uanime5 said:
Gizen said:
Link isn't really much of a 'character'. With the exception of Wind Waker, he generally has no personality, intentionally so, as he's supposed to be an avatar for the player themself. Making him female, or better yet giving the option to be either or, lets the other half of the world get to be in his shoes for a change. It's hardly laziness.
Care to explain why women can't play a Zelda game because the main character is male?
Also Link is a character in a story, not an avatar for the player.
No, he's specifically intended to be the player's avatar. That's why he still remains a silent protagonist even long after such characters fell out of style. Even Mario isn't completely silent, but Link still doesn't say a word.
No, because a person is not defined solely by their gender, especially in a fictionalized world where you're free to throw out gender stereotypes and prejudices as having never existed there.
That just results in unrealistic character that people can't relate to. It's also ridiculous to blame all difference in gender on prejudice when there's many biological reason for them, such as men being biologically stronger than women.
It actually doesn't result in unrealistic characters that people can't relate to. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. Unrelatable characters stem from the idea that all people act the same way, and thus all characters must be created in the same way in order for people to relate to them, when everyone is different and will react to things differently as a result. It is specifically for this reason that character building must come first.
While writing specifically with the knowledge that your character is female can increase the strength of the writing/story, that should never be the starting point. The focus needs to be on developing the character first, and figuring out their place in the world. You complain about token characters, but when you specifically start with nothing more than 'this character's gonna be a girl', that is exactly how token characters are created, with no purpose to serve other than to meet a checklist.
I'd say it's more important to figure out the general plot of the game, create characters that will be needed in this plot, then create supporting characters. There's no sense in creating some well written female character, then realising that she has no reason to take part in this adventure.
Again, you're assuming that a generalized approach is somehow the correct approach when not everything is the same. Not every narrative is plot driven, some narratives are specifically character driven, with a stronger focus on character development over a grandiose plot that moves from scene to scene and leaves no room for characters to be introspective and to actually develop and grow. Certainly some stories are like that, and an abundance of video games are, but it is not the only way to tell a story, nor is it necessarily the 'correct' way. Variety is ignored to the medium's own detriment.
People act like male is the default, and any attempt to do a female is 'token representation' or pandering.
The majority of soldiers and adventures are male, so it makes sense for male to be the default. For roles such as nurse or teacher it would make more sense to have the default be female as most of the nurses and teacher are female.
This is just straight-up bullshit on so many levels. Not only does this attitude stem from pre-women's rights movements when women were actively being excluded from those roles, but it also dismisses the fact that women CAN and DO perform these roles nowadays. Try telling that to an actual women serving in the military that she can't be featured in a video game because her gender hasn't finished catching up yet from back in the day when she still wouldn't have even been allowed to vote.
The fact that some women perform these roles doesn't change the fact that the majority of men perform these roles, thus making men the default is completely justified.
FICTION IS NOT REAL LIFE. BECAUSE REAL LIFE IS FULL OF BULLSHIT GENDER STEREOTYPES IS NOT A VALID REASON FOR FICTION TO FOLLOW SUIT, ESPECIALLY WHEN FICTION CAN HELP TO INSPIRE CHANGE SO THAT THE BULLSHIT WILL EVENTUALLY BE CLEANED UP. THIS SHOULD NOT BE SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND. THIS EXCUSE IS EVEN STUPIDER AND FLIMSIER THE FURTHER THAT FICTION TREADS INTO THE REALM OF PURE FANTASY WITH FUCKING MONSTERS AND MAGIC THAT HAVE NO GODDAMNED BUSINESS BEING COMPARED TO REALITY.
Not to mention that that kind of dismissive attitude only serves to make young girls feel like their options in life are limited. They deserve to be represented in all the roles they're perfectly capable of fulfilling in real life.
Their options are limited by their genetic traits, their parent's finances, the society they live in, and what they enjoy doing.
Also women aren't so fragile that they won't believe that they can be soldiers or scientists unless they see a woman in a game doing these things.
Their options are actually limited by none of those things. Each of those factors can certainly magnify the difficulty a thousand fold by themself to form seemingly insurmountable odds, but they CAN be overcome, and social studies have indicated that one of the most important factors in overcoming said obstacles is convincing people that it actually can be done. Not just women, but human beings as a whole, really ARE that fragile. They get discouraged easily and it ultimately isn't that hard to dissuade someone from living up to their full potential. That's why equal representation in media is so bloody important and it's why people make such a big deal out of shit like this. For everyone like you who thinks it doesn't matter, there's a story of a child who'd written off the idea of a career being involved in something they loved until they saw someone just like them making it work.
Except that, despite what marketing people may try to lead you to believe, it's never actually been proven that male characters inherently sell better than female ones, and in fact there are multiple examples where this is either blatantly false, or where a female-led game/move/whatever sold worse due to other unrelated factors (actual quality of the product/poor marketing/etc.)
Just because you don't like what the evidence shows doesn't make it wrong. I suspect you didn't provide any links to your claims because you don't have any evidence to support them.
Yes, nevermind the fact that you made your claims first and likewise backed them up with nothing. If you wanna get into a statistics war, feel free to start one up, but I have more valuable things to do with my time than go digging through archives for data on behalf of someone else who can't be bothered to do the same.
Hell, you don't even have to go far for the most blatant example that everyone's talking about on this very site. Assassin's Creed, the game that started this whole discussion at this year's E3. There was a game starring a female protagonist. Sold terribly. Was it because the character was female? Or was it because the game was released on a completely different platform from the rest of the franchise, a platform which by the way has had weak sales and thus a poor install base, and then on top of that the game was given next to no marketing to make anyone aware of it even while the main series games starring men are treated to massive all-out unavoidable marketing assaults? A refusal to make more female-lead games so that we have a proper sample size with which to make comparisons makes the answer difficult to determine for certain. The corporate/marketing line likes to say it was the former, but actual logic would lean heavily towards the latter. But admitting it was the latter would require the people in charge to also admit they weren't doing their jobs properly, and what what what? Corporate suits admit fault? Oh heeeeeeeell no, far easier to just blame the consumers and absolve themselves of guilt so they can go back to the status quo.
