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 Monster Rain wrote:
This is quality. The data is out there, go find it.

This isn't your first rodeo. Pretending ignorance on this subject is more of your trollery. The NPD Group found in 2009 that 28% of console gamers are female. As of 2012, the ESA found women make up 47% of the general market for video games.

 Monster Rain wrote:
While it was an interesting look at video game publishing, I didn't see the misogynistic heart of darkness of the industry.

Once, more a retreat to the strawman. Developers and publishers don't hate women. They do think female characters are worth less than male characters. This is "devaluation" in the most literal sense of the term.

 Monster Rain wrote:
how many sentences should I use to express ideas to cross the "snipe" threshold?

I suppose you'll say I'm starting another conversation about numbers now that you brought it up. If you don't know what the difference is between posting a rational argument and a snide remark then maybe you should read more and post less -- especially concerning this thread. Your innocent act is about as thin as I have seen on Dakka and that's saying something. For example, are you actually ever going to answer that ratio question -- I mean, since you claim sincerity here and that one liners like "what ratio of objectification would be acceptable" is not just flamebaiting, then I'm sure you have an answer for me about whether you think the industry can justify objectification as long as they also have some quota's worth of non-problematic female characters.

 Monster Rain wrote:
It doesn't attempt to keep them from criticism, it only attempts to make that criticism accurate. Whether or not the criticism is valid is another discussion entirely.

You are pretending that an argument you are making is a fact. It's called begging the question.

If you're speaking to me again could you at least respond to the points I raised that you refused to address?

 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.

You are only claiming such because you are desperately grasping at straws to try to discredit what I have said-- since you do not exactly have much of a point otherwise.

You mean that reading "intentionally" as meaning intent was shown was an attempt to discredit you?
Female leads have historically not sold as well (some exceptions notwithstanding), and from market research that trend doesn't seem to change. Now does that lack of investment by developers mean that;
A) They won't invest as much because the return isn't as good and they may get a better return with another product
B) That they base their decisions on emotive issues and cannot separate culture from the facts on paper

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.

I got that figure from facebook.

It does however, have spoilers for the game. So, be warned if you click the link.

 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.

I know BioWare gave some data on their FaceBook page and a video today but I didn't see the breakdown.

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...


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 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
You mean that reading "intentionally" as meaning intent was shown was an attempt to discredit you?

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.

 Compel wrote:
I got that figure from facebook.

I'd seen that on Facebook, but it didn't say whether those were custom characters or the default one

I liked playing as FemShep, her voice actor put so much more effort into it than her male counterpart.

Interesting thing.


There is minimal backlash (en total) against hyper sexualized two dimensional female characters in video games or any media for that matter. Feminists are dismissed as crazy or misandrists by the majority. Multiple males in this thread (and others) have claimed it is a non issue.


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.

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.

 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...

Damn, I've sunk a few hundred hours into it. I can't imagine not finishing it, but that's just me

 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.

And I'm saying that they are motivated by financial, rather than cultural values. I don't recall saying hate, but I won't accuse you of looking desperate

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
And I'm saying that they are motivated by financial, rather than cultural values.

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:
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.

So if 83% use a customised character, and 13% use the default, according to BioWare (I'd imagine that its easy for them to track this the same way they got their other data) then it stands contrary to the claim that "According to their own words, a large number of those players just went with the first option given to them"


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 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.

If someone did, good for her. Where was this reported?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
If someone did, good for her. Where was this reported?

This was on the Elder Scrolls modding scene.

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

 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.

I keep hearing that culture affects how people read numbers but I don't see how culture affects the fact that male lead games sell 75% better than female lead games or how you read that.


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

Thanks, I missed that. It doesn't bother me, so good for her.

 Melissia wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
And I think your side is based on an extremist

Your idea that a worldview summarized as "people should be treated with respect regardless of gender" can only ever be espoused by not only just extremists, but only delusional extremists, just goes to show how biased and out of touch with both reality your arguments actually are.

Your lack of understanding of economics is also well known, but that's not really relevant here.

So, yeah. The usual uninformed petulance and equivocation. I'll pass.

Because, Dreadclaw. Unless they are 2 completely identical games, there will always be other potential reasons.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Which is why it's far more interesting to analyse games like Mass Effect, which gives you the choice of a male character or female.

Now, an interesting question would be, what if you put the selection frame over the female character when it boots up, instead of the male one?

That ME3 stat there is quite interesting because it's those who finished the game.

Given that most people don't understand economics, I wouldn't be surprised if neither of you did.


And the modder was AlienSlof. She quit for a bit over it, but she's proven to be very tempermental and overreactive.

 Amaya wrote:
Given that most people don't understand economics, I wouldn't be surprised if neither of you did.

A Ph. D isn't required to know what "supply and demand" means.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 Amaya wrote:
Given that most people don't understand economics, I wouldn't be surprised if neither of you did.

A Ph. D isn't required to know what "supply and demand" means.

If you really think that is remotely that simple than you don't understand.

 BrookM wrote:
I liked playing as FemShep, her voice actor put so much more effort into it than her male counterpart.

I prefer FemShep, too, but I wouldn't say ManShep didn't do as good of a job. I just think ManShep is far more generic. When you think about FemShep's voice, it would probably be generic, too -- if there was a long tradition of generic(izing) female leads. But there isn't so that performance stands out by comparison to its male counterpart.

I thought it was commonly accepted that nobody understands economics, especially those paid to do so!

 Manchu wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
I liked playing as FemShep, her voice actor put so much more effort into it than her male counterpart.

I prefer FemShep, too, but I wouldn't say ManShep didn't do as good of a job. I just think ManShep is far more generic. When you think about FemShep's voice, it would probably be generic, too -- if there was a long tradition of generic female leads. But there isn't so that performance stands out by comparison to its male counterpart.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with Jennifer Hale being one of the best voice actors out of there of either gender.

Hale's experience and accolades dwarf Meer's. Why can't we just admit that Hale is the better voice actor? It has nothing to do with the fact "female leads" are rare. It's not as if there aren't many female characters with speaking roles in many games to compare to...




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 Compel wrote:
I thought it was commonly accepted that nobody understands economics, especially those paid to do so!

People like to oversimplify things. Never a good idea, especially with statistical analysis.

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

I have no problem with this, I thought that she was outstanding

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I don't see how culture affects the fact that male lead games sell 75% better than female lead games or how you read that.

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.


Edit: Goddamn, I didn't mean to type a fething essay here. Sorry about that.

 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.

So you're trying to equate market research with facts, figures and evidence and reasonable conclusions that can be drawn from those with someone getting punched without an explanation? Facts vs supposition? We aren't comparing apples with apples now are we?
So you're saying that the reason that they don't sell as well is not because historic data and predictions show that they do not in fact sell as well as other games, but they're underfunded? If that were true then demand would outstrip supply and there would be plenty of clear indications that there is an untapped market.

Unless you have something concrete that doesn't make assumptions concerning the differences in why games with female leads do not sell so well.

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.

 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.

No, you keep assuming that senior management are beholden to their emotions when assigning a budget, and not their financial forecasts. Especially when they'll be responsible to the Board and/or shareholders for why their investment did not yield a sufficient return.

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.

To do a proper analysis we'd have to assess genres on a case by case basis, not the industry as a whole.

Consider this, women have been shown to prefer RPGs to FPSs. Most RPGs allow the player to choose their own gender and often race (depending on setting). http://web.archive.org/web/20090211101758/http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/all/gamespotting/102702/8.html

 Amaya wrote:
Hale's experience and accolades dwarf Meer's. Why can't we just admit that Hale is the better voice actor? It has nothing to do with the fact "female leads" are rare.

Even if Hale is a better voice actor than Meer, that wouldn't indicate that female leads being rare in video games has nothing to do with her performance being comparatively more compelling.

 Amaya wrote:
It's not as if there aren't many female characters with speaking roles in many games to compare to...

There aren't many female lead roles to compare it with, a.k.a., one of the chief topics of this thread.

 Manchu wrote:
When you think about FemShep's voice, it would probably be generic, too -- if there was a long tradition of generic(izing) female leads.

You said quite plainly that the only reason Hale's performance was notable was because she was female lead character and that was rare.

That's quite insulting to her talent. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with RPGs, but she has been doing excellent voice work for a long time across many games despite not being a female lead.