Update: Remember Me Developer Dontnod 'Not Bankrupt'

[ShirowShirow]

Please don't bother registering the existence of a user named Sonichu. It can only end poorly.

Anyway, despite the fact that playing through remember me was a physically painful experience for me I'm still glad they aren't going the way of the dodo. There was enough interesting ideas there for me to get behind a second game from the studio.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Few examples of very successful (also commercialy) games with female protagonists and big budgets (absolutely from a top of my head):
Resident Evil 2
Tomb Raider 2
Diablo 2
Onimusha
Left 4 Dead
Soul Edge
Mass Effect 2
Fallout 3

Now analyse it yourself. Protip: there are two distinct recurring eements regarding their fem protags, and you need at least one of these things in your game to have it sell really well.

Alright, let's analyse:

Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 have flexible-gender protagonists, Diablo 2 has no individual protagonist at all. According to wikipedia, Onimusha's protagonist is always male, Soul Edge is really old and doesn't seem to be a plot-based game at all, and Resident Evil 2 has two main protaognists, only one of them being male. So only one (and a half) games on your list actually has a fixed-gender female protagonist at all.

The most distinct recurring element of the female protagonists on your list seems to be their nonexistence.

Edit: I'm not sure if you're doing yourself a favor by drawing mod attention. I mean, you have a really red health meter and you're deferring to women rather disrespectfully as "womyn" all the time...

 

[Salad Is Murder]

I actually quite enjoyed it, although I'm glad I didn't pay full retail price for it. The combat was pretty bland and formulaic, but it was an incredibly attractive game and the story had a strong cyberpunk feel. I'd have been interested in a sequel certainly.

This, right here.

They constructed a really interesting world with some cool concepts and then dropped it into a shamefully mediocre brawler. What the hell?

I would have played the crap out of a game that was nothing but you messing with peoples memories and working your mojo on them without ever having to punch a single face.

Also my biggest complaint with the Bioshock games. Great writing, interesting characters and setting, terrible first person shooter what the fuh....

 

[OtherSideofSky]

As one of the few people who genuinely enjoyed Remember Me, this causes a twinge of sadness to briefly animate my dead, blackened heart.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Wrong. You need to have either (or both):

1. Protagonists of both genders, or an ability to choose between the genders (using predefined characters or character creation).

Alright. So for a game with a female protagonis to be succesful, it has to have a male protagonist. That makes sense. Well, that or tits.

A game with a flexible-gender protagonist is not a game with a fixed female protagonist. The "fixed" part is not always explicit, but always implicit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womyn and welcome to feminism.

I'm sure I'll be able to learn much from you about feminism... and that doesn't mean that you're not using the term in a disrespectful way.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Yes, you can't have a singular "fixed female protagonist" without T&A in a big budget game and make it a major commercial success. Glad you understood.

And that exactly is the claim for which there is not sufficient evidence... as several people, including myself, have tried to explain to you. Obviously to no avail, so I won't bother anymore.

 

[Evonisia]

Anyway Nilin didn't actually kiss anyone in the game, not that I remember anyway.

She doesn't since the developers removed it. The character who owns the Leaking Brain seems to be friendly and affectionate towards Nilin so I guess he would have been Nilin's boyfriend in the ideal Remember Me.

 

[CloudAtlas]

And that exactly is the claim for which there is not sufficient evidence... as several people, including myself, have tried to explain to you. Obviously to no avail, so I won't bother anymore.

You're talking like people who say we didn't prove yet communism doesn't work. Once again, check the sales of celebrated "progressive" games, even the "10/10 GOTY best game ever" Gone Home and then imagine what catastrophe it would be with a huge budget. Then see the big hit fem protag games, practically all of them (even kid games, like Pokemon). Here you go, "sufficient evidence".

If we get a AAA game that has really awesome gameplay, with guns and big explosions and gunships and all that, and a really epic, indulgent story, and great production values overall (also emotionally enganging and thematically deep, but the indulgent part is important here) , and this game gets 9/10 and 10/10 ratings across the board, and is marketed the hell out of it, with trailers and such focussing on the action and the explosions and shows several characters of both genders, do badass stuff, like punching and shooting and blowing stuff up... Now if this game then has a protagonist who just happens to be female, a tough, badass no-nonsense character like Ellen Ripley or Femshep, and not a big fuzz is made out of her gender, neither ingame nor in marketing, and if this game still doesn't sell well... then we can talk.

Until then, your claims are hollow, and your gleefulness is telling.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Anyway Nilin didn't actually kiss anyone in the game, not that I remember anyway.

She doesn't since the developers removed it. The character who owns the Leaking Brain seems to be friendly and affectionate towards Nilin so I guess he would have been Nilin's boyfriend in the ideal Remember Me.

I see. It might have been for the best to cut it then, the game already had 4 other characters that you had to care about in order to make the narrative work on an emotional level (imho), and precious little time for making you do so:

Spoiler

Nilin, her parents, and Edge.

And since I'm already using the spoiler tag... the scene towards the end where you make your own father believe he was responsible for the death of his own daughter, that was really something, that made me pause. Now if the overall game was a bit better, the overall narrative a bit more compelling (to me), that would have been a truly powerful, heart-breaking scene.

As a side note: you realize you're not that young anymore when you're starting to identify with the fathers of the characters.

 

[CloudAtlas]

"and shows several characters of both genders"

The trailers would be showing characters of both genders because the story contains important characters of both genders, sort of like the secondary characters feature prominently in Mass Effect commercials too. But the game would still have a fixed-gender female protagonist. The trailers would just not be all about her.

Also, the marketing might also want to hammer down the message that you, as male player, will naturally be able to identify with the protagonist no matter her gender. Sort of like this (cool) Tomb Raider commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twjNaXJvZfk

And the thing is: This commercial isn't lying. If the character is good, you will identify with it no matter what if you have just a shred of empathy. You will feel for Solomon Northup even though he is not white in 12 Years a Slave, you will feel with Ryan Stone in Gravity even though she is not male, to use two Oscar favourites as example.

And this is how the business works.

Assuming this is both true and a valid defense, I want to ask you directly: Do you like that this is the way it works? Do you think there should be no games with (not heavily sexualized) female protagonists or other (not heavily sexualized) female characters?

 

[Evonisia]

Anyway Nilin didn't actually kiss anyone in the game, not that I remember anyway.

She doesn't since the developers removed it. The character who owns the Leaking Brain seems to be friendly and affectionate towards Nilin so I guess he would have been Nilin's boyfriend in the ideal Remember Me.

I see. It might have been for the best to cut it then, the game already had 4 other characters that you had to care about in order to make the narrative work on an emotional level (imho), and precious little time for making you do so:

Spoiler

Nilin, her parents, and Edge.

And since I'm already using the spoiler tag... the scene towards the end where you make your own father believe he was responsible for the death of his own daughter, that was really something, that made me pause. Now if the overall game was a bit better, the overall narrative a bit more compelling (to me), that would have been a truly powerful, heart-breaking scene.

As a side note: you realize you're not that young anymore when you're starting to identify with the fathers of the characters.

Spoiler

When I saw the objective to kill Nilin in that scene it was enough to make me pause for a moment, my first thought was just "Wait... what?!". Though I do like how it's a memory mix within a memory mix.

I agree, given the time restraints and the whole "being a AAA game" thing it's hard to make something so bloated even larger. Hopefully in Remember Me Too (I hope it's not called Remember Me Two, or do I?), we get expansions on Olga, that guy and perhaps add more impact to people's deaths.

Spoiler

That scene in the furnace/coffin room irritated me because there was little emphasis that we've just lost the person we came to save, and Nilin doesn't react to it.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Assuming this is both true and a valid defense, I want to ask you directly: Do you like that this is the way it works? Do you think there should be no games with (not heavily sexualized) female protagonists or other (not heavily sexualized) female characters?

Actually I usually prefer female protagonists. But I'm in a minority. The kind of people who did play Femshep when creating their character (and great most people didn't).

If you prefer female protagonists, why are you trying so hard to undermine a cause that is your own?

 

[CloudAtlas]

If you prefer female protagonists, why are you trying so hard to undermine a cause that is your own?

By talking on an internet forum about the facts of an average gamer's preferences? I'm not an usual gamer. I don't like playing GTA because what happens in the game is so nihilistically immoral, but most people do.

You know, maybe you're not such an outlier as you might think. Have a little faith. And, as I said before, don't undermine your own cause with comments like that, encourage game devs by telling that for you (as you claimed) a female protagonist is even a plus.

 

[Kegluneq]

Oh good, the fedora brigade arrived.

I only just got into Mass Effect having picked up the first two games in the January sale, playing as FemShep paragon. I've been so impressed with Jennifer Hale's performance so far that I'm just going to regard that playthrough as canon (I'll get round to Renegade MalShep(?) at some point). The actual figure for players as a whole seems to be something like 18% for those two games [http://www.vg247.com/2011/07/19/loving-femshep-biowares-first-lady-finally-steps-forward/], which is sad but perhaps not unexpected. Playing as Female Shepard was for me a deliberate attempt to try something different, since I do normally play as the generic male character on first playthroughs.

 

[Strazdas]

Mirrors Edge and Dead Space did like most "New IPs" difference being that those were good games, Remember me on the other hand... isn't.

mirrors edge struggled and was considered a failure by the devs at first, until it got that cult following bizzare games get.

According to Game Journalism [TM], it reflects AMAZINGLY on female gamers (48% of all gamers) "if they have so little empathy so that they can't identify enough with" a male character in order to experience a story from his point of view.

Morever, the same "48%" also can't and won't play any game with sexy, I'm sorry, SEXIST, female characters. But if someone makes a game with with "non-sexualized positive strong womyn protagonist" they'll reach into this untapped potential of half of the population and it's going to be a great success!

Except not at all. But hey, maybe they also need womyn "of color" (and the pretty usual Asian doesn't count). And trans. Trans-ethnic. Trans-fat. Non-neurotypical. Etc.

While this is true, its worth noting that more in-depth research ahs shown that female gamers are much more into puzzles and flash games while male gamers take over the majority (think 90%) of the "core" game genres that this game would fit in. So the whole "There are as many females playing my shooter" is completely false statement in reality.
I would like to see more fat characters in videogames though. Games seem to be dominated by slim and muscular characetrs from both sexes.

Please don't bother registering the existence of a user named Sonichu. It can only end poorly.

So i should ignore the only person here with sources? okay.