Ladies, how about you?

[Krixous]

I personally just like a customizable protagonist as a male i generally play male characters if i have the choice nothing against female characters but if i have to have a character to represent me in a fantasy world i prefer for it to be as much like me as possible but based on my expirence (ex-girlfriends, female friends etc.) i find that women like customizing theyre character to look like 10-15 year old boys who belong in some sort of yaoi fanfic.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

It's never really bothered me in the slightest. If I get to choose or create my character, cool, if I don't I don't, that's fine too.

If a developer creates a game a certain way and they have a certain character they want you to play, I don't question it, because that's what they wanted to create, and I have no power to tell them otherwise(I can of course, but that would be rather selfish, trying to control what artists create).

The way I view game development and play is the reason I thought all the character complaints about Dragon Age 2 were silly. So what if you got to be a dwarf or an elf in the first game. They wanted to make a more personalized story with the second game about one certain family that happened to be human. Just be glad they let you pick between having a male or female Hawke. Even if they had locked play to either gender, I wouldn't have cared. I play RPG's for the gameplay and story not what type of character I get to play as, if I get to pick it is just a little bonus.

Of course, this all could be because I'm not a very picky gamer. I play pretty much every genre and/or style of game, Action Adventure, RPG, JRPG, RTS, Platformer, Fighting, Builder/Creation, Shooters, MMOs, Puzzle, Racing, open world, sandbox, linear, etc, etc. Name it and I play it, well except scary/Horror games, I hate being scared.

So basically, if you look at my game collection for each console I own and on my PC, you will see just about every style of game.

Okay, ramble alert, time for me to step out the door.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Well since it seems to be another wave of discussion about us lady players washing through and it seems to be popping up in every thread, maybe this is a good time for me to post a thought I had awhile back.

This is a question for the female game playing members of the Escapist honestly, and I'm not foolish enough to ask gentlemen not to answer (because that will just provoke all sorts of crap) but the design of the question is directed at my gender so, if you're giving it a go, please stay on topic as much as possible. For the record - this is a question of personal exploration, not a commentary on the industry.

So here's my question: Do you find yourself not feeling a desire to play games that do not offer a male or female protagonist choice, the way others do i.e. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout 3/NV, Skyrim and so forth?

I am finding myself feeling this recently. Having been a player of video games for more than 20 years now, I've played and enjoyed plenty of games that had male only protagonists on offer, but recently I am finding I don't desire to give a title a chance if I can't make... well, myself I guess - or a version of me I choose and I am more comfortable playing a female me in game worlds.

I've speculated that maybe this is simply because I gravitate towards RPGs and that requires a certain amount of immersion to get the most out of as a genre. JRPGs I'm not really counting against that, because you play half a dozen people in those usually and are more of a director of people than inserted into any one of them - kinda like the personal demi-god/dess of whatever party you're rolling around the game world.

Still - people have been saying how good the Witcher is - and this is what brought it to my attention probably a month or so ago, talking about that series with a friend - and I found I have no desire at all to play it. It sounds like a great game, but my turn-off is being a grizzled older man for the entire experience and how I don't think I could get into it in that mode.

Even with little two-player games me and my fiancé play together - one's where there is only the option of picking among dudes I can't really get enthusiastic about, I'm just playing them with him to pass the time together, not for the game itself, and I get indignant that they couldn't throw one sprite in there that represents half the population's sexual characteristics.

Maybe I've just reached a point where, now that it's possible and moving towards more standard, I'm unwilling to settle for less than a choice to play my gender and make my character's face/hair/etc. up to my liking. Maybe I'm just in a bit of a rut playing the same games over and over that offer me that immersion other's don't.

I'm not sure if the old sprite stuff would bother me, it's been ages since I went retro. I'm pretty sure I still love Zelda games even as Link and would enjoy a mario 3 pizza party with friends easily enough, but like I said, it's been forever.


So what's your take? Where are you at? I'm sure I'm not "alone" in this (no one ever is) but I'm having trouble identifying when exactly this shift in my gaming philosophy took place and maybe hearing some perspectives on it might help me identify an "ah-ha" moment.

Hmm... to be fair, the Witcher is based off a popular series of fantasy novels from Poland. I've read some of them... the author shows a bit more maturity when it comes to sex and relationships with women than the games do (though Witcher 2 does improve in that area... somewhat)... so asking to make Geralt into a female Witcher (which does not exist in the universe... not sexism on the author's part, simply him trying to write a convincing medieval society... which were inherently sexist), would be a bit weird. Playing as say... Triss Merigold or any of the other female characters, though? That would be interesting to see (in fact, the Witcher 2 does have some brief segments where that does happen)...

Anyway...

as for your overall point, I think I can relate to where you're coming from... sounds like you're just... tired of seeing male protagonists all the time.

So am I. I'm an aspiring novelist, and I'm currently writing a book about a detective that happens to be a lesbian.
And before any assumptions are made: I'm asexual. The only appeal in writing a lesbian (or any active sexual orientation for that matter) character for me is a certain degree of challenge in portraying sexuality... at all.

As for RPGs... unless there's a specific role-playing reason for me to play one gender over the other... I just flip a coin. Example of a role-playing reason: I only play New Vegas with a female character because I love the irony of a woman dealing death to Caesar's Legion (bonus points for doing him in with a knife). Seriously, the Legion is my most hated faction in that game, closely followed by the Brotherhood of Steel because they keep killing off the Followers of the Apocalypse. Pricks.

 

[captnb2thep]

I am a black man and I guess I can see why some members of the gaming community want to play games where they can play as a character a little more like themselves. In my case, it would be especially frustrating as well if I was looking for that, and when I was younger it didn't really "bother" me but it was something that I did think about and found unfortunate. There arent many major black video game characters IN GENERAL, much less black playable protagonists in non-RPG games and one of the first games I played with one was GTA San Andreas which to say the least isnt the best or ideal depiction of a black male (especially in an EXTREMELY popular game).

Off the top of my head I can't think of many but that doesnt stop me from enjoying games with different protagonists independent of race and gender. I feel like role playing games serve an important niche there. For example there arent many games with minority protagonists, women protagonists or gay protagonists (I feel that will be the next issue called to attention) but in most RPGs, recent ones specifically, you can portray your player in detail down to even sexual orientation.

Side note, I noticed Walking Dead conversation earlier in this thread, and coincidentally, I JUST started watching the series this week. My favorite show is Breaking Bad and for some of my peers to say "its almost as good as Breaking Bad!" it really turned me off from wanting to watch it, because admittedly I have that show on a bit of a pedestal. But overall so far, the show is not bad, but definitely not as good as BB to me (I just watched the first episode I would call "great" in "Pretty Much Dead Already"). I haven't played the games, but ironically, they are said to have a great protagonist who happens to be black, so there goes that lol. I have read that a lot of feminists and female viewers in general have had huge problems with female characters in the Walking Dead TV show and recent AMC shows in general that I have seen some ongoing debates about.

But yeah, back on topic, its a little disconcerting to have 80% of games feature a white male with short hair and grizzly stubble (I remember seeing Bioshock Infinite changing its cover art to one) but I imagine its mostly due to marketing and who buys and plays games the most, as supported by what the Epic Games member saying about how a Gears of War game with a badass female protagonist "wouldn't sell as well." And yeah, that is unfortunate but I don't see that changing soon.

 

[Vault101]

As for RPGs... unless there's a specific role-playing reason for me to play one gender over the other... I just flip a coin. Example of a role-playing reason: I only play New Vegas with a female character because I love the irony of a woman dealing death to Caesar's Legion (bonus points for doing him in with a knife). Seriously, the Legion is my most hated faction in that game, closely followed by the Brotherhood of Steel because they keep killing off the Followers of the Apocalypse. Pricks.

I didnt know the brotherhood were at odds with the followers...

but yeah I really HATE the legion and everything they stand for, not only does cearsar have some backwards fucked up veiws on the world but he's a fucking hypocrite....

it did make playing as a woman all the more satidfying...I kind of wish though more attention was brought to your gender

 

[Vault101]

Now that I think of it, Far Cry 3 would be terribly interesting playing as a female protagonist... I wonder how many other games I can think of that I'd say that same for.

yeah...the whole "3rd world warzone/piracy" thing is a very male centered theme/setting....the Idea of putting a women in that situation is pretty much unheard of...and while unrealistic its not too much of a strech from white boy jason becoming a full on warior

 

[Polarity27]

I don't avoid games with fixed-male protagonists, but I've got limited funds for games and seriously limited time to play games, so knowing that a game lets me play as a woman does make me more likely to pick it instead of an equally interesting-looking, equally well-reviewed one that doesn't. I especially appreciate it if the game is in a genre where it's an unexpected thing, like Halo:Reach. It's a game franchise with a dudebro-heavy fandom in a mucho-macho genre, it was nice to have the option, and I think I ended up caring a lot more about my female Six than I have in the past for Master Chief. I also loved that they didn't sex her up-- she looked like a woman super-soldier in power armor probably would look, if such a thing were real. I think it also made the scene where Halsey gives you the shard of Cortana more poignant, three powerful women trying to save humanity.

BTW, it's odd, but I actually find Skyrim to be more immersive than the first Dragon Age or the first Mass Effect (though admittedly I haven't gotten as far through either as I have through Skyrim) because there's less actual dialogue role-playing. I can imagine the conversations that are going on off-screen without having to go through the "oh, I have to choose between three lines I don't like... oh, for crying out... this character would *never* say that!" that Bioware games tend to inflict on me. (I still can't imagine why people don't just smack Shepard. "Tell me everything about your childhood. Stop, I must move on now" Something about the way you end up interrogating everyone you meet over the silliest shit, and then when you exit the conversation, leaving with such a terse response to the person who just laid out their life story gave me serious second-hand embarrassment squick. I stopped playing partly due to irritation with the mechanics and partly because Shepard annoyed the good fuck out of me.) I don't have to role-play everything about my Dovahkiin on-screen, so I can decide why my Redguard was crossing the border when she got caught, and how she'd react to being made some other peoples' mythological hero vs. how my Nord from Kynesgrove feels about it, having grown up on those stories. Sometimes less makes room for more.

 

[Vault101]

[snip**

I get the impression (from that rambling wall of text that I cant decipher) that he was trying to somhow imply the its YOUR fault you feel that way..that its some deep issue you have

its not, what your feeling is perfectly normal, youve played enough games that your seeing the trends and now your bored with it...its not that bloody complcated

we all crave better....beter quality, somthing different that doesnt conform to our preconceptions that have built up through years of playing the same old shit

people like temnar can "wall of text" all the pretentiousness they want, but really thease are not problems to be ignored...

 

[Zannah]

a world where every npc is a statue, waiting for the glorious chosen one to come by and solve all their problems and determine their further fate (Dragon Age Origins, here's looking at you) is utterly hollow, and not in the slightest immersive. This kind of wish-fullfillment is in unfortunately high demand, which makes me question the sanity of other self-proclaimed role-players, but we don't need to go on that tangent.

On the contrary. This is the cheapest and easiest way to arrive at "immersion." It appears you are using the common internet version of "immersion," where the lack of it means "something I don't like." However, whether or not you like it, peopel tend to immerse themselves in those games. This is one of the big reasons for their popularity.

I define Immersion as "providing me with a living, breathing world that could realistically work, and that I can expect to continue beyond the immediate boundaries of the given story". Just like I define food as "a piece of edible sustenance that allows me to counteract starvation". If it became a new fad to eat car-tires garnished with rat-poison, that would not make those tires food anymore then being popular makes those "a jesus is you" games immersive (or for that matter rpgs).

It's just that with the latter, their popularity is more easily explained, even if doing so would probably require an amount of swears that'd get me banned.

 

[TheDoctor455]

As for RPGs... unless there's a specific role-playing reason for me to play one gender over the other... I just flip a coin. Example of a role-playing reason: I only play New Vegas with a female character because I love the irony of a woman dealing death to Caesar's Legion (bonus points for doing him in with a knife). Seriously, the Legion is my most hated faction in that game, closely followed by the Brotherhood of Steel because they keep killing off the Followers of the Apocalypse. Pricks.

I didnt know the brotherhood were at odds with the followers...

but yeah I really HATE the legion and everything they stand for, not only does cearsar have some backwards fucked up veiws on the world but he's a fucking hypocrite....

it did make playing as a woman all the more satidfying...I kind of wish though more attention was brought to your gender

If you kill him, some NPCs will notice the irony.

Ulysses also brings it up... subtly.

And yeah...

if you encourage Veronica to help the Followers... the Brotherhood of Steel massacres the unarmed doctors in Old Mormon Fort. Why? Because they didn't want her spreading her knowledge around.

Also... unless you ally them with the NCR with McNamara alive... and go for the NCR ending... they'll basically turn into a group of raiders with Power Armor.

 

[CleverCover]

Not gonna lie, having the chance to choose my gender highly increases the chances of me playing the game, especially if it's not a platformer or a puzzle.

Played my first fire emblem game because of it, and if the rest have as great a storyline and characters I'm going to go and get the others any way possible.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

As for RPGs... unless there's a specific role-playing reason for me to play one gender over the other... I just flip a coin. Example of a role-playing reason: I only play New Vegas with a female character because I love the irony of a woman dealing death to Caesar's Legion (bonus points for doing him in with a knife). Seriously, the Legion is my most hated faction in that game, closely followed by the Brotherhood of Steel because they keep killing off the Followers of the Apocalypse. Pricks.

I didnt know the brotherhood were at odds with the followers...

but yeah I really HATE the legion and everything they stand for, not only does cearsar have some backwards fucked up veiws on the world but he's a fucking hypocrite....

it did make playing as a woman all the more satidfying...I kind of wish though more attention was brought to your gender

Yeah - about that whole Caesar's legion thing - oy! My fiancé is a trophy hound sometimes and he doesn't have patience/playtime for open world stuff too much so he's always trying to get me to side with Legion and I'm always telling him that makes ZERO sense for a chick to side with a group that enslaves women... and lol yeah. We go round and round on it.

 

[Vault101]

I admit I may have spazzed out there more than nesscary....however..

And this is the problem. Instead of actually having an earnest discussion treating me as an equal you spend the entire time making me out to be some sort of villain which I really do find offensive.

drop the hyperbole....just because I imply that there are certain things you may not understand due to where or coming from...or imply that your misguided at best does not mean I think your a bad person or a bogeyman

[quote/]Especially given the fact that so far I'm the only one who actually has asked questions back at the OP to help her find out if her feelings is a problem or something just self manufactured. In other words, not actually a problem.[/quote]
and this right here is our issue

your eather misunderstanding the OP's position or you honestly belive there is no issue in the variety of charachters in games

she is not having some kind of cirsis..what she is feeling (and what I imagine many people have felt regardless of gender) is NORMAL

its like when you watch enough movies you can begin to pick out the plots, you begin to notice the bad ones...in this case when you play enough games as a boring protagonist (note I said boring and not male) then you get kind of sick of it and crave somthing more

also when you are female and you consume alot of media....you start to notice the dissonance between male and female charachters....and it starts to bug you <-this bit right here is what I suspected you don't get

[quote/]I keep trying to have these honest conversations and try to contribute but it's really hard to actually keep posting constructive posts to help my fellow escapists when at the end of the day I'm made out into a villain and not seen as what I really am. At the end of the day just another hobbyist of video games.[/quote]
that right there looks like your not ackoweleging counter arguments and jumping on the victim train, and constructive? well one thing you can try to do is make your points more clear and not try and drown us in walls of text

[quote/]This is why most discussion here stops being constructive. Instead of asking questions back to try and bring some clarity it is more often than not that a fellow escapist would rather infer their own emotions into what they read and respond with this destructive attitude preventing any sort of actual constructive conversation from happening.[/quote]"contructive" does not mean that same as "people agreeing with me"

[quote/]It stops being about gaining an understanding of your fellow man and more about how one's ideology is more important than anyone else who shares the hobby of video games.[/quote]
IT WOULD JUST BE BETTER IF EVERYONE AGREE WITH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

thats what I'm reading there

 

[Cheesepower5]

As a white, brown-haired man, I shouldn't find much to complain about for PCs in games. And yet, I still feel a little gimped every time I'm rolling around as the shortest dude on the crew. Can anyone remind me why my human male Warden is noticably shorter than Alistair?

That said, if a game makes my digital self have darker skin pigments, thinner hair, female genitalia or whatever, I don't really mind. As long as I'm tall, dammit!

 

[Vault101]

As a white, brown-haired man, I shouldn't find much to complain about for PCs in games. And yet, I still feel a little gimped every time I'm rolling around as the shortest dude on the crew. Can anyone remind me why my human male Warden is noticably shorter than Alistair?
!

huh...thats interesting
usually its the other way round...female shepard and the female boss from saints row are noticibly tall (for obvious reasons)

mabye its a similar thing there

 

[Amanda Diamond]

I'll admit that open world games that don't give me the option of playing through as a female character are less appealing to me. I can still be enticed into playing a game with a male-protagonist, but games that have female protagonists do tend to interest me more, because they are considerably rarer. Really looking forward to Remember Me, and the Anima game.


Consider Borderlands, I like that game, but why can't I create my own character? It's not as though the vault hunters in their current iterations are that central to the plot. It kinda sucks that you only get 1 option if you want to play a girl.(DLC doesn't count)

 

[Cheesepower5]

As a white, brown-haired man, I shouldn't find much to complain about for PCs in games. And yet, I still feel a little gimped every time I'm rolling around as the shortest dude on the crew. Can anyone remind me why my human male Warden is noticably shorter than Alistair?
!

huh...thats interesting
usually its the other way round...female shepard and the female boss from saints row are noticibly tall (for obvious reasons)

mabye its a similar thing there

I recall having a height slider in Saint's Row II (I actually made my guy exactly like me or so I thought), you sure you didn't just make your gal really tall in The Third?

It's mostly JRPGs where that happens like the Hero compared to Angelo in Dragon Quest VIII or the MC in Persona 3. I love the games to death, but it's always like "I'm supposed to identify with this squirt!?" The Nord and Breton males also seemed shorter than their female counterparts, oddly enough. Humans of either gender in WoW, I thought, were too short compared to other races as well.

I'm kind of losing the point here... I guess I'm saying, while I enjoy branching out into whatever gender (or lack thereof)in games, I can still relate to being turned off by some ultimately pointless aesthetic or plot difference, and not completely understanding why. And I really don't blame you or TC at all, you probably have to go looking to find many games with female protagonists as it is, and if you're mostly into shooters or something, well...

 

[Jayemsal]

It usually does turn me off of a game when I do not have the option of a female protagonist, especially in cases such as The Witcher and..... *retch* God of War.

Sometimes I can manage to wade through it if the story and gameplay are good enough, but that occurs rarely if at all.

 

[captnb2thep]

To the women contributing to this thread that self-identify as feminists: I noticed some mentions of Tomb Raider. Does the sexualization of female protagonists in video games, no matter how badass, turn anyone off?

There has been much use of the term "torture porn" in regards to the new Tomb Raider, and even though she doesn't have triple D polygon breasts in the reboot like the old ones, some of the camera angles and situations in the game have seemed a little "in bad taste" to people I have talked to.

Some games like Bayonetta sexualize the protagonist sort of ironically, in spite of itself, since that game is very over the top and downright goofy at times.

A good example of a strong playable female protagonist who is attractive but not really sexualized at all in my opinion is Lightning from FFXIII. She is strictly no nonsense and is all about the ass-kicking business and does it well.

Thoughts on any of this?

 

[Vladimir Stamenov]

Heck, I'm a guy and if I have a choice I play a female character, even if it's purely cosmetic. It's more aesthetically appealing and in RPGs gives a different perspective if they are well written. I played The Longest Journey and Dreamfall just recently, and April Ryan from TLJ has become my alltime favourite character in a video game. Most characters, female or not, are living power fantasies. I'm not one to not like a "cool" or "badass" character, but it's just most of them are like this, and they get no development. And I actually haven't played anything newer than 2008 and still feel like this because even old games are full of such tropes. Zoe Castillo didn't get that much development either, but was instantly more likeable than most characters I've seen in gameplay videos form recnt games. That's why I instantly pledged $28 for the Torment Kickstarter. When/if I get accepted in the uni where I want to study and buy a laptop, I want to be able to play a game with real characters. Though I'll gladly go through the AAAs I've missed out on.
And I don't get the attitud against playing as women. Some friends of mine from my class were saying that I just CAN'T play as a female Sheppard when I finally get my hands on Mass Effect. Dafuq?! Anyone with this kind of opinion can go fuck themself with a cactus.