Dragon age is wonderfully inclusive of women in every aspect of the universe, which makes its consistent use of masculine pronouns all the more grating. Such terms no longer communicate a generic sense of “anyone”.

Yes it is a minor concern but the fix is just as minor! Using ‘people’ or ‘soldiers’ instead of ‘man’ or ‘men’; ‘humankind’ or ‘people’ instead of ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ etc.

refs

Studies show it effects your visualisation of what you’re told:

http://en.wikipedia....c_male_language

And there are heaps of inclusive alternatives to everything:

http://www.kentlaw.e...al_Language.htm

Took a lot longer to be happy with than my human but I quite like how she ended up

There's not much evidence that games cause violence, but they can absolutely reinforces attitudes that find violence acceptable as well racism/sexism/homophobia etc. I think it would be irresponsible to make a game allowing players to express these attitudes without consequence (or, worse, reward them for it like GTA) but if it was done in such a way as to show the impact such behaviours can have and why it's not ok, that could be very interesting.

Kaisa ... normally I would find the dialogue in the Josephine romance a little nauseating but coming from her it is completely swoon worthy my goodness poor Josie never stood a chance

... and Saskia my elf

Well, on the plus side.. I think this instance in DAO - which could have been throwaway.. has been elevated to something more substantial. Ironically, I'll thank Anita for that. This game came out in 2009, and the quest has been overlooked for some time.

How? DAO just used rape as a way to motivate the hero and make their backstory more dramatic. Not much substance there.

Jimquisition did a pretty good analysis of the difference I think:
 

Where is your respect for the environment Sera?! GO PICK UP THAT POTION BOTTLE AND PUT IT IN THE BIN!

Howard's book covered the different shapes and forms of dude athletes too.  You can see some of them on this page here.  And, you can get a neat compilation graphic of all the men and women here.

That is interesting - so much variation! Also the female and male really don't look all that different. 

And yet the 'idealised' versions in games invariably exaggerate the muscles on males chars while giving the women noodle arms

Spoiler

Also hunger games >>>>>...>>> twilight. Just sayin'.

Every game doesn't feature a "straight white guy with dark hair" despite the feminist propaganda that leaves people like you to believe. And the ones that do are mostly action FPS/TPS AAA games, which makes up such a minority of gaming as a whole.

Case and point I just finished wrapping up the Walking Dead season 2. Not sure if the game classifies as "AAA" (probably not) but it was one of the best experiences I've had playing video games in quite a while. 

 

Full of interesting characters, lncuding the little black (mixed?) girl you play as; Clemetine.

Ummm... from your last few posts it seems like you are trying to argue that there is currently equal representation of women and people of colour in video games. Is that right? I may have misunderstood, but if not I'd be interested to know what planet you live on and if I can come and live there too.

WHY is that such a prevailing theme for these video game protagonists? Like, does the gaming community actually connect with some random stubbly dude who lost his daughter/wife/sister and now has to go avenge them? It's the exact same story getting recycled again, and again, and again. Do people actually want to keep playing this stuff? Why are video games in this rut?
 
For instance I actually really love Watch Dogs (it's entertaining and has addictive elements to it like... pokemon), but it's literally the exact same boring premise yet again. What gives?

 
There are soooo many games that use this trope to motivate their male protagonists:
 
 

Edit: examples of this 'women in the refrigerator' trope begin at 6.00

The problem is that there is still this notion out there that feminine is somehow worse than masculine.  And I think that's why so many of us skew toward gender neutral preferences in our armor/clothing for our characters.  We KNOW if there's feminine stuff (especially if available to male characters), there will be a backlash.  I suspect the developers believe this, too, and that is why most stuff tends to skew masculine or neutral--they have limited resources, and fear a backlash if they add anything too "girly," so they put those resources into more masculine and gender-neutral gear.  But fear not, we know there will be an Orlesian ball.  Maybe there's some way to customize a dress for that?

 

I sometimes work with pre-school children and often a boy will come in wearing a skirt, dress or even a pink fairy costume and all the other kids will be completely cool with it. It's only later that they learn that it is somehow not acceptable for boys to do anything "girly" and they are forced to give up that part of themselves or risk being a target for bullies. It's really very sad.

There is so little female representation in games anywhere I would so not mind if bioware tried to balance it out a bit.

More lady Inquisitor!

Someone posted this a while back (I forget who) regarding the lack of variation in the depiction of female 'beauty' in disney movies and I thought it was quite good:

http://turbomun.tumb...d-other-stories

Really shows how they seem to have one definition of female beauty, while villains and even men can be quite varied.

While it focuses on disney movies, the same theme is seen pretty much everywhere in media and it can have a devastating effect as women are so often given the message that their beauty is their most important asset.

See the moving speech Lupita Nyong'o made on the effect it had on her growing up below for example.

being asked to smile more is not something to be offended at, jesus. Not everything is an attack on your gender. Get over yourselves 

The message is that being eye candy for any random dude who sees us walking down the street is more important than our feelings and needs.

That doesn't tell me whether she consider combat inappropriately masculine.

If the PC is a female warrior, will she comment on that?

I hope not. I pretty of tired of hearing that sort of comment in regards to anything - in games and real life. 

Oh my goodness it looks like half of them are dead at the end 

Please tell me this situation is avoidable.

It happened!

http://www.escapistm...male-Inquisitor

Really glad i dont understand all this, i just pity the game developers who be afraid to put a bikini on a woman now for fear of being branded a sexist

I don't feel sorry for them.

If you're not interested in trying to understand 'all this' and being respectful about it then you should leave this thread.

Then again it is kind of depressing that having a game developer not completely ignore the female pc in marketing is actually newsworthy. Really shows how far we have to go.

I totally agree though, it would be great to see you guys get more recognition for it. 

I'm not sure which one of you it is (I'm assuming it is), but there was an interesting tumblr post that I saw some coworkers retweet.  The person's twitter (Ellorgast) points out the frustration that everyone jumped on other studios for lack of women, but nothing real came out of our reveal.

 

My love is real!!!

Hey, some of us were young enough to never get Xena initially and not sufficiently into frustrating subtext to seek it out as a retro thing...

It's totally worth it! I was too young but recently decided to check it out and seriously in some episodes it's pretty much maintext I don't really see how anyone can deny it. Go watch!

It's sentences like this that make me happy that I ever stumbled upon BSN.

You do realise however that if she hasn't consented to it it is pretty serious sexual assault though right?

I disagree. To me making a lesbian character sexually interested in men implies that one doesn't respect her identity. You have a problem with who she is and you solve it by changing her into something she's not in order to fulfill your desires.

And whether motivated by homophobia or not, doing so reinforces harmful messages that lesbians secretly desire men or can/should be "cured."

Yeah idk, I do see that perspective and problem. But I like fanfic with straight characters depicted as lesbian and don't see how you can argue that you "must respect a characters identity" without keeping straight characters straight as well. Which would make me sad. 

I don't really see that following. How is modding someone in a way that makes you feel that they're more attractive, different from modding them to be more available? Hell, the latter might be worse, as the former doesn't actually change anyone's character.