Jimquisition: Vertigo

[Machine Man 1992]

Oh not this crap again.

I swear, Garme Jernolists are more predictable than the fucking tide.

We get it, there aren't as many female protagonists in games as there are men. The question is, who besides the histrionic SJW's of the world even care?

You say men aren't as conventionally attractive, and I have to ask, do you even know what women look for in men? What seems like a pile of grizzled manliness to us could be a steaming pile of attractive man-meat to a female.

Men and women have differing standards of attractiveness, and attempts to compare the two as if they were the same comes off as ignorant.

Actually, they've done studies on this. Generally the muscly roidbros of games are viewed as not terribly attractive.

Can't be arsed to go find it though. I get the feeling it would be a waste of time.

That's just the roided up dudes, what about less muscled, but still hairy guys like John Marsden?

I would usually use this space to say "that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence," if I didn't also know of the same study you are talking about.

Look for "6 reasons why women are just as shallow as men" on Cracked.

 

[ConanThe3rd]

Wait, so now this mythical female protagonist has to be a deep, emotional, intelligent, never relies on a man ever, is never affected by a man, and now has to be conventionally ugly on top of that. Good luck selling that game.


Put out an APB for a 4'6" tall, 350# woman with severe burn scars all over her face and body and missing one leg and make a game about her...what.... oh that's right real people are boring and nobody gives a shit accept the PC hookers who have to appeal to their base by vilifying the very thing they make their living from...shameful.

It's like every argument just gets more and more reasonable and logical.

Need a corn cob pipe for that strawman?

The criteria that Jim had put out (Specifically the "Evil" part) made it so that he could only end with his conclusion.

It's less "There's no non traditional female protagonists" (which is a problem but not to the extent put forth) and more "There's no non traditional female protagonists that suit my lazer pinpoint criteria"

It's The Shrew's tactics; bring out the incremental improvements the industry IS making and then dismiss them because you're not in the business of improvement but talking down on high.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

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?

Just because it is not an exclusive problems for games does not mean that games do not have to solve it as well. While it is true that women display a more varied view of what constitute an attractive man as opposed to what men thinks constitute an attractive woman, I highly doubt that was taken into consideration when designing the more diverse male characters.

Also it is rarely a good thing just to go "well can't fix that. That is just the way it is.". Would kinda lead to that stagnation of humanity's growth and all that.

I dont care whether the character is male, female, young or old. I just want a good game. Yes older women are consider less so than young woman....which is opposite to an older male. In a world were old woman try to be young, granted they are forced to, but its still the case. Age comes into it also. A 15 yr old ist going to play as a 30 yr old woman. An again a 30 yr old male would have no problem playing as a 30 yr old woman. Thing is we dont have this discussion when a movie companies makes a movie with a young well built guy showing his muscles off. Women love that in movies. Hell even older woman love Twilight because of the male actors. It goes both ways.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

Suggestion: Try to come up with some male protagonists that fit Jim's criteria and debunk them like this thread has been doing with possible female character candidates that Jim might have missed. I couldn't think of one off the top of my head. The guys from GTAV don't even fit his criteria. Might be worth a separate thread

Ah yes, [link]http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/9966-The-Counterpoint[/link] this argument.

Wow, it hasn't gotten any more sensible in the interim time since that comic.

This isn't a vague complaint like "men sometimes are sexualized too" as that comic was intended to address but rather pointing out that the very specific list of traits Jim criticizes female characters for lacking is in fact lacking in characters of all genders, races, species, or whatever other possible category.

Again, I don't disagree with the Jim's sentiment that we could use a heck of a lot more diversity in protagonists. I just take issue with the way he made his point, because I found it to be flawed. I am not trying to tear down the argument, just provide constructive criticism and maybe provide another avenue to the discussion.

Sorry if that's not how things are supposed to be done here on the internet.

 

[Vicioussama]

Curious what you think about Maddox' take on women in games

http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=sexism_videogames

Kinda agree with his.

I have to agree with his logic more than what most of Jim has been saying. Granted, some of the points Jim has made, such as Elizabeth being removed from the box cover of Bioshock Infinite because she was a female is total BS, but Maddox makes some good points. And I hate agreeing with Maddox because even though he's funny, he's kind of a dick.

From what I can tell his dickish attitude is merely a persona he puts on for laughs on the internet/media/whatnot. But I don't know him personally so can't say for sure.

As for the bit with Bioshock Infinite? Ya, that's some bs.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

I think the real problem is rather more basic: the lack of female writers in games.

It takes a very good (male) writer to write a realistic protagonist of the opposite sex - understandable considering that all of their interactions with women are, of course, from a male perspective. Of course, most excellent writers don't write for video games - and even a very good writer can cock it up massively (Ian Fleming's "The Spy who Loved Me" springs to mind)

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Woman love watching Thor for the muscles of the main actor. Same with twilight. Just the way things are. Not saying its right, its just the way things are. Just woman are more vocal than men. Me? Im a guy, dont give a shit if older woman get off on twilight. Or woman watch Thor shows his abs. Its entertainment. Its fantasy. Its not real. Isnt that the point of games? Stick to the real world of adverts, modelling and Photoshopping models into fake woman. Start there then games.

 

[DamianWorld]

Female Liltie, FF Crystal Chronicles series (see Rings of Fate), and Yuke for that matter in all the others.

BARBARIAN DIABLO 3, I can't stress that one enough. Not attractive, dev made protag.

Cream the rabbit, Sonic Advance game series

Panda, Tekken

Thinking a problem exists and then bending evidence to fit what you believe makes you a hack. I mean, ANY CHILD FEMALE PROTAG isn't attractive and is a different character type than you described. Did you include it? No. Because then you can't make your "funny" observation.

 

[THE_MUFFIN_MAN15]

Why are female characteristics always seen as "bad writing" or "generic" to you Jim? What I got from this video is that all female characters should only have traditional male motivations and attributes. Did I miss a hidden assumption somewhere along the line? This doesn't seem as uncontroversial as you make it seem

 

[RJ 17]

Suggestion: Try to come up with some male protagonists that fit Jim's criteria and debunk them like this thread has been doing with possible female character candidates that Jim might have missed. I couldn't think of one off the top of my head. The guys from GTAV don't even fit his criteria. Might be worth a separate thread

But that's kinda the point of what Jim was talking about: the range for male characters is much vaster than the range for female characters. Men can be old, young, grizzled, handsome, out-right pretty, badasses, goody two-shows, neutral, etc. They can have much more diversity in their character models and personalities, where as female playable characters are stuffed into narrow margins.

One of the big requirements that people are missing out with a lot of the suggestions in this thread is that a lot of them are bringing up "good" characters. To be fair, Jim doesn't specifically list in his 3 criteria that he was looking for bad/morally questionable females, but I'm pretty sure he meant to seeing as how that's one of the points he makes at the beginning of the episode (that playable females are almost always one of the good guys), and he also makes it a point to talk about how Vertigo was a wicked beast wanting to enslave the world, pointing out that in Primal Rage Vertigo is one of the "villains" characters you can fight as. And finding an unattractive, "evil", playable, not-motivated-by-man-or-trauma female character is very tricky, implying that almost all female characters that are playable are "good", conventionally attractive, and are motivated by a man or trauma. They almost all fit into that mold, while male characters can be pretty much anything the developer wants them to be.

That said, I have seen some good examples of females that do fit Jim's criteria throughout this topic, but I think the video is more about making the point that the majority of female characters fit into that mold, not challenging us to try and one-up him by coming up with other characters that might meet the criteria of this exercise.

 

[Dante dynamite]

I am curious how many protagonists in general don't have generic motivations in games? I mean generic heroics is usually the norm, I'm not saying there aren't games that are more morally hazy but wasn't his last episode about how rare it is to play the bad guy.

Edit:I was thinking isn't this more a homogenization problem rather than a sexism problem? in fact isn't all the sexism problems in games (though not things like online communities) just repackaged homogenization problems that's what I don't get why people have to get up in arms on either side can't we all just agree on more variety.

 

[Megahedron]

Suggestion: Try to come up with some male protagonists that fit Jim's criteria and debunk them like this thread has been doing with possible female character candidates that Jim might have missed. I couldn't think of one off the top of my head. The guys from GTAV don't even fit his criteria. Might be worth a separate thread

Abe from Oddworld? Though I guess his motivations are kind of generically heroic... Generic motivations eliminates the vast majority of games and kinda makes this conversation difficult.

I do agree that some of his male examples were borderline, I doubt there aren't at least a few other people who have the hots for Snake and Fenix.

 

[daibakuha]

I don't think non-human characters qualify. Or at least they shouldn't. It falls into a common trap that a lot of writers fall into, it doesn't matter if your character is female if they could just as easily be male. Men and women are different, and a good writer can write characters that aren't just males swapped with females.

I think eliminating attractive characters is also probably going to far, being attractive isn't the problem. It's being nothing but attractive bits that's the problem. There's a lot of attractive women who are really great characters, some even brought up in this very thread.

 

[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.

Yeah but thats all subjective however and up to me or you to decide not one collective, since that pretty much voids all form of individuality which is yknow, fucking terrible. Once more, its not really urgent and may not even be all that important, trivial at best but hey, if creators come along with creations of said things to counter that then hooray for them *golfclaps* but it wont be the end of the world if they dont.
Then again i would like games to be appriciated for games and not for other things like how the controller looks or if my protagonist happens to be a nontraditionally attractive female or not, and if does come to that, then i would like the game to actually be praised and reviewed on the basis of it BEING A GAME, but appearently thats too much to ask from some people i guess :L

Well a lot of religious fundamentalists also have problems with todays world yet we can hopefully all agree that theyre far from reasonable, as is the case with this debate that, while perhaps a vocal but very stupid part of the debate, argues for one thing, doesnt by default make it valid or reasonable based simply on numbers, but rather how well their arguments hold up against their counterarguments, which they dont, not all that much exactly anyway...

Eh, i guess some people do but theyre usually stupid, i may not like what you like but i wont hate you for liking what i dont like, if that makes any sense, since i objectively cant tell you: what you enjoy is shit. because yknow, enjoyment is subjective and all that

The difference is that appeasing religious fundamentalists who complain would severely negatively impact several individuals who do not share those beliefs by restricting LGBT rights and affecting women's health issues. Whereas turning, say, Trevor from GTA V into a woman and basically changing next to nothing else about him probably wouldn't have negatively impacted the game or anyone's enjoyment of it in any significant way. You'd basically just have to slightly alter the character design and get rid of the scene where he shows off his dick. And it would have had the added bonus of engendering good will from gamers who wish to have more diverse examples of female protagonists in video games.

There's also the fact that religious fundamentalists are not in any way marginalized members of society (tax breaks, tons of representation in media as well as air time, a great deal of political influence and representation), but I don't think that's a necessary argument to make regarding this particular issue, valid or not.

But even so appeasing this type of crowd just for the sake of appeasement actually would have a negative effect on the industry since the act of acting for the sake of action has and always will be incredibly anti-intelligent.
Its a secondary priority and should always be.
You make your game first and then if your game has room for a nontraditionally attractive female protagonist then go right ahead, i havent argued against anything else, just that id like my game primarily to be..well a game, and then that whole feminist thing can be shoehorned in if it wants to as long as it doesnt affect my enjoyment of the game really

Entertainment industries are exclusively about appeasement. That's pretty much the entire definition of entertainment. It can be used to enrich lives, sure, but it is first and foremost used to be fun and distracting and give us something to do with our idle time. The better question is who we're appeasing, why we're appeasing them, and how that appeasement would negatively impact the appeasement of others.

My argument is simply that unless you can think of a counter-argument, changing a male protagonist in a game whose gender identity is not critical to their character (of which there are many) into a female protagonist whose gender identity is not critical to their character without changing much else would be trivially difficult, have a positive impact on communities who ask for such representation, and wouldn't have a significant negative impact on those who aren't asking for it. In my mind, if doing something is easy and would have a positive effect that outweighs the negative effect by a significant margin, it ought to be a no-brainer. We shouldn't FORCE people to do this, obviously, but there's nothing wrong with attempting to convince people to make this decision voluntarily if they find the arguments compelling and if they want to make work that's accessible to a wider audience.

Well yeah but again in that case there needs to be incentive and it needs to be compelling without feeling forced or without just the intent of creating diversity rather than letting it be created organically through play and through the player experience. Nothing good will ever come of simply complaining and shouting about it because what we need is not what we want. If we do however want it on the basis of something being simply objectively good as a, in this case, game, then we need to cater to that primarily and not let something be carried upon the simple fact that it "challanges the barriers of social constructs".

Like i said, i for one would just like a good game and if such a thing as gender doesnt affect my playing experience, go right ahead.
If its being shoehorned in just for the sake of it and forcing it upon me trying to make me compelled then that game can go eat a dong for all i care and the devs hopefully out of a job soon.

I understand what you mean, but I'm not talking about including women just for the sake of social justice, but more because if there's no reason for men to be the default, there should be no reason to not just swap the gender. You don't have to make it a big political thing or a statement, just change a chromosome. I look at a character like Trevor and ask myself "Why is this character a man?" and I can't think of a compelling reason. Then I ask, "If he were a woman, would I find the character more interesting?" And the answer, for me at least, is yes. I've seen male characters like Trevor before. Psychotically violent middle-aged slobs with substance abuse problems are frequently men, but there's no reason they HAVE to be, other than arbitrary social constructs and expectations. Statistically men might be more prone to this type of behavior, but women can be psychotically violent middle-aged slobs with substance abuse problems, and since when did protagonists have to be statistically plausible? Furthermore, if you turn Trevor into a woman, even without changing much of anything else, you create an additional layer of subtext that makes the character far more intriguing and complicated simply because we as an audience haven't ever really played as a woman like that before. Sometimes changing one ingredient can completely transform the recipe.

I'm first and foremost a proponent of making things more interesting. Having characters default to white men is boring to me. Having a gaming culture that's dominated by white men is boring to me. I want developers to shake things up and try new things, and if that has the added benefit of getting different people interested in gaming, then I'm completely on board.

 

[Miss G.]

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?

I find that sort of strange that someone would even have to read a manual to figure that out, considering Amaterasu is the sun goddess and mother to us all. It'd be like playing as Hera or Aphrodite or another well known goddess, but in animal-form, and being confused as to what gender she is without being told. As to people in-game confusing her gender, most of the time they can't tell if she's a wolf, let alone looking underneath to check what gender. Those characters that know, well... know.

*Though you didn't mention it, I don't like that there are those who say she can't be a girl just because she lifts her leg when using Golden Fury, as alpha female wolves mark their territory just the same as males; the devs can't be blamed just because they bothered to do the research and it just so happens to not jive with preconceived notions of what wolves are supposed to do.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Does bandage girl from super meat boy count?

I guess you can see her as "cute", but definitely not sexy or curvy in general.

She's got the same powers as meat boy, and takes on the hardest levels of the game.

Probably not. In the story she's the thing Meat Boy has to rescue. Despite said rescue falling into the realm of sheer parody/reference, Jim would likely not count it.

 

[CrazyFikus]

I'm a bit late to the party, but would Inquisitor Adrastia From DoW II: Retribution count? Haven't played the game to be honest...

 

[Thanatos2k]

Amaterasu lifts her leg to pee. She's probably not a good example. = )

 

[LisaB1138]

Well, I've got two to add to the list. They are both going to be knocked down because they don't meet all the requirements necessarily, but I don't think meeting all the requirements should really be a goal for a good character. They do, IMO, offer some palate-cleansing to the usual fare of victim/vixen women we encounter.

1. The original Lara Croft. Despite her bosom, she was entirely independent, morally ambiguous and beat the boys at their own game. She was considered attractive by PS1 standards, but I never felt that Lara cared whether the boys thought she was attractive or not. She played by her own rules and was accountable to no one.

2. Kaede from Onimusha Warlords/Genma Onimusha. Yes, she's a "helper" character, but you do get to play as her and she kicks ass, even saving the protagonist at one point. I suppose one could consider her attractive, but again, she feels very plain and unadorned by game standards for women. She is not morally questionable by our standards, but by the standards of feudal Japan, she's positively scandalous.

 

[ConanThe3rd]

Quina Quen from final fantasy 9

Not Evil, doesn't count.