So that whole "female main characters don't sell" bullshit

[Casual Shinji]

My concern with a female protagonist in a Houser game is that she'd be even more unlikable than the males. Almost every woman in GTA IV and V is abrasive, weak or a burden.

Yeah, I don't really know what shifted in Dan Houser between Red Dead Redemption and GTA5, but it certainly had an impact on the characters. Not that I care much at all for RDR, but the characters (just like in GTA4) showed some empathy and sincirity at least.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Whether a game does well or not with a female protagonist, is ultimately irrelevant. It's a question of sales vs the same/similar games with a male protagonist. Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't prove anything. There are stats that clearly demonstrate that male led games outsell female led games by large margins and that gamers on the whole prefer to play as males. While the choice is certainly welcome and reviews tend to be favourable, they don't reflect in sales. The question is how much Horizon Zero Dawn would've sold given a male protagonist, instead of a female one. While it's moot since it cannot be answered, stats demonstrate sales trends.

Gamers are still predominantly male, and male gamers tend to play male characters, given the choice. Female protagonists appeal to fewer gamers, so making a game with one is to aim at a smaller potential market. Right or wrong, the industry bases these decisions on hard facts. You can be assured if female protagonists outsold males, they would dominate the market as assuredly as male protagonists do now. Capitalism gives no s**ts about gender.

 

[Trunkage]

This is the first time I hear about this, I've never seen or heard anyone say that the gender of the main character matters much (except for bcell, but, you know.).

I cant tell if your being serious or not.

I remember having discussion during the middle of 2014 - you know the one where some people claimed that if there were more female protagonist then there would be less games for male protagonist. All these stats were given about how only male lead games sold. Also, you shouldn't cater to SJWs

 

[The Lunatic]

If women don't buy games featuring male leads, and thus we need to add more female leads, would it be all that surprising if men didn't buy games featuring female leads?

I can't say I'm really bothered myself, I played Nier, and enjoyed it, the fact that 2B is (One of) the playable protagonists didn't affect my decision to buy it in any way.

However, if we're going to argue that games need more female representation, as playing male characters isn't something they want to do, we have to accept the inverse is true too.

 

[Phasmal]

So, there should be more Female protagonists to support increasing Female Gamers, but if Male Gamers would play less that would be weak?

Do you see how this makes no sense?

I didn't say play less, I said stop playing.
I think more female protagonists would help some women into games and I don't think it would scare dudes off of playing games. I think that makes perfect sense.
Also the joke was that I've played games literally forever and there's never been that many female protagonists so if a few more female protags scared off the gamer dudes, yeah I'd think that was kind of lame.

 

[Elijin]

So, there should be more Female protagonists to support increasing Female Gamers, but if Male Gamers would play less that would be weak?

Do you see how this makes no sense?

I didn't say play less, I said stop playing.
I think more female protagonists would help some women into games and I don't think it would scare dudes off of playing games. I think that makes perfect sense.
Also the joke was that I've played games literally forever and there's never been that many female protagonists so if a few more female protags scared off the gamer dudes, yeah I'd think that was kind of lame.

I think he's trying to make a point of saying that this implies for females to get into gaming, they need to be represented. But if representation of guys went down, and player numbers dropped respectively, that would be 'weak', is a bit of a double standard.

IE "Why is it okay for girls to be disinterested based on the gender of the lead, but not guys."

Which, oversimplifies the issue significantly, but people like to catch out technicalities on these sorts of issues as if pointing them out negates the topic or something.

 

[Phasmal]

I think he's trying to make a point of saying that this implies for females to get into gaming, they need to be represented. But if representation of guys went down, and player numbers dropped respectively, that would be 'weak', is a bit of a double standard.

IE "Why is it okay for girls to be disinterested based on the gender of the lead, but not guys."

Which, oversimplifies the issue significantly, but people like to catch out technicalities on these sorts of issues as if pointing them out negates the topic or something.

Yeah but I'm not saying dudes can't get disinterested in a game due to the gender of the lead, if you don't wanna play as a girl then that's fine. I'm saying it's less likely to put dudes off entering gaming that a couple games have female protags but women are more likely to be put off because of the massive number of dude protagonists, coupled with the social perception of games as a "guy thing". A relatable female character or two can do a lot to counter that in the eyes of someone who is just getting into games, in my opinion.

My criticism of your post doesn't stem from lack of understanding it. I just think you hold a double-standard and I disagree with you that more female protags will accomplish much of anything. You are a perfect example. Like you said, male protags certainly didn't stop you from playing, so why again is it apparentlly stopping all the other ladies? And why again is it ok for them to have such hang-ups but not male gamers?

See above.
I was never discouraged from gaming and didn't know it was considered a male hobby until I was at least 10, and by then I'd been playing video games for longer than I could remember. I think it would help some women with the initial hurdle of entering gaming and I think that men have a massive backlog of male characters.

If we still disagree, well that's a darn shame but I can live with it. It's all opinions at the end of the day.

 

[Elijin]

Yeah but I'm not saying dudes can't get disinterested in a game due to the gender of the lead, if you don't wanna play as a girl then that's fine. I'm saying it's less likely to put dudes off entering gaming that a couple games have female protags but women are more likely to be put off because of the massive number of dude protagonists, coupled with the social perception of games as a "guy thing". A relatable female character or two can do a lot to counter that in the eyes of someone who is just getting into games, in my opinion.

I do not disagree with you. Was just clarifying that he was going for the 'well technically ' to undercut the issue. People have a habit of being pedantic about equality when it comes to these sorts of discussions. 'Guys cant stop playing for less of them represented, but girls can?1!'. Its more about girls not starting in the first place because it was traditionally seen as a 'boy activity', and helping to break down barriers. Plus, representation is nice. Being able to look at your media and say 'this character is similar to me!' is neato. There's a difference between girls not playing because the split is 90/10 and guys dropping out as that split takes any movement towards 50/50.

Especially when a lot of those same guys say things like "X don't need representation, they should just play for the story/gameplay". Its not a double standard to call those guys weaksauce when they drop out because the protagonist isn't 'them'. If anything its holding them accountable for their double standard.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

This is the first time I hear about this, I've never seen or heard anyone say that the gender of the main character matters much (except for bcell, but, you know.).

I cant tell if your being serious or not.

I remember having discussion during the middle of 2014 - you know the one where some people claimed that if there were more female protagonist then there would be less games for male protagonist. All these stats were given about how only male lead games sold. Also, you shouldn't cater to SJWs

???? Not sure what you're tryinng to say here. I'm just expressing my personal experiences and opinions, I have never seen ANYONE (1 exception that I mentioned before) say that a male/female protagonist matters that much that it has an affect on whether they should buy it or not.

I have however seen people complain about the skin-color of protagonist, latest one I can remember is someone complaining about Gears 4 protagonist being a white male. But like I said before, never have I seen someone say ''Oh a male/female protagonist? Pass''.

 

[Lilani]

If women don't buy games featuring male leads, and thus we need to add more female leads, would it be all that surprising if men didn't buy games featuring female leads?

I can't say I'm really bothered myself, I played Nier, and enjoyed it, the fact that 2B is (One of) the playable protagonists didn't affect my decision to buy it in any way.

However, if we're going to argue that games need more female representation, as playing male characters isn't something they want to do, we have to accept the inverse is true too.

As a woman, I would say I'm pretty conditioned to accept male leads without question. For the simple fact that if I ignored all media except that which has a female lead, I would consume next to no media. Thinking of the movies and shows I've watched in the last year or so, the only ones which would fall into that category are Beauty and the Beast, Ghost in the Shell, Moana, Finding Dory, Zootopia, Storks, and Rogue One. And that's actually a very unusual number of female leads in such a short period of time--and note that most of those are children's movies and from Disney alone. For TV shows with female leads, I've watched RWBY and Your Lie in April.

I haven't actually played many games in the last year, mostly just Overwatch and Undertale (mostly because I have a youtube channel where most of my content is Undertale-based right now). Both of those are pretty middle ground as far as genders are concerned. Overwatch has many great female heroes, and Undertale's lead has no specified gender. I have played but not yet finished the new King's Quest by Telltale Games, so I suppose that's one point to the male side.

The other films I've watched in the last year that don't have female leads (that is as the MAIN lead) are Captain America Civil War, The Jungle Book, Deadpool, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Secret Life of Pets, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them, Star Trek Beyond, Doctor Strange, and Jason Bourne. As far as TV shows, we're looking at Wolf's Rain, Baccano!, Overlord, Darker Than Black, Stranger Things, and Sherlock. I also watch a lot of Game Grumps and Good Mythical Morning on YouTube, both of which are hosted by men.

Is anybody forcing me to watch these things? No. Do I necessarily think those films or shows with male leads would be better with female leads? No. My point is that men who steer clear of media that predominantly features women are missing a hell of a lot less than women who steer clear of media that predominantly features women. I never consider whether or not the lead is male or female when first considering something to watch, because if I made a habit of dumping everything with a male lead, I'd end up watching mostly cartoons and rom coms.

I also don't think it's really a conscious thing. JK Rowling put her name that way on the Harry Potter books because it's an unwritten rule in book publishing that men and boys are less likely to take a book off the shelf if they are aware it was written female author. Young boys were an important demographic for Harry Potter, so she did everything she could to make sure her books took off. I don't think men and boys are going down the line consciously thinking "Ew, a girl, I'm not reading what SHE'S written."

But I think when you have the luxury of choice, you naturally go for what you feel you'll most relate to. Men simply have the luxury of choice because most media features and is created by men. Women have to either isolate themselves to a few select genres, or broaden their personal definition of characters they relate to.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

You're giving them a little too much credit. It was a stupid comment made by stupid people. Gaming executives aren't exactly well known for nuance.

Maybe, however, just because they're stupid doesn't give you carte blanche to be stupid.

Personally I take "Female characters don't sell", as meaning "Main characters whose only special qualifier is their gender doesn't sell", because of cause they don't. If you set out making a character whose only reason for existing is "being a female main character in a shooter" then that isn't really a compelling character.

'

Ok, I'm going to have to ask where the heck you drew that conclusion from, because every time this has been brought up by devs that have had problems getting their games with female characters published, it was painted as a more "boys don't want to buy games with girls in them," way, and "your character has nothing to her except the fact that she's a girl." Seriously, I don't follow your train of logic here.

And kindly don't call me stupid.

 

[Erttheking]

*sigh* I just... this feels like a real oversimplification of the issue at hand, honestly. You can't just point at two popular games and go 'See female protagonists do sell!' without also taking into consideration all the things like marketing, audience, history, who's the developer, who's the publisher... like, it's just not that quick a thing to throw together.

I mean, yeah, that's pretty much the case with the AAA industry, hence why it's so damn unsustainable given everyone wants the COD mega-bucks but tends to ignore the fact that COD tends to also dump most of it's billion-dollar profits back into production and advertisement.

Hell, as cool as it is that Horizon Zero Dawn has sold so well one of the most impressive things about it is that the dev budget was only 45 million dollars! That's fucking chump-change in the AAA industry. As cool as it would be for publishers and marketers to look at it and go 'hey, diversity doesn't actually hurt our marketing, who'd have thought', it'd be just as awesome for them to go 'hey look, we don't have to dump the GDP of a small country into our game and hope like hell we get enough sales to turn a slight profit'.

It's because it's a statement that I...seriously have no utter respect for. The sheer fact that there are franchises at all with female characters as either the main or prominent main character kinda disproves it, especially when usually the "women don't sell," is treated as an absolute. They don't sell peroid. I've never seen an instance of a developer talking about how they were trying to get their game with a female character published and they couldn't because the main lead was female AND it wasn't part of an established franchise.

And even then, as I pointed out, Horizon Zero Dawn is a brand new IP (done by people most famously known for a Playstation exclusive shooter of all things. When you think of open world exploration, do you think of the developers of Killzone? Heck, how many people actually know that Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn share a dev?) and Neir Automata, while part of an established series, is only loosely connected to its roots (would you even guess that it's connected to a series that started off in fantasy world?) that has reportedly already outsold its predecessor, and a lot of people who bought it were completly unaware that Drakenguard or the first Neir even existed...also I find it amusing that, while so many people romanticize Japan being unwilling to change their image to appease others, instead of the pretty boy teenage main character that stars in the Japanese version of Neir, the west got a older, big muscly man instead.

And if it's because both of them were more heavily marketed, frankly I feel like that's even more of my favor, considering that a common argument as to why female games usually sell less is because they usually don't get as much marketing and the industry is perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

*Sigh* Is this really something worth getting mad over? I mean seriously? Am I getting you mad from an ideological standpoint in which you just hate the way I'm arguing, or do you really think games with women in it don't sell well and I'm an idiot for not realizing that? Seriously, help me out here.

You know, that seems to be something that boils down to "you're glad that a game with female main characters is doing well, how fucking dare you." Yes, I'm happy that games with lady protagonists are doing well. I'm also happy that they're apparently good games that people enjoying and am slightly upset that the PC port of Automata isn't up to snuff. I'm VERY glad that Horizon Zero Dawn has been utterly eschewing the DLC bullshit you usually see in games. I'm a little put off by Automata because apparently you have to play the game three times to see the ending, and I'm thinking "Christ, why? I mean...WHY!? Is it a 999 thing were it ties directly into the plot? And you can fast forward through the bits you've already seen?" This might blow your mind, but I'm capable of caring about more than one thing at a time. And I seriously doubt that many people will honestly take issue with both of these games having a lady lead, because I refuse to believe that there are people out there who are that freaking insecure that they were originally going to buy these games, but refuse because a random person they never met in their life is happy that it's selling well because a lady is a lead (along with all the other reasons I'm glad it's selling well.)

Not really. We've been getting these comments from idiotic publishers who have been treating it as an absolute. There were no modifiers to their claims, no "well, there are exceptions," just "women don't sell," end of sentence. The only mental issue I have is overexposure from stupid game executives who think they know what's best for this industry. I'm not giving them a benefit of the doubt that they have not earned. To be frank, you seem to be saying that any attempt to praise the industry for expanding itself in terms of the range of characters it has is going to turn people off. Once again, I refuse to believe that there are people out there who are that freaking insecure. Who are more than happy to play a lady character, but get turned off the second I say how great it is that people can play as a lady character.

Seriously, where is all this freaking hostility coming from? Did I run over your cat or something? Also, Saint's Row. The Boss from Saint's Row 1 was male, that's canon. It's even referenced in later games. If you pick a female boss in the later games, you are playing a transgender woman. And you know what? When that was pointed out, it didn't scare people away because they didn't want to hear about a game that was praised for having a transgender character. And stop putting words in my mouth, I'd love to see a game that lets you pick that your character is trans. And I really don't follow your logic. If a single one of those games sells badly, it proves that those games don't sell by my logic? Not really. If a game with a woman character sell, a handful of examples are all that's needed to prove it right, and just one example doesn't prove it wrong.

Yeah, and I've provided my evidence and my case. Either disprove it or present a counter-argument.

Also, please refrain from insulting me this time around.

 

[RedRockRun]

You mistake a game with a female lead for a game with a LOOK FEMALE WOMAN HEROINE AREN'T WE SUCH PROGRESSIVE HEROES lead. Gamers only want a gender studies sermon in their games if they are insecure and/or hate themselves. By the way unless you can confidently list off all the myriad variables for the monetary success/failure in contemporary games, cross-referencing that data with games of past eras, and prove a causal correlation between the lead's gender and sales as opposed to gameplay, brand loyalty, marketing, etc. be my guest. My guess is that you can't.

/thread

 

[Erttheking]

as playing male characters isn't something they want to do,

Yeah...I never said that...stop putting words in my mouth.

 

[Erttheking]

You mistake a game with a female lead for a game with a LOOK FEMALE WOMAN HEROINE AREN'T WE SUCH PROGRESSIVE HEROES lead. Gamers only want a gender studies sermon in their games if they are insecure and/or hate themselves. By the way unless you can confidently list off all the myriad variables for the monetary success/failure in contemporary games, cross-referencing that data with games of past eras, and prove a causal correlation between the lead's gender and sales as opposed to gameplay, brand loyalty, marketing, etc. be my guest. My guess is that you can't.

/thread

I really didn't. All I said that games with female leads were selling well. So nice little strawman you've got there. Except here's the thing. I never said they sold well BECAUSE of their female leads. I just said that they were games that had female leads that sold well. Lots of gaming executives say that games with female leads don't sell well. I'm pointing out examples of how that's BS. Not that they sold well because they had female leads. Because they're games with female leads that sold well.

Reply to what I actually say please.

/thread. (See, I can do that too)

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

The problem is, and Jim Sterling made this mistake to, those games didn't sell well. He compared Zero Dawn to Bioshock infinite, which outsold it nearly 3-1.

Statistically speaking those games did not outsell male-lead games. Now that's a shame, because both those games are fun, but facts is facts.
I mean hell RE6 outsold RE7 nearly 6-1! That's how it goes!

Did he remember to adjust for the Playstation only sales in the comparison? Cause Bioshock Infinite was on 3x the platforms as Zero Dawn (possibly 5 if you count the Bioshock Collection).

(I think Nier was PS exclusive too, I could be mistaken)

I don't know. He just made the point Elizabeth should have been on the cover, and the sales probably suffered as a result compared to Zero Dawn.
And I think I even told him Infinite outsold Zero Dawn 6-1

 

[Erttheking]

The problem is, and Jim Sterling made this mistake to, those games didn't sell well. He compared Zero Dawn to Bioshock infinite, which outsold it nearly 3-1.

Statistically speaking those games did not outsell male-lead games. Now that's a shame, because both those games are fun, but facts is facts.
I mean hell RE6 outsold RE7 nearly 6-1! That's how it goes!

Did he remember to adjust for the Playstation only sales in the comparison? Cause Bioshock Infinite was on 3x the platforms as Zero Dawn (possibly 5 if you count the Bioshock Collection).

(I think Nier was PS exclusive too, I could be mistaken)

I don't know. He just made the point Elizabeth should have been on the cover, and the sales probably suffered as a result compared to Zero Dawn.
And I think I even told him Infinite outsold Zero Dawn 6-1

Wait, is it 3-1 or 6-1?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

The problem is, and Jim Sterling made this mistake to, those games didn't sell well. He compared Zero Dawn to Bioshock infinite, which outsold it nearly 3-1.

Statistically speaking those games did not outsell male-lead games. Now that's a shame, because both those games are fun, but facts is facts.
I mean hell RE6 outsold RE7 nearly 6-1! That's how it goes!

Did he remember to adjust for the Playstation only sales in the comparison? Cause Bioshock Infinite was on 3x the platforms as Zero Dawn (possibly 5 if you count the Bioshock Collection).

(I think Nier was PS exclusive too, I could be mistaken)

I don't know. He just made the point Elizabeth should have been on the cover, and the sales probably suffered as a result compared to Zero Dawn.
And I think I even told him Infinite outsold Zero Dawn 6-1

Wait, is it 3-1 or 6-1?

3-1! sorry, typo. Zero Dawn is close to 3mil, and Infinite sold just under 11mil. So its probably closer to 4-1, but I'm rounding down, not up

 

[Cold Shiny]

This whole stupid argument needs to be qualified and put to rest.

GOOD characters sell.

BAD characters do not sell.

The gender/sex/whatever of the character is of no consequence.