Should Every Game Allow You to Choose Your Gender?

[kaocrat]

I think the modern decoupling of sex and gender as separate things provides an opportunity to implement gender options in the laziest way possible. If you are a developer, just add a "male/female" selection option when the game starts, and then don't bother changing anything about the character design or game mechanics other than swapping the pronouns in any dialogue that comes up. Anyone who criticizes this is just a gender-essentializing misogynist who wants to enforce the "Ms. Male Character Trope".

Half the characters in games are goofy abstract cartoon characters or people fully encased in elaborate armor, so in most cases it's not like you can tell their gender by looking at them anyway. This works especially well for older games - you don't even have to put a bow on PacMan to make her into Ms. PacMan.

Narrative-driven, cutscene-heavy games are exempt from this, of course, because these games are actually movies.

 

[Mikeyfell]

My favorite game that lets you choose the gender of your character is Oblivion. because the males and female characters had different starting stats.

They took that out in Skyrim.
I mean that seems like a no-brainer doesn't it?
But NOOOOOO the way to "properly" acknowledge the gender divide is to make men and women completely identical and interchangeable.

 

[mrdude2010]

Well put. I think there are some games that absolutely reinforce misogynistic societal tendencies (see: GTA using hookers to get your life back, then killing them and stealing your money. That's a bit over the top), but at the same time, sometimes you have to show nasty, negative, things to get your point across. I remember either Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn bitching about the strip club level in Hitman: Absolution when its entire content painted the strippers as unfortunate, sympathetic, characters, and your target as a sleazy scumbag you should have no problem killing by the time you get to him. Sure it was nasty, but strip clubs are nasty things, and it's one of the quickest ways to establish what they wanted to establish. Even the male audience members watching the show have the group AI of a bunch of pigs.

 

[mrdude2010]

"Feminists in gaming." Not "women." I never said "women." I'm a feminist in gaming, and I'm not a woman.

I misread that. I'm for equality as a man, not feminism. Don't understand why any man would further feminism, be a feminist or want any of it to have anything to do with games and gaming.

Ed. What is the strawman representation of feminists?

Feminists want equality too. You see a lot of people misrepresent feminism as some kind of hideous, anti-men, extremist, position and use that representation to automatically dismiss any woman who describes herself as a feminist pointing that maybe women shouldn't be making 3/4 or what men make for the same work. Instead of actually addressing feminism or a feminist's point, they come up with an easily attackable stereotype to beat up instead (as in, you go and fight the straw man instead of the actual man). Basically, what feminism is and what misogynists/MRA's tell you feminism is are vastly different things.

 

[flying_whimsy]

Well written, well thought out, balanced, and not the least bit snarky. Too bad not all of the games media could be like this. /snark

Sometimes I think the cry for more diversity by simply switching genders isn't just about what's between a character's legs, but more about what that would imply about the story. Take the outrage over the next Assassin's Creed (please, because I'm sick of it), I think there's an underlying desire to see more about the role women played in the french revolution and that desire would be easily met and any doubts reassured simply by including more female options (even in multiplayer as it would show the devs are thinking about it). I do agree that there's more to it than simply switching out the character skins, though. I typically play as female characters simply because I play games more as an escapist fantasy than a self-representative one, and I like the idea of gaining a different perspective.

I once asked in the forums about what would constitute a female power fantasy as I have never seen one that was made by women. The responses I got were largely "I don't know" from women and "it'd be just like a male power fantasy" from men. I would honestly like to see one.

 

[unspokenkibbles]

I've been reading quite a bit on this subject lately, and I'm glad Yahtzee's decided to weigh in on it. He always brings an utterly unique perspective, and as he says here greater diversity of perspective is almost inherently noble. While I don't completely agree (my views tend a little more toward the "affirmative action" side when it comes to addressing this issue), I certainly appreciate his arguments and believe he brings up a good point: creativity and verve is something the industry desperately needs. While it's there, especially in the indie game scene, it needs more of a push in other arenas, particularly AAA development. That said, I doubt that's likely to happen, as "risk" is a four-letter word for big corporations.

 

[Ruisu]

For fuck sake, thanks for the article. Those are my though exactly on this whole matter, if anything I'm a bit less engaged in it.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Telltales the Walking Dead series.

Also: "Elite Force even named both characters Alex just so they wouldn't have to do two versions of all the NPCs' lines."
Oh yeah, I laughed at how cheap that was, then ignored it to revel at the actual voices of most of the actors (Yes, Captain! Blow everything with a pulse of some kind to mulch!".

 

[Rutskarn]

"Feminists in gaming." Not "women." I never said "women." I'm a feminist in gaming, and I'm not a woman.

I misread that. I'm for equality as a man, not feminism. Don't understand why any man would further feminism, be a feminist or want any of it to have anything to do with games and gaming.

Ed. What is the strawman representation of feminists?

Let's start with "the patriarchy," which does not mean what a lot of people assume it does. It's a complex topic, and from a historical and anthropological perspective, its existence isn't really up for debate. It's a means of structuring society propagated by prehistorical tribal conflicts that persists through socialization.

It's not a conspiracy. Nobody besides crazy conspiracy theorists think it's a conspiracy. It *does* lead to unconscious collusion between men against women, which honestly isn't hard to spot when you're looking for it, and it leads to unconscious collusion of women against men. It creates a system of sexual antagonism that hurts men and women both.

Unfortunately--and I refuse to ignore this part--the system as it is constructed hurts women a fuck of a lot more than it hurts men.

I don't identify as "egalitarian" because that term is disingenuous in a way that really feels like I'm trying to cover my own asshole. A informed reflection on the history of the movement that isn't content to stop at the scum of lunatics on tumblr proves that feminism *is* egalitarianism. You can't look at a handful of self-identifying bad eggs pushing for supremacy in the face of a system where the other side already has supremacy and decide feminism is all a supremacist movement.

As far as "mind the company you keep," I find that self-identified "egalitarians" don't often know as much about the issues. The label is taken as a knee-jerk response to a perceived threat, not education on social inequalities. "What, I'm being sexist? No, I'm for equality! Look!" Of course that person's for equality. They just don't know where it doesn't exist, and they don't want to confront that issue because they take it as a personal assault.

You want to know why a man would be feminist? Besides basic empathy and desire for a stable and equal system, <url=http://mic.com/articles/88277/23-ways-feminism-has-made-the-world-a-better-place-for-men>here's twenty-three good things feminism has done for men.

 

[clinicalPsychologist]

I once asked in the forums about what would constitute a female power fantasy as I have never seen one that was made by women. The responses I got were largely "I don't know" from women and "it'd be just like a male power fantasy" from men. I would honestly like to see one.

I once saw an argument about that maybe magical girls can be seen as a type of female power fantasy.
It was actually a feminist blog and I actually kind of agree. At least they don't get typically male traits to kick ass. They are not afraid of the feminine. They come in different tastes (e.g. Sailor Moon: The clumsy one, the beautiful one, the smart one, the tomboyish one, the motherly one, and so on) of "feminine" traits.
But yeah, the super hero and magical girls are actually extremes on a kind of spectrum. I think most power fantasies probably are more realistic if they were more neutral (as in having both female and male traits instead of having no traits).

Like... let's look at Peetah from Hunger Games. He is very strong (mostly associated with masculinity) and also very artsy and caring (mostly associated with feminity). He can have both and be strong because of that. I'd like to see that more. People just being people!

Edit: for perspective, I'm a woman

 

[Casual Shinji]

A large part of what made Portal work is that both characters were women. Portal 2's fat jokes wouldn't have carried nearly the same weight if Chell had been a dude, because guys are generally seen as not being as insecure about that sort of thing, regardless of the societal reasons for that. In The Walking Dead, Lee and Clementine both need their genders, because a father-daughter relationship is very different from any other parent-child gender combination.

Really?! Because to me the fact that Chell was a woman added nothing at all. Not that it should have, but it always kind of puzzles me when people bring her up in these kinds of discussions since you wouldn't even have known her gender if you didn't catch glimpses of her through the portals. She doesn't get adressed as a woman in any way in the first game, and as for the fat jokes in Portal 2, that's just GlaDOS using generic insults which she thinks will hurt because she doesn't understand emotions. Though Portal 2 got a bit too cute with itself anyway.

 

[Thanatos2k]

If you want your main character to be bland, have little personality, and sabotage the narrative of your game - by all means let the player choose the gender.

Only Mass Effect has been able to have a strong customizable character, and that's due to both good writing and excellent voice acting. No other game comes close.

If it's a game that's more about the content than the story like Skyrim then a blank customizable character is fine. But if you want your game to be narrative driven, a customizable character sabotages this goal.

Better to have a game like The Witcher where your character is already a character and then they let you choose stuff than a game where the main character is so characterless that even their gender can be switched without any impact to the story.

Also Yahztee, you got DANGEROUSLY close to addressing Gamergate!

 

[Elberik]

This reminded me of his previous article about hating companies for the right reasons http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/11859-If-You-Are-Going-to-Hate-on-a-Game-Company-Do-It-For-the-Right-R

I love these little bubbles of sanity!

 

[DrOswald]

If you want your main character to be bland, have little personality, and sabotage the narrative of your game - by all means let the player choose the gender.

Only Mass Effect has been able to have a strong customizable character, and that's due to both good writing and excellent voice acting. No other game comes close.

If it's a game that's more about the content than the story like Skyrim then a blank customizable character is fine. But if you want your game to be narrative driven, a customizable character sabotages this goal.

Better to have a game like The Witcher where your character is already a character and then they let you choose stuff than a game where the main character is so characterless that even their gender can be switched without any impact to the story.

Also Yahztee, you got DANGEROUSLY close to addressing Gamergate!

Clearly someone's never played Saints Row...

The Saints Row main character is pretty damned bland. It works, but the main character is by far the least interesting character in saints row, being more of a blank slate for the other more interesting characters to play off of. You can give them personality, but that personality does not fit into the actual game in any meaningful way. It is a smoke screen, but a damn good one. It works and it works well, but that doesn't mean Saints Row has an interesting main character.

 

[Wulfram77]

I feel like this is mostly arguing against a strawman. I don't think a meaningful amount of people think every game should be allow you to choose your gender. AC:U got people annoyed because it's co-op focused, and Ubisoft gave a stupid excuse initially.

I don't think having a male protagonist is particularly an issue of misogyny or sexism, though it can make some misogynistic tropes an easy option for the lazy developer.

 

[nuclearday]

I feel like it's never a good idea to make sweeping generalizations. "All" is a pretty strong term, and I'd be suspiscious of anyone wanting "all" of anything to be a certain way (sounds like it'd make for a pretty boring world.)

Kind of wary of discussions that use the word "should," come to think of it (because then we're getting into Platonic Ideals and dictating over-arching conditions without respect to context and nuance.)

I feel like most people would be in agreement that it depends on the specific game. If we're talking about an RPG where the point is to customize your hero and have the world react to your decisions then I'd say it kind of just fits that you'd be able to choose your gender. Even beyond equality's-sake, sometimes it's just fun to play as a character different from you anyway. But I feel like we're kind of to a point where that's the expectation for those games anyway - off the top of my head I can't think of any recent games like that which don't offer you a choice.

But if you're making a story about a specific character, then gender is going to be a part of that specific character's identity anyway. I certainly would never suggest that in The Witcher there's any need for the player to choose whether Geralt is a man or a woman - he's a specific character and one of his traits is that he has a penis.

Would a representative ratio of women to men characters in videogames be a good thing? I would say... probably? I don't think a developer going "well, our last game had a white male protagonist so our next game needs to be about a latino woman" is a goal to strive for, personally. I think that would feel like pandering, as would injecting arbitrary ratios of characters for no better reason.

From a quantity angle, I believe it really comes down to having a wider variety of developers from different backgrounds and points of view. I'm a white male, I like to think I have some depth of character. If I were a game developer I'd like to think I would try to be sensitive to social issues and portrayal of all manner of people in my games - but if we're making a game about the plight of a black woman, then I'm probably not the man for the job anyway. I'm going to make a story that's personal to me, with characters I feel I can write about without being pandering.

But I tend to focus on quality over quantity anyway. There's too much of a focus on the existential state of these buzz-words, whether or not they're present in any particular game, and then placing a value judgement on said game without regard to nuance or context or presentation. At least that's how I see it.

Really I think it boils down to - how a character treats another character in a game is not the same thing as how the writer treats that character within the game.

And of course let's not forget that there's a difference between talking about forests and trees. I can make an observation about the overall character of a forest, and generalized patterns and traits about the forest as a whole, but those observations don't innately apply to each tree individually.

If I'm looking out at a forest on the horizon, maybe I can see that it doesn't look totally healthy. I can then assume that if I go down and inspect each tree will find unhealthy ones, but it doesn't mean every tree in that forest is unhealthy. To make that call I would have to individually inspect every tree in the forest.