324 réponses à ce sujet

[TomY90]

if your curious I am going to make my own mass effect 2 trailer I will let you know how it goes and i will upload it to youtube once its done

[Shimmer_Gloom]

Eh. Perception is everything. Comics are not superhero comics just as FPS games are not video games in general. There is a wide berth of different genres in American comics. Though, to be fair there are many superhero books that are much better than the stereotypical view. I love superhero books.

But back on topic. American Comics don't do a good job of showcasing their great female characters. Or when they do its in a very titillating T&A kind of way.

Not unlike Miranda's treatment in ME2. Could EA do a better job of making Mass Effect more interesting for female players/ those that don't quite get what Mass Effect is about?

I certainly think so.

Modifié par Shimmer_Gloom, 27 avril 2011 - 09:22 .

[Rurik_Niall]

That really depends a lot on the author. Gail Simone's run on Birds of Prey for example does an excellent job of showcasing female heroes without objectifying them. Anything by Frank Miller on the other hand...

[ReinaHW]

After Miranda's very skin tight uniform, if you can call it a uniform, in ME2, I wouldn't be surprised if they ask for advice on added bounce from the Dead Or Alive game series developers in order to cater to do the whole sex sells thing once again.

Maybe that's how the Reapers will be defeated, gravity defying bouncing.

[MGIII]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Go to any anime convention, and you will find hundreds of girls dressed as characters from JRPGs. The RPG genre is incredibly popular with women... it's just that that the female demographic is dominated by JRPGs, which are marketed toward both men and women. You'll be reading some girly manga, and see a JRPG advertised with beautiful character portraits, usually featuring a male and female character. You'll see another ad in a more gender-neutral publication that has dudes fighting exploding monsters with swords.

I also think you're displaying right here a fundamental flaw in modern marketing strategies. Marketers prefer not to try to capture new markets, rather they spend all of their money focusing entirely on the existing market, no matter what their product says. This is why most game companies are falling behind Nintendo in market share.

Because the men in JRPGs look like women.

Also, marketing is designed to appeal to the main demographic, and secondly appeal to general sensibilities enough to get non-fans interested in the product to see give it a try/research it. The risk of alienating your main fanbase because you cut some of your primary marketing to appeal to non-fans usually out-weigh the gain. A fact which has been brought up time and again in this debate, and one that seemingly keeps being glossed over.

I referenced the back cover of ME, and there's both a picture of femShep, and a bulletpoint that says in no uncertain terms, "Customize your character..." I will admit that the fact you can choose to play as a woman is not made clear, though. And I will also admit that, within the scope of giving information about the game, it wouldn't hurt elucidating the depth to which you can customize Shepard (especially in bulletpoint). But it's a matter of how they want to spend that 15-to-30 seconds, and Bioware has chosen to emphasis the epic tale of ME and the decisions therein rather than the character customization feature.

I also made a reply to you in the thread of which this discussion originated, and didn't feel like transporting it.

Modifié par MGIII, 27 avril 2011 - 09:27 .

[Xaijin]

Shimmer_Gloom wrote...

Xaijin wrote...

82% of people play maleshep. Marketing dictates that the largest amount be reached in venue with the least amount of dollars to maximize performance. It has rather little to do with vaginas or having them or not. In fact, quite the opposite.

I think JRPGs are great. And I think a big part of the reason girls are attracted to them (and Manga and other things from Japan) is because their treatment of female characters have a perception of being better than the Western Gaming Market right now. And the Western Comics market too.

you are in complete denial. Most JRPGs treat women as cardboard stereotypes, without exception, as does the rest of japanese popular media, which is about 20 years behind the rest of the world in referencing sexual equality. Making statements like that makes it very hard to take you seriously.

Really?  Way to completely generalize an entire medium of expression.  And even a whole country.

And you have to remember.  I'm not talking about REALITY here.  I'm talking about perception.  Girls tend to like things from Japan when it comes to more nerdy things like Comics and Video Games.  I posit that is becuase they perceive it as being more girl freindly.

I loved Celes from FFVI.  Freya and Beatrix from FFIX.  Yuna from X.  Ashe and Fran from XII.  They all struck me as interesting 3d characters.  And that's just Final Fantasy games.  So, at the very least they are the 'exception.'

You're skirting around what I said. I said they were simplistic stereotypes. The ones you listed with the exception of Beatrix are exactly what I'm talking about, including the FF omnipresent staple of all the "tough on the inside, squishy OMGGIRLIE on the inside" cliches present in Celes, Yuna, Ashe, Fran... hmm sensing a remarkably similar trend here.

Whether you LIKED them or not has very little to do with whether they are cliched or not. One is subjective, the other is objective. You approve of them, great; they're still cardboard cutouts and four of them are in fact the same exact character with set dressing changes, which was half of my initial point.

Modifié par Xaijin, 27 avril 2011 - 09:50 .

[Shimmer_Gloom]

Sure all of the characters listed conform to tropes. But they don't lack depth of character. Celes is hardly 'girlie' inside or out, she's a hardened soldier. Yuna is not a very strong character, she's naive and unsure and definitely girlie but that was by design. Ashe is the tacturn fearless leader. And notice how she doesn't end up hooking up with Vaan? She doesn't have time for that and is a direct response to Yuna. They wanted something different. Beatrix is a direct continuation of many things they explored with Celes but strung out the plot point of her working for the bad guys (thus making her a villain instead of a party npc) much longer... Really the only characters that conform to your assertion that they are 'tough on the outside girlie on the inside' are MAYBE Tiffa. And then... um idk. I'm not much of a fan of FFVII character development anyhow.

Yeah. Now we are off topic.

[Xaijin]

We aren't off topic at all, we've simply explored the gigantic flaw in your premise in the first place, and we haven't got into the the part where ME's sensibilities and thematic exploration aren't even germane to a discussion about JRPG's, much less beaten to death Japanese fetish-roles; which is probably why they should never be tied together in the first place

Forest > Trees.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

The point isn't whether the female characters are better written in JRPGs. The point is whether the marketing allows girls to imagine that there might be something in the game FOR them.

The female characters in Mass Effect are amazing. I consider FemShep to be the best female game character of all time. But the difference between Femshep and Ashe, or Lucca, or Etna is that every girl who plays games knows that Ashe and Lucca and Etna exist! Most girls who play games do not know anything about commander Jane Shepard.

And that's messed up.

Since everyone ignored my top of the page 2 post, I'll summarize it here: the only reason I played Mass Effect was that a webcomic artist I liked did a drawing of female Shepard.

Why can't Bioware make up some banner ads featuring female shepard, and use them ONLY on webcomics with a heavily female or mixed gender audience? Webcomic advertising is dead cheap, if you're not Penny-Arcade or something similarly huge. If you put a banner that had both ManShep and Femshep up at Girl Genius, Gunnerkrig Court, and Johnny Wander, you'd make a lot of female gamers aware of the option. And the only people who would see these ads are people who are reading female-oriented Webcomics... that is to say, people who won't be turned off by the idea of a female Commander. You'd likely even hook some male fans who would prefer to play as a female.

I'm saying a small scale, supplementary ad campaign, focused soley on female-driven markets, featuring Femshep, would likely increase the game's female viewership, while being unlikely to pollute the perceptions of guys who are turned off by female characters. Win win, no lose.

[Rurik_Niall]

I've never heard of many guys turned off by the idea of playing as a female character. Samus is one of the most famous game characters of all time, and she's a girl, and lots of people actually play as the opposite gender in MMO's. Honestly if the gender of your character in a game is really enough to sway you one way or another you've got a pretty shallow set of standards for your games. Boy, girl, it doesn't matter. Is the gameplay fun? Is the story good? That's all you should need to know.

Modifié par Rurik_Niall, 27 avril 2011 - 11:07 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Rurik_Niall wrote...

I've never heard of many guys turned off by the idea of playing as a female character. Samus is one of the most famous game characters of all time, and she's a girl, and lots of people actually play as the opposite gender in MMO's. Honestly if the gender of your character in a game is really enough to sway you one way or another you've got a pretty shallow set of standards for your games. Boy, girl, it doesn't matter. Is the gameplay fun? Is the story good? That's all you should need to know.

I agree, but that's not what we're saying here. Before I played Mass Effect, my two favorite games of all time had male protagonists: Chrono Trigger and Shadow Hearts. Of course, both those games had females featured on their covers seeming independent and badass, and were marketed toward both men and women. They sat comfortably in a genre that both men and women enjoy, waiting to be discovered.

What we're saying is this: most of the most visible Mass Effect marketing makes it look identical to Gears of War or Crysis, which are games that don't try to offer anything to women, specifically. They're almost exclusively about shooting things in the face over and over in a gritty future environment. Which is fine. No problem with that.

The challenge Mass Effect has to face is that it needs to appeal to the people who like Gears and Crysis, but also hint to the people who like Shadow Hearts that maybe there's a similar game in here, and might you like to take a look inside? I can't think of any easier way to shorthand "Hey ladies, we made this game with you in mind, too!" than showing a picture of a female lead. Sure... if a game had a great story and characters and polished RPG elements I'd play it no matter who the protagonist was. But as a girl walking into a game store, or shopping for games online, I have no reason to think that Mass Effect is a game like that. A few discrete ads in locations where a girl is likely to see them could drop those hints.

[Rurik_Niall]

Maybe it's just the fact that I don't really view the world in terms of masculine and feminine, and actually find both labels rather annoying, but I just can't see the need to tell either gender that something can be enjoyable to them. I can agree that putting ads in places where a girl might see it isn't a bad idea, but honestly that can be pretty much anywhere these days. Unlike men people don't think twice if a girl likes any given thing, pro wrestling, football, monster trucks, first person shooters, all perfectly normal for girls to the modern world. A guy who likes My Little Pony though? He's either gay, trolling, or a freak.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Male fans of MLP:FiM, or "Bronies" as they like to be called, are a real thing, man. They are serious. Seriously AWESOME!

They also show how marketing simply does not understand what it's doing a lot of the time. A lot of these Bronies are perfectly willing to pay big bucks for accurate pony figures, but because marketing didn't anticipate an audience who would care about accurate toys, all their toys are horribly off model, and they are losing potential profit hand over fist. So while they have all these male fans, they aren't making any money off of them, because they are incapable of adapting fast enough to take advantage of this unexpected demographic.

Anyway, back on topic. There's a difference between putting an add where someone can see it, and creating an ad that reaches a certain person. If I see an add out of the corner of my eye that is a beat-up dude with a gun, I am not going to look closer. If I see an add out of the corner of my eye that is a girl in space armor having a conversation with a green fish-parrot-dude, I'm gonna click on it. I'm gonna click on it so hard. Both of these things (a crewcutted dude with a gun, and befriending a sexy lizard man) are things that are in Mass Effect. But as a girl, the second one sparks a thing in my brain that the first one does not. It tells me that this game is something different from Crysis or Gears.

Now, not everybody wants to see that. Not everybody needs to. So just put the picture of an armored girl talking to a cool alien in places where only the people who need to see it will see it, and where anyone who wouldn't like the image is safe from it.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 28 avril 2011 - 12:01 .

[Rurik_Niall]

Indeed, I'm a proud brony myself, I even have one of the McDonald's toys of my favourite pony, Pinkie Pie, which is much more accurate to the show. I'd find both of those ads appealing enough that I'd look into it. The fact that it says Bioware helps as well. Honestly a banner that simply says the name of the game and Bioware would be more than sufficient to make me want to play it, it's bloody Bioware I can't name a single bad game I've ever played with them involved.

[Shimmer_Gloom]

double post.

Modifié par Shimmer_Gloom, 28 avril 2011 - 12:24 .

[Rurik_Niall]

Hrm, well given the box-art it might be somewhat confusing if the banner you saw showed a female Shepard but when you go to the store to look for a copy you wouldn't be able to find a cover with the same character you saw. As far as banner ads and what not goes I think it's a better idea to not show Shepard at all but stick with squad mates like Miranda and Thane, which honestly if you look at their outfits back to back Miranda's doesn't really seem as objectifying in the context of the universe, it's actually pretty normal looking.

[Shimmer_Gloom]

Its not that I couldn't defend my point.  Its just that I can see exactly where it was headed.  I mentioned JRPGs and manga becuase they seem to have captured the female demographic (almost inadvertantly I may add) in a way that their western countparts have not.  "And now why is that?"  I wanted to say.  I certantly didn't want to defend my Final Fantasy fandom or the entire country of Japan.

I was just making a point that one doesn't have to specifically target a female audience to get one.

So I'm gunna second CGG.  This person seems to have brought up a much more interesting thing to talk about.  What problems would be involved in maybe specifically targeting Fem!shep in sites with heavy traffic by females or those that wouldn't nessicarlly be put off by a female Shepard?

[jellobell]

Rurik_Niall wrote...

Hrm, well given the box-art it might be somewhat confusing if the banner you saw showed a female Shepard but when you go to the store to look for a copy you wouldn't be able to find a cover with the same character you saw. As far as banner ads and what not goes I think it's a better idea to not show Shepard at all but stick with squad mates like Miranda and Thane, which honestly if you look at their outfits back to back Miranda's doesn't really seem as objectifying in the context of the universe, it's actually pretty normal looking.

Thing is, what gets women's attention is the ability to play as a woman. Seeing Miranda on an ad isn't the same kind of thing. It's like the Beyond Good and Evil poster vs. the GTA4 poster. Both have women, but one is clearly the protagonist and the other is there for sex appeal.

[Rurik_Niall]

Maybe it's the women I know, but most of them couldn't care less about being able to play as a woman. I know my sister is perfectly content with having a set gender in Planescape: Torment or Grim Fandango. They're both fantastic games that's all that really matters.

[ciaweth]

jellobell wrote...

Rurik_Niall wrote...

Hrm, well given the box-art it might be somewhat confusing if the banner you saw showed a female Shepard but when you go to the store to look for a copy you wouldn't be able to find a cover with the same character you saw. As far as banner ads and what not goes I think it's a better idea to not show Shepard at all but stick with squad mates like Miranda and Thane, which honestly if you look at their outfits back to back Miranda's doesn't really seem as objectifying in the context of the universe, it's actually pretty normal looking.

Thing is, what gets women's attention is the ability to play as a woman. Seeing Miranda on an ad isn't the same kind of thing. It's like the Beyond Good and Evil poster vs. the GTA4 poster. Both have women, but one is clearly the protagonist and the other is there for sex appeal.

This.  Big difference between showing me a Bond Girl and showing me I can BE 007.

[jellobell]

Rurik_Niall wrote...

Maybe it's the women I know, but most of them couldn't care less about being able to play as a woman. I know my sister is perfectly content with having a set gender in Planescape: Torment or Grim Fandango. They're both fantastic games that's all that really matters.

Well a good game is, in the end, a good game. But we're talking about getting women interested in the first place, and being able to play a woman (which is exceedingly unusual) is a step in the right direction.

Bioware has earned my undying loyalty by not only making good games, but allowing me to choose my gender in every single one of them. I didn't buy Alpha Protocol because Obsidian took that choice away from me. I would've bought it if it had included the option. It's a powerful thing, and it's part of what makes Bioware so unique. They should be milking it for all it's worth.

[MGIII]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I consider FemShep to be the best female game character of all time.

No. That's not accurate. At all. Femshep is maleshep, and the only ounce of difference between the two is their respective romance dialogue (among other, completely superficial, minor differences). Unless you are sourcing your admiration purely on romance dialogue (which is purposefully cheesy), in which case that is an affront to many well realized female characters.

And if I granted you all that I just refuted above, I still would bring up a list female characters that marginizalizes femShep in both character, capability, and any unbiased metric you can ascribe to fictional characters.

Shepard barely has a character of his or her own. The player decides most of it. And even that is super thin.

Modifié par MGIII, 28 avril 2011 - 01:07 .

[Rurik_Niall]

jellobell wrote...

Well a good game is, in the end, a good
game. But we're talking about getting women interested in the first
place, and being able to play a woman (which is exceedingly unusual) is a
step in the right direction.

Bioware has earned my undying
loyalty by not only making good games, but allowing me to choose my
gender in every single one of them. I didn't buy Alpha Protocol because
Obsidian took that choice away from me. I would've bought it if it had
included the option. It's a powerful thing, and it's part of what makes
Bioware so unique. They should be milking it for all it's worth.

True enough, but I still think that's a pretty shallow way of thinking and quite silly as well. Never heard of any guy refusing to play Metroid just because Samus is a girl, and I'm fairly certain that Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball had a much larger male fanbase than female.

Modifié par Rurik_Niall, 28 avril 2011 - 01:09 .

[ciaweth]

jellobell wrote...

Bioware has earned my undying loyalty by not only making good games, but allowing me to choose my gender in every single one of them. I didn't buy Alpha Protocol because Obsidian took that choice away from me. I would've bought it if it had included the option. It's a powerful thing, and it's part of what makes Bioware so unique. They should be milking it for all it's worth.

They already have your undying loyalty, which is why they don't feel like they need to market to you.  And maybe they've also convinced themselves that the female gamer market isn't all that big, so outreach to new fans in that segment would be a waste of marketing money.

That's just me being cynical.  I don't actually have any idea what the reasoning (or, as one of the BioWare bigwigs put it when discussing the topic, "intuition") is behind marketing Mass Effect and Dragon Age solely to males.  I only know that it turns me off to the point where they don't necessarily have my undying loyalty anymore. 

Eventually, other companies with excellent games will market to me, and I have a finite amount of cash, so they may get my custom instead of BioWare.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

MGIII wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I consider FemShep to be the best female game character of all time.

No. That's not accurate. At all. Femshep is maleshep, and the only ounce of difference between the two is their respective romance dialogue (among other, completely superficial, minor differences). Unless you are sourcing your admiration purely on romance dialogue (which is purposefully cheesy), in which case that is an affront to many well realized female characters.

Shepard barely has a character of his or her own. The player decides most of it. And even that is super thin.

See, here we clearly see the difference between how male gamers percieve character and how females may percieve it. This may be significant. And no, the romance lines don't factor into my assessment at all, though the fact that you assume they do is... interesting.

Also, I said that I consider her to be the best female character of all time... meaning that such is my opinion. So my statement is accurate, in the same way it would be if I said "I consider chocolate to be the tastiest Ice Cream." Even if you think vanilla is better, it doesn't mean that my assessment of my personal taste is incorrect. But anyway, time to argue that Shepard is awesome.

To me, and to most of the posters in the FemShep thread, Shepard is an incredibly deep character. What kind of character she is comes out in our play. Jane is a model soldier, a true hero, and a white knight. She's a diplomat among the stars, and a hero that all young girls can look up to. Crow... Crow is an amoral sociopath. The fact that both these characters exist in the same game, waiting to be discovered, is marvelous. It's something I haven't felt in any other game, not even other Bioware games, not even DA:O.

I wrote an essay about this a while back, maybe I'll revisit it sometime. It talked about how, in some forms of literature, character is revealed through a person's interactions with others. You can learn a lot about Sherlock Holmes through the conversation he has with a business owner, or a street urchin, and the similarities and differences in his attitude toward both. It is in this way that Shepard's character is revealed, and it is revealed, discovered, and shaped by the player. That it can be different does not mean that every choice, all of the thousands of character who can be Shepard, are not valid, real, and developed. If Mass Effect were a game with only the Renegade lines, would you say that Shepard has no personality? Then again, maybe you've just been listening to Meer's voice for too long. I'll agree that he doesn't add a lot to the character, and I find male Shepard to be flat and characterless sometimes. Here, again, we go back to learning about a character through their inflection. If someone sounds angry or curious when asking a question, it is very different than if they sound like they don't care at all. In a lot of circumstances, Hale's voice reveals something about the character of Shepard that Meer's voice does not imply. To me, that means that that particular character quality is posessed by Female Shepard, but not male Shepard. It makes their characters distinct, in the same way the character of Renegade Shepard is distinct from Paragon Shepard.

I still love Lucca, and Samus, and all the other girls who save the world. But Shepard is extra special because she puts me in control of how the world gets saved. And she doesn't need a love interest to do it.

I'm not sure if there's any real correlation between gender and Fan Fiction. I've read before that that particular medium of fandom is dominated by the ladies, and I have no reason to disbelieve it. In a lot of cases, female enjoyment of a game is about finding the story and then making it your own, building more stories in your head, telling others those stories. This is something that Mass Effect offers explicitly rather than implicitly, which is outstanding.

It is also something that the most visible marketing for Mass Effect doesn't acknowledge.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 28 avril 2011 - 01:42 .