What problems do gamers have with how men are represented in games?

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**easysauce**

Sigvatr wrote:
Japanese game characters don't even have a gender anymore

On the other hanad, though, that also has a lot to do with culture. Being fit isn't a large focus in the East whereas it is in the West.

ummm... no, its shamefull to be fat in the east, I would say even more so then over here.

personally, I think the idea of getting to co op or fight against fat guys, short guys, pimply neck beards, would be fun... im sure plenty of people would rather have an avatar that looks like themselves even if they are fat/ect

the game doesnt have to be about boring real life scenarios to incorporate real life graphics....

no one complains about realistic physics engines being "borning" because no one wants to play with real physics....

**AdeptSister**

Sigvatr wrote:
AdeptSister wrote:
This is same issue (diversity) that is seen in the comic book and tech industry: people hire friends/people in the same circles which reinforce the same homogeneous environment. And while having a greater diversity of designers would be good, let's not let the current groups off the hook. People have to learn empathy and being able to expand their comfort zone. I am wary that if that is not supported, women or minority designers will automatically be pigeonholed into being responsible for having to be the flag bearers for diversity. That is not fair to limit them to that.

And I hopeful that we will continue to expand our range of characters.

No offense, but those are empty words. The question is - how do you want to back those up? The premise that more women in gaming will automatically mean better games is foolish and naive.

In order for there to be a change, there have to be women MAKING games. And women making games must make GOOD games in order to be appreciated for their work instead of their gender or their victimization as the latter are sexism. And women making games need to stand up against the very vocal slacktivists who only care for their fame and money. Those people slander the actual work of women in the industry.

See, I have few issues with that stance. While agree that it would be good for women or minorities to be making good games, once again you are putting the onus on them (and only them). That is not realistic or fair. That their game must be spectacular, if not, it's a failure. And it sounds like instead of aiming for addressing a faulty the system, you expect them to have to better than everyone to even compete.

It IMHO, is silly to put the entire burden on women and minorities to change the industry. Like everything, it takes empathy and collaboration.

**Sigvatr**

No. It's on them. It's an industry, not a children's ball park. If you want to be successful, you have to deliver a good product - hands down. If you can't, you should fail.

Why should the industry suddenly start making amendments? Just because they're women? That's sexist.

**AdeptSister**

Good is subjective and we all know that designers influence the market.

So you expect superhuman efforts by a tiny group of people with little power to change the system? Doesn't that implicitly support the status quo?

**Sigvatr**

Do you consider releasing a good game a "superhuman effort"?

**AdeptSister**

Without support and experience? Of course. It sounds like you want something created without development of an infrastructure. Great games are not created from aether. Art is made from struggle, experimentation, repeated failure and collaboration. You are saying that women need to make good games, but are not allowing the same resources to gain the experience, support and contacts that are usually required. It can happen, but it would be rare.

For a fundamental change to occur, one cannot usually do solely on their own.

**StarTrotter**

AdeptSister wrote:
Without support and experience? Of course. It sounds like you want something created without development of an infrastructure. Great games are not created from aether. Art is made from struggle, experimentation, repeated failure and collaboration. You are saying that women need to make good games, but are not allowing the same resources to gain the experience, support and contacts that are usually required. It can happen, but it would be rare.

For a fundamental change to occur, one cannot usually do solely on their own.

All can equally suffer through the process of programming at home or at College. Just be warned that the answer to your problems is not hitting your computer with a wrench

**Melissia**

"All can equally suffer through the process of programming at home or at College."

Actually, most people don't have to. You never did in order to play games you want.

**Sigvatr**

AdeptSister wrote:
Without support and experience? Of course. It sounds like you want something created without development of an infrastructure. Great games are not created from aether. Art is made from struggle, experimentation, repeated failure and collaboration. You are saying that women need to make good games, but are not allowing the same resources to gain the experience, support and contacts that are usually required. It can happen, but it would be rare.

Female game developers follow the exact same pattern any male developer does. The exact same pattern. Gender has nothing to do with it. You could literally create a game completely anonymous and people wouldn't care at all as long as the product is good. You're making the assumption that every man who gets into game development is immediately welcomed because all men essentially are bros and totally stick to each other. Hm.

If you think that women need special support when making games, then you're saying they're worse / less skilled than their male counterparts. Hm. I disagree.

**nomotog**

Melissia wrote:
"All can equally suffer through the process of programming at home or at College."

Actually, most people don't have to. You never did in order to play games you want.

It's maybe one of the bigger fallacies of game design. You can be a part of game design without coding a single line of code. Yes with most video games, someone somewhere coded something, but that doesn't need to be you. Also some games require zero coding. (Table top games.) Coding and game design are really two different disciplines.

**AdeptSister**

Sigvatr, we fundamentally disagree if you think that the issues women face to be successful in the gaming industry are the same as men. It is not about "special" treatment, it is about equal opportunity.

**Sigvatr**

We will have to agree to disagree then. When it comes to measuring a game's quality or success, gender plays no role at all.

**StarTrotter**

nomotog wrote:
Melissia wrote:
"All can equally suffer through the process of programming at home or at College."

Actually, most people don't have to. You never did in order to play games you want.

It's maybe one of the bigger fallacies of game design. You can be a part of game design without coding a single line of code. Yes with most video games, someone somewhere coded something, but that doesn't need to be you. Also some games require zero coding. (Table top games.) Coding and game design are really two different disciplines.

Ah, apologies on that. Frankly I was more messing up because I had been in computer science for a year. Decided it wasn't for me so really was more joking on that. As per the talk about table top games, doesn't really matter considering we're in a board for video games which is my assumption.

That said, it's very much the truth that there is the designer, artist, the other branches (which I honestly don't quite know every part of it), the advertisement segment, the publisher (which might advertise it?). So yeah, lots of ways to get in and overall it probably matters more to get into the design aspect of it and/or whoever designs the characters and the sorts.

**Melissia**

You never had to be any of those things to enjoy the games.

**StarTrotter**

Melissia wrote:
You never had to be any of those things to enjoy the games.

Wait huh? I thought we were talking about game development not people that like games. Now I'm really confused

Did I miss something?

**Melissia**

StarTrotter wrote:
Melissia wrote:
You never had to be any of those things to enjoy the games.

Wait huh? I thought we were talking about game development not people that like games. Now I'm really confused

You are (or appear to be) arguing that women should have to take part in designing our own games in order to be included. However, you never had to take part in designing your own game in order to be included.

**Psienesis**

Sigvatr wrote:
No. It's on them. It's an industry, not a children's ball park. If you want to be successful, you have to deliver a good product - hands down. If you can't, you should fail.

Why should the industry suddenly start making amendments? Just because they're women? That's sexist.

Then why are men still in the industry? There are far more gakky games than good ones.

**StarTrotter**

Melissia wrote:
StarTrotter wrote:
Melissia wrote:
You never had to be any of those things to enjoy the games.

Depends on what you mean by included

Joking aside, I'm not saying that anybody is "supposed to". I was more discussing that it'd likely produce the most significant increase of games with PoC and women. As much as I know, the majority of the developers for games that have significant places in making "core games" are predominantly white males and, despite the significant number of black and latin gamers hasn't significantly influenced those numbers despite the fact that they are a significant number of consumers. Honestly the best I can say is perhaps more women gamers has lead to a push for more games where you can customize your characters.

Not to say that it's necessarily true though. Honestly I wish that we actually had statistics for every single gamer and proportions of genres, race, and sexuality along with family wealth for PC gaming, Wii gaming, XBox gaming, PS gaming, handheld gaming, and Phone/Social Media (including all Facebook here). That said, maybe I just like the thought of all those numbers all over the place and as I was speaking I kept on adding caveats of ooo those numbers and aaaaah those numbers would be interesting! Think of all the things you could see from them!

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Psienesis wrote:
Sigvatr wrote:
No. It's on them. It's an industry, not a children's ball park. If you want to be successful, you have to deliver a good product - hands down. If you can't, you should fail.

Why should the industry suddenly start making amendments? Just because they're women? That's sexist.

Then why are men still in the industry? There are far more gakky games than good ones.

Ah my favorite tactic. The one where we escalate! I use slippery slope! Sturgeon's Law claims that 90% of everything is crap. 90% of all games are crap+90% of people's ideas are crap = to the same equation for every other field including books and movies. This leads us to the acclamation that due to the fact that there are too many bad things in the world, we must destroy all entertainment and people. That or we must ascend from our pathetic human nature to harmonize with our world or we must ascend by way of technology past our pathetic meatbags. All purity must be destroyed

**Kojiro**

Melissia wrote:
You are (or appear to be) arguing that women should have to take part in designing our own games in order to be included. However, you never had to take part in designing your own game in order to be included.

I'm not sure what 'included' means here. I've never felt any barrier to me playing a game beyond it appealing to my tastes.

But who is supposed to make these games that will make you feel included? More importantly if they don't want to, why should they?

**Psienesis**

Ah my favorite tactic. The one where we escalate! I use slippery slope! Sturgeon's Law claims that 90% of everything is crap. 90% of all games are crap+90% of people's ideas are crap = to the same equation for every other field including books and movies. This leads us to the acclamation that due to the fact that there are too many bad things in the world, we must destroy all entertainment and people. That or we must ascend from our pathetic human nature to harmonize with our world or we must ascend by way of technology past our pathetic meatbags. All purity must be destroyed

And here we go with someone entirely missing the point and trying to be cute about it.

No, women and people of color should not have to trail-blaze their way to their own AAA studio and produce the next mega-bazillions-making game in order to then finally earn a place at the table. Feth that.

What needs to happen is that studios need to a) stop listening to their marketing teams, because their marketing teams are really, really wrong and b) tell the basement-dwellers that they're going to have to learn to play nicely with others, because gaming is now a mainstream cultural affair. It is no longer something just for nerds and geeks, it is now a hobby enjoyed by a significant portion of the population.

In short, gaming has "arrived", and now it's time for it to start broadening its horizons and appealing to the demographics that got it there, which most certainly includes women and people of color.

**StarTrotter**

Awww come on, I just wanted to have a bit of fun on it. I mean, I just sat there, tossed in a sturgeon's law reference and then was mentioning the newest Civ Game....

I was more just talking about the thing that would influence it the most naturally without anybody saying it. I'm not talking some grand trail-blaze of people into it because over the year's it's been changing to begin with. It all changes. Opinions, fields, etc. That and because it feels more likely than economists realizing it

Besides that,
a) As mentioned before, I agree it's completely idiotic and I'd love to see publishers (in particular) and developers (to a lesser extent) realize that's it's a bunch of smoke in the air. That and even the train simulator thing sold I think around one million dollars worth. That said I'd rather avoid tokenism so not just tokenism for that matter.
b) Telling the basement-dwellers that they have to play nice with others? You mean the internet's nasty habit of being malicious in general and largely toxic? Can't complain if that left but I really doubt that will happen... ever. MOBAS prepare your legion of insults!

**Ensis Ferrae**

Psienesis wrote:

In short, gaming has "arrived", and now it's time for it to start broadening its horizons and appealing to the demographics that got it there, which most certainly includes women and people of color.

I agree that gaming has "arrived".. but how do you "broaden its horizons"?? Apparently for you, it's affirmative action and shoehorning people into jobs, regardless of qualifications just because there "needs" to be more of some demographics represented in gaming.

To me, that is just simply the wrong fething answer.

[url]http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GerardMartinCueto/20120921/178125/Recognizing_the_Filipino_artists_that_worked_on_Uncharted_2_and_3.php[/url}

Did a google search for video game credits, and this site came up near the top. It's for Uncharted 3. The Vice President is someone named Isabel. 1 of 3 "Senior Environment Artists" are women, 2 of the "Environment Artists" women.

Hell, the url is for an article specifically recognizing the artists and people involved who are Filipino, which, last I checked, Filipinos are not white.

If we, or rather, the gaming industry, follows the standard hiring laws we will continue to see these numbers increase. As you yourself said, women and people of color are now a fairly significant demographic within the video gaming, and gaming industry. Another generation from now, and I will not be surprised in the least to see more and more women in the credits to games.

**StarTrotter**

To be exact, I don't think that the broaden horizons is really that. He's more talking about the PCs, support cast, etc. In fact I was yammering about how it'd possibly be influenced by a greater number of women and other ethnicity in game development would very likely influence these factors and, as long as it doesn't involve filling it to "make demographics more even in the industry". I was just talking about as gaming becomes more accepted, more people will likely want to go into the field and thus it will move on. Give it a generation and the proportions will likely be significantly different.

tldr: the only thing that Psi was talking about is the PCs and NPCs of the games itself, not the race or sex of the ones making the games.

**Ensis Ferrae**

Psienesis wrote:

No, women and people of color should not have to trail-blaze their way to their own AAA studio and produce the next mega-bazillions-making game in order to then finally earn a place at the table. Feth that.

Sorry StarTrotter, but this bit I quoted here has NOTHING to do with NPCs or PCs, and everything to do with the people who program them into games.

I do agree with you though, that as we get more women and other minorities into game design, we'll see more PCs and NPCs that reflect those designers own demographics.

**Psienesis**

Will we? Because we really haven't so far. Uncharted 3 is still a story about Whiteboy McWhiteyson, with brown hair and a grizzled 5 o'clock shadow.

Go a bit further back in the thread, and you'll note that the comment of mine you quoted is a direct response to someone stating that, if women/minorities want to be accepted in the developer side, they will have to do all the work themselves. Which is, I think, an asinine position.

But in the main, that is somewhat secondary. I mean, sure, yes, there should be more women and people of color in the industry in general. That's true of just about any tech-job, of any stripe, which is still predominantly white-males-only (this has gotten slightly better in the last decade, but only slightly).

The casts of games are still almost-entirely-white-dudes. Most female characters are presented solely as a Damsel in Distress, with little to no agency of her own, as a romance target for a male character, or as eye-candy/sex symbol for the assumed-male player.

**Ensis Ferrae**

Psienesis wrote:
Will we? Because we really haven't so far. Uncharted 3 is still a story about Whiteboy McWhiteyson, with brown hair and a grizzled 5 o'clock shadow.

Go a bit further back in the thread, and you'll note that the comment of mine you quoted is a direct response to someone stating that, if women/minorities want to be accepted in the developer side, they will have to do all the work themselves. Which is, I think, an asinine position.

But in the main, that is somewhat secondary. I mean, sure, yes, there should be more women and people of color in the industry in general. That's true of just about any tech-job, of any stripe, which is still predominantly white-males-only (this has gotten slightly better in the last decade, but only slightly).

The casts of games are still almost-entirely-white-dudes. Most female characters are presented solely as a Damsel in Distress, with little to no agency of her own, as a romance target for a male character, or as eye-candy/sex symbol for the assumed-male player.

I think though, that, as I commented, in another generation of developers, we'll start seeing more and more "different" main characters. I mean, if we look at other avenues of media, look at movies. Sure there were a number of minorities in film, but it wasn't until the 70s that we really see a number of minorities really cast in the lead role? And I'm not really referring to "blaxploitation" films either.

Just because we "suddenly" have more voices on the backside of games doesn't mean we'll suddenly see "results" as we're talking here. These things take time. Once we have ONE truly successful gem of a game with a female, or really minority character, we'll see more pop up. And I mean, successful on the COD level, because as we've seen with Tomb Raider, she didn't really spawn a huge offspring of other female lead games.

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Sigvatr wrote:
What's so sad about it: the only constructive thing about #Gamergate and anything surrounding it, aka female developers being supported to make an own game, was initiated by a group of men.

I know the founder of TFYC is a man, but iirc, there are also women in TFYC.

Anyhow, do you have any idea who makes the game you play? I personally have next to none. Most games involve a huge cast, and I do not even know what exact work most titles means. I never paid attention to how many women were mentioned in the credit, and I would not be able to determine what their influence on the game was even if I did watch the credit explicitly for that purpose. So, I do not really see what you mean by “Women will earn respect by making good games”. Respect from whom? Can we even expect a big title to be made only by women? And why would we expect that?
I am a bit lost on that whole “female designers” argument.

**MetalOxide**

I have problems with the stereotypical muscled white guy protagonist; I'd like to see some more variation and customisability.

When it comes to male gamers, the most damaging thing is the way women are portrayed in gaming; I don't buy a game for tits and ass, I buy a game for a good story and/or good game-play. I would like it if game developers started to treat us as more than just perverts who will buy anything with tits in it.

**Melissia**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Once we have ONE truly successful gem of a game with a female, or really minority character, we'll see more pop up.

It'll take a lot more than that to overcome the biases inherent in those whom decide where money is spent in the video game industries, and this applies to both "what problems do gamers have" threads.

**AdeptSister**

I just don't believe in the "one shining example" theory as I don't think it will be enough to motivate permanent change. Maybe spark some emulators, but not change an Industry. Change only occurs with perseverance. And it cannot be done by a minority alone. It is a collaborative process. But it requires people to believe/acknowledge a problem and working together be create a possible solution.

So it seems like the general consensus on this thread is that people would like a greater diversity of male characters. How does one promote this?