Games Aren't Fair to Women, and Even Duders Should Care

The relationship between women and video games is something I've been thinking about only recently, and I only get more frustrated the more I think about it. Perhaps the most frustrating part is the blanket dismissal of the issue by so many of my fellow gamers who don't want politics and social issues in their games or their games journalism (even though they want games to be seen as art). The blanket hate Patrick got when he started to care about such issues and injected them into his writing is evidence of that. They disagree with the views of radical, irrational, and unreasonable feminists such as Anita Sarkeesian, so they dismiss the issue as a whole and avoid talking about it or thinking about it. They know that they don't hate women, so they don't see how there's a problem, etc. Let's dig into this, shall we?

Sexism is a problem that is nowhere more prevalent than in games. In any other industry there are things made specifically for women. Movies, TV shows, etc. Sure, sexism still exists in these products (particularly in the fact that far too many "for women" entertainment is created by men, and is often pandering), but it's leagues more fair than games are. Why is it that the nightmare fuel that is Marcus Fenix can be the protagonist of an incredibly successful franchise, but there is no female equivalent? Why can't I find a single game of an even close to comparable budget that has a female protagonist who is badass but not "sexy badass"? I'm talking grotesque muscles, facial scars, armpit hair, and a mullet. Make her as unattractive to me as Marcus is to every woman on the planet. It would only add to her badass cred, and that shit would be cool. I know plenty of women who would appreciate a character like that.

Not only are female protagonists unjustifiably rare, but the few that are around are across the board very conventionally attractive. It's as if the gaming community is saying, "Hey, I'd really prefer not to play as a chick, but if you make me play as a chick she better be hot, you hear me?" It perpetuates the caustic idea that women who aren't hot are pointless. Valueless. They might as well not exist at all.

Now, let me make something clear. I don't have a problem with sexy women in games. If you ask a female gamer who isn't an angry activist that likes to point at everything as being sexist, she's likely to agree. Women love Bayonetta, for instance. The difference is that Bayonetta isn't just her looks. She's her own person, with agency over her existence. This, unfortunately, is often not the case. Too often sexy women in games are nothing but trophies and sex objects. And even that wouldn't be a problem if it weren't the de facto standard. After all, a game that is very much trying to be a male power fantasy should be able to have characters like that if it wants. The problem is that the vast majority of video games, especially mainstream titles, are male power fantasies. There's no equality, and no variety. How is it that half of the gaming populace isn't getting their fair share of games that are made with them in mind?

And I don't just want this for the women I know who have to deal with it either. I want it for myself as well. As a man, even I'm tired of playing as gruff male characters in male power fantasies, so I can't even imagine how fed up with it female gamers are. I want to live in a world where I can pop in a game that has an average looking female protagonist that is very much designed for women gamers, and then turn around and pop in a game with big gruff dudes with guns or swords who are fucking hot chicks with voluptuous digital melons, and I want both games to have a comparable budget. Unfortunately I can't, because the former doesn't really exist and the latter makes up 90% of this industry.

I guess basically what I'm saying is this: I understand the knee-jerk reaction to this feminist movement that has infected games journalism. Many of the most vocal proponents are just as terrible as the "misogynists" they hope to combat, and the fact that many journalists agree with the most base sentiment that they propose means people think they agree with it all and that everybody is out to get the games they like and replace them with politically corrected bullshit, but that's not the case. It's not about the games that exist, but the games that don't exist.

Similarly this issue isn't about men who hate women, because that's obviously not the majority of men. Just saying, "Well, I don't hate women, so I'm not part of the problem," doesn't help the discussion, because the problem is much subtler than that. It's about thinking, however subconsciously, that a woman's opinions and viewpoint isn't as valuable as a man's. They complain about games never being made for them, and they are ignored, and that's not okay. Take Assassin's Creed for example. It's a game that has massive cross-gender appeal. I know plenty of women who love the series, and it's never tried to be this gruff male power fantasy with sexy women in your face all the time. Why is it then that after a million entries we've not had a single female protagonist? Why is it that so many male gamers would cry, "political correctness" and say how they don't want a female protagonist, even though their female gamer brethren are just expected to deal with the constant rotation of dudes? Even if Ubisoft only did it "for the sake of having a female protagonist" as people would immediately decry, would that really be the worst thing ever? Methinks not. At the very least, we could definitely use the variety.

If certain other threads are any indication, I'm probably doing nothing more than starting a flamewar that the mods are going to be inconvenienced by (sorry) and that Rorie eventually locks down, but I had to get this off my chest all the same.

You're not really pointing out anything that hasn't been pointed out countless times before.

The solution to sexism in video games is clear: Women will be better represented in games when more women are making games.

Yes, there are outliers in the video game community and industry that are hostile towards female developers, but it's pretty clear they're a dwindling, yet vocal and obnoxious minority.

This community by-and-large seems to have no problems with women working in video games. You're preaching to the choir.

I still find arguments like this a bit ridiculous. It's human nature to see females as the fairer sex. They always have been and they always will be. There is difference between the masculinity of men and the femininity of women, and in their idealized forms, they will not be presented the same. Sure we live in an era now where ideas of gender identity are always being questioned, but there is a simple beauty in how games strive to idealize both their male and female protagonists. Curves should be celebrated and muscles appreciated. This idea that men and women shouldn't be portrayed differently is crazy. Male characters are just as cut and perfect looking as female characters. Even Marcus Fenix, whom you refer to as an ugly dude isn't really that ugly in the context of that world. He's battle worn and scarred, but good looking when compared to his peers.

If a game creator decides that they want to make a super crusty war torn looking woman as their main character, then they are totally free to do that since it is their vision for their game. However on the flip side, making idealized avatars for the players to control is equally valid. Rarely did you see sculptures and other works of art not displaying the human form perfectly. It was always the goal of art to hand pick the greatest elements from humanity and merge them together. It's how we ended up with stuff like the David. This guys talks about it better then I:

The issue with women as protagonist is that even if you put a women into your game you will have scores of people complaining.

She is to sexy, she is to week, to manly, to feminine, to strong, to tall, to ugly, to short, to sensitive, not sensitive enough for all ohter sides then the gamer's them self. Like take the GTA5 thing and the feminist agenda around it that says that it is sexists because you can do horrible things to nameless women in that game. Now the fact is you can do horrible things to every one in that game, men or women, but that dose not matter so what do you think happens when you make a female protagonist that gets hurt or is shown as any kind of flawed. You got the same Anita crowd screaming bloody murder about her being to weak and if you make here to strong she is seen as a man with tits and there for it is still sexist. You are FUCKED no mater what you do.

Also the Anita crowd is not helping the issue and there dishonest behavior is helping to make this entire conversation even more hostile. Then there is the gaming media that is also making things fucking stupid in and effort to try and jump on every dam band wagon to be the first to scream "SEXISM" at any whiff of any thing in a effort to garner clicks.

The issue with Patrick was that he was very one sided and gave a free pass to any one on his side of the debate so people started tuning him out. He had an agenda and he pushed it hard so people ignored or did not like him because of it. Any one who claims to be a journalist, but can not even follow basic journalistic ideas will get a bunch of hate.

Assassin's Creed: Liberation had a female protagonist.

@davidh219: This fantastic article explores and pretty much answers all of your points made.

The basic thesis (well, less of a thesis as it's really just history rather than a hypothesis) is that in the early days, games were just made for whoever, by anybody who could. The market was so fluid and new that the idea of making games "for" a subset of people just wasn't even possible. Consider this choice quote:

Carol Shaw was the first female developer Atari hired. She is best known for designing and programming River Raid for the Atari 2600 at Activision. She says she never got the sense that the games she made were for one gender or another, and there was never a mandate from higher-ups to target a certain audience. When she interviewed for the job, she didn't believe she was at any disadvantage because she was a woman, nor did she feel that video games were the realm of men. She knew not many women held bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and engineering, but she held both. She was qualified to do the job, and that was that. "We never really discussed who our target demographic was," she says. "We didn't discuss gender or age. We just did games we thought would be fun." "

Then, after the crash, and the subsequent rebirth of consoles, publishers and developers became much warier of what type of games to make, fearing that audiences could abruptly loose interest as they had before. But they became more willing to make games if they had a dependable demographic to cater to. They chose young boys, and the rest leads right up to me writing these words.

Happily, we're on the cusp of the next phase. And it's not one where we have to storm the gates of Activision and demand equality or tie any lingering sexist game exec up in burning bras. We've nearly past the threshold where even people who lack the exhaustive education earned by the Carol Shaws of our past, can still easily make games beyond the wildest dreams of the pioneers from 30 years ago.

The skewed marketing of the past worked, and the mainstream "AAA"s will cling to their cash-cow young male gamer as long as they can, but they're no longer the gatekeepers, and we'll start to see anyone who wants to, walk right through.

Also, as a side note, it is a bit reductive to imply that currently male gamers are getting what they want, while the females are being left out completely. I'm entirely uninterested in millitary FPSs, but most of my female gamer friends are rabidly into multiplayer CoD. Basically, that series (who's success is born out of a laser-like focus on that typical demographic) is unattractive to me, a straightish youngish white male, and very attractive to the group that it has never tried to directly appeal to. The term "male power fantasy" is largely erroneous, as not all men share the same fantasies, and many women actually do.

It could be argued, since many historians believe that Michelangelo was potentially gay or at least bisexual, that his David was as much a creation of the "male gaze" as characters like Ivy Valentine are derided as being. It could be argued, but it probably shouldn't be as that's still not really problematic and I agree with all of your points. ;)

Also, Game Theory is awesome.

A minority too, but a few games don't balance out the scores of white dude protagonists.

@sethphotopoulos: True. I mentioned this because he specifically says:

@liquidprince: In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the fact that Sera is made purposefully really ugly made me cringe every time she showed up in cutscenes. As you mentioned, she wasn't like your typical battle scarred character while still maintaining good looks - that was Cassandra. Sera was just downright bad looking, and personally it detracted from the enjoyment of the gameplay for me. I don't know if that is considered sexist in the current political climate, but I really rather not look at ugly characters whether they be male or female. I'm also one of those people who will spend hours in the character creator making sure my protagonist doesn't look goofy in any way. I honestly think people wouldn't react positively if developers started making less idealized heroes.

Hey I romanced Sera. But yes, she is butt ugly.

I think your overestimating the hate devs would get by having a female protagonist.

Game publishers by and large don't give a shit about social issues they just want to sell products. If women bought games in the same numbers as men I'm sure we would see more female focused games. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem - with a small market there won't be lots of product, but without the products how do you grow the market? As with most things, it will need to start small and grow over time.

I'm not really sure how Sera is "really ugly" or unpleasant to look at. She doesn't look completely like your typical female video game character, I guess but she doesn't strike as someone made "purposely ugly." Regardless, personal taste aside, it's pretty ridiculous to me that attractiveness, whether we're talking about male or female, has really anything to do a character's merit. When I think great characters of either gender in movies or TV, their rating of the hotness meter isn't exactly what jumps out of me. Recent male examples like Tony Soprano or Walter White are far from the prototypical action hero, clean shaven handsomeness and even looking at female characters through history, people like Ripley, Princess Leia or Sarah Connor aren't traditionally beautiful in the typical sense you see in most video games. I'm not exactly sure why we're comparing video game characters to sculptures either but the idea that sculptures throughout history have always shown the perfect human form is also far from true.

the issue of women is bigger than games man. it's a societal issue. you say movies and tv are better with women but it's only gotten slightly (i mean slightly) better in the last decade or so. compare to video games, those are old mediums. if you look at anything remotely older, it's hilarious how sexist things were. even now, popular shows sell sex like crazy. have you seen true detective (one of the most acclaimed shows in recently memory)? have you seen games of thrones? sopranos? kill bill sorta made kick ass girls cool and hollywood is just making action movies they made with dudes in the past, only with chicks now. it has nothing to do with movies furthering some agenda. vast majority of films and tv programs use women as sex object to sell their products. idk where you're getting the idea that it's getting better out their for women for those mediums. have you seen female musical acts in the last, oh idk, forever? they use real teenagers to sell sex.

of course video games need to improve but games learn from its big brothers in media. game creators come from this world thats inherently sexist. i think things will change but everything has to change with it and it'll be hella slow. for such a young medium, i don't think it's doing that badly. what about jade from beyond good & evil? character from journey? girl from gone home? claire and jill from resident evil? they werent that sexed up in the beginning right? you also gotta think about target audience. i'm in my mid 20s but the target audience is teenage boys. you know what easily sells to teenage boys? now, i know the statistics show that ton of women play games but i don't think publishers see them as heart of their business. they are probably considered more casual or mass and are hard to predict what exactly will click with them.

idk, i think all i can do is just treat women in my life well. wtf can i do about it other than that? hopefully me doing that will make the next generation do even better and on and on and on. i think that's the only way to improve w/e sex issue. expecting cooperations to do "the right thing" is just unicorns and dragons. same with government. just stop expecting ppl to change that have money and power on their brains. i honestly don't understand all this internet talk of feminism and gamergate or wtf not. idk anyone who doesn't want things to be better. do you? cause i sure as hell don't. we all want things to get better and believe me, everyone cares. but caring means nothing. what is your solution? this is not an issue that gets fixed in my life time.

I'm with @Humanity, I don't want to see purposely ugly video game characters of any sex. What's the point of making a game with an ugly female character? "Look, we can market a game with an unappealing protagonist?"

What video games need is choice, to broaden the audience, not change the focus.

@milkman: I suppose I'm a little more (I hate to use the term) OCD about games with party members. If given the choice to select armor and looks I will spend quite literally hours trying to perfect the look of my team. I simply can't play if a character has a helmet that doesn't match their overall outfit, or the color scheme doesn't work and so on. Looks are very subjective and to me Sera looked pretty bad in a very true to life sort of way - as in not quirky bad but still fine, just plain bad, right down to that awful haircut. Now I'm not saying her looks took any merit away from her as a character, although I didn't really enjoy her personality too much either, but it did make me not choose her as often because I simply didn't like the way she looked.

I also think there is a stark different between not being classically attractive and simply looking bad. Princess Leia I would argue was considered quite attractive at the time. Sigourney Weaver I will agree had a much different type of appeal, but in her glory days of Alien she was still a good looking woman. We rarely have especially "bad" looking leads. Unorthodox maybe, but never downright unattractive. Bryan Cranston is not your typical lead, but he's far from a bad looking guy. Which is where the comparisons to statues come in. While not "always" sculptures have often shown the idealized form of the human body throughout the ages. It stems from the natural human instinct to create something beautiful when given the chance. Which sculptor would waste all that time and energy on crafting a female statue with a sagging gut and poor body image? As an artist myself I can tell you that whenever I draw human forms I'm instantly driven towards making them look great. I want to draw the perfect male body with subtle muscles and a strong posture. I want to make the perfect female with long legs and beautiful curves. I think it's just human nature.

Just because you find her ugly doesn't mean that everyone will, or that she was purposefully made to look ugly. I personally like having people who look more like someone you would actually meet on the street, instead of everyone looking like they belong in a beauty magazine.

@twinsun: Fair enough, although the question is how many people feel one way or the other?

EA put out a stat sheet a couple years ago saying a bunch of stats for Mass Effect 3. One of the stats was 4% of players shot Mordin, another one was, 86% of players played as the Male Shepherd.

50% of total gamers might be women but I don't know if the same can be said about action games. I think that stat includes Facebook games and stuff. You may know a lot of women that may like playing an action-shooter as an unattractive female, but I still doubt they would make up a significant player base for such a game.

What I want is, more women enemies! Example, in Batman it was awesome you could also play as Catwoman, but all the enemies in that game are men! Same with Tomb Raider, and many other games, all the enemies are men! That is not realistic imo.

I want more women enemies like in Saints Row! Even in GTA all the police and gangsters are men!

If there are to be more women protagonists, there must also be more women enemies imo.

@humanity: It probably speaks to the level of storytelling in most games but there is absolutely value in having your characters just look like normal people. Since most games story are about saving the world or beating whatever big bad, it's obvious while most of them use these very idealized versions of people to tell their story. But when telling a human story, sometimes you want your characters to look...human. This isn't a fantastic example because he's still pretty attractive in the typical action hero sense but look at someone like Joel in The Last of Us. He's has a sort of haggard, worn out becaus at the heart of the story, he's just a dad. I don't know about your dad but mine looks closer to Joel than Commander Shepard.

@milkman: Well thats the point. Joel looks haggard, but he's still a decent looking guy - much like many other video game protagonists. When trying to make these characters look "average" game designers still err on the side of good looks and it works well. If Joel was missing teeth, had bad skin and a weasliness to him, his character wouldn't speak to us quite as well. I completely agree that game protagonists don't need to look like super models at all times. I'm simply speculating that it would probably be harder to connect if they were anything less than average, and I think this goes double for female leads. I can see myself playing an action game as a Danny DeVito styled male - it could be interesting. I'm having a hard time seeing this work as well were the genders swapped.

It may be superficial... in fact, it is superficial of me, but I want the characters in my party to look good. That is the main reason Sera is not in there. Nor is the guy with the hat. I also spend an inordinate amount of time making sure my main character looks good. In fact, I restarted the game three times after the tutorial because I wasn't pleased with how my dude looked.

Personally, I really hope we don't end up in a future where every in game female character has to look like a Tumblr feminist, just to avoid stepping on anyones toes.

How about this for a thought; let the majority of male consumers continue to have what they want - action games, war games, just games in general featuring men - and instead allow for new projects to push inclusive games forward for new audiences. Like women, for example.

Sure, the funding and budget won't be the same right now. The development teams won't be as large initially. But that's a market that needs to be built up on its own merits, with its own expectations, and not shoehorned into an existing field. I'm sympathetic to those who feel underrepresented but when I read about the kind of quick fixes these people want, I just can't feel sorry for them anymore.

The solution will be the kind of steady, powerful buildup that the existing industry experienced after the crash of 1983. It's going to be through smaller games, generally different games. And there's no reason that this alternative market can't coexist with the existing style developed over the preceding thirty years. But forcing "fair" female representation into otherwise manly games does nothing but betray the truth here.

I think there's more than one kind of feminist on Tumblr, and I don't think any of them would appreciate your broad dismissal. Many of their arguments are valid: the idea that videogames as a medium should reflect the diversity of the culture they are being designed for, for example, is not unreasonable.

@sweep:

I probably triggered them all.

@nophilip: first light had a female protagonist. That free PSN game something x2 had a female protagonist. Metroid had a female protagonist. Left 4 dead had female protagonist. Shoot, this game is easy! Who's up next?

This discussion's answer always ends up the same: men need to make female protagonists -> why don't women do it? -> because there's not enough women in games development -> exactly, men will make what they feel like as well as what they want -> we need affirmative action for women -> no we don't, that's not right -> yes we do, women need opportunity -> most qualified gets position -> not fair for women. -> fair for everyone.

@sweep: I believe there is diversity in both male and female characters we've seen in gaming. As always Bayonetta is a standout example of a strong female lead that is completely in control of herself and the world around her. She is the exact equivalent of a Marcus Phoenix in female form. The beauty of Bayonetta is that she was crafted as an exceptionally strong lead by amplifying her unique gender traits rather than trying to transplant male attributes and twist them around to work in a female context. She is feminine to a fault and not embarrassed or belittled by her sexuality - in fact it emboldens her and gives her more power than a typical male protagonist could ever hope to achieve through sheer strength alone. This is in no small way thanks to Japans more casually open attitude towards sexuality.

On the flip side, one of Bayonetta's main sidekicks is Enzo, who is the direct opposite of your typical male character. Borderlands 2 featured a whole range of diverse female types, from the buxom Moxi to the giant Ellie. Gears of War featured Anya Stroud who was the more literal approach to replicating a "strong" female lead. She was was basically like one of the guys, but towards the end of Gears 3 was also able to show that she still had the softer feminine side which is unique to her gender. The ironically forgotten Remember Me featured not only a strong woman at the forefront but one of mixed ethnicity, who went up against a whole host of similarly powerful female adversaries. Assassins Creed Black Flag had Mary Read.

There have been plenty of high calibre games with diverse characters over the last few years. It is certainly not an unreasonable request, but it's equally unreasonable to ignore all these examples in order to focus on why the newest Call of Duty has another straight while male leading the charge.

If you don't like it don't buy it. This is America, you're allowed to do what you want when it comes to shit like this. Vote with your dollar, and stop acting like you know best for the 300+ million that live here.

@feanor: Sorry to burst your bubble mate, but this is actually an internet forum on giant bomb dot com, not the United States of America.

Also "if you don't like it don't buy it" isn't really a principle that stands up to much scrutiny anyway. Case in point: child porn, mustard gas, black tar heroin etc. etc. And, in this instance, nobody's even saying this shit should be banned, they're just criticising it. Pretty sure that's par for the course on the internet and in America, no?

I don't see anything wrong in women in games being attractive. It is a fantasy after all. I think there should be more female leads in games but making them unattractive for the sake of making some kind of point is not the way to go. Some people say that it makes us think of women as nothing but sex objects but I call bs on that. I treat women well and with respect and my fiance can testify to that but that doesn't mean I don't like to look at attractive women. I wouldn't start disrespecting women because of video games any more than I would start shooting people because that is what I do in video games. Men will always want to look at boobs and butts and such and the girls I know are not shy to admit they like to look at men with a nice body. As long as you understand the difference between fantasy and reality all is fine. Just like most of us fantasized about a teacher or friends sister or something when we were growing up, it is natural and harmless as long as you don't do anything disrespectful to them like groping, rude comments and such.

Edit: I think we should focus on teaching our kids how to behave rather than trying to censor stuff. It is not video games that make men behave badly towards women that has been a problem for much longer than video games have existed. It is harmless fantasy and if I like to make my female character in saints row have massive boobs that is my business.

Men being masculine in games and women being sexualised happens for the same reason advertisers use models that fit that bill as well.. mass appeal.. Video games are a bussiness and money talks. If you want to find games that aren't necessarily targeted at the masses, look for unique indie titles that are made soley to express the developers. I'd be willing to go as far as to say that mos indie titles really do a great job of not catering to either gender more than the other.

So these arguments shouldn't be directed towards the people making the games, it should be directed at the audience to stop liking attractive females and to stop wanting to play as a very masculine males... good luck.

Not sure what the fuck that even means but I think it's my cue that this thread isn't worth discussing anymore.

@hurricaneivan29: I'm not sure I understand that mentality. Do you think that, say, nobody should criticise Disney for producing Song of the South because "Well, that's how the audience thinks of black people, so it's only right that they're portrayed that way"?

@humanity: Not to pick on you because you've already made your point, but there's something really harsh about you saying she was designed to be ugly. It sounds weird because she's not real and can't be hurt by your comment but I think it just sounds harsh. She looks real. Minus the ears she's one of the most realistically modelled characters I've ever seen in any game. Cole is the same. I like that he's not just another perfect specimen of man.

I can't reply to the OP because I don't have much to say that wasn't already said.

I agree with some of your points. At the same time, I think you're wrong to say this problem is more prevalent in games than other media. If you look at Hollywood, 90% of big blockbusters have male protagonists, and women are romantic interests with little character development. Whenever there's a superhero who also happens to be a woman, she's always part of a team(Black Widow, Susan Storm, X-Men) where she supports the male hero.

I think women are more common protagonists in games than they are movies, partly because many games lets you pick gender. At the same time, the ratio of male to female protagonists is in story-based games still lean heavily towards male. As for objectifying women, I see the same problem in other media, particularly movies and comic books.

One thing to consider is that games aren't quite at the quality level of a movie and novels. As games progress, hopefully they will get better writers, to tell better stories, and have better roles for women.

Let people create what they want to create, and let people buy what they want to buy.

Saying that people shouldn't create something in fiction that they want to create is silly. Saying that people shouldn't buy something that they enjoy is doubly as pointless.

I play pretty much all games regardless, so it doesn't bother me too much, but I know that I definitely prefer games with more stylish and attractive characters. I'd definitely take a new Space Channel 5 over a new Rock Band, but that doesn't mean that Rock Band is sexist for not catering to my preferences as a woman.

This whole debate seems to revolve around people trying to get what they want by calling anything different as 'problematic.' As people have already said, if there's such a demand for unattractive plain characters, and you're aspiring to make games, then make a game for that audience! That's why games like Harvest Moon are still popular after all these years. Sitting around trying to force other people to match your own tastes doesn't help anybody.

One of my friends won't play Bayonetta 2, although he acknowledges that it's probably the best video game on Wii U. Why?

He doesn't want to role play as a woman.

He tries to personify himself in video games, and wants his characters to look somewhat like him. He wants to feel like he is represented. He wants to share something in common with the character he's immersing himself with. And you know what? That's fine.

There are plenty of games with strong female characters, and I'm positive only more are coming, but we don't need to start affirmative action-esque movements crying out to devs to put "average women" in their games. Doing so only shoehorns creative freedom for the individuals making the game and causes them to change their vision for the story they wanted to tell. I openly applauded Rockstar when they didn't back down and include a female playable lead character in GTA5's single player - they wanted to tell the story they did, which was pretty good, and slapping a pair of breasts and a vagina onto one of those characters wouldn't have made it any better or worse.

tl;dr: there are games with female leads, there are games with character creation, play what you want and stop screaming at developers to make their story your way

@jesus_phish: It might be harsh but in my opinion Sera doesn't look like a typical person, she looks worse.. Her hair and rough facial features just look wrong and out of place for a race that has typically slender features. This is all subjective of course and really pointless to argue at length. Maybe what also bothers me is that Sera is an elf and elves are typically fair and endowed with great beauty in fantasy. So the fact that Dragon Age is breaking convention and defying expectations might be another reason why she was so off putting to me. She looks wrong to me more so as an elf than a female. In some scenes when she grunts or smirks harder her face almost takes on a Gollum like quality - it's really nothing like what a typical person of average looks would be like.

This entire discussion is hilarious in light of the fact that regardless of her face she's still built like a supermodel.

@sinusoidal: I think she has an average build, and as an elf she should be tall and lanky. Regardless, it is a long conversation about "how pretty" a female character is in a game which is something we should probably avoid.

@sinusoidal: All women in Dragon Age are built like that. It's terrible.

@humanity: I'd put the quality of her expressions down to the animations. There's been times during cutscenes of conversations where my character's eyes do this thing where he squints so hard for no reason that his eyelids clip into each other. It's terrifying. Also Elves are like that in other fantasy settings but in Dragon Age they're basically not that at all. Particularly those from the Alienages.

All other discussion aside, I don't think this:

is an "average" build.

I would just like to say that making definitive or hyperbole statements like this title won't help your cause EVER. Because you make a sweeping generalization that is: False. And while the internet is most of the time no place for nuance, definitive statements or hyperbole seldom have a positive impact.

Also urging people that they should care or agree with something is THE WORST EVER way to make them care or agree about something. Its psychological, but forgot the name of the theory.

People want things from games that they're not currently offering. There are far fewer games with female leads than male ones, that is not debatable. Talking about it does not equal trying to force dev to do anything. Just the same as you saying you don't want to have the conversation doesn't mean you're forcing others to not have it.

@sinusoidal: I don't think you get it mate. This elf does not turn me on, and that is a serious oversight by the designers.

@sweep said:

That is one of my biggest gripes with the argument because it's just not true. The culture that many of the big triple AAA games are designed for is almost exactly inline with the people who buy them. I understand people really like to throw out the 50% of gamers are women figures but the problem is those figures did include mobile/FB games and the people who will play Farmville/Candy Crush are usually just not the same folks who will buy Destiny, Mordor, and GTA.

I think the market is slowing trending to more diversified games like Guacamelee,Papers please, Transistor, Gone Home, Monaco, Alien: Isolation, FTL, ect, there was no reason to try and rush things along.

Progress is slow but there is definitely progress being made and arguments like the GTA/hookers or even the RE4 and "mexicans" (even though they were Spaniard...) were silly stupid arguments. GTA allows you to do terrible things to practically everyone.A hooker and a cabbie shouldn't be treated differently,though hopefully in the next game we get male hookers for equality but then I guess people will be saying it's a hate crime..... Wait are you telling me people in a village in the middle or nowhere Spain speak Spanish?!?!?!? Next thing you're gonna tell me people in a middle of nowhere Village in Africa will be mostly dark skinned...... Even in scenarios where the story/location gives perfectly reasonable explanations people only want to see it as someone being purposely being discriminatory.

Progress is being done, I guess it's just too slowly for some. People are just more sensitive than ever and being "politically correct" online even if you're not that in real life has become a thing. People just need to get back to playing games so they can relax and fuck everything else.

Title makes a positive claim of injustice occurring, and urges that people "should" care.

First several paragraphs are committed not to prove that the injustice exists, but to talk about how receiving this kind of criticism without changing your behavior reveals bad things about you, so you should probably just change your behavior. Once that's done, the proof that games aren't fair to women is that the OP doesn't find Marcus Fenix attractive (possibly because he's a man and isn't attracted to men with a masculine gender expression), but he does find most female characters attractive; failing to let women play as female characters they find unattractive is unfair, and has everything to do with enforcing our current aesthetic norms and nothing to do with reflecting our current aesthetic norms, because video games are a tool for social control rather than an act of creative expression. Or at least they should be treated that way.

I'm glad everyone is zeroing in on the appearance of a female member of a fantasy race known for being lithe and skinny. Obviously by portraying a female elf as skinny, they're enforcing female aesthetic norms. Never mind that shirtless, muscled, scarred, Iron Bull. Or the fact that the default male body shape appears to have a personal trainer and a 21st century nutritionally sound diet. Protein!

In this thread there are people who are scandalized because someone expressed that they didn't find a female character to be attractive. Clearly this person needs to be criticized for calling a woman ugly or unappealing. Meanwhile...

> Make her as unattractive to me as Marcus is to every woman on the planet.

You know what behavior shared by male nerds that I'm sick of? Projection.