Jimquisition: The Creepy Cull of Female Protagonists

CC17

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oreso said:
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.
This is a very good point. It does take courage to make a female protagonist, because if you screw it up then your gonna get a lot more shit that you would for a male protagonist. If you make a male protagonist, as long as his actions aren't sexist etc. you wont offend anyone.
 

Abomination

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CC17 said:
oreso said:
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.
This is a very good point. It does take courage to make a female protagonist, because if you screw it up then your gonna get a lot more shit that you would for a male protagonist. If you make a male protagonist, as long as his actions aren't sexist etc. you wont offend anyone.
Apart from the folks who think it should have been a female protagonist and your game is yet another drop in the sea of testosterone dominated waters.

It is essentially a "no-win" scenario but you'll win worse if you make the protagonist a female and -get it wrong- which you have a higher chance of doing due to the scrutiny every female character suddenly receives.
 

Trishbot

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CC17 said:
oreso said:
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.
This is a very good point. It does take courage to make a female protagonist, because if you screw it up then your gonna get a lot more shit that you would for a male protagonist. If you make a male protagonist, as long as his actions aren't sexist etc. you wont offend anyone.
I think WORRYING about it is a self-imposed limit. Just write a good character, gender neutral, and if the character is strong on that principle alone, he or she would be a good character regardless of gender. If Samus in Other M was a boy, she'd still be an awful character, just as Raiden in MGS2 would still be lame if it was a woman in the role.

One of the strongest women in science fiction is Ripley from Aliens... and she was written in the first movie to be entirely gender neutral; they could've cast a man in her role according to the script, but Sigourney Weaver gave the best performance so they went with her.

Lara Croft in the new game is a well-written character, as either a man or woman, but she has elements of femininity that help shape her without defining her. Samus Aran in the original Metroid games was almost entirely gender neutral because her gender was a non-issue when fighting aliens just as much as Master Chief's gender is a non-issue (screw Other M, though).

Writing good women in games is "hard"? Yes. But that's because writing GOOD characters is HARD, regardless of gender. It's insanely easy to create a lackluster male OR female character, and it's just as difficult making you care about the new Lara Croft as it is making you care about Garrus Vakarian or Lee Everett or Alan Wake or any other male hero.

Surprisingly, "quality" means work. But if you slack off from writing a good female character because "it's a lot of work", then the problem is the creators for being both lazy and/or afraid of stepping out of their insanely small comfort zones.
 

Hagi

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Thank god for Daddy!

Good points made in the video. What I found to be worthy of bonus points is that Remember Me looked totally awesome from the shots you included yet everything I've noticed from it's marketing campaign, what little that was, has been mediocre at best.

Also an important point is that it's really quite hard to attach blame to anyone. Are developers and publishers to blame when every female characters faces much, much more scrutiny and criticism than any male character, you're basically guaranteed to be called sexist at some point if you even mention the possibility of a female character let alone include one but if you just never bring it up no controversies happen (and shouldn't)? Are consumers to blame when, even if they wanted with all their heart to buy games with amazing female protagonists, there aren't really many of such games to be found?

It's a difficult question and one I hope the games industry will eventually grow out of as more and more people grow up with technology and games, hopefully leading to much more variety in every aspect of games, both playing them and creating them. And not just women, they certainly aren't the only ones who rarely get turned into protagonists.
 

SnakeCL

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boots said:
I'm sick of hearing that argument because I'm sick of the assumption that women don't like war games or shooters or strategy games, and that the only way to make games appeal to women is ... I don't know, having customisable high heels or sticking flowers all over the box art. Rather than the relatively simple adjustment of just making the same old shooter, but with a grizzled badass female character instead of a grizzled badass male character.
Except that, like it or not, there are large swathes of the playerbase who don't enjoy playing as persons of the other gender. Heck, we've even had various women admit as much about playing as male characters on this very website. Its not a "sexist" thing, its just that some people enjoy playing as the gender they can relate to.

I'm also sick of this argument because it assumes that, as a female who likes war games, and strategy games and stealth games and shooters and horror games, I must be some kind of freak or outlier or anomaly. Along with all my female friends who are into horror games and shooters, apparently.
But see, anecdotal evidence doesn't an argument make. Under many of the "gaming demographic" breakdowns, my mother falls into the "girls who game" demographic because she plays a few cell phone games.

Here. for instance, the ESA...

According to a study conducted by the Entertainment Software Association in 2012, "Forty-seven percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (30 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent)."
So 47 percent of all gamers are women. It doesn't go on to define what KIND of games. Heck, many people consider playing solitaire on their windows PC as "gaming".

But then, a more in-depth study done years earlier, once more, by the ESA, showed this...

According to a survey done in 2004 by the Entertainment Software Association, 25 percent of console players and 39 percent of PC game players were women. Also, 40 percent of online game players were women. According to a report by USA today 60 percent of female gamers played on mobile devices says a survey done by EEDAR. The same survey done by EEDAR also finds 63 percent of these female mobile gamers played online multiplayer mobile games.[29]
Even Nintendo themselves came out with figures that showed there's nowhere near a 50/50 split of gamers in the console space during the beginning of last generation.





But the main reason I'm sick of that argument is because it's a very lazy and very transparent attempt to dismiss the concept of women playing games. "No, there aren't really any women playing real games, the surveys must be lying, gaming is still a safe male space, it is, it is!" It's the same attitude that brought us the ever-pervasive "fake gamer girls" meme, and it's starting to get old.
And I just showed you why this is patently false.

Let me put it this way, if there was a huge untapped 47% marketshare, ripe for the picking, do you think suits would be passing on making a game catered to the untapped demographic?

Its not that the argument is a shallow attempt to show that women don't belong in gaming. Its a valid argument that the industry is just playing to the group that'll make them the most money. Its not necessarily a gaming thing, but more of a societal thing where women could have just been conditioned to stay away from. Which means major kudos to you for liking what you like and letting society be damned.

Heck, the "basement dwelling neckbeard" trope that gets bandied about... guess what, its a male stereotype readily used and accepted by women. It can also be one of the prime reasons why many women don't have an interest in gaming, since hey, the only people who play games like Gears of War or Halo are "basement dwelling neckbearded men".
 

Infernai

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I admit i don't play female characters too often in games (I have a few times though: Dragon age 2 and Mass Effect series for one). But, i certainly agree this whole "Can't have Female Protagonists EVAR!" is a big problem. Seriously, variety is awesome and i certainly am getting a bit tired of just seeing big burly SPAEC MARINS! all the freaking time. We should not be afraid to have female characters in a leading role, nor should people be scared to put them on front covers.

So if we can get to work on getting the people in charge from using values from the 1950's out of our industry, that'd be great.
 

Mr.Squishy

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Guy here. I really think we could do with more female characters, and less hang-ups about them, both hang-ups about including them and pushing it in our face that 'zomg you're playing as a GURL!'. See, this is why I like Dark Souls (well, aside from the lovely lore, fun combat etc. etc.). You can make a chick or a dude character, and not only does it not affect story or character interactions, it leaves armor models intact too - no bits of string, unless I dunno, you're playing as the 'deprived' class, but then that's par for the course. To me, that just felt like a fresh breath. Actually, that's one of the reasons I like RPGs a lot - as well as the new XCOM (haven't played the old one). Basically, I don't find gender to matter - unless there is, like Jim points out, a disturbing overweight of male characters, and a pathological fear/hate towards having female characters.
I'm entirely comfortable with women being in lead roles, kicking ass, having romances, developing as characters and so forth and so on, and I really fail to get why dudebros/executives are terrified of that. Although, speaking of dudebros, I am not entirely sure, but I think the effect of Far Cry 3's main arc wherein white-as-snow, pasty dudebro Jason Brody gets his world flip-turned upside down might have been slightly diminished if we were dealing with, say Jane Brody - not that I would mind, but...nevermind, train of thought crashed.

TL;DR: Yes, more female characters, both leading and supporting, please. Moar agency, less being treated like fine china or something to rub one out to. Oh and yeah, let them be allowed to fuck up. Seriously. Flaws are just as instrumental in making a character work as positive qualities.
 

Yuuki

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Too many factors:

> Foundation of the gaming industry primarily being made by males back in the 70's and 80's.

> Statistics are happy to reveal that 40-45% of gamers are female, but when it came to breaking down that percentage by GENRE (what sort of games they're playing) then suddenly reports get very tight-lipped (i.e. such statistics are almost nowhere to be found).

> Today less than 1 out of every 10 game developers is female. Females are far less interested in developing games than males, the majority of them sway away from degrees/certifications that revolve around Programming, CAD design, game design, etc. The world needs to understand that men and women have different career paths in mind. But how are we supposed to get a solid female perspective on games? Universities/schools are 100% open to females, so who do you blame for this?

> Female agency in general is something that has taken the back seat for the last hundreds, if not thousands of years. A great example of this is that even today, in many cultures and in many people's MINDS a man is judged by his worth and a woman is judged by her beauty. Don't believe me? Just take a look around the internet! Also if it wasn't obvious enough, the entire beauty industry rose primarily because of female consumers. If you're STILL too thick to be convinced, look at the prostitution, the oldest "occupation" in the world.

> Till today we are still completely devoid of detailed statistics on what sort of games women are buying, what percentage of consumers of specific games are female (e.g. CoD, Halo). Huge publishers like EA/Activision HAVE all these statistics, or at least they can take a fairly accurate stab at the ratios. ..but they are not sharing it with the world. They are making decisions based on stuff that only they know, and if it's one thing I REALLY hate it's being left in the fucking dark.

> And of course, as Jim said people often say one thing and do another. Why? No idea, someone needs to do a PHD on it.

The last 1000+ threads on the Escapist would've been greatly helped if we just had some concrete statistics about male/female consumers! But alas, we're still waiting...

Anyway, I heartily want more female protagonists in games. That game that Jim was playing looked like it had an awesome protagonist, I absolutely wouldn't mind playing her! And NO, I'm not one of those people who says one thing and buys another.
 

HalfTangible

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Creepy? No, Jim. It's not creepy at all.

STOP! Just... hear me out.

See, 'creepy' implies intent, and intent implies thought. There's no thought to this. Therefore, it's not creepy that developers need to fight tooth and nail to keep their female protagonists.

It is sheer, utter stupidity of such an appalling degree that you can probably hear my mental facepalm. Having written female protagonists in a relationship a few times, (mostly in forum games admittedly, but one of the leads in a novel I'm writing is also female) it is not creepy in the slightest to see a character of the opposite sex in a straight relationship. Maybe (MAYBE) it could feel awkward if you deliberately insert yourself into the character's role, but frankly that should only happen with blank-slate characters. None of the examples you gave (as far as I know) were blank slates. And if your character IS a blank slate, then why aren't homosexual relationships an option for the gay people in your audi-

... No, HT, one problem that needs tackling at a time.

I mean, this is stupid, disgraceful and sick. 'Creepy' is too good for it. SCREW. YOU. GAMES. INDUSTRY.
 

Elexia

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I'm a female gamer. I love my FPSs as much as the next man (or woman). I don't feel romance is necessary at all in games. You can be a fully rounded human being and save the universe without locking lips with a lady about to burst out of her spandex space suit. In fact, saving the universe should be your number one priority at that point, not the woman in spandex.

That being said, I keep seeing people say the same things on this site - that women are treated as objects rather than fully rounded characters in mainstream gaming, but nothing happens to change that. It's like a very loud protest that rises from the ashes every few weeks but turns out it's a tree falling in the woods and no one's around to hear it.
 
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boots said:
Sir Thomas Sean Connery said:
The poll they held is a very silly thing to pick on.

They just wanted to know what the players wanted instead of just designing some random person for the box cover.

Besides, the default is honestly kind of scary looking.
I'm not "picking on" the poll. It's not the fat kid in the playground. I'm mentioning it because it's relevant to the discussion of customisable characters.

If you can customise your character in-game, then it's just silly to offer the fans the choice of customising the character in the marketing as well. It defeats the purpose of the appearance customisation mechanic, which is built off the assumption that different people like different things.

My main point is that they didn't do a poll for the male Shepard's appearance "to know what the players wanted". But when it came to the simple challenge of designing a female character for box art, they were too scared to come up with and decide upon their own ideas and instead resorted to throwing options at their audience and going, "Which lady is the prettiest? Which lady will make you buy the game? Please, please tell us."
They couldn't have effectively done it with the male Shepard since that had to be designed for ME1. Without a fanbase for the game in place, the poll wouldn't have even been noticed.

Also, I still see no issue in having the players decide which FemShep looked best.

I mean, there HAD to be a default. There's no question about that. So why not let the players decide? That's the whole point of RPG face customization: To let players decide what the main character looks like. It had nothing to do with fear. It was just about giving the players a bit more control.

So what if it was a "beauty contest?" It's not like the other Shepards are going to get their feelings hurt.

I just don't understand why you consider it to be a bad thing.
 

talideon

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sweetylnumb said:
erttheking said:
Oh dear, just when I thought the sexism threads were done.
Oh dear, just when i throught sexism was a thing of the past. I really dont get nor support feminism in its mission of turning every female into a hypersensitive *****, but this kind of thing does suck.
I think you'll find the vast majority of feminists are simply egalitarians and in no way see their mission as, as you put it, "turning every female into a hypersensitive *****".
 

Legion

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Elexia said:
I'm a female gamer. I love my FPSs as much as the next man (or woman). I don't feel romance is necessary at all in games. You can be a fully rounded human being and save the universe without locking lips with a lady about to burst out of her spandex space suit. In fact, saving the universe should be your number one priority at that point, not the woman in spandex.

That being said, I keep seeing people say the same things on this site - that women are treated as objects rather than fully rounded characters in mainstream gaming, but nothing happens to change that. It's like a very loud protest that rises from the ashes every few weeks but turns out it's a tree falling in the woods and no one's around to hear it.
That's because complaining on an all-round gaming forum isn't really the place to go to get this sort of thing changed. If people are unhappy about how specific publishers and developers behave in regards to this subject matter, the best place to go is onto their forums.

A place like this is for discussion with fellow consumers. It's like having a bunch of co-workers around your house to complain about work conditions rather than speaking to the management.

Although the official forums for most companies aren't much better. In most cases if you criticise the company in any shape or form you are a "hater" or a "troll", and if you support them, then you are a sheep or a "blind fanboy/girl".
 

BBboy20

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KaZuYa said:
Well there is many reasons for this and it is and it isn't the fault of industry, I can understand games like Call of Duty and Battlefield being very male orientated because that's life the military is like that and with wanting realistic games that's what you're going to get and all the female gamers I've met who play these kind of games are not bothered by it in the slightest.
That just changed last month. Females are now going to fight on the frontlines.
 

TrevHead

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The industry is just lazy, I mean male characters aren't exactly at the same level of Raziel & Kain, many are as one dimensional and wooden as the worst sexualised females.

As for whose fault it is, I think it's both:

Gamers who by and large don't want complex games, instead they are quite happy buying the same old clones with a new lick of paint.

The industry especially the AAA industry that really needs to stop making games as a one size fit's all lest we turn away ppl who have more particular needs. One only has to take a look at the Japanese Anime industry to see where that will get us. IE games made to cater to the demographic with the fattest wallets, the okatu and teens where after 5 years that's all that gets made because the adult mainstream demographic has stopped watching anime.