Where your source that people want games with ugly women? Also how many people would buy a game they wouldn't normally buy simply because it was more diverse.
First of all you did not say ugly (and this is actually just about non-attractive women) but diverse.
And as to my source, well let's just go with quite a few of Jim's videos, Extra credits and Anita Sarkeesian (Plus all the people supporting them in the comment section).
Should indicate that quite a few people would like more diversity.
The Boss may not have the prettiest face in MGS3, but it's still a somewhat attractive face. She also has a fairly nice body and of course gets her tits out at one point in the game. Standard attractive stereotype right there. And of course she isn't the playable character.
I would assume Ammy was purposely excluded due to the point about having a unique personality and motivation, both of which Ammy does not have. Ammy has no personality and no motivation other than "have to save the world because... just because". She's about as developed as Mario, that is to say, very little if at all.
Chessrook44 said:
Frankly I agree with those who bring up Amaterasu. Sure she's a very pretty character design (But then the whole game is a very pretty character design) but I don't think she really counts as "Traditionally attractive".
Frankly I think you need to consider all of the criteria Jim presented in the video and not just the first one.
Andy Shandy said:
How about Chell, from Portal? At least in the first one, she was just trying to survive GladOS. And I wouldn't call her particularly attractive in the game.
Once again someone has missed the point about attractive. First of all, it's not about what you personally find attractive, it's about whether or not she was designed to be "generically" attractive. Chell is a young girl with a nice curvy body, thus she counts under the attractive stereotype and is disqualified. Then she's disqualified again for having no personality.
I mean come on people, watch the video. Watch it, watch it, and watch it again if you have to. Pay attention to the rules, all of the rules, presented before you throw out random characters. Sheesh!
I wasn't trying to disagree with Jim's point that there is a greater range of character traits used for male characters than female characters. I was criticizing his method of making a lengthy and specific list of criteria and then being angry and judgmental that there are so few female characters that meet it when in fact barely any characters regardless of gender meet his requirements. I don't disagree with the sentiment, just the way in which it was delivered.
Ahhhh, I get your point now. Yeah, I can think of a few off the top of my head, probably some more if I took some time to do a bit of research. I think he was just going for direct opposites for what we see in female characters specifically, but you still do have a fair point.
Hmm, well here's a list of characters I think meet that criteria:
Amazon in Dragon's Crown.
Lucca from Chrono Trigger.
Okami from Okami.
Peacock from skull girls.
Double from skull girls.
Macha from Chrono Cross.
NeoFio from Chrono Cross.
Poshul from Chrono Cross.
Sprigg from Chrono Cross.
Shale from Dragon Age.
Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2.
Bombette from Paper Mario.
Lady Bow from Paper Mario.
Watt from Paper Mario.
Sushie from Paper Mario.
Goombella from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Flurrie from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Ms. Mowz from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Toadette from Mario Kart.
Birdo from Mario Kart.
Baby Daisy from Mario Kart.
Nana from Ice Climers / Smash Brothers.
That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head from games I've played.
Jack from Mass Effect 2.
Sue Sakamoto from Cave Story.
Gaige from Border Lands 2.
Hildegard von Krone From Soul Calibur IV
Freya from Final Fantasy 9.
Quina Quen From Final Fantasy9???
I don't know. Seems there's a lot that are at least possible. You could even make the case that Purna from Dead island fits the criteria.
Amazon and Jack are pratically naked the whole time.
Jack is future hell's angel biker girl.
Luca is the cute engineer.
Do you actually play with Shale? I've never played Dragon Age.
Quina Queen is a genderless entity
Freya is on a quest to find her lost love
I think from this list the only candidate is Amaterasu (Okami)
Shale becomes a party member if you do a quest and you can take direct control of her during combat. She is basically a walking tank as all golems are and can absolutely murder just about anything the game throws at her. Once I get her she's in my party about 90% of the time.
The major difference and the reason this comparison fails is that how a controller looks actually impacts how it plays.
Weresquirrel said:
Of Darkspore's 4 female characters, at least 3 of them fall under the same blanket as Vertigo. I'd argue the full four, but Andromeda is fairly feminine looking, and as near as I can tell from her back story is a bit of a goody goody.
Well, no. she hates the tropes associated with it. There's a difference. A pretty large one. On that folks should be capable of muddling through just by reading/watching/listening to the things she's said on the matter.
but then, I'm still at a loss as to why it even matters what she does think.
SonOfVoorhees said:
Still dont get why this is a "game" issue. Look at modelling, advertising, movies etc The whole size 0 thing. Even woman believe this crap when a mens mag showing woman in bikinis are given top shelf and black bagged, yet normal woman mags still have those photo shopped models with perfect looks etc.
Except you have older women, women of colour, women who aren't "traditionally attractive" in advertisements. I mean, perhaps you can add a couple more examples, but if you want to pretend advertising is an equivalence, you're just wrong. Not only that, but why is that only an issue for women? Shouldn't there be parity on the male side, too, if this is just a general thing, not a gaming one?
would assume Ammy was purposely excluded due to the point about having a unique personality and motivation, both of which Ammy does not have. Ammy has no personality and no motivation other than "have to save the world because... just because". She's about as developed as Mario, that is to say, very little if at all.
That kind of fits almost perfectly with Jim's point - you have to look for things like lizards, rats, aliens, and geometric objects to find "female" characters that are outside the norm. If you look at more humanoid characters, the numbers go way down. I'm sure there are people out there who get aroused by quadrilaterals, but it's the exception that proves the rule.
As for Season Passes, I liked them better when it was the Rockstar Pass for LA Noire, they told you everything you were going to get before you bought it, and it was a reasonable price offering a reasonable savings.
Now they don't tell you what you're getting before you buy it (they don't even tell you after, they tell you MONTHS later), the prices are insane, and the savings are abysmal. $30 for content I don't even know what it is or if it's good? That's half the game's price and also a savings of what, $5? Fuck off with that nonsense.
'Women have been brain washed' isn't a fair statement at all, it's more like 'Women have acknowledged that the path set before them has been laden with obstacles that are nearly impossible for them to overcome unless they conform.' We're not STUPID. We know what's happening, and alot of us are rather fed up with it but lack the power and voice to penetrate the anti sound walls of men and women completely complacent with this system because it's what they're used to and comfortable with.
I know you don't know me, you haven't been here long enough to know me, But I facepalmed.
It takes quite a few years to make even a basic game, but you presumed quite wrong here. VERY wrong.
I'm not one of those pissant loud mouth nazi-feminists who sit in front of a computer all day proclaiming what needs to change loudly and aggressively and yet doing 0 things to change it. I AM contributing in my own way, but this battle is more complex and more time consuming than you know and your ignorance towards what I do is fair enough but I am correcting you here.
I am learning to program (better than the basics I alredy know), and have actually programmed a fairly in depth combat system that I am trying to now apply to very basic stock model type 'game'. And put it through it's paces and have designed several interesting un conventional female characters for my project. Sadly it's not yet ready for prime time on Kick-starter and/or Greenlight or the like, not for quite some time and I have many things to accomplish outside of this pet project, so it will likely be on the back burner for years or until I find interested parties who won't meddle with the formula but will contribute to it in good ways.
IN THE MEANTIME HOWEVER. I will prod others to follow suit who already HAVE the resources, time, man power and connections that I am not blessed with. So don't pull this on me. I am one voice, this battle needs many, I can do, but I cannot lead, that is up to those already with the power and responsibility, If I claw my way up and still nothing has changed, then I will be all too happy to oblige you and lead this crusade of representing female ability and variety in the games industry. All too happy.
I absolutely disagree with this attitude of 'it's not affecting me so it's not my problem'. Well okay then, please continue to think that way, but one day when everyone who isn't affected has been silenced and something comes along that is a serious detriment to the way a majority perceives you, none of those you snubbed will be around to care.
The last person who quoted me before you isn't even dignified an answer, that's the highest grade of self absorption and doesn't need pandering to.
I honestly don't know why people care so much about this gender "issue". I don't even think it is an issue. People who claim that it's an issue don't know anything about men or women. They're the ones who think that women are too fragile and pathetic and that men understand them well enough to make good female video game characters. And also, come on. Who makes video games? GEEKS! Who's clueless about women? GEEKS!
I am not entierly sure why you think Vertigo isn't trying to be sexy. Come on Jim, I've never seen a girl in a video game so blatantly advertise that she swallows.
She's also walking around completely naked. That doesn't make any sense because she is going into battle. Someone cover her sexy ass in giant mech armor already!
Well, if there's a market for playing as a shady, unattractive middle aged woman who've turned to anarchist beliefs because of a fascination with Nietzsche's philosophy, such product will surely come about. I've yet to see a commercial industry turn down making something that consumers would love to throw money at.
However, maybe the actual desire for such a thing is in fact exceedingly uncommon, and the theoretical discussion mostly the result of a vocal minority out to push its moralistic agenda upon the gaming industry. Though it is of course none of its business what other customers enjoy, and receive proportionately to the willingness to actually pay for it.
Hit it right on the head. The lack of a market means that it won't change. I am happy with the way things are now, and so are most people who buy games, I assume, or they wouldn't be buying games.
The market won't change because of a series youtube videos with terrible arguments, and the newest game to get people all riled up about gender just sold a bazillion copies, so it's clear to me that this topic will continue to go nowhere.
I mean, it's enough. I am actually interested in the topic and I stopped the video when I realized what it was.
Women play video games, a great many of them infact, so representing women as protagonists in such a narrow space makes it an incredible disservice to the gaming community as a whole. The market is there since I for one play story driven games for the story and not empowerment fantasies. So a protagonist being fat, white, black, male, female, hetero or gay doesn't matter to me. But what does matter is that the overwhelming majority of video game protagonists are male, white, hetero, and of medium to lean build, it gets old and boring after a while. There is a rainbow of stories to tell and they're not being told because we're only being forced to play one very specific type of character.
((Also White male medium to lean is also considered the normal American which is also bullshit, so this shit does matter, since it reflects wider attitudes outside of the gaming sphere.))
As such, throwing bloody FPS titles at women may never get the response it does from men, no matter how capable and plain the female protagonist was made. Because God only knows that women strongly desire to play as some ugly chick as their avatar. Just like I desire to play as some fat slob with an asthma problem.[/sarcasmjoke]
Oh, I absolutely agree that any kind of character can be well-written. Hell, in Thomas was Alone I played as a rectangle that could move and jump and loved it. Scott being what he was really lent itself to the nature of those old gumshoe stories. I'm not saying that unattractive individuals can't make vibrant stories worth remembering, just that I don't sit around wishing my avatar could be even more unattractive. I remember playing Fable and being disappointed with permanent scars.
On another note, even if it maybe is understandable that developers make games with a male audience in mind because that is their biggest audience, I just cannot accept that this argument used in this context always implies that the only thing male gamers want are the same tropes used over and over (both male and female centered) or only hyperattractive women in their games. I think that this assumption is rather sexistic against men.
I agree that the assumption is sexist. However, sex does sell. It's easy and I think it's a copout just like you probably do, but I'm not going to claim that it's a baseless assumption. The characters in The Last of Us weren't particularly attractive and you felt like Ellie's father at most. Those characters stuck with me FAR more than the generic boobs and ass that we usually get. However, I also think about games like Mass Effect with attractive characters that I did very much appreciate were mostly attractive. But the intention of that game WAS attraction and so it makes sense.
Do you assume that people in general don't prefer attractive individuals over unattractive individuals? Do you believe that I can't find any number of studies to attest to that statement? Movies and marketing have practically built their house on this concept. Nations have fallen because of it. It's a tricky thing when assuming that men want sex is sexist but assuming that they don't is naive. A healthy medium is that given several studies it is likely that attractive characters sell more copies of things than ugly characters on average. Would Heavy Rain have sold better were he attractive? An avatar looking like people wish they looked like? I don't know. Like you, I felt like his appearance added to the story.
WhiteTigerShiro said:
Except that studies have shown that men are NOT in the "overwhelming majority", it's just a popular misconception that they are because they're generally more vocal about it.
No, an ESA study came out that said that 47% of gamers were female with the other 53% being male. This was the year they included mobile gaming. That's why the number jumped from 40/60 in only two years. Did you know that less than half of the respondents of that survey were even considering buying one game in 2012? Just one. If that doesn't make you question how they defined gamer then I don't know what would. AAA developers aren't selling their AAA games on android/iPhone devices. Not unless it's easy to scale down that far. They certainly aren't selling their games to people who aren't buying.
What we saw in 2010 was that 80% of those women had a Wii as their primary console. Unless you're Nintendo, that meant 80% of the female demographic of gamers weren't on a console that you developed your game for. The other 20% who owned a 360 or ps3 may have also expressed different buying habbits. Like just dance/zumba/etc, and not COD or Mass Effect or any other such title.
Let's assume that the total population of gamers in 2010 was 100. This is for easy math and since we're working with percentages this will scale just fine.
There was a 40/60 (male/female) ratio. 80% of females owned a wii as their primary console. (that's 32 out of every 40 female gamers). 9% owned a ps3 and 11% owned a 360 for a combined 8 out of every 40 female gamers or 8 female x60/ps3 gamers out of every 100 gamers.
Now, males also owned Wiis as their primary consoles but at half the rate. So it wouldn't be fair to say it's 8 females out of 100 gamers. You have to drop off the male Wii primary console owners too. 41% of males owned a Wii (24.6 out of every 60). 21% owned a ps3 (12.6 out of every 60). 38% owned a 360 (22.8 out of every 60). That means 35.4 out of every 60 male gamers owned one of those consoles.
The new total demographic of the AAA consoles of ps3/360 is a total of 43.4.
The 8 women in that number equals 18.4% of the total AAA consumer market for both consoles combined.
The 35.4 men in that number equals 81.6% of the total AAA consumer market for both consoles combined.
This doesn't even touch on which games each gender prefers. I mean, in movies guys have action and horror movies moreso than females. What if guys have FPS titles more than women in gaming? That'd really change the dynamics of the customer base.
Summary, out of all gamers in 2010, only 18.4% of the combined ps3/360 market was female and 81.6% were male. This is why Wii games were largely a lot more female friendly or at least what publishers on the system considered to be female friendly, whether right or wrong. Considering the number of female gamers who owned a Wii as their primary, I'd say they mostly weren't wrong (56.5% of all console owners who considered the Wii their primary system were female)
There is no evidence to show that between 2010 and 2012 that there was any real change in female gaming behaviors. That is to say, there's no reason to believe that 80% of female console owners wouldn't still own a Wii. Since the increase from 40% to 47% is largely credited to the inclusion of mobile gaming in the 2012 survey, we can also state that the biggest reason for the increase does not concern the big money AAA games. I do fully expect mobile games to continue exploding in numbers but as people are not willing to pop out $50+ bucks for mobile games we shouldn't see huge investments on the development side. We also do see a lot of female friendly mobile games though. Interestingly enough, mobile gaming may further reduce the number of women who may otherwise have purchased a WiiU or some other such console.
It is disappointing that the 2012 study and others like it did not delve into gender differences like last time. A huge gap in knowledge in my opinion.
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