Melissia wrote:
Checking back, I see actually several polls on the matter, not all of which agree on the specific numbers (for example, one of them stated that 53% of players picked Soldier while another one said only 48% did, and yet another one said 65% did), so I'm going to have to see about finding the actual information from Bioware.

 Compel wrote:
I got that figure from facebook.

 Melissia wrote:
As an aside, less than half of all players that played the game finished it? Wow, and I thought I was being lazy only playing it once...

 Melissia wrote:
It shows that they intended to get rid of female characters. It does not show that they did so because they hate women. That is your assumption. For the fourty thousandth time, that is not my assumption, and claiming it is so just makes you look desperate.

 Melissia wrote:
I found a few articles that mention it, but I'm trying to find their source as they don't always say the same number.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/19/bioware-13-of-mass-effect-players-use-default-hero-18-play-f/

That's one example. "13% of mass effect players use the default hero". Still not sure where they got that from.

 Amaya wrote:
But when a woman creates mods with sexualized men (for her standards) she is lambasted as being a homosexual (there are no girls on the internet, remember?) or a pervert.

 Melissia wrote:
I never disagreed that they're motivated by money, but that's not really relevant. I'm saying that cultural values color their interpretation of the data, leading them to jump to inaccurate conclusions-- such as shutting down or forcibly changing (against the will of the writers, a problem that in comic books is called an "editorial mandate") because of a misplaced belief that female leads are unprofitable specifically because they're female.

That's what cultural values DO, they color our interpretations of the data we receive. Because of our culture, we know that a red light means stop, while a green light means go. Because of our culture, we know that a hand held up palm facing you is a sign for "stop", while in another culture, it might actually mean something rather profane and/or sexual. Our upbringing and values colors our interpretation of the data, and this is not really bad, it's necessary for functioning as a human being, but that doesn't mean that nothing should ever change.

 Melissia wrote:
It's been mentioned a few times (I think it was linked to earlier) in this thread.

 Amaya wrote:
Why can't we just admit that Hale is the better voice actor?

 Melissia wrote:
Yes you did, you just ignored it.

Let's say a woman walked up to you and punched you in the face. Tell me, why did she walk up to you and punch you in the face? Can you tell, with the information that you have (which is only what I have given you; a human female punched you in the face without warning or explanation), why she did that?

No. But you can make assumptions. There's several to make. For example, you can assume that you did something to piss her off. Or, for example, you can assume she did it because she's a rotten [bleep] and is mean to everyone. But why do you make these kinds of assumptions? Because you have imperfect information and you are attempting to fill in the gaps. But more likely than not, given the situation, you never seriously considered any alternatives to that one assumption. What if she did so on a dare? What if she was paid to do so by someone else, or did so on someone else's behalf with no malice on her part? What if it's just a case of mistaken identity? And so on and so forth. Once an explanation is found, one has to be convinced of it being wrong. It's not bad per se, it's certainly a good idea to try to figure out the world around you, but it should always be kept in mind that we do so with imperfect information.

So, let's bring this to the subject at hand. Imperfect information (they do not take in every single variable that predicts why and when and how a game will become successful-- it's not possible to do so) combined with cultural baggage from earlier times (see: Hollywood, Comics, Literature, Newspapers, etc) along with a natural tendency to write about what you know led developers to create mostly male characters. The exceptions to this rule in the early days of the gaming industries were quite rare, and usually only came from relatively minor developers, rather htan any major ones that developed any sort of franchise-- the only exception I can think of for this would be Metroid's Samus Aran and Tomb Raider's Lara Croft. As the industry grew from its infancy, it started doing research on to what makes these games sell. Instead of taking the whole picture in (which is often an impossibility anyway), they saw that games with male characters (which were already by far the majority simply because that is what the mostly male writers would actually end up writing in the first place) sold more than female characters.

But they did not actually research WHY this was the case. They just assumed that no one wanted to play female characters. As time went on, this developed in to an inherent bias in the industry, to the point where producers will try to shut down or force change in games which have female leads-- and for those that continue to have htem anwyay, they will underfund them, which is how we have such startling numbers as "games with female leads receive, on average, 40% of the marketing funding as games with male leads". Like most of the time that these kinds of products do not receive proper advertising, this results in games which do not sell anywhere near as well. As a result of the games not well due to being underfunded, future games are underfunded, ensuring that they continue to do poorly. However, not all of the games do poorly. The ones that don't, however, are labeled as statistical outliers and ignored-- where any other startling success will be rushed to copy, any successful female lead will not be copied because of the long-built in biases of hte industry.

It's not as simple an issue as "the numbers say that they don't sell as well". You have to actually look in to WHY they don't sell as well.

 Melissia wrote:
You're assuming that the free market is a perfectly rational and perfectly intelligent thing with perfect access to all information.

I am not.

The free market doesn't actually even exist, never mind be perfect.

 Amaya wrote:
Corporations have proven time and again to be slow to change even when the information was right before their eyes. Data has often been misinterpreted and the true signal lost within static.

Also, simply because women make up a large percentage of gamers, doesn't mean they play the same game males do. Perhaps complaining about the lack of female leads in the FPS genre for example might be an excercise in futility if there is evidence that the vast majority of said players are male.

 Melissia wrote:
On the contrary, I never said that they were somehow emotional wrecks unable to control their emotions.

 Melissia wrote:
Companies are not perfectly intelligent things that make perfectly rational actions based off of perfect information.

They are inherently flawed things that are slow to adapt to change which have imperfect levels of information.

 Melissia wrote:
No, there isn't, when one causes the other.

 Melissia wrote:
... which is the conclusion one comes to when one takes the data at face value instead of looking at the reason why the data is the way it is. If one sees that a movie has gone bad and sees a black lead in it, then assumes that all black leads will give poor returns on all movies in the future, it'd be a pretty stupid assumption, too-- and an assumption likely motivated by latent racism.

Both the historical and modern reasons for the disparity are fairly obvious, and I described them earlier.

Also, for the record, marketing that only gives you a dollar or less in return for every dollar spent is a very poor investment to begin with. Marketing is expected to return far more than that.

 Manchu wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
If you want more female characters in video game games, or rather want anything specific in video games, be vocal.

So that you can be abused, reviled, shut down, attacked, insulted, and silenced. Then we can ask this question:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Does anyone hear a huge uproar among gamers about a lack of female characters?

And smugly retort, "I didn't think so."

Quite a system, that.

 Slarg232 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 rockerbikie wrote:
Yeah, still games such as Metroid and Tomb Raider take fem leads.

The only two you can actually name, I see.

So you admit that your position is wrong and that there needs to be a change in the industry.

Jill Valentine, Lilith/Maya, Zoey/Roschelle, Alice Littel, Kameo, Bayonetta, the entire cast of Skullgirls, The leading lady of Hydrophobia.....

There are plenty of female leads out there.

 Manchu wrote:
I'm not advocating silence. I'm explaining what happens when female gamers -- and even male gamers making similar points -- actually speak up about these issues.

 Manchu wrote:
Sigvatr's post is another example of prejudice-reinforcing self-fulfilling prophecies. The assumption is that if there was a real need for change, that need would be widely vocalized. First off, there is an increasingly vocal acceptance that gender is an issue in video games.

 Manchu wrote:
Second, it is met with massive hostility -- a pervasive attempt to dismiss it, shut it down, silence it, stamp it out. And that hostility isn't new. It's not that this is only now an issue. It's that the scales are starting to tip just a little in the big picture sense, probably thanks in large part to the internet, so that the existing hostility is no longer enough to silence people on this issue such that we can pretend it doesn't really exist.

 Manchu wrote:
Wow. Just wow. Is anyone else having this amount of trouble reading my posts?...
You get another "wow" for that one...
All in all, you don't seem to understand even the most basic dimensions of this discussion.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I know better than to respond in kind, especially to a moderator. If your attitude is to condescend and patronise then I don't see any reason to respond to you further.

 Compel wrote:
I'm still thinking about that case that the BBC mentioned.

I mean, clearly when working in an official capacity, you can't go and post some folks pictures online and say, "these dudes are sexist." So I honestly can't blame her company for letting her go, that in legal terms, I believe does open the company up to harassment suits, libel/slander and all other sorts of nastiness.

However.... That doesn't invalidate her point.

Hello. My name is Meagan Marie, and I’m a person. I’ve decided I’m going to start standing up for myself in order to be more frequently treated like one.

Something transpired at PAX this weekend that was a true eye opener. While hosting a Tomb Raider cosplay gathering, comprised of eight or so incredibly nice and talented young women, a member of the press asked if he could grab a quick interview. I said he’d need to ask them, not me, and they agreed. He squeezed into the group and posed a question. I couldn’t hear what he said over the hubbub of the show floor, but the confused and uncomfortable looks from the ladies indicated that it wasn’t what they expected, to say the least.

I moved in closer and inquired “Excuse me, what did you ask?” with a forced smile on my face, so to give him the benefit of the doubt. He laughed and didn’t respond, moving a few steps away as I repeated the question to the group of women. Turns out he’d probed what it felt like “knowing that none of the men in this room could please them in bed.” Yes, I’m aware it’s a poor adaptation of a gag told by a certain puppet dog with an affinity for insults. Lack of originally doesn’t excuse this behavior, however.

My anger flared upon hearing this, and for a moment I almost let it get the best of me. I attempted to calm myself down before walking towards him and the cameraman, and expressing that it was rude and unprofessional to assume that these young women were comfortable discussing sexual matters on camera. I intended to leave the conversation at that, but his subsequent response escalated matters quickly and clearly illustrated that this ran much deeper than a poor attempt at humor. He proceeded to tell me that “I was one of those oversensitive feminists” and that “the girls were dressing sexy, so they were asking for it.” Yes, he pulled the “cosplay is consent” card.

At this point, as he snaked off into the crowd muttering angrily at me, I was livid. Actually shaking a bit. It was inexcusable in my mind to treat the group of women in this manner, especially when I gathered them there to participate in an official capacity. I suppose I felt protective for this reason. As if I’d exposed them to an undesirable element of the convention. They united to celebrate their fandom, only to have an uncomfortable and unprofessional moment captured on film.

As I stated publicly this weekend, we escalated the issue to PAX and they responded with overwhelming concern and worked to ensure he wouldn’t bother anyone at the this or future PAX events. They handled the situation with flying colors.

But this encounter isn’t the crux of my blog. This blog is about what I came to realize as a result of the press member’s actions. And what I realized is this: When it comes to defending others, I’m fierce. I’m assertive. And I will hold my ground. One of the cosplayers tweeted me to praise my bravery and say they wish they had the courage to stand up too. The truth is my bravery doesn’t run that deep. When it comes to defending myself I’m a rug that is walked over repeatedly. This has to stop.

Similar behavior has been directed at me for years. Back in 2007 at my very first GDC, I was starry-eyed and overwhelmed to be in the midst of so many people I idolized. So when a drunken CEO of a then-startup pointed to my midsection and said “I want to have my babies in there,” I laughed. I did the same next year when another developer told me that he “didn’t recognize me with my clothes on” after meeting me the night prior at a formal event (to which I wore a cocktail dress). The trend continued for years, and I took it silently each and every time.

It got so bad that one of my Game Informer coworkers had to sit me down and convince me to file a complaint against a massive publisher, after one of their PR leads repeatedly commented about how much he “loved my tits” at a party. Each time I laughed it off and internalized my embarrassment, cementing a fixed smile on my face while fighting back tears. Why? Because I was afraid to rock the boat. I was afraid to perpetuate rumors that I was uptight, difficult, or had no sense of humor. I was afraid of what I’d heard being said about other women being said about me. So I would stick up for others, but never for myself. Sticking up for others was the right thing to do. I had to be careful not to stick my neck out too far, though.

I’m ashamed to admit my lack of courage has continued to this day. While on a press tour in Europe late last year I sat alone with an interviewer while he set up his camera. PR was talking to another member of the press just out of earshot. I asked the journalist what his readers would like to know about me first, per the introduction he outlined earlier. He responded nonchalantly, “Well, they’d really like to see you naked.” I was so shocked I didn’t even register what he said, and I defaulted to my uncomfortable chuckle and frozen smile. I conducted the interview as if nothing had happened. I should have walked out of the room then and there. I should have immediately reported it to PR. But I didn’t, because I was afraid.

And while these industry comments hurt the most, as they often do when coming from peers, I’ve got hope for change even if it is motivated by fear. In a social economy where one unprofessional tweet can ruin a career, I feel like the few unsavory industry personalities are becoming more aware of their words. My line in the sand doesn’t end there, though. I’m going to start holding commenters accountable for their actions too, even if I can only do so on my social spaces.

So here is the deal. I’m a person. I’m not just a “girl on the internet.” I am not comfortable with you remarking on my breasts. I am not comfortable with you implying that you’d like to have sex with me. And I don’t appreciate you rating my looks against my girlfriends in candid photos.

While I can’t stop these comments and questions from arising when they pop up on random blogs across the web, I can stand up and say that that I won’t accept being talked to in this manner anymore. I’m not simply going to ignore you; I’m going to call you out and tell you that you’re being inappropriate. Just because I have a public job and an equally public hobby doesn’t give you the right to ignore my comfort zone.

The situation this weekend at PAX made me question why I’m willing to stand up for others, but not myself. By allowing myself to be treated this way I’m perpetuating that this behavior is acceptable. And it isn’t. If I continue stand by silently, I might as well sit on the sidelines and watch while other young women endure what I have.

The treatment and representation of women in gaming has come to a head this past year, and I know some of you are tired of hearing about it. I’m tired of living it. I want to feel safe and valued as a member of this industry, whether I’m conducting an interview, talking to fans on a convention floor, or cosplaying. And I have a right to that.

I’m not afraid anymore. I’m angry.

[For those of you who have been so supportive these past years, both in the industry and out, please know this blog isn’t directed at you. I can’t imagine dedicating my life to anything other than video games. And that’s why I’m going to fight my hardest to leave it a better place.]

 Melissia wrote:
Sadly, denying that it exists doesn't make it cease to exist.

If only it could, right?

 Monster Rain wrote:
I'm glad no one around me at work is that uptight.

Compared to some of the female servers I'm the very picture of chaste professionalism.

 Melissia wrote:
That's a rather drastically different experience than I had. Very unprofessional.

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, that's the kind of behavior that's plaguing the Secret Service recently. At least nine Secret Service Officers have been "let go" for hiring prostitutes and getting drunk on the job.

 Ahtman wrote:
And then there was this...

If Meaghan Marie’s recent post about the sexism she’s encountered in the games industry was at all shocking to you, you either don’t work in the games industry or you’ve had your head up your ass. I applaud her for writing it—it took guts. But she’s just shedding light on attitudes and practices that are business as usual in the industry.



Lots of people read and commented on the post. It created a bubble of discussion that seemed to be beneficial. Then I saw this picture from one of the parties at the Game Developers Conference.



A woman posted it and defended it in comments. This is not to call out this prominent female in the industry because I like her and her involvement in games has done far more good than harm for women. I was taken aback because her caption wasn’t one of disbelief or disgust it was just “oh look.” As if she doesn’t even see the sexism anymore.

Here’s the thing. If you want to survive or thrive in the industry as a woman you could fight this gak every day of your life and never make a dent in it. All you’d do is destroy your own career. If you want to get along you either stop seeing it or you become complicit.

Sexism is rampant in the games industry. How it compares to other industries I couldn’t say. I’ve only ever been in games, and I’ve been in it for 18 years. The sexism I want to talk about is that within the industry itself. Not the fan communities and not the in-game experience though those are without doubt unfriendly places for women.

How can I begin to tell you what it’s like to work in a business that treats you like a curiosity and a plaything? Which anecdotal nuggets can I bust out to illustrate my point? I have 18 years of incidents to draw from. Should I go for shock value and tell you about the time a coworker asked me into his office to proofread a document and whipped his dick out? Naw, that was a one-off. Except that he showed his dick to me on several subsequent occasions. He thought it was funny. I didn’t report him to HR or do anything about it. I told a couple female coworkers and they thought it was funny. Weird, but nothing to get worked up about.

Or how about the time my manager thought it would be amusing to close out one of my Inside Xbox videos with audio of me pretending to have sex in the shower with a video game character? Did I feel uncomfortable? Yes. Did I protest? No.

Other things that barely even made a ripple on the radar: I wore a pendant with a “D” on it (My husband’s first initial). First co-worker “What’s the D for?” Second co-worker “Cup size.” And I laughed.

I laughed when I caught game studio executives taking pictures down my shirt. I laughed when I caught a co-worker at my company looking up my skirt on the stairs. I laughed and found an excuse to change the subject when co-workers instant messaged me with detailed accounts of the kind of sex they wanted to have with me.

I don’t go to GDC anymore, but I confess that when I did, one of my roles there was to get women to attend the party that my employer threw. To try to skew the sausage-fest male female ratio to more attractive (for male developers and publishers) levels. They wanted me to bring hot chicks. Eye candy. So the devs would have something pretty to look at and flirt with. And I did it. Year after year. No, I wasn’t Heidi Fleiss, but I participated in making those women objects.

Why did I do that? For my personal gain. I liked going to GDC. And if I kept bringing boobs to the party, I kept getting to go.

Why did I laugh off the upskirt pics, the ‘nice tits, can I touch them’ comments, the random ‘suck my cock’ text messages from industry dudes I barely knew? I’m not entirely sure. Part of it was the attention. Everyone likes attention. And maybe the gross stuff was the price to pay for the nice stuff. And yes there was nice stuff. Lots of flattery and free drinks and dinners and tickets to stuff and trips. My end of it was to bring the chicks, wear short skirts, smile a lot, and laugh it off when some drunk got grabby or, in one instance, shouted across a party at the top of his lungs “Trixie! I’m going to have sex with you tonight!” Note: He did not.

Why didn’t I report the dick dangler, the coworker who took upskirt photos of me on a business trip, or the exec who hinted I’d be safe from the next round of layoffs if I put out? Why didn’t I have a partner developer thrown out of a party when he shoved his tongue down my throat? Why didn’t I call out every ass-grabbing, talk to my tits, sexist gak?

Because I was afraid of being “that woman.” The once that the internet jumps all over. I knew my career was fethed the minute I went through that door, so I chose silence and the status quo. I was a coward and I didn’t even attempt to make things better for myself or any other woman trying to do their thing in the games industry.

I was absolutely complicit in the way I was treated because I kept holding up my end of the bargain. I got to hang out in the boy’s clubhouse because I showed some skin, laughed at their jokes and didn’t get too worked up if they pinched my ass.

So I’m sorry for that. I apologize to every woman who comes after me that finds gak like this still happening.

To women who actually have the ovaries to stand up and do something about it, like Brenda Romero: You have my utmost respect and admiration.

 Manchu wrote:

Christa Charter wrote:Why did I do that? For my personal gain. [...] So I’m sorry for that. I apologize to every woman who comes after me that finds gak like this still happening.

Christa Charter's new book:

http://trixie360.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/coverfinalx.jpg?w=1563&h=2500

When a young woman's nude body is discovered on the Xenon game company's corporate campus, community manager Lexy Cooper gets an early morning call from her uncle, homicide detective Mike Malick, to ID the corpse. As Malick investigates the crime, Lexy works the case from inside Xenon and discovers more about the seedy underbelly of the games industry than she ever wanted to know.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A1RF8U4/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

 Melissia wrote:
Mind you I'm not saying the concept is perfect by any means, but it IS intended to explore the idea of sexism and seediness in the gaming industry, so having a few sexist tropes displayed in the story is not necessary contradictory to the message being delivered.

'Women are the new core,' says Microsoft narrative designer

A narrative writer for Microsoft Studios has said that "women are the new core" and that creating more diverse stories, including more female characters and ethnicities, will make for better games.

Speaking as part of a presentation at GDC 2013 (written up by GamesIndustry and Polygon), Tom Abernathy--who has worked on Halo: Reach, The Saboteur, and Destroy All Humans--said the games industry hasn't kept up with today's social culture and that the market for video games is changing at a pace that developers and publishers aren't keeping up with.

"Our audience is leaving us behind," Abernathy said. "The world is changing, it has already changed, and we have not been doing a very good job of keeping up with it."

Abernathy pointed to various studies that show the diverse makeup of modern gamers, including research by the Entertainment Software Association and casual game developer PopCap which states that adult women now make up 30 per cent of US gamers.

"Women are not a small special market on the fringe of the core," Abernathy said. "Women are the new core."

Abernathy also said that more diverse games would be good for the business of the games industry, because more diversity would bring in a wider audience and therefore generate more money. "But you need to persuade people that it's OK, and won't hurt sales but might help them," he said.

"Nobody in the room admits to being against making characters female or nonwhite," he added. "But they're scared because they don't know how to defend that choice to their bosses."

"Our industry, our art, and our business stand to gain in every sense simply by holding a mirror up to our audience and reflecting their diversity in what we produce," Abernathy said.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
As I've already said I believe that when the market change then this too will change. Not that there is some culture shift in attitudes towards women, but that the forecasts show that there will be a suitable return on their investment to justify the risk. That is the nature of almost every business. To make money regardless of morals etc. If they sideline characters it is because of financial reasons, not some cultural baggage unless you have concrete evidence to the contrary.

 Melissia wrote:
Or, as an article I posted a couple days ago stated, they really just don't understand their market as well as they think they do. It's already changed, but the companies themselves haven't.

 Melissia wrote:
I stated that long-running societal biases have colored their decision making

 Melissia wrote:
I provided evidence that they attempt to shut down games with female leads or force the developers to change the lead to male, and made assertions to that effect. That does not necessarily indicate active misogyny. It DOES indicate a flawed set of cultural baggage that needs to be gotten rid of.

Abernathy pointed to various studies that show the diverse makeup of modern gamers, including research by the Entertainment Software Association and casual game developer PopCap which states that adult women now make up 30 per cent of US gamers.