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 Seaward wrote:
They were clearly hoping for Uncharted-style sales.

Their projections were above even the Uncharted games. They were completely unreasonable. Uncharted 2 has made roughly 5 million sales. Tomb Raider is 4 million. I can't find Uncharted 3 because Sony on listed 3 million shipped (which isn't the same as sold). The game wasn't a failure by any stretch of the imagination, and it did really well.

In the same way that the industry has blamed used games for declining tail sales (in spite of the cause being yearly release schedules), and piracy when the game sells poorly (even though the game was bad, and even then piracy mostly happens in Asia). There are entire marketing departments that are supposed to research this stuff, yet in many areas the industry makes bad decisions and draws faulty conclusions. I don't know if its because marketing is being ignored or poorly managed, or is inept or what but there's some stupidity in the way publishing houses work right now that causes them to do really dumb things at times. Why assume female leads are any different?

Being female hasn't stopped Samus, Lara, Chun Lee, or Lightning, yet there's hesitation just to put a girl on the box art (even though she's arguably the real focus of the story and probably should be on the cover more than anyone else!)?


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The game wasn't a failure by any stretch of the imagination, and it did really well.

It was a failure in that they invested too much into it while holding unrealistic expectations. The figure they wanted was downright insane it was higher than Halo's (not fifteen million dollars, no idea where I got that. It was a sales goal of 7 million units. In six weeks. No game sells that much).

Out of the two options publishers being stupid or gammers not wanting female characters I would really hate for the second one to be true..... That is also what worries me. I mean I would rather gammers not be the problem. I would much rather think that the majority of gammers would welcome more female characters and then the lay the blame at the feet of a evil soulless corporation, but I'm wanting it doesn't make it true.

Going with my gut, well you all know the culture just as well as I do. We all know what happens on Xbox live.

I loved Beyond Good and Evil.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I loved Beyond Good and Evil.

Pretty much everyone did, which radically raises the question why the sequel continues to squander in the pit of 'projects Ubisoft has no interest in', which thus leads to my point; Ubisoft doesn't always make bright decisions. It's not even a question of now but of then. In another industry the game would have been noted for its sale potential and the reasons it didn't sell well addressed. That didn't happen. Instead the first time the game even gets mentioned after years of nothing by Ubisoft... is in reference to Jade being female being the 'Beyond Good and Evil mistake.'

 LordofHats wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I loved Beyond Good and Evil.

Pretty much everyone did

1% representing

I really liked the characters, don't get me wrong (Uncle Pey'j was awesome, if somewhat worthless) but the combat and the picture hunt really killed it for me.

 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?

Sure, there's scope to have all kinds, and among the general population there's plenty of people with sympathy to men on all kinds of issues who aren't misogynist in any way. But the point is that among people who identify as men's rights activists, decent functioning human beings are not common at all. Just go and read some feminists forums and some men's rights forums. That one feminist who's just plain nuts and posts stuff that's so crazy you have to wonder if she's ever met a man, well about 90% of the men on the men's rights forum will sound like that.

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.

That's actually a pretty good example, because there really aren't many people taking pride in their caucasian ancestry who aren't racist in some form or another (even if its just that weird kind of 'they get black pride so I get white pride' kind of clueless racism). Now, there's plenty of people who are proud of their Irish or German ancestry, and that's entirely normal and not racist, but caucasian ancestry... yeah that's pretty much about the same as men's rights.


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 DarthOvious wrote:
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.

You can consider it to be whatever you want. But there's a real world out there, and I've seen more than decent sampling of feminist and men's rights activists, and I know which group is consistently way crazier than the other.


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 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 think believing that because a company is profit driven then it must automatically be completely aware of its market and the potential of sales in all demographics would have Adam Smith pointing his finger and laughing at you.

Seriously, firm and industry inertia is a real thing.


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 LordofHats wrote:
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.

Gaming is actually starting to look a lot like film making. I suspect that having millions of dollars dumped in to a project with multiple years before payback, and then having that payback being highly variable and packed in to a tiny window kind of screws with people's heads a lot, and leaves them searching for a lot of popular myths to try and get and get some (albeit false) sense of security about their highly risky industry.

quote=H.B.M.C. 564020 6290632 5ef3b38ebb6368c7e7980509797d624e.png]
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 DarthOvious wrote:
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.

You can consider it to be whatever you want. But there's a real world out there, and I've seen more than decent sampling of feminist and men's rights activists, and I know which group is consistently way crazier than the other.

 Slarg232 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I loved Beyond Good and Evil.

Pretty much everyone did

1% representing

I really liked the characters, don't get me wrong (Uncle Pey'j was awesome, if somewhat worthless) but the combat and the picture hunt really killed it for me.

Your not the only one. I think hats is just wrong about the popularity of it. I was gifted it for Christmas when it cam out and enjoyed it, but I can't think of too many others who bought it back then. They ended up giving it away in cheese if anyone recalls. It wasn't popular in it's time. Hard to think of a reason why it didn't sell well other then being rather short. Feels like a missed opportunity.

 Slarg232 wrote:
So his experience is null and void, but your experience is nothing but truth?

His experience is null and void in that he's just some guy on the internet claiming some stuff. If he said dogs couldn't look up, that claim wouldn't mean a damn thing compared to my real world experience of dogs looking up.

And so yeah, him claiming the same stuff that the "woe is men in this cruel modern world" crowd always claim doesn't mean a damn thing compared to my actual experience.


Now, you might think that to you, I'm just some guy on the internet, so surely my claims are as meaningless to you as DarthOvious' claims are to me... and you'd be right. Don't take anything to be true just because I've said it. Go out and find out the facts on the issue - go and read feminist pages and men's rights pages.

Just don't fall for any kind of false equivalency - oh one side says some stuff, and the other side says some other stuff, so you just assume the truth lies somewhere between the two. Go out and find out the facts for yourself.

 LordofHats wrote:

Spoiler:

In the same way that the industry has blamed used games for declining tail sales (in spite of the cause being yearly release schedules), and piracy when the game sells poorly (even though the game was bad, and even then piracy mostly happens in Asia). There are entire marketing departments that are supposed to research this stuff, yet in many areas the industry makes bad decisions and draws faulty conclusions. I don't know if its because marketing is being ignored or poorly managed, or is inept or what but there's some stupidity in the way publishing houses work right now that causes them to do really dumb things at times. Why assume female leads are any different?

Being female hasn't stopped Samus, Lara, Chun Lee, or Lightning, yet there's hesitation just to put a girl on the box art (even though she's arguably the real focus of the story and probably should be on the cover more than anyone else!)?


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The game wasn't a failure by any stretch of the imagination, and it did really well.

It was a failure in that they invested too much into it while holding unrealistic expectations. The figure they wanted was downright insane it was higher than Halo's (not fifteen million dollars, no idea where I got that. It was a sales goal of 7 million units. In six weeks. No game sells that much).

Here in Japan there are many games which have female leads, so i wonder if it is a cultural thing (parasite eve, lollipop chainsaw, kagero deception, project Diva, lots of JRPG and Video novels).

 sebster wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:
So his experience is null and void, but your experience is nothing but truth?

His experience is null and void in that he's just some guy on the internet claiming some stuff. If he said dogs couldn't look up, that claim wouldn't mean a damn thing compared to my real world experience of dogs looking up.

And so yeah, him claiming the same stuff that the "woe is men in this cruel modern world" crowd always claim doesn't mean a damn thing compared to my actual experience.


Now, you might think that to you, I'm just some guy on the internet, so surely my claims are as meaningless to you as DarthOvious' claims are to me... and you'd be right. Don't take anything to be true just because I've said it. Go out and find out the facts on the issue - go and read feminist pages and men's rights pages.

Just don't fall for any kind of false equivalency - oh one side says some stuff, and the other side says some other stuff, so you just assume the truth lies somewhere between the two. Go out and find out the facts for yourself.

But Big Al says Dogs can't look up;



(Sorry, had to).

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

Spoiler:

In the same way that the industry has blamed used games for declining tail sales (in spite of the cause being yearly release schedules), and piracy when the game sells poorly (even though the game was bad, and even then piracy mostly happens in Asia). There are entire marketing departments that are supposed to research this stuff, yet in many areas the industry makes bad decisions and draws faulty conclusions. I don't know if its because marketing is being ignored or poorly managed, or is inept or what but there's some stupidity in the way publishing houses work right now that causes them to do really dumb things at times. Why assume female leads are any different?

Being female hasn't stopped Samus, Lara, Chun Lee, or Lightning, yet there's hesitation just to put a girl on the box art (even though she's arguably the real focus of the story and probably should be on the cover more than anyone else!)?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The game wasn't a failure by any stretch of the imagination, and it did really well.

It was a failure in that they invested too much into it while holding unrealistic expectations. The figure they wanted was downright insane it was higher than Halo's (not fifteen million dollars, no idea where I got that. It was a sales goal of 7 million units. In six weeks. No game sells that much).

Here in Japan there are many games which have female leads, so i wonder if it is a cultural thing (parasite eve, lollipop chainsaw, kagero deception, project Diva, lots of JRPG and Video novels).

And yet they have a worse treatment of women when it comes to cultural views, then America does.

Kinda ironic.

I don't think it is as simple as just having a female lead, you also have to actually look at the context and character.

Oh ahtman , that isn't how AA kind of stuff works, it's just important to get more women there.

Personally as someone who almost always selects females if a choice is given, I am always curious why female gamers seem to want to have a female character to play . I always wonder if there were more female leads then would the perceived need for a female lead relax as well (due to it not being such a novelty any more).

I agree that gak/good lead characters matter more than the gender, though that said I find most computer game stories/characters/ voice acting to be so over dramatic and slow that i barely watch them any more.

I just bought a JRPG - BAD mistake, when a character scrolls off and then a new character scrolls onto the screen to say "uh? oh...." and then scrolls off , I know I am never playing that game again .

 Slarg232 wrote:
But Big Al says Dogs can't look up;



(Sorry, had to).

I might have just been watching that...


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Bullockist wrote:
Oh ahtman , that isn't how AA kind of stuff works, it's just important to get more women there.

Personally as someone who almost always selects females if a choice is given, I am always curious why female gamers seem to want to have a female character to play .

Not everyone is in to pretending to be totally different kinds of people. Lots of people actually just want to play a smarter, stronger pretty version of themselves, in a fantastical setting. Others want a hero they can look up to, and that means the character is much like themselves.

And of course lots of other people don't give two gaks about the character they play, they just want to game.

But for people in those two categories, not having an option to play their own gender is in some way excluding them from the game. Where such an option could be included without impacting the rest of the game significantly (and Mass Effect has shown it can be done without major changes) why not give people the option?

 sebster wrote:
But for people in those two categories, not having an option to play their own gender is in some way excluding them from the game. Where such an option could be included without impacting the rest of the game significantly (and Mass Effect has shown it can be done without major changes) why not give people the option?

And thus we come full circle right to the start of the thread, to which I said (on page 3):

Men and woman are not always interchangeable.

Mass Effect allows for a male or female Sheppard because their presence in the story, whilst central, is generic. It doesn't matter whether Shep is a man or a woman because they are essentially a blank slate, it changes nothing in the game's narrative, and the only real effect Shep's gender has is on the romance options (and even then you can flip-flop between straight and gay between games, so it doesn't even matter that much). Shep is a blank slate designed to be whatever the player wants them to be, and that's perfectly fine for some narratives. Same goes for, say, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy where the character of Jaden Korr can either be a man or a woman (also voiced by Jennifer Hale, as it happens). Changes nothing about the story, just the voice. KOTOR, another Bioware game, allows for male or female Revan. Changes nothing except a slight romance subplot.

Just allowing for a "male/female" option doesn't solve anything.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And thus we come full circle right to the start of the thread, to which I said (on page 3):

Men and woman are not always interchangeable.

Mass Effect allows for a male or female Sheppard because their presence in the story, whilst central, is generic. It doesn't matter whether Shep is a man or a woman because they are essentially a blank slate, it changes nothing in the game's narrative, and the only real effect Shep's gender has is on the romance options (and even then you can flip-flop between straight and gay between games, so it doesn't even matter that much). Shep is a blank slate designed to be whatever the player wants them to be, and that's perfectly fine for some narratives. Same goes for, say, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy where the character of Jaden Korr can either be a man or a woman (also voiced by Jennifer Hale, as it happens). Changes nothing about the story, just the voice. KOTOR, another Bioware game, allows for male or female Revan. Changes nothing except a slight romance subplot.

Or we can go fuller circle, and get to my reply to your later comment on much the same thing;
"I'd love it if all games were written with the strong literary principles you're claiming above. Some are, of course, but most reach at best the pulp standard of 'here's a pretty standard genre character, and some stuff happens to him'. Worrying that the game will lose context and narrative structure because there's an option to play through as a female character is a bit much."

Just allowing for a "male/female" option doesn't solve anything.

It doesn't solve everything, but it certainly solves one very specific thing - the people who want a character much like themselves get to do so.

Are the both of you trying to wind a thread back 11 pages just to prove yourselves right? I expect a 2 page quote ridden post from both of you "discussing (also known as stonewalling) how the last 11 pages have proven you right.

 sebster wrote:
It doesn't solve everything, but it certainly solves one very specific thing - the people who want a character much like themselves get to do so.

Then what you're adovating is at best tokenism and at worst a demand that the writers sacrifice the integrity of their story for the purposes of "inclusion/diversity".

Having an interchangeable gendered character removes a TON from that characters iconicness, though.

Look at Jon 117 and Samus Aran:





Both are silent protagonists that wreck their enemies gak on a regular basis and pull it off stylishly as well (Other M NEVER HAPPENED!), but they have a very strong character centralization amongst them; Chief, despite his usual silence, is still a sarcastic sob (Thought I would shoot my way out, mix things up a bit) fully confident in his abilities and rightfully so. Samus is much more pragmatic, due to the fact that even when working with other bounty hunters she's focused on the mission.

Now look at Commander Shepard:


Not saying Shepard hasn't taken on equal challenges as Samus/MC (Despite the later two typically taking on said threats alone), but Shepard himself isn't as iconic as the other two, it's more of the armor marking the Shepard than anything else distinct about Shepard himself. Whats more, My Shepard is totally different than your Shepard. Mine is a sarcastic badass who slept with three different women over the course of three different games, yours was commited to Talia throughout all games while helping everyone he could.

My Sheppard was the whitest of white knights, a paragon of virtue who stayed true to Liara even when Liara seemed to be ignoring her.

 Slarg232 wrote:
Having an interchangeable gendered character removes a TON from that characters iconicness, though.

Both are silent protagonists that wreck their enemies gak on a regular basis and pull it off stylishly as well (Other M NEVER HAPPENED!), but they have a very strong character centralization amongst them; Chief, despite his usual silence, is still a sarcastic sob (Thought I would shoot my way out, mix things up a bit) fully confident in his abilities and rightfully so. Samus is much more pragmatic, due to the fact that even when working with other bounty hunters she's focused on the mission.

All the qualities you remember on Samus and Master Chief have nothing to do with their gender.

Chezcat , I thought that was the point of his post. Characterisation is more important than gender.

Nothing stops a customizable character from having character. Some even have more character then predefined characters. I guess there is a point that they won't have an iconic image, but is that important to have?

nomotog wrote:
Nothing stops a customizable character from having character.

Never said that they don’t have character. Shepherd is a character, but their impact on the story is mostly reactionary. They go and do things set out before them. You don’t make choices that cause outcomes, you pick options that lead to pre-determined situations. The outcomes of your choices are already set, you just pick which ones are displayed.

To boil it down to a really simplistic analogy, you’re putting on clothes and get to choose what clothes you wear, but there are only 4 pairs of pants. You don’t get to choose the colour, style, length or anything – you get to choose from the four options. You can justify why choice makes sense to you (or your character), but at the end of the day your acting within set parameters. And at the end of it, you will be dressed (unless you reject the system and refuse to pick, thereby causing a resonance cascade failure and the complete destruction of reality… or something!).

nomotog wrote:
I guess there is a point that they won't have an iconic image, but is that important to have?

Yes. Absolutely. Character (and characters) are important. No story can survive on plot alone, and no character can survive without a plot. Characters must grow organically from the stories being told. Now you can start with a character (ie. I want to tell a story about this sort of character), but that requires setting the character in stone even more and defining them even further, or specifically not defining them (like Shepherd).

Hollywood movies beg to differ HBMC, they seem to lack both plot and characters.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

nomotog wrote:
Nothing stops a customizable character from having character.

Never said that they don’t have character. Shepherd is a character, but their impact on the story is mostly reactionary. They go and do things set out before them. You don’t make choices that cause outcomes, you pick options that lead to pre-determined situations. The outcomes of your choices are already set, you just pick which ones are displayed.

To boil it down to a really simplistic analogy, you’re putting on clothes and get to choose what clothes you wear, but there are only 4 pairs of pants. You don’t get to choose the colour, style, length or anything – you get to choose from the four options. You can justify why choice makes sense to you (or your character), but at the end of the day your acting within set parameters. And at the end of it, you will be dressed (unless you reject the system and refuse to pick, thereby causing a resonance cascade failure and the complete destruction of reality… or something!).

nomotog wrote:
I guess there is a point that they won't have an iconic image, but is that important to have?

Yes. Absolutely. Character (and characters) are important. No story can survive on plot alone, and no character can survive without a plot. Characters must grow organically from the stories being told. Now you can start with a character (ie. I want to tell a story about this sort of character), but that requires setting the character in stone even more and defining them even further, or specifically not defining them (like Shepherd).

I said iconic image. I know character is important, but also like I said nothing stops a customizable character from having character. I wasn't thinking of mass effect though. Shepard is kind of devoid of much character. She gets to play the stoic badass well everyone else gets to sing and dance around her. (Making Shepard a defined charter wouldn't change that though. They would likely be just as devoid only now with a generic style as well.) The person I have in mind when I think of how you can do customization with character is the boss. Volition did a very smart thing with them. You can customize the their visuals to a crazy a amount all the way down to their underwear, but you can't put words in their mouth or decided their goals. It gives the boss a lot of room to sing and dance. They get flaws, goals, a personality. Not a very nice one mind you. We all know what she did to the brotherhood.

Bullockist wrote:
Hollywood movies beg to differ HBMC, they seem to lack both plot and characters.

They certainly have plot and characters. The quality of said plot/characters might be in question, but their simple presence is not.

I suppose the main argument being made is, why does gender have to have such an impact on the kind of story being told in a computer game. Surely there's got to be a better reason for it than a token romantic subtext in a game like Master Chief and Cortana?

Of course, if at that point, if you were terrified of controversy, you could always gender flip the romantic leads as well.


Another way to flip the argument back on itself is to say, for example, how much of, say, Lara Croft's character in the new Tomb Raider game is entirely dependent on being female? I'd argue, one pseudo-rape scene. - And quite frankly, that caused huge controversy being in the game in the first place.

There's a character, Alex Weiss, who at the start was very much just a normal 20 something student. In my mind, if you were playing as him, everything that Lara went through wouldn't have been any less dramatic had there being a slightly different character model you were controlling with a deeper voice. - I know I would be pretty damn freaked out if I was shipwrecked, then forced to kill a deer to avoid death by hunger. I would probably apologise to it too if I managed to kill it as well.


So, it could be argued that the same thing could be true for any other game that usually has a male protagonist, where the players investment in the character can depend on the characters gender being the same as theirs.


Admittedly, this does sort of fly in the face of the whole 'diversity' thing I was talking about earlier. However, I'd argue we're dealing with stories being told, not actual people's lives.