Jimquisition: Vertigo

[Rebel_Raven]

Oh, and the BS that guys can't write for women. TV, the Movie industry, and books generally prove that wrong.
There's a long list of old (And I do mean old. People are fond of pointing me to the list on Giant Bomb that goes back to the dawn of gaming, and even then the list is small considering that) games that prove that wrong. A lot of iconic female characters in gaming blow that argument out of the water. Shame the future's so bleak towards proving "guys can't write for women" wrong. I blame the anti-female mentality in the industry in general.

I think it's like saying short People can't play Basketball, you could find numerous relatively short professional basketball players throughout the history of the sport, but you'll find being tall is still an advantage.

I dunno, there's a lot of tall people that can't play basketball either. Lord knows most of the NBA is largely ignored save for a few star players by and large.

Wasn't there a height minimum instated in the NBA? I dunno for sure.

Not a great analogy, IMO.

I get what you're saying though. Women would have an easier time writing for women. Thing is, even with women writing for women, those women being written for have to get out to market to begin with. It doesn't do a ton of good to have women writing for women when the women being written for will never make it to the end product.

 

[Erttheking]

Oh, and the BS that guys can't write for women. TV, the Movie industry, and books generally prove that wrong.
There's a long list of old (And I do mean old. People are fond of pointing me to the list on Giant Bomb that goes back to the dawn of gaming, and even then the list is small considering that) games that prove that wrong. A lot of iconic female characters in gaming blow that argument out of the water. Shame the future's so bleak towards proving "guys can't write for women" wrong. I blame the anti-female mentality in the industry in general.

I think it's like saying short People can't play Basketball, you could find numerous relatively short professional basketball players throughout the history of the sport, but you'll find being tall is still an advantage.

Actually to be perfectly blunt I find the idea that men cannot write women to be beyond insulting. I love writing female characters. Do I stumble every now and then? Yes I do, but who doesn't. But I have learned and I feel like my characters are something that I can be proud of. I'm sorry, any writer that says that they can't write characters of the opposite sex isn't trying hard enough.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

My go-to has been Faith [Mirror's Edge], but by your conventions it's true she's only halfway there.
-Questionably attractive. It'd be a personal taste thing - no exposed huge chest, no skin tight jeans. She is however 20 or so.
-Her motives are not male oriented (for the most part. She does like her friends, including Merc)
-Merc could be construed as her 'boss' or even role model.
-She is largely independent and self sufficient.

You bring up a good point though. People like to go to LoL or DotA and dredge up someone like Spectre, but even then you're comparing a small percentage of the female population to a much more diverse male population. Vertigo's a good pick, though clearly none of the Primal Rage characters are attractive in a cosmopolitan sense.

Lastly though this issue is old. No, that doesn't make it irrelevant, and perhaps continuing to talk about it will net us some progress, but the industry seems to want to throw bits of so-called 'progress' at us a little at a time (see that more recent motherhood Metroid, or Tomb Raider). Games like Borderlands throw in that one fat chick as if it's shattering the mold. A large part of the issue has to be the audience, and for all the talk gamers seem to be content with mid level objectification and cliche stereotypes. Games keep getting purchased. I'm not sure what the alternative is -- are we all to simply shut our wallets and boycott until an acceptable female lead hits shelves? I personally haven't bought any of the more objectionable fare, but then I haven't bought much so developers probably care little about my wallet to begin with.

 

[Smeatza]

Well I can think of at least one.

Spoiler: Mesme from Micro Maniacs

 

[Firecracker119]

What about Legate Rikke from Skyrim. She may not be a playable character, but she does classify as a strong female protagonist/antagonist by your standards. She isn't overly beautiful, and you can clearly see her age. She has her own motives for fighting in the civil war, and she doesn't fights to appease the men around her.

 

[Amaury_games]

Have anyone mentioned the Lookout from the game Monaco as a possibility? She's playable and have her own reasons to steal stuff, along with a pretty nice ability! As for her looks, with the game's style choice, I can't really say what she looks like. However, we can, for example, assume the Red Head is very attractive, since her ability is to seduce anything (including dogs!). As far as I could distinguish from the silhouette of the Lookout, she seems very average, but not particularly being attractive (although, of course, I find it safe to assume that for most of the heterosexual guys, and homosexual girls, and whatever else might find the feminine figure attractive, the Lookout will be more attractive than a reptile goddess).

 

[Velocir_X]

To be honest I haven't been paying attention to the discussion, but I had an interesting thought that may be pertinent.

Samus was quickly discounted because she's conventionally attractive. For the sake of argument allow me to challenge that for a second.

If you were to ask a stereotypically "sexist" gamer/developer/industry worker to describe Samus, how would they go about it? Something related to her badassery don't you think? Maybe a quip or two about how terrible Other M was?

By contrast if you were to ask someone arguing for the evil sexism in the industry to do the same, what would they talk about? Probably her looks?

You can repeat this though experiment with a number of female protagonists, hell I think even Laura Craft may work, though you probably won't escape a mention or two of her titties. MMmm dem titties.

And that I think is pretty telling. My point being that this whole discussion suffers from a bit of pop-culture criticism hysterics. For men (the primary demographic of gamers) who are visual, the good-looks of a female are simply an aesthetic thing devoid of connection to the most memorable or important traits of a character. No one remembers Samus for how traditionally attractive she is much in the same way no one remembers, say, the Mona Lisa for how traditionally attractive she is, instead focusing on something intangible like her achievements or in the case of the Mona Lisa her smile.

It's like calling a Greek temple "rectangleist" or mathematicist" for extensively using the golden ration for aesthetic purposes, while completely ignoring the fact that its primary purpose, and what its remembered for, is the god it serves. Then shaming the designers for not incorporating enough triangles, ugly rectangles or ugly triangles. Trivial. A critique of style instead of substance.

I can enjoy Lara's titties for being an attractive pair of titties without "objectifying" her or necessarily dismissing her achievements or general level of awesomeness. In fact I think the most recent tomb raider, which was oh so highly praised for making her more "realistic" or "down to earth" actually made her a much less interesting and capable female character. It was praised for what it did to her looks and not to her character, which I think is ass-backwards coming from the people arguing against sexism.

P.S. No sexism in games thread would be complete without a repost of Thunderfoot:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQJW3WMsx1q3BAZh3XsK1cSwCiaqjSulc

 

[LazyAza]

I think it's kinda funny (not in a haha kinda way) all the best examples people can think of when it comes to female characters of the like of Vertigo basically none of them are fucking human, or even close to humanoid. That's where its so fucked, even when these female characters exist they have to be more animalistic, cartoony or creature-like to be allowed to exist apparently.

I remember playing Gears of War 3 and upon seeing the female characters, long touted by head designer Cliffy B as being progressive and a long overdue addition to their franchise and them with their fucking perfect shiny hair, almost perfect skin and generally slim appearances I wanted to personally smack the man upside the head when every god damn fucking male character in those games is grizzled, ugly and generally a walking pile of meat.

What we need is someome to make a game with a large, muscular, empowered women who does what she does because she fucking wants to. Make her evil or anti-heroish too and that'd be icying on the cake. Why on earth don't we have a female equivalent of Kratos, that'd be god damn awesome.

 

[carnex]

As usual, just another sensation bait from Jim. Not that anything he said is lie, outside that there are human form females that fit that picture in fighting game genre. But on another hand I understand that he made a pick to ilustrate his point.

On the other hand, he is carefull never to touch upon causes of that trend which is much, much more important thing to discuss. If we don't get to source, changing it will be impossible. So, lets start on that notion

- Someone said that females are considered desirable unless they are really fat or disfigured or both. While I agree with that, I will state the following too. Males are found desirable even if they are muscled freaks, scared, older, sadist, psychopath etc. Not by everyone but, for example, I have read quite a bit from females that find Kratos and Marcus Phoenix just peachy. When we play as character, for most part, we want to play character we would to be, character that has some traits we would like to have or character that is just embodies our animalistic and anti-social desires we suppress.

- Developers are afraid of backlash and lost sales. Seriously, most of them try to do tightrope walk down the narrow path that they see as something that will not piss off either side too much. If they perceive something as thing that will affect sales negatively they will not do it.

- We perceive thigs differently. Male character in loincloth is power fantasy, female character in valkyrie armor (armored bikini) is objectification. Male character saving female is DiD, female character rescuing male is dependent or has daddy issues etc.

- We associate sexualization of female charaters with male creators while females create same charates all the time. And in same scenarios. That means causes are much, much deeper then gender tendencies. Most importan question is how much of that is biological and how much social (social in terms of flying in face of biological benefits)

There are many, many more but form the top of my head this late at night I can't get to mentioning them. I would appriciate if someone would pick up the torch.

 

[Innegativeion]

Well she's Ammy!

Yeah no, Amaterasu is definitely a better example. I haven't played the game yet (I'll get around to it! I promise) but as far as I can tell, she's just in general defending nature and kicking the ass of anyone who tries to fuck around with it.

I'm sure there are more examples than Ammy and the dinosaur too, but Jim's point still stands.

 

[Don Incognito]

One of the more baffling things (among many) about your argument is that you don't seem to understand that different women like different things. You talk about them as if they're some kind of hive mind who all have the same tastes. The same applies for men, too, of course. It's a pretty simple concept to grasp - different people have different preferences.

Care to explain why so many women want to be a princess and so few want to be Rambo. Could it be because the vast majority of women do have similar tastes? That would explain why chick-flicks appeal mainly to women, while action movies don't.

I'll say it again:

CITATION.

NEEDED.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Snip,

There is one Gears of War female playable character that comes to mind here in regards to you asking where the old grey haired ones are:

Spoiler: Bernadette.

Bernadette is based off a New Zealander who is racially mixed (half Maori, half Caucasian) so she's got a bit of uniqueness there as well.

I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, I'm just saying Gears of War has a 50+ years old lady who's kicking ass with the rest of them.

 

[Laurie Barnes]

Spoiler: *cough*

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 ( something to aspire to, rather than something to desire), where few-to-no female characters are female empowerment fantasies.

I think that bit about most games being a male empowerment fantasy might be the root problem here actually. I just thought about all the games that I love, and a fair majority of them are in fact male empowerment fantasies. So that makes me wonder, what would a female empowerment fantasy look like? Do any even exist?

I'm not saying making a few games that are focus tested for women the same way COD is for men is the answer, or not inherently sexist, but I must admit curiosity for what the result might be.

Perhaps the Mighty and Benevolent Jim Sterling can field this one after he is done with Season Passes.

 

[spiffleh]

Well said. Boy oh boy though Jim. You sure do know how to make people rage. You must bust out a bowl of popcorn and read the comments while laughing maniacally. I'm sad they do rage though. Such a valid point.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

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.

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

Amazon - Sexualized, impractical outfit. While not "traditionally" attractive from a mainstream attraction, she definitely fits within fetishistic character design tropes popular in certain niches within Japanese entertainment. She may not be everyone's cup of tea, but trust me, she's designed for sex appeal. Plus none of the characters in that game have interesting or unique character motivations or identities, so even if you could argue that she isn't designed with sex appeal in mind, she fails to meet Jim's criteria for that reason as well (though at least the male characters in the game are equally as uninteresting and under-developed).
Lucca - A supporting character, not a protagonist. Jim was specifically looking for playable protagonists.
Okami - The character is actually named Amaterasu, but I'd say that's probably a fair example that Jim may have overlooked.
Peacock - Her motivations center around being used as a test subject, which Jim would justifiably qualify as "power from trauma".
Double - See above.
Macha/NeoFio/Poshul/Sprigg - Not protagonists.
Shale - A DLC character and not a protagonist.
Kreia - Not a protagonist.

One example I thought of that Jim may have overlooked is Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie, who could be argued as a supporting character, but I'd argue that she's the more active participant in the duo, particular in regards to gameplay, though obviously she has less at stake in terms of plot since it's not her sister that's been kidnapped. But it does seem a bit silly that we have to keep looking at non-humanoids to find valid examples.

And it may seem like splitting hairs for discounting many of your characters for not being protagonists, but part of the issue is that women would like to be able to directly identify with the character they has the most agency and direct focus within the story. They may like to see well-crafted female supporting characters, but when it's all they have, it starts to make them feel ignored, marginalized, and underestimated. It seems like there's an underlying hesitance to make a woman the central protagonist either due to concerns regarding whether or not their young male demographic would enjoy playing as a female character they don't find attractive, as though we would be afraid of identifying with a woman. As a dude, I find that assumption pretty demeaning. I don't need to find a female character sexy to want to play as her and I don't need to play as a male character to identify with the protagonist. I think game publishers need to stop overthinking it so much.

For starters, look up the definition of 'protagonist'. Here let me help:

protagonist: the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text.

So Kreia, Macha, NeoFio, Poshul, Sprigg, Lucca, and Shale are, in fact, Protagonists. Any Party member would be. Even non playable characters, like Joker from Mass Effect, would count as a Protagonist. Lucca especially, since Chrono dies half way through the game. Is there just no Protagonist at that point?

A character being DLC is entirely irrelevant.

The Trauma thing, well you might have me for those two.

Ok, but Lucca is still pretty conventionally attractive, I mean except for the big-ass glasses and the goofy helmet she's still got the whole smooth skin, slender body thing going on.

I thought she was cute, but not exactly conventionally attractive since she's, eeeeeew, NERDY. If Old Snake is considered not conventionally attractive then so is Lucca. I know plenty of girls who think the grizzled, or older men are quite attractive. Harrison Ford won People's Sexiest Man Alive at 56 after all.

Yes, but she's still got the whole smooth skin, slender body thing. I think Jim's point was that you don't see any female protagonists that look like the amazons from Futurama. A better example you could've brought up from Chrono Trigger would've been Ayla.

I guess it all depends on your definition. It's that 'Not Another Teen Movie' thing where the unattractive nerdy girl just needs a quick makeover to make her attractive. Her in game sprite isn't designed to make her look attractive, unlike Marles. Ayla is a little more on the line so I left her off.

Well that brings up another topic altogether that's been bugging me, but I won't get into it. Anyway I still don't think Lucca quite fits the criteria Jim was looking for. Also I may have been a bit hasty in naming Ayla. So I take that back.

Yes, but she's still got the whole smooth skin, slender body thing. I think Jim's point was that you don't see any female protagonists that look like the amazons from Futurama. A better example you could've brought up from Chrono Trigger would've been Ayla.

Are you kidding? Ayla? Ayla is probably the sexiest-designed character in that entire game. Blonde hair, curvaceous figure, and she wears an animal-fur bikini. Not to mention how "bouncy" her animations are.

The Amazons from Futurama, for that matter, weren't universally ugly. Most of them were as attractive as any other Futurama female, they just happened to be 15 feet tall. That's why Zap and Fry are both thrilled and terrified when their sentence comes down as "DEATH BY SNOO-SNOO!!!!"

Yeah, I realized my mistake almost immediatly after I posted that, but I had to go to work so I couldn't correct myself. I forgot that it's only in fanart that she's made to look more like a buff amazon.
Anyway as for the Futurama Amazons, no they weren't universally ugly... I guess, but none of them were exactly Maxim magazine material either. And I think Fry and Zapp's reaction to their sentence had more to do with getting Snoo-Snoo and dieing than it did the attractiveness of the Amazons.

 

[The Material Sheep]

I was thinking GLADOS... for a lot of this. Perhaps the the disembodied voice of sexless machine doesn't count but I thought most people viewed her as a female character.