590 réponses à ce sujet

[EmperorSahlertz]

How in the name of all that is holy is this an important subject?? It is just a part of the development cycle to start out with the male protagonist designs, and it is also because the english language does not have an asexual term for a third person character, so they have to say "him" or "he". Saying "she" "her", or "herself" jsut for the sake of saying it, is just as sexist as saying "he" "him" or "himself" to avoid using a female pronoun..

[Steelcan]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

How in the name of all that is holy is this an important subject?? It is just a part of the development cycle to start out with the male protagonist designs, and it is also because the english language does not have an asexual term for a third person character, so they have to say "him" or "he". Saying "she" "her", or "herself" jsut for the sake of saying it, is just as sexist as saying "he" "him" or "himself" to avoid using a female pronoun..

Becuase DA forums are appaprently the best way to enact social change against injustice

[direwolves]

I have to say, when I first saw the dev diary, I was a little... worried? Annoyed? Maybe the right word is "uncomfortable." And mainly by the lack of a clearly identified female Inquisitor. I'm glad David pointed out the concept at 2:21, because, like he said, I had simply assumed the character holding the flag was an NPC. For me, it wasn't the devs calling the Inquisitor "he" that really drew my attention to the apparent lack of female representation. It was the sudden plethora of male concepts and armor on the screen that made me stop for a second and think, "Wait, where are all the chicks?" As a faithful Dragon Age fan, I KNOW there are women in these games, and they're even well-written. But for those few seconds in the video, it was raining men (ba-dum tss) with no women to even it out.

However, with that said, after reading all of the patient, understanding responses from the staff on this thread, I understand why these things happened. So, I just want to say thanks to you guys for being so responsive to our concerns, and for taking them seriously instead of just setting them to the side. Can't wait to see some more detailed concepts of both the male and female protagonists.

[PadawanMage71]

Sanunes wrote...

In the English language "himself" can be used to describe either gender, its not very common anymore, but it is an accepted use of the word.

Really?

http://dictionary.re...wse/himself?s=t    

[Raging Nug]

I agree that this is a problem. Would be nice to see it acknowledged as such, instead of having it justified and deflected.

[kinderschlager]

John Epler wrote...

It's worth remembering that, as men, it's very easy for us to say 'I don't see a problem!'

The vast majority of protagonists and heroes in media are men. Privilege is basically the acknowledgment that, as far as culture goes, you are the default. Recognizing that and acknowledging that people fighting for more inclusivity are entirely correct to do so isn't easy, but it's necessary if you want to have conversations about these sorts of issues.

i think someone needs to link the lecture david gave to a bunch of people in the gaming industry over sexism and its portayal in the industry, was very educational. (it's here somewhere, just no clue which thread and spending hours and hours looking for it won't be fun, just poke someone at the office about it, sure SOMEONE knows the video i'm talking about)

[kinderschlager]

John Epler wrote...

Conflating hair and gender as being 'basically the same thing' is also not something we're doing in this thread.

One is a fundamental part of someone's identity and how they are treated by society. The other is hair.

that you had to clarify that is kinda sad

[AngryFrozenWater]

If the male focus was an unfortunate and not a deliberate mistake then I guess we'll see that changed soon. Somehow I don't think that will be the case. If gender neutrality was core to the design of the game then it would be reflected in everything we see. And we don't.

[kinderschlager]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Assumed by who? Marketing isn't primarily aimed at people who are already going to buy the game.

If I'm unfamiliar with Dragon Age, why would I assume that I can play a woman? There's lots of games where I can't.

Not all marketing is geared directly towards getting new fans, however. Sometimes it's about regaining confidence with fans that have felt alienated.

I thought it was pretty evident that much of the marketing has been addressing the very vocal concerns a lot of the fan base had with things, such as lack of player race, improved armor customization, and so forth.


So while it may not be acceptable for us to omit/under represent female protagonists in our discussion points, I hope you can understand how it may not have come up when trying to determine what to discuss in 3.5 minutes of footage.

At this point, in order to maintain fairness we wouldn't have been able to show the armor shots because there aren't (to my knowledge anyways) female concepts for many of them. So in that sense we have to pick and choose. We could be fair, and not show it and just talk about it. Or we could show it, and accept that some people are going to see that there's no women being represented and going to be unhappy.

It's a situation of recognizing that someone isn't going to be happy.

*cough cough DA:O fans who picked up DA2 cough cough*

[PsychoBlonde]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

You say their in english. Or the could just use the Inqusitior, but the trouble is that did not even mention you could play as female.

It's becoming more and more common now, but I was actually taught (by my not at all old, female University Professor) to use "he" in gender neutral context because she was of the mind that you do not match the plural "they" (or it's equivalents) with a singular noun, and constant use of "he or she" everywhere ends up becoming distracting and wordy.

For better or worse. From then I saw usage in that context to be similar to referring to "man" or "mankind" when referring to "****** sapiens." Although I have started to revert back to using "they" since people would read too much into my usage of the word "he" (whether on BSN or otherwise)

A quick reference.
http://oxforddiction...she-versus-they


EDIT: As for the concept art, I can't really answer why it was drawn more with male characters instead of female ones.

I ran across an optional update of this rule that I kind of like, personally: use the term that represents your own gender.  So a man would always use "he" for an unknown party and a woman would always use "she". 

[pdusen]

 What if they went back to just marketing the companions?

gamerate.net/img/games/1/bigcover.jpg

Modifié par pdusen, 21 août 2013 - 04:20 .

[Maria Caliban]

pdusen wrote...

 What if they went back to just marketing the companions?

gamerate.net/img/games/1/bigcover.jpg

They never only marketed the companions. ST:KotOR trailer

[n7stormrunner]

you know once, just once I'd like to log in find a topic about a female protagonist for marketing and it be about how people would like her to look.

[Rafficus III]

You're reading too much into limited concept art pieces. While you, TC, and others have valid viewpoints for being concerned, just be sure to take a step back and be sure you remember who you are griping at. Refer to FemShep, past remarks from Gaider and other Bioware devs/writers saying the white heterosexual male crowd is not their only audience, and how receptive they've been with several minorities in the past. Bioware has gone through hoops to represent minorities and many differing audience members outside of the "norm," generalized gamer. And to be honest, you can't really fault them for showing obscure concept art on a male human protagonist. It's what sells and appeals to the masses. I'm sorry that it's not your cup of tea, but that's what's currently more easily marketable. Keep calm and have faith in Bioware. They'll produce and do their best to level the playing ground.

[CuriousArtemis]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

You say their in english. Or the could just use the Inqusitior, but the trouble is that did not even mention you could play as female.

It's becoming more and more common now, but I was actually taught (by my not at all old, female University Professor) to use "he" in gender neutral context because she was of the mind that you do not match the plural "they" (or it's equivalents) with a singular noun, and constant use of "he or she" everywhere ends up becoming distracting and wordy.

For better or worse. From then I saw usage in that context to be similar to referring to "man" or "mankind" when referring to "****** sapiens." Although I have started to revert back to using "they" since people would read too much into my usage of the word "he" (whether on BSN or otherwise)

A quick reference.
http://oxforddiction...she-versus-they


EDIT: As for the concept art, I can't really answer why it was drawn more with male characters instead of female ones.

I ran across an optional update of this rule that I kind of like, personally: use the term that represents your own gender.  So a man would always use "he" for an unknown party and a woman would always use "she". 

Ahem, ahem, actual English professor here. Under no circumstances in this day and age should you use "he" to represent anyone other than a male person. For a subject that is potentially either gender, say he or she, or make the subject plural so that you can say "they." Do not use the word "mankind"; use "humanity" or "humankind" or "people." 

I am sorry this professor steered you wrong. Even the book we teach out of (not chosen by me but by my colleagues) has a special section advising the student writer to avoid using "he" as a gender neutral pronoun, simply because it is not. It never really was, really. I know people hate the p-word, but it's about an obvious a signal of patriarchy as you can get.

[Briallen]

David Gaider wrote...

And I'm sure we start with the male appearance first because that's the one most people will play. As I said before, that's surely not even in question.

Might that not be somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, though? If the marketing a) is aimed almost exclusively at the young white male demographic, and focuses solely on a young(ish) white male protagonist, then...doesn't it stand to reason that that's what "most people" will play? The one that gets the most attention and exposure in the marketing will naturally get the most attention from the people who pick up the game. 

I've seen so many comments from people (mostly women) who passed on the Dragon Age and/or Mass Effect franchises initially because they had no idea it was possible to play as a woman. Then when they later found out--either through word of mouth or by sheer chance--that a female protagonist was an option, they bought the games (usually used or at a reduced price by that point) and fell in love with them. How many more potential day-one customers are out there but never hear that word of mouth? 

Mass Effect 3 is another example, what with it being the first ME game to show female Shepard in the marketing (after years of pleading from fans). I saw comments from male players saying, "Hey, in the third game you'll have the option to play as a woman!" When told that that option had always been there, they were flabbergasted. Even though ME 1 and ME 2's opening screens have the "female Shepard" option right there, they didn't even notice it, and probably just skipped right into the game playing the grizzled white chiseled-jawed dude that was splashed all over the marketing.

And I know you're not in the marketing department, but still...just putting that out there.

P.S. Apologies if this point has already been raised. In the interest of keeping my sanity intact I'm reading only the dev posts on this topic, and not looking at any of the other comments. 

[ZabiGG]

Wall-of-text warning!

OK. I stopped reading at page 15. Enough dibble-dabbling!

Let's mention that the main writer of DAI, David Gaider, has been very vocal (positive and avant-garde [vanguard]) about the female audience for video games and our right to be pleased, since we now form an important group of consumers in a changing world (please take the time to read the many posts on http://dgaider.tumblr.com/ if you don't believe me). Let's also mention that Bioware has taken extreme care to cater to the tastes of women for the past few years in very positive and innovative ways. (I love being able to play a strong female lead in a video game. I feel empowered, and love to let loose in unreal and lofty circumstances that make me feel like I can take over the world. I'm also thrilled about the fact that the female Shepard in ME is so much more interesting than the male thanks to the superb voice acting that playing a male Shepard is actually less of an experience and quite boring... I know. I tried and disliked. My female Shepard is so much more everything it hurts!)

I honestly believe that Bioware will do its utmost to promote the female POV in the next game, but I understand how time and budget constraints might have hindered this objective in the Dev Diary. I've worked in advertising for 20 years, so I do understand very well how time limits and constraints can shape a vision into something else entirely.

This said, I have been playing video games since the Intellivision console and the Amiga, and Commodore Vic20 days. That might make me old and putrefied, but it also makes me someone who can say that the OP is definitely not exaggerated.

We, women (bad and mean feminists [oh, cursed adjective] for some I won't name) have been taught at a very early age that it was better to be a man. In real life it is true. I actually still think I would have been happier in life if I were a male – and it would have been much easier if I were – and I played along.

I actually enjoyed playing most games as a man and having to completely let go of who I am doing so. I can truly enjoy romances with people from the sex I don't go for just to see how it will end up just because I'm used to it by default and it's a given considering most production houses think that their only target audience is 18-25 males.

It doesn't mean that I never felt the need to identify with same-sex role models with bite. But there was a clear and definite lack thereof for so long, I just got used to it instead of wondering why I, as a person, wasn't important enough. And I still feel that, even though I am part of the reason why games are successful because I buy them, I remain a loose thread in the grand scheme of things.

But now that I have the opportunity to play as a bad-a** woman, too, I'm overjoyed. And I can't get enough. I just wish other women knew the perks.

Why? Because I had to fight to impose myself as a brain instead of just a pretty ensemble of backside and legs who can serve coffee when I started working, over 20 years ago.

Because I had to deal with the consequences of the freedom "we" fought for when we burned our bras. Instead of keeping one single job as a human, working only 40 hours a week, I added scholar for 40 more. Then, after getting a great-but-demanding job, I added mother and caretaker, which doubled the work load.. all while my male was too tired from HIS stressful 25-hour job to help in any way.

Some people think women are shrews just for merely asking for the same exposure as men (darn feminists! Such a bad fault.). I say, in this special case, it was an oversight as Bioware has proven time and time again it was forward-thinking (unfortunate, but a mere oversight). I say if we work double and keep working triple personal and professional shifts to prove it again and again, we deserve it. They are listening more than any developer. Let's give them a chance.

[Taint Master]

What the hell? Why are the "fans" so concerned with Bioware's advertising strategies? How does a 3 minute promo video effect your enjoyment of the game in any sense?

We KNOW you can play as a female. Just because some pre-alpha footage and concept art didn't depict the female inquisitor doesn't mean it won't be an option. Get a freaking grip.

The only people who have any kind of vested interest in how Bioware advertises their game is EA and its investors.

Whiniest community ever.

[Direwolf0294]

Heh, I thought I was going to be the only one who noticed and was bothered by it, how wrong I was.

They, their, them, themselves; those are the terms you need to be using when talking about the PC, though I would applaud BioWare if they bucked the trend and went with her, herself, she.

I was disappointed to see so much concept art and almost none of it of a female Inquisitor (I actually didn't see any female Inquisitor art, but apparently there was). Made that part of the video rather boring to be honest.

Also very disappointed from reading the BioWare responses in this thread to hear that they design the male models first. It's typical of game development, but it's also a massive problem in game development and the reason why so many games never include female models for entire factions in their games. Blizzard is particularly bad at this (if a new enemy race is introduced in WoW, you can bet it will be all male), but this is also a pretty big problem at BioWare, as evidenced by their numerous games that haven't bothered with female models (DA2 and dwarves, Mass Effect and most of the races except for the very last game).

[Taint Master]

Direwolf0294 wrote...

Heh, I thought I was going to be the only one who noticed and was bothered by it, how wrong I was.

They, their, them, themselves; those are the terms you need to be using when talking about the PC, though I would applaud BioWare if they bucked the trend and went with her, herself, she.

I was disappointed to see so much concept art and almost none of it of a female Inquisitor (I actually didn't see any female Inquisitor art, but apparently there was). Made that part of the video rather boring to be honest.

Also very disappointed from reading the BioWare responses in this thread to hear that they design the male models first. It's typical of game development, but it's also a massive problem in game development and the reason why so many games never include female models for entire factions in their games. Blizzard is particularly bad at this (if a new enemy race is introduced in WoW, you can bet it will be all male), but this is also a pretty big problem at BioWare, as evidenced by their numerous games that haven't bothered with female models (DA2 and dwarves, Mass Effect and most of the races except for the very last game).

Lets be honest.  You're still going to buy the game anyway or you wouldn't be posting here with every Bioware game ever made on your profile.  So what difference does it make?  Just like in presidential elections, candidates campaign hardest in swing states.  Not states they've already cornered.

[Paul E Dangerously]

Direwolf0294 wrote...
(DA2 and dwarves, Mass Effect and most of the races except for the very last game).

DA2 isn't a very good example, since it was rushed as hell. There's a lot that wasn't finished in that game, so excluding female dwarven models wasn't some sort of sinister conspiracy on Bioware's part.

That said, the uproar over this is just insane. Everything we've seen so far is either a cutscene or Pre Alpha. It's not even close to complete. They shouldn't be - and probably aren't -  thinking about "how do I advertise to audience X with this trailer", but more "here's some neat stuff from the game in development that might get a lot of you interested, even if it's still well over a year away'.

[Hazegurl]

Well this is the age of offendism, Sopa. I wonder how many people was truly offended when they watched the gamescon vid or became offended when they were told there was something to be offended about. I love the internet lol!

[KiwiQuiche]

Taint Master wrote...

What the hell? Why are the "fans" so concerned with Bioware's advertising strategies? How does a 3 minute promo video effect your enjoyment of the game in any sense?

We KNOW you can play as a female. Just because some pre-alpha footage and concept art didn't depict the female inquisitor doesn't mean it won't be an option. Get a freaking grip.

The only people who have any kind of vested interest in how Bioware advertises their game is EA and its investors.

Whiniest community ever.

Hypocrite much?

Modifié par KiwiQuiche, 21 août 2013 - 06:08 .

[Allan Schumacher]

To be honest with you, I think we are kind of speaking on different levels regarding the armour thing; I question whether showing us twenty or so different armours was a better choice for a video about customisation, when you could have shown us 10 different armours on two different genders to show us the breadth of the customisation. Surely it would require the same amount of work? (Or, even, less considering the fact that they would know exactly what they *wanted* the armour to look like already).

Well, the thing is that one of the issues many people had was specifically the lack of armor customization. So on some level, it was done specifically to address that point.

As for the second point, I think you're still looking at it as "concept art being for marketing" instead of "concept art so we have concepts for how things may look."

Yes, creating 10 men and 10 women may be easier if you're concepting 10 pieces of armor and, as you say, you already know what it looks like. Now, if we're literally doing concepts for just armor, it could be argued that this only gave us half of the variations on armor (it should be noted that I don't know how many failed concepts were created that I never get to see, let alone what the fans never get to see).

If the goal is to concept how particular armor pieces may look on both men and women, then that makes sense. If the concept it more purely "give me a lot of different armor types" then you're going to get something different.

In all honesty I don't think people would have complained if we'd lost 10 blurry pictures of new armour from the video in return for seeing what the vision for the female protagonist is.

No, but it may mean that, internally for our own development, we have less iteration on armor styles in general.

brushyourteeth wrote...

But like motomotogirl said, why is it something they'd have to get around to, rather than something that feels just as natural as designing and showing off the fellas?

It's possibly for the same reason that you notice it so readily. Unfortunately the process of changing how people approach these things isn't going to change rapidly. Which, if I can muster a hypothesis, is on some level what the concern is.

I making the assumption that women here don't typically feel that BioWare themselves genuinely look down upon women and see creating female characters as irrelevant and so forth (since my assumption hinges on the fact that people wanting this stuff wouldn't continue to follow it if they were feeling insulted/disrespected by the content they are improving).

So you're possibly taking someone and saying "Go make me some concept art for whatever" and they will run off and make concept art, like they always have. Except, unfortunately, they have historically (for whatever reason) just defaulted to doing whatever concepts on a male avatar. So then some people on the internet see said concept, they (fairly) go "Hey, I notice there isn't much women in these. In fact there's none! This kinda sucks you know."

So then there's a dev like me: "Oh crap.....we done goofed."

The next time that concept art request comes around (which may be some time later), there's going to be situations such as simply forgetting (whoops...), or having some and then realizing after the fact that there is a heavy male focus, so some extra time ends up getting spent to "mix it up a little" since the implicit observation is made.


I feel on some level, especially with concepting, hoping for a fully diverse and inclusive set for any given request will have some challenges. That isn't to say "It'll be white male, so deal with it." I'm saying that, whatever we go with, there are workflow advantages, especially early in a project, for picking one and sticking with it. Especially with character models, because if the task is "create dozens of armor models" my focus is more on creating as many armor concepts, and when there's a deadline coming up and teams are waiting on these concepts downstream, making sure you're mixing up the gender, body type, race, skin colour, and so forth, on top of the actual armor focused work, it's going to create overhead.

Now maybe that overhead is worth it in the long run, because the concept art is better suited for marketing so there's some longer term benefits for those shorter term costs. Although since I'm just hypothesizing, maybe it isn't worth it? I don't know. In part because I don't know how much benefit it may have, nor how much cost there is either. It's easy to logically construct that it IS beneficial, however. But I think that that is easy to say and more difficult to implement in practice. And not even because there is resistance, but simply because some decisions will be habitual and subconscious.

So it's fine to be all "hey you guys.... you done goofed" since that keeps working as a reminder. You're starting to see some of the benefits of that, from increased focus on FemShep for ME3, as well as some concept work that shows female protagonists.


I'll admit that I can initially take things a bit too personally and misread what others are actually saying too, which can cause me to respond in a way that may appear callous. I mean, I hear about a video that's just been released, and has some stuff in it that I think will be super exciting and whatnot, and then I come in and see that people feel offended by it and suddenly it's like "Whoa! Well.... crap... that certainly wasn't the case...." and people ask "Why?" (with varying degrees if intensity) and if I make an attempt, sometimes I'll take the exchange in a way that makes me feel as though that someone feels marginalized is blaming BioWare (and by extension me) for acting in a malevolent way. Which isn't fair, so I do apologize, because it will put me on the defensive (rightly or wrongly) simply because I'm human, and will always make mistakes, especially when attempting to actually try to do the right thing.


I can't speak for BioWare of old, but I do know that internally discussion do include things (I personally have asked questions about things such as a female protagonist focused ad campaign in franchise meetings), because I thought that FemShep's focus was a good start and think it's interesting to try to break out of the box. But sometimes, yeah, I'll see a video that details a wide variety of armor types and to me it's "Ooooo, look at all those armor types. I'm curious what the BSN sees" while not actually recognizing "They are all on male characters...." simply because I'm just not used to thinking that way.

I do think I'm getting better, but the mind is an interesting thing, and I think on some level it's still going to require a transition for me to get there. And frankly, there's just sometimes obstinate stupid human cognitive dissonance protection and my one friend (the one that actually plays the Female protagonists) points something out to me that may be biased or whatnot, being human (and therefore somewhat stupid) on some level there's just the barrier of "I've done that, and I don't think I'm a monster... therefore <resistance to criticism>." Upon reflection, depending on the topic sometimes my mind changes, and other times it doesn't. Though they are usually interesting philosophical discussions. He's a good friend like that


Anyways, the Administrative Republic of Germany won't dominate central Europe without me (EU4). But I do appreciate, brushyourteeth, that you "always felt very cared about" because as a dumb human, sometimes I misread the (valid) commentary of "You should show more women" as "I feel BioWare disrespects me!!!" which is very, very, rarely the impression I want to convey to people.

Cheers.