The real significance of female protagonists

[Vault101]

You want to see female protagonists succeed? First lower your standards, There are tons of male protagonists, and Zero perfect ones, so stop demanding a perfect female one, it doesn't exist.

nobody is saying that

they want them to exist in the first place

[quote/]Last, SUPPORT WHATS OUT THEIR ALREADY. I can't believe how many people are up in arms about No female assassin in unity, but haven't played Liberation?!?![/quote]

because it was a sub par game releagted to a handheld..I might check it out at some point and I do aplude them for trying but I don't have to eargly eat up every pathetic bone thrown my way and thank them for it

I don't understand why a problem that aparently doesn't ven affect you bothers you so much, I'm so sick of people telling me to shut up or mansplaining my problems to me...yeah you think you just "educated" all the silly femenazis? no...you just straw manned the hell out of

and people acused us of "whining" its unblievable

 

[Vault101]

"Human" female characters that aren't customizable are a ticking time bomb, and any cred gained can easily be thrown out the window because things like "Oh my god Samus in high heels" Or " Look at her jiggle omg they are trying to be the sexy" And the counter is a male character can look like he was dropped on the head a couple dozen time and no one bats an eyelash.
.

by that logic the amount of times people complained about brown haired guys and brown color palettes you'd think the industry would have gone in flames

hate to dissapoint but girl gamers are not some secret order...we don't have the power and influence to destroy people when enraged

 

[Eve Charm]

You want to see female protagonists succeed? First lower your standards, There are tons of male protagonists, and Zero perfect ones, so stop demanding a perfect female one, it doesn't exist.

nobody is saying that

they want them to exist in the first place

What non perfect ones? well they do plenty already, yay! and your bringing up the strawmans?

Last, SUPPORT WHATS OUT THEIR ALREADY. I can't believe how many people are up in arms about No female assassin in unity, but haven't played Liberation?!?!

because it was a sub par game relegated to a handheld..I might check it out at some point and I do aplude them for trying but I don't have to eargly eat up every pathetic bone thrown my way and thank them for it

I don't understand why a problem that apparently doesn't even affect you bothers you so much, I'm so sick of people telling me to shut up or mansplaining my problems to me...yeah you think you just "educated" all the silly femenazis? no...you just straw manned the hell out of

and people accused us of "whining" its unbelievable

Subpar, why cause it's 7 out of 10 as apposed to 8 out of 10? If you don't care enough when they TRY to appeal to you, then why are you caring when they Don't try to appeal to you? Not that I particular like assassin's creed but it seems to me you honestly could care less about the game itself you just want to kick dirt on something that doesn't have female representation, dirtying and causing drama about a game someone else might like regardless of the sex of the characters. Effectively you are ruining the game for other people with even if you get your way, you could care less.

"Human" female characters that aren't customizable are a ticking time bomb, and any cred gained can easily be thrown out the window because things like "Oh my god Samus in high heels" Or " Look at her jiggle omg they are trying to be the sexy" And the counter is a male character can look like he was dropped on the head a couple dozen time and no one bats an eyelash.
.

by that logic the amount of times people complained about brown haired guys and brown color palettes you'd think the industry would have gone in flames

hate to dissapoint but girl gamers are not some secret order...we don't have the power and influence to destroy people when enraged

The difference is the brown hair guys and brown color palette doesn't actually stop the main stream audience from buying games, now if people would just buy the game cause of girl on the cover developers and finances wouldn't be affairs of putting girls on the cover of games let alone starring in them.

 

[Vault101]

ubpar, why cause it's 7 out of 10 as apposed to 8 out of 10? If you don't care enough when they TRY to appeal to you, then why are you caring when they Don't try to appeal to you?

how well do you think it would go over if I told PC gamers to stop whining and just be cool with subpar ports otherwise companies won't even bother with PC?

[quote/]Not that I particular like assassin's creed but it seems to me you honestly could care less about the game itself you just want to kick dirt on something that doesn't have female representation, dirtying and causing drama about a game someone else might like regardless of the sex of the characters.[/quote]

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAahahaha oh lord its MY fault assasins creed liberation wasn't a hit? I'm somehow ruining the game for others? oh man I can see the headline

VAULT101 CAUSES GAME DRAMA, ESCAPIST USER OUT OF CONTROL

[i/]"she said the game was subpar" says another forum user "she started talking about...about female s and games and...it was horrible"

"I literally curled up in a ball crying" says another Ubisoft employee who is seeing a therapist for PTSD due to Vault101's comments [/i]

no no...ok then, lets not stop there

PEOPLE SAY NEGATIVE THINGS ABOUT GAMES ON THE INTERNET

[i/]on the forum known as The Escapist users aparently say unkind things about games, ruining them for everyone, there is even a man they call Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw who says ESPECIALLY mean things about games. "its like you can't like things anymore" says an ex forum user[/i]


its amazing you think I have that much influence...or that I complain for no reason

[quote/]
The difference is the brown hair guys and brown color palette doesn't actually stop the main stream audience from buying games.[/quote]

we don't know if females stop them eather

 

[Eve Charm]

ubpar, why cause it's 7 out of 10 as apposed to 8 out of 10? If you don't care enough when they TRY to appeal to you, then why are you caring when they Don't try to appeal to you?

how well do you think it would go over if I told PC gamers to stop whining and just be cool with subpar ports otherwise companies won't even bother with PC?

Like people haven't said that before, and that not exactly what your doing. What what be more like what your doing calling Ubisoft sexist pigs for not including a female character in a game your not going to bother with is complaining ubi is crap developers because watchdogs won't run at 120 FPS on a 4k display ever, something that people playing watchdogs on a pc right now, probably couldn't even dream of doing without a pc bursting into flames.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAahahaha oh lord its MY fault assasins creed liberation wasn't a hit? I'm somehow ruining the game for others? oh man I can see the headline

VAULT101 CAUSES GAME DRAMA, ESCAPIST USER OUT OF CONTROL

[i/]"she said the game was subpar" says another forum user "she started talking about...about female s and games and...it was horrible"

"I literally curled up in a ball crying" says another Ubisoft employee who is seeing a therapist for PTSD due to Vault101's comments [/i]

no no...ok then, lets not stop there

PEOPLE SAY NEGATIVE THINGS ABOUT GAMES ON THE INTERNET

[i/]on the forum known as The Escapist users aparently say unkind things about games, ruining them for everyone, there is even a man they call Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw who says ESPECIALLY mean things about games. "its like you can't like things anymore" says an ex forum user[/i]


its amazing you think I have that much influence...or that I complain for no reason

Actually yes, now take that type of thinking and Multiply that by thousands of people screaming all over. How many times do people call a video game/movie/book crap because that's the popular opinion of it without even knowing or looking into it themselves. How many people think something is good soley on popular opinion and no first hand experience with it. What makes you think AC:L is a bad game despite never picking it up? Better yet, how is ubisoft sexist/racist for AC unity when the game hasn't even been in any form what so ever yet, the game hasn't even gone gold.

 

[Vault101]

What what be more like what your doing calling Ubisoft sexist pigs for not including a female character in a game your not going to bother with

those words...stop putting them in my mouth....I never called them that

[quote/]Actually yes, now take that type of thinking and Multiply that by thousands of people screaming all over.[/quote]screaming....oh how wonderful, such vivd images of thousands of hysterical females screaming over nothing

1.gamers complain about shit all the time

2.again if we have issues were allowed to voice them

[quote/]How many times do people call a video game/movie/book crap because that's the popular opinion of it without even knowing or looking into it themselves. How many people think something is good soley on popular opinion and no first hand experience with it.[/quote]
thats why people need to have informed opinions DUH!

[quote/]What makes you think AC:L is a bad game despite never picking it up?[/quote]
reveiws...you know...thats why they exist..and not BAD just has certain faults

[quote/]Better yet, how is ubisoft sexist/racist for AC unity when the game hasn't even been in any form what so ever yet, the game hasn't even gone gold.[/quote]
well having a white guy protagonist isn't nessycarly sexist in of iteslf...it is getting to be boring/tedious though

my problem here is more with Ubisofts response than the game itself (although the feaure in question seems dumb)and you know I could totally be into Unity if I weren't so burned out on the series and this sexism crap didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth

 

[Casual Shinji]

You know what. I sympathise with devs. If they make a woman and people don't like her they get shit. If they don't make any women, they get shit. If it's anything less that perfect, they get shit. I see why they are reluctant to do it. And to be honest, i wouldn't do it either.

Unfortunately that's the kind of shit we're gonna have to muscle through.

You know why female characters are put under such scrutiny? Because it's still seen as a big deal to even have one by both developers and gamers. Male characters are a dime a dozen, so nobody bats an eye when they're shit. The more females characters inhabit games, the more comfortable everyone is going to be with them, and the less anyone is going to care whether or not they get perfectly represented. And when we reach that point creating female characters will become just as much of a second nature as creating males.

Even now you'll have people saying there needs to be a reason for a woman to be in a game, and that they shouldn't just get shoehorned in. But since when are women (or blacks, gays, whatever) so goddamn special that they can't simply be in a game for the sake of it?

 

[Boris Goodenough]

You know why female characters are put under such scrutiny? Because it's still seen as a big deal to even have one by both developers and gamers. Male characters are a dime a dozen, so nobody bats an eye when they're shit. The more females characters inhabit games, the more comfortable everyone is going to be with them, and the less anyone is going to care whether or not they get perfectly represented. And when we reach that point creating female characters will become just as much of a second nature as creating males.

I think Krazykidd' point is that when they finally learn that, which is unlikely consider how "often" male writers are still critized this day and age for how they write females in books (I guess that can besolved my hiring females to write those roles), they would have lost millions of dollars in the process, they do not want that.

 

[Casual Shinji]

You know why female characters are put under such scrutiny? Because it's still seen as a big deal to even have one by both developers and gamers. Male characters are a dime a dozen, so nobody bats an eye when they're shit. The more females characters inhabit games, the more comfortable everyone is going to be with them, and the less anyone is going to care whether or not they get perfectly represented. And when we reach that point creating female characters will become just as much of a second nature as creating males.

I think Krazykidd' point is that when they finally learn that, which is unlikely consider how "often" male writers are still critized this day and age for how they write females in books (I guess that can besolved my hiring females to write those roles), they would have lost millions of dollars in the process, they do not want that.

And that itself is a very clear indicator that something needs to change, instead of perpetuating it. And I'm not just talking about female characters in games, I mean the entire triple-A industry. If something becomes so bloated that even the slightest nudge in a different direction can send it crashing into a building, then there's a big problem.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

And that itself is a very clear indicator that something needs to change, instead of perpetuating it. And I'm not just talking about female characters in games, I mean the entire triple-A industry. If something becomes so bloated that even the slightest nudge in a different direction can send it crashing into a building, then there's a big problem.

They still have be convinced to take the financial hit in order to make it there.

 

[Casual Shinji]

And that itself is a very clear indicator that something needs to change, instead of perpetuating it. And I'm not just talking about female characters in games, I mean the entire triple-A industry. If something becomes so bloated that even the slightest nudge in a different direction can send it crashing into a building, then there's a big problem.

They still have be convinced to take the financial hit in order to make it there.

And I don't think they will.

It'll probably be the little guys who will bring the change by coming up with something innovating that becomes really popular, which the big guys will then feel comfortable enough with to try and emulate themselves... Untill it become monotonous again.

 

[MrBaskerville]

If Unity didn't have the four player co-op, I would understand having a male protagonist. Maybe having a female protagonist would have required the story being altered somewhere along the line. Maybe the game takes place over a couple of years and has a sexual subplot - all the Assassins tend to do it, given that they don't really do any recruiting. That, I would understand. Altair, Ezio, getting pregnant may have spoiled the parkour a little. I didn't mention Connor because he'd have to be likeable before anyone could spend that much time alone with him.

Whatever reasons they might have, I could get that.

But there are four players. Each player sees themselves as Arnaud and everybody else as the other assassins. There is literally no reason one of them couldn't have been female.

There is, and you said it yourself. You're all playing as the exact same guy from the story, just your version of him. He wasn't written as a female, he was written as a male. I don't understand how many people just don't seem to understand that. It makes absolute fuck all sense for Arno to sudden have tits in a co-op session when you're all supposed to be playing his story.

The real question is, why did they design a 4 player coop game where everyone had to play as the same guy for it to make sense? The real problem starts all the wat back in the design phase, they had a chance to do something new with the series but they botched it because the story is more important than anything else, for some odd reason. Personally i would have prefered something where you could chose between four characters that each had a different playing style, just to mix things up a bit.

 

[Colour Scientist]

]Just... let people make the game they wanna make. If someone feels like their story should have a male protagonist, then let them go. I rather them have four male characters than for them to shoehorn in a female character just for the sake of having a female character. It's like when people complain about too much white characters and want an ethnic one. It simply feels like they want an ethnic character simply for the sake of it rather than if or if not it'll work with the story/setting.

This came up in another thread about 24 hours ago but I'm going to say it again.

Why is it that "shoehorning" and tokenism only ever comes up in relation to characters that don't fit the straight white guy mould?

Gay character? Shoehorning.
Female character? Shoehorning.
Non-white character? Shoehorning.

When has a game ever been accused of "shoehorning" a straight white guy into their narrative?

 

[putowtin]

I'm gonna copy what I've posted in Vault101's thread, cause it's quite succinct if I do say so myself, which I just did so you can't stop me

Here's some videogame/ movie standards for you,

A guy flirts with a girl in a bar... he's a stud, no doubt he'll soon sweep her off of her feet and entertain her all night in his expensive hotel suite
A girl flirts with a guy in a bar... she's a slut or a hooker, if he sleeps with her he'll be shamed, shunned by his family and end up with a STD

A guy kills a militia and their evil leader... he's a hero and has probably just saved the world from nuclear war or an ancient evil, guy can sail off into the sunset with a girl hanging off his studly arm.
A girl kills a militia and their evil leader... she's getting over a traumatic event from her childhood, though the deed will not fully cure her daddy issues, hence the next game/ film will be the same plot with a different location.

There are many, many more... why do I bring them up? Because even as a Female Gamer, one (apparently) sworn to moan and complain about female protagonists I can't. The female protagonist in gaming are generally boring to play. Gaming developers need to understand that female protagonists can have the same back story as their male counter parts, they just need different modelling and slightly less studly walk animations!

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

And I don't think they will.

It'll probably be the little guys who will bring the change by coming up with something innovating that becomes really popular, which the big guys will then feel comfortable enough with to try and emulate themselves... Untill it become monotonous again.

To be fair Bioware has handled multi-gender protagonists well for at least a decade and their "choose your own hero"-approach has begun to become normative in RPGs. That's on top of their generally diverse cast of party NPCs that contain both good male and female NPCs.

2013 also saw two games where the hero of the story arguably wasn't the player avatar, but the female companion. Both got loads of critical and popular acclaim for their storytelling and their depiction of the central female character. I am of course talking about Bioshock: Infinite and The Last of Us.

So the triple-A industry is slowly changing to be more inclusive. It is just taking a long, long time and chances are that if we, as the consumer and base, stop pushing for change it will revert to the status quo of white men being standard.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

]Just... let people make the game they wanna make. If someone feels like their story should have a male protagonist, then let them go. I rather them have four male characters than for them to shoehorn in a female character just for the sake of having a female character. It's like when people complain about too much white characters and want an ethnic one. It simply feels like they want an ethnic character simply for the sake of it rather than if or if not it'll work with the story/setting.

This came up in another thread about 24 hours ago but I'm going to say it again.

Why is it that "shoehorning" and tokenism only ever comes up in relation to characters that don't fit the straight white guy mould?

Gay character? Shoehorning.
Female character? Shoehorning.
Non-white character? Shoehorning.

When has a game ever been accused of "shoehorning" a straight white guy into their narrative?

I see it more in movies than games, like Keanu Reeves in 47 Ronin.

 

[1066]

Here's the difference: your story cost you... precisely nothing to create.

Time, effort and maybe even soul, yes, but no billable hours and you did it because why not?

Triple A games have budgets as much as into nine digits. Flops can, will and do sink companies for both reasons of return on investment and reputation.

people on tumblr don't have that kind of power...

criticism of this kind and sales do not always reflect each other....AC:Unity is going to sell...its a big mainstream cash cow...the amount of sales it loses to people on grounds of the female issue will probably be inconsequntial...now the amount Ubisoft loses due to the bullshit theyve been pulling with their PC crowd might be more...but thats their fault

Watch_Dogs had a protagonost and story comparable to soggy bread...yet it didn;t flop

Watch Dogs had a massive, year+-long advertising campaign based on the game's gimmick, not the story, and it only just got released and is already fading from memory. It was a resounding meh, which is actually a good thing in the grand scheme. In similar vein, though, Alone in the Dark basically finished off the franchise and that iteration of Atari and Dragon Age 2 and ME3 dealt a huge hit to Bioware.

Double-Fine is not-so-slowly losing its fanbase due to the issues with Broken Age.

For the rest, well, you just proved a previous point you argued against:

krazykidd:
You know what. I sympathise with devs. If they make a woman and people don't like her they get shit. If they don't make any women, they get shit. If it's anything less that perfect, they get shit. I see why they are reluctant to do it. And to be honest, i wouldn't do it either.

people always say this

but so what? they might actually LEARN something

You said it yourself above: The E3 thing isn't going to do much to affect sales.

It's very true that many developers will avoid female protagonists, or at least I would were I them, because the injury to their company would be greater if they made a mistake in the product than in the marketing. Frankly, I tend to argue that this exact pressure is making it harder to put women in games simply because of that scrutiny doesn't let them make any mistakes, perceived or otherwise, without a huge media frenzy. The negative publicity from simply not having female protagonists is short-lived, gone before the game goes to market, and one of dozens every year.

I also have to point out that, while there simply may not have been an answer to it, you've avoided the entire part about risks to reputation and career; aside from maybe stating that there's no such thing as risk in the game industry.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Could they? Yes. Doesn't mean they have to. It's never been the way they create their protagonists. It's probably why we have this kind of co-op system instead of a separate one or a game co-written with 2. It's just how they do it and that's perfectly fine. They aren't required to create a female protagonist if they don't want to, and they sure as hell don't deserve this retarded backlash of "oh well it should of had a female from the beginning!"

Is that the way game announcements are going to be now? If someone dare creates a game where your protagonists happens to have a dick will they be condemned for it?

If someone "dares create a game with a protagonist with a dick" claims the reason they didn't add women was because "it was too much work", then, yeah, condemn them for that, because that excuse sucks royally and deserves to be called out on.

That's the big thing. Nobody is calling out Metal Gear Solid V, because their creator didn't outright state women are too much work to make playable. Nobody is calling out Killzone, because the developers didn't make up a load of BS that women couldn't be factored into their budget.

Ubisoft is taking heat because they claimed women are neither worth the time or effort to make playable, the proceeded to handle the backlash with the grace of a falling cow.

You are correct; they don't HAVE to add in women.

But that shouldn't stop people like me from asking for them. And I certainly don't HAVE to buy their game if their excuses reek of BS.

I suspect Guerilla Games actually succumbed to some half-hearted diversity quota because they shoehorned a female character into the abortion that was Killzone 3 and had every single other character act like she'd been there the entire time and was totally awesome, despite having her arse kicked by an unarmed Helghast grunt.

You know, come to think on it, the entire series has been pretty progressive as far as gaming goes, what with Luger, Echo, Admiral Grey and Hera Visari....