Andy Chalk said:
But are women really complaining?
I think most of the uproar that arose from this, and it's really been quite muted compared to what I was expecting, is a result of the fact that it was Activision allegedly giving the order. The fact that Activision clearly has good reasons to keep on doing what it does apparently isn't relevant; Bobby Kotick is evil, Activision is evil, thus the gender imbalance is evil. But Activision is a business. Its responsibility is to its shareholders, not to social progress. The predominance of "uber-macho narratives" in modern games and the harassment of female gamers that results isn't game culture, that's just culture, period. You want to change games? Change the world.
The women I know who game, yeah, a lack of female protagonists isn't what we consider a major downfall of the industry, but it's one of those grumbling complaints I hear and sometimes reflect. I compare it to load screens; mostly it's something that isn't bothersome, but it can be improved on - and on some occasions, it creates a jarring game-breaking dissonance with game narrative.
As far as the Activision outcry, it may have brought this subject to the forefront again (because we all like to jump on a good round of Activision bashing), but it's something that's circulated for a while - among the women I know, and the forums I visit, at least. Whatever Activision is doing, I know game publishing and development is often a numbers game, pure and simple. For a publisher like Activision, picking a protagonist for a multi-million dollar franchise will come down to focus groups and safe bets, because there's so much at stake. Even if having a male avatar will sell 3 percent more units, of course they're going to direct the dev team to make a male avatar. But if the games industry as a whole - hell, if any creatively-driven media industry as whole consistently produced only safe bets, the media it produces gets stale - and the consumer moves on.
As far as "uber-macho narratives" - narratives *are* changing the world, and have changed themselves. Since it's often compared with the games industry, let's look at the movie industry. We're not at the point where a movie with a kick-ass female lead won't be marketed or received or talked about as "Holy crap, female empowerment!" - i.e., it's not so much a part of our culture that it's gotten beyond tokenism - but there are certainly marked evolutions in female roles in movies. I'm not saying that movies don't still use normative gender roles, but humans evolved from a common ancestor with monkeys, and we still have monkeys. Male-lead macho movies - and macho games - can co-exist with movies/games that feature a woman in traditionally macho roles. We've moved from Faye Raye's fainting beauty to Sigourney Weaver's asexual Ripley, a role that was written originally for a man (I speak of the first Alien movie - relegating a woman to having immense power when she's got a child to protect is moving, but a slightly sexist slant to viewing how and when women can exercise violence). And once Hollywood had a commercially successful movie with a female protagonist, there were many other characters inspired by or imitating her. It's partly following money, true, but that tends to come across in business meetings as a mumble that consumers aren't turned off by a strong female lead, so it's ok to plunk down investment capital on a major production when the concept has been proven safe.
Quite frankly, I'm sort of aghast that you seem to be throwing your hands up in the air at the concept of holding games up to certain artistic standards, or that it's silly to think they can be a factor in social progress (a major definition of art is reflecting and having the potential to influence our society). Gaming is reaching a market saturation point that will, like any media, have a profound effect on our culture. Funny how cultures change when certain media reaches saturation levels. Wonder what our society would be like if movable type hadn't made books available to the common person and started with the Bible, moving it out of the Catholic Church's control? Or if broadcast channels and the tv's market saturation had avoided taking a gamble on new programming formats, leaving us without a large part of our society's shared experiences? Even something as common as Big Bang theory jokes at a water cooler serve an important social function, in this case serving as a sort of social cohesion - and mass market TV is a way to share a cohesive culture across a vast country. Will games do any less than previous media when it comes to informing us of culture and changing that culture?
So don't tell me to stop griping, or dismiss my point as invalid because games are a reflection of society at large. I know the importance of narrative in society. It's a reflection of society, but it's also a living force that can change society as well. If you want to change society, change the media it ingests. It's one of THE most effective ways to do this - oral history, told through poetry and other performance media, was once all that kept displaced cultures intact. Theater and sports, both forms of entertainment, were a huge part of, say, Greek culture, both reflecting and influencing it. Why do you think we assign certain committee-picked books to children in public schools? It helps inform them of social mores and values. We invest as a society in certain media simply BECAUSE of this effect. Just look at one of the articles here, from Movie Bob - the Movie Nerd Bible, I think it's called. It's part of what I'm talking about - a set of media can inform a group and give it a common language and experience so that they can establish and maintain this certain social group.
In this case, since the media I prefer is mostly games, and games will continue to become gradually more relevant to our society in the foreseeable future -- then I say, if you want to change society, change the games. Not all of them. Just some of them, a few, just where artistically or narratively merited. I respect the slow turn of the industry and its life-force, money, and I respect the fact that tokenism is a step towards normalizing female empowerment. But I still want to power through alien scourges with a beefy neckless male marine on a regular basis. And before you say, "Oh, go be a game designer then," I start classes in 2 weeks. I'm still gonna gripe about this little annoyance of female protagonists till then. It's how we women deal with stress and annoyance - besides committing intergalatic genocide & beating back the zombie invasion in electronic media, I mean.
