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[Mononoke]

I find it funny how "It's safe/ it's about the money" is tossed out there when we talk about Women or PoC in games or films when on the small screen we're getting a well welcomed wave of diversity in TV shows and it's credited to ad companies figuring out that the best way to sell MORE of their products is by depicting the people you want to buy them in the commercials.

Not saying that all these things are playing on the same field but the reason we're getting this rising interest on the topic is because games are growing and becoming more interlaced in our lives. They're becoming more accepted as a form of entertainment so people are starting to take note of it as it's something that will help form young minds for generations to come.

I think "gamers" should at least be happy we're having this conversation regardless of how ever they feel about it. Shows that the world is recognizing (well, starting to recognize. We're still suck with "video game journalist" instead of proper journalism) this as something more than "silly shit".

I don't think anyone is saying it's a good excuse (at least I hope not!). But it's definitely a perspective that companies and those that put up the money (and take the risk) think about. Sometimes it's just dead wrong. But it's hard for them to see that. It can be very hard for these systems to SEE the future, or to realize what direction things are going. They want to bleed things dry, and it's very hard for them to move on from what they know works (and this is often why Business's fail).

That said, I think having these conversations are extremely important. I think consumers letting people know what they want, is key to getting more diverse content from them. When you put pressure on companies (like everyone giving Ubisoft shit for lack of female characters in Assasin's Creed), it puts a spotlight on them that can effect their bottom line (and thus make them see it as a better business decision to be more inclusive).

 

[SRTtoZ]

Lara Croft has a penis like Lady Gaga.

And no, I'm not complaining.

 

[Pristine_Condition]

Too many white guys in NHL 15 and too many black guys in NBA2K14...FIX THIS SHIT, GUERRILLA.

 

[Kater]

I find it funny how "It's safe/ it's about the money" is tossed out there when we talk about Women or PoC in games or films when on the small screen we're getting a well welcomed wave of diversity in TV shows and it's credited to ad companies figuring out that the best way to sell MORE of their products is by depicting the people you want to buy them in the commercials.

Not saying that all these things are playing on the same field but the reason we're getting this rising interest on the topic is because games are growing and becoming more interlaced in our lives. They're becoming more accepted as a form of entertainment so people are starting to take note of it as it's something that will help form young and old minds for generations to come.

I think "gamers" should at least be happy we're having this conversation regardless of how ever they feel about it. Shows that the world is recognizing (well, starting to recognize. We're still suck with "video game journalist" instead of proper journalism) this as something more than "silly shit".

A great post and I fully agree with it. Especially the bolded. Thank you.

 

[Isleofsancroy]

I find it funny how "It's safe/ it's about the money" is tossed out there when we talk about Women or PoC in games or films when on the small screen we're getting a well welcomed wave of diversity in TV shows and it's credited to ad companies figuring out that the best way to sell MORE of their products is by depicting the people you want to buy them in the commercials.

Not saying that all these things are playing on the same field but the reason we're getting this rising interest on the topic is because games are growing and becoming more interlaced in our lives. They're becoming more accepted as a form of entertainment so people are starting to take note of it as it's something that will help form young and old minds for generations to come.
I think "gamers" should at least be happy we're having this conversation regardless of how ever they feel about it. Shows that the world is recognizing (well, starting to
as something more than "silly shit".

Uh, there are s lot of black people in films. 3 of the highest top 5 grossed actors are black.

 

[Nzyme32]

dracula_x, key word was protagonist, which many of those you quoted are not. Not quoting you since that would reveal the spoiler

 

[Boxcar Overkill]

I'm not sure there is such a big gender imbalance industry wide.

When one considers all the Angry Birds and Dance Dance type games out there is more balance, and I suspect there are a lot more people playing those games than we give credit.

For example, the Halo series has sold nearly 50M copies by 2012 (all totaled.) . Angry birds had been downloaded well over 500M times by 2011. There are a lot more people playing Angry Birds than Halo.

I think we focus too much on the market segment that targets predominately men and then assume all of gaming is the same way.

 

[GalacticAE]

Instead of looking through the history of video games to create a suitable counterpoint, maybe you should limit it to today, this year, and more specifically, what was shown at E3 2014 since that is what her tweet was about.

Ok, I understand. But she shouldn't have titled it "Face of Gaming". I think she meant "Face of western AAA games" instead which is what E3 is mostly a showcase of.

 

[Infinite]

Yeah that's true about the Chinese games. But it's odd that even many Japanese games pretty much strictly tailored towards the Japanese and will pretty much only sell in Japan still make their main characters white.

That's not enriely accurate. Japanese characters in Japanese games aren't always white people and when they are their nationality is explicitly stated, usually.

 

[CrimsonCrescendo]

People have a bizarre view that if 50% of the entire population is female, games should comprise of 50% females and 50% of all protagonists should be female.

(That's not sarcasm I do find that bizarre).

As mentioned if you're a white guy you're more likely to focus on making a game from the POV of a white guy.

If I tried to make a Black Female character for a game... ya probably wouldn't go well lol.

At the very least, it should be more than 3.5% of protagonists being female.

Looking at a sample of 669 games that had protagonists with discernible genders, only 24 had exclusively female protagonists.

 

[out0v0rder]

Videogame characters dont have a race. They are computer generated models.

 

[KorrZ]

Same reason why most movies still have white men/women as their lead roles. We're still the largest demographic in North America for the time being.

Being a young white male myself, I know I might not be the best person to comment on representation but... I have a hard time with some peoples reactions on this forum. Isn't real equality relating to a character based on....the character? Rather than their gender or skin color? When I'm playing something like Tomb Raider I'm not going "this would be 100x better if I was playing as Nathan Drake right now!"

 

[Shamrock7r]

I'm not sure there is such a big gender imbalance industry wide.

When one considers all the Angry Birds and Dance Dance type games out there is more balance, and I suspect there are a lot more people playing those games than we give credit.

For example, the Halo series has sold nearly 50M copies by 2012 (all totaled.) . Angry birds had been downloaded well over 500M times by 2011. There are a lot more people playing Angry Birds than Halo.

I think we focus too much on the market segment that targets predominately men and then assume all of gaming is the same way.

A good point to make. Can't ignore the more mainstream games that appeal to a more diverse group of people. Still, more variety in hardcore games is a good thing. It needs to be done correct and tastefully. Change has been slow, but it's getting better.

 

[funkypie]

It's a hypothetical situation. You always use this argument in social issue threads. It's not about the products - it's a metaphor.

Use what argument. Metaphor... you're implying some games are racist products, complete nonsense.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Ok, I understand. But she shouldn't have titled it "Face of Gaming". I think she meant "Face of western AAA games" instead which is what E3 is mostly a showcase of.

Well, E3 is basically the biggest show of the year for western AAA games which comprise most of what gets sold on consoles. GAF is American in origin, the majority of its posters are from the west, and its discussions are mainly about the most popular games, the ones made by western developers and publishers. I think it's fine to have stated what she did...I mean, she's very specifically talking about E3 and who fronts the games of 2014 and 2015 there.

 

[akira28]

Videogame characters dont have a race. They are computer generated models.

are you talking about the actual pixels themselves? cause I think you're the only one.

 

[Orayn]

Videogame characters dont have a race. They are computer generated models.

Movie characters don't have a race. They are just blobs of color on film.

Character in books don't have a race. They are just collections of descriptive words.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

Uh, there are s lot of black people in films. 3 of the highest top 5 grossed actors are black.

Your first sentence has nothing to do with your second sentence.

 

[Gnorman]

The day I start caring about the gender or colour of the character I'm controlling is the day I know my life's pretty damn good. Seems a very trivial thing to get worked up over imo.

 

[Korigama]

off the top of my head

Neptunia
Atelier Series
FFXIII
Biohazard Series (Claire, Jill, Sheva)
Bayonetta
Shion and kosmos
Lara Croft
Regina from Dino Crisis
Raiden in MGS2
Etna from Disgaea
Parasite Eve
Silent Hill 3 and 4
Fatal Frame
Panzer Dragoon Orta
Chun Li
Castlevania order of Ecclesia

Western AAA gaming doesn't represent all of video games.

People are really still mad enough about MGS2 13 years later to make this joke?

 

[kirblar]

I find it funny how "It's safe/ it's about the money" is tossed out there when we talk about Women or PoC in games or films when on the small screen we're getting a well welcomed wave of diversity in TV shows and it's credited to ad companies figuring out that the best way to sell MORE of their products is by depicting the people you want to buy them in the commercials.

Not saying that all these things are playing on the same field but the reason we're getting this rising interest on the topic is because games are growing and becoming more interlaced in our lives. They're becoming more accepted as a form of entertainment so people are starting to take note of it as it's something that will help form young and old minds for generations to come.

I think "gamers" should at least be happy we're having this conversation regardless of how ever they feel about it. Shows that the world is recognizing (well, starting to recognize. We're still suck with "video game journalist" instead of proper journalism) this as something more than "silly shit".

But TV is also very much branded by networks specifically targeting a demographic niche. For instance- take ABC. It's entire programming slate is aimed at women (and is why Agents of Shield was such an awkward show to schedule for them.) For FOX - it's really old people - their median age? 68. Spike TV? Young Men. Cartoon Network? Kids and young adults. They sell advertisers, and they want to be able to deliver a specific type of person to those advertisers.

Not all game genres will ever have the same demographic representation, simply because they're marketing to different groups. That's not a good or bad thing- it's just how the world works. Men and women tend to have different game genre preferences and that they get marketed to accordingly.

 

[Isleofsancroy]

Same reason why most movies still have white men/women as their lead roles. We're still the largest demographic in North America for the time being.

Being a young white male myself, I know I might not be the best person to comment on representation but... I have a hard time with some peoples reactions on this forum. Isn't real equality relating to a character based on....the character? Rather than their gender or skin color? When I'm playing something like Tomb Raider I'm not going "this would be 100x better if I was playing as Nathan Drake right now!"

Your not serious with that first paragraph are you.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Use what argument. Metaphor... you're implying some games are racist products, complete nonsense.

No I'm not, at all.

I'm using racism as an example of a form of discrimination. If someone is uncomfortable with one form of discrimination against a minority, then they should be uncomfortable with another. I don't understand what is so hard to get about this concept.

 

[Kater]

I'm not sure there is such a big gender imbalance industry wide.

When one considers all the Angry Birds and Dance Dance type games out there is more balance, and I suspect there are a lot more people playing those games than we give credit.

For example, the Halo series has sold nearly 50M copies by 2012 (all totaled.) . Angry birds had been downloaded well over 500M times by 2011. There are a lot more people playing Angry Birds than Halo.

I think we focus too much on the market segment that targets predominately men and then assume all of gaming is the same way.

Even if the casual focused video game market were pretty balanced when it comes to diversity in protagonist, what does that have to do with the hardcore video game market and why shouldn't there be a more diverse palette of characters in hardcore video games anyway?

 

[Astarte]

As long as a character's fun and/or well written, I don't care about race or gender.

 

[SolidSnakex]

The movie and TV industry is a lot more diverse now than it ever was before with hundreds of female actors in leading roles, etc. Why is it then that the gaming industry still stands still while all the other mediums like literature and movies embrace a more colourful cast of characters with people of all genders and ethnicities?

I think you have to take into account that the majority of games are basically action movies. With that in mind, how many big budget action movies feature women in the lead role? You have the Hunger Games which has been a big success. But interestingly two of the biggest action movies series with female leads are based off of videogame franchises (Resident Evil and Tomb Raider). I think when you consider the genre that games mainly work in, they're actually far ahead of Hollywood in terms of representing women in them in lead role.

 

[Seeds]

It's a hypothetical situation. You always use this argument in social issue threads. It's not about the products - it's a metaphor.

It's not a good metaphor seeing as countless of prodcuts are made while trying to cater to a single group. Would you for example call romantic novels sexist because they cater to women and the main characters are mostly women?

 

[Mr.Wreckless]

At least Nintendo are okay with adding playable women in their games. Ubisoft (and a lot of the industry to be honest) could learn a thing or two from them.

Ubisoft, which has had female, Native American, and African LEADING CHARACTERS needs to learn from Nintendo? How many minority major characters can Nintendo even claim, let alone leading characters?

Boy I needed that laugh.

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

It's changing, slowly. I am doing a course at uni specifically for game development and our lecturers say that every year, the gender ratio evens out a little more. There's still something like 4 or 5 dudes to every girl on our course, but it's getting there.

Aren't most executives going to target the demographic/play it safe anyway? I mean most are out of touch and greedy already ...

Spoiler

/wink
Hopefully stuff works out for you. As a disabled minority male I want to get into my field too!

 

[Isleofsancroy]

Your first sentence has nothing to do with your second sentence.

Yes it does. It got cut off, but I meant to say that same pattern happens all the way to the bottom 100.

 

[GalacticAE]

People are really still mad enough about MGS2 13 years later to make this joke?

I love MGS2. It's my favorite in the series and one of my all time favorite games. Im not mad about anything. Hell, there's even a joke about it in the game itself when the president grabs Raiden's crotch...

 

[weevles]

This week's All Tech Considered on NPR also discusses this issue.

 

[RazielCuts]

where's mexican men in videogames?

In Fifa where they beat Cameroon 1 - 0

 

[licktheenvelope]

At the very least, it should be more than 3.5% of protagonists being female.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them

In all three genres, a little under 300 games gave the option of a female lead. That includes games where you can choose your gender or create your own characte

In about 50% of those games you had the option.

In terms of pure sales numbers, in the first three months of availability, games with only a male hero sold around 25 percent better than games with an optional female hero. Games with exclusively male heroes sold around 75 percent better than games with only female heroes. By looking at these trends two things become clear: games that give you a choice of gender are, on average, reviewed slightly better than games with male-only heroes, but the games that sell very well are almost all led by male heroes. If you’re funding a large-budget game and you see these numbers, you see that you lose sales by adding the capability to choose a female hero, and you lose significant sales by releasing a game with a female hero.

However,

“Games with a female only protagonist, got half the spending of female optional, and only 40 percent of the marketing budget of male-led games. Less than that, actually,”

So you could call it companies screwing up on marketing leading to these sales figures. Probably true but I still don't believe the % of actual "exclusive" gender comparisons means anything other than who is making the game and who is it targeted for.

 

[genjiZERO]

I was thinking shout this the other day. Unless the game is stylized I don't see why there aren't options to let you change your character around.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

It's not a good metaphor seeing as countless of prodcuts are made while trying to cater to a single group. Would you for example call romantic novels sexist because they cater to women and the main characters are mostly women?

No. I would call them sexist if they had an increasingly non-female audience, yet they still only catered to women.

 

[Korigama]

I love MGS2. It's my favorite in the series and one of my all time favorite games. Im not mad about anything. Hell, there's even a joke about it in the game itself when the president grabs Raiden's crotch...

I'm aware of that. Plenty are still serious in acting like everything concerning that game is a plague, though.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Aren't most executives going to target the demographic/play it safe anyway? I mean most are out of touch and greedy already ...

Spoiler

/wink
Hopefully stuff works out for you. As a disabled minority male I want to get into my field too!

Yes, unfortunately. But I hope as dev studios get a more even gender/race ratio, then publishers will too and etc. Also good luck

 

[HolyBaikal]

I don't understand why there is so much negativity towards Anita Sarkeesian. I agree with almost everything she has to say. I'm glad that NeoGAF is a nice place where feminists aren't very mistreated.

It's true that some of her videos are taking a lot time to come out. But that doesn't really explain the horrible reaction people have to her. I lost all respect for thunderf00t and lots of other people when they went on anti-feminist tirades against her.

And while I don't fully agree with her position on women taking on masculine gender roles. I think it's more positive than she sometimes says or thinks it is. It is true that feminism isn't just challenging women's gender roles. Femininity is also undervalued in society. And we should be careful when challenging women's gender roles, and making strong female characters, that we also don't degrade femininity. Women can and should be just as strong or traditionally masculine as any man. But femininity is wonderful for people of all genders, too.


And I think that video games are sort of having a problem of being a white male stereotype like Legos that she also talked about. Lots of things about gender are moving forward and getting better. But people are still marketing all sorts of things with gender roles. And unfortunately video games have been marketed as a toy for boys for a very long time. And since most of the rich countries in the world where white people are the majority and privileged, most video games tend to cater to this. Even Japanese companies like Nintendo, or Nintendo of America, I guess that is kind of Japanese, catered a lot to white American boys to appeal to conservative Americans and not seem very different. Nintendo was Japanese, but they wanted to sell in America and appear all American to not upset family values type people. So most advertising and things like that were very focused on young white boys.

And a lot of that has stayed, because it seems like new gender roles are always happening.
It's a really sad thing about marketing that new gender roles are happening because of it. Like happened with Legos and all sorts of things.

And it's also sad that even when marketing decides to create new gender roles and gender their things. Men are treated as the default in general. And white people are treated as the default while people of colour make people uncomfortable and are offensive to many people. Even many people of colour themselves. American Hollywood celebrities are privileged in many ways. White American people who fit a certain body type are not only privileged in America, but in the entire world. White Americans can do almost anything and be famous and rich worldwide, but people of colour have to try extra hard to be known or respected or cared about. And Hollywood is actually an active part of oppression and cultural imperialism.

Things like Jpop and Kpop and pop culture from rich East Asian countries are going against that. But they're only about two countries. And most people and most cultures are still very invisible. Also, when people's cultures who aren't from English speaking countries where the majority is white become popular, there are a lot of people who discourage it for all sorts of reasons. One of the things I find so tragic about this whole thing of people saying multiculturalism is "cultural appropriation" and racist, is that it's actively stopping America and Western Europe from not being the only cultures that are spreading to the whole world.

A lot of it is sadly money. Most of the richest countries are places with a white majority. And the global corporations from those countries favor white people and white culture, and they try to spread that to the rest of the world. Where people of colour have to abide by it and have to do their best to work within that system. Two rich countries like Japan and South Korea aren't enough to change that. And their global influence is really resisted because a lot of these corporations don't want to promote their culture. And a lot of rich white countries like the United States, Great Britain, and Australia, don't promote their culture. A lot of people on the right wing find their culture strange and not patriotic, and a lot of people on the left wing discourage the spread and acceptance of their culture with ideas like cultural appropriation and fetishization.

A lot of people are right that a lot of people do mock and marginalize other cultures by mocking them and "appropriating" them. And that a lot of people fetishize other cultures in bad ways that aren't helpful to their cultures. But in the process a lot of people are helping to keep cultural imperialism the status quo an discouraging multiculturalism. And are actively preventing the situation from changing, to where that people of colour and their culture from being popular worldwide.


In that way, video games are kind of like movies and music, most of the most successful and influential music and movies are from white men. And if you're a popular white entertainer, you get to be popular around the whole world. But if you're a person of colour, you're lucky if you get to be popular among your own country or among people of colour in your own country. Exceptions to things like that, like Gangnam Style, are sadly very rare.

 

[cheststrongwell]

Really all I want are good stories and good characters. I don't care what race or gender these characters are and would like to believe the majority of video game players don't care either. I wasn't really into internet gaming communities when GTA SA came out. Did people lose their mud over CJ?

 

[-Horizon-]

What about Zeld...oh.

AONUMAAAA!!!

 

[CrimsonCrescendo]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them



In about 50% of those games you had the option.



However,

So you could call it companies screwing up on marketing leading to these sales figures. Probably true but I still don't believe the % of actual "exclusive" gender comparisons means anything other than who is making the game and who is it targeted for.

Granted, they are getting better about the option, I should have mentioned that.

 

[gngf123]

Ubisoft just released Child of Light. The Assassins Creed series is comprised mostly of non-white male protags. The previous Far Cry game had a male lead for a blatant reason in the context of the story. As for Rainbow Six: Siege, I'm not even going to dignify the hubbub around the female hostage with a response.

People are remarkably quick to jump down throats on this topic.

You know what, I actually agree. I support Ubi with their UbiArt projects, and Child of Light in particular. I'd like to see more of them. Their name was just the first to come to mind, probably because of that stupid statement from the other day.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

Really all I want are good stories and good characters. I don't care what race or gender these characters are and would like to believe the majority of video game players don't care either. I wasn't really into internet gaming communities when GTA SA came out. Did people lose their mud over CJ?

Yes.

On IGN, even on ye olde GAF, there was an embarrassing amount of people who could relate just fine to master criminal action heroes like Claude or Tommy Vercetti, but a "gangsta thug" teenager in the 1990s was just too offputting and unrelatable.

 

[Ballthyrm]

Transistor
Child of Light
Contrast
Borderlands 2
Remember Me

Valiant hearts

 

[Mandoric]

Why is this lack of females in video games gets so much buzz now?

I don't get it.

Apart from the other good answers in the thread, the biggest-market modern games also focus much more on a single very "fleshed-out" in terms of wish fulfillment hooks character.

Anyone can imagine they're piloting a starship or latch onto a cartoonish mascot--remember, plenty of guys went until adult replays before they realized Samus was a woman--and the narrative progression in early titles is so sparse and surreal that you're dealing with single-line window-dressing for mechanics rather than plotlines focusing on a single identity's issues with relating to the world.

As we move on, we get to more solidly defined but still fairly fungible characters, often presented as an ensemble cast. Take, say, FF10; people still argue whether Tidus is white or Asian, and while he's the viewpoint you could seriously debate whether the overall focus is his or Yuna's.
Narrative is bulked way, way up, but the focus tends to be on coming-of-age stories, which is at least a universal touchpoint among teens and higher.

Nowadays, on the other hand, major titles are heavily focused on telling a single, strictly-defined "realistic" character's story. The room for suspension of disbelief is cut even further as the main character comes into exclusive sharp focus.
In addition, the themes tend to be of protection, vengeance, or honor - "dadthemes", for lack of a better word, which are tied very deeply in western society to the mindset of a mature man.


On the flipside, this certainly isn't the first example of people loudly declaring that they just can't relate to game characters anymore. It's not like, say, JRPGs haven't been roundly criticized by a western white male audience for "androgynous" (=not manly enough) lead characters and "juvenile" (=plot about standing up and taking your place, rather than holding on to what you have) narratives. But I think even within a microcosm that ignores historical advantages, this one rings a lot truer; the mascot/nonhuman/anyone can relate school of design in "core gaming" is well and truly dead, and everyone can relate to being the angsty teen if they just remember while a majority of people are never ever going to be the stoic pillar of the family.

 

[Kater]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them



In about 50% of those games you had the option.



However,

So you could call it companies screwing up on marketing leading to these sales figures. Probably true but I still don't believe the % of actual "exclusive" gender comparisons means anything other than who is making the game and who is it targeted for.

Then they could just adjust their sale expectations lower (instead of throwing so much money behind it like SE did with Tomb Raider Reboot) and then acting all surprised when the sales don't meet their expectations.
But that's just one example that I can remember and I don't remember anything similiar.

Well, Remember Me was also overhyped and too much money got put into it.

So what I get from those two examples is that not that the playable character being female but that they were, from a marketing perspective, slightly mismanaged.

 

[jon bones]

Why is this lack of females in video games gets so much buzz now?

I don't get it.

It's almost as if females are playing video games in greater numbers than ever before, and wish to be represented in them...

Crazy, I know.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I wasn't really into internet gaming communities when GTA SA came out. Did people lose their mud over CJ?

The REAL problem is that black people ain't as cool as white/Italians perception wise. When you think white/Italian criminals; there is an aura of yeah.. the cool factor. Black people; you'd associate with slums and ghettos, pimps, druggies and all the really negative associations (WHICH they've been dealt an unfair hand with). Mention Harlem and nothing really good comes out in relationship to the area. Racial stereotypes are deeply ingrained IMO. White america will find it hard to deal with the theme. I personally can't watch black porn. GTA SA sounds like something I won't be able to get into. (But then I wasn't too impressed with GTA to go run out and buy VC).

I think once word gets out about the setting. This game won't sell that well. (DID DEF JAM sell well?) Fact that Manhunt sold like crap is also indicative that maybe the lustre on violent games is wearing out.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=23132&postcount=145

 

[Sheroking]

No. I would call them sexist if they had an increasingly non-female audience, yet they still only catered to women.

Well that's absurd.

There's nothing sexist about targeting a demographic. Not everything (or even most things) can have four quadrant appeal.