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 DarthOvious wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:


I'm a guy, and as a guy, it's infinitely painful reading the rantings of raging male misogynists, moreso than it is reading the same caliber of material from the deranged fringe of Feminists. Dunno why, but that's just how it is for me.

Also, I'll just chime in with the others and ask you to point to stats that back up your rather grandiose claim that society oppresses men.

~Tim?

I guess its one of those things you'll never see until it happens to you. I guess the best place to ask if what do mens rights activists consider to be proof of their claims. Mens rights on reddit do list some sources on this page.

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRightsMeta/comments/tnwn8/faq_suggestion_antimale_legislation_roundup/

Not saying its proof that's going to change your mind but it is what is being touted.

There's a mens' rights movement?! Wow.

~Tim?

I really liked the picture of all the women olympians, should have something like that at EVERY char select screen

same thing for men, our options are not much better, if at all.... It really depends on the game, but even games with scalable 3d mesh models seem to only slide between the " tall steroid freak" and "slightly shorter slightly less steroid freak model with perfect 6 pack" for men, and "short and sexy" to "tall and sexy" for women.

I would love to play a short, non steroid freak warrior in most games, male or female.

how about some options for disabled limbs/robot limbs too... or a wheelchair???

FFS get creative... people want to play as chars they can relate too

 Talizvar wrote:
I swear a cartoon or game character we should try to make as androgynous as possible to be inclusive.

Just watch a child focused cartoon, see a few.
With my parental non-clinical opinion I could not witness more media that tries to define male and female roles, models and behavior.
Any product that tries to shoe-horn a gender bias, just do not buy it or give it a means for funding.

It all boils down to "not caring" or not making a point of it, why feel a need to "put a bow on it" in the first place?

Do not call your boy "slugger" do not be afraid to wrestle with your daughter, get your boys pets, a chance to nurture.

Games reflect what we have trained into our kids to be an interest.
So action, social interaction, relationships, puzzles and "spatial" relationships are not the specific skillset of a gender: it is common across both it just needs to be given a chance.

These videos are of interest but makes no attempt at pointing to root cause.
Here is an area specific to the industry: http://www.techwell.com/2012/10/culture-shock-battle-sexes-software-development
We are still at a stage where there is not enough female representation that an all male development staff has no clue on how to write for a female audience.
All it takes is hiring one, the rest will follow.

It is far easier to make a video to criticize the industry rather than just say to your viewers have respect for each other and question what behavior you are trying to promote.

One thing I've noticed though is it is never asked whether boys and girls tend to have these differences to begin with biologically. There was a documentary in Norway questioning why more women weren't in traditionally male dominated jobs. This question was asked especially because Norway is considered to be one of the more gender neutral countries of the world, however there was still a lack of women employed in certain jobs like Engineering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70

What was found was actually quite interesting. Biology may play a part in what careers people may choose to go for.

 DarthOvious wrote:

So in essence, here are some questions we need to ask.

1) Did she actually play any of the games?

2) What exactly did she do with the money she raised?

oh and

3) Why was she unaware Zelda fights back against Ganondorf in Twilight Princess if she did actually play the game?

1. Doesn't matter as she is talking about the visual themes and character design of these games which can easily be gauged simply by looking at them on youtube or something similar. If she was reviewing them or talking about the actual gameplay this would be a fair point but as she isn't its not relevant.

2. No idea, in fairness though she only actually asked for $6000 and one of the main reasons why she made as much as she did was people making a counter reaction to the troglodytes that were harassing her. It's the nature of Kickstarter.

3. No idea, maybe she didn't get very far.

I have no issues whatsoever with attacking her work, frankly I am less than impressed with it myself. The trend however seems to be to simply attack her which undermines the valid criticisms that are made against her work.

Its like a little Off Topic colony in here.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:

 DarthOvious wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:


I'm a guy, and as a guy, it's infinitely painful reading the rantings of raging male misogynists, moreso than it is reading the same caliber of material from the deranged fringe of Feminists. Dunno why, but that's just how it is for me.

Also, I'll just chime in with the others and ask you to point to stats that back up your rather grandiose claim that society oppresses men.

~Tim?

I guess its one of those things you'll never see until it happens to you. I guess the best place to ask if what do mens rights activists consider to be proof of their claims. Mens rights on reddit do list some sources on this page.

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRightsMeta/comments/tnwn8/faq_suggestion_antimale_legislation_roundup/

Not saying its proof that's going to change your mind but it is what is being touted.

There's a mens' rights movement?! Wow.

~Tim?

Yes there is. Just be mindful, a lot of these guys are mra's because they have been on the receiving end of what they perceive to be discrimination against them. i.e. Custody battles and they haven't seen their kids for a while.

I have a tendency to understand a lot of those guys who don't get to see their kids. My wife and son live in Thailand and I don't get to see them a lot. So I know how it feels to be separated from your children.

I work in software and have been in several teams with *a* female programmer in them.

Now, my company is very progressive and they do realise that about 1/8th of the teams being female isn't an awesome stat to have. (In saying that, it's better than 1/10th).

However, one slightly ironic thing that is happening, especially with the younger female coders I know, is that they just simply want to get on with it. They're fed up of being volunteered to go on talks about women in the workplace, being told that it'd be a great tickbox. In other words, just be left alone to get on with their jobs, like anyone else.


So, sometimes part of me does wonder about equality and things because of that. Is attempting to get people to promote equality actually treating those doing so in an unequal manner, when in fact, all some want to do is be treated the same themselves.

On the oher hand, the phrase I hear most often now in the UK is Diversity as opposed to Equality. Which, although related, I think it approaches things from a different angle. - Though it'd probably require someone who knows what they're talking about to describe it, as opposed to me!

 Palindrome wrote:

 DarthOvious wrote:

So in essence, here are some questions we need to ask.

1) Did she actually play any of the games?

2) What exactly did she do with the money she raised?

oh and

3) Why was she unaware Zelda fights back against Ganondorf in Twilight Princess if she did actually play the game?

1. Doesn't matter as she is talking about the visual themes and character design of these games which can easily be gauged simply by looking at them on youtube or something similar. If she was reviewing them or talking about the actual gameplay this would be a fair point but as she isn't its not relevant.

I thought she sold herself as a female gamer though. I also don't understand how you can make a proper critique when your basing your arguments on other players experiences rather than your own. Perhaps the games have other options she is unaware about which fly in the face of her critique.

2. No idea, in fairness though she only actually asked for $6000 and one of the main reasons why she made as much as she did was people making a counter reaction to the troglodytes that were harassing her. It's the nature of Kickstarter.

Would you not give back what you don't need? Raising money for a cause and then not using that money for said cause is unethical to say the least. I'm wondering whether it can be classified as fraud.

3. No idea, maybe she didn't get very far.

The answer is actually because she used another players footage instead of her own. The video she uses for this cuts out before the event in question happens. This is why she doesn't know about it and this is what happens when you don't do your own research but rely on others.

I have no issues whatsoever with attacking her work, frankly I am less than impressed with it myself. The trend however seems to be to simply attack her which undermines the valid criticisms that are made against her work.

I agree when criticising something that a valid argument should be used in the process.

 DarthOvious wrote:

I thought she sold herself as a female gamer though. I also don't understand how you can make a proper critique when your basing your arguments on other players experiences rather than your own. Perhaps the games have other options she is unaware about which fly in the face of her critique.

She may well be, the evidence for her being a 'fake' gamer isn't all that compelling, and yes I watched the youtube video that has already been posted. Even so the elements that she has chosen to critique in this video are almost all visual, you really don't need to actually play the game to experience them first hand.

As for giving her Kickstarter money back, who should she give it to? The only real option that she has is to do something like http://kickingitforward.org/ but even so she is doing what she said she would do and a successful kickstarter campaign doesn't have to actually produce anything, just look at the whole dubious Clang saga.

She may well be, the evidence for her being a 'fake' gamer isn't all that compelling, and yes I watched the youtube video that has already been posted. Even so the elements that she has chosen to critique in this video are almost all visual, you really don't need to actually play the game to experience them first hand.

Problem is she's made plenty of mistakes whereupon if she played the games in question she might've known.

At the least she could've researched further then single cutscenes..

 Ahtman wrote:
No more then still being at the point where if you support her you are feminazi man hater trying to propagate an extremist agenda.

Supporting her just means you don't understand her and her completely misleading, cherry-picking, context-ignoring, history-erasing, goal-post-moving 'arguments'. Nothing wrong with equality, and there are serious problems in the gaming industry in regards to the roles women play that need addressing and changing... but we needn't be so dishonest about it.

But then again, games don't have narratives I guess because of sports games.

 DarthOvious wrote:
I thought she sold herself as a female gamer though. I also don't understand how you can make a proper critique when your basing your arguments on other players experiences rather than your own. Perhaps the games have other options she is unaware about which fly in the face of her critique.

Her familiarity with gaming depends on her audience. There are videos of her explaining how she dislikes/disliked gaming and knows/knew nothing about it, requiring her to do "lots of research" before she could comment. Then there's the TED presentation where she goes "Here's me playing a SNES as a child! Totally a gamer y'all!". So make up your own mind on how genuine she is, or just do what she does and take things out of context and contradict yourself constantly ("Women in games are always weak... except when they're strong, but when they're strong they're just pretending to be men!").

 DarthOvious wrote:
One thing I've noticed though is it is never asked whether boys and girls tend to have these differences to begin with biologically. There was a documentary in Norway questioning why more women weren't in traditionally male dominated jobs. This question was asked especially because Norway is considered to be one of the more gender neutral countries of the world, however there was still a lack of women employed in certain jobs like Engineering.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70 What was found was actually quite interesting. Biology may play a part in what careers people may choose to go for.

I had looked at a few articles and have read things citing that "boys development is more focused on physical aspects as for girls it is more social".
I did not cite it or quote it because it is exceptionally hard to find a scientific controlled study on tendencies of a given gender that is definitive.

Health, body type, those have real "mechanical" demonstrable differences in gender that would have some impact on behavior (we all play to our strengths).

Right now the barrier is the cultural climate of insufficient mentoring or a sense of "belonging" than a gender aptitude for a given job.
Men are still not exposed to women enough to treat them as one of the group: they still think they are someone to be given special treatment; trying to be inclusive but achieving the opposite.

It is funny how in an effort to be thoughtful, men alienate women. Another victim of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

 Cheesecat wrote:
Uh, what does socialism have to do with any of this?

Don't be fooled; the correct answer is "nothing." It's just another fearful word to throw in the mix.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Supporting her just means you don't understand her

Wow. It's hard to tell who you are demeaning more with a statement like this.

 Palindrome wrote:
the evidence for her being a 'fake' gamer isn't all that compelling

It's hard to imagine how the case could be compelling in any sense. What is a "gamer" and how does one "fake it"? The category "gamer" is conjured up out of thin air for no other purpose than to kick out some people who like games in favor of others -- and sometimes, as in this case, based on something external to the enjoyment of gaming.

It shouldn't be too hard to define a gamer. - Someone whose primary hobby, or one of their main hobbies involves games.

So, I'm a gamer, my father is a golfer, my mother is a crafter. Someone else's main hobby may be a kind of music. It's not worth overthinking, though I suppose you could make it more specific - wargamer, as opposed to gamer. Or even *gasp* puzzle/casual gamer, if you spend most of your hobby time doing bejeweled, words-with-friends or sudoku.

 Palindrome wrote:

 DarthOvious wrote:

I thought she sold herself as a female gamer though. I also don't understand how you can make a proper critique when your basing your arguments on other players experiences rather than your own. Perhaps the games have other options she is unaware about which fly in the face of her critique.

She may well be, the evidence for her being a 'fake' gamer isn't all that compelling, and yes I watched the youtube video that has already been posted. Even so the elements that she has chosen to critique in this video are almost all visual, you really don't need to actually play the game to experience them first hand.

I did point out the mistake she made though. Playing the game for herself would allow her to do her own research. When she relys on other gamers videos then she is also relying on the exact footage that they record and their interests might not be the same as hers. I don't know how you're supposed to do a video on sexism in games but use footage from other players who don't have that goal in mind when they are recording their videos.

As for giving her Kickstarter money back, who should she give it to? The only real option that she has is to do something like http://kickingitforward.org/ but even so she is doing what she said she would do and a successful kickstarter campaign doesn't have to actually produce anything, just look at the whole dubious Clang saga.

Perhaps she should use it for her videos like she said she would. Still waiting to see if she actually does anything with it.


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Her familiarity with gaming depends on her audience. There are videos of her explaining how she dislikes/disliked gaming and knows/knew nothing about it, requiring her to do "lots of research" before she could comment. Then there's the TED presentation where she goes "Here's me playing a SNES as a child! Totally a gamer y'all!". So make up your own mind on how genuine she is, or just do what she does and take things out of context and contradict yourself constantly ("Women in games are always weak... except when they're strong, but when they're strong they're just pretending to be men!").

How about the argument that games need to change to accommodate women but women do make up 40% of the gaming community with the younger age brackets being 50%? If this is true then it looks like women are generally happy with the gaming element as is and it doesn't need to change.


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 Talizvar wrote:
Right now the barrier is the cultural climate of insufficient mentoring or a sense of "belonging" than a gender aptitude for a given job.
Men are still not exposed to women enough to treat them as one of the group: they still think they are someone to be given special treatment; trying to be inclusive but achieving the opposite.

It is funny how in an effort to be thoughtful, men alienate women. Another victim of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

It's difficult though. You have different groups telling what you need to do in order to make the workplace more inclusive to women. It doesn't help when you have a million different ideas being shouted at you, some of which are completely contradictory to each other in this regards.

Don't be fooled, a lot of these ideas originate from activists in the first place.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I like how you try and point out that men are worse somehow, Very demeaning and trying to push away the issue. I mean men aren't exactly on there calling out for Sterilization of all feminists.

The men's rights groups are straight up worse. Feminism has more than a few ridiculously strident nutters, and more than a little dose of misandry thrown in for good measure, but nothing like you'll find in men's rights groups, where ridiculous nutters and rampant misogyny are basically par for the course.

Aye, the worst insult one could ever pay feminists is to equate them with "men's rights" false-flaggers.

Manchu wrote:
Wow. It's hard to tell who you are demeaning more with a statement like this.

Not really. It's a simple thing to figure out.

Are there gender issues within the gaming industry? Yes.

Are these gender issues indicative of an entrenched culture of misogyny and patriarchal control as Sarkeesian would imply? Feth no.

Her videos are intentionally misleading (wonderfully selective editing of that game trailer from her first video, removing any and all information about the male character that she glossed over), intellectually dishonest, lack any credible sources other than "take my word for it", ignore context, quash or in some cases equalise history (ie. acting as if what happened in the 80's is the same as what's happening now) and rampantly contradictory ("Women in games are portrayed as weak... except when they're not, in which case they're just pretending to be men!") plus the usual bouts of goal-shifting and crazy double standards (women who are forced to be killed by the male protagonist = bad... but we won't ever mention the male NPC's who suffer the same fates ever because... uhh... look! Misogyny!).

Her overall message is 100% correct, and it's an issue that needs open discussion and real progress to make things better and equal for all (especially with risk-adverse publishers who are probably 90% of the probem). We just don't need her doing it.


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 DarthOvious wrote:
How about the argument that games need to change to accommodate women but women do make up 40% of the gaming community with the younger age brackets being 50%? If this is true then it looks like women are generally happy with the gaming element as is and it doesn't need to change.

Or to put it a different way "These people are happy with it, so there's nothing wrong."? Is that what you're getting at?

Nah, there are bad apples in the gaming industry. It's infuriating to hear things like the fight Naughty Dog had to go through to get Ellie on the front cover of The Last of Us, or the fact that when a game like Remember Me fails some publisher is going to blame it on the fact that it had a female protagonist rather than on the fact that it was simply a bad game.

But we can't just look at this from the perspective of the gaming industry. This applies to all media that's run by big publishing houses - movies and television are notorious for this. I remember one writer/executive producer giving an example of how a series he was developing was knocked back because the main character had brown wavy or curly hair, and for some reason those in charge of green-lighting the show had come to the conclusion that brown wavy/curly hair wasn't what they were going for, therefore they wouldn't go ahead with the series. These are minor things that can be changed before something goes into production, but these publisher types live in a different world of focus groups and message management down to the most pedantic Nth degree.

Sarkeesian is right to raise the issue of inequality (it's her methods that are dubious and deceptive), but the issue isn't with a ingrained culture of misogyny. It's more about risk adverse publishers more focused on making money than making good products.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
We just don't need her doing it.

I say, old boy, and who would you prefer to do it?

 sebster wrote:
The men's rights groups are straight up worse. Feminism has more than a few ridiculously strident nutters, and more than a little dose of misandry thrown in for good measure, but nothing like you'll find in men's rights groups, where ridiculous nutters and rampant misogyny are basically par for the course.

Surely there's a gradient though? Not every conservative is a Bible-thumping creationist. Not every progressive is a Stalin-worshiping environmental alarmist nut bag?


Or maybe it comes back to social constraints. You can't want men's rights without immediately labelling yourself a sexist bastard in the same way that taking pride in Caucasian ancestry instantly makes you a racist.

Manchu wrote:
I say, old boy, and who would you prefer to do it?

Someone who doesn't have a skewed agenda as an anti-sex feminist for starters. I've spent a lot of time over the past few weeks going through all manner of rebuttals to Sarkeesian's work, and once you filter out the nut bars and the people screaming for her to "get back to the kitchen and make me a sandwich" you do find a few interesting ones (including a rather cutting series of videos from a very posh-sounding South African - wonderful videos). The most interesting ones are from women though, the women who turn around and go "Wait, you don't speak for me.". It's even better when those same women point out the deceptive nature of the videos using their own (better) video game knowledge. But I'm drifting.

To answer your question though of who should do it? The developers of course. Change has to start from within, and until the developers can start standing up to (for lack of a better expression) the EA's and the Activisions of the world, nothing with change. Indie developers have a better chance here, and as they become more prevalent*** this sort of change can expand outwards. We're in a very interesting transitional stage across many types of media. The unassailable foundations of television are weakening every day as digital viewing expands. We could very well see the idea of buying a game in a box disappear within the next decade as digital distributional increases (and the requirement for publishers). More and more people can make their own things and are no longer tied to the Hollywood studio system, the network pilot system or the need for game publishers, allowing for more change to come from within these various areas of the so-called "new media". But change is slow, and tends to happen organically. It can be jolted along every now and again, but these changes are happening right before our eyes. This is a good thing.



***This new generation of consoles has a higher emphasis on indie development because Sony/MS know that's what people are beginning to gravitate towards and because the AAA game market isn't viable in the long term, especially as more and more people get wise to DLC/micro-transaction shenanigans.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Or to put it a different way "These people are happy with it, so there's nothing wrong."? Is that what you're getting at?

No, I would say that's more indicative of the fact that anyone claiming to speak for women as a monolithic entity with set preferences has absolutely zero business doing so. Felicia Day's a well-known female gamer who advocates for the inclusion of female characters pretty frequently, for example, yet has admitted that whenever a game has character customization options, she does her best to basically make herself, only she ramps up the boobs and the lips. My girlfriend, as another example, makes downright stripperific MMO characters, and enjoys doing so.

Pointing out that female gamers are actually quite active in a lot of the games that a small subset of advocates claim are intolerable simply suggests that the simplistic models of this discussion don't really function in the real world.

 sebster wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I like how you try and point out that men are worse somehow, Very demeaning and trying to push away the issue. I mean men aren't exactly on there calling out for Sterilization of all feminists.

The men's rights groups are straight up worse. Feminism has more than a few ridiculously strident nutters, and more than a little dose of misandry thrown in for good measure, but nothing like you'll find in men's rights groups, where ridiculous nutters and rampant misogyny are basically par for the course.

I think we have a bit of poisioning the well here. My experience hasn't indicated this. I've seen some feminist groups go as far as claiming that all men should be castrated. I have never seen a single mra claim the same about women. I would consider a view point like this to be an extreme one. Therefore I consider your claim "but nothing like you'll find in men's rights groups" to be a false one.


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Manchu wrote:
Aye, the worst insult one could ever pay feminists is to equate them with "men's rights" false-flaggers.

Don't worry, I'm sure femitheist devine will be triumphant one day and have all men castrated. I'm sure you'll be there to praise her name when it happens.


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 DarthOvious wrote:
How about the argument that games need to change to accommodate women but women do make up 40% of the gaming community with the younger age brackets being 50%? If this is true then it looks like women are generally happy with the gaming element as is and it doesn't need to change.

Or to put it a different way "These people are happy with it, so there's nothing wrong."? Is that what you're getting at?

Not really. I'm not saying there isn't anything wrong. What I am saying is they expect the environment to change to meet women's needs but ignore the fact that women are pretty happy being part of the gaming community as is. Sure there are a few things here and there that are not right. There is a drive to suggest that everything around gaming should be changed to meet womens needs and that what men think or want doesn't matter. The complaints are usually centered that everything needs to change towards them rather than a push being made to create new things from the female perspective.

Here is a example of what I mean to explain myself more clearly:

http://www.hollywood.com/news/tv/38162977/the-next-doctor-who-star-could-be-a-woman-and-it-should-be

What I don't like about this sort of reasoning is that there is an expectation here for the creator of Doctor Who to change his character to a female form in his next regeneration. However I am of the mind set that what should happen is that new female characters should be created instead.

Nah, there are bad apples in the gaming industry. It's infuriating to hear things like the fight Naughty Dog had to go through to get Ellie on the front cover of The Last of Us, or the fact that when a game like Remember Me fails some publisher is going to blame it on the fact that it had a female protagonist rather than on the fact that it was simply a bad game.

Can't really offer an opinion on this I'm afraid. I am unaware of the examples cited.

But we can't just look at this from the perspective of the gaming industry. This applies to all media that's run by big publishing houses - movies and television are notorious for this. I remember one writer/executive producer giving an example of how a series he was developing was knocked back because the main character had brown wavy or curly hair, and for some reason those in charge of green-lighting the show had come to the conclusion that brown wavy/curly hair wasn't what they were going for, therefore they wouldn't go ahead with the series. These are minor things that can be changed before something goes into production, but these publisher types live in a different world of focus groups and message management down to the most pedantic Nth degree.

Well thats it, isn't it. They want the products to sell but for some reason pick out pedantic reasons why the product won't sell.

Sarkeesian is right to raise the issue of inequality (it's her methods that are dubious and deceptive), but the issue isn't with a ingrained culture of misogyny. It's more about risk adverse publishers more focused on making money than making good products.

Agreed.




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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Surely there's a gradient though? Not every conservative is a Bible-thumping creationist. Not every progressive is a Stalin-worshiping environmental alarmist nut bag?


Or maybe it comes back to social constraints. You can't want men's rights without immediately labelling yourself a sexist bastard in the same way that taking pride in Caucasian ancestry instantly makes you a racist.

There is indeed a gradient on the matter. the mrm is like any other group with examples of extremists and examples of more reasonable people.

Sarkeesian is right to raise the issue of inequality (it's her methods that are dubious and deceptive), but the issue isn't with a ingrained culture of misogyny. It's more about risk adverse publishers more focused on making money than making good products.

Well, it's also about stupidity. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is effectively a dead project at this point solely because Ubisoft isn't interested in it. can say that a guy recently tried to pitch a game and was told no. Why? Ubisoft said female characters don't sell and cited Beyond Good and Evil as an example.

I don't really expect Ubisoft to be rocket scientists. They're public relations is worse than Activision-Blizzard, but you'd think a huge corporation with a massive marketing department (and one that seems pretty well funded) would know that Jade being female had very little (i.e. nothing) to do with Beyond Good and Evil having less than desired sales figures.

For an industry that touts target demographics and spends mountains on advertising, publishers can be pretty inept when it comes to reading their own industry, but what else is new?

You know it's very likely that Ubisoft and every other publisher who thinks female characters don't sell is just stupid, out of touch and everything we think they are, but I kind of wonder what if they have something of a point? Maybe the people they are marketing their games at really don't want to play as women or eve have women on the cover of the box. If true, It's a said thought for sure. I wouldn't be happy with either answer. Though how you would go about fixing them might be radically different.

The most recent Tomb Raider game would seem to suggest a female lead is not an obstacle in itself (throw in Remeber Me and Last of Us too). Of course, when you have terrible budgeting and utterly perposterous sales figure expectations like $15,000,000 in the first six weeks (hahahahahahahahahaha.... hahahahahahahahaha) and I suppose we can blame Lara for the um, 'failure' all we want.

I think believing that profit-driven corporations are leaving money on the table simply to strengthen the bulwark of the patriarchy is a little out there.

 Seaward wrote:
I think believing that profit-driven corporations are leaving money on the table simply to strengthen the bulwark of the patriarchy is a little out there.

I don't think that. I think they're just stupid/set in their ways. Never attribute to malice what is more likely caused by baffonery.

In the case of female characters as leads the industry has kind of set itself to fail. They allocate less advertising and money to unknowns, often resulting in poorer quality gamesn (and thus less likely to reap sequels). In the case of Tomb Raider, Square allocated too much money and set widly unrealistic sales goals. It's more a series of reinforced false conclusions than a conspiracy to maintain the patriarchal tyrany.

 LordofHats wrote:
The most recent Tomb Raider game would seem to suggest a female lead is not an obstacle in itself (throw in Remeber Me and Last of Us too). Of course, when you have terrible budgeting and utterly perposterous sales figure expectations like $15,000,000 in the first six weeks (hahahahahahahahahaha.... hahahahahahahahaha) and I suppose we can blame Lara for the um, 'failure' all we want.

Squeenix are out of their minds at the moment. Their sales projections for Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman: Absolution were laughably high, so much so that basically every media outlet, even those bought and paid for buy the various publishing houses were going "Umm... these games were huge successes - what are you talking about Squeenix". And they're working on the next Tomb Raider anyway!

 LordofHats wrote:
Never attribute to malice what is more likely caused by baffonery.

I don't think these companies devalue female characters because they actively hate women or are morons. I think they're simply in lock step with our culture generally.

 LordofHats wrote:
It's more a series of reinforced false conclusions than a conspiracy to maintain the patriarchal tyrany.

That's quite a good way to put it.

Yeah. Square hopefully has realized how absurd they're being on that front. It just made no sense at all. The problem still remains though that part of those sales figures was budget, and they've been spending way too much money on development (evident by how they could lose money as a company when overall sales increased).

For a billion dollar industry video game publishing and development showcase remarkably poor money management.


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Manchu wrote:
I think they're simply in lock step with our culture generally.

And my low expectations of the world remain met

That said, it's hard to argue for other reasons why Ubisoft would make the statement that female leads don't make for good sales and cite BGaE as an example when Lara Croft is slinging cash around and there's a good number of more sensible reasons. My conclusion is simply stupidity (probably helps that the execs in game publishers seem to have very little to near no knowledge of their own industry outside of the simple equation of profit). EDIT: The same thing happened to Okami actually. At least that one got a sequel.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
I think believing that profit-driven corporations are leaving money on the table simply to strengthen the bulwark of the patriarchy is a little out there.

I don't think that. I think they're just stupid/set in their ways. Never attribute to malice what is more likely caused by baffonery.

In the case of female characters as leads the industry has kind of set itself to fail. They allocate less advertising and money to unknowns, often resulting in poorer quality gamesn (and thus less likely to reap sequels). In the case of Tomb Raider, Square allocated too much money and set widly unrealistic sales goals. It's more a series of reinforced false conclusions than a conspiracy to maintain the patriarchal tyrany.

Maybe, maybe not. They were clearly hoping for Uncharted-style sales. They didn't get them. Indiana Jones-style adventure game with a male protagonist outdoes Indiana Jones-style adventure game with a female protagonist. There's more to it than that, but I can understand why they'd get the idea in their head.

I think it's important to remember that, among the big publishers, everybody's chasing the alpha money in their given genre. Making a shooter? You want Modern Warfare returns. Making an MMO? You want World of Warcraft. Sports game? You want it to sell like Madden. If you follow roughly the same formula but change an identifiable variable, and wind up not hitting that goal, it's tough to say how much that variable played a part. Sure, your clone might just have been worse, but what metrics do you have to rule out the possibility that going with a female protagonist over a Soap MacTavish clone didn't cost you some sales?