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FPS are for shooting pretend terrorists not for crying over a story. Ergo: does it really matter? You're still killing pretend terrorists.

The last time any game had any sembalance of a character that I cared about was one that had random one liners that would crop up (IE Duke Nukem, borderlands charcters.)

Go kill some more pretend terrorists then realise that story/lead is more tacked on to a FPS rather than be the main bit. And you can't ever see your own character as it's first person.

And with that. I will go kill some more pretend terrorists.

Yes, and I care how?

I'd like to play a badass female character in a shooter for once. It hasn't really happened very much, and usually you're right, she IS done for sex appeal. That doesn't mean that's how it has to be, nor does it mean that women can't be done properly in the setting. So why should I want to settle for less, again, while you don't have to?

Say, why not have a female soldier in a modern army? Is that realistic? Of course it is, it's not like it's not already happening, it's not like twenty minutes into the future it won't be even more common. And there's already at least one game that does it. Now if only Combat Arms wasn't inherently flawed for being styled off of Korean MMOs. But major releases never even bother to try, hell, most of hte time they don't even have female models in them period, not even as NPCs in single player. Because they are being lazy and they aren't marketing to us, mostly, and that is exactly what's pissing me off.

Or even a non-soldier. It's not like all modern games have to be about the army. Crimecraft comes to mind, but then again it's a 3PS rather than FPS, and it sucks anyway so it's hardly a good example, and besides, it also sexualizes its female PCs-- high heels, high skirts, and low cut tops are the order of the day. So a more appropriate one would be Left 4 Dead. Zoey was actually the most popular character in Left 4 dead (poll by Valve)-- there's pretty much noone like her. Yet nobody is taking advantage of this sort of popularity and adding these kinds of characters to their games, making me wonder about the (lack of) capability of the gaming industry's marketing departments.

Or hell, a badass female lead in a futuristic setting for an FPS game. These are a bit more common, from Samus Aran on the Wii, to Global Agenda on the PC, and a few more. Yet even here, where the rigors of fiction take place and lower the barrier for believability (yes, I've seen and heard some male gamers openly despise Zoey and Rochelle for this reason, as their sexist beliefs are so ingrained in their heads that they can't comprehend a woman actually doing anything heroic), it's incredibly rare to see a woman for any purpose other than sex appeal.

Hell, older games such as Quake or Unreal Tournament or Doom managed to do it, yet newer games seem incapable of it, the devs usually citing that it's too much work. Unreal Tournament 3, for example had believable female characters who were armored up like everyone else, and it's a pity the game itself was kinda flawed and unpopular. Halo Reach has them (and it basically only really means new voice acting there, which I'm perfectly fine with), but as before, I'm not going to be able to play THAT for a long time no matter how much I want it. Maybe I should try and sell my PS3 so I can buy a 360 because it's not like my PS3 has many games I actually want to play these days...

Will I still play FPS games? Of course I will, I like the genre for it gameplay.

I just haven't been enjoying it as much as I would like.

NOTE: Though technically an adventure game more than a shooter, Metroid Prime features a female protagonist in a FP environment. Samus Aran is around 6ft 2in, weighs in at 260lb and could break a man's spine if she so wished due to her genetic modifications by an alien race.

Just saying, FP viewpoints are no limitation to the use of female characters, as Halo: Reach has proved.

Melissia wrote:... and yet, if you read it, you would notice that the quote I gave came directly from the article, stated directly by her.

I obviously read it because I quotes other parts of the article. However, I'm able to read an article for what it is really saying versus what someone wants it to say.

You'll note that she includes FPS last in that list of games. And, honestly, I bet she said it as a nod to the genre. The genres she cited data for didn't include FPS games.

In fact, I can't seem to find numbers for that anywhere. I've found tons of articles that are reporting things like 40% of video gamers are female, or that if you only include online games like Farmville or Sims, women outnumber men about 2-to-1. But all of these articles mention the appeal of the casual game and the social game as being responsible for this demographic, and note that males still significantly outnumber females in traditionally competitive games like sports and shooters.

Right, women are gaining marketshare. They're just not gaining marketshare in every single sub-genre. The fact that more titles are being published that seem to be want women want to play is a good thing. Bemoaning the fact that development efforts to include women in genres that most women don't find interesting to begin with is missing the point. Spending 20% more time and effort on development for a 10% additional gain in sales is not good math.

Melissia wrote:
Hell, older games such as Quake or Unreal Tournament or Doom managed to do it, yet newer games seem incapable of it, the devs usually citing that it's too much work. Unreal Tournament 3, for example had believable female characters who were armored up like everyone else, and it's a pity the game itself was kinda flawed and unpopular. Halo Reach has them (and it basically only really means new voice acting there, which I'm perfectly fine with), but as before, I'm not going to be able to play THAT for a long time no matter how much I want it. Maybe I should try and sell my PS3 so I can buy a 360 because it's not like my PS3 has many games I actually want to play these days...

In Doom, graphics were sprites. A sprite is a collection of pixels that look like a little guy, and by having several of them, you can create a semblance of a 3d critter. You scale them for perspective and display one of a handful to compensate for angles. Adding a new sprite is relatively easy.

In Quake, they moved to polygons and skins, but since all you have to do to change the gender of a character is change the skin, it's still a fairly easy process.

Modern games aren't like that. Modern games strive for realism in how things appear, and so they use actors and motion captures to create how their characters look, and move. It's not just a matter of applying a new skin anymore, it's a matter of hiring new actors, and generating all that information another time. They record dialog using voice actors, rather than just putting text on the screen.

You say, "well, they could do this before, how come they can't now", and unfortunately, the answer to that advancements across the board in how video games play have increased the complexity of the development process to the point where things that were easy before are now quite involved. It's the price paid for the extra level of realism.

Left4Dead, by its nature, is investing in four characters, so making one of them female doesn't add to the development cycle. But if the story is Bob versus the Undead, adding the option to make it Betty versus the Undead doubles the required characterization process. It IS a technical cost, and that's why they don't do it anymore, even though they used to.

Redbeard wrote:Right, women are gaining marketshare. They're just not gaining marketshare in every single sub-genre.

Cite your source.

EVERY single study and poll and etc that I've read contradicts this-- women in gaming, both as players and developers, are more common nowadays than before across the board. Is it an even growth across the board? No. But some genres haven't exactly been marketed to women to begin with, so that's hardly surprisin.

Melissia wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Right, women are gaining marketshare. They're just not gaining marketshare in every single sub-genre.

Cite your source.

I just said, I was looking for any article, at all, that says anything about market share for women in FPS games, and could not find any. What I did find was a lot that said women are gaining market share in gaming in general, and that they all mention causal and social games as the cause.

I can't cite a source that doesn't exist.

EVERY single study and poll and etc that I've read contradicts this-- women in gaming, both as players and developers, are more common nowadays than before across the board. Is it an even growth across the board? No. But some genres haven't exactly been marketed to women to begin with, so that's hardly surprisin.

More common is a relative term and doesn't mean a lot in terms of market share. If one more girl plays an FPS this year than last, then female FPS players are more common. They're not a more relevant percentage though. Ten more players doesn't mean squat in terms of the market. We're not talking about all gaming here. I've already acknowledged that women have gained significant market share in gaming as a whole. We're talking, very specifically, about FPS games.

Cite one source that definitively states, with data, that the percentage FPS players who are female has increased significantly (say, 5% or more) in the last five years, and I'll bow to your superiour googling ability. Cite one that shows that the percentage of FPS players who are female is higher than 25% of all FPS players and I'll graciously agree that FPS developers should make more of an effort to market FPS games to women.

But, I don't think that data exists. And, if female FPS players account for less than 25% of the FPS market, then I'm sorry, I think that game developers are simply spending their development and marketing dollars where it makes sense, making titles for boys that boys typically like, and making titles for girls that girls typically like. The fact that you're an exception doesn't change the wisdom of their choices.

Redbeard wrote:I just said, I was looking for any article, at all, that says anything about market share for women in FPS games

I already posted one. Sony's VP of marketing specifically said that there was now a significant amount of female gamers in the FPS genre (along with Action and MMOs).

If the marketshare of female gamers wasn't growing, there would be no reason for them to say that, yes?

Yes.

That article included no data. It included no marketshare information. It didn't single out FPS games, it included them as an example of a type of game. It did, of course, mention that most women gamers played casual games and online social games like the sims.

Show me numbers, not some propaganda speech by a woman who is pushing an agenda.

The main games my wife wants at the moment are Left4Dead and Red Dead Redemption and that's hardly a new thing, she used to be a big HalfLife gamer. She does however appreciate being able to choose female characters in like like Morrowind.

With vague reference to the subject... Alyx was, in my opinion, an extremely tacky addition to Half-Life 2 that ruined the atmosphere of a game that I had really enjoyed up until that point.

I sometimes ask 'what were they thinking' but, of course, I know exactly why she's there. It pisses me right off.

That's my little rant. Nothing against women in games, but that just bugged me hard.

Redbeard wrote:That article included no data. It included no marketshare information. It didn't single out FPS games, it included them as an example of a type of game. It did, of course, mention that most women gamers played casual games and online social games like the sims.

I've made the exact same point in at least two nearly identical discussions, so its nice to see that I'm not the only person who comes to this conclusion.

Melissia wrote:GoldenEye 007 Wii: No playable female characters.

If you're referring to the one that was originally produced for N64, you'd be interested to know that Perfect Dark was made by the same company and had a female protagonist.

Not that it really matters. FPS protagonists tend to be males, because statistically men and women have different interests. Anyone with any type of background in marketing will tell you that. There's a reason why there's different commercials on during MXC than Oprah.

My fiance is a gamer and she is more into the competitive side then cooperation so whoever said that earlier is generalizing.

My fiance also agrees with the OP. Personally the playable characters gender isn't that big of a deal to me, yes it can add to the story but for me it dosen't effect the game very much.

Gears of War 3 is supposed to have 2 playable female characters when it comes out.

VikingScott wrote:FPS are for shooting pretend terrorists not for crying over a story. Ergo: does it really matter? You're still killing pretend terrorists.

The last time any game had any sembalance of a character that I cared about was one that had random one liners that would crop up (IE Duke Nukem, borderlands charcters.)

Go kill some more pretend terrorists then realise that story/lead is more tacked on to a FPS rather than be the main bit. And you can't ever see your own character as it's first person.

And with that. I will go kill some more pretend terrorists.

Clearly this man has never played Bioshock and then Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den.

Redbeard wrote:Show me numbers, not some propaganda speech by a woman who is pushing an agenda.

Why don't you try providing proof of your assertion that the women gaming demographic is so monolithic?

I can, and have, provided tons of links to places which show women are a very large (in fact, women are a larger online gaming demographic than men, and about fourty percent of the overall gaming population according to most sources, including the ESA itself) portion of the gaming population. Women are half the global population of humanity, and we're just as widely varying in personality, likes, and dislikes as men. The assumption that somehow we're somehow all the same or even just largely so is insulting and ignorant.

Meh. When you still have bull**** like THIS going on, marketing is doing a HIDEOUSLY bad job. That is downright insulting to a grown woman, when they're referred to that rack because of their gender regardless of age (and the average gamer is in their mid thirties according to the ESA). Then there's bull**** like the Della which further exacerbate the problem, as though that's a tech company rather than a gaming company it only goes to show the problem of marketers being ludicrously clumsy in dealing with the overall female demographic, acting as if we're all one monolithic group that only cares about pink and flowers and dresses and losing weight.

I hate marketers.

Moved from Video Games.

Melissia wrote:Meh. When you still have bull**** like THIS going on, marketing is doing a HIDEOUSLY bad job. T

Actually, considering how many of those things sell I'd say that the marketers are doing exactly what they're supposed to. That's also a horrendous example, since those games are aimed at children.

Newsflash: A lot of little girls like Bratz and princesses.

Yeah alot girls I know play COD and Halo and starcraft 2. And they owned me. Several times over.

Slarg232 wrote:Clearly this man has never played Bioshock and then Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den.

He's generally correct though. Formula for an FPS: insert protagonist + firearms + generic bad guys = pew pew pew bam bam zap. Most FPS don't have a strong single player. Bioshock is an exception to the standard set up, and there are others, but usually the story is just an excuse for giving somebody lethal firearms and letting them go to town on someone. And it's all in most cases a side show as a marketing gimmick (play our epic campaign *cough* it sucks but it's there *cough*) than something actually worth noting as a masterpiece of story telling. So I agree with him. It doesn't really matter. You can substitute the dude for a chick in most FPS story lines and shockingly... nothing really changes because the gender of the player character is mostly irrelevant.

This could be true even in some genres that are heavy on story honestly. I could take Lightning from FFXIII, make her a dude, and the story isn't going to change much, because Lightning's gender isn't a major part of it. Bioware even makes it a priority in their games! Being one gender over another never changes anything but which fake-friend you can make out with.

And OP: Go play halo for a day. Random matchmaking. Let me know how many girls you find. You'll probably come across three or four over the course of a twelve hour stretch (and I've done plenty of those) and everyone else will be dudes. My PC clan has one female member (not including our clan leaders wife who hops on from time to time), and none of our associate alliances have any (and that's about a hundred players at least). Sorry. There just aren't as many female FPS gamers as you'd like to think. Playing these games for any given period of time makes that obvious. Granted, five years ago, I didn't find any girls on any of these games.

LordofHats wrote:This could be true even in some genres that are heavy on story honestly. I could take Lightning from FFXIII, make her a dude, and the story isn't going to change much, because Lightning's gender isn't a major part of it.

So why is there an issue with the request of there being more females?

I would like to play a female character in a good quality shooter game. Since obviously it doesn't really have to make any difference as far as story goes, it's merely an aesthetic concern-- and hell, if the characters are in power armor it's basically just an audio concern.

Melissia wrote:

LordofHats wrote:This could be true even in some genres that are heavy on story honestly. I could take Lightning from FFXIII, make her a dude, and the story isn't going to change much, because Lightning's gender isn't a major part of it.

So why is there an issue with the request of there being more females?

I would like to play a female character in a good quality shooter game. Since obviously it doesn't really have to make any difference as far as story goes, it's merely an aesthetic concern-- and hell, if the characters are in power armor it's basically just an audio concern.

My point is that there's no need to get upset about it. It'll happen as the female demographic increases. Bungie has already noted that women are playing more Halo, and what did they do? They catered to that demographic and made a female multiplayer model available (which in an FPS means more than a female single player character).

What you want is coming, the demographic just needs more time to grow.

Melissia wrote:
I can, and have, provided tons of links to places which show women are a very large (in fact, women are a larger online gaming demographic than men, and about fourty percent of the overall gaming population according to most sources, including the ESA itself) portion of the gaming population.

And you still fail to grasp the distinction between gaming in general, and the specific style of game, FPS, that your original post complained about. Look, statistics about general gaming don't matter. I agree with you in terms of general gaming. Where is the data on FPS games?

Women are half the global population of humanity, and we're just as widely varying in personality, likes, and dislikes as men. The assumption that somehow we're somehow all the same or even just largely so is insulting and ignorant.

Get over it already. It has been like that, for both males and females, for decades. Look, they don't advertise cooking products during sports show and they don't advertise F-150 trucks during Oprah. That doesn't mean there are no women who watch sports, it doesn't mean there are no women who like trucks, it doesn't mean there are no men who watch Oprah, and it doesn't mean there are no men who cook. What it means is that marketers like to get the most bang for their buck, and that means hedging their bets where it is appropriate. Cry about it all you like, it's a fact.

You're just upset that your demographic doesn't include all of your personal preferences. Join the club. 90% of the ads I see on TV targeted to men (Trucks, cheap American beer, erectile dysfunction pills) don't interest me either.

Meh. When you still have bull**** like THIS going on, marketing is doing a HIDEOUSLY bad job.

I disagree. My wife, a grown woman of 35, has 2-3 of the titles on that shelf. She plays the cooking/gardening mama games a lot. Maybe you're the one that's out of touch. Furthermore, the titles on that shelf are clearly appropriate for "girls", you know, females 13 or under. I'm not upset that I've outgrown Bob the Builder games, why are you upset that you've outgrown the Little Mermaid?

Think of it another way. You're a grandparent, and your 10-year old granddaughter asked for a game for her DS for Christmas. You go into the game store. Are you happy that they've got a shelf like this there, or do you want to grab something random off the blood&guts shelf and hope she likes it, because girls and boys should all like the same stuff.

In the UK games industry only 12% of staff are women (I shouldn't need to CITE anything look it up yourself if you don't [want to] believe me). This twelve percent encompasses a much wider range of expertise and interests, for example it is common for marketing, production (in the media sense not manufacturing sense),PR and HR staff to be female in game publishers/developers. As it is a good springboard into TV/Film/paper media. Based on this i would reckon that it is not statiscally unfounded to further diminish this 12% into those that are actually interested in the medium, (is the marketing man for pesticides intersted in killing insects? Not really. Profits? yes). So if LESS than twelve percent of women employed by the game industry are significantly intersted enough in games to develop them, that must mean a majority of the female gamer demographic must have only a casual interest. Im sorry but around 90% of your 'Sisters' only want to play 'Just Dance' and Warble drunkenly along with 'Singstar' or perhaps maybe stab boredly at the DS there BOYFRIEND bought them. Anecdotely (or the word i am tryin' to spell) a couple friends have done coding/game developy courses and have only spoke of maybe two females out of 60 odd. Though perhaps it is not scientific to extrapolate trends from one facet to a more generalised contexts, i notice this logic has been employed by the OP, so :-P....

Asherian Command wrote:Yeah alot girls I know play COD and Halo and starcraft 2. And they owned me. Several times over.

Also I should add that girl I mentioned earlier who plays FPS's, RPG's, Fighting games, etc. She has a younger sister as well, guess what she was doing on the PC, playing Halo a FPS.

Cheesecat wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Yeah alot girls I know play COD and Halo and starcraft 2. And they owned me. Several times over.

Also I should add that girl I mentioned earlier who plays FPS's, RPG's, Fighting games, etc. She has a younger sister as well, guess what she was doing on the PC, playing Halo a FPS.

Her name doesn't happen to be HaloGirlx51? And she camps on a ridge and shots sniper shells at my team then I come up right behind her with a shotgun and said "You just got sarged." is she?

Asherian Command wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Yeah alot girls I know play COD and Halo and starcraft 2. And they owned me. Several times over.

Also I should add that girl I mentioned earlier who plays FPS's, RPG's, Fighting games, etc. She has a younger sister as well, guess what she was doing on the PC, playing Halo a FPS.

Her name doesn't happen to be HaloGirlx51? And she camps on a ridge and shots sniper shells at my team then I come up right behind her with a shotgun and said "You just got sarged." is she?

I wouldn't know I only took a brief glance.

Cheesecat wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Yeah alot girls I know play COD and Halo and starcraft 2. And they owned me. Several times over.

Also I should add that girl I mentioned earlier who plays FPS's, RPG's, Fighting games, etc. She has a younger sister as well, guess what she was doing on the PC, playing Halo a FPS.

Her name doesn't happen to be HaloGirlx51? And she camps on a ridge and shots sniper shells at my team then I come up right behind her with a shotgun and said "You just got sarged." is she?

I wouldn't know I only took a brief glance.

Because if she is. Tell her this "Alpha 124 pwns you all."

Asherian Command wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Yeah alot girls I know play COD and Halo and starcraft 2. And they owned me. Several times over.

Also I should add that girl I mentioned earlier who plays FPS's, RPG's, Fighting games, etc. She has a younger sister as well, guess what she was doing on the PC, playing Halo a FPS.

Her name doesn't happen to be HaloGirlx51? And she camps on a ridge and shots sniper shells at my team then I come up right behind her with a shotgun and said "You just got sarged." is she?

I wouldn't know I only took a brief glance.

Because if she is. Tell her this "Alpha 124 pwns you all."

I sense someone wanting to inflate their ego and I'm supposed to be their pump.

Melissia wrote:
Regardless, I would say that a good deal of the reason why FPS games don't attract women is precisely because of this. All the games are marketed towards men to begin with. And the number of female gamers in all genres is increasing as time goes on, so that's more reason to produce such titles.

How would you market fps games to women? They're basically violence fantasies, and that doesn't jive with the traditional feminine archetype that female marketing plays off of.

Moreover, if you're right and people really are more attracted to playing characters of their gender, then any company that produces a game with a female lead risk alienating male fps gamers, which is a far larger group than female fps gamers.

I mean, I guess an option to choose gender could be included, but that significantly increases the amount of work that must be done to create a storyline that doesn't merely revolve around a skin change.

Well, I can say that there will be female eye candy...err...characters in DNF... but I expect that it will get a thread about it all on it's own.

Though I am also somewhat put out about the lack of female characters in FPS games, as they were much more common in side scrollers.

Where are my Metal Slug peeps? Put cho hands in da air and put them together now!

*starts playing house remix of Metal Slug theme*

Let's not forget in groundbreaking work that DoA did for advancement of female video game characters.