No Female Heroes At Activision? (Gamastura Article)

coopolon said:
The problem is she's a woman with an agenda who has no credibility (775 million) citing anonymous sources to bash a company she's known to dislike. You don't see any reason why some of us would have concerns about trusting this article?

Very few games journalists like Activision, or so it seems.

Many others seem to have fairly low credibility.

But people only seem to be going all "journalistic integrity/credibility" over this article because it's by her. I just haven't seen a similar level of scepticism applied to all of games journalism (not that such close attention would be a bad thing).
 
Jexhius said:
Very few games journalists like Activision, or so it seems.

Many others seem to have fairly low credibility.

But people only seem to be going all "journalistic integrity/credibility" over this article because it's by her. I just haven't seen a similar level of scepticism applied to all of games journalism (not that such close attention would be a bad thing).
No people don't like anonymous sources period. Do you believe all those rumors about games as well that come from anonymous sources?
 
chogidogs said:
you can't blame activision. i heard it cost 775 million dollars to add females to modern games.

neogaf2.jpg
 
Zoe said:
Exactly.

As I said earlier, the focus should be on drawing more girls to gaming.

That's not going to happen until we get more women in the industry. Guys are going to design games they want to play.
 
george_us said:
If you're talking about merely placing female protagonists in genres made for and dominated by males i.e. FPS, then no I don't they wouldn't be expanding their market. If you're talking about creating games in genres specifically DO cater to females then I agree with you 100%.

Well certainly, but I wasn't originally referring to expanding the market, simply Activison's (supposed) claim that female protagonists would shrink their market (which may or may not be true).

But obviously, if they actually wanted to expand they should do as you suggest and carter to females in a serious way rather than throwing in a female lead.

Pimpbaa said:
That's not going to happen until we get more women in the industry. Guys are going to design games they want to play.

Not necessarily. If large corporations see it as a potential market to target they will go after it, whether the games are designed by men or women will not be the concern of the publisher.
 
Jexhius said:
So because Leigh talks to a source they automatically become invalid? Now who has a crazy bias :lol[/suore]

Not at all. But Ms. Alexander has proven to both not be reliable and incredibly biased both on this topic and against this company, so if she has reliable sources, please name them.

[qupte]
It's hilarious that people slam her article because they accuse her of looking through some feminist-centric lens, but then look out through their own anti-Alexander lens and ignore perfectly reasonable claims.

When I read news articles, before deciding whether or not I believe I am being told, I think about who wrote it, what information they had access too, etc. before accepting it as valid and allowing it color my opinions on things.

In this case, what I know about Leigh Alexander: she doesn't get her facts straight, she has a very pro-feminist agenda, and she hates Activision.

So when she writes an article citing anonymous sources (who, if they exist, appear to be developers who have had past conflicts with Activision and thus clearly have an axe to grind) to bash Activision (again, a company she has admitted to hating) on a topic she has strong personal feelings about, I'm going to be a little skeptical.

Is what she is saying true that Activision actively removes female leads from projects because they don't think they will sell? Maybe, maybe not. Unfortunately, I don't have any better of an idea on this topic after her reading her article as I did before, because I have no idea if she's telling the truth.

But people only seem to be going all "journalistic integrity/credibility" over this article because it's by her. I just haven't seen a similar level of scepticism applied to all of games journalism (not that such close attention would be a bad thing).

Well, to be fair, how often do true "journalist" pieces get written in this industry? Gamasutra is one of the only places where you find them. There's not much to get upset over when reading previews or press release paraphrasing. Which is why it's a crying shame she's made such a point of completely discrediting herself because she's one of the few people in this industry actually doing stuff.
 
Zoe said:
Exactly.

As I said earlier, the focus should be on drawing more girls to gaming. I couldn't care less if Master Chief was a woman--I'm not going to be playing Halo anyway.
That's a separate issue for me, I think. I want more for female protagonists for my own personal tastes, not necessarily because I feel it'll recruit more female gamers into playing action-heavy genres.
 
2San said:
From the things I've read about her she doesn't come off as a good source. If a gamedev himself would have said you might have point. I don't go for the whole anonymous source thing.

Why not? Negative information from insiders is generally going to come from anonymous sources. Do you think her sources were lying?
 
coopolon said:
When I read news articles, before deciding whether or not I believe I am being told, I think about who wrote it, what information they had access too, etc. before accepting it as valid and allowing it color my opinions on things.

That's certainly a reasonable way to think but

coopolon said:
because I have no idea if she's telling the truth.

I'd hope that even if she was extremely biased in one direction, she wouldn't go as far to outright lie.
 
2San said:
Even then Activision is just doing what they think is the best course of action to sell those games. I can hardly fault them for that. I'm just pointing out this isn't as big of a problem as you guys make it out to be. Since in the end of the they you don't really care.

Go ahead and not buy their games. If enough people follow your path, Activision might change their ways.

This issue in isolation isn't my favorite cause or anything, but I'm not sure how you can say, given the information in the article, that things are the way they are solely because developers aren't choosing to do anything about it. There are more complicated pressures out there that many teams can't overcome, as this article points out. When it comes to teams with creative freedom, some choose not to have major female characters, and some (such as Valve) do.

There was a study of MMO characters referenced by a poster earlier that indicated that many male characters are okay with playing as females, and many females don't want to play as males. MMO social dynamics affect those choices a lot, but I think that this, combined with the existence of multiple successful counterexamples of successful games with female protagonists, indicates that the market exists.

Activision may or may not come around, but until then, I'll buy games like Bayonetta, Mirror's Edge, and Left 4 Dead. I'm not sure what your evidence is that I, or others posting, don't actually care. As I said before, what are you expecting? Protests in the streets?
 
smh at the people in this thread who think "feminist" is a negative quailty, by the way, as though the OP was some sort of Dworkinesque screed or the SCUM manifesto.
 
Jexhius said:
I'd hope that even if she was extremely biased in one direction, she wouldn't go as far to outright lie.

You're right, I don't actually think she's lying. I believe she has actual sources, and I believe she's not making up words for them. But the credibility of the sources is of paramount importance in accepting the point she's making here (that activision is actively against releasing games with female protagonists) is where I can't make the leap.

smh at the people in this thread who think "feminist" is a negative quailty, by the way, as though the OP was some sort of Dworkinesque screed or the SCUM manifesto.

I don't think being a feminist is a bad thing. I don't think hating Activision is a bad thing. But those biases are going to color how willing I am to accept what you are telling me is the truth about issues of gender or activision, especially when your only evidence is anonymous sources.

Edit: I do think getting facts wrong and sticking to them in a public forum is a bad thing though.
 
badcrumble said:
smh at the people in this thread who think "feminist" is a negative quailty

It's hard not to when so many of them have an agenda to make men feel bad about their sexuality.
 
I thought the point of the article was that Activision tends to dictate the development of their games based on focus testing and market analysis, to an extreme degree. This particular example is female characters. Currently they don't sell like they used to in the late 90's early 2000's, so Activision is hamfisting developers that want a female character, to change to a male lead. Knowing Activision, this is not surprising. I don't see it as some smear campaign or crazy pro-feminism agenda, but that is just me.
 
does it really matter that there aren't any female heroes in Acti games? It wouldn't bother me as a guy if there weren't any male heroes, and it wouldn't bother me as a white guy if they weren't white. I think the writer is a little over-sensitive.
 
truly101 said:
I thought the point of the article was that Activision tends to dictate the development of their games based on focus testing and market analysis, to an extreme degree. This particular example is female characters. Currently they don't sell like they used to in the late 90's early 2000's, so Activision is hamfisting developers that want a female character, to change to a male lead. Knowing Activision, this is not surprising. I don't see it as some smear campaign or crazy pro-feminism agenda, but that is just me.

Before heading off it's heart-warming to see someone actually read the article and not attach some crazy bias to it. (For the record, this was my interpretation)

Man, the Gaming side sure is trying.
 
george_us said:
Aren't there more girl gamers than guys? The majority of gamers aren't guys, the majority of gamers who play games in "hardcore" genres like FPS, RTS, Racing, competitive, are guys and I don't think putting female protagonists in games where you're shooting and stabbing people in the face are going to make females want to play those games. I don't believe genres like FPS and the like will ever catch on with females simply because they're not really built for them.
This is kind of an odd argument.

Back in the 1950's, no one thought that women would be interested in television shows with blood and violence. However, eventually we started seeing crime dramas popping up with lots of interesting characters, and suddenly we find that more women watch CSI than men.

Back in the 70's and 80's, RPGs were solely the domain of men who played on their PCs in their basements, but now it's a genre with one of the largest female audiences.

The issue we currently face is that there's very little outreach in genres like FPS games to females, so they're going to naturally assume they're not for them. If the industry actually starts to build that outreach, they will actually be able to gain an audience of women who plays these games.

The problem with the industry (and many others as well) is that they base their actions solely off what the current stereotypes of the market are instead of trying to actually expand.

If the industry treats women like actual human beings with a wide range of thoughts and perspectives, then they will actually recognize that there are women who would like these types of games if they actually made an outreach to them.

This same issue exists for men. Why is it assumed that because I'm a male gamer, all I like to do is kill people? I like a much wider variety of things than that, but there are very few games targeted at my other interests.

Are there some women who will never like first person shooters? Absolutely, but the exact same thing is true of men.
 
Oxymoron said:
No one in the industry knows how to make female leads that aren't cookie cutter tough girl. That can change.

Maybe most female leads, but even then I dont think all of them are. Characters like Jade or April and Zoe are definitely developed beyond that notion. And this definitely isnt the case with supporting characters or party members though.

So dont say no one.
 
Jexhius said:
Very few games journalists like Activision, or so it seems.

Many others seem to have fairly low credibility.

But people only seem to be going all "journalistic integrity/credibility" over this article because it's by her. I just haven't seen a similar level of scepticism applied to all of games journalism (not that such close attention would be a bad thing).
there's no such thing as a "games journalist"

it's not a real thing.
 
Big Ass Ramp said:
does it really matter that there aren't any female heroes in Acti games? It wouldn't bother me as a guy if there weren't any male heroes, and it wouldn't bother me as a white guy if they weren't white. I think the writer is a little over-sensitive.

How would you really know, since you are both white and male, and don't have to worry about being in the minority?
 
Literally half my games have 'create a character' options, are jrpg's, have female leads, females in prominent roles, or swing completely the other way and are gritty war-based first person shooters, Superhero games, or racing games where they either have no character or an established license like Batman.

Only a handful of them could I see maybe changing the lead role to a female character, like Dead Space, GTA, or a myriad of third person shooters. (For some reason they like male leads in tps's.)

I'm not saying things are all rosy. Clearly game developers/publishers could do a better job featuring females in lead roles. I'm just saying it's not nearly as bad as people seem to be implying. Things are improving in that regard, imo.

Gravijah said:
How would you really know, since you are both white and male, and don't have to worry about being in the minority?
Oh give me a fucking break.
 
Gravijah said:
How would you really know, since you are both white and male, and don't have to worry about being in the minority?

Bububu if I was, I'm sure I wouldnt care! I know this...somehow.
 
Jexhius said:
But people only seem to be going all "journalistic integrity/credibility" over this article because it's by her. I just haven't seen a similar level of scepticism applied to all of games journalism (not that such close attention would be a bad thing).
I'd say it's because her public screw-up was particularly recent and particularly taints this article given the target. I know the unprofessional-ism finger has been pointed at others but I'd argue that she basically hit the Trent Lott Target, and that we expect low-brow idiocy out of 1UP but at least some restraint from Gamasutra writers.
 
Jexhius said:
I just haven't seen a similar level of scepticism applied to all of games journalism (not that such close attention would be a bad thing).
I dunno man, I haven't seen many journalists use a failed game (Mirror's Edge) a character long past being relevant (Lara Croft) and an informal twitter poll to bolster their arguments.
 
Dance In My Blood said:
Oh look, it's Leigh Alexander.

The sad part about this is that her two incidents of drunken stupidity during the Giant Bombcast have damaged her credibility to the point where even when she makes a good point, the first thing people think of is the drunkenness. It taints her to the point where fewer people will listen to her opinions and take them seriously. This is why professionalism matters, even in video game journalism.
 
Jexhius said:
Says you!
some people may try to pretend, but those people are wrong, and if they self-identify as a "games journalist" they have inferiority complex issues stemming from the fact that "games journalist" is not a real thing.
 
Pimpbaa said:
It's hard not to when so many of them have an agenda to make men feel bad about their sexuality.

Yes I'm sure you are an expert on feminism and bothered to go beyond the stereotype, Mr I Jizz at the Sign of CG Tits. You definitely project the aura of someone knowledgeable about this sort of thing.
 
badcrumble said:
I think what's weird in the movie industry is that there's an almost entirely separate ecosystem for black-targeted movies (Tyler Perry stuff, etc.) from the whiter Hollywood ecosystem, with different writers/directors/casts et cetera, and the fact that this exists says that mainstream Hollywood isn't doing a very good job of catering to anything but white people.

When we get a Marvel or DC superhero movie with a black lead, I may change my mind.

The movie industry is much, much better about its treatment of female characters and protagonists, though, for the most part, even if it's not perfect.

Steel.
 
Dude Abides said:
Did you read the article or the OP? She addressed the banal and obvious "Activision is just following the market" argument that the armchair David Ricardos are making.

Yeah, I did. I was jabbing at the idea that she believed 775 million would be spent on a single media event ---- not related to the article.
 
Does anyone remember when GTA: San Andreas was announced and the collective reaction on GAF (as well as elsewhere on the internet) leant heavily towards "I don't like the main character. It's not racist, I just can't 'relate'. I can't 'see myself in his shoes'"?

*shakes head*

Every single million-seller in the NPD data era with a female lead
1. NDS - Cooking Mama - 2.0 million units, NPD, I think Pachter verified this LTD in 2009
2. PSX - Tomb Raider - 1.85 million units, NPD, Jan 2003, excel file available on the internet publicly
3. PSX - Tomb Raider 2 - 1.75 million units, "
4. PS2 - Final Fantasy X-2, 1.6 million units, NPD, 2007-ish, last available leak just after the GAF ban
5. 360 - Left 4 Dead - 1.5+ million units, NPD, mix of publicly charted numbers and extrapolation of post-sales dropoff sales. Is a million seller in public numbers
6. PSX - Resident Evil: Director's Cut - 1.4 million units, Jan 2003, excel file available on the internet publicly
7. PSX - Tomb Raider 3 - 1.3 million units, "
8. 360 - Left 4 Dead 2 - 1.25+ million units, NPD, mix of publicly charting numbers and extrapolation.
9. N64 - Perfect Dark - 1.25 million units, "
10. PSX - Resident Evil 2 - 1.25 million units, "
11. Gamecube - Metroid Prime - 1.25 million units, NPD, last available leak
12. PSX - Resident Evil 3 - 1.05 million units, "
13. NDS - Cooking Mama 2 - 1.0+ million units, NPD, not sure what the date is on this one, I think the million mark was reported by IGN

Rules:
- No licensed titles (Barbie, Hannah Montana, Dora)
- No gigantic 10+ cast RPGs that have a few female leads; although I did include games with very female dominated ensembles.
- No create-a-character games (Mass Effect, Saints Row 2)
- I included RE1, 2, 3, and CV but not 4 or 5 because 3 and CV are both primarily female leads and 1/2 had female campaigns. 4/5 have female characters, of course, so if you want to split hairs, include them.
- I did include L4D/L4D2 because I think it's fair to say that Valve made a conscious decision to include males and females of various ethnicities and then went ahead and made it so that gameplay was the same regardless, so I think they'd qualify as progressive for the point of this discussion

13 million sellers in the last 15 years. The earliest NPD numbers we have are from about 1997, give or take. Pretty shitty. Of course I don't have full PS360 numbers or even full PS2 numbers, but I don't think anything else is close. I know Cooking Mama Wii is past 800k.
 
badcrumble said:
When we get a Marvel or DC superhero movie with a black lead, I may change my mind.

The movie industry is much, much better about its treatment of female characters and protagonists, though, for the most part, even if it's not perfect.

Uuuuuhhhhhhh.....Blade? Steel?
 
HK-47 said:
Yes I'm sure you are an expert on feminism and bothered to go beyond the stereotype, Mr I Jizz at the Sign of CG Tits. You definitely project the aura of someone knowledgeable about this sort of thing.

I still have my balls, so I guess that means I am no expert on feminism just like feminists are no experts on male sexuality.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Does anyone remember when GTA: San Andreas was announced and the collective reaction on GAF (as well as elsewhere on the internet) leant heavily towards "I don't like the main character. It's not racist, I just can't 'relate'. I can't 'see myself in his shoes'"?

What the hell kind of logic is that, anyway? Makes me want to hurt people. :lol
 
Stumpokapow said:
13 million sellers in the last 15 years. The earliest NPD numbers we have are from about 1997, give or take. Pretty shitty. Of course I don't have full PS360 numbers or even full PS2 numbers, but I don't think anything else is close. I know Cooking Mama Wii is past 800k.

Not that it really effects your point, but did Portal really not sell a million between XBL, Orange Box on 360 and PS3, and Steam?
 
GRRLS CAN DO WHATEVER GUYS CAN DO. NYAH.

not even going to bother with the article for the same reason i don't read tabloids or cat fancy.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Does anyone remember when GTA: San Andreas was announced and the collective reaction on GAF (as well as elsewhere on the internet) leant heavily towards "I don't like the main character. It's not racist, I just can't 'relate'. I can't 'see myself in his shoes'"?

*shakes head*
*GTA4 is announced starring a Slavic immigrant who is a former soldier of brutal Eastern European conflicts*

OH MAN AWESOME I LOVE THIS DUDE
 
coopolon said:
Not that it really effects your point, but did Portal really not sell a million between XBL, Orange Box on 360 and PS3, and Steam?
I think he's doing this as retail only with non-compilation games, but yeah, it actually did phenomenally well.
 
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