Jimquisition: The Creepy Cull of Female Protagonists

Unia

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You honestly think they dont try to make Samus sexy?



And then theres Other M, which has a number of fan service shots of her in her zero suit.[/quote]

Aargh, my spine groans just from looking at that picture o_O

Back towards the topic: I'd say the complaints about yet another sexism thread come from the fact that Jim is preaching to the choir here - I haven't read ALL 19 pages of responses but I'm betting there aren't too many disagreeing posts.
We're all pretty much agreed that the "guys don't want to play a girl" argument is iffy. How about we send the log of this thread to whoever makes those silly statistics marketing departments swear by.
 

Dollabillyall

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This is a sexism issue.. in part.
But more it's an organisational issue.
It's all because people let MARKETING have an influence over CREATIVE.
The marketing departments of most any business have slowly been taking a larger and larger role in the actual end product. This is an abomination because marketing is the place where people who WANT to be creative but AREN'T end up. This lack of power for the creative branches of an organisation causes all product to be bland, repetetive and most importantly selling for MARKETING reasons rather than QUALITY reasons. By extension it is the reason we havn't had a real major new creative hit. Most creativity in game development is concentrated at smaller developers who most likely are working on smaller projects and don't have the rigid production structures of a company like EA causing great storytelling and gameplay ideas to get stuck in mediocre games for phones. The result? An industry where all creativity is doomed to be used in inferior product while big budget games will seldom bring anything fresh to the table.

Marketing thinks they know, but they don't. They say "we know the demographic most likely to buy games are fratboys with latent homosexual desires and an agression problem". What they don't realise is that that FACT is due to most games having been marketed to exactly that demographic! If the pseudo-scientific bastards had spent the last 15 years selling games to housewives the steroid-addled freak on the box art would've been as out of place as a mom driving her minivan is right now. Not because there are no business oppertunities but because marketing would be too stupid and scared to tap into them.

It's kind of like how WoW was a stupid move by Blizzard because MMO's are costly to maintain and only attract a handful of basement dwellers. If only those critics had known that there is a basement dweller in each and every one of us just waiting to get his first quest.
 

Lightknight

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Dollabillyall said:
But more it's an organisational issue.
It's all because people let MARKETING have an influence over CREATIVE.
Well, yes and no. Marketing is the one influencing their decisions based on market research, statistics, and all those things. But the reason why it influences the developers is because they enjoy eating and having a stable job. There are some things you cannot do (or your game will be unsellable, such as if it gets a mature rating) and there are things you can do but will harm your bottom line.

So marketing's purpose, aside from informing consumers about your product is knowing what the environment is like for the product being made. Those of us who care about gaming enough to actually come in here and discuss it may be open enough to games from different perspectives but what if there really is a significant mass out there who would hate these kinds of things? Do we then expect producers to pump money into a game that won't make a return on investment?

I personally think the sex of the avatar doesn't matter. I mean, it would detract from some games like God of War unless it's a particularly bulky female (I always giggle a little in movies when a 130 lb girl kicks a 250 lb man through a wall, complete suspension of disbelief), but nowadays games are often about stealth, agile blade use, guns and such so the need for a no-necked meat soldier isn't as necessary for plausible power-fantasy warrior scenarios. Do I feel like more of a badass in such games if my avatar is male? Perhaps, maybe subconsciously. But it doesn't ruin a game or make it unenjoyable if my characters not the beefiest person in the room.

So if marketing is coming back with this kind of research I'd like to see their numbers. If Tomb Raider has taught us nothing it's that female protagonists can be a real asset to the game because guys do like curves. My honest guess is that their numbers are moreso just based on how other games have handled the situation and a lack of good female-led games can really hurt such statistics in dumb ways.
 

Sir Prize

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Watching this video just shows how poorly publishers think of their target audience, and possibly men in general.

Do they honestly think that men everywhere will feel 'awkard' over a woman kissing a man?
Or is it that they cannot understand people are capable of seprating themselves from fictional characters?
 

Lightknight

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Hallowed Lady said:
Watching this video just shows how poorly publishers think of their target audience, and possibly men in general.

Do they honestly think that men everywhere will feel 'awkard' over a woman kissing a man?
Or is it that they cannot understand people are capable of seprating themselves from fictional characters?
Perfect question.

It's my hope that these marketing departments are actually doing some kind of research. If so, I'd love to see the numbers they're getting back that indicate that men watching a female kissing a man on screen screams homoerotic to them.

My guess is that they're drawing on conventional "wisdom" and basing numbers on female led games that already exist. The problem is that there's so few of them (especially if split up by genre) that there's no way they can arrive at a sample size large enough to make such a call. Especially not when any number of games significant enough to consider would have to span a decade or more (unless there are a lot more female-led games in each genre than I'm aware of). So the data wouldn't be relevant to today's gaming.

While we are quick to judge their results (I have an incredibly hard time believing them just like all of you), maybe there actually is a sea of biggoted guys out there who wouldn't buy a game with a female lead that does female things with men. I mean, maybe the lost city of Atlantis actually exists? All we need is data telling us otherwise, until then they're just dumb marketing departments who are scared to let innovation take plase.

I repeat that teenagers playing the original Tomb Raider back in the day would have paid money for code adding a sex scene with her in it. I seem to remember people getting scammed with all manner of viruses while searching for non-existent nude codes.
 

nitrium oxide

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Strife2GFAQs said:
Considering Square Enix wussed out with both X and XII's male protagonists, I guess I should say it's refreshing to see Lightning on ALL THREE XIII games. I would, but they still wussed out ten years too late.
I presume you also ALWAYS play as a human too? If not, you are not being consistent.
I play whatever I feel like - it is a ROLE playing game after all.
 

nitrium oxide

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DVS BSTrD said:
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
I presume you also ALWAYS play as a human too? If not, you are not being consistent.
I play whatever I feel like - it is a ROLE playing game after all.
 
Apr 24, 2008
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nitrium oxide said:
DVS BSTrD said:
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
I presume you also ALWAYS play as a human too? If not, you are not being consistent.
I play whatever I feel like - it is a ROLE playing game after all.
Are those 2 things definitly equivalent though? I'm not convinced that they are, I know that they're not in my head.

He is also playing as what he feels like playing as(why else would he select what he does?), it's just that he feels like playing as a male character.

It's really ok. Nobody need judge him for it.
 

SAMAS

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Unia said:
You honestly think they dont try to make Samus sexy?



And then theres Other M, which has a number of fan service shots of her in her zero suit.
Aargh, my spine groans just from looking at that picture o_O[/quote]

Never see a contortionist or a ballet dancer. Your backbone may commit suicide. :)

Honestly, I don't care about the sexiness of a character, male or female, in an of itself. The fact that a character is going to be at least a little attractive by conventional standards is pretty much a given across all media (except literature, which can get away with it (but then gets hit in the adaptations)). As long as it's not absurdly blatant, at least.

What I want is for them to be characters on top of that.
 

GamerAddict7796

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Now, while I DO prefer to play male characters in RPGs to better project, I understand the problem. The fact that it is 'just wrong' for women to kiss 'dudes' is nothing short of disgusting. There are plenty of female gamers out there who find it hard to project on male characters the same way I do about projecting onto female characters.

Sort it out.

Not every game needs to have big burly men being big and burly and manly.
 

Lictor Face

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I don't mind playing a female character. Take gears of war 3 for example. What i do mind is playing a character with a quadruple stacked chest and impossible ass. I mean, COME ON.

I despise games who overly sexualized characters. I barely talked to miranda from mass effect two becomes i CANT STAND the bloody close ups to her freaking ass. Im having a conversation and i have to look at ass? Fuck off.
 

weirdee

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Bhaalspawn said:
Krantos said:
I has to be said that a lot of games with female protagonists don't sell well simply because they're not that good.

Lets take a look at the big games in recent years featuring female protagonists:

-Metroid: Other M
-Mirrors Edge
-Hydrophobia
-Tomb Raider
-Amy
-Final Fantasy XIII

...I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones off the top of my head. Notice anything about them? Aside from Tomb Raider, they panned by critics and audiences alike. Not because they had a female lead, but because the games themselves were of questionable quality at best.

If publishers and developers want female protagonists to sell well, for gods sake put them in good games.

Also, if someone is honestly wierded out when their character kisses a guy, grow up. How do you think women have felt all these years playing as big burly men saving the princess of the day?
You forgot a rather popular blockbuster game that had a really good female protagonist. And recieved universal critical acclaim from over a dozen major news outlets and was considered a great work of gaming art, and a great VA to boot.



Why does everyone forget the Commander? Don't deny the Commander her credit!
because statistically only 18 percent of me3 playthroughs were female

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122880-See-How-Your-Mass-Effect-Choices-Compare-to-Everyone-Elses
 

chinangel

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you can be my Daddy Jim <3

ah...ahem. right anyways,

This isn't the first time i've heard of this, and it's annoying and frustrating as a girl myself. I get really irritated in games when my armor is reduced to 'sexy clothes' while the male equivalent is either fashionable and functional or just plain more realistic than stylized lingerie.

Even Guild Wars II, one of my favourite games at the moment is guilty of this, which is whyi have a hard time playing any of the cloth classes.

My general belief of armors is that "If I wouldn't wear it into combat, my character isn't going to either" thus I play the medium and heavy armor classes and avoid the striperiffic clothy classes.
 

boandpop

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weirdguy said:
because statistically only 18 percent of me3 playthroughs were female

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122880-See-How-Your-Mass-Effect-Choices-Compare-to-Everyone-Elses
I'd be interested to see the statistics, with those who chose 'default Shepard' at the start of ME3, without having played the previous games. Soldier, male, saved Ashley, spacer, war hero - easiest to get paragon with, given the buffs that those provide to your paragon/renegade points.

Onto the topic presented in the video. I really don't have much to add. A dialogue about female characters in games would be nice to open up to the public, though it could go either way.
 

CrystalShadow

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Apr 11, 2009
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Treblaine said:
CrystalShadow said:
I'm saying that the in context reason for a female warrior wearing what amounts to a bikini under her armour is vastly different to the most likely reason the developers of Super Metroid chose to have an ending where she is posing in her underwear.

There's little narrative reason for such a character to be depicted in that way, which raises the question of why such a scene exists. it's structured as a 'reward', and that feels a little off, regardless of whether I think there's anything wrong with sex or not.

It's tacked on, and out of step with the rest of the game. And that does disturb me somewhat.
But to get to why I refer to it that way, I meant innocent as opposed to deliberate.

That is, even though it's possible to find a rational in-context reason for depicting Samus in underwear/bikini, it looks as though it was done for the sole reason of it being 'sexy'.

It's like depicting a scene of someone getting out of the shower - Of course any normal person would be naked while taking a shower, but if you show this in a film, are you doing so because it makes sense for someone to be naked in such a situation, or because people might be aroused by it?
That's what I'm getting at here.
Look it's fan-service. I'm mature and secure enough not to start going on about how "it's a little off" having the blatant fanservice in Twilight series.

Just don't start acting like heterosexual attraction is something sinful or defiling of innocence. That doesn't make sense to mean "innocent as opposed to deliberate."

And yeah, for straight women and gay men, it's not much of a reward, but it's not like it's any punishment. But it's not exactly a significant reward for the straight male or lesbian player either, otherwise google-image search would be worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox. It's just a little something, it's not like it's persistent throughout the game.

You don't seem to get "fan-service" it's not supposed to trick the player. It's also a throwback to the original Metroid by how they revealed you'd been playing a woman all along, with such limited pixels and memory of 8-bit graphics and cartridge they of course decided to show her in a bikini.

And the suit would have to come off occasionally for narrative reasons... to remind that she's a woman, you can't even tell that walking metal thing isn't an alien or a robot. I'd really like a story about a humanoid robot, but if you're going to have a human, putting them in a metallic suit always... it's little different than if you had a robot.

And yeah, shower scenes are usually fan-service, except I think the shower scene in Apollo 13 where she loses her wedding ring down the sink hole, symbolism there for fear of losing her husband.
Well, it is what it is. It means little in the end, but that doesn't stop it feeling out of place to me.
And if you really want to get technical about it, you're reading far too much into a minor comment.

Interpreting this to mean something far beyond what I actually intended by it.

Maybe you'd understand it a little better if I had phrased it differently, but that would've required a much lengthier explanation that the handful of words I used originally.

Basically, it was intended to signify something along these lines:
Showing Samus in a bikini has a secondary purpose that exists entirely outside of the narrative of the story, but reasons could be devised for why it might make sense within the narrative.
However, the actual real-world reasons for why this scene exists are probably based almost entirely around this secondary purpose (eg. "Fan Service"), and is unlikely to have any real other reason aside from this secondary purpose.

Ultimately, I meant 'innocent' in terms of it being something whose intent was something that made sense in context, rather than something which required a concept of what the developer and/or audience for the game were expecting.

But of course these things are always a matter of interpretation, and that can lead to problems of it's own.
Consider for instance that somewhere in my photo albums I have pictures of myself as a young child, running around naked. - Which is something young children do a lot, funnily enough.
There is nothing in these pictures existing besides the obvious point that parents like to take pictures of their children, but if you start second-guessing the intent, you could also reach the conclusion that whoever took these pictures is some kind of pervert that likes seeing small children naked.
That would be completely wrong, but therein lies the problem of having to consider the intent of the creator when looking at things like this.

If I saw a woman in a bikini in reality, I could still be guessing at why she chose to wear it, but I'd know me seeing it is entirely down to my own intent, and some degree of random chance.
If I see this in a film or game, then the creators of whatever I'm playing or watching become a factor as well, and thus it's less clear why I'm expected to see this. Does it have some significance to gameplay/plot/etc? Or is it really only there because the creators thought the audience might like it in and of itself?

Anyway, fan service in and of itself isn't that big a deal. (Though I've seen my fair share of it that's either just plain creepy, or sometimes just plain rediculous.)
But despite it not being a big deal as such, it can still detract from whatever it's been tacked on to, by virtue of having been done in a careless manner.
Just like sticking a joke in the middle of an otherwise very serious drama can feel completely out of place, putting fan service or the like somewhere where it wasn't expected can really detract from something, rather than add to it.

Though at the end of the day the situation with Super Metroid doesn't amount to much to worry about, except that it feels kind of unnecessary.

Well, whatever. Thanks for making a mountain out of a molehill for me. ;p
 

Carson Shindigg

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Well, I like your offer Jim, though I am in Australia. In light of the topic, it is true, but so is much of gaming culture. The Sarkeesian incident (speaking of which I am actually interested in watching it when it comes out, to hear a different take on the issue), the Bakhtanians vs super yan incident, and the fact that, outside Lara croft and Dora the Explorer, I cannot think of any other major leading female characters in videogames, let alone any with love interests. It is an issue that needs to be addressed, and if it is not addressed internally, by gamers, developers and publishers, the market will stagnate and new IP won't develop.