Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Sigvatr wrote:It's a very different scale. Deus Ex and e.g. ME are vastly different in regards of you determining your character's path. Let's stick to the story, else you could also say that in River Raid, you decide whether your plane decides to fight the enemy planes or dodges them.

Where do you see these vast differences? Honestly, the only thing that springs to mind is that one game offers a choice of romance options and the other doesn't. That's it.

No, it's their vision. They say they couldn't have done it with a woman (no pun intended), they couldn't. It's simple as that. Could someone else have re-written the game to feature a female protagonist? Sure. I could have re-written the ending of ME 3 as well despite Bioware claiming it's "how it had to end". It's *their* game and *they* decide what happens where, when and why.

Here's where *I* see the different scale. You're comparing a major facet of the game series (Shep going out with a big boom) to a character's appearance.

To bring this into proportion: Would you still say the same if they'd have said something like "we couldn't have told a story like the one in DE:HR with a black dude"?
I have a feeling there'd be quite an uproar. Yet it is supposed to be okay when it's concerning women.

Sigvatr wrote:Not gonna doubt that it would have been possible to feature a woman, but I'd have expected her daughter being the damsel in distress then instead of her man.

Not gonna hold this against you - stereotypes really are that subversive, at least when we're constantly bombarded with them in the daily media.

[edit] typos

Oh look a bunch of pointless, irrelevant links to an off-topic tangent that you didn't yourself actually read and which don't prove anything related to your point or do anything remotely related to disproving anything anyone in this topic has actually said.

I'd be surprised if pointless, irrelevant distractions weren't your normal MO on feminist topics.

 Melissia wrote:
Oh look a bunch of pointless, irrelevant links to an off-topic tangent that you didn't yourself actually read and which don't prove anything related to your point or do anything remotely related to disproving anything anyone in this topic has actually said.

On the contrary, I think the point that people care a lot about certain things for a short time and then move on the something else was rather well made, not that it would have to be if we were being intellectually honest in this thread.

The Haiti earthquake is the best example I can think of off the top of my head.

I'm an old grey-beard gamer. I've only played (TT and PNP RPG's) with 4 girls in my life. So I only have two thoughts on the subject. Yes, I feel they should include girls in focus groups, because they do have a different take on things and can add a lot to the plot of the game. When you only ask teenage boys you come up with crap like PlanetSide 1.

1. Female gamers tend to come up with the creative solutions and think outside the "try shooting it first" box, which is really refreshing for a GM and I'm loving it because some actual roleplaying happens most of the time when someone brings a girlfriend who's into gaming.

2. Where the hell were all the nerdy girls when I was in high school/college? I mean, back in the 80's you might find a girl who was into collecting unicorns or something but even admitting you played D&D meant striking out with the most desperate of the outcast girls. Back then, if there was a girl at an arcade she was inevitably bored and nagging her date to leave. Dammit, I can't even get my wife to watch Walking Dead or Game of Thrones with me, let alone GAME with us. At least once a night she bee-otches about getting my "stupid little men" off her dining room table.

Son moved away to college. Can I have his room for my hobbies now? NOOooooooooo.....because he might decide once in a blue moon to grace us with his presence for a couple days if it's a holiday or something. Sigh.

It's just not (censored) fair. I'd trade her in for a new model but all the "gamer chicks" my age are spinsters who sit on their fat backsides playing WOW 8 hours a night. I hate Raids and I hate eating out of a bag every night. Can I get a "Whoa BUNDY!"?!?


Just my 2 cents.

 Sigvatr wrote:
In the case of Deus Ex: it's different than e.g. in Battlefield where you got no story and play a random character. Deus Ex was a story with a main, male, protagonist because the story's writer(s) decided their main character to be male. That's it.

I've seen this video being pulled in another forum too and it was hilarious...there was one guy who was *raging* all over the ending of ME and when people brought up that Bioware can put in the ending they want to because it's their story and "artistic vision", he raged again. On the other hand, in regards to the video, the same guy (or girl, idk, weird pony names don't make up for easy gender identification) replied to someone saying that it's the writer's idea to have a male protagonist. Was fun as long as it lasted.

Anyway: any developer is free to choose the protagonist's gender and some even removed genders from games entirely (e.g. Final Fantasy). In the case of Battlefield or rather action games, it's just that a lot more men play those games than women do. Hell, even in ME3, 83% (iirc) of the players chose Shepherd and not Femshep despite having the choice...and they had a fully voiced second character (which did, imo, a better job...).

They wanted to include the option to pick gender, but they ran out of money.

 Melissia wrote:
Oh look a bunch of pointless, irrelevant links to an off-topic tangent that you didn't yourself actually read and which don't prove anything related to your point or do anything remotely related to disproving anything anyone in this topic has actually said.

I'd be surprised if pointless, irrelevant distractions weren't your normal MO on feminist topics.

Oh look, Melissia refusing facts because they conflict with her own opinion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8qcccZy03s

Trends are trends, no matter how hard you don't want them to be.

I am open for you pointing out the contrary. With facts this time please. I could not care less for your personal experience, I care for actual facts.

/e:...and just to back Monster Rain up:

http://www.google.de/trends/explore#q=haiti%20earthquake

Maxim C. Gatling wrote:[stuff]

Wow. Glad you got that load off your chest.

But she doesn't even watch GoT?! My condolensces. :(

 Sigvatr wrote:
Oh look, Melissia refusing facts because they conflict with her own opinion.

Misusing and misapplying statistics in order to prove something completely unrelated to what your opponent is arguing, and which the statistics don't actually prove anyway, is not the same as posting a fact.

 Melissia wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Oh look, Melissia refusing facts because they conflict with her own opinion.

Misusing and misapplying statistics in order to prove something completely unrelated to what your opponent is arguing, and which the statistics don't actually prove anyway, is not the same as posting a fact.

 Sigvatr wrote:

I am open for you pointing out the contrary. With facts this time please. I could not care less for your personal experience, I care for actual facts.

The onus is on you to prove that feminists aren't doing this:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Become vocal. Gather a huge group of people and found an organziation etc.

There are numerous feminist organizations, including numerous feminist gamer organizations. The number has been growing as the years go by.

Yet you claim that they do not exist, even as you have been linked to numerous examples of such in the past.

I didn't make the original claim. I just disputed that the claim was anything more than blind ignorance on your part.

Attempting to shift the burden of evidence is logically fallacious and does not prove anything.

What are we talking about? I'm not sure I can tell anymore. I kind of doubt this is productive.

nomotog wrote:
What are we talking about? I'm not sure I can tell anymore. I kind of doubt this is productive.

Sigvatr is responding to a thread where gamers and game developers are being vocal in our desire for change in the gaming industry by requesting that we be vocal in our desire for change in the gaming industry.

Bit late to the party but going back to the orignal post I can't help but remember this article about Avatar: The Legend of Korra and the issues the creators had convincing the studio to greenlight a series with a female protaginist.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150566153/airbender-creators-reclaim-their-world-in-korra

Some Nickelodeon executives were worried, says Konietzko, about backing an animated action show with a female lead character. Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls.

During test screenings, though, boys said they didn't care that Korra was a girl. They just said she was awesome.

I'm also trying to recall another article that I saw a few years ago similar to this where execs in a company were challenged by the developers on what kind of games appeal to the market and who they appeal to. Their answer would be to call a focus group and stack it with people that fit their preconcieved views and use the results as evidence to make devs churn out same product over and over again.

It's this kind of thinking that leads to an industry full of this.

http://borderhouseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/1237687236272.jpg

5 of the guys up in the top left corner could be mistaken for the same person. Try and tell me with a straight face, that each of these male protaginists was their creators artistic vision and not either:

a) Clever marketing/design decisions in order to appeal to the mass, young male demographic. Because they're the only ones who play games right?

or

b) A symptom of an industry so resistant to change that they just go along with it rather than challenge the status quo.

Groupthink has long been a problem in business in general, not just within the gaming industry. It's caused many companies to miss changes in the market, ignore problems within their company, and in some cases, even caused companies to utterly collapse.

Conventional wisdom is crap. It's wrong to just assume things are because that's just how it is. In an ideal world that is what market recherche is out to fix by investigating the conventional winsome and seeing if it actually the case. Just some times people don't actually do their job. They get lazy. Like when they don't think to include half the population as part of a test group.

 Melissia wrote:
According to Cracked, you just hate us because we don't have sex with you enough

Nonsense. We hate women because we eat meat.

I see what you did there, you fiend.

Tempting me to make gay jokes.

How cruel!

I think the entire thing about letting more women into the game industry is a great thing, however i doubt the problems will just go away that easy when it comes to issue.

There is to me a double standard in this matter as well,for if men and women are to be totally equals in the game industries then things such as booth babes should be removed but here is a problem with that, you can't take away booth babes if there are still women who are actually enjoying doing that witch in turns will send out a double message.

Also there is some times to much focus on the stereo typical
female characters in games that we over look the men as well, after all i'm sick and as a guy to see majority of male characters in various games having six packs and being like super macho and such instead of well more down to earth like.

 Melissia wrote:
I see what you did there, you fiend.

Tempting me to make gay jokes.

How cruel!

No no no. You never! Eat The meat. That is so not how it works.

There I made the joke for you.

 SneakyMek wrote:
Also there is some times to much focus on the stereo typical female characters in games that we over look the men as well, after all i'm sick and as a guy to see majority of male characters in various games having six packs and being like super macho and such instead of well more down to earth like.

No, we aren't overlooking that.

For example:



This is a serious problem for male characters even ignoring the feminist side of the issue.

A few of those we can discount (Eastenders is obviously a joke, and Riddick can't be said to be typical as it's based on a real person... and Heavy Weapons Guy, well... we can discount him... and the Assassin's Creed guy... is he bald?).

 Melissia wrote:
I see what you did there, you fiend. Tempting me to make gay jokes.

Not at all. It was just the second time in the past couple of weeks where I've had an apropos moment to post a link to that article, so that more people can see it for the sheer absurd nonsense that it is.

Okay granted, ignoring it might have been the wrong word to use since you do have a point there. To rephrase it i think that it's being well falling into the shadow of the entire focus on female characters. It would be better if the entire game industry would focus on the problem with stereo types of both sexes at once.

 Melissia wrote:

 SneakyMek wrote:
Also there is some times to much focus on the stereo typical female characters in games that we over look the men as well, after all i'm sick and as a guy to see majority of male characters in various games having six packs and being like super macho and such instead of well more down to earth like.

No, we aren't overlooking that.

For example:



This is a serious problem for male characters even ignoring the feminist side of the issue.

What do a large number of these characters have in common?



Personally I don't mind the relatively similar character design. You're going to have similarities when you have a protagonist that they want to remove the "stormtrooper effect" from in a military capacity.

In some cases (Mass Effect and Too Human off the top of my head, with Killzone and Gears of War to a lesser extent as it is restricted to their MP components) you have the options of different helmets/headgear and facial/player skin options.

On another note, I find it ridiculous that the "Gears of War" photo is of a character who isn't even a main character. Tai is a third string character at best.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
A few of those we can discount (Eastenders is obviously a joke, and Riddick can't be said to be typical as it's based on a real person... and Heavy Weapons Guy, well... we can discount him... and the Assassin's Creed guy... is he bald?).

To be fair, there's quite a few "Assassin's Creed guys".

Desmond is bald/shaved head. It grows out over the course of the different games though.
Ezio had hair, Altair had hair, the characters from ACIII had hair, and the character from Black Flag is a pirate and has hair.

 SneakyMek wrote:
Okay granted, ignoring it might have been the wrong word to use since you do have a point there. To rephrase it i think that it's being well falling into the shadow of the entire focus on female characters. It would be better if the entire game industry would focus on the problem with stereo types of both sexes at once.

Different problems but same solution. If you remove the perception that the main character needs to pander to 18-25 year old white males, then things really open up. Not only will we have nice female charters, but we will also get more diversity of male charters.

nomotog wrote:

 SneakyMek wrote:
Okay granted, ignoring it might have been the wrong word to use since you do have a point there. To rephrase it i think that it's being well falling into the shadow of the entire focus on female characters. It would be better if the entire game industry would focus on the problem with stereo types of both sexes at once.

Different problems but same solution. If you remove the perception that the main character needs to pander to 18-25 year old white males, then things really open up. Not only will we have nice female charters, but we will also get more diversity of male charters.

Doubtful, as long as they continue to try to do military styled games.

 SneakyMek wrote:
Okay granted, ignoring it might have been the wrong word to use since you do have a point there. To rephrase it i think that it's being well falling into the shadow of the entire focus on female characters. It would be better if the entire game industry would focus on the problem with stereo types of both sexes at once.

While I'm all for better writing in games the issue of boring male characters is different to the issues facing female characters. It is moreso an issue of lack of creativity and stagnation in the industry creating those carbon copy male protaginists. Whereas the depiction of women in gaming or infact the lack of women in general is a more deeper problem that there is the perception that women have no interest in gaming therefore there is no reason to make them anything more than an object of desire in games.

Going on what nomotog said, every year we see more and more surveys saying the people playing games are getting older and older and women are making an increasingly larger portion of gamers. The industry in my view is cripiling itself by focusing on one demographic.

 Kanluwen wrote:

nomotog wrote:

 SneakyMek wrote:
Okay granted, ignoring it might have been the wrong word to use since you do have a point there. To rephrase it i think that it's being well falling into the shadow of the entire focus on female characters. It would be better if the entire game industry would focus on the problem with stereo types of both sexes at once.

Different problems but same solution. If you remove the perception that the main character needs to pander to 18-25 year old white males, then things really open up. Not only will we have nice female charters, but we will also get more diversity of male charters.

Doubtful, as long as they continue to try to do military styled games.

Well ya we would do fewer military shooters. People are starting to get sick of them anyway. Maybe we can go back to the old days where you didn't need military training to punch aliens in the face.

 Kanluwen wrote:
On another note, I find it ridiculous that the "Gears of War" photo is of a character who isn't even a main character. Tai is a third string character at best.

That's not Tai. It's Kim, from the first game. Um, which you might find even more ridiculous given he dies at the end of the first level.

Anyway, what's this business about the Deus Ex HR guy? Was there a link somewhere? It sounds like Sigvatr has some serious misconceptions about creative work and the purity of the ~artistic vision~.

 Melissia wrote:
The onus is on you to prove that feminists aren't doing this:

Never said that. I said to become vocal. And I don't mean your definition of vocal aka making irrational claims. You do not seem to having had a look at how such a behavior is treated in levels that actually matter - people laught at your face. Becoming vocal means being serious - about your arguments and, most of all, about your appearance. That does happen in few places, but the problem are people like you, female supremacist / sexists who are very vocal but cannot back up anything they got and, as stated before, refuse logical reasoning. The consequence? Put every such movement in a bad light.

The initial point, that you tried to dodge, was that talking about sexism in video games is a trend that will go away as soon as it came. As factually proven above, it happens to everything and I don't see any reason why this topic should be an exception. It will fade away in a few weeks; actually, it's fading away right now. Unless you accept reality, you will never have an impact on anything.

 Madcat87 wrote:

Going on what nomotog said, every year we see more and more surveys saying the people playing games are getting older and older and women are making an increasingly larger portion of gamers. The industry in my view is cripiling itself by focusing on one demographic.

You need to have a look at more detailed studies though. Women are, by a long shot, preferring social games and such whereas men heavily prefer action games. We saw a huge influx of female gamers with a spike not so long ago due to the rise of facebook / social games whereas the classic core genres did not change much in regards to gender preference.

nomotog wrote:


Different problems but same solution. If you remove the perception that the main character needs to pander to 18-25 year old white males, then things really open up. Not only will we have nice female charters, but we will also get more diversity of male charters.

It needs to fit though - a fat guy or even an average man wouldn't be able to handle himself in a generic military shooter...and those are a huge genre that is vastly preferred by male players. Successful genre, dominated by male players => make more games and cater to the crowd.

Personally, I'd like to have more 3rd person games with females a I also play female characters in, e.g., World of Warcraft - if I am stuck with staring at a character's back for lots of hours, I'd want it to be an attractive one.

HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
On another note, I find it ridiculous that the "Gears of War" photo is of a character who isn't even a main character. Tai is a third string character at best.

That's not Tai. It's Kim, from the first game. Um, which you might find even more ridiculous given he dies at the end of the first level.

You're totally right. They're both completely unremarkable third string characters who die horribly.