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[Blue Gloves]

IGN is terrible when it comes to sexist guys, was on there that i argued with a guy who was sh*tting on DA2 prior to release simply for having a female version of Hawke

 

I have had very, very little to do with IGN since 2009 when they ran a contest to promote District 9 where they flew the winner out to San Diego Comic Con and then  sent him on “assignment” to do some reporting and promotion of the film.  The contestant entry rules were as follows

 

         This sweepstakes is open only to males who are both legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and Washington D.C.

         and who are at least between 18-24 years of age as of July 23, 2009…

 

Yep, only men; because somehow, despite the fact that by that time period, I had spent a year dodging IEDs and mortars in Iraq with a Combat Engineer BN, and another year on assignment attempting to come to terms with the poverty, racism, sexism, and the general crappiness of what one set of human beings was willing to do to another in the Philippines, my female genitalia made me less capable than a man to be insightful and passionate about the real-world parallels on the issues of racism and apartheid espoused by the film.

[Lady Nuggins]

I have had very, very little to do with IGN since 2009 when they ran a contest to promote District 9 where they flew the winner out to San Diego Comic Con and then  sent him on “assignment” to do some reporting and promotion of the film.  The contestant entry rules were as follows

 

         This sweepstakes is open only to males who are both legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and Washington D.C.

         and who are at least between 18-24 years of age as of July 23, 2009…

 

Yep, only men; because somehow, despite the fact that by that time period, I had spent a year dodging IEDs and mortars in Iraq with a Combat Engineer BN, and another year on assignment attempting to come to terms with the poverty, racism, sexism, and the general crappiness of what one set of human beings was willing to do to another in the Philippines, my female genitalia made me less capable than a man to be insightful and passionate about the real-world parallels on the issues of racism and apartheid espoused by the film.

 

Wow, they didn't even try to hide it with excuses, either. 

 

On a side-note, Blue Gloves, I'm going to think of you the next time I see some guy claiming that we can't have more female game protags because women don't have the upper body strength for combat and carrying heavy guns.  I have run into that very argument more than once, and I'm always like, "but the average male can't handle heavy combat either!  That's why soldiers require training!"

[Blue Gloves]

Wow, they didn't even try to hide it with excuses, either. 

 

On a side-note, Blue Gloves, I'm going to think of you the next time I see some guy claiming that we can't have more female game protags because women don't have the upper body strength for combat and carrying heavy guns.  I have run into that very argument more than once, and I'm always like, "but the average male can't handle heavy combat either!  That's why soldiers require training!"

 

Yup, thousands of women besides me have also spent years, day in, and day out, in 100+ F° weather in fourty to seventy pound rigs consisting of IBAS, Kevlars, M16's, full rucksacks, and individual equipment for detainment, handheld intel gathering, terp gear etc.  Granted, I only ever personally knew two people that carried a SAW (M249) rather than manned it mounted on a truck, and they were dudes; but I'm going to go ahead and estimate that a very few number of the men I worked with would be capable of carrying that particular weapon comfortably for long ruck missions/ patrol base tours/ dismounted route clearing missions. 

 

Also, I'm not really particularly buff- even when I practiced with (was never anywhere good enough to actually compete with) the Army 10-miler team on Ft Hood, Most people seeing me would classify as me as "fit, but pretty average looking."  You don't need to be Wonder Woman, or even FemShep, to do it, you just need training.

[Nefla]

Tomb Raider is the type of game I honestly would buy no matter who the protag is as I enjoy games like that.  I say this as a straight male.
 
However, some games like Bayonetta I haven't bought even though it is practically just like Devil May Cry and made by Capcom.  Both Bayonetta and Heavenly Sword I didn't buy and I can't really put my thumb on it.  I'd like to say that it isn't because Bayonetta and Heavenly Sword have a female protag whereas DMC has a male but that might just be it.  I'd like to think it's because I feel like those two games are ripoff copycats of DMC.

I think games like Bayonetta (i don't know anything about heavenly sword) are a huge part of the reason men say they don't want to play as a woman. She's not a character she's an object and her sole purpose is a sexual fantasy. Who can identify with that? If women are portrayed as weird, one dimensional, subhuman things then no one is going to want to play them. Unfortunately this portrayal trickles over onto legitimate female protagonists because that's what we're conditioned to think women are. It also spills over into the treatment of women in real life.

Back to the topic, even if a female protagonist is the safe choice and will possibly sell less (which has not actually been proven) someone has to step up and make a change or everything will stay stagnant forever. Once upon a time white people were the only people shown in movies and TV, even going so far as doing "blackface" and "yellow face" rather than having black or Asian actors, etc...white was the "safe" choice and every character in every show was white with the occasional black person as a dumb, bumbling servant type for laughs. Was this better? It was popular at the time, it was safe but we were lesser for it.

We are not better for having only straight white male protagonists in almost every game. Games that treat women like objects are losing so much potential quality and fans (that's right) by being stuck in the 1950s. Most female character in video games are portrayed as weak, selfish, whiny, foolish, victims with their only "positive" traits being their looks. They're all basically versions of Lorri from The Walking Dead tv show. She's a useless annoying damsel who is only there for two men to fight over and is universally hated. Looke and Michonne from the same show. She's cool, strong, clever, capable, independent, caring, and is one of the most popular character. Right now the gaming industry is filled with Lorri's put there for the male protagonist to rescue. Is that really what we as a culture want? Of course no one wants to play as what they percieve to be that. We need more women created as PEOPLE like Michonne or Clementine (TWD game). If game companies do that then perceptions will change and the reluctance will go away. (When was the last time you met someone who wouldn't watch a movie because it had a black person in it?)

[SnakeCode]

I liked Bayonetta

[Ryzaki]

I liked Bayonetta

 

I lost the link but I read a really good blog about how she was sexually in control of herself rather than just eyecandy for the player. Man I wish I knew where it was.

 

http://obligatoryspi...rol-of-herself/

 

Found it

[Gileadan]

Sadly, Bayonetta isn't into PC gamers.

There is a Walking Dead mobile game. You get characters like Rick and Shane and Glenn for free, but Michonne is so cool that it costs real money to unlock her awesomeness.

After the pretty good Tomb Raider reboot I'd actually really like to see Cate Archer again. NOLF was great.

[Blue Gloves]

I liked Bayonetta

 

I did too, but it took me a while, a loooong while, to get over her sexualized appearance and deliberately male-fantasy-wish-fulfillment marketing enough to actually purchase and then play the game.  Once I did, I found that, despite her blatantly sexual design, Bayonetta herself was not some sex-crazed video vixen portrayed as a female protagonist that male gamers might feel the need to protect.  After a while, I actually began to appreciate the idea that, maybe, Bayonetta was presented the way she was in order to entice an otherwise (possibly) anxious marketing team and fandom into picking up the game, and once they did, to allow the female protag to change some opinions and misconceptions about the strength of female protagonists in general.

 

Similarly, I found myself initially disgusted with some of Bioware's early marketing for DAII and the portrayal of Isabela's character and her prominence in the ad campaigns despite the fact that she's actually an optional companion.  During my first playthrough of the game, however, I fell in love with Izzy's sexually empowered spirit, her disregard for what anyone, man or woman, thought of her or the way she looked, and especially with her relationship with Aveline (the banter with Aveline towards the end where she says 

• Aveline: How are you so successful with men? You're not that pretty.
• Isabela: Cast a wide enough net, and you're bound to catch something.
• Aveline: (Laughs) At least you're willing to admit it.
• Isabela: Trust me. I've heard, "Get away from me, you pirate hag!" more times than I care to count.
• Aveline: Doesn't that bother you?
• Isabela: Why should it? They don't know me. I know me.

is my favorite). 

 

I mean, it doesn't change the fact that the DAII marketing showed less "empowered female" and more "dead woman, weep, weep, avenge avenge" and "sexy woman dancing in flames" and "Some men blah blah blah, some men blah blah, some men..." voice overs by Kate Mulgrew, but baby steps.  I am also encouraged by the fact that there seems to be less of all of that in the promotions for DAI thus far.

[Stelae]

Sadly, Bayonetta isn't into PC gamers.

There is a Walking Dead mobile game. You get characters like Rick and Shane and Glenn for free, but Michonne is so cool that it costs real money to unlock her awesomeness.

After the pretty good Tomb Raider reboot I'd actually really like to see Cate Archer again. NOLF was great.

 

It looks like NOLF may get a re-release, courtesy of Night Dive Games.  Yaaaay!!  Let us cross our fingers and put on our grooviest flares, and hope. 

[Gileadan]

It looks like NOLF may get a re-release, courtesy of Night Dive Games.  Yaaaay!!  Let us cross our fingers and put on our grooviest flares, and hope.

That's great news! Thank you for sharing!

[Mes]

On a side-note, Blue Gloves, I'm going to think of you the next time I see some guy claiming that we can't have more female game protags because women don't have the upper body strength for combat and carrying heavy guns.  I have run into that very argument more than once, and I'm always like, "but the average male can't handle heavy combat either!  That's why soldiers require training!"

 

Exactly.

 

From what I've seen the average male is as soft around the edges as I am, with beer guts and moobs.

 

Men and women are MUCH more similar than a lot of these people would like to believe.

[Kaiser Wilhelm]

Since we're on the topic of marketing female protagonists, I thought some of the dev quotes around Tomb Raider were outright terrible. 

Out of curiosity, what did they say?

 

Edit:

Sorry, this has already been asked

Modifié par Kaiser Wilhelm, 28 mai 2014 - 12:41 .

[kukumburr]

My counter to that would be if people feel that strongly they would be buying the games regardless of quality just to make a point. Why would a publisher bother taking a risk when Ubisoft just proved you can roll out a protagonist like Aiden Pearce and top the charts anyway?

 

These are games which NEED to sell millions just to break even. 

 

So video game developers should stick with doing what's proven to work? If that's the case why are you only applying this to the game's protagonist? If the best selling game is a shooter, shouldn't all games be shooters? Why risk trying another genre? Why not just copy the mechanics and design of the current best selling game? Probably because people eventually get sick of playing the same thing over and over and start looking for something different. A lot of the best-selling games in history were games that took a risk and broke the mold.

 

Now I would argue that the gender of a game's protagonist is a lot less important to a player than game mechanics, and if that's the case then how is changing it a huge risk? If you do think it's a huge risk then I ask again why is it fine to take risks on changing mechanics/setting/everything else but it's not okay to take a risk on the protagonist?

 

Now the reason I believe it's beneficial to have and show a female protagonist is simple. According to ESA reports the percentage of women gamers has steadily been rising. Even if this is just mobile games or online games that doesn't change the fact that more women are paying attention to video games. My mom used to scoff at my love for video games and never understood why I played, but recently shes started playing app games on her phone and loving it. She still doesn't play console/PC games but now when she sees me playing she actually comes to see what's going on and asks about them. I know that's anecdotal but in my experience games aren't such a weird hobby anymore, so previously untapped markets are paying more attention instead of immediately being dismissive.

 

So anyways, since more women are paying attention I think the best way to pull them in is to feature interesting, non-sexualized female protagonists. The video game industry already has the male demographic and I don't see any evidence to suggest a female protagonist (or at least a choice of gender) will dissuade them from playing if the game is otherwise good. You mention female-led games failing more often but there's such a small sample size that I see no reason to take it as definitive. I see little risk to the male demographic by promoting a female protagonist but there is a chance to pull in a mostly untapped market, especially for a game that already has an established tradition of being able to choose your protagonist's gender. Marketing should be aimed at people who don't already play Dragon Age games, not to people who are already likely to know about them.

 

Honestly I think the biggest reason for the dominance of male protagonists is that for the entire history of video games, the vast majority of game developers have been male. Making a male character is probably much more within their comfort zone than making a female. This isn't because women don't like making video games but because technology has always been a "male" pursuit. Boys are encouraged to become inventors, astronauts, engineers, etc. while girls have historically been discouraged from those paths. I think this is also a large part of why more boys generally play video games than girls. I know I probably wouldn't have gotten into video games as a child if I didn't have a brother near my age. My parents bought the NES for him, not for me, but I always insisted on playing with his toys.

 

Anyways I don't remember if this has already been posted but there's an interesting article here that talks about the history of video games and how women have been excluded.

[Gwydden]

Exactly.

 

From what I've seen the average male is as soft around the edges as I am, with beer guts and moobs.

Hey!

 

In all seriousness, what men do you live around? German bakers?

[Stelae]

Exactly.

 

From what I've seen the average male is as soft around the edges as I am, with beer guts and moobs.

 

Men and women are MUCH more similar than a lot of these people would like to believe.

Especially now, when most of us are urban-dwelling and relatively sedentary, and when materials and equipment are becoming lighter, so we can do a wider range of things with less need for raw physical strength.  I suspect there are very few men or women who could work like a nineteenth century farmer or navvy unless they went into serious training for it.

 

Even before the Industrial Revolution, the only class which really displayed strong differences in gender was the nobility.  Working as a maid or a farmhand meant hauling and scrubbing and hard physical work.  Women were progressively barred from skilled trades in the cities, but even traditional roles like housekeeping and kid-wrangling involved a lot more hard graft than they do today.  And women often did the same work as their menfolk, anyhow.  Only without the credit.

 

The idea that men are big and strong and women are floppy, gentle creatures is a Romantic Victorian riff on chivalric ideals.  It says more about the Victorian intelligentsia than it does about the realities of life, either in Victorian times or pre-Industrial ones.  

[Kaiser Wilhelm]

IGN is terrible when it comes to sexist guys, was on there that i argued with a guy who was sh*tting on DA2 prior to release simply for having a female version of Hawke

**** those guys.  No, seriously, **** those guys.  They can take a long walk off a short pier.  I was raised with no tolerance for that kind of sexist claptrap (or bull****, if you prefer).  If any of y'all ever get grief from misogynistic arsch-schweine, tell them the Kaiser says, "**** you."

 

 

Post Script:

I hope this post doesn't get me in trouble for rudeness, but I am willing to accept a rap on the knuckles to express my feelings (at least in this one instance).

Modifié par Kaiser Wilhelm, 28 mai 2014 - 01:21 .

[Kaiser Wilhelm]

Especially now, when most of us are urban-dwelling and relatively sedentary, and when materials and equipment are becoming lighter, so we can do a wider range of things with less need for raw physical strength.  I suspect there are very few men or women who could work like a nineteenth century farmer or navvy unless they went into serious training for it.

 

You should read what Primo Levi has to say about how the urban elite faired versus the rural and working classes in Auschwitz in his (first) memoir Survival in Auschwitz.  In fact, now that I'm on the subject of Primo Levi, I would recommend The Drowned and the Saved.  It provides insight not only into the camps and genocide, but also into a great many other aspects of our world, including the nature of privilege in the midst of genocide.  It's very short.  This sounds like it's off topic, but what I learned about the nature of privilege directly influences and strengthens my feelings about female representation in video games (and in all media, and, indeed the representation of all underrepresented groups in all media).

Modifié par Kaiser Wilhelm, 28 mai 2014 - 01:37 .

[fdgvdddvdfdfbdfb]

Yup, thousands of women besides me have also spent years, day in, and day out, in 100+ F° weather in fourty to seventy pound rigs consisting of IBAS, Kevlars, M16's, full rucksacks, and individual equipment for detainment, handheld intel gathering, terp gear etc.  Granted, I only ever personally knew two people that carried a SAW (M249) rather than manned it mounted on a truck, and they were dudes; but I'm going to go ahead and estimate that a very few number of the men I worked with would be capable of carrying that particular weapon comfortably for long ruck missions/ patrol base tours/ dismounted route clearing missions. 

 

Also, I'm not really particularly buff- even when I practiced with (was never anywhere good enough to actually compete with) the Army 10-miler team on Ft Hood, Most people seeing me would classify as me as "fit, but pretty average looking."  You don't need to be Wonder Woman, or even FemShep, to do it, you just need training.

I thought women weren't allowed in combat roles in the US. I know that's not the case in quite a few countries however

[Hanako Ikezawa]

I thought women weren't allowed in combat roles in the US. I know that's not the case in quite a few countries however

That ban was officially removed on January 24, 2013.

[Kaiser Wilhelm]

I thought women weren't allowed in combat roles in the US. I know that's not the case in quite a few countries however

Officially, although that's being reconsidered currently.  Unofficially, women have been in combat for about a decade.  It's harder to have hard and fast rules re combat and non-combat roles when one is fighting an insurgency.  Insurgencies, practically by definition, practice irregular warfare, and with no front line it's harder to keep, say, MPs, out of combat.  Also, considering the cultural sensitivities of the theatres in question, there were some counter-insurgency roles that men simply could not effectively fill (e.g. searching women).

Modifié par Kaiser Wilhelm, 28 mai 2014 - 01:52 .

[Blue Gloves]

I thought women weren't allowed in combat roles in the US. I know that's not the case in quite a few countries however

 

Actually, now they are, and have been officially since 2012.  However, when I served, you are correct, there were no women in combat MOS's- which means that there were no infantry women, no female Cav scouts, no female combat engineers, and no female tankers.  However, the war in Iraq changed the definition of "combat role" considerably, since the landscape was largely urban and for most of the campaign there were no "front lines" per se to keep the women behind.  MP (military Police) units handled search and cordon, and a very large percentage of MP's are women. In Iraq, it wasn't unusal to find cooks, medics, mechanics, and other support personnel driving or providing fire support in convoys, and many of them were women. Additionally, individual attaches (like myself) from Military Intelligence units were stationed with every unit in the field.  Pretty much every convoy, every patrol, every QRF team and so on needed at least one warm body along with a security clearance to handle, err, delicate issues.  I happened to be assigned to the 299th Combat Engineer BN when I was deployed to Iraq, and was one of the first female soldiers to receive the newly created (at the time) CAB (combat action badge) as a result of some of my experiences there.

 

If you're really interested- look up team lioness (of which I was not a part) and you'll get another, really good example of some of the "non combat with combat" roles played by women in Iraq and Afghanistan

[Bugsie]

Anyways I don't remember if this has already been posted but there's an interesting article here that talks about the history of video games and how women have been excluded.

That was fantastic and resonated with me a great deal (I grew up in the 70's)

 

So many interesting points about women playing games, marketing and the wider public view on games and gamers.

 

On a much smaller scale - I was wading through some department store junk mail at breakfast this morning and they were advertising winter slippers for kids, partitioned into 'boys' and 'girls' I felt pissed off that the fun slippers - big green or blue monster hairy slippers were marked as 'boys' and the ballet like shoes were 'girls'.  Why does this crap have to be gendered so damn early?  I can see past this sort of BS but a lot of others can't and 'buy into' this stereotype.  It's no wonder kids buy into the idea 'only girls do this' and 'only boys do that'.

[Stelae]

On a much smaller scale - I was wading through some department store junk mail at breakfast this morning and they were advertising winter slippers for kids, partitioned into 'boys' and 'girls' I felt pissed off that the fun slippers - big green or blue monster hairy slippers were marked as 'boys' and the ballet like shoes were 'girls'.  Why does this crap have to be gendered so damn early?  I can see past this sort of BS but a lot of others can't and 'buy into' this stereotype.  It's no wonder kids buy into the idea 'only girls do this' and 'only boys do that'.

With clothing and toys, it's simply to sell more stuff: no hand-me-downs, especially from an older sister to a younger brother.  You're pressured to buy new, gender specific stuff for each kid. 

 

It's not just kids who buy into the "only girls/only boys" thing. It's adults too, for themselves and for their children. I was actively steered away from cars and science by my well-meaning parents, who felt that I was already socially awkward, and pursuing "male" interests would just make my life harder in the long run.  They encouraged me into girly pastimes, but none of them took, and I spent most of my youth reading (All The Things!) as a result.  It's only recently that I have come to realise that the societal pressure on parents to raise kids who conform must be awful.