Honest question.
How many games with starting males are actually "written characters" that couldn't be replaced with a woman?
I feel like most of the characters, even if you can't choose their gender, are avatars that could easily be swapped for the other gender (include race and sexuality here as well) since they don't tell "a man's story".
I'm quoting someone from the first page (sorry I just copy pasted)
This is what I mean. I guess Metroid is not a "woman's" story then? (only played till Prime)
If Samus was a man the narrative would've stayed the same, right?
I don't feel Horizon is telling a "woman's" story either. But a "hero/avatar/our" story.
And please don't get me wrong, I understand what you mean but I thought this was worth posting.
Im not entirely sure on what you mean? Do you mean to imply that any written character can just be gender-swapped without any changes in writing and it would have no effect on the story? If so, Id say that that is wrong on multiple levels. Lets pick five male playable characters from recent games;
( left to right: Chris from Until Dawn, Joel from The Last of Us, Michael from Grand Theft Auto V, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Booker DeWitt from Bioshock Infinite )
Change their gender and you change how their actions and relationships in their stories are perceived by the audience. This goes for pretty much any other character too.
This is different from what we see in most games with a gender toggle, where one mostly neutral / genderless character is written and then male or female skins are applied to them. Most of those games do not have the character actually influencing the story. The player character in Fallout 4 for example does not exhibit any real character traits that influence the story; the story is shaped by player action / player choice, not by the character itself. These characters have no real agency; they are shaped and guided by the player. Written characters are not. Written characters are observed and perceived by the player, not shaped by them. This is why we can have a discussion on the morality of Joels actions at the end of The Last of Us but not about the morality of the player character nuking a town in Fallout. Joel is a character that made certain decision that lead to that final action while the fallout player character is completely controlled by the player that could have made any decision for any reason.
Id also like to discuss your use of mans story and womans story a bit; you seem to interpret them as stories that need to specifically deal with the gender of the player character in a big way through major themes incorporated in the main story. I would disagree with that. Any story where you play exclusively as a male character is a mans story just as any game where you play exclusively as a female character is a womans story. Those are the lenses that you perceive the story through. Metroid is a womans story because it stars Samus. That her gender is not a major - or even minor - plot element in most of the stories ( *shoots nasty glare at Other M in the corner* ) does not make her story not a womans story.
Specifically on Horizon: Zero Dawn; I dont really see how you can think of Horizon as an our / avatar story at this point. From what we have seen so far, Aloy is very much her own character with her own motivation. She is a character with agency.
She decides that she wants answers.
She decides to leave her tribe.
I don't think there's been enough games with minority leads to produce anything statistically significant, sadly. We could go back and forth all day with anecdotes. I'd be willing to bet that some EA executives are looking Mirror's Edge sales and partially blaming it on the main character and non-violent gameplay even though you could make the same case that it wasn't marketed.
But you're right, any remark about potential sales is conjecture. We do have plenty of data on past sales however, which is what executives at publishers use to make business decisions, and the best selling games tend to violent and male-led. Change "risk" to "perceived risk" if it feels more accurate, but the reality is that if publishers thought there was a massive audience for something like a motherhood story, it'd be made.
This is exactly why I will keep pointing this out to people though. There are no current statistics supporting this assumption and there have simply not been enough big new games starring female characters in the last few years to draw any sort of conclusion on our own. The big publishers seem to be stuck in a loop of male executives, male focus testers and pulling in more males. Therefore the the market doesnt want it / developers would be taking a great risk at this point is almost entirely based on assumption and thus not a valid counterpoint in this discussion until we get detailed and recent statistics supporting it.
I used That Dragon Cancer as an example because it's story can be related to by a much larger portion of the population than any given gender or ethnicity and it still struggled to find an audience. Presumably something that spoke directly to women would appeal to fewer people. Also IIRC it was actually covered quite a bit in mainstream press for a game, especially an indie game. I'm pretty sure I remember reading about it in the New York Times and New Yorker, which is impressive for a game with such a small team. I don't see what the fact that it was initially an Ouya exclusive has to do with anything. But like I said, picking apart each other's anecdotes is a waste of time.
I very much disagree with your assessment of That Dragon Cancers reach / accessibility due to the points I already listed and I still fail to see the relevance of this specific game to the overall discussion. I doubt being mentioned in a newspaper contributes any meaningful amount to sales for that specific type of game. So yes, I agree that picking this example further apart is not a productive line of discussion.
When I mentioned "themes" it was in response to you using "fatherhood and father-like relations (The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, God of War, Bioshock Infinite ), relationships from a male player perspective ( Uncharted, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor ), bromances ( Gears of War, Call of Duty, FFXV ) and similar things" as examples. Seems like more than motherhood to me. Maybe I misunderstand.
Then there might be some miscommunication here then. I listed games that have been made / are being made with those themes that were received positively. You said those themes are sadly not financially viable, but all of the games I listed did well / great sales-wise ( FFXV and God of War not yet out of course, but they have been positively received by the press ). Why can similar themes not be explored with a female main character? Why would that make it less viable? This loops back into the unproven the market doesnt want it.