Silveryne wrote...
I don't mind being locked into a specific protagonist, male or female. I think oftentimes when you do that, it ends up helping to further the story, as is the case in both Torment and The Witcher. You can get a more tailored, detailed story through play. Both games allowed for a customization of the character to an extent, but also allowed for an uncovering of the character's past.
Exactly.. Having one character thats already defined allows for a more personal experience imo, even if the character is completely dissimilar to yourself.
Thats one of the reasons why I'm enjoying Dragon Age 2 a lot more than Dragon Age Origins, because Hawke's story is a lot more personal than the nameless Warden..
On the topic of RPGs, a lot of women tend to shy away from them, I personally think, because we want the whole pie: we want to be intelligent, pretty, and strong. Male characters in RPGs often get to be intelligent, handsome, and strong, but female characters are often missing a part of this. An example could be Aveline in DA2 -- the character is intelligent and strong, but as the modding community has pointed out, she isn't very pretty. The challenge for developers when they create female protagonists and they want to target a game to reach more women should not be "how can I also make this appeal to men", but rather, "how can I make this appeal to men and women". I don't mind if the characters in a video game are busty (some of us women actually do have hourglass figures in real life, afterall -- it's not unrealistic, although for some things it is impractical), but I do mind when a character, male or female, is clearly fanservice, and lacking in some department that only the protagonist can solve.
Well to be fair to the devs, it must be very difficult to create a female character thats aesthetically pleasing, yet strong in appearance.
Most people,
including women, are absolutely horrified by the prospect of a woman having the kind of muscle mass required to do heavy lifting or intensive labor. I was a personal trainer years ago, and every time I trained a female client, they would always be hesitant about lifting weights because they thought it would make them as muscular as a man.
I would constantly have to reassure them that unless they took steroids, they would never develop a man's bulk because they don't have enough testosterone.
So in the end, they (the developers) play it safe by creating stereotypically attractive female characters with scrawny arms and runway model physiques, that are yet still capable of swinging greatswords and hefting mass accelerated weapons.....
These are games after all, and all games rely on suspension of disbelief.
There's a kind of indoctrination that happens at an early age with toys, books, movies and TV shows -- at least, I think so. Women/girls connect better with female characters and men/boys connect better with male characters, simply because it's easier to imagine stepping into that role. This doesn't mean that you can't appreciate the LC games, or I can't appreciate PS:T, but simply that we connect with the protagonists in different ways.
Honestly, as a father of two girls and one boy, I've seen first hand how gender identities form at a very young age, seemingly independent of environment.
I can't say that I, or my wife ever pushed my daughters into playing with girls' toys or games; not consciously at least. They just seemed to gravitate towards them on their own..
Even now, if I bought my youngest daughter a boy's toy, I doubt she would play with it. She might be fascinated with it for a day or more, but afterwards, she would abandon it in favor of a barbie doll, or one of those imitation babies which are the new rage.
To be sure, there is
DEFINITELY some cultural reinforcement going on; but ultimately, I think that inner nature is the true deciding factor for most boys and girls.
A lot of women like stereotypically girly things because they're concerned that if they don't, there is something deeply wrong with them. They gravitate (what a lovely word) towards games like The Sims, Barbie Horse Adventures, and various "casual" games for Facebook and Wii because those are acceptable for women in our culture. Women who play games that are geared towards men are assumed to be ugly, fat, or socially awkward.
There are many studies about whether the differences between the genders are inspired by nature or nurture. Certainly both play a big role, but from what I myself have read (and experienced), the latest research seems to be suggesting that many of the differences between boys and girls are hardwired from birth.
http://www.parenting...-boys-and-girlshttp://www.telegraph...not-social.htmlThose articles pretty much confirms what I as the father of two girls and one boy has witnessed.
I think a lot of people, men and women, are very concerned with their image. If Bioware really wanted to pull in more women, they could help break some norms by featuring both FemHawke and BroHawke on DA2's box art, or FemShep and ManShep on Mass Effect's. The presence of a man as a central character/focal point (instead of both a man and a woman as central characters) on box art signals who the game is primarily aimed at. There's a lot of other things to consider, too -- clothing, pose, character placement, et cetera. A gender neutral graphic design is not as simple as I can would like to outline it to be in a paragraph.
Honestly, I doubt it would make much of a difference. It all goes back to the nature vs nurture debate.
I've tried
EVERYTHING to get my wife interested in computer gaming (the kind of games that I myself play), since it's one of my favorite hobbies and she was always curious as to what I'm doing when I "lock myself in the computer room."
What I discovered, was that although a female protagonist (ie Lara Croft) might get her interested, it was never enough to hold her attention. She would play for a bit, but she would always eventually quit. Eventually I decided it was the overall content and theme of the game that she didn't find appealing.
Games that were violent in nature didn't interest her at all. She would play games on the Wii like Mario Kart (a fun game when you play as a family), or games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and the Sims on her laptop quite readily however. After reading that IGN article, it's women like my wife that are the ones those developers are identifying as the "female gamer," and not women who play masculine oriented type games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
And funnily enough, my almost 2 year old son absolutely loves to watch me playing games on my computer
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