Petition Demands Female Jarheads in Aliens: Colonial Marines

[MetalMagpie]

aside form the fact that every game should have female avatars for MP...

Any particular reason why?

Any particular reason why not?

No particular reason why not. Just as there's no particular reason why all multiplayer games shouldn't include avatars for every major ethnic group, all readily recognisable "body types", someone with dwarfism, someone in a wheelchair, etc.

There are a lot of different avatar options that multiplayer games could offer. Why is gender the particular one that you think every multiplayer game should include? What's so important about having the choice of which gender your avatar is?

because almost half the worlds is female.
that and the option to determine the color of your skin should do a good enough job of shaping your avatar into something that looks remotely like you since that kinda thing is important to a lot of people playing MP
unless of course your game is set in a historic setting that makes the presence of female character implausible.

oh and dawrfism and people in wheelchairs are really not fair since their head will not be at the expected height and thus will ruin my headshot/miss quota.

My question is why is making your avatar look like you important? I don't hear anyone complaining that they don't look like the characters in Team Fortress 2.

Besides the fact that just giving a character the same gender and skin colour is still such a hilariously long way from actually making it look like anyone in particular. Body shape is arguably far more visually striking than ethnicity (especially if you're very fat) and ethnicity affects far more than just skin colour anyway.

I realise there are games (especially RPGs) where part of the appeal comes from creating an idealised version of yourself to kill dragons, have sex with hot women, and all the others things you can't do in real life. But I think it's a bit strong to suggest that every game with multiplayer should offer this.

 

[teebeeohh]

What's so important about having the choice of which gender your avatar is?

because almost half the worlds is female.
that and the option to determine the color of your skin should do a good enough job of shaping your avatar into something that looks remotely like you since that kinda thing is important to a lot of people playing MP
unless of course your game is set in a historic setting that makes the presence of female character implausible.

oh and dawrfism and people in wheelchairs are really not fair since their head will not be at the expected height and thus will ruin my headshot/miss quota.

My question is why is making your avatar look like you important? I don't hear anyone complaining that they don't look like the characters in Team Fortress 2.

Besides the fact that just giving a character the same gender and skin colour is still such a hilariously long way from actually making it look like anyone in particular. Body shape is arguably far more visually striking than ethnicity (especially if you're very fat) and ethnicity affects far more than just skin colour anyway.

I realise there are games (especially RPGs) where part of the appeal comes from creating an idealised version of yourself to kill dragons, have sex with hot women, and all the others things you can't do in real life. But I think it's a bit strong to suggest that every game with multiplayer should offer this.

your question was why including female models was so important.
personally i really don't care what my avatar looks like and if he looks like me but i know a lot of people who do, thus making female models important.
and tf2 is a bad example because it doesn't try to emulate reality but deliberately looks like something you will most likely never see in the real world. So the characters will never look like you and most people will be fine with that, especially since the character design in tf2 was done so all nine classes are easy to identify when you spot them. but if you throw in customization you do it to give people the option to make characters look like them (unless you can only repaint the power armor, that doesn't count) and in that case why would you exclude half the worlds population?

again: when i said every game should include female models i meant every game that lets you change the appearance of your avatar independent of it's abilities and is not set in a scenario where females would not be plausible (historic settings, all avatars you being robots, that kinda thing)

 

[knight steel]

Well that seems weird considering the source material but really at this point in time will this achevie anything!

 

[Callate]

I'm not generally a fan of making demands of game developers (or of internet petitions, for that matter) but if the plan is to make customizable characters for online play, then why not include women too? It seems like kind of a no-brainer given the subject material, and it actually has me wondering if maybe there was a misunderstanding somewhere along the line. After all, if females were rocking smartguns and driving dropships 25 years ago, why would Gearbox exclude them now?

Recognizing these were probably intended as rhetorical questions, I still have to give a real answer: probably, cost.

We've come a long way since it was considered acceptable form to slap a blocky "female" skin on a low-poly male model and maybe have a random woman on the company's staff record a couple of grunts and screams. In some cases, it might require both new voice acting and new motion capture sessions with one or more new actresses. I would not be surprised to find that Gearbox simply decided it was a feature that wouldn't be missed, and not one worth the additional time, money, and energy versus the amount of players who would truly appreciate the feature. (As someone who's published a couple of small games, I have to confess there are few time sinks more irritating than the ones that you sense players will only notice in their absence!)

Now, this is not to say they were correct in their assessment. I tend to agree with "Melissa K." that female marines are worth including, as strong females have always been a significant part of the world as presented. I just want to be clear that I doubt it was merely an "oops, we forgot, too late now" kind of decision.

 

[Mandalore_15]

I can see her point, but anything that's going to delay the game further can fuck off as far as I'm concerned...