The Counterpoint

[chozo_hybrid]

As a male, I often feel insulted how women are in video games. Especially since they seem to think I like what they portray them as, and I'm supposed to like that.

No, I find it an insult to mine and many others intelligence, and wish it would stop. Unfortunately, they are always going to "need" to put big boobs on women and such in games for the foreseeable future because as an industry, gaming still has growing up to do. It still wants to cater just to young boys a lot of the time (I am talking the AAA market) and that's part of the problem, I know some teens that wish that games weren't as stupid about it as well though. It's just dumb a ll around.

As you can see, I'm a big Metroid fan, Fusion is one of my favorite games off all time too, and I think it was a great way of representing a strong female character without having to show any skin at all. It can be done, there are other great examples too, we just need to get more of this going in the industry as a whole.

 

[mdqp]

Yeah, April's a pretty classic example. Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, Hope from Mirror's Edge, Maya from Summoner 2 and Kate from Hydrophobia are the others I can think of. Alyx from Half-Life 2 is worth mentioning since whilst she's a support character she's considerably more fleshed out than the lead .

And that's the biggest problem. There are tons of 1-dimensional space marines or whatever out there, but there are also tons of more interesting male characters. I think there'd be far fewer complaints from women about how they are portrayed if someone who has played many hundreds of games over the past two decades from every genre under the sun, could think of more than five interesting female leads. I'd still get squicked out by the OTT objectifying games but I could just shrug and settle down with a nice counterexample to each one.

Yeah, I should have mentioned Jade, too, considering I really like Beyond Good & Evil (will they ever do the damned sequel? It would be an insta-buy for me). I am not sure about Hope, though, I feel like the story doesn't develop enough for her to be considered a good character (she doesn't suffer from dumb design choices, though, that's for sure... On a side note, I am acrophobic, so playing Mirror Edge is an absolute thrill for me).

I own a copy of Hydrophobia, but I just gave it a short run to see if it worked properly, do you think she makes for a compelling character?

Never played summoner 2, so I can't say anything about Maya.

Yeah, Alyx is a nice character (though when she kind of hits on Gordon remains one of the most awkward moments in gaming history to me... Was I the only one that felt it was completely out of the blue?).

Yeah, that's the main problem. Who cares about those who fail? The problem is that almost nobody succeeds in making good female characters... Sometimes, it can be annoying.

 

[maninahat]

Thank fuck someone is bringing up this point - it gets my goat that everytime we have a discussion on female portrayals (basically every day on the escapist), some chump comes along and starts saying how men get portrayed badly too. Yes they do, but:

1) We weren't talking about men, we were talking about women. Start a thread about men if you genuinely give a shit. (The fact that there are comparatively few male portrayal threads implies they don't).
2) Male portrayals, in the balance of things, are still more varied, numerous and positive than female portrayals. You don't even get ugly or old female protagonists in games. At least, not unless you messed around with the character customisation in Mass Effect. Trying to suggest that men and women are treated equally as bad (and that women aren't more denegrated in games) is just plain bullshit.
3) The fact that male portrayals are problematic takes nothing away from the fact that they are problematic for females. As an argument it means nothing. That's what the comic is all about.

I was actually going to start a thread about male portrayals, just to see if those who make the "whataboutthemen" arguments actually chip in and have a proper discussion that needs to be had. Guess there is no point now.

 

[Cephei Mordred]

Every industry needs regulation in order to keep everyone from taking too much of the pie, which is why we have anti-trust laws to break up monopolies.

So, against the oppression of visual bias that spills over into media, perhaps the answer is for the government to mandate equality in that wise? Perhaps laws to mandate the presence of at least some unidealized or even ugly characters, in major roles, in every movie, book, and video game? Look no further than how there are quite a few ugly male actors but you never really see ugly female actors.

That's the sort of unfair disparity that's being addressed here.

 

[Illessa]

Yeah, I should have mentioned Jade, too, considering I really like Beyond Good & Evil (will they ever do the damned sequel? It would be an insta-buy for me). I am not sure about Hope, though, I feel like the story doesn't develop enough for her to be considered a good character (she doesn't suffer from dumb design choices, though, that's for sure... On a side note, I am acrophobic, so playing Mirror Edge is an absolute thrill for me).

I own a copy of Hydrophobia, but I just gave it a short run to see if it worked properly, do you think she makes for a compelling character?

Never played summoner 2, so I can't say anything about Maya.

Yeah, Alyx is a nice character (though when she kind of hits on Gordon remains one of the most awkward moments in gaming history to me... Was I the only one that felt it was completely out of the blue?).

Yeah, that's the main problem. Who cares about those who fail? The problem is that almost nobody succeeds in making good female characters... Sometimes, it can be annoying.

That's the really sad thing, I included Hope and Kate more because they're female leads that were capable but not perfect and not blatantly set up to be eye-candy - but in both cases the game kind of squanders their potentially interesting setups by not making any special effort to really expand on them further. Main thing that stuck with me about Kate was I thought they played up the reluctant hero angle nicely, it's just a shame they claimed she was scared of water (and in the Prophecy edition, actually put in some backstory around that) then did naff all with the fact that she's suddenly having to deal with it constantly. Also the fact that any drama inevitably gets squandered by annoying comic-relief man on the radio.

I suppose I shouldn't have included them - else I might as well have gone with Naija from Aquaria or freaking Chell.

Maya's a bit of a funny one, right from the outset she's a queen and is worshipped as the rebirth of a goddess, and she's exactly as arrogant as you would expect from that kind of upbringing. Yet after the initial shock of your main character imperiously ordering people around, she still turns out quite sympathetic, and I just think having a main character who is in a position of power all through the game (ish) is interesting. Mostly I just love Summoner 2, it's got its fair share of problems, but there's some wonderfully freaky visual design (even if the actual humans are kinda butt-ugly) and it's generally a bit of an underrated gem.

And yeah Alyx hitting on Gordon did feel an awful lot like "We feel obliged to do something around sexual tension with the sidekick since she's female n all". On the other hand with a silent protagonist it's always going to feel a bit odd...

 

[franksands]

Every industry needs regulation in order to keep everyone from taking too much of the pie, which is why we have anti-trust laws to break up monopolies.

So, against the oppression of visual bias that spills over into media, perhaps the answer is for the government to mandate equality in that wise? Perhaps laws to mandate the presence of at least some unidealized or even ugly characters, in major roles, in every movie, book, and video game? Look no further than how there are quite a few ugly male actors but you never really see ugly female actors.

That's the sort of unfair disparity that's being addressed here.

I don't think this is a good idea. There are legitimate reasons for an all-male or all-female cast in a show or a game. The government shouldn't interfere with any creative process. But we as individuals can and should go after these offending parties.

 

[franksands]

Anything after ME1 is horrible in my opinion, I mean, they hired Yvonne Strahovski and modeled a completely shallow character just to show close-up shots of her ass. And I didn't like what they did with Liara either. I didn't play ME3 and have no intention of playing it in the near future.

I heard a lot about The Longest Journey, but never stopped to actually playing it.

Anything after ME1 is horrible in my opinion...

Would you marry me? I don't care about gender and political beliefs right now...

i'm sorry, I'm already married ;-)

I think the problem we have today is with AAA games. We don't have, at least I haven't seen, this kind of problems with independent games.This should be reason enough for us to encourage good indie games getting as much coverage and attention as possible.

 

[Cephei Mordred]

Every industry needs regulation in order to keep everyone from taking too much of the pie, which is why we have anti-trust laws to break up monopolies.

So, against the oppression of visual bias that spills over into media, perhaps the answer is for the government to mandate equality in that wise? Perhaps laws to mandate the presence of at least some unidealized or even ugly characters, in major roles, in every movie, book, and video game? Look no further than how there are quite a few ugly male actors but you never really see ugly female actors.

That's the sort of unfair disparity that's being addressed here.

I don't think this is a good idea. There are legitimate reasons for an all-male or all-female cast in a show or a game. The government shouldn't interfere with any creative process. But we as individuals can and should go after these offending parties.

I thought this was a matter of oppression and favoring the Male Gaze over everything else, in which case surely it would be appropriate for the government to do something about that, the same as with other oppression issues in the past.

 

[The Random One]

You're too late, someone dismissed it by saying they are all playing Farmville on the last page!

Let's have a look at the quote....

"Different markets, I'd imagine. For the purposes of surveys, something like FarmVille will count as well. But even further from that, you'd need to break down genres. How high a percentage of the AAA-action genre is male/female? I'd wager significantly different from 60/40. To some extent, females may feel isolated from those games just because the heroes are men, but how many?"

So the brief mention of FarmVille was not, in fact an assertion that "they are all playing Farmville", but part of a larger point that most of the gender stereotyping exists in specific genres, which "I'd wager" have a very different breakdown that surveys don't always take into account.

I even take your point that there are probably women who would play more titles if they weren't put off by the depiction of women in them - we only differ in how strong we think that influence is.

I may have exaggerated your quote, but I don't think you realize how damning even bringing that fact is. One has an opinion. One hears a fact that proves, without question, that their opinion is wrong. One then, instead of trying to find out what's wrong with their opinion, tries to find out what's wrong with the fact.

There is no reason to bring up Farmville and social gaming unless you are trying to reach the foregone conclusion that the amount of women that play core games is significantly smaller. If I came up with data saying that the 47% figure does not, in fact, include such games, someone would suggest that those are sales data and not usage data, and that it's schewed due to women buying games to their significant others.

If 47% of women play games, 47% of women play games, period.

[

If women were as big of a market as you say they are, developers and publishers would have doubtless tried to appeal to them. Surprisingly enough, they like money.

I'd say it's much more likely that most women play more facebook and smartphone games than AAA titles.

If your point is that a kind of player doesn't exist because publishers don't cater to them I need only to point you towards Kickstarter. Just because publishers haven't nailed that market does not mean that 1) it doesn't exist or that 2) they haven't tried.

Did you know there is a thriving community of text adventures made by and for genderqueer people? You can bet that is not a market and we will not see Activision trying to cash in on it. It may not be a market, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I'd say it's much more likely that if 47% of women play games then 47% of women play games.

 

[franksands]

Every industry needs regulation in order to keep everyone from taking too much of the pie, which is why we have anti-trust laws to break up monopolies.

So, against the oppression of visual bias that spills over into media, perhaps the answer is for the government to mandate equality in that wise? Perhaps laws to mandate the presence of at least some unidealized or even ugly characters, in major roles, in every movie, book, and video game? Look no further than how there are quite a few ugly male actors but you never really see ugly female actors.

That's the sort of unfair disparity that's being addressed here.

I don't think this is a good idea. There are legitimate reasons for an all-male or all-female cast in a show or a game. The government shouldn't interfere with any creative process. But we as individuals can and should go after these offending parties.

I thought this was a matter of oppression and favoring the Male Gaze over everything else, in which case surely it would be appropriate for the government to do something about that, the same as with other oppression issues in the past.

But then, the government would only be creating more oppression.

 

[Cephei Mordred]

Every industry needs regulation in order to keep everyone from taking too much of the pie, which is why we have anti-trust laws to break up monopolies.

So, against the oppression of visual bias that spills over into media, perhaps the answer is for the government to mandate equality in that wise? Perhaps laws to mandate the presence of at least some unidealized or even ugly characters, in major roles, in every movie, book, and video game? Look no further than how there are quite a few ugly male actors but you never really see ugly female actors.

That's the sort of unfair disparity that's being addressed here.

I don't think this is a good idea. There are legitimate reasons for an all-male or all-female cast in a show or a game. The government shouldn't interfere with any creative process. But we as individuals can and should go after these offending parties.

I thought this was a matter of oppression and favoring the Male Gaze over everything else, in which case surely it would be appropriate for the government to do something about that, the same as with other oppression issues in the past.

But then, the government would only be creating more oppression.

By creating more equality in the media for women? So that everyone must needs be acknowledging unideal and unattractive women, whether by men giving in by doing the right thing and dispreferring their standards of attractiveness, or by government mandate?

 

[OfficialJab]

There is no reason to bring up Farmville and social gaming unless you are trying to reach the foregone conclusion that the amount of women that play core games is significantly smaller. If I came up with data saying that the 47% figure does not, in fact, include such games, someone would suggest that those are sales data and not usage data, and that it's schewed due to women buying games to their significant others.

We are indeed largely talking about 'core games' since that's where most of the gender stereotyping etc exists. The study is almost too irrelevant to be in this conversation - a more appropriate one would be:

"How many men/women play these games: -list of games identified as creating damaging stereotypes-".

How many women play FarmVille is just as irrelevant as how many men play it, as is how many play Brain Age etc etc, which is why bringing that broad study into this debate is misleading. Just the mention of it gives readers the impression that women and men play every game 60/40 (or whatever it was), which isn't true. Whoever didn't get that impression were people who realized that it wasn't providing the necessary evidence to be of any value here.

The study that was brought up back on page 1 was, as I understood it, to support that female gamers should have more clout when it comes to developers who are only marketing to males. That argument is only relevant to gamers who play the types of games those developers make, though. Unless "gamers, period" play every type of game, that study is too broadly targeted to help or hurt anyone's point, let alone prove anybody wrong or right. If "47% are playing games, period" is as deep into the groups as you'll go, then you're missing a lot of important details.

Yeah, I should have mentioned Jade, too, considering I really like Beyond Good & Evil (will they ever do the damned sequel? It would be an insta-buy for me)

Last I heard, Ubisoft was using a small studio to make it in order to "preserve its soul", but I feel like that was about a year ago. Then again, a long development cycle might be just what it needs. I also heard, sometime since then, that Silicon Knights was working on "their most requested game", geez whiz what could that be? (yeah its ED2) But they're in shaky financial shape I guess, if they still exist at all. I haven't heard from them since Epic handed them their ass in court.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Grey and Cory are baiting the forums again?

Anyone have popcorn?

what is this "women" you speak of?

 

[swimon]

I just want to voice my approval of this comic. This is so very true and the fact that seemingly the only people discussing how men are mistreated in modern society are assholes who try to silence discussions about how women are mistreated breaks my cold dark signal generator.

Different markets, I'd imagine. For the purposes of surveys, something like FarmVille will count as well. But even further from that, you'd need to break down genres. How high a percentage of the AAA-action genre is male/female? I'd wager significantly different from 60/40. To some extent, females may feel isolated from those games just because the heroes are men, but how many?

http://blog.pricecharting.com/2012/09/emilyami-sexism-in-video-games-study.html

This study also reaches the 40/60 split between men and women but moreover argues that there is no discernible difference in the type of games women play and the type men play. Now the study also notes that male gamers usually play more than female gamers so the 40/60 split is not the whole picture but it's clear that women are a vary large part of the audience.

If women were as big of a market as you say they are, developers and publishers would have doubtless tried to appeal to them. Surprisingly enough, they like money.

I know right, because it couldn't possibly be that they're just incompetent.

 

[uncanny474]

I think I'm done reading Critical Miss. I enjoy most of the plot and characters, but it's gotten to the point that every other week Corey and Gray deliberately bait the forums to generate views and comments.

I'm all for discussing these topics, but when someone states a political or ethical opinion in a webcomic, it feels like they're shoving it down my throat, because there's no way they're going to bother reading the comments because they KNOW there's a shitstorm there. Not to mention the internet is the last place you're going to find rational, levelheaded discussion. So, consider this my farewell to Critical Miss. I depart now for shores that don't pull this crap.

 

[Kargathia]

Grey and Cory are baiting the forums again?

Anyone have popcorn?

I have plenty.

Now let us enjoy.

But to have something to say vaguely related, instead of both sides complaining at each other, why not work together and complain about both things at once?

That'd require us to reach a level of peace, love, and mutual understanding that is simply unacceptable.

That said: while female objectification is clearly more condescending, I inwardly groan whenever a chainmail bikini or walking fridge appears on my monitor. It's an authorial ploy so lazy I can feel my brain cells committing mass suicide.

 

[Callate]

On many of these issues, I increasingly feel like there's a problem in the lack of separators or gradations between things many men could sympathize and/or agree with- "this is hurtful", "this prevents the medium from moving forward", "this makes us all look bad" and "GET AS ANGRY ABOUT THIS AS I AM RIGHT NOW OR YOU'RE PART OF THE OPPRESSIVE EVIL MONOLITH THAT'S KEEPING US DOWN, GRAAAAAA!"

On one hand, comparing unrealistic female stereotypes to unrealistic male stereotypes may be silly; those who point out that muscular men-of-action have as much to do with how male gamers wish to self-identify as anything may have some mileage, and probably more so than those who suggest that those images are actually there to entice female gamers. But on the other hand, I think it _is_ worth pointing out that the typical male gamer doesn't necessarily have all that much sway over the way his avatar is portrayed either, and that while many male gamers may not "mind" the way men are portrayed as much as some women dislike the way female characters are portrayed, if we're to seriously contemplate the idea that portraying women as sexual objects and rewards is somehow harmful, doesn't the portraying of men as unfeeling uber-macho death machines who are never supposed to express things like doubt or pain or remorse and whose entire worth is based upon their ability to inflict violence also deserve at least a glance?

 

[mdqp]

That's the really sad thing, I included Hope and Kate more because they're female leads that were capable but not perfect and not blatantly set up to be eye-candy - but in both cases the game kind of squanders their potentially interesting setups by not making any special effort to really expand on them further. Main thing that stuck with me about Kate was I thought they played up the reluctant hero angle nicely, it's just a shame they claimed she was scared of water (and in the Prophecy edition, actually put in some backstory around that) then did naff all with the fact that she's suddenly having to deal with it constantly. Also the fact that any drama inevitably gets squandered by annoying comic-relief man on the radio.

I suppose I shouldn't have included them - else I might as well have gone with Naija from Aquaria or freaking Chell.

Maya's a bit of a funny one, right from the outset she's a queen and is worshipped as the rebirth of a goddess, and she's exactly as arrogant as you would expect from that kind of upbringing. Yet after the initial shock of your main character imperiously ordering people around, she still turns out quite sympathetic, and I just think having a main character who is in a position of power all through the game (ish) is interesting. Mostly I just love Summoner 2, it's got its fair share of problems, but there's some wonderfully freaky visual design (even if the actual humans are kinda butt-ugly) and it's generally a bit of an underrated gem.

And yeah Alyx hitting on Gordon did feel an awful lot like "We feel obliged to do something around sexual tension with the sidekick since she's female n all". On the other hand with a silent protagonist it's always going to feel a bit odd...

In their defense, they probably planned something more for Mirror Edge at first, so maybe things could have been different, but I guess they decided to keep her relatively neutral to "Gordon Freeman-ize" her and allow the players to project on them (the game has a few cutscenes, but they are relatively rare). Kate sounded like she had more personality-wise, but as I said I just moved the first steps to take a general look at the game (I guess the reason they didn't work on her fears, is because they didn't find a way to build some gameplay mechanic around that concept, and the game had a somewhat troublesome development, if I remember well).

Yeah, a lot of protagonists just lack... Character, so to speak, making them a poor subject for a discussion.

I never had the chance to play Summoner 2 (I guess it was a PS2 exclusive?). If ever find a copy, I might give it a try.

Having Alyx talk pull the move on Gordon was really odd, I guess she is into the silent type... Or maybe they played the "suspension bridge effect" card, who knows?

 

[Frostbite3789]

The funny thing about all this is in LoL, the only people offended by the female champ design in that game are men.

Every single woman I know that plays the game doesn't care. Every thread in the LoL forums I see pop up about the subject is created by a dude.

While I'm at it, white knighting is far more sexist than a sexy female character design.

"DONT WORRY WUMAN I TELL U WEN U SHUD BE OFFANDED U NEED MY HALP TO PROTACT U"

No. If they were offended, they'd say so themselves guy.

 

[mdqp]

i'm sorry, I'm already married ;-)

I think the problem we have today is with AAA games. We don't have, at least I haven't seen, this kind of problems with independent games.This should be reason enough for us to encourage good indie games getting as much coverage and attention as possible.

You sir, are a tease... ;p

Well, we first would need to know how many indie games might fit the bill. What I mean is that a good chunk of indie games will never be able to pander, because they employ stylized graphics, or because they are in a genre that doesn't allow such design to get into their characters in the first place (I mean, in a platform game or a strategy game, what are the odds of having an oversexualized character? I am not saying impossible, I have seen a few myself, but I think we can agree that it is unlikely). Also, having a tight budget makes the developer necessarily focus on the core of the game, you have less time for unnecessary pandering. And anyway, a lack of female leads remains true even in the indie world, so, who knows?