Jimquisition: Vertigo

Dec 14, 2009
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Branindain said:
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

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Metalix Knightmare said:
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?
 

Ukomba

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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

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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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

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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

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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

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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".
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

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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

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Ukomba said:
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

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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.

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? :p
 

ShadowHamster

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Not G. Ivingname said:
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.



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

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hentropy said:
Ukomba said:
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.
 

Tombsite

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Monxeroth said:
Tombsite said:
Of course because its such a rational and constructive way to debate to simply call out strawmen left and right because you simply do not have the tools to logically counter any of them *pats your head*

1. It does but only if the developer intended for that obviously, hence why i think its so strange we discard MMOs and Saints Row for some reason because it, oh i dunno, counters this point?
2.More options=/=Good Would tetris be anymore enjoyable if we put a little skirt on the L-block?
3.That is a point but again youre failing to see the bigger picture of: It suits the game, its consistent with the gameplay and its also something that makes sense, if you can do that with female protagonists then sure go right ahead, so far i havent seen much prodoctivity from your type of people, only complaining, and no action whatsoever except crying social justice on tumblr.
4.Its in fact a very high risk, and not chance, that it will matter, since its completely trivial, again, the whole look of something vs its practical use.
Steam controller looks shit
Steam controller is therefore shit
I like to play using the controller and look at the monitor rather than on the controller but ok
Bringing in the look of a piece of hardware is in fact a straw-man. but lets not get bogged down in semantics.

1. Because Jim chose that it had to be a developer designed character. Because that would mean that the artist behind the game envisioned a certain character and not just a blank slate for the player to do what ever with. As this is about calling the developers out it is a very relevant that we discard them.

2. Putting a skirt on the L-block is a choice. An option is something you can chose not to use thus an option can never be bad. Again, in fairness, I'll give you that it is possible that all the added options do not increase the amount of good. But this is the exception most of the time. The point still remains that it is most likely that more options means better end results.

3. (Your poor use of structure makes your argument unclear but I will try.) Again Jim is not arguing against using attractive people. He is providing proof that apparently women can only be attractive. Why does it make more sense that all females in fighting games are skinny models and not one of them is a densely build fighter with a broken nose?

4. Yes looks do take a back seat to functionality but that does not make them irrelevant. Of course the game has to be good and function. But that is not something that has anything to do with the character design. As it takes the same graphics to make an "ugly" woman as it does to make an attractive woman,I do not see how this is an issue.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Daystar Clarion said:
Mcoffey said:
Daystar Clarion said:




I like to think that The Boss and Ammy fall into this category.

Have you seen The Boss? She's built like a fucking horse, and Ammy is...

Well she's Ammy!
The Boss isn't a playable character nor a protagonist. She's a great character, to be sure, but not quite what Jim's talking about. I've got nothing on Amaterasu though. :)

In this thread I expect plenty of people to say that plenty of male characters are sexualized, completely ignoring the fact that they are male empowerment fantasies (ie, something to aspire to, rather than something to desire), where few-to-no female characters are female empowerment fantasies.
Well, I suppose she doesn't count if she's not playable...

Damn it!

Ammy, save me!

*falls back on Ammy point*
Along with one requirement being that the character has to be playable, I believe another one of the requirements was that the character in question has to be bad, or at least morally questionable. :p