@f1r3storm: Great interview -- thanks for sharing! One observation...
f1r3storm wrote...
As promised, the parts of my Dragon Age 2 interview regarding female characters.
Eurogamer: BioWares Producer Jesse Houston recently said on Twitter that he thinks male Hawke is just as iconic as Male Shepard from Mass Effect and, although Female Shepard was the fan favorite, marketing prefers to use the male versions. Why is that?
--snip--
The reason it's iconic is that you have to go with one.
--snip--
Only if you don't understand the meaning of "iconic." Or if you are way too much of a fan of the Highlander movies.
An iconic character is a memorable or exemplary instance of a trope. For example, in the case of male vs. female default Shepard profiles in ME, there are going to be many differences between the pivotal, psyche-changing experiences of a man who grew up running with orphan gangs on Earth, then became a soldier, then was the sole survivor of a disaster, and a woman with the same background. We are talking about two tropes here, not one, which means the potential for iconic characterizations is two, not one.
A great example of this is Battlestar Galactica's Starbuck. In the original series, Starbuck was a man. When the news broke that this character would be played by a woman in the re-envisioned series, many fans were up in arms. How could a woman possibly play this character? Not only did Katie Sackhoff prove them wrong, she converted them, and now BOTH Starbucks are iconic. Why? Because they represent two very different tropes. One character, two realizations of it, both iconic.
Honestly, I'm not buyin' these excuses from BioWare. They're a great company with some of the most talented game designers and developers in the business, but these responses are just deflections, and it's really hard to understand why they consider this such an issue.
I don't think they've done that much "research" at all in this specific area, and I'm relatively certain, based on what I do hear representatives saying, that any marketing studies that might actually have been done were hopelessly biased in favor of the result they wanted or expected. I think one real underlying cause is that they're afraid to make the change toward equal presentation of male/female Shepards because of some imagined potential for negative blowback from their core market segment.
...And the "We have to put somebody on the box" argument doesn't fly either. The last time I checked, boxes have two sides.
Modifié par SkaldFish, 11 février 2011 - 12:09 .
Retour en haut
Perfectly said 
