. It's genuinely pathetic, and I long for the day when these parasites are no longer part of the creative process.

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

First off, re: sex initiated by female characters. I've always felt sex in video games was weird when initiated by *ANY* character. Kratos banging Aphrodite in a QTE was possibly one of the most awkward situations to ever show up in a video game, and that's even counting those weird dating sims. The act of playing through it, while probably the worst part, certainly isn't the ONLY reason it was weird. Hell, I can't recall a single sex or sex-ish scene in a single video game that actually helped convey narrative or plumb the depths of a character (yes, intentional)

That said, I can somewhat understand the general reluctance you mention. If a video game is well crafted, with an engaging story and well rounded characters, you should feel yourself immersed in the protagonist. Suddenly having said protagonist grab a handful of some dudes crotch, or whatever, could be a mite off-putting. Probably even moreso if the protagonist was male, too ... but that would be worth it, just for the outraged "mothers of America." And if the game isn't well crafted, etc, it's just going to feel like shameless fan service. Honestly, I'd probably vote to keep gratuitous depictions of sex out of videos game entirely.

.

Secondly, re: no female protags because REASONS. There are no reasons. There are literally no reasons a female cannot be just as well written as a male. In fact, (minor spoilers ahead) I was playing through the recent XCOM again, and decided to personalize my troops a bit. The first character to promote into support class was female, and so I gave her the nickname "Team Mom." She ran around with medkits and smoke grenades keeping everyone else alive and what not. Maybe it was a bit sexist, but it made me laugh, so whatever. Then, towards the end of the game, she was the first character to develop psionic gifts, and my heart actually skipped a beat, knowing full well what that could imply. And that's just some very superficial characterization that I jokingly gave a mostly faceless female character in a top-down tactical game with little to no actually personality.

Men (for the most part) have a natural tendency to protect women, and even bad men love their mamas [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas]. This should make for easy slam dunks for writers. As long as they're not too ham fisted or glaringly obvious about it, well written females can by just as engaging for audiences, if not significantly MORESO. Hell, people are still upset about Aerith, over 15 years later. (damn I feel old now, and no I'm not marking that as a spoiler. It's been 15 freaking years)

 

[Treblaine]

Now, admittedly, that makes sense if you think about it, but I doubt that the reasons for her appearing that way are that innocent.

Interesting choice of words... are you saying there is some "guilt" in being interested in such things? That it's some sort of illicit and immoral crime?

I thought we were beyond such tawdry ideas of "innocence" to do with sex. This is not the language of inclusion, tolerance or understanding.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Not only would I accept a female protag, I WELCOME it. It would be very interesting and would be a great divergence away from the usual male protag.

 

[Zen Toombs]

What is the game with the female protaganist at about 2:50? It looks bloody baller. It's the one that looks sci-fi.