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[Tasha2k2]

I don't really mind too much but it's nice to be given a choice.

And even then when given the choice depending on the game I play as a male character.

Like, in most of my playthroughs of skyrim i've played as a male character.

From the chart, 52% of games shown at E3 let me play as a female protagonist and 90% of them let me play as a male protagonist. Ideally the numbers would be more closely similar (like 75% letting me play as female and 75% letting me play as male) but this doesn't seem too bad really considering that a lot of the games announced were sequels for games with male protagonists (really really wish Link in the new Zelda was a girl though)

 

[spazchicken]

I updated the title to reflect that they were referring to exclusively female leads and added the following chart to the OP:

She didn't list the games so I couldn't double check them.

Next time maybe they could use a color scheme that isn't so close together.

The colorblind would appreciate it.

 

[Surface of Me]

I think there's problem a lot riding on Horizon in that area because Tomb Raider underperformed, Mirror's Edge tanked, and i'm almost certain that Dishonored 2 isn't going to do all that well. And if that does happen it'll mean three big AAA games with female leads will have underperformed or outright tanked.

I cant imagine Horizon tanking. It might not set the world on fire, but that's moreso because Q1 next year looking insanely crowded.

 

[SaucyJack]

I hope Horizon: Zero Dawn will be a big seller to show publishers that female protagonists can be successful.

We all know female protagonists CAN be successful it's not something that's needed to be shown.

We've known this since at least 1996.

 

[Tacklemacain]

I study game development/design and from 30+ students, only 2 are female. We just need more female developers and not female characters, written by male writers, who already have enough problems writing something good.

 

[Aquillion]

I'll add the "I'm ok with [ Female / LGBT+ / minority character ] as long as they are well written." / "They shouldn't be shoehorned in." type arguments we also see come up way too much during these kinds of discussions.

Yes, this. Why is a badly-written female or LGBT character worse than a badly-written straight male character? Why is it all right for a developer to shoehorn in a badly-written straight white male character because they think it's what will appeal to their audience, but not all right for them to include a female or LGBT character for the same reason?

I'll also point out that you have people saying "they have so many male characters because the audience is mostly male and that's what the market wants" while also saying "if they include female or LGBT or minority characters, it's just shoehorning them in for marketing purposes." It's pandering and shoehorning when developers cater to other markets, whereas when they're catering to you it just feels natural and normal, etc etc.

Taken together, what those arguments boil down to is "I want all the devs catering to me, not to anyone else."

I think the issue is that devs who actually think about this stuff, and consider how to be inclusive, will let you choose your gender.

That's not always possible, though. Sometimes you want well-defined protagonists. And sometimes the character's gender is actually important to the story they're trying to tell (GTA 5 and FFXV, say.) There are some games where changing the character's gender doesn't matter so much or where it's possible to adapt (SR4, Mass Effect, etc), but that can't work everywhere.

And... you don't really see many games focused on what it means to be a woman in the way GTA 5 and FFXV focus on masculinity, even though studies have constantly shown that there's a decent market for it. (Even if you go by the most conservative figure for desktop gamers, and assume that there's no way to draw some of those mobile gamers to the desktop if you make something that aggressively appeals to them -- which I don't think is a given -- that's still a lot of people, and they're people who will be eager to buy your game because there are few alternatives.)

But in a business sense, the game industry is inherently conservative, since games cost a huge amount of money and take huge amounts of time to make. Nobody wants to make anything remotely risky. This is bad in ways that go beyond representation.

 

[Diferentigual]

Who cares. Christ, I just want to enjoy my games without political correctness bleeding into them like everything else

 

[Lime]

I study game development/design and from 30+ students, only 2 are female. We just need more female developers and not female characters, written by male writers, who already have enough problems writing something good.

Mine was more like 60 to 40 in a crowd of 120.

 

[Tacklemacain]

Mine was more like 60 to 40 in a crowd of 120.

In which country do you study? I have the feeling there arent as many female gamers in Germany as in America. Outside of College, i only know one gilr in rl who plays video games other then mobile or Wii Sports.

 

[Twiforce]

Who cares. Christ, I just want to enjoy my games without political correctness bleeding into them like everything else

Would you please define 'political correctness' for us?

 

[Llyrwenne]

Who cares. Christ, I just want to enjoy my games without political correctness bleeding into them like everything else

Political correctness? What does that have to do with anything? People want more diversity and better representation in games and you waving that off as 'political correctness' tells us more about your ignorance on these issues than anything else. There are plenty of posts out there explaining why this is an issue and why people care. I suggest you look those up and read them to get a better understanding of why this issue is being discussed.

 

[SarusGray]

We all know female protagonists CAN be successful it's not something that's needed to be shown.

We've known this since at least 1996.

A super sexualized female? Sure. How about a female that isn't super sexualized? Regardless I have high hopes for horizon

 

[Lime]

In which country do you study? I have the feeling there arent as many female gamers in Germany as in America. Outside of College, i only know one gilr in rl who plays video games other then mobile or Wii Sports.

Denmark.

Tons of people of different genders across so many different ages play games, whether it is your run-of-the-mill AAA or some PC strategy game or some mobile title.

 

[Lys Skygge]

Who cares. Christ, I just want to enjoy my games without political correctness bleeding into them like everything else

Its an important conversation. If you don't like it, than don't participate.

 

[spazchicken]

A super sexualized female? Sure. How about a female that isn't super sexualized? Regardless I have high hopes for horizon

There are more Metroid games than I can remember.

 

[Dangansona]

The lack of female characters has been a problem for video games, there is no arguing that. However, this year actually shows a lot of promise of things getting better and it frustrates me that Feminist Frequency continues its legacy of cherrypicking and creating unreasonable narrow criteria to match their bias instead of praising the actual work done by developers.

Edit: Just realized Spidey said something very similar on the front page. Wow. Oh well.

 

[Tasha2k2]

There are more Metroid games than I can remember.

Seeing Samus in a bikini is a reward for playing the game well.

 

[Basketball]

A super sexualized female? Sure. How about a female that isn't super sexualized? Regardless I have high hopes for horizon

A variety of female protags are welcome regardless of labels people put on them. We know females can become icons without toeing the line of what is progressive in
[Current Year]

 

[Applecot]

Would you please define 'political correctness' for us?

I guess that's where the topic goes a bit grey. If the only games that came out were games about medieval combat would it be okay to have a 100% male lead? It's more historically accurate but not really representative in a modern sense.

I previous post mentioned the games with female leads underperforming: it's not a trivial consideration. If we suddenly threw out a bunch of bad games with female leads what implications would that have for the future of female representation in games?

it frustrates me that Feminist Frequency continues its legacy

It's too anecdotal. As a person who deals in evidence based practice (something we often don't as a society) I would have liked more evidence thrown in. Letter to the Editor style would have been nice with a mix of anecdote and evidence.

 

[SarusGray]

There are more Metroid games than I can remember.

I've never played metroid but isnt her gender not revealed till like the end of the game?

 

[SmokedMeat]

Edit, half of PC RPG players are women. Enough with the Candy Crush/ Facebook bullshit

Plenty of females play CoD on console, yet that's always considered a "dude bro" series.

 

[Doop]

Who cares. Christ, I just want to enjoy my games without political correctness bleeding into them like everything else

I honestly don't get what this mindset is. Are you expecting games to suddenly be worse if a woman were to star, or what? What is the political correctness in this scenario? Is something about this thread preventing you from enjoying you favorite games?

 

[StoveOven]

Interesting study, although I do wish she provided a list of the games somewhere. I'd also like to see this study redone with the N/A games taken out and the both games split into male and female depending on which character is the focus of the marketing.

 

[Jamaro85]

Maybe I'm living in a cave, but those RPG numbers are a shock to me. If they are representative of the greater population I find that very interesting. I somehow find it hard to believe that the majority of people playing Fallout, The Witcher, Dragon Age, FF and other JRPGs, CRPGs, etc. are female.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Maybe I'm living in a cave, but those numbers are a shock to me. If they are representative of the greater population I find that very interesting. I somehow find it hard to believe that the majority of people playing Fallout, The Witcher, Dragon Age, FF and other JRPGs, CRPGs, etc. are female.

Bioware has often noted to their great pull with female gamers. They are one developer you can honestly say caters to that demographic. Also one of the few series I personally talked with girls about.

 

[Maedhros]

I honestly don't get what this mindset is. Are you expecting games to suddenly be worse if a woman were to star, or what? What is the political correctness in this scenario? Is something about this thread preventing you from enjoying you favorite games?

I guess he's just sick of people complaining about this, in truth.

Let people ask, complain, criticize. The industry will decide if they'll hear the complaints or stick to their vision.

As long as it doesn't end as some kind of law where developers should make games with female protagonists, I'm ok with these complaints.

Anyway, it's more about making the developers aware that they could change how they approach their choice of protagonists, I guess. Also, I don't agree with people who want to have stablished characters have a female counterpart just because.

 

[g11]

I agree that The Verge's headline is clickbait-y. But even when you look past that, there are other numbers that simply do not lie: in 41% of games, you can only play as a male. In 3% of games, you can only play as a female. I don't think anyone can reasonably deny that's far too large of a gap.

And I totally agree. If you look back somewhere in the thread, I said even without FF limiting it to press conferences and excluding games with a character creator, the amount of games where the option to play a woman is still low which is why I don't understand the need to artificially make it seem lower by excluding games where playing a woman is an option.

 

[AlimNassor]

FF and ANita are very glass half empty and rightfully so. I'm more of a it's improving. Baby steps but, it's improving. 10 years ago I would have said Gay marriage was impossible or LGBT acceptance was unfathomable and now? Things are improving and and the white straight male hegemony is slowly eroding away.

 

[Diferentigual]

Would you please define 'political correctness' for us?

the fact this is even a thread implies it is insensitive

 

[socksfelloff]

Sometimes I swear I'm the only person who doesn't give 1 shit whether someone is male, female, black, white, yellow, gay, trans, christian, muslum, Buddhist,athiest etc

IDGAF

This goes for anything in life.

edit: I'm from Canada and we generally don't waste our time worrying about this stuff.

.

 

[Diferentigual]

I honestly don't get what this mindset is. Are you expecting games to suddenly be worse if a woman were to star, or what? What is the political correctness in this scenario? Is something about this thread preventing you from enjoying you favorite games?

no, the point is that it shouldn't matter. I'm Hispanic, imagine if I made a thread about lack of Hispanics in games. It's a silly conversation. The thread implies discrimination, etc. IMO this is an issue in a lot of areas- art, games, etc. Let's enjoy these games and stop looking for trigger issues. There are great characters in ever race, gender, etc.

 

[Diferentigual]

I honestly don't get what this mindset is. Are you expecting games to suddenly be worse if a woman were to star, or what? What is the political correctness in this scenario? Is something about this thread preventing you from enjoying you favorite games?

Sometimes I swear I'm the only person who doesn't give 1 shit whether someone is male, female, black, white, yellow, gay, trans, christian, muslum, Buddhist,athiest etc

IDGAF

This goes for anything in life.

edit: I'm from Canada and we generally don't waste our time worrying about this stuff.

.

I agree. I don't even think about it

 

[diaspora]

Plenty of females play CoD on console, yet that's always considered a "dude bro" series.

To be fair that might be due to the whole 12 year old kids on XBL thing.

 

[g11]

Sometimes I swear I'm the only person who doesn't give 1 shit whether someone is male, female, black, white, yellow, gay, trans, christian, muslum, Buddhist,athiest etc

IDGAF

This goes for anything in life.

edit: I'm from Canada and we generally don't waste our time worrying about this stuff.

.

Nah, you're just part of the silent majority.

 

[Diferentigual]

I guess he's just sick of people complaining about this, in truth.

Let people ask, complain, criticize. The industry will decide if they'll hear the complaints or stick to their vision.

As long as it doesn't end as some kind of law where developers should make games with female protagonists, I'm ok with these complaints.

Anyway, it's more about making the developers aware that they could change how they approach their choice of protagonists, I guess. Also, I don't agree with people who want to have stablished characters have a female counterpart just because.

To me, it's a non-issue. I play games for the experience, and have never cared about the gender or race of the character. As long as it's well done.

 

[diaspora]

Maybe I'm living in a cave, but those RPG numbers are a shock to me. If they are representative of the greater population I find that very interesting. I somehow find it hard to believe that the majority of people playing Fallout, The Witcher, Dragon Age, FF and other JRPGs, CRPGs, etc. are female.

Hoo boy, I can 1000% believe it.

 

[Persona7]

Maybe I'm living in a cave, but those RPG numbers are a shock to me. If they are representative of the greater population I find that very interesting. I somehow find it hard to believe that the majority of people playing Fallout, The Witcher, Dragon Age, FF and other JRPGs, CRPGs, etc. are female.

yeah, you are out of touch and definitely living in a cave.

 

[El Topo]

edit: I'm from Canada and we generally don't waste our time worrying about this stuff.

Didn't your prime minister even enforce a quota for his cabinet?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/justin-trudeau-s-cabinet-gender-quota-raises-debate-1.3303356
Miraculously, despite not actually worrying or caring about these things, somehow women are massively underrepresented in your parliament.
http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/women-politics/

 

[royox]

I've never played metroid but isnt her gender not revealed till like the end of the game?

That's true for the first Metroid. In any other 2D metroid Samus real body is exposed when she dies.

After the first Metroid it's not a secret that Samus is a girl.

 

[Diferentigual]

Its an important conversation. If you don't like it, than don't participate.

I guess we have different ideas of what are important conversations about games. Shitty ports, pre-oders, lack of care about the consumer are important. What may very well be the game of E3, Horizon, has a female protagonist. Maybe focusing on the recent steps in this direction- T Raider et al- would be more productive.

 

[Doop]

I guess we have different ideas of what are important conversations about games. Shitty ports, pre-oders, lack of care about the consumer are important. What may very well be the game of E3, Horizon, has a female protagonist. Maybe focusing on the recent steps in this direction- T Raider et al- would be more productive.

Most problems like this don't get solved by ignoring bad examples. Rather than sweep this shit under the rug, I think it should be out in the open. Even if you come away from it thinking "who cares?" you were another set of eyes, you at least considered the issue, which is the point of this.

 

[Lys Skygge]

I guess we have different ideas of what are important conversations about games. Shitty ports, pre-oders, lack of care about the consumer are important. What may very well be the game of E3, Horizon, has a female protagonist. Maybe focusing on the recent steps in this direction- T Raider et al- would be more productive.

Find a thread that's dedicated to an issue you care about then. No need to shit up this one.

 

[royox]

Most problems like this don't get solved by ignoring bad examples. Rather than sweep this shit under the rug, I think it should be out in the open. Even if you come away from it thinking "who cares?" you were another set of eyes, you at least considered the issue, which is the point of this.

Are you saying games with male main Character are Bad games?

 

[Diferentigual]

Find a thread that's dedicated to an issue you care about then. No need to shit up this one.

I'm simply stating my opinion. Conversations have many sides, friend. It's good to disagree. Don't be so sensitive

 

[RadicalVelocity]

I guess we have different ideas of what are important conversations about games. Shitty ports, pre-oders, lack of care about the consumer are important. What may very well be the game of E3, Horizon, has a female protagonist. Maybe focusing on the recent steps in this direction- T Raider et al- would be more productive.

That's what led to this very thread.

A lack of care for about half of the consumer base.

 

[Smellycat]

I did an analysis that shows that 0% of the games featured at E3 keynotes, at the 20 minute mark, featured a female protagonist!!!!

 

[Diferentigual]

Find a thread that's dedicated to an issue you care about then. No need to shit up this one.

That's what led to this very thread.

A lack of care for about half of the consumer base.

I'm not sure it really is half the consumer base. More like the loud minority frequently found in the interwebz

 

[A Link to the Past]

Who cares. Christ, I just want to enjoy my games without political correctness bleeding into them like everything else

And this thread is stopping you... how?

I'm simply stating my opinion. Conversations have many sides, friend. It's good to disagree. Don't be so sensitive

No, you're explicitly not participating in a conversation when your opening line is how sick you are about this conversation existing. Please don't pretend that you're here to constructively debate this, not when you came in talking about how this thread was ruining your games.

 

[Jamaro85]

yeah, you are out of touch and definitely living in a cave.

I'll admit I don't have the greatest pulse on this subject. It's just one of those things that you may find difficult to believe but can end up being way wrong about.

 

[SmoothRunningGun]

The best game did: Horizon ZD.