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[Griss]

Right, I think when we boil down this whole topic, the actual work Anita puts out is vastly less relevant than just getting the conversation started and letting the reaction show that the audience is actually notably interested in this topic.

It simultaneously gets developers to think about the topic and gives the developers who were already thinking about it ammo to actually act.

Like in 2010 we had Activision telling Treyarch:



In 2015, you can select your gender for the main character of Call of Duty and they get full voice acting and cutscenes and everything. The classes in multiplayer even have pre-set genders (or non-genders for things like robots) as well as they're actual characters.

Yeah, I'm in the weird position where I find the work Anita puts out to be almost uniformly shallow and intellectually deficient but find the results of her (and others') advocacy for greater gender representation to be a wonderful result for the games industry, as well as for me personally as a player. It's a strange feeling.

Basically, I can't stand to read her but I'm delighted she exists.

This was the E3 where if you were going in to grind the "not enough female main characters in gaming!" axe, you had to sort of mumble "sorry" politely on your way out.

Haha, if Anita gets any more successful at this advocacy lark, she'll talk her way out of a job/cultural position.

 

[CalamityPixel]

So 55% out of a possible 87% since we can't count the N/A which I assume are things like racing games that have no protagonist.

That seems pretty diverse to me

I swear I've read somewhere that you can choose your gender in Forza Motorsport 6.

 

[HK-47]

Bizarre. Games like Mass Effect, Fallout, etc are gender-neutral in nature until you actually pick the sex of your character.

Sure but the marketing relies heavily on the male Shepard. We didnt even get a canonical female until 3.

 

[benicillin]

I take it we're ignoring the bits where conflict in drama is supposedly part of patriarchy and therefore even Fury Road is anti-feminist then?

I don't agree with everything she says but she's certainly less inflammatory with her opinions than the people who often respond to her and amp everything up to 11.

 

[Auctopus]

She lost me when she said Dishonored 2 shouldn't have given players the option to play as Corvo in addition to Emily. I love the idea of playing as Emily, and I love the idea of playing as Corvo as well. And they play differently. Developers found a way to let everyone play as whatever they want, but you want them to take away options? That doesn't make sense to me.

And her "exclusively female view" argument doesn't necessarily apply because we don't know how different Emily's version of the game will be.

It shouldn't make sense to anyone. If this is about equality then Dishonoured in her mind has provided the perfect game - turns out equality isn't enough.

Also, 46% giving you the choice seems pretty good to me. More male protagonists than female is going to happen purely because of the market.

 

[Mesoian]

This honestly looks like a pretty good ratio to me.

When the winds of change seem to indicate that those numbers will probably closer to equal next year then they were this year, yeah, it's something to be pleased with.

When you see publishers starting to give on that stern mindset of "no girls, it won't sell if there are girls in it", you know big change is happening. When 5 of the games on my Day 1 list are games that exclusively star female protagonists, you know things are shifting for the better.

 

[neogaffer1]

Which, from both a gameplay and narrative standpoint, sounds perfectly fine.

Also just found out that

Spoiler

there's one campaign that both characters share, but while the final objectives and the setting for each mission is the same each character gets there in different ways and interacts in the world in different ways. Sounds like how in Dishonored, Corvo could interact with NPCs and do side missions, and each character has different NPCs to interact with and different side missions.

 

[Mask]

Why is the "both genders playable" part greyed out? Wouldn't handing choice to the player be a good thing? I know I certainly enjoy any game with decent character creators more.

I don't know. I don't pay attention to Anita anymore. More and more, it seems like she picks and chooses what is relevant in her eyes, and ignores other relevant things. Like this, having the choice of which gender you want to be is nothing but good, stops people from throwing hissy fits if they don't like being forced into a binary choice, and allows people to be what they want.

 

[Sesha]

I wonder how many of the games with male characters were from established franchises with an established lead, like Uncharted.

 

[ZeroTheShadow]

I really dislike feminists that do the whole "violence is masculine, non-violence/nuturing is feminine" narrative. Violence and abuse and manipulating others is more a human problem than a gender problem, gender is just tied up into it.

Human problem huh? Tell that to the poor mice my cat brings back.

 

[stump sock]

Choice isnt always a good thing.

yeah, unless they're writing entire games from the ground-up twice over, it can impact a lot of themes and nuances that would otherwise be the realm of a carefully crafted character

still, the ability to play as a woman in somewhere between 55 and 68% of those games sounds pretty awesome to me

 

[prwxv3]

She lost me when she said Dishonored 2 shouldn't have given players the option to play as Corvo in addition to Emily. I love the idea of playing as Emily, and I love the idea of playing as Corvo as well. And they play differently. Developers found a way to let everyone play as whatever they want, but you want them to take away options? That doesn't make sense to me.

And her "exclusively female view" argument doesn't necessarily apply because we don't know how different Emily's version of the game will be.

That comment on dishonorable 2 was one of the dumbest things I have heard in quite a while.

 

[Pilgrimzero]

I'm usually cool with her opinions and agree with a good amount of them but that last couple seems like she has her head up her butt.

This one and the one about violence in games. I believe she was talking about Doom. Well, it's Doom what is he supposed to do, offer the demons a flower?

It seems to me that she won't be happy unless a game is only about a woman and involves no violence. So a puzzle game then?

And again, usually I love her stuff but she seems to be getting further out there.

 

[Mesoian]

Yeah, I'm in the weird position where I find the work Anita puts out to be almost uniformly shallow and intellectually deficient but find the results of her (and others') advocacy for greater gender representation to be a wonderful result for the games industry, as well as for me personally as a player. It's a strange feeling.

Basically, I can't stand to read her but I'm delighted she exists.

I don't think she does a particularly good job at what she does, but she's the only one doing it, so until there's someone better, I'll keep watching her stuff, uphold her good arguments, and condemn her bad ones.

That's our job. Nothing more.

 

[NEOPARADIGM]

That's a very weird way to twist what was in the OP. I fail to see where it's said that gender choice is bad.

Not bad so much as irrelevant:

"As long as games continue to give us significantly more stories centered on men than on women, they will continue to reinforce the idea that female experiences are secondary to male ones."

So it's about the story more than anything.

 

[Pineconn]

I don't have anything heavy to say, but put me with the crowd that thinks lumping Yoshi with the male characters group is just asinine.

 

[addik]

Rereading the portion where they tackle the lack of women representation in video games, I think one should also talk about how male-dominated the industry is. While yes, we can technically create games with exclusively-female characters that portray the different issues a woman faces regarding her gender and gender notions, it might come off as shallow, or they might be written with a male perspective. That's not to say that men cannot write convincing female characters (see Life is Strange, Dreamfall: Chapters, etc.), but we really cannot fully diversify gender representation in video gaming when we cannot even have a diverse field of programmers and video game designers.

Oh, and I hate the fact the team says that the choices of characters do not have diversifying gender identities when we are simply studying these representations through trailers and demonstrations. Yes, I agree, there is a lack of gender identities represented in video games, but let's not use previews of unfinished games as proof. Some of these games might come out and surprise us.

 

[mclem]

The article mentions Dishonored 2 as the only one shown at the various press conferences that did this.

I wonder how much that's an intent to buck trends, and how much simply because Emily is the newcomer (to gameplay, of course, not story!)? Still, at least it's something!

 

[Mesoian]

Sure but the marketing relies heavily on the male Shepard. We didnt even get a canonical female until 3.

That girl ain't MY Shepard.

 

[lazygecko]

Skyrim, at least from what I've seen. That's pretty anecdotal though.

I haven't seen a female protagonist depicted anywhere in Bethesda's promotion and marketing.

I honestly think their depiction of the male nord Dovahkiin for the promotion doesn't really jive with the game. This is a game where you can play any sex out of 10 different races, and the marketing ough to reflect that. They didn't have any poster child for Morrowind or Oblivion and that worked out just fine.

 

[HK-47]

Human problem huh? Tell that to the poor mice my cat brings back.

Cats and mice dont have the awareness to be bothered by it.

 

[Caronte]

I don't understand this perspective at all.

Why would you make your gaming choices based on the sex of the character, rather than, I don't know...the quality of the game?

It helps with immersion for some people.

 

[itsgreen]

Or 68% of titles don't require you to play as a man...

 

[DoktorEvil]

I really dislike feminists that do the whole "violence is masculine, non-violence/nuturing is feminine" narrative. Violence and abuse and manipulating others is more a human problem than a gender problem, gender is just tied up into it.

I'm curious as to how loose her definitions of "combat" and "violence" were that she stretched this graph.

I could understand when something like Doom footage is being shown, hyper-violent as fuck, but what about the game teasers and the trailers without gameplay footage?

Would The Last Guardian be considered too violent?

 

[neogaffer1]

I wonder how much that's an intent to buck trends, and how much simply because Emily is the newcomer (to gameplay, of course, not story!)? Still, at least it's something!

They made it pretty clear that they want Emily to be the main character of the game, and Corvo's there because they wanted to explore improvements on the original game's abilities while still introducing new abilities with Emily.

 

[Phu]

55% of games allow you to play as a female [Either and Female].
78% of games allow you to play as a male [Either and Male].

By focusing on only the games that allow you to play exclusively as a male or exclusively as a female you cut out 59% of the games shown [from the N/A and Either groups].

The N/A category doesn't really play a role here but it seems strange to push the Either group aside and look for Solo Female games. I think the Either group can still play a role in countering the idea of 'male by default' and I don't think that's something that has actually been researched enough to act like it would result in a zero sum change.

 

[Cheat Code]

I want to see the list she has of male characters, female characters, choice characters and N/A characters.

If she's throwing in Yoshi with male characters I wouldn't be surprised if she threw in Cuphead as well.

 

[Caronte]

Sure but the marketing relies heavily on the male Shepard. We didnt even get a canonical female until 3.

Why would they market the game with female Shepard when most people will play as the male one.

 

[ZeroTheShadow]

Cats and mice dont have the awareness to be bothered by it.

You don't get it do you? Violence and abuse is natural. It's part of nature. A cat toys with a mouse, pokes it's eyes out and watches it squirm for it's own amusement before killing it, eating 1/8th if it because it decides it doesn't like how it tastes, and leaving it on a door step. Trying to say it's a human problem is completely ridiculous.

 

[HariKari]

She lost me when she said Dishonored 2 shouldn't have given players the option to play as Corvo in addition to Emily. I love the idea of playing as Emily, and I love the idea of playing as Corvo as well. And they play differently. Developers found a way to let everyone play as whatever they want, but you want them to take away options? That doesn't make sense to me.

It's not enough for one side to gain. The other side has to lose somehow.

 

[Sephzilla]

That 46% either is pretty big to me

 

[kewlbot]

i see that the majority of the games let you choose your character's gender
im guess its easier to write a gender ambiguous story than one exclusively about a female protagonist
that and its more likely to succeed
i dont blame em, it's the safest route

 

[Zakalwe]

Why would they market the game with female Shepard when most people will play as the male one.

...because most people play as the male one.

We need perceptions to shift, and to do this we can start instigating physical change to help guide that perception.

 

[Sophia]

By and large girls and women are expected to project themselves onto male characters, but boys and men are not encouraged to project themselves onto or identify with female characters.

Yeah... I'm not really sure how Feminist Frequency got to that, but I'm not seeing it.

It also seems a little bit dishonest to not count the games that allow for a choice. :\

 

[SinShep]

Why would you make your gaming choices based on the sex of the character, rather than, I don't know...the quality of the game?

As a male, I prefer playing a male protagonist rather than a female one. It's not an absolute, but I still prefer it.

...because most people play as the male one.

We need perceptions to shift, and to do this we can start instigating physical change to help guide that perception.

Marketing isn't done to shift perceptions. It's done to sell more games.

 

[HK-47]

Why would they market the game with female Shepard when most people will play as the male one.

Why did they change their minds?

 

[Caronte]

...because most people play as the male one.

We need perceptions to shift, and to do this we can start instigating physical change to help guide that perception.

No. What EA needs is to make money, not to change society. Marketing the game with male Shepard is the obvious choice.

Why did they change their minds?

Releasing a couple trailers in Youtube made in 5 minutes is not changing their minds.

 

[Freaking Limit]

Additionally, we are well aware that Yoshi’s gender has been discussed and debated, but Nintendo uses male pronouns when referring to Yoshi, so for our purposes here, Yoshi’s Woolly World (which looks delightful!) is classified as a male-led game.

So does that mean Steel Diver was a female-led game?

Seriously? -_- They really should exclude non-humanoids.

They probably should, otherwise any game about ships or cars are female-led, which is absolutely silly.

 

[prwxv3]

She really needs to stop bringing violence into her narrative. It's clear she has no idea what she is talking about (complaints about violence in fucking DOOM and Fallout). There are plenty of games without graphic violence.

 

[Pie and Beans]

Haha, if Anita gets any more successful at this advocacy lark, she'll talk her way out of a job/cultural position.

Fantastically most of the titles would have been in dev for 3 years if not more, which of course predates Anita's time on stage.

This is of course now when we see the switching of gears to tackling 'masculine violence' rather than gender equality, and the sort of strange swerving drunken-drive route her convoy is engaging in stance-wise.

 

[Gbraga]

I wonder how many of the games with male characters were from established franchises with an established lead, like Uncharted.

This is also something very interesting to me, someone should count, I'm lazy.

 

[blackjaw]

This is unfortunate. She purposefully put the N/A games in there to lower the percentage of female led games, skewing her whole data sample and really rendering her argument null in my opinion.

I wish she would fix this and then celebrate the work that devs have done to give you a choice for male/female and even in how many great single player female stories that have/are coming out.

Also disappointed in the attempt to link boys=violence girls=non-violence. That's not even shady science its just stereotyping gamers, attempting to drive a wedge between us. Also, I have several female friends that would probably take offense to that who play plenty of games that she would consider "violent" because they are fun.

 

[Devil]

I don't think quotas should be taken to seriously with this and there is no actual need to have an exactly equal distribution when it comes to the protagonists.

I actually thought the results in OP's graphics were rather positively surprising. It shows we're on a good way and that female protagonists are increasingly welcomed. All I ask for is some healthy variety in race and gender now and then, not complete parity.

 

[Gunmonkey36]

Interesting article. She presents the data in a way that benefits her stances as probably anyone would, but at least all the data is visible in the graph. I'd like to see a list of the games and what category they were placed in.

I'm a bit confused why the combat survey/statistics was placed in this article. It seems a bit off topic for an article titled Gender Breakdown of Games Showcased at E3 2015

 

[Sylverstone14]

The "either" stat is actually pretty good, considering that there are more offerings to play as a female protagonist.

Focusing on the exclusive just seems to downplay that statistic.

 

[kewlbot]

I'm usually cool with her opinions and agree with a good amount of them but that last couple seems like she has her head up her butt.

This one and the one about violence in games. I believe she was talking about Doom. Well, it's Doom what is he supposed to do, offer the demons a flower?

It seems to me that she won't be happy unless a game is only about a woman and involves no violence. So a puzzle game then?

And again, usually I love her stuff but she seems to be getting further out there.

i agree
its becoming pretty tough to agree with her recently
i support what she stands for, but i cant agree with some things she's been saying

 

[Stone Ocean]

She really needs to stop bringing violence into her narrative. It's clear she has no idea what she is talking about (complaints about violence in fucking DOOM and Fallout). There are plenty of games without graphic violence.

Yeah. I highly dislike her work but I respect what she's trying to accomplish, but the violence comments are just... keep your day job.

 

[oti]

Games in which you can cross dress: 1

Spoiler

Triforce Heroes

 

[Zakalwe]

The "either" stat is actually pretty good, considering that there are more offerings to play as a female protagonist.

Focusing on the exclusive just seems to downplay that statistic.

There is still a large imbalance in the exclusive games.

 

[Infinite]

OP isn't.

FemFreq seems to though.

If anything, the fact that 50% of games allow for gender choice is something that should be celebrated and encouraged. This air of, "yeah but what about female only games" seems dismissive of real positive change.

Hmm. I guess it would be. But allow me to say this. When I'm playing monster hunter 4 ultimate I do have the choice of choosing a man or woman to play the game. I typically chose a female avatar because that's just how I roll. Anyway, I notice that the game even when playing as a female treats my character as a male regardless. All of the interactions done with other characters in the game are conducted under the assumption that my character is a male despite existing in that world as a female. This strikes me as odd. If Fem Freq is trying to make the point that "game worlds can teach it's players how to empathize with other points of view" then I don't see how monster hunter 4 would be in support of that despite technically allowing me to play as something other than male