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So women in games. Kind of a hot button if I ever knew one. One aspect about it is that is is often framed as people outside of gameing coming in and pointing out problems. (It's not always this way, but that is the feeling that seems to pop up most of the time.) Now my idea is to just flip that. We are gammers here, so what problems/eye rolling bits have we noticed that we might like to see addressed?

My kind of pet peeve is the Women=Dex/Magic Men=Str/Con trope. It's not always always present, but it shows up often enough that the exceptions are note worthy. (Fable 2.) It's kind of annoying because if you want to play a female character, your kind of locked into these fineness gameplay styles and game after game that can get annoying. (The fip side of it is that if you like fineness gameplay, you're often pushed into playing women.) This trope just bugs me.

I tend to play historical games. If anything, having women shoehorned in annoys me. Like having female Napoleonic Soldiers everywhere for example. Or having female ww2 pilots etc.

At the end of the day, it does little to change the games I play aside from the look and realisticness, but in other games I can think of that I play not based off history I cant think of too many where its a problem.

To me, it isnt the outfits, but how many are just, non-characters or character Archetypes.

The better games let you play any class with any sex.
Not usually a problem unless it is a limited hand-held game.

My problem with how women are represented in games is that they should be equally mixed in all the roles.

Like anything you see of a "group" that has been or feels repressed or messed with in general "over adjustment" can occur and suddenly the shoe is on the other foot and the opposite group is now at a disadvantage.

Treat it all like the question of gender does not matter and we may have a little more equality and peace.

The people who speak the loudest tend to be the ones who would have the least amount of fairness and empathy if the scales equalize: there is typically a "payback" period.

Its hard to treat this as gender doesnt matter, because every single aspect of a movie or game is designed. A character is female, for a reason. The type of gun used, is used for a reason. Its all meant to be a well thought out and planned thing. So treating gender like it doesnt matter, is impossible to do, when having a female character is a design choice.

Unless im missing something in how media is designed.

My biggest gripe is the token-ness and predictability of many female characters in a lot of action games. Like that chick from Gears of War. She spent what, like two games as the proverbial "only woman in the galaxy" cause... well cause. She's pretty much only there to remind you women exist and to look pretty.

Kat in DMC, Anya in GoW 1-2, Amy in Sonic (until they got around to adding Rouge, which really, not an improvement), and while there were other women in Dishonored, what exactly is Callista but your sexy secretary? I mean, just about anyone else could have done her job, except they decided there wasn't a mature woman in the game past the first few minutes and just forked her into it.

And as to predictability, well... Kat, basically your secretary. Anya, your secretary. Callista, your secretary. I like Cortanna, but she's still kind of your secretary. These characters could be completely absent and the story wouldn't really miss them (well, someone would have to do Cortana's job, cause Chief really did need someone to handle his appointment book) and I kind of find their presence an insult to my intelligence. Video games are not action movies, the husband isn't going to convince the wife to sit down with him and watch him play some Halo just cause you threw a woman into the story are the closest available vacancy.

Yeah token females who are essentially just your secretary eye candy have kind of gotten old. Bayonetta at least mixed it up

 Swastakowey wrote:
Its hard to treat this as gender doesnt matter, because every single aspect of a movie or game is designed. A character is female, for a reason. The type of gun used, is used for a reason. Its all meant to be a well thought out and planned thing. So treating gender like it doesnt matter, is impossible to do, when having a female character is a design choice.
Unless im missing something in how media is designed.

See how you treat women and men in your day to day life.
How do you treat either of them different?
A woman at my work acts all flirty and it gives her a real advantage getting the guys to do things for her.
It drives her nuts that I treat her no better (possibly less due to the intentional manipulation).

When I met my wife we were working at a pretty hard job, the one guy I worked with kept lifting heavy stuff up for her without even asking.
I told her if she wants help I will help, not do it for her, some of the REALLY heavy stuff I told her I will need her help so be ready.
So I got the girl by being a not quite gentleman...

The issue I have with female representation in games lies mostly around the depth of their character. It's annoying when writers have a female character whose only reason for existing is to be the love-interest/damsel-in-distress for the male lead or, if they're not the damsel-in-distress, the 2-dimensional science/medic/support character who doesn't really have much of a personality beyond "vagina lol".

The lack of female protagonists is also frustrating.

I could generally care less about appearances though. Boob window/armor or attractiveness doesn't bother me at all. Heels and headlights on the other hand, bother me immensely.

There is nowhere near enough representation of female playable characters, and in many games (both old and, sadly, new) the ones that exist are shoehorned in to "agility" or "magic" roles, and some games (like Deus Ex) actually remove the option of having them where they had it previously. Most big-name-game protagonists end up being basically skinhead whiteguys with no personality, too, so it's not like there's anything gained by this bizarre practice.

 Talizvar wrote:
Like anything you see of a "group" that has been or feels repressed or messed with in general "over adjustment" can occur and suddenly the shoe is on the other foot and the opposite group is now at a disadvantage.

Unless they go to physically count the number of characters and such, many people initially "feel" like a game or TV show is female-dominated when it's actually 50/50, and that there is equal representation when there are actually far more men than women.

As a result, a lot of the complaints about this particular line of thinking tend to not really have any basis in reality. I actually remember on this forum someone having a debate about whether or not a game was egalitarian vs female-dominated, where people ended up literally counting the number of characters of either gender... and it ended up fifty-fifty. Then the people who said it was female-dominated queasily began to argue "well, it certainly FELT female-dominated, I bet they got more screen time"...

Well it's not just the representation of women in games that is the issue, it's true that both genders should be playabel in most games now a days but it should also depend on the game it self as well.

For example like Swastakowey said, it wouldn't make any sense for instance to have female soldiers in a game that takes place during the Napoleonic wars since that wouldn't be historically accurate in that sense.

Both genders are in one way or another badly represented, for instance once more whit war games, it's okay to kill men but if you kill women then people will have a fit. Or that all male characters most of the time have have to have six packs and such in for example fighting games.

That being said, it's easy to some times take the focus away from the game it self and focus more on such issues as these, and well as long as games sell where one of the two genders is being portrayed in a bad way or where certain roles or things are gender locked then this trend will contiue.



.

Boob armor and heels are the worst.

My main gripes tend to be all the standard ones about character design. Boob Plate, yadda yadda. Also that we get like 4 stock female character personalities across all nerd media. Anything I'd say, you've heard it all before. My complaints are not unique.

Lately I've been trying to focus on what I do like rather than what I dislike just for my own sanity. My griping isn't going to shake up the industry and change things, so my energy is better spent on what I've think has been done well.

Like I'm willing to forgive some of the missteps in the class designs and a couple creepy plot points in Bravely Default when it comes to Edea, because we got an enjoyable character playing to an archetype that isn't one of the 4 stock female characters personalities. She felt confident and convicted without being the grating "Touch Girl" caricature. She even gets some genuine character development by the end.

 Vash108 wrote:
Boob armor and heels are the worst.

I love Mass Effect, but watching Miranda run around in combat wearing high heels gets me every time. I can deal with the skin suit, fem-Shepard's boob armor, maybe even going head to head with the 1400 lbs Shadow Broker in a punching battle, but no one is going to wear heels into a combat situation.

I do kinda take issue when games treat men and women exactly the same. Like the GoW 3 women who are some how just as strong as the steroid-pumped Marcus Fenix. It's not hard to come up with plenty of combat roles where women could excel in games without turning them into token characters, sex objects, or women-just-cause. Mass Effect did it pretty well with Liara as a brilliant biotic scientist, Kasumi as a master thief, Miranda as a great leader, Jack as a crazy biotic, EDI as EDI, Samara, Ashley, Tali.

Deus Ex 3 had Faridah Malik who was a kick-ass pilot and Megan Reed who was the research director of a major corporation.

But yea, the heels in combat are ridiculous.

 Melissia wrote:
There is nowhere near enough representation of female playable characters, and in many games (both old and, sadly, new) the ones that exist are shoehorned in to "agility" or "magic" roles, and some games (like Deus Ex) actually remove the option of having them where they had it previously. Most big-name-game protagonists end up being basically skinhead whiteguys with no personality, too, so it's not like there's anything gained by this bizarre practice.

Something that really to bug me when I thought about it is that we really don't have any actually blank slate characters. Like for example it is very hard to think of a single game character that doesn't have a designated gender.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I tend to play historical games. If anything, having women shoehorned in annoys me. Like having female Napoleonic Soldiers everywhere for example. Or having female ww2 pilots etc.

At the end of the day, it does little to change the games I play aside from the look and realisticness, but in other games I can think of that I play not based off history I cant think of too many where its a problem.

This is the sticky wicket. Should you include women in a setting were women wouldn't be expected. It's some times gets more sticky when people some times underestimate women's presence in some fields.

 LordofHats wrote:
My biggest gripe is the token-ness and predictability of many female characters in a lot of action games. Like that chick from Gears of War. She spent what, like two games as the proverbial "only woman in the galaxy" cause... well cause. She's pretty much only there to remind you women exist and to look pretty.

Kat in DMC, Anya in GoW 1-2, Amy in Sonic (until they got around to adding Rouge, which really, not an improvement), and while there were other women in Dishonored, what exactly is Callista but your sexy secretary? I mean, just about anyone else could have done her job, except they decided there wasn't a mature woman in the game past the first few minutes and just forked her into it.

And as to predictability, well... Kat, basically your secretary. Anya, your secretary. Callista, your secretary. I like Cortanna, but she's still kind of your secretary. These characters could be completely absent and the story wouldn't really miss them (well, someone would have to do Cortana's job, cause Chief really did need someone to handle his appointment book) and I kind of find their presence an insult to my intelligence. Video games are not action movies, the husband isn't going to convince the wife to sit down with him and watch him play some Halo just cause you threw a woman into the story are the closest available vacancy.

Yeah token females who are essentially just your secretary eye candy have kind of gotten old. Bayonetta at least mixed it up

Tokenism is not good, but my worry is that the fear of tokenism is maybe more of a problem then tokenism itself. The solution I like is to include more women who aren't just a token jester, but some people think the solution is to just not include women.

 TheSilo wrote:

 Vash108 wrote:
Boob armor and heels are the worst.

I love Mass Effect, but watching Miranda run around in combat wearing high heels gets me every time. I can deal with the skin suit, fem-Shepard's boob armor, maybe even going head to head with the 1400 lbs Shadow Broker in a punching battle, but no one is going to wear heels into a combat situation.

I do kinda take issue when games treat men and women exactly the same. Like the GoW 3 women who are some how just as strong as the steroid-pumped Marcus Fenix. It's not hard to come up with plenty of combat roles where women could excel in games without turning them into token characters, sex objects, or women-just-cause. Mass Effect did it pretty well with Liara as a brilliant biotic scientist, Kasumi as a master thief, Miranda as a great leader, Jack as a crazy biotic, EDI as EDI, Samara, Ashley, Tali.

Deus Ex 3 had Faridah Malik who was a kick-ass pilot and Megan Reed who was the research director of a major corporation.

But yea, the heels in combat are ridiculous.

An image that always amuses me to this day.

nomotog wrote:
Tokenism is not good, but my worry is that the fear of tokenism is maybe more of a problem then tokenism itself. The solution I like is to include more women who aren't just a token jester, but some people think the solution is to just not include women.

That does seem to be sadly common.

 SneakyMek wrote:
For example like Swastakowey said, it wouldn't make any sense for instance to have female soldiers in a game that takes place during the Napoleonic wars since that wouldn't be historically accurate in that sense..

Except it would be historically accurate, because there were women participating in those wars as soldiers, as there has been since the dawn of time.

This reminds me of people who complained that if a CoD game had a black main character it'd misrepresent what the US military's demographics are (an actual thing that someone argued on Dakka). Basically it sounds more like a lame, unimaginative excuse to exclude rather than actually caring about accuracy. Fun is more important than historical accuracy regardless, but this is true especially of the layman's idea of historical accuracy, which is anything but accurate and oftentimes is just a fantasy instead.

 Melissia wrote:

nomotog wrote:
Tokenism is not good, but my worry is that the fear of tokenism is maybe more of a problem then tokenism itself. The solution I like is to include more women who aren't just a token jester, but some people think the solution is to just not include women.

That does seem to be sadly common.

 SneakyMek wrote:
For example like Swastakowey said, it wouldn't make any sense for instance to have female soldiers in a game that takes place during the Napoleonic wars since that wouldn't be historically accurate in that sense..

Except it would be historically accurate, because there were women participating in those wars as soldiers, as there has been since the dawn of time.

This reminds me of people who complained that if a CoD game had a black main character it'd misrepresent what the US military's demographics are (an actual thing that someone argued on Dakka). Basically it sounds more like a lame, unimaginative excuse to exclude rather than actually caring about accuracy. Fun is more important than historical accuracy regardless, but this is true especially of the layman's idea of historical accuracy, which is anything but accurate and oftentimes is just a fantasy instead.

Napoleon did muster the entire able-bodied population, that was a big part of his advantage over the traditional European powers, who mostly kept to small professional armies, meanwhile Napoleonic France had literally hundreds of thousands of conscripts. Wouldn't be surprising to see women playing more important government functions, after all they needed all those men for the front.

 TheSilo wrote:

 Vash108 wrote:
Boob armor and heels are the worst.

I love Mass Effect, but watching Miranda run around in combat wearing high heels gets me every time. I can deal with the skin suit, fem-Shepard's boob armor, maybe even going head to head with the 1400 lbs Shadow Broker in a punching battle, but no one is going to wear heels into a combat situation.

I do kinda take issue when games treat men and women exactly the same. Like the GoW 3 women who are some how just as strong as the steroid-pumped Marcus Fenix. It's not hard to come up with plenty of combat roles where women could excel in games without turning them into token characters, sex objects, or women-just-cause. Mass Effect did it pretty well with Liara as a brilliant biotic scientist, Kasumi as a master thief, Miranda as a great leader, Jack as a crazy biotic, EDI as EDI, Samara, Ashley, Tali.

Deus Ex 3 had Faridah Malik who was a kick-ass pilot and Megan Reed who was the research director of a major corporation.

But yea, the heels in combat are ridiculous.

I always laugh at that. I mean she is the only character who is sexualized. But then I remembered. OH yeah... Thats the character. I always saw her as the sleeper agent that had sex and shot the guy in his sleep.

I wouldn't put it past her.

I have a problem with just how few there are compared to straight white male protoganists.

As it is now I feel like Antia which this discussion stems from is quite wrong.

I mean who are amongst most famous nintendo characters. Zelda, Samus Aran, Princess Peach, and my personal favorite Farah.

Who's zelda? She's a sage.... She's an extremely intelligent princess of Hryule. Very rarely is she actually a damsel in distress. Is so wise and powerful, she is credited as not a prize, but as a guide. She is more of the wise mentor that gives you advice through the story, and occasionally helping the player. Zelda is responsible for sending link back in time. And holds a friendship with Link. Nothing else. No romantic relationship has ever happened between Link and Zelda (From my memory)

Samus Aran? Asian Woman who has been trained by alien bird race to kick major arse. She don't need no man, she has been kicking the asses of pirates for well.... Years.. By herself.

Who is Farah? Farah is the female protoganist Prince of Persia sands of time. What is she? She is a badass. She is a princess of india, and is an archer. She actively helps the Prince (Who was quite a dick), she is the only likable character, until the prince finally grows on you. But then in the third game she is even more fantastic and is even stronger. But she was sort of sexualized. For some odd reason.


The games industry has written a few. But I would like to see an increase in female characters that are playable.

But then I got reminded that Halo has actually really strong female characters. Cortana, Dare, Miranda Keyes (lets face it shes a badass), and Kat (Who sadly dies the most unheroic way possible but I get the reason why.)

There are series out there. And people often forget them.

I mean Bioshock is rife with fantastic female characters. Strong woman who actively try to kill you and get a lot more characterization than some of the men do.

There are many times when I just remember gaming has done it. But it has not written stories about one thing....

Mothers. Mothers are underrepresented in gaming. Along with fathers. Family relationships have not been shown as often as I would like.

There are a bare few that are.

Two Brothers (not a tale of two brothers, but just Two Brothers) That explores it. But it explores death more than family.

 Asherian Command wrote:
Samus Aran? Asian Woman who has been trained by alien bird race to kick major arse. She don't need no man, she has been kicking the asses of pirates for well.... Years.. By herself.

Ah, congratulations on wiping Other M from your memory.

 Melissia wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
Samus Aran? Asian Woman who has been trained by alien bird race to kick major arse. She don't need no man, she has been kicking the asses of pirates for well.... Years.. By herself.

Ah, congratulations on wiping Other M from your memory.

I have no idea what you are talking about

Oh you mean the game about sammy baran. Yeah I hated that game.

That's the spirit!

nomotog wrote:
We are gammers here, so what problems/eye rolling bits have we noticed that we might like to see addressed?

Nothing at all.

Well there where so called cantinières that where females that had followed regiments to the battlefield,they did however not take part in the battles themselves.

Each French regiment had women authorized to accompany it on campaign. Designated cantinières or vivandières, they wore clothes of at least partly military design. Their official function within the regiment was to sell tobacco and refreshments such as cognac from their carts and care for the wounded. In the latter role, some inevitably ventured into harm's way and became casualties. Marie Tête-du-bois, the cantinière of the 1st Grenadiers of the Guard, was cut in two by a cannonball at Waterloo.


Anyone is of course free to provide facts that proves that there where female soldiers in the front like during Waterloo and during the Russian expedition.


In any case..lets not get too side tracked from the main focus on this thread.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I mean who are amongst most famous nintendo characters. Zelda, Samus Aran, Princess Peach, and my personal favorite Farah.

Who's zelda? She's a sage.... She's an extremely intelligent princess of Hryule. Very rarely is she actually a damsel in distress. Is so wise and powerful, she is credited as not a prize, but as a guide. She is more of the wise mentor that gives you advice through the story, and occasionally helping the player. Zelda is responsible for sending link back in time. And holds a friendship with Link. Nothing else. No romantic relationship has ever happened between Link and Zelda (From my memory)

Samus Aran? Asian Woman who has been trained by alien bird race to kick major arse. She don't need no man, she has been kicking the asses of pirates for well.... Years.. By herself.

If you think Samus is asian... well...

Zelda is actually

Which is why she is so wise and actually even more useful than you mentioned.

 SneakyMek wrote:
Well there where so called cantinières that where females that had followed regiments to the battlefield,they did however not take part in the battles themselves.

Nadezhda Durova served in the Russian cavalry, Anna Anna Lühring served in the Lützow Free Corps, Joanna Żubr served as a soldier for Poland and was the first woman to ever get the Polish equivalent of the Medal of Honor (Virtuti Militari).

We have similar tales in the US Civil War in the same time period, as well as throughout history in general.

 SneakyMek wrote:
In any case..lets not get too side tracked from the main focus on this thread.

The desire to claim "no women ever participated in these wars" or "the women who participated don't deserve to be represented" is in fact a part of this thread's focus, since it is a problem that I, a gamer, have with the depiction of women in games

 Melissia wrote:

 SneakyMek wrote:
Well there where so called cantinières that where females that had followed regiments to the battlefield,they did however not take part in the battles themselves.

Nadezhda Durova served in the Russian cavalry, Anna Anna Lühring served in the Lützow Free Corps, Joanna Żubr served as a soldier for Poland and was the first woman to ever get the Polish equivalent of the Medal of Honor (Virtuti Militari).

We have similar tales in the US Civil War in the same time period, as well as throughout history in general.

 SneakyMek wrote:
In any case..lets not get too side tracked from the main focus on this thread.

The desire to claim "no women ever participated in these wars" or "the women who participated don't deserve to be represented" is in fact a part of this thread's focus, since it is a problem that I, a gamer, have with the depiction of women in games

Ok, so some very rare examples. Very rare. Out of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers we have some ish stories of women in combat. They do not, outside of exceptional circumstance, deserve to be represented in most wars, due to their tiny minimal combat presence.

Im sorry if its offensive that people dont want to see women all over the front lines in a Nepolionic setting, when there shouldnt be.

Some exceptional examples, are not evidence for massed female ranks of soldiers. In any war really, even today. Fantasy and sci fi is fine to have such representation, but not history. Unless the story is specifically on the exceptional case of a female soldier.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Some exceptional examples

Make for more interesting stories.

 Melissia wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Some exceptional examples

Make for more interesting stories.

In your opinion.

I prefer to learn about the average joe, and have accurate representations.

As I said, keep them to fantasy and Sci Fi settings where it can happen without raising eyebrows or breaking the historical accuracy too much.

 SneakyMek wrote:
Well there where so called cantinières that where females that had followed regiments to the battlefield,they did however not take part in the battles themselves.

Each French regiment had women authorized to accompany it on campaign. Designated cantinières or vivandières, they wore clothes of at least partly military design. Their official function within the regiment was to sell tobacco and refreshments such as cognac from their carts and care for the wounded. In the latter role, some inevitably ventured into harm's way and became casualties. Marie Tête-du-bois, the cantinière of the 1st Grenadiers of the Guard, was cut in two by a cannonball at Waterloo.


Anyone is of course free to provide facts that proves that there where female soldiers in the front like during Waterloo and during the Russian expedition.


In any case..lets not get too side tracked from the main focus on this thread.

So they were a little like battlefield waiters/merchants. That is actually kind of cool. That could actually be a cool feature to see in a game.

nomotog wrote:

 SneakyMek wrote:
Well there where so called cantinières that where females that had followed regiments to the battlefield,they did however not take part in the battles themselves.

Each French regiment had women authorized to accompany it on campaign. Designated cantinières or vivandières, they wore clothes of at least partly military design. Their official function within the regiment was to sell tobacco and refreshments such as cognac from their carts and care for the wounded. In the latter role, some inevitably ventured into harm's way and became casualties. Marie Tête-du-bois, the cantinière of the 1st Grenadiers of the Guard, was cut in two by a cannonball at Waterloo.


Anyone is of course free to provide facts that proves that there where female soldiers in the front like during Waterloo and during the Russian expedition.


In any case..lets not get too side tracked from the main focus on this thread.

So they were a little like battlefield waiters/merchants. That is actually kind of cool. That could actually be a cool feature to see in a game.

Camp Followers they're called. They make up huge numbers of armies as they travel between battles etc. Many being families of the soldiers or those looking to profit through trade (of various things) etc.

They are in mount and blade ish which is kind of cool.