The Portrayal of Male Characters in Video Games.

[Bobic]

And saying that a character has brown hair, is white and is male, is not characterization. It's almost as if all those guys having similar genotype doesn't make them the same.

Unfortunately, a lot of game writing seems to think that "grizzled white guy" is a personality.

I think the appearances are more a symptom, personally. These guys look as generic as they act. They're so bland and typical, probably because some marketing dildo thinks "generic" is interchangeable with "bigger audience."

Well yeah, sucky writing is the bane of the industry, and there are a lot of generic characters out there (which is actually the point of this thread if I remember correctly, sorry for the derailment OP), I just don't think that image proves anything. Taken as a joke, it's fine, but when people tout it as an example of all characters being the same, it becomes a wholly different type of joke. Some of the characters on there are actually quite well written and unique. Alan Wake, Niko Bellic, Commander Sheppard, Mike Thorton, Dude with the freaky sci fi drug addiction from heavy rain, all quite well written characters, all quite brown haired 30 something white males.

But yeah, marketers are dragging the industry through the dirty dullness with their quest for 'mass appeal'. Marketers just see correlation between random aspects and good sales, so take those random, most obvious of aspects, shove them in any old production line game development process and expect an equal success whilst missing the thing that made the original popular in the first place.

Then again, generic probably does appeal to more people, it just doesn't appeal to them as much as the niches smaller groups love.

 

[Rednog]

I'll post this so no one else has to.

Yep, there is hardly much variety when it comes to guys in games, it's a shame. At least Mario is fat, he has that going for him.

1st row:Nathan Hale,Naked Snake,Nathan Drake,Chris Redfield,Mike Thornton
2nd row:???,Norman Jayden,Old Sam Fisher,Commander Shepard,Starkiller
3rd row:Cole Macgrath,Alex Shepard, Tomas "Sev" Sevchenko,Jason Fleming,Max Payne
4th row:Alan Wake,Alec Mason,???,NIko Bellic,Frank West

I'm surprise not see any COD characters like Soap MacTavish or Yuri. Hell I'm surprise not to see Baldur from Too Human that dude screams generic space marine look for a Norse God.

I think your '???' is Jack Slate from Dead to Rights.

in which row 2nd or 4th??

I didn't even see the 2nd row '???', I think Jack Slate is the '???' in the 4th row.

 

[scw55]

I think in video games with gamers there's more female sexist comments than male sexist comments. Female representation in video games is to blame. That is why female representation is a bigger deal than male.

Also, with personality, Men get Powerful, Heroic and Beefcake. Women get slut. Women characters have 1/3 the variety of poor-representation. At least Men are more diverse in their wrongness.


But I agree. Any false-presumptions is bad. I do dislike 'token' minority characters that are interchangeable of "ethnicity/Sexuality/Gender". I wish when writers write characters, they have a roulette wheel and just spin it randomly to choose the 'appearance' of the character. So you don't get any subconscious discrimination of the writers realising they've got a roster of 7 white males and they need to add a few 'minorities' to make it PC.

We need to fight the battle for female equality for a bit longer. But we also still need to remember that the point of equality, is that everyone is equal.

 

[Vault101]

I think they can be boring more than anything

and when they try and make them [i/]not[/i] boring (Nathan Drake) you just want to stab them in the face...

...I mean I want to stab nathan drake in the face...

I think deep down we ALL want to stab nathan drake in the face


interestingly Issac Clake I feel symapthy for probably because all the shit he goes through

 

[Ryotknife]

I think in video games with gamers there's more female sexist comments than male sexist comments. Female representation in video games is to blame. That is why female representation is a bigger deal than male.

Also, with personality, Men get Powerful, Heroic and Beefcake. Women get slut. Women characters have 1/3 the variety of poor-representation. At least Men are more diverse in their wrongness.

really? because i was going to say the exact opposite.

they are the sluts, the damsel in distress, the man haters, the ones bound by duty, the badasses, the steel-eyed realists. all of which have a full spectrum of emotions.

men on the other hand are regulated mostly into angry, smug, idiotic, or silently stoic. in fact, lately its been hard to find a good male character in comparison to female characters. Noel from FF 13-2 is probably the only new interesting male character this year. from last year it would probably be Anders from dragon age 2. Quite honestly, for the foreseeable future all we are going to get are more Mason-type characters from the Red Faction Series.

if it wasnt for the fact that there are exponentially more male characters in general compared to female, we would probably be talking about why male characters are more often crappier than female ones.

the only real advantage male characters have over female are numbers and villains. Nearly every favorite villain of mine is male....in fact i think they all are.

 

[iblis666]

wtb blond or red head fat nerd avatar that looks like hes actually exerting himself while battling the forces of evil and being as lazy as he can about it while talking such as complaining/telling jokes/snide remarks and maybe a caster or assassin or gun nut

i want a character that has to stop and catch his breath after a mad dash while cussing or when he sees stairs in the next room says something like just what i wanted to do with my day climb more fucking stairs or when he is low on stamina during a boss fight he will say hurry up and die all ready

i guess i just want a character that shows some sort of character other than angry blank slate or manic fairy

 

[swenson]

How to fix male videogame characters: MAKE THEM HOTTER, because "buff wish fulfillment fantasy" doesn't always translate to "attractive".

I kid, I kid, that would be dumb. How you do it is the same way you fix female videogame characters, though: you give them interesting and realistic motivations ("the bad guys murdered everyone I ever loved" is NOT interesting; neither is "I want to save the pathetic damsel in distress who was dumb enough to get herself caught by the bad guys"), an engaging and likable personality (or no personality at all, a la Gordon Freeman, if you're good enough to pull it off), and character traits other than "communicates only in uber-manly grunts" and "angsts endlessly about shooting things but never thinks to take up an alternate career like flower arranging or something".

The problem is that the vast majority of characters these day are pretty poorly written, regardless of gender. I'd still argue women get the short end of the stick (as female videogame characters are almost always sexualized in addition to the usual pack of dumb stereotypes), but it's a sign of lazy writing overall.

 

[TheScientificIssole]

I would like to say, that games take notes from movies! Look at your average leading man! They are all the stereotypical character you are talking about! Blame movies for this!

 

[Raioken18]

I do kind of feel like there is a lack of variety for both sets of characters.

For FPS/Action games I'd like to suggest a younger male or female protagonist, someone who isn't a grizzled veteran but is rather new to killing or dealing with those intense situations.

It's kind of why I am so interested in The Last of Us, because there is emotional variety in comparison to other games of that type.

Also seeing that there is a black female protagonist of the assassins creed series made me sit up and pay attention. It's an interesting idea and hopefully her personality might be something interesting to watch.

Personally I'd like to see a female soldier in a MW game, as someone who is tough in her own right. The stuff that was said about protecting the new Lara Croft was just insane, if you are trying to be immersed in a game and protect someone... it's going to be hard to do if you are that character in game...

 

[aestu]

stereotype rather than how women are often hyper-sexualised

These bits are the key to understanding this whole issue.

Hypersexualized? According to whose standards? The standards of most women? Or a few women who try to speak for all, who perhaps don't even understand themselves?

Women define themselves through their gender identity more than men. This is why women and feminist movements always associate themselves with flowers and the color pink. This is why women spend enormous time and effort in making themselves appear physically attractive - much more so than men.

In answer to your question, the issues with male role models is that they have been perverted by trying to force a false equality between men and women, and in doing so, completely lost touch with the reality of what either gender wants.

Women and men must be equally driven by drives for power, sex, social prestige, self-image, etc, and the result is characters that are cliche, unconvincing, unreal, and contribute to the shallow irrelevance that plagues modern video gaming.

Of course society plays a major role too, as young men and women are so out-of-touch with themselves and the general human experience that they don't even know who they are or what they want, something attributable to poor parenting, poor education, and the noise and omnipresence of contemporary media.

So in effect, we have a vicious cycle that can be described most simply as bad taste. This "bad taste" (to answer the OP directly) means male characters who lack manly qualities such as courage, honor, and decency. Characters that appeal to boys and girls who have no idea nor respect for what a real man is - something directly attributable to the factors described above.

 

[aestu]

you give them interesting and realistic motivations ("the bad guys murdered everyone I ever loved" is NOT interesting; neither is "I want to save the pathetic damsel in distress who was dumb enough to get herself caught by the bad guys")

This is a really good example of what I was describing above.

Those ARE interesting and realistic motivations.
That IS the reality of what men and women want.

You can't make an realistic unreality. You try to do that and it leads us right back here to this thread.

 

[aestu]

Women define themselves through their gender identity more than men.

Citation needed.

This is why women and feminist movements always associate themselves with flowers and the color pink.

Citation needed.

I need a citation for neither any more than I need a citation to say the sky is blue or that humans have two hands and two feet.

Conversely, "sayin don't make it so", no matter how many toilet paper degrees someone has.

you give them interesting and realistic motivations ("the bad guys murdered everyone I ever loved" is NOT interesting; neither is "I want to save the pathetic damsel in distress who was dumb enough to get herself caught by the bad guys")

This is a really good example of what I was describing above.

Those ARE interesting and realistic motivations.

Shit that happens to someone is never as interesting as how the characters feel about. This is a basic rule of writing.

Nonsense. That sort of thing happens every day. It's called white knighting, or opening the door for women, or paying for the date, etc. The realities of male, female, and human nature as they play out on a day-to-day basis.

By contrast, would you argue that a man (or woman) putting on the spandex and saving the world, or fighting dragons, is useless as a plot because that never happens either? Where do you make the distinction?

 

[Grygor]

I'll post this so no one else has to.

Yep, there is hardly much variety when it comes to guys in games, it's a shame. At least Mario is fat, he has that going for him.

The problem with this poster is that several of the examples are cherry-picked, slightly off, or just plain wrong.

For example, Commander Shepard is 28 to 29 in the first Mass Effect (which is the one shown), and Shepard can be customized to be nearly any race and either male or female. Additionally, Alec Mason from Red Faction: Guerrilla is 28, and Resistance's Nathan Hale is 28 in the first game. Snake is shown (Naked Snake from Snake Eater, to be exact), but Naked Snake was 29 in Snake Eater. Solid Snake was 23 in his first game appearance, and chronologically 42 (physically, even older) in his most recent.

Nathan Drake's year of birth has never been stated in canon, and while he was described as "in his 30s" in at least one interview, the two birth years put forward in non-canon works (1982 and 1980) put him at, respectively, 25 or 27 in the first game. Cole MacGrath's age has also never been explicitly stated, but late 20s is a reasonable guess. Michael Thorton's (Alpha Protocol) age is also never given - each of the backgrounds available implies a different age range; most suggest that Thorton is somewhere in his 20s. Jason Flemming's age is, again, never stated.

Sam Fisher is 47 in his first game appearance, and only gets older from there. Max Payne was in his 30s in the first games, but in the most recent one he's in his 40s, most likely late 40s.

Starkiller the first is about 17, and cannot possibly be older than mid-20s; Starkiller the clone, while artificially aged, looks the same age as, if not slightly younger than, the original.

Tomas Sevchenko is 25 in Killzone 2. Chris Redfield is 36 in Resident Evil 5 (the image shown), but he was 26 in the first game.

Silent Hill: Homecoming's Alex Shepherd is 22.

Of the 20 "brown-haired 30-something white males" shown I recognize 18. Of those 18, only 6 - Chris Redfield, Norman Jayden, Max Payne, Alan Wake, Niko Bellic, and Frank West - are definitely in their 30s in the chosen picture, 4 are definitely in their late 20s (of whom 3 are in their 30s in another game), and 3 are probably in their late 20s. 3 of the characters shown are not only well outside their 30s, but have never been playable in their 30s.

"Brown" seems to cover the entire black-brown-chestnut-auburn spectrum, by which definition "brown-haired" describes some 75% or so of "white people" (i.e. Europeans) and about 95% of humanity. The range of skin colors shown encompasses something like 70% or 80% of all people. The faces show a fairly wide variety in structure as well, hinting at a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds (excepting the ones who come from settings in which our notions of ethnicity are meaningless), so apparently "white" in this context means "lighter-skinned and not overwhelmingly asian."

But I guess "darker-haired lighter-skinned adult men" isn't as catchy, is it?

I would be ok with the character being a naive 20-something who is not used to what is happening, it would be fresh. Seeing them grow and adapt to the hardships would be interesting.

So... the overwhelming majority of JRPG protagonists, then?

Also, Leon Kennedy was 21 in Resident Evil 2 - there are no doubt many other examples (see also the above-mentioned Alex Shepherd, and Michael Thorton with the recruit background pretty much has to be in his early 20s as well), this was just the first one that came to mind.

 

[aestu]

If you think men and women are functionally identical then you need to go outside.

And if you want to argue that's a "social construct" then you need to read more history and less political nonsense. Human nature is what it is in all places and times. It's called sexual dimorphism.