Jangles said:
Along with the seemingly renewed vigor of feminists everywhere, writers of gaming articles have begun to pander to the push for "equality" in every single aspect of life and have begun to ask "Why are females in games made to be extremely attractive to the vastly male majority of core gamers?"
Yeah, except that's not the complain that any female feminist gamer has (at least none that I've ever met).
As a female gamer, MY complaint is that there are fairly few female protagonists, and that many of the female characters in gaming reflect negative stereotypes.
Most games are about white men being awesome. If there's a female character in the game, she's there for that guy to have sex with or rescue (or both).
This isn't a problem with just gaming either - movies have this problem as well. However, there are several categories of movie marketed to women. Very few video games market to women, however. Well, outside of Popcap. So that's a problem.
What I want are more strong female protagonists. Why can't the detective be a woman, instead of a hardbitten man? Why not the action hero? And I have no problem giving the player a little eye-candy, as long as the woman is well written and interesting.
Aya Brea, Samus (apart from Other M), Chell (from Portal), and Female Shepard are the only strong female protagonists I can think of off the top of my head, and that's just sad. There need to be more women protagonists.
I mean, do you, as a guy, really have a problem seeing a fine ass running around carrying your video game gun? I didn't think so.