Jimquisition: Vertigo

[ImBigBob]

Hey Jim, I think I've found your woman, and she comes from one of my favorite games of all time, Fire Emblem on the GBA:

http://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/thumb/6/69/FERK_Vaida.png/200px-FERK_Vaida.png

That's Vaida. She's a playable character. She's an older woman with a scar on her face. Granted, she's not one of the main characters, and she doesn't come in until late in the game, but still. It's true that she's wearing a short skirt and low-cut top, but she's remarkably older than most of the cast. Not to mention, she DOES have nonstandard motivations. At one point she's a boss character, but later she defects from the enemy army to join your side.

There you go, Jim. Can we get a Fire Emblem episode now?

 

[james.sponge]

You forgot about Broodmother from Dota1/2 she is more contemporary female protagonist.

 

[Pat Hulse]

If looks doesnt matter, why cant women be "attractive" so to speak?
Why is the concept of Saints Row and other types of games such as MMOs completely discarded because theyre our creation not the developers?
Can then only good female characters exist if they're created by the developer and not the player?

They can, Jim doesn't have a problem with that. The problem is that apparently they can't be anything else than attractive. That is a problem.

Thats up for debate however and not an objective fact, especially if you just consider that to be the one part that matters to a player, regardless if its being marketed to you as such. Its a woman, shes attractive.
I like to compare this debate to the new steam controller rage:

oh my god look how bad this controller looks it must be shit.

While im thinking instead: I wonder what it feels like to use it for play though since i will use my controller for a game and not to look at.

Look you can split hairs as much as you want, but it's pretty hard to deny that a massive majority of female characters are designed with the intention of people trying to make them look good in mind. And a good looking character isn't a bad thing, a lot of people really like Mitsuru from Persona 3 and she's hardly lacking, but good looking for female is become ing what "White, brown haired thirty something" is for male. There is nothing wrong with a character like that but the sheer number of them is ridiculous and something ELSE would be nice.

Truth=/=Urgency

While its debatably somewhat true, the impact it has or the urgency of said subject isnt objectively problematic in itself, because again i must ask the question in that case: Does the opposite matter/not matter, and if so, why/why not?

I havent denied anything but neither am i so gullible to simply accept a black and white scenario without contrast.
First of all the fallacy that appearently then according to most arguments vs this, is well, we get a "non-traditionally attractive female protagonist" and then to break it down first of all. Well what constitutes one ideal over another, as you must be aware both male and female gamers find some "non-traditionally attractive males" to be appealing in games. The other problem comes with ambiguous genders and well, if it is a female but we cant tell, is it a female? If a tree falls in the forest without anyone around to hear it does it still make a noise, basically?
Then the third question of course becomes, protagonist, according to me? you? what about anti-heroes then or npcs or other characters in a game that have equal amount of impact on the game as you the player does?

Your question regarding "urgency" of this kind of representation discrepancy drudges up the dreaded Tumblr-abuse word of "privilege". Because you and I do not lack for representation in our favorite form of media, we cannot empathize with someone who has no high-profile representation in said medium. So the urgency of this sort of discrepancy may seem trivial to us, but as there are so many gamers clamoring for this sort of representation in games, one would assume they find it rather urgent.

To put it another way, your question seems to be "Yes, there probably is a discrepancy regarding the prominence of non-traditionally-attractive female protagonists in games vs. the male equivalent, but is that a serious problem?" Well, my feelings on the issue are that if a lot of people have a problem with it, their complaints seem reasonable, and changing things would require very little sacrifice from a practical or social perspective and our community stands to gain from it, I think whether or not it is "urgent" is a moot point. Rather, I think the more "urgent" matter is that people within our community seem hard-wired to resist this sort of observation and criticism as though it potentially threatens something.

It's really no different from when a person complains about how shooters are too generic or how single-player experiences are diminished to favor tacked-on multiplayer experiences. We complain about aspects of the industry that we don't like, hoping that they will change and improve our overall experience. That's exactly what those arguing for equal representation are doing. They dislike something in the industry, so they're pointing it out and complaining about it so it can change and improve their enjoyment of it. And unless someone thinks those changes will lessen their enjoyment of it, then I don't really understand why people bother to take it so personally as if they are accused of being called sexist just for enjoying video games.

 

[Erttheking]

If looks doesnt matter, why cant women be "attractive" so to speak?
Why is the concept of Saints Row and other types of games such as MMOs completely discarded because theyre our creation not the developers?
Can then only good female characters exist if they're created by the developer and not the player?

They can, Jim doesn't have a problem with that. The problem is that apparently they can't be anything else than attractive. That is a problem.

Thats up for debate however and not an objective fact, especially if you just consider that to be the one part that matters to a player, regardless if its being marketed to you as such. Its a woman, shes attractive.
I like to compare this debate to the new steam controller rage:

oh my god look how bad this controller looks it must be shit.

While im thinking instead: I wonder what it feels like to use it for play though since i will use my controller for a game and not to look at.

Look you can split hairs as much as you want, but it's pretty hard to deny that a massive majority of female characters are designed with the intention of people trying to make them look good in mind. And a good looking character isn't a bad thing, a lot of people really like Mitsuru from Persona 3 and she's hardly lacking, but good looking for female is become ing what "White, brown haired thirty something" is for male. There is nothing wrong with a character like that but the sheer number of them is ridiculous and something ELSE would be nice.

Truth=/=Urgency

While its debatably somewhat true, the impact it has or the urgency of said subject isnt objectively problematic in itself, because again i must ask the question in that case: Does the opposite matter/not matter, and if so, why/why not?

I havent denied anything but neither am i so gullible to simply accept a black and white scenario without contrast.
First of all the fallacy that appearently then according to most arguments vs this, is well, we get a "non-traditionally attractive female protagonist" and then to break it down first of all. Well what constitutes one ideal over another, as you must be aware both male and female gamers find some "non-traditionally attractive males" to be appealing in games. The other problem comes with ambiguous genders and well, if it is a female but we cant tell, is it a female? If a tree falls in the forest without anyone around to hear it does it still make a noise, basically?
Then the third question of course becomes, protagonist, according to me? you? what about anti-heroes then or npcs or other characters in a game that have equal amount of impact on the game as you the player does?

First of all, yeah we have been getting some non-attractive males in gaming. I'd like to see someone flat out say that they think that Kratos is attractive. Come to think of it we have a lot of butt ugly guys in gaming. Marcus Fenix, Geralt of Rivia, Kratos as I mentioned before and that bloke from Asura's wrath. And yes ideals vary from person to person, I personally think that manly women are very attractive, but that's not the point. Here is one image of wolverine.

http://www.eastside-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wolverine1.jpg

And here is another

http://wallpaper-share.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/the-wolverine-handsome-wallpaper-1024x576.jpg

It's pretty obvious which one had the intention of being attractive in it and while some people may find the second one ugly and some of them may find the first one attractive, that's not the point, it's about the intent, and intent is very obvious.

...What does that have to do with anything? And not necessarily, if a character is female, she is still a female even if her gender doesn't define her.

A protagonists in a video game is the character you play as, the main character that the story revolves around. End of story. Dom is not the protagonist of Gears of War, the Arbiter isn't the main character of Halo 2 even though he is playable, he is the deuteragonist, Clementine is not the protagonist of the Walking Dead, Elizabeth is not the protagonist of Bioshock Infinite, Ellie is not hte protagonist of the Last of Us.

Also, as for urgency, yes it is urgent because repetition breeds stagnation, and stagnation kills creativity.

 

[hentropy]

Recette from Recettear is a pretty damn good female character in my estimation, as well as the female protags from other Carpe Fulgar games. Not exactly mainstream, though, I suppose, even if Recettear has quite the reach now.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Vertigo is really only the protagonist in a fighting game sense. She has her own story, but so does everyone else you can play. If we are saying that is a protagonist, we can extend this to a few, if only a few, other women in gaming.

Broodmother from DOTA (and 2), who is a giant spider (thus not attractive in the slightest, besides to Keeper of the Light) who is really annoyed with all the people who keep coming from the surface and killing her young, fighting for their survival, not hers. She is really morally grey, since she cares more about her own spiders rather than any other humans.

Peacock and Double from Skullgirls: The former is a mutilated child, once a slave who was beaten, tortured and blinded (we get to see that happen from her. This caused her to go absolutely insane. She was rebuilt (it's implied the only bits of her that are not robotic are her brain and her face) by a man named Dr. Avian, to help hunt down the "Skull Girl" and end that threat once and for all. However, she does not do it for Dr. Avian, not pushed by the hardship she has suffered. She does it because he insanity, plus her augments, have turned her into a minor reality warper that looks and acts like a murderous cartoon. She does it (at first) because she really likes fighting, and later, to save her best friend who had been turned into the Skullgirl.

Spoiler: Double, on the other hand, is... this.

While she does have a sexy nun form, it's made very clear that isn't her true form in the slightest (her ability to turn into the other characters may suggest she ate who ever was that nun). This Elderich horror just wants to collect the other characters to om nom nom and gain their strength.

Special note goes to Painwheel, who has mostly the same motivations as the former, and a lot of the messed up designs for the later, but was "doing it for a man," strictly speaking. I wasn't sure if mind control counted, but I am going to just play it safe here.

 

[Toilet]

It's almost like Jim doesnt know about Ingrid Bottomlow from Gnome Ranger. Ingrid was banished by her family for being un-gnome like getting an education and going to university and is teleported into a dark forest. She is a deep tormented character far more deep than Vertigo. She's also not pretty to look at either.

Spoiler

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Regarding Amaterasu, she certainly seems the perfect choice. Correct me if my memory is lying to me though, but didn't they pretty much obfuscate her gender throughout the game, presenting her as non-gendered unless you read the manual? Seems like fear of low-selling female protagonists again.
Also, if the only way to be an empowered video game female is to be an animalian deity of some description then that's sort of limiting in itself.

Only in the American version of the game.

In the Japanese and EU versions, she was always refereed to as female.

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

Just wanted to add this, Anita would hate this revelation a bit more than you Jim. She hates seeing women used as villian characters.

Do you have a quote for that?

 

[hornedcow]

I'm thinking Ameratsu and Jill from Mighty Jill Off. It's still not much though.

 

[Ukomba]

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.

 

[RJ 17]

Ahhhh Primal Rage...Vertigo was always my best fighter in that game. I used to use that hypnotize attack like it was going out of style...often getting the "NO CHEESE!" icon to flash on the screen. You make a very fair point about her, Jim, and thanks for bringing up some good nostalgic memories about a fighting game that I really enjoyed back in my arcade-hopping days. :3

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

At time of posting, this thread has 67 replies in... 45 minutes.

Oh my. This is gonna be one of those threads.

OT: Thank the gods once again for you, Jim Sterling. You have enlightened the ignorant masses once again. Excellent video all around. Thank you and thank the gods for you.

Also, I like the new eyes. Very stylish.

 

[ImBigBob]

Oh, here's another two, courtesy of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn:

Meg: http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121227124028/fireemblem/images/6/6e/Meg.png

A fat girl. And you get her early on, too!

Calill: http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121023011405/fireemblem/images/a/aa/Calill.png

She is attractive and slender, though she's also on the older side of the cast (and it's a large cast).

 

[Worgen]

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".

She is technically doing a lot of stuff at a mans behalf though. Her motivations aren't really her own, shes just the mostly blank slate the player is controlling. And even then, they are kinda on the down low about her gender.

 

[jokulhaups]

I think it's worth putting out there that female characters catapulted to heroism by tragedy shouldn't be discounted. Plenty of male character only have their story begin after experiencing an initial trauma; it's just a very prototypical way for a heroic character to get their start. The real issue here are stories where female protagonists are just treated as though they're a victim of circumstances throughout an entire game, and never really drive their own story forward.

 

[hentropy]

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.

That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head from games I've played.

I think Jim was referring to characters that you can actually play as the main character and not something like a party member.

 

[deathjavu]

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.

I guess there is only one thing you can get out of this. Men dont care about age or looks. Grizzled or muscly or thin - men dont care. Men like sexy woman. Woman like strong sexy men. Same reason will woman play a game staring a 80 year old male? Its a non issue in my book. Make a compelling fun game where the character is a 60 year old woman, then i will play it. But also find me a woman that would play as a 60 year old and not a sexy 20 year old.

Maybe the issue is woman have been brainwashed by advertising to look young and sexy. By make up, music videos, adverts and models etc Not saying its right or wrong. Just thats how it is.

What do woman on escapist think?

Isn't the prevalence of these ideas across culture the whole point of the "patriarchal society" argument? I mean, you've just rehashed the basic points of it; especially that women actively participate too.

Anyway, it's not entirely true. You can find ugly, villainous, weird woman with interesting motivations on TV and in movies. They certainly aren't anywhere near the majority, but they're definitely not as conspicuously absent as they are in video games.

This is a societal norm. The same is generally true for all areas of media and have been for millenia. Men also have to generally be attractive in media as well but it is certainly true that older men are more "permisseable" than older females. But if this is a societal standard, hard coded into human kind for all this time, why call out the gaming industry by itself (aside from you being a gaming reviewer which makes it your job to call it out)? Should gaming be held to a higher standard that movies, painted art, literature, and the like? I'm not saying it shouldn't, perhaps the act of interaction and ownership of the avatar does carry with it more weight.

However, you're criteria also disregarded several legitimate candidates. A female character can be pretty without being sexualized, it is wrong to throw out a character just because they aren't horribly scarred (kinda like a certain professional that fired a female employee because she was "too pretty"). I also find it unwarranted to throw out customizeable characters which are generally a direct response for female gamers. I'm not sure why you didn't use characters like Princess Peach in Mario Party and such unless you're talking about the character as a whole. How about that pink square from Thomas was Alone? Hah. We barely even knew what Chell looks like thanks to lesser graphics until recently. I assume you're talking about playable females and not just female characters in general. Otherwise I have quite a few (such as Ellie of Borderlands 2 fame, for example)

As I've said elsewhere. According to the 2010 ESA results, 40/60 (female/male) was the gamer ratio. In that year, we also learned that 80% of women who owned consoles had a Wii as their primary. 9% ps3, 11% 360. The current ESA 47%/53% was after including mobile gamers and over 50% of the respondants in that survey weren't planning to purchase even one game that year. We also have no reason to suspect the distribution has changed since then.

That means that AAA developers are looking at a console target market that is more than 80% males thanks to the underpowered wii consoles. So if you're going to create a stable, non-customiseable character then it suits you as a development studio to make a male character or a female character that appeals to males. Customizeability gets around that without alienating their largest market segment. But at an 80%+ male market you'd almost be demanding that a lady's stocking company make their crotch area more roomy for the X% of males that use the product even if it makes the females slightly less comfortable.

Either way, i couldn't care less what my avatar looks like. Could be an 80 year old woman in a clown costume as long as the story is compelling.

What comes first, the women who play games or the attempts to design games with them in mind?

 

[ShadowHamster]

Vertigo is really only the protagonist in a fighting game sense. She has her own story, but so does everyone else you can play. If we are saying that is a protagonist, we can extend this to a few, if only a few, other women in gaming.

Broodmother from DOTA (and 2), who is a giant spider (thus not attractive in the slightest, besides to Keeper of the Light) who is really annoyed with all the people who keep coming from the surface and killing her young, fighting for their survival, not hers. She is really morally grey, since she cares more about her own spiders rather than any other humans.

Peacock and Double from Skullgirls: The former is a mutilated child, once a slave who was beaten, tortured and blinded (we get to see that happen from her. This caused her to go absolutely insane. She was rebuilt (it's implied the only bits of her that are not robotic are her brain and her face) by a man named Dr. Avian, to help hunt down the "Skull Girl" and end that threat once and for all. However, she does not do it for Dr. Avian, not pushed by the hardship she has suffered. She does it because he insanity, plus her augments, have turned her into a minor reality warper that looks and acts like a murderous cartoon. She does it (at first) because she really likes fighting, and later, to save her best friend who had been turned into the Skullgirl.

Spoiler: Double, on the other hand, is... this.

While she does have a sexy nun form, it's made very clear that isn't her true form in the slightest (her ability to turn into the other characters may suggest she ate who ever was that nun). This Elderich horror just wants to collect the other characters to om nom nom and gain their strength.

Special note goes to Painwheel, who has mostly the same motivations as the former, and a lot of the messed up designs for the later, but was "doing it for a man," strictly speaking. I wasn't sure if mind control counted, but I am going to just play it safe here.

Skullgirls is definitely a great example, and look at it well. Skullgirls was canceled halfway through development even though it had a strong push to come out from the hardcore fighting game community. When it finally came out they only had the budget to release what they had, which ended up being 8 characters. When kickstarted, it didn't have ANY trouble getting the money to keep development going so that we could finally get more characters, and they were happy to give said characters freely.

It's also an indie game, and there are a lot of those that break conventions. It doesn't put down that they are doing it, but it's sad that no big developer can take a minute to look at what is popular there and try to work it in. We are getting more homogenized crap all the time, which is the main issue. No one is saying that their aren't interesting and well loved female characters, just that their appearance and look is one of the most homogenized things in gaming today.

 

[Ukomba]

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

That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head from games I've played.

I think Jim was referring to characters that you can actually play as the main character and not something like a party member.

and I think Jim never specified that in his list of requirements, so it goes for any female main character. He talked about non-playable teammates in his video.