Given that Bioware is one of the developers that includes a gender option when creating video games (that tends to be a stable of many western RPG's) what do you make of excuses not to include them?
Excuses that some developers make for not including female models and females in video games:
- New body frame.
Heck even in Bioware, we rarely see female variants of Turians, Salarians, Elcor, Hanar, Batarians, Volus etc due to to the amount of resources and time it takes to include these female variants. (There are no lore reasons not to).
That said Bioware does include both gender variants of humans and quarians. There was Omega DLC which has a female Turian (which I won't spoil for you). A female Turian was playable later on in multiplayer. The multiplayer allows gamers to play as both genders for Quarians, Humans and Turians.
- Need new costumes: Women wear different clothes to men. That said, females in real life can cross dress without the same stigma as men who cross dress. When men cross dress it is mostly for fancy dress, but when females cross dress it is merely one of the diverse fashion options available to women. So it is strange that developers use this excuse. There are many ways round this. You could explain that said universe, women and men have no fashion distinctions. This could lead to some baggy results do to female's different frames.
- Animations: I don't pay much attention. I am told however that men and women move differently. Yes there are noticeable differences between poses, women tend to cross their legs (especially if they're wearing a skirt) etc. However there are plenty of subtle differences. Some gamers found it off putting that female Shepard had identical animations to male Shepard despite her different frame. In Dragon Age 2, some gamers remarked that the "butt wiggle was offensive".
- Clipping Issues: In games that give you the option to change the body type of the created character, you run the risk of clipping into objects or even the telekinesis effect (where the character never physically touches anything). I noticed this when I went crazy with this feature in some of the early WWE Smackdown games. The reason being that regardless of the body shape, the invisible body frame is exactly the same, with exactly the same animations.
- We don't have time: When a developer wants to implement a feature but the 2 years development time isn't enough. Goodness. How does Bioware manage it these days? 2 years is all they get and they manage it for a 20-40 hour game yet it's not doable for a 4 hour game? Oh well. Maybe Bioware has a larger development team.
- There is no demand: Developers sometimes use this argument. It angers a lot of women understandably. Apparently because most gamers are male and apparently male gamers will always play as males if given the choice, this invalidates the need for the female option. Developers who use this argument may even quote Bioware's statistics on how many gamers play as female Shepard to back up this argument. I don't agree with this argument, but there you have it. It is frequently said that if you put a female on the front cover, this will hurt sales. People had to fight for female Shepard to get her trailer and cover. People had to fight to have Ellie's face shown on the cover of The Last of Us. People had to fight for Elizabeth to be shown on Bioshock Infinite covers.
- Mine field: This excuse is used against the inclusion of disabled, ethnic minorities, LGBT and of course women. Yes, it is apparently better to stick to 30-40 something burly white men than step outside the box. With a "burly white man" there is no such thing as an offensive portrayal. You can bombard the player with burly white male stereotypes and not offend anyone. However if you step outside of that box, you must be ultra careful of how you portray such a character, just incase you offend a pressure group. I think this excuse is exaggerated since, video games get away with offending pressure groups all the time without any impact to sales, but hey, a lame excuse can be made compelling by developers.
- We don't know what a woman is: The argument is that women are different to men and behave in a different manner to men. Since the development team is all male, that apparently means that they don't have a clue about women. None of the development team had mothers, female teachers, friends who happened to be female, seen any females in their entire life etc. The entire development team grew up in an all male colony in Madeupistan. One developer from Madeupistan's capital "Nonsensia" had this to day. "So what is it that women do exactly? What are their interests? If we cake the female model in makeup, get her to talk exclusively about dating men, fashion and gossip have we created a female character? Do women give you cooties?" Sorry guys. If you're saying you know little about women I can buy that. But nothing at all? Besides, you don't write stereotypes, you write characters. Write an engaging character who happens to be female if you're really that clueless about women. If you're a smart writer you'll be able to make her engaging and include her gender as part of her personality (not the entirety though).
- Artistic Vision: Actually an exception. Heck I am not sure whether this counts as an excuse. If it is an excuse then it's a good one. There can be lore reasons in game for women not being present (that alien race reproduces asexually or maybe there is a virus that attacks women exclusively). Perhaps the setting is World War 2.
- We don't want to: Another good excuse in my opinion. Maybe just maybe the developers just don't want to include women and that's that. Okay. If that is excuse then I'm okay with it. You can't debunk the "we don't want to" argument. There is just no counter to this. Whatever reason you can come up with for including women in a game "we don't want to" trumps it every time. Go on Ubisoft, have to guts to say "we don't want to". It's fine.
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