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[Roxas]

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it seems games featuring females as the lead just don't seem to sell as much. Maybe devs just don't want to take that risk?

 

[Llyrwenne]

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it seems games featuring females as the lead just don't seem to sell as much. Maybe devs just don't want to take that risk?

I would like to see some data on this as I do not believe this to be true at all. Bayonetta sold poorly due to a lack of marketing and being a fairly niche title. Bayonetta 2 had those same issues and was only available on WiiU. Mirror's Edge 2 did not do well because of a complete lack of marketing; even here on GAF, people just did not know the game had released. I believe Life is Strange did fairly well. The Last of Us is a game with a female character equally important to the male player character with that female character prominently on the cover and it sold tons. The Tomb Raider reboot also seemed to do great despite the absurd expectation Square had for the sales, though obviously Rise of the Tomb Raider suffered from not being on PS4. I do not think there are enough high-profile female-led games out there to draw the conclusion that having a female main character by itself has any noticeable negative impact on sales.

 

[kamineko]

Do people even read anything beyond the OP or perhaps stop to reflect on what they are posting and what that says about them?

Perhaps a rhetoric instructor with a bunch of alts is creating a "spot the fallacy" exercise for a remedial course

I might use this thread for the same purpose, honestly. Seems like we've got a full bingo card ITT

 

[Mr. Nice_Guy]

I really can't understand the ire here. As others have said, something between 49-51% of the games shown have optional female protagonists, meaning that if the latter number is true, than under half of the games shown at E3 had an exclusive male protagonist, which is definitely progress. Sorry, the title is click-bait and could have been reworded to show the progress made this year instead of choosing an inflated statistic to continue a narrative. Also, always good to add the examples in your chart if possible.

 

[Chao]

As long as males keep purchasing games targeted to them and male developers are in charge of the creation of said games, this is not going to change.

In order for this to change we need more women at the head of these companies and as directors because it's them who will push their female vision into their games.

You can't just make another gears of war, put a female lead in it and expect it to sell trillions, it doesn't work that way.

As long as the dominant genre in video games is "violent stuff happening on the screen" you won't see many female leads.

 

[warheat]

Not sure if already posted, but I found this article :

http://www.themarysue.com/why-games...ont-sell-and-what-it-says-about-the-industry/

In terms of pure sales numbers, in the first three months of availability, games with only a male hero sold around 25 percent better than games with an optional female hero. Games with exclusively male heroes sold around 75 percent better than games with only female heroes.

By looking at these trends two things become clear: games that give you a choice of gender are, on average, reviewed slightly better than games with male-only heroes, but the games that sell very well are almost all led by male heroes. If you’re funding a large-budget game and you see these numbers, you see that you lose sales by adding the capability to choose a female hero, and you lose significant sales by releasing a game with a female hero.

There is a sense in the industry that games with female heroes won’t sell. “I think that there is general feeling from marketing that it’s hard to sell a mass-market game that’s a female-only protagonist,” Zatkin agreed. “This may be changing greatly with mobile and social, where you’re expanding the audience, but in core console land, there’s a lot of marketing thought that it’s hard to sell a game with a female-only protagonist in a core genre. The question is, is this something that really doesn’t happen, or do marketing budgets get gimped?”

Female-led games do find an easier path to get covered, simply due to their novelty in the market, and reviews tend to almost as strong as male-only games. You can find games with female heroes, such as the Tomb Raider or Portal series, but there simply aren’t enough female-led games with strong marketing budgets to see if gamers are willing to pay attention to games that tell stories with women at the center.

And yet, I have a lot of hope for the future of video games. How often does a new artistic medium come around, and how lucky are we to be right here in the thick of it? The reason I remain excited is because while the big dogs are saying, “Nope, can’t be done,” the smaller studios come back with, “Wait, why not?” I’m not just talking about scrappy indie teams fueled on ramen and love. I’m thinking of Double Fine, who asked for $400,000 in development funds on Kickstarter after publishers told them that adventure games don’t sell. They raked in $3.3 million. I’m thinking of Star Citizen, whose crowdfunding campaign page stated “traditional publishers don’t believe in PC [games] or space sims.” The campaign closed this week with $6.5 million. I’m thinking of indie darlings like Super Meat Boy and Minecraft, successes that never could’ve been predicted by looking solely at last year’s bottom line. Yes, there are plenty of indie games that suck, and yes, for every Star Citizen, there are a hundred more crowdfunding campaigns that fail. That’s exactly why the big publishers are afraid to take risks (though one could argue that indie devs have more to lose). On some level, you can’t debate that point with them. I could walk into their offices and spend hours talking about why diversity in storytelling is a good thing for gaming and art and humanity as a whole, but at the end, they’d just point to their quarterly sales report and say, “But will it make this number get bigger?”

And the truth is, I don’t know. I know that most male gamers don’t have a problem with connecting to a female protagonist (just as women have managed to fall in love with games despite the dearth of heroines). I know that most gamers, regardless of gender, would like to see some new stories being told. I know that the next Call of Duty would still sell a kajillion copies even if the single-player campaign was written around a female protagonist. I know that milking popular franchises dry and delivering the same thing over and over again will eventually drive even the most loyal fans away. But these are things based in anecdotal evidence and personal impressions. They aren’t cold hard numbers, and without that, the people writing the checks won’t care. So as maddening as it is to hear the blanket statement of “women don’t sell,” nothing is going to change on that front until a big publisher takes a chance and finds the gaming equivalent of The Hunger Games. Considering how long it took the movie industry to get that far, I’m not holding my breath.

And I agree with this comment from the page :

I was just about to post something VERY similar to this. Looking at the wikipedia page for best-selling video games by console (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games), 11 of 16 on the Xbox 360 and 17 of the 25 listed have male-only protagonists.

But six of those seventeen on the PS3 and ALL eleven of the Xbox 360 titles are in the first- or third-person shooter genre, bought primarily for their multiplayer. (Note: I think a main reason these games don't have female protagonists stems from the reluctance of most real-life military forces to send women to active combat duty. Also, I didn't include the Wii since so many of their best-sellers stem from LONG standing franchises that both genders love.)

The remaining games that have male-only protagonists could easily be female with few tweaks (Rockstar games, Uncharted) or are Metal Gear (similar to above situation) or God of War games (based off standing mythos). So as far as these best-seller games go, the problem seems to stem from issues with real world gender issues that creep into what has to be the most popular genre in gaming today.

 

[Staf]

I would like to see some data on this as I do not believe this to be true at all. Bayonetta sold poorly due to a lack of marketing and being a fairly niche title. Bayonetta 2 had those same issues and was only available on WiiU. Mirror's Edge 2 did not do well because of a complete lack of marketing; even here on GAF, people just did not know the game had released. I believe Life is Strange did fairly well. The Last of Us is a game with a female character equally important to the male player character with that female character prominently on the cover and it sold tons. The Tomb Raider reboot also seemed to do great despite the absurd expectation Square had for the sales, though obviously Rise of the Tomb Raider suffered from not being on PS4. I do not think there are enough high-profile female-led games out there to draw the conclusion that having a female main character by itself has any noticeable negative impact on sales.

There's obviously data supporting this otherwise the big publishers would act differently. The people who run these companies are smarter than you and me when it comes to market understanding, otherwise they would never get to the position they are in. There's probably just a much larger demand for male protagonist due to the majority of players self-insert into the protagonist. It's not what i'm into through.

I think the representation problem will get solved automatically over time as the playerbase gets less white and less male. It's just going to take time since gamedevelopment takes time and publishers are, as all publicly traded corporations are, risk-averse.

(Or maybe i'm overanalyzing the whole market thing due to bias created from my background in macroeconomics).

 

[Lime]

I really can't understand the ire here. As others have said, something between 49-51% of the games shown have optional female protagonists, meaning that if the latter number is true, than under half of the games shown at E3 had an exclusive male protagonist, which is definitely progress. Sorry, the title is click-bait and could have been reworded to show the progress made this year instead of choosing an inflated statistic to continue a narrative. Also, always good to add the examples in your chart if possible.

You don't see a problem with 3% vs 41%?

I think the representation problem will get solved automatically over time as the playerbase gets less white and less male. It's just going to take time since gamedevelopment takes time and publishers are, as all publicly traded corporations are, risk-averse.

"Just kick back, relax, and everything will be fixed automatically"

I've been told to wait for the last decade or so that things be fixed little by little.

 

[Staf]

You don't see a problem with 3% vs 41%?



"Just kick back, relax, and everything will be fixed automatically"

I've been told to wait for the last decade or so that things be fixed little by little.

The other option is to try and change the buyingpatterns of the existing consumerbase. The traditional way of doing this is through marketing. And i just can't see publishers taking that risk and spending millions of dollars due to risk-aversion, would love to be wrong though.

 

[Wulfram]

I really can't understand the ire here. As others have said, something between 49-51% of the games shown have optional female protagonists, meaning that if the latter number is true, than under half of the games shown at E3 had an exclusive male protagonist, which is definitely progress. Sorry, the title is click-bait and could have been reworded to show the progress made this year instead of choosing an inflated statistic to continue a narrative. Also, always good to add the examples in your chart if possible.

Considering last year 32% of games were exclusively male its not really progress.

 

[Lime]

The other option is to try and change the buyingpatterns of the existing consumerbase. The traditional way of doing this is through marketing. And i just can't see publishers taking that risk and spending millions of dollars due to risk-aversion, would love to be wrong though.

But do the data on the buying patterns actually explicitly state that consumers (both actual and potential) are less inclined to buy a game if it does not exclusively features a white dude in it? I still haven't seen any evidence that says so, at least to my knowledge.

 

[Gunmonkey36]

As this has become a consistent and interesting topic each year I find it perplexing how much people truly care about the gender of the character they are playing. Perhaps this is my privelage. I don't quite understand why it really matters. The video game media for me is there to tell a compelling story. Whether it's Laura Croft's story,Nathan Drake's or a nameless player chosen protagonist I'm there to see and fulfill a journey. The protagonists genitals seem such a minor detail and so far from the crux of the experience. Perhaps I'd feel much differently if I was a female but I can't imagine so, though I will never know.

I'd like to pose a bit of a hypothetical. If tomorrow one awoke and saw that all games moving forward would contain a female lead would you feel any different about gaming, good or bad? Would it really matter to you?

I'm curious if I'm in the minority of GAF or at least this thread in saying that character identity just isn't a big deal to me. I want to play games and experience stories, character gender has no percepted bearing on my enjoyment of a story.

 

[Staf]

But do the data on the buying patterns actually explicitly state that consumers (both actual and potential) are less inclined to buy a game if it does not exclusively features a white dude in it? I still haven't seen any evidence that says so, at least to my knowledge.

We don't know that. All big corporations have micro-economists working for them doing these types of analysis for them. They do this to optimize their resource allocation. Don't know this to be a fact in gamedevelopment but would be shocked otherwise.

To me it's evidence enough that the preference is the 'white dude' protagonist otherwise the big publishers would have diversify their production. But like i typed in my original post, this analysis might be bias due to my background in macro-economics.

Anyways, not interested in discussing this further since i kind of find it boring. Just wanted to give my two cents. Still, hope more diverse protagonists isn't too far into the future since i'm growing bored by the white bald spacemarine.

 

[warheat]

As this has become a consistent and interesting topic each year I find it perplexing how much people truly care about the gender of the character they are playing. Perhaps this is my privelage. I don't quite understand why it really matters. The video game media for me is there to tell a compelling story. Whether it's Laura Croft's story,Nathan Drake's or a nameless player chosen protagonist I'm there to see and fulfill a journey. The protagonists genitals seem such a minor detail and so far from the crux of the experience. Perhaps I'd feel much differently if I was a female but I can't imagine so, though I will never know.

I'd like to pose a bit of a hypothetical. If tomorrow one awoke and saw that all games moving forward would contain a female lead would you feel any different about gaming, good or bad? Would it really matter to you?

I'm curious if I'm in the minority of GAF or at least this thread in saying that character identity just isn't a big deal to me. I want to play games and experience stories, character gender has no percepted bearing on my enjoyment of a story.

I don't care as long as it works. "Works" in the sense that it's not forced just for the sake of it.

For example, I think I wouldn't enjoy Life Is Strange as much if the main protagonist is a male without a changes to the story (I think the best example for this is P3P with FeMC route).

 

[HokieJoe]

It doesn't absolve them from criticism though.

For what? Publishers/developers know their market demographics quite well I suspect.

 

[HokieJoe]

Definitely. But it's also good to have someone pointing things out from time to time, right? I don't think there's a call to make it law for 50 percent female protags or something, but it's good to have awareness about such things, maybe get some more games with female leads if there's a bigger realized demand for equal showing. At least that's one way to see it.

I think this is a reasonable position. You just made a good business case. Destiny is a good example of a game which offers selectable characters. I don't run across many women playing it, but there are some.

 

[Kenshin001]

This myth needs to die already. How many times do I have to post this in this thread?

That data just confirms what I thought doesn't it? The bulk of the console/PC market that E3 is catering to is male. 40% does not consist of the bulk of the US market and even then that ignores what sort of games they are playing. It says the top male favourites on console were action, shooter, RPG in that order while for females it was RPG, action, shooter. Yet RPGs only accounted for 9.5% of sales that year. If it's the favourite genre of 40% of the market I would have thought the percentage would be higher. Action and shooters were the top selling genre of games and not coincidentally they are the favourite games of males.

Sports accounted for 13.3% yet did not appear on the list of favourite games for either gender. Madden was the second highest selling game in the US that year but sports doesn't get in the top 5 favourite genres? What's up with that? There were 3 sports games in the top NPD for 2014.

Not saying that females should be ignored at all but when the game companies are run by males and the bulk of their customers are males it is not a big surprise they mostly use male characters.

 

[peace]

Who cares what sex game characters are though?
I mean its the type and content of the games that matter.

 

[kamineko]

Considering last year 32% of games were exclusively male its not really progress.

All these numbers! When something's right, you can feel it in your heart. Nobody wants to have an evidence-based discussion on NeoGAF

There's obviously data supporting this otherwise the big publishers would act differently. The people who run these companies are smarter than you and me when it comes to market understanding, otherwise they would never get to the position they are in. There's probably just a much larger demand for male protagonist due to the majority of players self-insert into the protagonist. It's not what i'm into through.

I think the representation problem will get solved automatically over time as the playerbase gets less white and less male. It's just going to take time since gamedevelopment takes time and publishers are, as all publicly traded corporations are, risk-averse.

(Or maybe i'm overanalyzing the whole market thing due to bias created from my background in macroeconomics).

This perspective is valid, because of course these large, publicly-traded companies tend to be risk-averse (as their shareholders probably demand). That is a factor in this discussion, absolutely.

It's also reasonable to assume that there is an affinity between investment capital and privilege, because we see this reflected in everything from home loans to wage ceilings.

There is no ethical dimension to identifying phenomena such as this. By saying, "Yes, the world seems to be this way" one in no way has demonstrated that the world "ought to be this way." An "is" never mandates an "ought."

A role of the critic is to identify the actual and the ideal and point out gaps between the two. One response, and it's not ridiculous, is to suggest that, over time, the movement of history itself will close the gap. Your suggestion that changing player demographics will eventually lead large publishers to adapt in a positive direction seems of this category.

While I think this is true, and it additionally leads to the somewhat satisfying conclusion that people who can't be bothered to understand the concern or even read an OP are "on the wrong side of history" (though some seem so lost as to appear completely ahistorical), it is ultimately unsatisfying because there is also the chicken-and-egg question of whether or not available titles influence who gets interested in gaming in the first place.

So some of us want to have these conversations. It's good to talk about this stuff (even though half the posts ITT are about how dumb it is to talk about this stuff). It's good for companies to know that people are talking about it, because large corporations also place value on their brand image and how they are perceived in the world. They don't want to be on the wrong side of history, either. Additionally, some of these developers would like to do better than they are doing currently with representation, and they need conversations like this to contextualize their own dealings with their publishers.

So while I agree that you are right, a hands-off approach will probably lead to parity in time, why should anyone wait? Is waiting a decade or more the best anyone can do? Should young girls today simply do without the kind of identification and representation that I got to experience as a young boy? I can't get down with that.

I agree with the system you have described in a very general way. That is how things are. I just don't choose to accept it.

 

[paragonpro]

The U.S. is leading the world in childhood poverty, unemployment, corruption within the political and criminal justice systems, mass shootings, debt, and academic failure.


And this is what feminists are talking about? The fact that there aren't as many female characters in video games, as there are males?

I don't think Anita should be given a say on what goes into video games. She's probably only interested in "I'm Fat and I have Daddy Issues Simulator version 3.66"

Look, theres the off topic discussion for that stuff. This is a games enthusiast forum. Featuring people from all walks of life who enjoy games. I dont think that some of us as white males have a right to say that they arent allowed to be annoyed at the lack of diversity in the tripple A market. Think of it this way, if all games never features white males, wouldnt you be annoyed at the lack of your representation? I know i would, thats why its easy to see where minority players are coming from and there complaints shouldnt be so easily dismissed. The games industry has taken great strides in this in the past few years, but we are not quite there yet.

 

[Arkam]

Here is a counter stat: ZERO... The number of scantily clad "booth babes" on the show floor. Where is any appreciation for that fact? If that does not show the industry is trying very hard than some are not looking.

 

[kamineko]

Here is a counter stat: ZERO... The number of scantily clad "booth babes" on the show floor. Where is any appreciation for that fact? If that does not show the industry is trying very hard than some are not looking.

Maybe you should start a thread about it

 

[Mesoian]

Who cares what sex game characters are though?
I mean its the type and content of the games that matter.

The sex of the game characters IS content though.

IMO though, in a year where most games being shown on mainstage are 4th, 5th or 6th generation sequels, the fact that 49% of games offer games a choice of who they want to play as is dramatically more important games that either focus solely on a male or female prospective.

And let's not discount Sony's handling of Horizon. This thread is filled with studies and editorials about AAA games with female leads not getting the budgeting or marketing that they should otherwise deserve. Well here we go ladies and gentleman, Horizon is going to a BIG BIG game. I'll be a good example of whether or not a game with a female lead that isn't ingrained in gaming history can sell as well as the other more traditional games. Sony had it on the forefront of their conference, that isn't a small gesture.

This article makes it sound like things are getting worse, when in actuality the games featuring women solely are just coming close to release and the number of games where you can play as women has never been higher in history.

We're doing better. We have a ways to go, but we're doing better.

 

[Woo-Fu]

Sounds like progress to me. After all if having exclusively male protagonists is bad then so is having exclusively female protagonists. All hail the androgynous future of videogames.

Once every protagonist is a green hermaphrodite who is a member of a classless society we will have reached the pinnacle of videogame storytelling. Nobody will feel particularly left out, misrepresented, and/or offended. When people can be concerned about the racial mix among androids I think this is really the only solution.

 

[Plasma]

I know that number does seem low if taken at face value but having nearly half of the games let you pick your gender is still pretty good.

Also although it is only two games that feature a female lead exclusively it is encouraging to see that both of those games are new IPs which makes you believe (or hope) that game developers are at least moving in that direction.

 

[Lime]

That's a gross misreading of the data, Kenshin...

After all if having exclusively male protagonists is bad then so is having exclusively female protagonists.

No one is saying that having exclusively male protagonists is bad. Having a game that exclusively features one perspective or identity is fine and can actually provide very interesting, diverse experiences.

What is 'bad' is the unequal distribution of exclusive perspectives. 3% vs 41% is bad.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Who cares what sex game characters are though?
I mean its the type and content of the games that matter.

You guys are like lemmings, all happily jumping to your ban by doing the exact same thing one after the other. It would be almost tragic if it wasn't for the fact that reading even the first ten posts would make you realize it's bannable. At some point it becomes funny to watch, even if the noise is annoying.

 

[dottme]

Here is a counter stat: ZERO... The number of scantily clad "booth babes" on the show floor. Where is any appreciation for that fact? If that does not show the industry is trying very hard than some are not looking.

This one is an interesting information. Actually, none talk about it. Also, for myself, I did not watch any booth tour this year.
That's some additional lost marketing. And I'm not sure anything replaced it. But they are avoiding the "bad" marketing around booth babe at least.

 

[Cyborg]

Another thread about lack of female involvment......!

 

[A Link to the Past]

We should have OP update in big flashing gif images expressing that it's not bad that games exist where men are exclusively the stars, but that it's a problem that men are disproportionately given exclusive roles.

Another thread about lack of female involvment......!

Yeah, those polygonal video game women should have just been more proactive and inserted themselves into all of the biggest video games

 

[Weltall Zero]

That data just confirms what I thought doesn't it? The bulk of the console/PC market that E3 is catering to is male. 40% does not consist of the bulk of the US market and even then that ignores what sort of games they are playing. It says the top male favourites on console were action, shooter, RPG in that order while for females it was RPG, action, shooter. Yet RPGs only accounted for 9.5% of sales that year. If it's the favourite genre of 40% of the market I would have thought the percentage would be higher. Action and shooters were the top selling genre of games and not coincidentally they are the favourite games of males.

Sports accounted for 13.3% yet did not appear on the list of favourite games for either gender. Madden was the second highest selling game in the US that year but sports doesn't get in the top 5 favourite genres? What's up with that? There were 3 sports games in the top NPD for 2014.

Not saying that females should be ignored at all but when the game companies are run by males and the bulk of their customers are males it is not a big surprise they mostly use male characters.

60% is not "a bulk" of anything, least of all a market which is force fed male-led games to begin with. 40% of console gamers are female and 60% are male. 3% of console games have fixed female leads and 41% have fixed male leads. If you can't see the illogical disparity immediately perhaps you shouldn't try to weave flimsy arguments about game genres and sales.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

It's like the whole gluten intolerant trend. It's just awesome to cry outrage about political correctness for non existent issues.

I have two friends who are gluten intolerant (diagnosed).

I guess I must have imagined them!

I'm going to tell you guys a secret. Women do not care about women in games. They do not care at all.

How powerfully condescending.

Please don't tell me what I care and don't care about, thanks.

tell me, why is this an issue?

I don't understand why would some "feminists" push for "equality" in everything.

WOW this post

 

[TaterTots]

So...devs need to start going out of their way to make sure their game has a female protagonist? That's all I'm getting from this.

 

[Famassu]

So can someone tell me what's wrong with this?

~50% of the population of Earth are women.

So...devs need to start going out of their way to make sure their game has a female protagonist? That's all I'm getting from this.

They go out of their way to make sure that the protagonists are NOT women. You decide which is worse.

 

[Basketball]

So...devs need to start going out of their way to make sure their game has a female protagonist? That's all I'm getting from this.

They go out of their way to make sure that the protagonists are NOT women. You decide which is worse.

How about this both of you are wrong. Devs are normal folks like the rest of us, they are just trying to make the best games possible with the goal of fun/satisfaction without any bugs first and foremost in mind rather than thinking about the imaginary genitals/skin color/sexual orientation a character has on screen.

 

[Lime]

they are just trying to make the best games possible with the goal of fun/satisfaction without any bugs first and foremost in mind rather than thinking about the imaginary genitals/skin color/sexual orientation a character has on screen.

That's not how game development works.

 

[DesertFox]

Why does the statistical representation matter so much to some people? I think Horizon Zero Dawn is the most appealing game on the horizon (no pun intended) but the gender of the playable character means absolutely nothing to me.

I don't care that she's female. I wouldn't care if Aloy was a male. Wouldn't care if he/she where black, white, Asian, whatever.

Can't we all just let storytellers tell their stories with the characters they have chosen to create? Why campaign for a certain percentage of a race or gender present across the board just to satisfy some statistical equilibrium? Why does this shit matter and get so much attention?

 

[A Link to the Past]

I have two friends who are gluten intolerant (diagnosed).

I guess I must have imagined them!


How powerfully condescending.

Please don't tell me what I care and don't care about, thanks.


WOW this post

I love that second post. It's the kind of post someone would make if they didn't think that feminism believed in inequality; it essentially means to that person that any instance of feminism pushing for equality is a strange outlier because it better justifies their mindset.

Why does the statistical representation matter so much to some people? I think Horizon Zero Dawn is the most appealing game on the horizon (no pun intended) but the gender of the playable character means absolutely nothing to me.

I don't care that she's female. I wouldn't care if Aloy was a male. Wouldn't care if he/she where black, white, Asian, whatever.

Can't we all just let storytellers tell their stories with the characters they have chosen to create? Why campaign for a certain percentage of a race or gender present across the board just to satisfy some statistical equilibrium? Why does this shit matter and get so much attention?

This statistic isn't a product of art, it's a product of explicit erasure of art. Do you think that so few creators want to have a woman as a sole lead of a game because they are more interested in male characters, or do you think that the reason why Ellie almost got nixed from the cover of The Last of Us was also the reason for this statistic?

People like to see characters who reflect their features, and it's rare that it happens. It's very simple, really simple in fact. It's nice to see stories told of people whom you identify with.

 

[Famassu]

How about this both of you are wrong. Devs are normal folks like the rest of us, they are just trying to make the best games possible with the goal of fun/satisfaction without any bugs first and foremost in mind rather than thinking about the imaginary genitals/skin color/sexual orientation a character has on screen.

How about this, we've heard tons of stories from developers about how publishers constantly shoot down ideas of games featuring female protagonists. Even a game like Last of Us had trouble like Naughty Dog having to fight to even have Ellie on the fucking cover of the game. Horizon almost didn't have a female protagonist because higher-ups didn't want to fund a game with a female protagonist. Your idea that this is just what the developers want to make and they can never ever never ever be criticized about it or asked to do better is a pathetically naive, narrow-minded one.

Games aren't made in a vacuum, nor are they these untouchable "visions of their creators" without any output from people outside the dev teams. Creative types also aren't perfect and we can criticize their work and how badly they represent certain aspects of reality in hopes that they take that criticism to heart and try to do better in the future.

Again, 50% of the population of the world are women. It's not even a problem with JUST protagonists not being women. The whole casts of games are often overwhelmingly male. You have some game with a group of 15 characters (of any importance) and often maybe 1 or 2 of them are women and the rest are men. Even in games that do have female protagonists, the rest of the cast can often be filled with men otherwise.

Why does the statistical representation matter so much to some people? I think Horizon Zero Dawn is the most appealing game on the horizon (no pun intended) but the gender of the playable character means absolutely nothing to me.

I don't care that she's female. I wouldn't care if Aloy was a male. Wouldn't care if he/she where black, white, Asian, whatever.

Can't we all just let storytellers tell their stories with the characters they have chosen to create? Why campaign for a certain percentage of a race or gender present across the board just to satisfy some statistical equilibrium? Why does this shit matter and get so much attention?

Just stay ignorant, then. If you don't understand why it's problematic on a multitude of levels that characters are overwhelmingly white, straight men, then maybe don't enter these discussions with your crap.

 

[Hypron]

How about this both of you are wrong. Devs are normal folks like the rest of us, they are just trying to make the best games possible with the goal of fun/satisfaction without any bugs first and foremost in mind rather than thinking about the imaginary genitals/skin color/sexual orientation a character has on screen.

Dev teams have different people in charge of different tasks. The guys in charge of the story, dialogue, and character design are definitely concerned about these aspects of the game because that's their job. It's completely disingenuous to claim the opposite.

 

[A Link to the Past]

It also needs repeating that chalking this up to artistic freedom is ignoring the very corporate interference that happens with most big games.

Also, it's quite annoying to see (and this is just an aside) people who talk about how it would be better if more women got involved. If more women were making games (and they are), they would just have the same roadblocks that all game designers face when they try to make games about women.

 

[mikefrails]

Has anyone mentioned quality over quantity? Dishonored 2 for example seems like it'll be amazing. I would rather play as women in GOOD games. Let the men keep starring in God of War 12 or whatever.

 

[A Link to the Past]

Has anyone mentioned quality over quantity? Dishonored 2 for example seems like it'll be amazing. I would rather play as women in GOOD games. Let the men keep starring in God of War 12 or whatever.

It's not a versus though. Men and women are in good and bad games, men just are in a lot more. It's not like Dishonored 2 will get worse if we got more games that feature women. In fact, if we assume that quality vs. quantity is applicable, the rare time it ever would apply is that because we have so few people making games that star women, that puts more pressure on those designers to make more games starring women, and thereby making their games of less quality.

 

[Famassu]

Has anyone mentioned quality over quantity? Dishonored 2 for example seems like it'll be amazing. I would rather play as women in GOOD games. Let the men keep starring in God of War 12 or whatever.

Considering how often women are objectified & otherwise handled poorly in very stereotypical ways, one can't even say there's much of a quality advantage for female characters either.

And God of Wars are great games.

 

[Shane89]

it's even too much. imho

 

[Two Words]

As this has become a consistent and interesting topic each year I find it perplexing how much people truly care about the gender of the character they are playing. Perhaps this is my privelage. I don't quite understand why it really matters. The video game media for me is there to tell a compelling story. Whether it's Laura Croft's story,Nathan Drake's or a nameless player chosen protagonist I'm there to see and fulfill a journey. The protagonists genitals seem such a minor detail and so far from the crux of the experience. Perhaps I'd feel much differently if I was a female but I can't imagine so, though I will never know.

I'd like to pose a bit of a hypothetical. If tomorrow one awoke and saw that all games moving forward would contain a female lead would you feel any different about gaming, good or bad? Would it really matter to you?

I'm curious if I'm in the minority of GAF or at least this thread in saying that character identity just isn't a big deal to me. I want to play games and experience stories, character gender has no percepted bearing on my enjoyment of a story.

This is a rather insular perspective. I mean, you really don't think you'd have some kind of issue if games features women as the protagonist 95% of the time when there is no choice? You really think you wouldn't think "man, it would be nice if we could have more men represented in games."

 

[A Link to the Past]

it's even too much. imho

You know what they say about bad opinions

you have one

This is a rather insular perspective. I mean, you really don't think you'd have some kind of issue if games features women as the protagonist 95% of the time when there is no choice? You really think you wouldn't think "man, it would be nice if we could have more men represented in games."

The problem is that a lot of people who claim to not care about this kind of stuff, they also claim that they wouldn't care in that kind of hypothetical scenario, as if they know how it would be if they grew up with games that don't star people of their race and/or gender

 

[Wollan]

Horizon seems pro-feministic. The main character being a strong non-dolled-up woman, the first village leader being a female, the deity being a goddess etc.

 

[DesertFox]

Just stay ignorant, then. If you don't understand why it's problematic on a multitude of levels that characters are overwhelmingly white, straight men, then maybe don't enter these discussions with your crap.

Yup, cuz if someone disagrees with you then they're ignorant. Your debate skills are impeccable!

This statistic isn't a product of art, it's a product of explicit erasure of art. Do you think that so few creators want to have a woman as a sole lead of a game because they are more interested in male characters, or do you think that the reason why Ellie almost got nixed from the cover of The Last of Us was also the reason for this statistic?

People like to see characters who reflect their features, and it's rare that it happens. It's very simple, really simple in fact. It's nice to see stories told of people whom you identify with.

Who's to say they're not? You quote one example of Last of Us where a female character was almost left off the cover, and you've applied that to the entire industry pretending that every developer is dying to have a female lead but their mean overlord publishers won't let them? I remember when people used to play video games for fun

 

[Claude Augario]

Some people in this thread would benefit from not asking why the statistical lack of female presentation matters to people, and start asking themselves why people talking about the problem seems to bother them so much.