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Videogames meet Women

E

etiolate

Banned
So what what are people's thoughts on females in videogames these days? Political figures always rally around violence, but the issue of women portayal is often ignored. Not only the way they are portayed, but females as a market is often ignored. It's not just a matter of having a toned down Lara Croft in a game. Genres and ideas would have to be different to target women on a larger scale. I know there are girls who like playing the basic variety of games that are out now and aren't the "Sims" variety. But research of young girls showed stuff like The Sims and Animal Crossing is what girls were looking for. Even the Metal Gear Solid games lean more to the typical responses young girls gave in what they'd do in a videogame than say something like Dynasty Warriors.

So uh, I guess the question is have things improved? We've gone from female characters being trophies at the end of a game, to them being idealized boobie-trons. Of course both sides of the genders are idealized in their look, but is there a way to be idealized and less insulting? Maybe it has to be with why they are idealized, instead of how Animu meets Barbie-esque they look.

And female gaffers, I'd love to hear about one female videogame character you really like and one you really despise. The good, the bad and the ugly. I have ongoing research on this and so far all stuff I've written has been based on others research and personal polling of a random group of females. I think the people here are a bit more devoted and might have more an understanding and knowledge of the history to draw from. What I mean is they know more than Lara Croft and Rikku.
 
Drinky Crow said:
I really don't think about it much, frankly.
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I kind of figured as much. I am not sure who would respond to this other than some of the female posters. Unless guys want to challenge the amount of Johnny Action Stars out there.
 
Well, other than the Sims, pretty much every attempt to target women has failed. So publishers just aren't terribly interested in trying anymore.

At least not with big budget AAA titles. You'll see a lot of downloadable PC game stuff targeting women.
 
"And female gaffers, I'd love to hear about one female videogame character you really like and one you really despise"

i ask the other half...
 
well, more women should be game designers then. the major reason for the misrepresentation is that behind every female character is a horny and slef-pleasuring guy.

seriously, I hope more women get into the game development scene, going to work might not be so bad then.
 
monchi-kun said:
well, more women should be game designers then. the major reason for the misrepresentation is that behind every female character is a horny and slef-pleasuring guy.

seriously, I hope more women get into the game development scene, going to work might not be so bad then.
Click to expand...

A few women had very prominent roles on God of War, which is about as "guy game" as you can get.
 
VALIS said:
A few women had very prominent roles on God of War, which is about as "guy game" as you can get.
Click to expand...

note, key word in your response is "few"

it's still a male-dominated industry from developer to consumer....
 
monchi-kun said:
well, more women should be game designers then. the major reason for the misrepresentation is that behind every female character is a horny and slef-pleasuring guy.

seriously, I hope more women get into the game development scene, going to work might not be so bad then.
Click to expand...

There is a drastic difference in the amount of female designers to male designers, but thats going to be hard to change. Technology fields are male heavy, schools like digipen is extremely male heavy, even your nearest math dorm may be devoid of many girls. Meanwhile, liberal arts/english classrooms lean to the female side. There has been some influx of females though, the amount of I don't know off the top of my head.

The idea is that females don't buy games, so why should the guys making them even consider them? It's kind of a "show me the money" deal.
 
Tetris was a women's game, wasn't it? They excelled at the game. Good at cleaning and all.

Heh. Joking of course. Although I did read an article explaining such in a newspaper of some sort; an editorial or something, so...
 
etiolate said:
There is a drastic difference in the amount of female designers to male designers, but thats going to be hard to change. Technology fields are male heavy, schools like digipen is extremely male heavy, even your nearest math dorm may be devoid of many girls. Meanwhile, liberal arts/english classrooms lean to the female side. There has been some influx of females though, the amount of I don't know off the top of my head.

The idea is that females don't buy games, so why should the guys making them even consider them? It's kind of a "show me the money" deal.
Click to expand...


...then women interested in games should go into Game Design. That's a field that really benefits from a variety of non-gaming interest (ie literature, art, etc.). Heck, Tetsuya Mizuguchi doesen't play many games himself and he comes up with some really cool stuff. Once we see an influx of designers with a variety of backgrounds and interest then maybe we'll start seeing more interesting and non-gender specific games.
 
monchi-kun said:
...then women interested in games should go into Game Design. That's a field that really benefits from a variety of non-gaming interest (ie literature, art, etc.). Heck, Tetsuya Mizuguchi doesen't play many games himself and he comes up with some really cool stuff. Once we see an influx of designers with a variety of backgrounds and interest then maybe we'll start seeing more interesting and non-gender specific games.
Click to expand...

I know, I think more than a math background is needed for good, fresh game ideas and design. I'm just saying that male designers need to consider less stereotypical female and male roles.
 
It's a non-issue in my opinion. Most women don't want to play video games. It's not that the industry is ignoring them so much as most are just not interested in the first place. Absolutely, there are women who love games, but most just don't. You could keep going around and around on the reasons why it but it will keep coming back to the fact they're just plain not interested, and more Animal Crossings or Tetrises isn't going to make it happen.

A similar discussion came up on one of the music mailing lists I belong to about a year ago - why aren't most women really into music? Of course most women like music, they just generally don't buy large amounts of it or discuss it or get into the history and etc. etc. Basicially the theory agreed upon was women (in general, of course) just have a different set of priorities. For most, playing Windows solitaire on the computer is plenty of gaming.
 
VALIS said:
It's a non-issue in my opinion. Most women don't want to play video games. It's not that the industry is ignoring them so much as most are just not interested in the first place. Absolutely, there are women who love games, but most just don't. You could keep going around and around on the reasons why it but it will keep coming back to the fact they're just plain not interested, and more Animal Crossings or Tetrises isn't going to make it happen.

A similar discussion came up on one of the music mailing lists I belong to about a year ago - why aren't most women really into music? Of course most women like music, they just generally don't buy large amounts of it or discuss it or get into the history and etc. etc. Basicially the theory agreed upon was women (in general, of course) just have a different set of priorities. For most, playing Windows solitaire on the computer is plenty of gaming.
Click to expand...

if Boyfriends/Husbands came with a PS2 controller i'd bet girls would play more games.
 
etiolate said:
I know, I think more than a math background is needed for good, fresh game ideas and design. I'm just saying that male designers need to consider less stereotypical female and male roles.
Click to expand...
I think it's a cop-out to claim that women aren't into games because of "stereotypical female roles." There have been plenty of attempts to appeal to women with femal characters other than big-boobed Amazons, see e.g. BG&E, Syberia. None have really caught on.

Maybe there's some secret megical forumula for appealing to a broad class of women that no one has yet discovered. But I doubt it. Lots of women have a modest interest in games if you can offer them something that they can play in short spurts. But get them to go to a store and pay $50 for a 30-hour game? Not happening.
 
Rhindle said:
I think it's a total cop-out to claim that women aren't into games because of "stereotypical female roles." There have been plenty of attempts to appeal to women with femal characters other than big-boobed Amazons, see e.g. BG&E, Syberia. None have really caught on.

Maybe there's some secret megical forumula for appealing to a broad class of women that no one has yet discovered. But I doubt it. Lots of women have a modest interest in games if you can offer them something that they can play in short spurts. But get them to go to a store and pay $50 for a 30-hour game? Not happening.
Click to expand...


come to think of it, my wife will drop $700 on a Louis Vuitton bag but she gets pissed when I buy 3 games in one pop.

it may boil down to tangible rewards (or lack thereof) in playing videogames
 
Hmmm, most of what I play doesn't really objectify, I don't think.

I like and dislike Samus from the Metroid games. The whole bikini thing was goofy, but I guess that helped to show that she was a woman in the original. Her self-reliance is something I appreciated in most of the games. However, her whorification in Fusion (in the ending pics) and "look, I'm a blonde airhead!" look on MP2 were disappointing. On Zero Mission, she wasn't as nearly whored out in most of it, and still retained her "I rock you" attitude, to me.

Tomb Raider, well I played through the first one and none of the others, so I don't know how bad that got. I've already seen the "no one would want to stare at a guy's butt all day" reasoning for having Lara, and when looking at marketing/selling a game, it does make sense. So I really didn't give a hooha.

DOA does bug me though. When a game has "bouncing breasts on/off" as an option, you know that something weird is going on. And DOA Volleyball just takes that to another level altogether. Although I still do want to see that game in person. I do think of the game on this aspect as a low point.

GTA, I've never played any past 2. The whole hooker thing never bothered me; they're big cities. Big cities have hookers. Oh no! For all the Lieberman-ish bashing of getting a hooker and running her over afterwards..you can run over whoever. You can also pay the hooker then drive off. Big deal.

Fighting games have pretty much always had the "sexy girl fighter". From Chun Li to Taki, it's just a norm. Sure, some are respectable in their design (VF comes to mind), while some are obvious hardon grabbers (Ivy/Morrigan/Mai). If you blanket the whole genre, you're giving respectably designed characters a bad rap. Fighters do seem pretty predominant in the eye candy group, though. But they all aren't, and you don't have to choose the character. Doesn't really bug me (save DOA).

RPG's, I really haven't played many aside from DQ/FF from the PS1 era on (aside from Suikoden 1 and 2, which I'm finally going through now). I do have the Lunar games for the PS, and know about those bromide things. They're just bonuses for the completists, as the horny guys probably downloaded them years ago. Not needed to get, and aren't they all kind of out of the way to get in the first place?

With FF's the first replies are usually about 7 on. But if you look at the sprites for 4-6, some characters are pretty busty to begin with, and love to wear high heels. Weird stuff to wear for what they did, but that was the norm.

I still do think it's funny at how many people call Tifa a whore in FF7. In-game, she wasn't. Aerith was. But because of her boob size in the game, hentai artists went wild. Yeah, there's Aerith hentai too, but nowhere near as much as Tifa. Tifa's victory pose is pretty "look at my boobs!", but you rarely have to use her (even though I do, I like her LB's).

I found Rinoa to be the worst female character, she's the archetypical "please save me, I'm helpless!" in the whole series, IMO. Garnet from 9 comes close, though. Yuna changed from that at the start to an almost 180 by the end of 10 and into X2, but that game I would prefer to play with the sound off and subtitles off.

Mostly I prefer the bitchy type (which is sadly mostly little girls in FF's, like Kururu, Relm, Eiko, and then Paine).

The most recent wtf for my games has to be Jessica from DQ8. When I used that sexybeam animation at another forum, people called the whole thing a hentai game. :roll.
Sure, she's designed to be bouncy and alluring, but stuff like that was in the older DQ games (Puff-Puffs were in 3 and 5, and an attack in 7), and even Ayla in Chrono Trigger originally got the Alluring Bra to give her a higher steal rate.

Hm, I don't even know if I'm talking about what you were asking, anymore. More or less, it's like hollywood. A staple. If you don't like it, don't play it, I guess. Doesn't really bother me for the most part, unless it's a main feature/what the game is designed to be.
 
monchi-kun said:
if Boyfriends/Husbands came with a PS2 controller i'd bet girls would play more games.
Click to expand...

A friend of mine made what I thought was a very clever comment when we were having a nearly identical discussion once: "Male hobbies are things like music, video games, movies, cars; women's hobbies are relationships."
 
Rhindle said:
I think it's a total cop-out to claim that women aren't into games because of "stereotypical female roles." There have been plenty of attempts to appeal to women with femal characters other than big-boobed Amazons, see e.g. BG&E, Syberia. None have really caught on.

Maybe there's some secret megical forumula for appealing to a broad class of women that no one has yet discovered. But I doubt it. Lots of women have a modest interest in games if you can offer them something that they can play in short spurts. But get them to go to a store and pay $50 for a 30-hour game? Not happening.
Click to expand...


Yeah, the female in BG&E was a pretty nice character. That game just didn't get attention from anyone though.

As for the formula: More open ended, communication is important, a story is good, more than one way to solve a problem, ability to create things.

Which is why The Sims succeeds, not just because it's playing house, but because it isn't set up just in levels and you can create your character and house as you wish. MGS has the ability to solve a problem how you decide to. Animal Crossing has the communication part.

Plus, more complex controllers turn people who use to play games when they were young off from new games, including females. Lots of us played games growing up and I knew more girls who played games growing up than those that still do now. Whenever I invite a girl to play a game they normally just stare at the controller with disgust or confusion.

And previous attempts at targeting girls have been crap like the Barbie games and odd little Nancy Drew games, along with some female protaganists here and there in consoles.
 
i like the dynamic between Yorda and the kid in ICO.....talk about a strong depcition of relationship w/ zero dialogue. when my wife watched me play that game she had a strong attachment to both characters
 
hmm... the other half is musing over which ones. Seems to be no problem picking the no. 1 HATED character though. I'll post once she mails me.
 
monchi-kun said:
i like the dynamic between Yorda and the kid in ICO.....talk about a strong depcition of relationship w/ zero dialogue. when my wife watched me play that game she had a strong attachment to both characters
Click to expand...

I just spent a while debating over what kind of character Yorda is.

At the worst, she's a submissive androgynous wimp.

At the best, she's a girl in love with a boy and she has secret powers.

The whole submissive thing is what I'm not sure about. In the story, Yorda isn't submissive to the boy as much as she's submissive to her mother. And Yorda isn't a trophy or boobified eye candy. Still, I think Yorda is meant to appeal to a sense of chivalry.

Scarlet mentioned Samus and she's another good/bad character. She is self reliant, powerful and brave. You can also say they hide her being a female behind that body suit. One of the Gamestop guys wrote a rant about Yorda and Samus, a poor rant I thought. Sure Samus being a female was just meant as a surprise treat for players who finished the game, but it's no longer a secret at all. You could also say that being behind that body suit makes her gender a non-issue. Samus is a kickass bounty hunter who happens to be female. That's ideal in a good way. I agree with Scarlet about her face in MP2, didn't like it at all. I do like that she was seen out of suit in actual gameplay in Zero Mission though.

And speaking of Nintendo characters, I think they made Zelda a little less helpless in OoT and Wind Waker. Peach is still a trophy ditz though. They still got a ways to go.
 
This is a topic I've been thinking about for the past while.

I've always thought that girls are predominantly into the puzzle game genre because of various reasons. But recently I've found that a lot of girls I know actually prefer fighting games which really surprised me. And it wasn't just one fighting game, my sister enjoys SF3, one girl at work enjoys Tekken while another enjoys Soul Calibur, and my gf like CvS2.

Obviously this isn't a comprehensive study or anything like that, but it's definitely something I'm going to be looking further into.

But on whole girls don't get into guys things as much guys do. Everything from computers to cars to sports to music, whatever, I find that in general the more enthusiast crowd for any hobby is dominated by men. Except for the ones that are seen as traditionally feminine like cooking, which is definitely having a large increase in male presence.
 
Well, her rack is obscenely large though and seeing the Sexy Beam special attack out of context could do that (if they were prudes).
 
Yeah, it's pretty out of context in the animation, and I have it in all the outfits just waiting to be made into videos (they're on a videotape right now).
 
Peach is screwed in the head. Keeps inviting her kidnapper to social events. What the shit?

My girl and I had this figured out a while ago, but I'm too lazy to dig up the notes (as evidenced above). Basically, all of the main Mario characters suffer from some sort of psych disorder. Yes, the Mushroom Kingdom makes perfect sense - it's the characters that are gone.
 
In order for things to "improved", the industry needs more female developers to make what women want in a game. Having male developers trying to make games aimed at or appealing to women is futile. If I were in the industry, I wouldn't want to make a game for women, I'd wanna make a game I would want to play (and aspect of such a game would most likely turn off female gamers).
 
If I were a game designer, I'd approach the issue through character design and dynamic. I don't think there's anything else to it. Just design decent characters that give a shit about more than what's laid out in front of them - with a little more depth than a rat trying to scurry after a piece of cheese - and that would solve most of our problems right there. Beyond that, male and female gamers aren't all that different. Simply judging by various message board posts, male gamers are just as fickle about their games as women can be about anything else. Sunday, you probably want to start that epic RPG you've been putting off, but you're binging on a fighter by Tuesday.
 
My wife's favourite character is Doshin the Giant.
Her least favourite character was Jonnyram in FFXI.
That's all for now.
 
etiolate said:
So uh, I guess the question is have things improved? We've gone from female characters being trophies at the end of a game, to them being idealized boobie-trons.
Click to expand...
The problem with women being used as trophies extends outside the videogame world
 
Well the breasts in the DOA series have improved. They had their own gravity system in the first game.
 
D-X said:
Well the breasts in the DOA series have improved. They had their own gravity system in the first game.
Click to expand...
They were self-centering in the first game. While i'm sure some women would be offended by them, i'm sure others would write them off as silly, which they were.
 
well. I'd like to introduce you to this:

groessenaenderung5745260.jpg


:lol
 
okay, so i chatted with the other half about this , and basically she came up with the following :

"Well, in terms of female character that i dislike the most, that's the princess out of Bahamut dragoon. Not that's she's a bad character per se, she's just a bit of a bitch.... she won't go into the church (which binds you and your lover together) with the main character, then she gets kidnapped by the "bad guy" who isn't really bad, she then goes in to the church with the bad guy (becoming bound) and, to make things worse, she then turns back up with new bloke in tow asking to be part of your party? hmm....

For a good female character, not sure there are any. Samus was interesting, but it was more like "oh, she's a woman" than anything else rather than feeling any attachment to her. For me the female character i feel most attached to is my own character in FFXI - yes, that's a bit of a cop out, but i don't see why there should be any gender related bias. A good game is a good game, a good character is a good character - and FFXI allows you to create your own character exactly as you want it to be (be it a man or a woman). I don't specifically want to play as a woman, just as a good, interesting character. That said, I guess if i _had_ to chose someone it would probably be Kachua from Tactics Ogre - she does some annoying things, but it's done out of the love for her brother. Okay, not exactly great, but at least slightly more interesting than other female characters. Square have always produced interesting female characters in games like Front Mission, and at the other end of their games, i can certainly see the attraction of Yuna, but that's not for me."
 
Red Scarlet said:
I found Rinoa to be the worst female character, she's the archetypical "please save me, I'm helpless!" in the whole series, IMO.
Click to expand...

Rinoa only needed help she got into stuff that was beyond her (like
being turned into a sorceress
or
falling off the obviously huge Garden and not being able to find a side entrance
), and the rest of the time she was devising her own plans to get things done, and usually carried them out herself (Odine Bracelet)
 
I don't know that many girl gamers, but all the ones I know well prefer old-school arcade titles or platformers. And a couple are into RPGs of the Square variety.

Small side-note...a few of the girl gamers I know (the couple who played it) really, really disliked RE4. Both mentioned separately that in one way or another they found it one of the more sexist games they've played in it's design. I never really thought of it that way at all being fairly sucked into the action/eye candy. Both mentioned how they hated the interaction with Ashley/Leon and how the game played to that.
 
Alot of women play old school HL1 mods (CS and DoD) ... I am not sure what that means. Maybe they like the chat and teamwork aspects of the game (Also, being able to own cocky guys)...

It seems like women enjoy PC games more than console games.


because they are smarter and have taste
 
FRAGDOLLS

fd_profile_ill_valkyrie.gif


one thing's for sure, to a gamer guy, the hawtness factor of a gal goes up when we see her manipulate controllers with ease and finess. It becomes another bullet point in the "how do I relate to you" factor and in some cases leads to a stronger relationship.

oh why oh why did I not listen to my own advice....
 
It's gotten better. At least now it's common to have a girl playable.


I really like Yuna in FFX. She is so strong, both emotionally and in fighting ability, while still being feminine. That's my problem with most main girl characters. They try too hard to make them badasses that they end up being no different in attitude and personality than the guys.

I also really like Rinoa. There's nothing wrong with needing help. The main character in that game also needs help all the time, even if he doesn't accept it.


I can't think of one specific girl that I hate, but what really bugs me is the generic "femme fatale" type. It's like the female equivelent of angsty guy filled with rage. She has huge boobs...but she can still kick ass! Boring.
 
This past weekend, I was in Long Island at a sci-fi/fantasy convention to talk about video games. One topic was girl gamers, and speaking primarily as a designer, I definitely feel more women could be playing games, its just that most attempts have been half-hearted at best, or even insult their intelligence. But the biggest problem is marketing, which has portrayed gaming as a mostly male oriented thing, so its natural that women would be turned off to the notion of playing games, or be embarrassed to admit to have an interest in them.

The weird thing is that the two other panelists with me, who are women, didn't really think about or care about the issue. Though they both admitted to playing games only sparingly and didn't consider them "gamers" per say. I then argued that perhaps they might be more interested if there was more content to appeal to them.

I do believe the heart of the matter is that there needs to be more women on the creative end, such as game designers. And I there are plenty of women who do play, such as online via portals like Yahoo games and the such. Granted they're all parlor games, but that still counts to an extent.
 
etiolate said:
So what what are people's thoughts on females in videogames these days? Political figures always rally around violence, but the issue of women portayal is often ignored. Not only the way they are portayed, but females as a market is often ignored. It's not just a matter of having a toned down Lara Croft in a game. Genres and ideas would have to be different to target women on a larger scale. I know there are girls who like playing the basic variety of games that are out now and aren't the "Sims" variety. But research of young girls showed stuff like The Sims and Animal Crossing is what girls were looking for. Even the Metal Gear Solid games lean more to the typical responses young girls gave in what they'd do in a videogame than say something like Dynasty Warriors.

So uh, I guess the question is have things improved? We've gone from female characters being trophies at the end of a game, to them being idealized boobie-trons. Of course both sides of the genders are idealized in their look, but is there a way to be idealized and less insulting? Maybe it has to be with why they are idealized, instead of how Animu meets Barbie-esque they look.

And female gaffers, I'd love to hear about one female videogame character you really like and one you really despise. The good, the bad and the ugly. I have ongoing research on this and so far all stuff I've written has been based on others research and personal polling of a random group of females. I think the people here are a bit more devoted and might have more an understanding and knowledge of the history to draw from. What I mean is they know more than Lara Croft and Rikku.
Click to expand...


This is a trick to get the womenz to post. :lol
 
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