Devs and Pubs need to stop shooting for CoD/GTA numbers with their game sales.
Niche games with budgets matched to the potential fanbase?! Heresy!
Even BioWare wanted CoD's audiance. Although it was DA2 marketing, so yeah, they went full retard on that one.
I hate that in gaming pubs expect huge numbers all the time.
CoD, GTA, sales like that are outliers, kinda like Avatar and Titanic are in the movie industry.
Imagine if every time a movie came out, the producers were like, "We need to gross as much or more than Avatar or our movie is deemed a failure"
Thats what gaming is like. And then those pubs will find excuses for why they don't gross that much, and blaming fem protags is an easy excuse.
Gaming is faaar too patriarchal. It's not toys for boys anymore. Slowly gaming is getting more open to new types of protagonists(Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider is a young, possibly lesbian, female character with a potential romantic interest in Samantha Nishimura, and that would've been not questionable but absolute fact had producers not convinced the writers to make it more vague).
SE is well known for having stupidly high expectations along with the fact that they delayed Tomb Raider to put crappy MP in it which raised the cost. TR sold in it's first month what many games wish they could do. TR was never a failure, if it was a failure like SE was trying to claim it would not have gotten a sequel greenlighted.
TR sold very well and it was a game with a female lead.
So like Capcom huh? 
Gaming is faaar too patriarchal. It's not toys for boys anymore.
Women can play a game for the same reason men can play a TPS with an attractive lead. Sex sells goes both ways.
For example, my sister looooooooooooves her some Prince of Persia and The Witcher.
I actually liked the first person view in Mirror's Edge, not a first but it grew on me.
This thread needs more breasts
I hate that in gaming pubs expect huge numbers all the time.
CoD, GTA, sales like that are outliers, kinda like Avatar and ***Frozen*** are in the movie industry.
The problem with the white straight protag is it's been so overused now it's hard not to think the writers/devs where being a bit lazy.
You serious?
I thought it was awful -- Platforming and first-person doesn't go well, it makes certain stunts become a clusterfuck and **** up because I can't see where I'm going most of the time. And when I play it on the PC, then that's even worse.I actually liked the first person view in Mirror's Edge, not a first but it grew on me.
I think the reason I liked it was because my favourite parts of the game where the really fast paced free running moments. Once the traditional platforming set pieces starting showing up I lost interest in the game as a whole.
Fixed that for you, Prince.
Speaking about Frozen, there's a movie that involved two female leads that absolutely held precedence and priority over the males in the film.
Grossed 1.2 billion dollars and counting.
It may not of been have a video game, but "Female leads don't sell" my arse
Mirrors Edge would have been better with more free running moments and less traditional platforming.
Guest_JujuSamedi_*
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.
From a resource perspective, these are viable reasons. Baldur's Gate didn't come with a female dwarf model actually.
In ubisoft's perspective however, I think they could have been content with a reskin. Use the same skin for the male models but just change around the comsetic female elements. Problem is ubisoft is iterative and there is not enough time in a 1 year release.
Speaking about Frozen, there's a movie that involved two female leads that absolutely held precedence and priority over the males in the film.
Grossed 1.2 billion dollars and counting.
It may not of been have a video game, but "Female leads don't sell" my arse
Regarding the "female leads don't sell" excuse, it's time to "let it go".
Niche games with budgets matched to the potential fanbase?! Heresy!
Even BioWare wanted CoD's audiance. Although it was DA2 marketing, so yeah, they went full retard on that one.
Having no female models or NPCs is a good way to get some publicity.
Also Quiet is fine.
Fixed that for you, Prince.
Or the Hunger Games. Or, really, Twilight. When you think about it, a substantial portion of blockbusters in the last while have had female leads.
I should also point out that while it's great that we're getting more varied playable characters in games, just because a company decides to go with a straight white dude that is not a valid excuse to bash the game or the developer(unless the character is poorly written, then by all means go ahead and bash the character for being poorly written).
Not that It's really happened in this thread, but it happens plenty on the internets.
Also, movies and games are not all that comparable. Mentioning Frozen(or any other movie) is largely irrelevant to this discussion.
I should also point out that while it's great that we're getting more varied playable characters in games, just because a company decides to go with a straight white dude that is not a valid excuse to bash the game or the developer(unless the character is poorly written, then by all means go ahead and bash the character for being poorly written).
Not that It's really happened in this thread, but it happens plenty on the internets.
Also, movies and games are not all that comparable. Mentioning Frozen(or any other movie) is largely irrelevant to this discussion.
If the topic is "how marketable is a female lead", then certainly games and movies are comparable, since gaming development costs are starting to be comparable to movie costs (not blockbuster level, but still).
If the topic is "how marketable is a female lead", then certainly games and movies are comparable, since gaming development costs are starting to be comparable to movie costs (not blockbuster level, but still).
Just because the costs are similar doesn't mean that the two are comparable.
As odd as it may sound to some people, a lot of people find a difference in watching a character do something on a screen versus actually playing as them and possibly getting into the role like in a video game.
I'll agree that female leads are plenty marketable in gaming, but it has nothing to do with Frozen pulling in 1.2 billion.
I think personally we shouldn't focus on a characters exterior as much as their interior. As in, getting more characters then the "I was a good person but I lost someone close and now I'm living on the edge" protag we always get stuck with, no matter what game it is, or what character is in the lead.
If I had to choose between a wide range of interesting character personalities, or a wide range of character physical attributes, it'd be the personalities every time. And the character being dark skinned or a women or disabled won't amount to anything it their personalities are still chosen from the bin of generic motivations.
Why not have both?
It's doable.
Diversity in race, gender etc.
Diversity of personalities and motivations.
Diversity in everything!
Be diverse in your diversity!
Regarding the "female leads don't sell" excuse, it's time to "let it go".
I'll play Devils advocate (Because it's loads of fun)
And present this piece of evidence, since we're all talking Ubisoft,
0.96 Million units.
That's laughably bad, from their standpoint, a female protagonist in an Assassin's Creed Game doesn't sell.
And Publishers are more interested in turning a profit then taking risks. We should all be aware of this by now.
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