Rumor: Activision Doesn't Think Female Leads Can Sell Games

pyrus7

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Mar 16, 2010
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I like how people state Lara Croft and Bayonetta as excellent female boobs lead characters, where if Activision games had similar characters they would be blamed for pandering to the lowest common denominator (not to mention blaming Activision for being sexist while putting Lara Croft on a pedestal).
 

theriddlen

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I'd love to see a woman on the cover of next Modern Warfare (or maybe Modern Duty : Call Of Honor made by infinity ward members in EA). You know, in all the military gear. And also, as the game's main character.

Why are females are usually not good main characters? Because it's hard to make good female character. But not impossible.
 

Haydyn

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The interesting part of all this is that a sexy female lead can make an okay game sell great. In the end it just can't make a great game sell amazing that easily. It could be that developers rely on sexy females to make up for other faults in the game. I'm still ashamed to say this, but at the same time I find it amusing: I wanted to buy XBlades the first time I saw it on display based soley on the cover.

The correct way to utilize this is make a game that would do great with a male lead, but replace him with a sexy female lead. Imagine how much better GTA4 would have done had Nico been a fun loving Latina instead of a gritty depressing middle age male Russian, on top of it's already amazing sales.
 

UnravThreads

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The3rdEye said:
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you for the most part, but to be fair it can be argued that a considerable portion of the Tomb Raider fame had more to do with the ladies strapped to Lara rather than Lara herself, and I'm not talking about pistols. (As [user]AcacianLeaves[/user] so vividly demonstrates above me)
Well, I think that's two arguments in one. At first, sure, I would agree that Lara's assets helped to rocket her to success, but if you look at Legend and above (So Anniversary and Underworld), whilst she's still retained her femininity, she's been toned down a lot. Yes, her busom is still somewhat large, but she's a more realistic character now, and if anything, the latest 3 games prove that you can have a strong female lead character in a decent game.

Tomb Raider wouldn't have lasted so long if the sales were due to that. X-Blades, Sudeki - Two games with scantily clad female characters, yet they're "dead" franchises already, after just one release each.
 

The_ModeRazor

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Ahem. Lara Croft you fucking morons at Activision.
Actually, I think it would be funny if a plot twist in an FPS revelaed that your character is actually female :D
 

Capt. Crankypants

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Really? Do we HAVE to do this?
Ergh. Having a female lead for the sake of having a female lead is a retarded concept. On a broad scale, I don't mind feminism or racial equality. What I DO mind is blatant feminism or racial equality for the sake of it. Forcing a female lead into an uncomfortable character will always be disastrous. Like putting a grizzled male lead into the next 'My Pony Ranch' game or whatever. Sure guys can ride ponies if they want, but everyone can feel that it just doesn't belong.

There are plenty of games that have a female lead with a story and personality that suits her. Perfect dark, Metroid, and alot that other people have mentioned. These games revolve quite well around the female and her story. You know what worked REALLY well? Saints Row. It didnt matter which gender you chose, somehow it just worked. The chicks were as sadistic and deranged and badass as the blokes.

I can't see them pulling that off in something like CoD. Frontline toe-to-toe warfare is extremely comfortable with a male lead, and you don't NEED a female there, you can always present us with an interesting character and story without changing the gender or race. And they make sure to shoe-horn in some female appearances there anyway, ala the chopper pilot in CoD4. But thats okay, it still felt right.

The best way to deal with it is to have a choice. Saints Row. Fable II. Oblivion. Fallout 3. Everyone is happy.

(Waiting for the release of a 'bayonetta-esque' game with a female target audience, where you are forced to play as a gimp.)

(...Or a game with a very unattractive lead character. Like an obese man or woman with a GIANT nose and massive ears. THEN we can start talking about 'equality')
 

Low Key

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What I don't get is why they don't allow players to choose between a male or female. Change the sprite and throw in a couple hours of dialog, and bam, you now have a female character.
 

Eruanno

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Aug 14, 2008
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Uuuuhhhm, what about the coolest villain in very recent memory, Sarah Louise Kerrigan, otherwise known as the Queen of Blades? One of my favorite most badass anti-heroes ever?

Activision, you're very, very strange. Also, I cannot fathom playing through Mass Effect with anything but a female Shepard, because the male voice actor (and all the male models) make me want to puke a little (yes, I know ME is published by EA).
 

Aardvark Soup

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If this is true and I worked in that development team I would immediately quit. Not just because of Activision's idotic sexism but also because they apperantly want to surpress the slightest bit of developper creativity in favour of making bland rip-offs of whatever is popular at the moment.
 

lijenstina

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Jun 18, 2008
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Yeah first thing you do when making a game is market research.

"Hey kiddo do you like games?"
"Yes sir. I like that with big explosions and aliens"
"To the drawing board! Before someone steals this original idea!"
 

Vrex360

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Mar 2, 2009
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While I do have to admit that I find this whole idea very sexist and offensive to women I have to also admit that there is a bit of truth in it too.
A bit.

You see I have noticed a common trend that when we imagine an action hero in a game, it is almost always male and when we do add a female to the mix we often do a complete swap from big and muscular to sleek and sexy and there's something very wrong about someone who is sleek and sexy going into a battlefield and it's hard to take her seriously as a character.

I have more respect for people who go the extra mile to make female characters look 'real' instead of ideal fantasies of female characters but at the same time part of the problem was never the 'looks' in the first place. Rather I think it was the way they get characterized or to be more precise how gamers respond to how they get characterized.

Yahtzee pointed it out already in his article 'on female protagonists' that often when we try to make a toughened female character the only way we know how to do that is make her really, really unpleasant. However recently I've given a bit of thought to this and while I admit I find myself agreeing with a lot of Yahtzee's points there is one other point that I and my sister actually discussed a bit recently.
Males seem to have difficulty accepting female characters in roles that are usually reserved for men. Let me try and explain...

To me personally one of the best female characters in gaming is Ashley Williams from Mass Effect, but I would have no difficulty finding people who disagree with me. Now subtracting all the ideas of 'racism' and 'religious fanaticism' (both complaints I totally think are full of shit I might add) and you'll find that a lot of people find her tough girl demeanor to be annoying.
But here's the funny thing, Ashley is in almost every sense of the word, a direct clone of the Ash J. Williams from the Evil Dead Trilogy.
Both are skilled in combat, both spout out macho one liners, both have an angry and aggressive attitude and a cynical personality and both can show that they actually can be sensitive under all that.
From where I stand if Ashley from Mass Effect is annoying then so too should Ash J. Williams be considered... but he isn't. He is worshiped for a lot of the things that Ashley of Mass Effect is hated for.
Ash does it and he's a badass, Ashley does it and she's a *****. I never got that.
That said I acknowledge that Army of Darkness was much campier than Mass Effect was so that could be considered the reason though I still think I have at least a bit of a valid point here.

Then I see who the most popular female character is in Mass Effect and it is Tali who is admittedly a very charming sweet sort of person but of whom ultimately only comes across as strong in a few distinct scenes and then spends the rest of her time being almost a lapdog to Commander Shepard (if romanced) and just sort of becomes a damsel in distress figure, which kind of annoyed me a bit.
But Tali's role was undeniably a 'female-centric' role, hence why people might have had more ease accepting her as the lead lady of the franchise and enjoyed condemning Ashley in the process to having to sit on the sidelines.
(I mean no offense to any Tali fans out there... please don't burn me)

This role demand in female characters in side roles might also explain why main female protagonists are also judged as 'bitchy'.
I actually think, if we look back, a lot of the hated 'bitches' of gaming would have been much more popular if they had been male. Let me give an example here, Rubi in Wet is a selfish, greedy, violent, nasty sociopath who laughs at the horror she inflicts on the world and ridicules it in the process.
And yet, so does the male protagonist in Saint's Row 2 and if you play as him, typically he's quite popular and considered awesome. In fact a lot of the great male 'badass' characters have had pallet swaps into the realm of the female perspective and a lot of the time when facing the exact same character but with different genders it tends to get bad press. When a man is badass and tough and doesn't show emotion we love him, if a woman does it, especially without being in a bikini the whole time, we call her a *****.
This also works in reverse, a lot of the male characters who are shown to be soft, flawed and kind and open with their emotions are often instantly hated by gamers and referred to as 'fags'.
(see: Kaidan Alenko)

It just seems like a lot of gaming culture is transfixed on set gender roles and often we only realize how irritating and stupid the 'toughened emotionless hero' really is when we see it played out in the opposite gender and out of its usual comfort zone.

I mean yes, you can argue the case for characters like Lara Croft and Samus Aran but remember that Lara has been a sex symbol essentially throughout her career and that Samus spends most of her time without a voice, trapped in a suit or armor that makes her not only not resemble a woman but also barely resemble a human being and once she gets out of that suit... we all know what she looks like then and it's a nerd's wet dream.

Even characters like Alyx Vance have the problem of being too emotionally likable and the uneasy feeling that we are idealizing the 'perfect female protagonist' to just be surrogate girlfriend figure, but still at least with Alyx they still give her a real personality and purpose even if she still undeniably conforms to a female stereotype.

That said, while I can sort of understand the reasoning why female characters might not be as readily accepted as males in the traditional action game setting but that's still no excuse not to try. Maybe if there are some more games with great intense game play that use an ordinary female character who is strong but flawed and under her tough attitude lies a soft spot that we learn about and grow to like as the story progresses similar to the typical roles of males.

Or better yet just abolish the idea of male and female role types in games altogether and just come up with the idea of multiple protagonists that can be tough or sensitive regardless of gender.

That said, to suggest that female leads can't sell games is just plain stupid. Even the big breasted ones that I don't approve of are evidence that girls sell games, we just need to know how to better characterize female characters.
 

Premonition

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Jan 25, 2010
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The world needs more characters like Jade and Lightning. Activision are idiots if these rumors are true.
 

The DSM

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Activision are too busy making Fratboy shooters to worry about female leads as it might lose them some of that giant money pit Kotick is making

Also, Samus and Lara Croft say hi from there gold plated helicopters from the money they got from the games that "Didnt sell".
 

More Fun To Compute

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Us nerds really like our strong female leads. If you read a certain type of modern adult Science Fiction novel, since that is still a haven for nerds, then I guess that there is a good chance that at least one of the protagonists will be a woman.

The problem is no doubt with the marketing obsession with zeroing in on the tastes of younger teen "alpha males." They don't call it crass commercialism for nothing.
 

laggyteabag

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I don't know where Activision get this Sexist bull-crap, I don't mind if the main Character is a female, I'm not saying stop making every game with a male lead and change it into a woman I'm just saying mix it up a bit...
 

Trilaanus

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Still waiting for my transgendered main character here. Enter the future, people!

I say develop one with an MtF to start, then an FtM later.