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[MazeHaze]

I feel the political needs/desires to have a strong female lead is just as annoying as not having one.

Cant we males just enjoy a game and not keep whining of weakass females or big breasts females am bad! Male needing to empower female in a game is just as irritating as right sided feminism or Peta.

There's a difference between a political desire for a strong female lead, and, you know, just not being outraged about a female lead.

 

[Frozenprince]

Because one asks you to relate to the character and gives her equal treatment while the other makes her a shallow object to be oogled and fapped to. Too many men prefer to think with the head in between their legs instead of the one on their shoulders.

Even being hyper sexualized is bad if that character DARES to express her sexuality in any way. She has to be hyper sexual, but chaste.

Honestly this whole thread just re-affirms my belief that we have been teaching men some FUCKED UP things about how to deal with a woman being a sexual creature with her own agency if the very idea of being able to empathize with that even the littlest bit makes them feel gross.

I'm not even getting into how it's a slight against homosexuals who don't really have a choice but to be okay with heterosexual sexuality being expressed everywhere at all times.

 

[Kinyou]

Well golly gee. Maybe if there were more women main characters in these games.

Nah, easier to assume it's just "delicate sensibilities" or whatever stupid nonsense you might think it is.

That women would suddenly play GTA because it has a female protagonist would surprise me a lot.

 

[Via Purifico]

I feel the political needs/desires to have a strong female lead is just as annoying as not having one.

Cant we males just enjoy a game and not keep whining of weakass females or big breasts females am bad! Male needing to empower female in a game is just as irritating as right sided feminism or Peta.

I wonder if this same argument would be made if the situation was reversed.
People have been used to male protagonists for so long they just gel into it and don't even notice that for quite awhile gaming has been lacking in proper female leads.

It's very telling when people want a change in protagonist other than a white male that it somehow has to be political.

 

[Frozenprince]

That women would suddenly play GTA because it has a female protagonist would surprise me a lot.

Women already play GTA.

Gaming has such a huge gender divide because for decades, literal decades, it was viewed as taboo to even suggest a woman play a game that went beyond Tetris.

I mean fuck look at how "girl gamers" are STILL treated. That's the reason why more girls don't play things like GTA or Last of Us or anything.

If women go out to see summer blockbusters, don't feed me the line that they don't like games where you shoot stuff. That's an enforced block, not some "women are wired too differently" thing.

 

[Megatron]

As much as Nathan can be mocked as a mass murderer or whatever, as a 20 year old male I do find myself relating to Drake a lot more in Uncharted 4 than Laura Croft in Tomb Raider.

That's not a complaint about female leads or Tomb Raider or whatever and I still enjoy playing both, that's just how I feel playing both games.

Obviously it helps that Drake is a modern day kind of normal guy trying to be an Indiana Jones. I don't find myself relating to John Marston in RDR.

I feel like you are probably relating to his charisma, the jokes he is constantly telling and the excellent voice work by Nolan North. Laura doesn't do that and is fairly bland. So that may be the reason, not the gender.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Even being hyper sexualized is bad if that character DARES to express her sexuality in any way. She has to be hyper sexual, but chaste.

Honestly this whole thread just re-affirms my belief that we have been teaching men some FUCKED UP things about how to deal with a woman being a sexual creature with her own agency if the very idea of being able to empathize with that even the littlest bit makes them feel gross.

I'm not even getting into how it's a slight against homosexuals who don't really have a choice but to be okay with heterosexual sexuality being expressed everywhere at all times.

Exactly.

 

[Kinyou]

Women already play GTA.

Gaming has such a huge gender divide because for decades, literal decades, it was viewed as taboo to even suggest a woman play a game that went beyond Tetris.

I mean fuck look at how "girl gamers" are STILL treated. That's the reason why more girls don't play things like GTA or Last of Us or anything.

If women go out to see summer blockbusters, don't feed me the line that they don't like games where you shoot stuff. That's an enforced block, not some "women are wired too differently" thing.

Okay, I can see that, but it's also a different argument from that the gender of the protagonist is the factor that causes it.

 

[MazeHaze]

Women already play GTA.

Gaming has such a huge gender divide because for decades, literal decades, it was viewed as taboo to even suggest a woman play a game that went beyond Tetris.

I mean fuck look at how "girl gamers" are STILL treated. That's the reason why more girls don't play things like GTA or Last of Us or anything.

If women go out to see summer blockbusters, don't feed me the line that they don't like games where you shoot stuff. That's an enforced block, not some "women are wired too differently" thing.

Part of the reason women play less games is because a huge chunk of the gaming population has this disgusting boy's club mentality that games should cater to them exclusively, and this mentality permeates into greater society as a whole.

My SO plays games all the time, but growing up her parents would only let her play stuff like Spyro because action games were "for boys."

 

[MazeHaze]

Okay, I can see that, but it's also a different argument from that the gender of the protagonist is the factor that causes it.

it's not that the gender of a protag causes it, but when you literally have people being outraged and saying they aren't interested in a game because it doesn't let you fulfill a power fantasy of playing as a muscular white male, when there are MAYBE 2 games a year where you can play as a non-white, or a woman. That is some straight up bullshit, and subtly says "these games should be made for me and only me, a straight white male, and anything else isn't worth my time."

 

[Frozenprince]

Okay, I can see that, but it's also a different argument from that the gender of the protagonist is the factor that causes it.

I'm saying that the two things are linked. This artificial divide the industry created for itself is the reason that there is a distinct lack of female protagonists. An increase in female leads means that they are being treated with more respect and attempting to draw them into playing the games that we "associate" with men and men only.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

If women go out to see summer blockbusters, don't feed me the line that they don't like games where you shoot stuff. That's an enforced block, not some "women are wired too differently" thing.

This is a really good point. Even the actioniest of action movies will see at least a third of the audience being women. Bit games don't come close to that in some genres. There's a reason for that.

 

[lifetimeofnot]

A lack of empathy for someone does indeed show a lack of effort on behalf of the person who should be feeling it as well as a lack of maturity. It's easy to say that the person just needs to try harder but a lack of empathy for someone different from you is one of the biggest problems facing this planet. There are no easy solutions for this. I'm trying hard not to make this post into a political thing so I think I will just leave it as it is because I don't want to fight with anyone about it.

 

[MazeHaze]

I'm saying that the two things are linked. This artificial divide the industry created for itself is the reason that there is a distinct lack of female protagonists. An increase in female leads means that they are being treated with more respect and attempting to draw them into playing the games that we "associate" with men and men only.

right, and the reason there is a lack of female leads in the first place is because all of these man babies with their exclusionary mentality throw a fit whenever they sense any hint of diversity encroaching on their safe-space, because they believe games should only cater to them.

 

[UpDownLeftRight]

Sorry to jump in late but this whole 'I can't empathize with' bullshit has always seemed like a lazy way of saying 'I'm too prejudiced to care'. Once upon a time twelve year old me thought that I won't play FFX-2 because of the all girl party. Then another boy at the school offered to lend me it. Of course at that age I asked "Isn't it a bit weird being an all girl game?" but the guy explained how it's still a good game anyway and I should try it. Half an hour in I couldn't care less anymore about the gender back at the age of twelve.

The idea of not playing or watching due to differences in ethnicity, gender or sexuality seem like nothing more than thinly veiled prejudice at this age. I'd like to think that a large portion of such comments come form people who are young and stupid but I doubt it's truly the case.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Lets see, from that bar graph you posted, one study is from 1998

Oh dang the late 90s. Yeah that chart is probably skewed by video game makers doubling down on appealing predominantly to teenaged boys with violence and tits in every inch of their marketing.

"Hey boys stop spending time with your girlfriends and ogle Lara Croft instead of being whipped"

Hey a game about world war II with green plastic soldiers. Let's insert some insanely sexist joke in the ad!

Yeah, trying to frame those results as something intrinsic to gender preferences in video games is disregarding a lot of variables.

 

[gaiages]

I don't buy it. Not a very good method imo. They should have taken the effort to get more females and minorities involved in the survey if they wanted to make a graph about demographics.

Thank goodness I'm not the only one that saw that lol

Additionally, there is the problem of how games are marketed in the first place that messes with this survey. I don't believe that this survey proves that "male gamers like X, female gamers like Y, so let's market it accordingly"... but rather "X was marketed to males, Y to females, so they tend to drift towards X and Y respectively".

 

[Ekai]

It's usually men making that argument for women. Most women probably don't give a shit either way.

Please don't speak for women.

 

[Frozenprince]

Thank goodness I'm not the only one that saw that lol

Additionally, there is the problem of how games are marketed in the first place that messes with this survey. I don't believe that this survey proves that "male gamers like X, female gamers like Y, so let's market it accordingly"... but rather "X was marketed to males, Y to females, so they tend to drift towards X and Y respectively".

The study was built to find those results, from what it looks like.

It went in with a preconceived notion to prove, not an objective study to determine identity.

 

[KingJ2002]

removed

 

[clintar]

Maybe they are old and have dealt with 14 year old daughters before and now they just have an automatic aversion to having to deal with 14 year old girls

 

[Frozenprince]

Only in games is this an argument.

Movies, books, comics, music, have ALL moved past this block, or at the very least, BEGUN to move past it.

It's also creepy to me that some people in this thread are okay with lesbianism being an expression of a woman's sexuality, but not anything else.

 

[Tigress]

Sorry to jump in late but this whole 'I can't empathize with' bullshit has always seemed like a lazy way of saying 'I'm too prejudiced to care'.

It's not a lazy way of saying it, it's a disingenuous way of saying it. Basically they are saying they understand why a female would want to play a female character (They'd have to cause they outright admit they can only relate to a male character) but they don't care because they think the game should be catered to them only, fuck women who want to be able to relate to the character.

 

[bati]

What? Could you please bother actually reading my posts? Please?

Or alternatively, contribute to the discussion instead of drive by posting? Because I'm giving my considerably numerous thoughts about the interesting topic of "empathy" but I have no clue what point you are making other than "don't correct people on terminology".

Here, I'll quote the relevant part of your post again for easier readability:

If someone says "I don't particularly want to play as a female", then sure, it might not be (lack of) empathy. But if they specifically say "I can't relate to a female character", that is literally the definition of lack of empathy.

My point was that it is not so black and white. The person who says he is not able to relate to something might not know how to phrase it better to avoid to confusion. Maybe english isn't even his first language so he's using the only english words he's familiar with to substitute the more nuanced ones from his own language. Maybe he doesn't even realize that he'll be accused of lacking empathy based on one word.

Regarding your numerous thoughts on this interesting subject - I went through your post history for this thread to see if there is indeed anything interesting and this popped out:

I have been thinking about empathy a lot for the last few years. I used to take mine for granted, and fail to understand how people could not (not "would not", literally "could not") put into other people's shoes. Ironically, the people that it made the hardest for me to "put myself into their shoes", were racists, sexists, homophobes, etc.

I hear you like thesaurus? Let's see what MW says about empathy.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy

the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this

Note that this isn't a personal attack on you - honestly I'm not that interested in the subject, I'm just using your example here to try and understand the logic behind the thinking in these rather sweeping statements that permeate the thread.

So we have a person A who claims he has strong empathy.
And we have a person B who is perceived to be lacking empathy based on the statements they've made in relation to fictional person C.
Person A fails to understand or relate to person B's state of mind
Person B cannot seem to relate to fictional person C, either due to physical of psychological characteristics of the person C.

So, in the interest of the discussion, explain to me why should the Person A in this case be shown to exhibit a strong sense of empathy but Person B would not?

 

[ReBurn]

I just always assume that the character I play as was what the creator intended and not meant to be someone I needed to feel is like me. I see them like I see characters in movies or books, which are something to be experienced in the context they were created.

 

[someday]

That women would suddenly play GTA because it has a female protagonist would surprise me a lot.

I'm a woman and I would definitely buy and play a GTA game with a female protagonist. Not sure why that would be a surprise. For all the reasons that men seem to prefer playing as other men, so they can relate or empathize, I'd feel the same way about playing as a woman. Sure I play plenty of games as a dude already and I'm used to attempting to get the same emotional resonance from them, but when I have played games with characters that are more like me I obviously get a little more from them.

I think the thing is that as games get more and more story driven, I'm finding myself getting less and less invested in them since they aren't my stories or even close. Playing as "The Impossible White Man" dealing with the "White Man's Burden" has been done to death in video games and in movies. I'm not suggesting that these are bad narratives or that they don't deserve to be made, just that they are increasingly alienating and a bit played out for me. So yeah, a female protag in a GTA game would be fucking amazing to me.

 

[Snowybreak]

Even being hyper sexualized is bad if that character DARES to express her sexuality in any way. She has to be hyper sexual, but chaste.

Hmm... I think this might be the reason why a character like Bayonetta is fine in my mind, but characters like Quiet make me uncomfortable.

Bayo is silly and over the top, but she's obviously aware of it and internalizes it, making her flamboyance fit the tone.

Quiet is dour and... well... quiet. She doesn't speak really, and the fucking awkward bits (rain scene) come off as just creepy.

 

[Mathieran]

Although in RPGs I usually make myself for the first time I play through (I like to play as myself), I love being able to play games that feature leads that are different than me. I can relate to them even though I'm a 30 year old white dude.

At the PSX conference I was really interested at the beginning of the UC video. I thought at first it was a game where you play a middle eastern female in a war torn country and it seemed super exciting to be able to experience that. It was disappointing at the end but oh well.

 

[Spiritwalker]

To lack such a basic thing is pretty sad. I play a female Orc in WoW because they look badass.

 

[A Link to the Past]

It's usually men making that argument for women. Most women probably don't give a shit either way.

What is your basis for this position?

Because seriously, if you don't have good evidence, you've literally just written a post complaining about how men speak for women and then made a point of speaking for women.

 

[someday]

It's usually men making that argument for women. Most women probably don't give a shit either way.

I won't try to speak for all women, and neither should you, but some of us absolutely give a shit.

 

[SpartanForce]

Well for me sometimes I can't relate to certain protagonists like the dude from watch dogs 2 and the crew, just not for me. same for ff15.

on the other hand I loved life is strange so i dunno

 

[longdi]

I wonder if this same argument would be made if the situation was reversed.
People have been used to male protagonists for so long they just gel into it and don't even notice that for quite awhile gaming has been lacking in proper female leads.

It's very telling when people want a change in protagonist other than a white male that it somehow has to be political.

To have a good female lead means a rethink of work flow, best to have female producers and such. There is no point of having a female skin like EA did with mass effect and fifa, then some players cheering their political bravery.

We have to understand male and female are fundamentally different, its not stereotype

And just maybe many females are just less invested in action movies and games?

I don't see why we should be speaking on behalf of female gamers as someone said earlier.

 

[shiba5]

I'm a woman and I would definitely buy and play a GTA game with a female protagonist. Not sure why that would be a surprise. For all the reasons that men seem to prefer playing as other men, so they can relate or empathize, I'd feel the same way about playing as a woman. Sure I play plenty of games as a dude already and I'm used to attempting to get the same emotional resonance from them, but when I have played games with characters that are more like me I obviously get a little more from them.

I think the thing is that as games get more and more story driven, I'm finding myself getting less and less invested in them since they aren't my stories or even close. Playing as "The Impossible White Man" dealing with the "White Man's Burden" has been done to death in video games and in movies. I'm not suggesting that these are bad narratives or that they don't deserve to be made, just that they are increasingly alienating and a bit played out for me. So yeah, a female protag in a GTA game would be fucking amazing to me.

Same. I'd love to play female Trevor aka Tricia.

 

[psychowave]

I don't see why we should be speaking on behalf of female gamers as someone said earlier.

Maybe you should stop assuming most/all posters are male. Plenty of women here speaking for themselves.

 

[Frozenprince]

To have a good female lead means a rethink of work flow, best to have female producers and such. There is no point of having a female skin like EA did with mass effect and fifa, then some players cheering their political bravery.

We have to understand male and female are fundamentally different, its not stereotype

And just maybe many females are just less invested in action movies and games?

I don't see why we should be speaking on behalf of female gamers as someone said earlier.

It's almost like female gamers have posted in this veyr thread saying that attitude of "women just don't like thing" is bullshit.

 

[Necron]

One of the better OPs I've seen on this forum and a very interesting thread so far.

That said, I think I can't relate to most characters in a video game regardless of gender. I didn't feel any empathy with Nathan Drake or Lara Croft or Geralt of Rivia and I believe this has a lot to do with the camera's perspective.

It is why I most likely prefer 1st person games like Portal, BioShock, The Darkness, Metroid Prime, Soma, Mirror's Edge and Alien: Isolation because I think it offers a much easier way to transmit the feelings of that protagonist; you're in the driver's seat and experiencing/seeing it the same way as that protagonist - not just some camera man framing the action. In some cases, the protagonist isn't even voiced (i.e. the famous "silent protagonist" like in Half-Life) which further instils this idea. I think VR would only further enhance those games I've already mentioned with regards to that aspect (haven't tried a VR though).

One of the reasons I'm so excited for Resident Evil 7 is exactly that... change to a 1st person viewpoint. I guess some might argue that changing the perspective from 3rd person to 1st person is too simple a solution to this issue; it obviously removes the need to actually witness the character you're controlling (in most cases) and in essence makes the discussion of gender kind of pointless in a way. To those I'd ask: imagine if the indie game Virginia or some of the aforementioned titles would have been in 3rd person? Would you have felt the same way? Would you have related more/less to the struggles of that character? It's funny that something so simple as perspective changes everything... it's also funny that Alien: Isolation was originally going to be 3rd person but was changed to a 1st-person perspective instead. I don't believe that relating to a character is inherently and only linked to its perspective but I think it's a key aspect and greatly emphasises it. I also believe The Last of Us could have worked as a 1st person title, despite many probably disagreeing with that notion.

 

[PtM]

Here, I'll quote the relevant part of your post again for easier readability:



My point was that it is not so black and white. The person who says he is not able to relate to something might not know how to phrase it better to avoid to confusion. Maybe english isn't even his first language so he's using the only english words he's familiar with to substitute the more nuanced ones from his own language. Maybe he doesn't even realize that he'll be accused of lacking empathy based on one word.

Regarding your numerous thoughts on this interesting subject - I went through your post history for this thread to see if there is indeed anything interesting and this popped out:



I hear you like thesaurus? Let's see what MW says about empathy.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy



Note that this isn't a personal attack on you - honestly I'm not that interested in the subject, I'm just using your example here to try and understand the logic behind the thinking in these rather sweeping statements that permeate the thread.

So we have a person A who claims he has strong empathy.
And we have a person B who is perceived to be lacking empathy based on the statements they've made in relation to fictional person C.
Person A fails to understand or relate to person B's state of mind
Person B cannot seem to relate to fictional person C, either due to physical of psychological characteristics of the person C.

So, in the interest of the discussion, explain to me why should the Person A in this case be shown to exhibit a strong sense of empathy but Person B would not?

bati's got a point or two.

 

[TriniTrin]

Most of the people who cannot relate to characters are simply NOT WANTING to relate.

Maybe it's a thing of consideration for peoples situations that cause them to not care. Some people have extremely low consideration for others and their hardships and could give a shit since they think the situation the person/character is in will never happen to them.

This doesn't mean you cannot emphasize and understand the character/person, some people just don't want to try because they see no point. It'll never happen to them so they think it's unrealistic.

You can put yourself in anyone's shoes if your open to seeing what they're going through but you have to want to understand their movitivations enough to care about them.

 

[Ekai]

Maybe you should stop assuming most/all posters are male. Plenty of women here speaking for themselves.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[Gotdatmoney]

People saying they can't relate to Ellie because she is a girl, son you can't relate to Joel either. Fuck outta here. You aint even "seen" half the shit Joel "does" in that game. YEt you are trying to tell me that Ellie being a girl makes it hard to relate?

The stereotype of gamers being socially awkward girl fearing persons is obviously true if this is all it takes for you to not wanna play a game. "She has boobs and less testosterone, I can't relate to her. I relate more to the guy that physically tortured multiple people."

:/ Go away

 

[Nottle]

I never understood why people can't see themselves in anything vaguely different then them.
Why can't men play as females. Why cant people le of one race see them self or empathize with another.

Do those people just play human in games that let you choose between humans and made up fantastical races?

 

[GetDigitized]

I never understood why people can't see themselves in anything vaguely different then them.
Why can't men play as females. Why cant people le of one race see them self or empathize with another.

Do those people just play human in games that let you choose between humans and made up fantastical races?

You lack empathy. They do as well but so do you.
This thread in a nut shell.

 

[Frozenprince]

You lack empathy. They do as well but so do you.
This thread in a nut shell.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

You lack empathy. They do as well but so do you.
This thread in a nut shell.

What are you talking about? This is not a both sides situation. There are those of us who have zero issue playing games with people who don't look like us and those who are so damn against anything but status quo. It's not empathetic to understand someones desire for every character to be a straight white male, it's just fucking stupid.

 

[Rathorial]

The I can't relate to a teenage girl thing seems so laughable, when you assume they do think they can actually relate to the white male superhero soldiers that can annihilate through all these enemies to get to a goal of often saving a ton of people. You're playing a fantasy in someone else's skin you surely aren't yourself in real-life.

At least Joel is a character I would hope people aren't completely like in real-life, and instead like Ellie just have some common ground like enjoying the guitar.

Still not excited about the Last of Us 2 unless the gameplay massively improves, or changes in some significant way. Actually implementing the balance of power AI they advertised with the last game, and in their post mortum showing they couldn't do, would be a step in the right direction.

 

[Johnny Cage In The Shower]

Well, lot of posters here are missing the point of why a 40 year old male may not relate to playing a teenage girl in video games.
It is not so much about the age and the gender of your character that these people don't relate to, but the world they encompass. The life they live, thier interests and the people that surround them.

Speaking from a personal experience. I am a minority, male in his late thirties. I did not grow up in a western society. My childhood and teenage years were very different than your typical North American (Westen) teenager. So... earlier this year I tried to play "Life is Strange" going into this game without knowing much about it, except the protogatist is a young, white girl.

30 minutes into the start of game, I felt very bored, very detached, and even mentally exhausted. I turned it off and never looked back. Why? Was it because the character I was controlling happened to be a teenage white female? No!

Because the game did everything in its power to force feed me the life of a contemporary, awkward, white girl in high school. Everything in the first 30 minutes offered in this game is about the main character, and who she is and the world she lives in, nothing really interesting about the world outside her little head.
I learned she's socially awkward, not the prettiest girl in class, but most likely one of the smarter ones, she likes photography and has a creative eye for it, hates how her young, pretentious, douchy, hipster male teacher gives more attention to the prettier girls in the class instead of her...The dialogue tried so hard to immerse the player in the benign, mundane world of a teenage female student. I felt restless, I wanted to get the hell out of that classroom ASAP and do some interesting stuff, but the game forced me to read my teenage girl diary, full of really teenage girly thoughts about romance, friendship, relationships. This shit just bummed and creeped me out. I felt like a creep going through a teenager's notes that were left behind on the table at a coffee shop. I never felt so detached and alienated from a video game before, and I thought to myself; Surely there is the right audience for this type of game/genre, but that player was not me... Just as the Disney channel has to be on in the house with all the Hannah Montana like shows while I'm babysitting my 8 and 10 year old nieces. I am forced to endure that, because it is there for the kids, not me, but I don't have to endure a game that makes me feel like I am watching an episode of iCarly, if I really don't want to.

On the same token, for those who are joking about not relating to a middle aged, Italian plummber... if Super Mario World was more like Dreaded Mario's World instead, where you were this struggling plumber in some poor Italian village, had hard time making ends meet, your wife resented you for your failures and most likely was cheating on you with your brother Luigi or the wealthier, docuhier guy named Bowser down the street. (The village bully/cop)

If that was the premise of Super Mario Bros/World... surely things would've been very different for Nintendo right now.

In a nutshell, a game's purpose, first and foremost is to exist for the gamer's pleasure and enjoyment. Not to judge or test the player's patience in accepting the world, the story and characters it conveys.

I wonder if Life is Strange is more than just about a teenage girl, and her diary... but I don't wonder enough to keep playing it to find out if it is worth another 5 minutes of my time. I got the gist of it, and it ain't for me, and dare I say, I don't fell one bit guilty for deleting it from my hard drive.

It's your life, your time, if you're not enjoying something because you cannot find any entertainment value to suit your taste, move on to something else, who gives the shit if the character is a teenage minority female, a white, middle aged, bald space marine or a fucking wombat!

 

[Lime]

It's usually men making that argument for women. Most women probably don't give a shit either way.

That women would suddenly play GTA because it has a female protagonist would surprise me a lot.

Since you guys are repeating the same mistake when talking about representation, I'm just going to quote this research once more:

Anyone interested in the question of identification in games absolutely need to read this book:

https://test19104.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/bookcover.jpeg?w=840[IMG]

It perfectly captures how we should talk about representation, empathy, and identification in video games. [/URL]

[QUOTE]"Identfiying as might result in empathy or sympathy but not the taking on of that character's role. [...] Identifying with the character, however, as Devon pointed out, does not necessitate that type of concrete connection. He could identify with the character's situation, experiences, and personality regardless of whether he shared identifiers with the character."[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]Designers may not be able to assume how audiences will identify with texts, but they do shape, particularly via narrative, the potential for identification. Although not all interviewees said that representation was important, when they did say it was important it was in the social-political sense described by Charles Taylor. The problem with arguments for minority representation diversity in video games is that they tend to focus on pluralism rather than diversity. They emphasize peripheral markets, targeted on the basis of specific identifiers. Such arguments celebrate texts that depend on active audiences to creates to create their own diversity in games. Yet building on Nick Dyer-Witherford and Grieg de Peuter's critique that the game industry is increasingly built on the immaterial labor of players, we can see the ways in which a neoliberal, do-it-yourself approach to representation has become increasingly central to how the industry conceptualizes representation.

The findings in this book indicate that the marketing logic that focuses on marginalized groups as the target for diverse representation hinders the more political goals of media diversity. The marketing logic has resulted in a pluralistic version of representation, not diversity in a more general sense. In contrast to pluralistic representation, diversity addresses the way my interviewees described representation as important. Representation was important in a social sense, according to my interviewees, not the individualistic sense stressed by market logic. Whereas market logic suggests that diversified representation is important only because it is desired by individual players (who are potential exploitable customers), I argue that it is important because it has political and collective force. It can enforce but also expose social violences such as racism, heterosexism, misogyny, ableism, nationalism, and capitalism (the very ideology undergirding hte market emphasis on individuals as customers). Too often, the argument for the importance of representation relies on realism as contrasted with fantasy. Interviewees' responses reflected this, as well. Representation was important to those players who wanted their media to be realistic; it was important to those who wanted their fiction to present the world in a manner that conformed to their expectations of that fictional world, as well as their real-life personal experiences. This raises the question, how does representation come to matter in a medium defined by play and fantasy?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]Ultimately, however, interviewees said that representation was socially important, not important to them as individuals. They wanted others to see diverse experiences and identities on-screen. It was not merely important for individuals to see themselves reflected in a mediated mirror. [...] People do not want ot feel alone or unseen. Representation is important because it is an external acknowledgment of one's existence. This is intertwined with Gregory's assertion that people want to see themselves in media texts because they want people like them to be seen.[/QUOTE]

And from a recent interview with the researcher:

[QUOTE]It is assumed by people I’ve spoken to that the discourse around representation is supposed to matter to them. People talk about representation mattering to them by relating to the ongoing discourse as they understand it or rejecting it. Some say, “You can’t tell me what’s important to me,” while others say “I can enjoy things that don’t necessarily represent me.” Still others are upset because the popular discourse makes them feel responsible for their marginalization in the game industry. They feel that the industry supposes that if you are not knowable as a market, and therefore not representable as a market, it is your fault and not the industry’s. Another argument is that you are increasingly responsible for creating their own content through customization options, as opposed to just being represented because you matter, because you exist in the world, and you ought to be represented in these texts. I try really hard in my book to think about representation mattering beyond either market logic or media effects discourse. It’s important to talk about more than representation just mattering to groups because they play games and therefore are subject to marketing, but also not talking about media effects research that is ultimately far less nuanced than ideology. The total replication of the same ideas over and over and over again—that’s where representation matters.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://gamescriticism.org/interviews/aronczyk-3-a[/url][/QUOTE]

 

[LegendofDragoonLives]

Telling people that they should relate to someone in a game when they don't is a pretty hilarious ideal. Let people relate to who they want, it doesn't affect you in the slightest and it's not weird at all. People relate and don't relate to all kinds of different things and people, that's why we're different.

Saying that, I can't wait to play as Chloe in Uncharted or Ellie in TLOU2, both are fantastic characters,

 

[Kenai]

Even being hyper sexualized is bad if that character DARES to express her sexuality in any way. She has to be hyper sexual, but chaste.

Honestly this whole thread just re-affirms my belief that we have been teaching men some FUCKED UP things about how to deal with a woman being a sexual creature with her own agency if the very idea of being able to empathize with that even the littlest bit makes them feel gross.

I'm not even getting into how it's a slight against homosexuals who don't really have a choice but to be okay with heterosexual sexuality being expressed everywhere at all times.

Truth bombs all up in this post.

I'm all for not dogpiling on people so a reasonable discussion can be had, but let's not do too much coddling either.