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

Rachel from Binary Domain!

I'll admit, I have a bit of a different view of this whole representation thing. I've always seeked towards characters who are nothing like myself. In an RPG I will usually try to play as a downtrodden, female, non-white character if I have the choice. And I am anything but downtrodden, female and non-white. It's never been important to me to play someone I identify with. I want to play someone who can give me a perspective that's not my own. A new way of looking at things. I don't want to *be* the character. I want to experience the character's story, and them then being different than me is great.

It's because of this, I never gave much weight to the idea of people of other races, sexualites and gender complaining that they were not being represented. Why would you want to, was my thought. It took me a while to realise that maybe the reason it's not that important to me is that I really am swamped with options. White men are all over video games. If options were there for other people as well, they'd arrive where I have too.

There's a bunch of good and bad characters of both genders. Character building and stories in video games are scattershot.

Most of this discussion is kind of prudish. It's just finger pointing and saying how one side is wrong and the other is right. I won't deny that there are bad and offensive female characters. But I won't deny that there are also great female characters. It's not the end of the world if something offends you. Speak your mind about it but as soon as you start blaming others for what they like or what they make you're just being a dick.

there are tons of games with great female characters. wish people would spend this much energy complaining about actual minorities that are getting shafted in games. how many games have great hispanic characters? or great indian characters? not sure why everyone only focuses on women.

It shouldn't be a one thing or another, but yeah this is true. Feminism needs to be cross sectional, and that includes championing the cause for ethnic minorities. More female characters is great, but it's an issue when it's largely more white female characters.

Even though it's a playable Yakuza flick, my first two very slow hours of Yakuza 4 were super refreshing with regards to female characters in games compared to western productions. A chubby and very caring secretary worried about her boss, an energetic bubbly ping-pong enthausiast and a mysterious very depressed, shocked lady in such trouble that she needs 100 million yen within ten days. They are all acted genuine, they also feel genuine and real, and am I as concerned about the mysterious lady as much as the player character is, it could be seen and heard that she was risking more than just life in whatever situation she had come to find herself in.

You don't get that with western games do you? It would be Hollywooded out in a terribly stiff manner that doesn't work with at least my brain :/

First post on the page list is great and I wish I had played more than half of those games. I'd rather have another game with female NPCs the quality of GTA5 (due to them being so very real, horrible people or not) than another game with poorly written might-as-well-have-been-a-dude female romance-option trash, just hoping we get more publishers as this goes on being okay with having a female character instead of saying make it male or find another publisher.

@draugen: "It took me a while to realise that maybe the reason it's not that important to me is that I really am swamped with options. White men are all over video games. If options were there for other people as well, they'd arrive where I have too."

This was an important realization for me as well.

Anita S should use her kickstarter money to set up scholarships for women to attend Game Design and Computer Science programs. We know she only wants to further her own career with misleading controversy though. (i.e. taking instances out of context sch as her GTA or Hitman rants)

@gamefreak9: I'm sorry but due to time constraints I cannot reply you this week, meanwhile you can read the answer to @imsh_pl, your opinions seem to be similar to some extent.

Are those assumptions any different from the classical economics that only work in the ivory tower?

Because it completely looks like you are calling me ignorant for not taking those assumptions for granted, when much empirical research (with behavioral economics being a prime example) has shown that those assumptions don't hold in the real world.

Intellectual discourse is a euphemism for fallacies, sophism and demagogy? I don't listen to those. If you have any evidence to present I'd like to see it. I presented a few points I would like to see in the debate in message #243, with which I painfully discovered I need to send posts twice to get them posted. Being the second time I was writing it maybe I skipped as obvious some part of the reasoning, but in any case it's real simple: Games have an influence and an impact on people and culture, as any media, they shape the culture and with it the prejudices of millions of people.

For example in some cultures topless clothing is usual both for men and women, as it was in the ancient Egypt (pointed by a video in the first page). Obviously these cultures had no influence from video games, but they had their influences and so does our culture. Video games and media in general, as well as religion and many other factors, influence the culture and the culture has an impact on everything. Why should we care? Because people mayneed to be protected from what they want, this is the point of A Brave New World and a point that you don't seem to have understood as you are not commenting on it. Maybedue to some cultural influence from liberalism that prevents you from thinking some ideas that would conflict with those prejudices, I don't know, why don't you tell me? More on this: the Dozen Doughnuts problem.

I am honestly not interested in talking about economy, this is a matter of culture, education, society and emergence/evolution of the "zeitgeist", I just pointed at the economic argument as a naïve approach that doesn't consider that unregulated economy may lead us to bad places and some regulation may be advisable, or perhaps some (economic?) encouragement for a change or a direction. Are you familiar with the economy for the common good concept? Seriously, we can go offtopic to the infinite and beyond with economic topics, that's why I would like to focus on games, culture and personal growth (as healthy human beings, physically and psychologically). If you have good points to make to say that any attempt at trying to do things better than the way they seem to emerge/happen is futile due to economic reasons then I would like to see that. However, when economists present their assumptions to define theorems, theories and such, they are just meant to be there to help them make a point (i.e. working hypotheses), they are not stating that those assumptions are "The Truth", nor you should consider such a thing. Can you really prove consumers are rational? Seriously.

I'm not making assumptions here, AFAIK, I'm actually questioning assumptions, from the beginning, re-read the posts if you feel like you need it. I think there are some points that need to be considered. If you think those points don't need consideration for some reason then the burden of proof is on your side, so far the evidence and arguments (scattered through the links I shared so far) point to the contrary. I have seen no evidence and no arguments on your side, but old known fallacies that are rooted on assumptions that you didn't expose, taking them for granted, as the word of God. Another fallacy is asking me to present my assumptions, which already assumes that I'm making any assumption, or that assumptions need to be made.

I like giant boobs in games in the same way I like them in a Troma or Russ Meyer film (or Game of Thrones, to not limit this to just badly made schlock), so I certainly don't agree with the hardliners who want that kind of thing gone. I remember this all blowing up over the booth babe shit a few years back. A lot of people say the industry's focus on tits makes it hard to take it seriously, but I don't see how it's different than any other media product. They all do it. Female roles in the film industry are way more limited then men's roles and far more sexualized, despite the fact that there are more women than men in our population, and that's a media product that isn't nearly as one-sided in its audience target. So it's obviously pretty systemic. I would like to see more rounded roles for female game protagonists as well, but I think we'd have to dig a lot deeper than anyone thinks for it to be commonplace at all

In that case, why are you so sure to know the only way in which games can ever be?

1. Setting up rules (for stable matching allocations and with other purposes, e.g. the application of the VAT is such a rule) is exactly market design, a market is a set of rules that create a context in which exchanges happen. If there is a market, then there are some rules, which define (compose) the market. Even illegal/black/unregulated markets have some rules (maybe tacit, perhaps implicit, sure but there they are), either emergent from game theory or imposed by someone with enough power to do so.

2. Which model doesn't apply to the digital economy and how is that relevant? I ask just because you used bold letters, you seem to be ranting about irrelevant and unrelated stuff.

3. You seem to throw concepts into the debate without even knowing what are you talking about, and seriously, it's not that hard to go and read a just little bit before talking nonsense. You can find the precautionary principle in wikipedia: "if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action.". Therefore:

a) Games (and other media) may be promoting hate (or discrimination, a lesser form of hate) towards women (and ethnic minorities, and aliens, and zombies)
b) Hate is undeniable harmful: for the people holding it as long as there is no action, and for others if there is some action.
c) Probably for this reason, hate speech is forbidden in some places (e.g. in Canada).

Therefore, according to the precautionary principle, some suspicious games (e.g. Hatred) should be forbidden until there is enough evidence that they are harmless. I'm not sure about the point that you are trying to make with the precautionary principle...

Maybe you would like to elaborate more. As with the precautionary principle, you seem to throw concepts at random in an attempt to make a point. So far it looks like you didn't understand what you said, but that is not obvious yet, so please try to elaborate and make it obvious. Thank you.

@fluttershy_xxx: I certainly agree that any possible change is most likely going to come on the side of making games in new ways and not stopping making games in ways that definitively work from a commercial point of view, unless there is strong evidence on those games being harmful. That possibility, however, should not be overlooked.

The argument from ignorance is quite prevalent in many discussions and the point that is usually made is: "that is what people buy, hence what they want, hence what is good for them", which could similarly be used with drugs or Doughnuts, however there are at least two faulty steps in that syllogism.

It may be an uncomfortable topic, but it is one that should be discussed, IMHO.

@somejerk: Not something you'd expect out of Japan.

Pfffffftt. I thought the gaming project post would be the highpoint, but this is too good.

@anwar: I was reading your post and I have realized that the whole topic is pointless without data, statistics and conclusive studies/results. I hope the pedagogical potential of games and other media is explored. Please note that with pedagogical I do not only mean academic knowledge, but also culture, manners, attitude and values.

@reverendk: sorry, where's the "gaming project post"? Thank you.

@trylks:

Model thinking: I am not sure about anything and that's the point. However pointing to a theoretical model and then thinking you have gained knowledge about the world is nonsense.

Market Design:

Market design is a broad term but you linked me to the nobel prize so let me tell you why its complete nonsense to even bring that up in here. Market design is about efficiency, if you have two sets of agents who have varying preferences for each other then the delayed acceptance algorithm is a better way to make sure nobody wants to switch, the easiest application is in jobs, and most of the applications of this concept are emergent, aka private firms decided to do this, think job hunting sites. Now, the last time I checked, video games don't have preferences about who plays them, nor are they exclusive(aka if I am playing it you can be playing it too, digital means there isn't even a cost to distributing it once its out). If you think you have an ingenious idea of how this concept applies to the video game industry making more female protagonists... then state it clearly. If by market design you are referring to a different concept(than the one you linked to) then say what the concept is and how it applies.

Now VAT is not about market design, its about funding the government, it might be done in a way that it keeps negative externalities at bay but that's not what its for and that's not market design in any meaningful economic sense. Implicit and explicit rules among people/companies/thugs/mafia is spontaneous order at work and has NOTHING to do with market design. Design implies that somebody is looking at things from the top and telling them how to get organized.

Distributions: What I was saying about distributions, my first statement says that lots of games don't make profits in a binary sense. So if you want to have private equity funding lots of independent projects at once there must be potential for massive outliers, this is a feature which the video game industry does not have(as far as making anything but mobile games in concerned). You can't have potential for millions in profits if you only invest something like 20k. I'd say you have to have at least a 100k-200k, now if like other ventures its like 95% chance of failure(lose money) and your cap on profits is 1-3 million(because the industry doesn't have leptokurtic properties) its not really going to be worth it. In my mind there is no game that has an indy developer(below 10 people) that ever made 10 million in profits. Private Equity works because of this potential for outliers, which is severly capped in video games(though perhaps if cost of development goes down drastically then it becomes more feasible) but saying its silly why it doesn't exist is ignorant.

Precautionary principle: Your action to change something will give rise to a new and more uncertain distribution. AKA all this noise to have more inclusiveness has made plenty of gamers not like feminists(probably the opposite intended effect). It could be that video games are causing some of this drop in crime and changing them would revert this, we just don't know and the precautionary princinple tells you to not mess with something unless its about reverting back to a previous more known state(no video games at all). So given that we have no knowledge of negative effects emanating from games(we have no data that video games cause people to be more hateful), the PP tells us to either abolish them and go back to a world without them or let them be and evolve in a way in which all robust organic systems do, small tinkering here and there. I hope you have learned something.

Economics has Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, completely different. The latter may fall apart from some of Kahnmena's heuristics, but the former just has something called "constrained efficiency" where you still have the best feasible outcome(this is a very technical argument) unless there's some even more unrealistic assumptions to be made. Kahnman himself is a kind of libertarian(who just wants some things to expressed in a way where the human mind can better process it, but its VERY SPECIFIC, like when you filling it whether you want to donate your organ, instead of opting into it, you have to opt out of it by ticking the box).

@gamefreak9: Model thinking: it's not about the knowledge but the assumptions. There are many assumptions here about why "several things could not be possible", because "there is no market", etc. If you are not sure, as you mention now, then maybe those possibilities could be discussed, which is the only thing I've been saying form the start.

Market design: efficiency applies to everything. For example: digital distribution implies smaller costs than physical distribution, AFAIK, (i.e. more efficient), hence indie games have the possibility to use digital distribution, marketing works on a different way, etc. WRT markets, you can consider the regulated markets in XBL and PSN, or how stuff works on Steam and HumbleBundle and what not. Why is that important? Because games that would otherwise not be profitable may be profitable now, and games that are "risky" (e.g. Portal) are also possible, and maybe we (as customers, or as a society) should be promoting more risky games and pursuing higher quality standards (among much other stuff).

So that's efficiency, but there's more, for example tax reductions for games that are something more than mere entertainment, empty of any value. I don't know about the specific case of USA, in many countries VAT (or their equivalent) is applied in different ways (a different percentage) depending on the type of the product, e.g. basic food and health related items, luxury items, culture and education, those have different percentages. That's market design.

This is being done with the food, and it's being done the wrong way. Market design is not only about efficiency, as you seem to imply, it's also about equilibrium points, this kind of actions change the equilibrium points to better or worse ones, and we should care on both our body and our mind health, with food having a strong impact on the former and games having a debatable impact on the latter (IMHO a strong one, again that's debatable). So yeah, it could be worse, we are not talking about people dying of hunger to cultivate drugs, but we should strive for the better, not for the "not-as-bad-as-others", again IMHO.

Distributions: I think many indie games can be done with a budget below 100K and I don't remember the context for this point, but I would like to point two things:

1. We would need actual numbers to continue in that direction.
2. That direction doesn't really interest me. I'm more concerned with what should be done and what could be done than one specific way in which it could or could not be done. Kickstarter could be another, and there are surely many other, but finding ways to do "something" is irrelevant if we don't agree first that there is something that should be done, IMHO.

Precautionary principle: that's the main point of all my participation in the thread. We should study better and try to know the effects of games, and different types of games, and different elements of games (graphic depictions, story, etc.) on people, their behaviour (specially criminal behaviour), wellbeing, motivation, etc. Really, if you choose to understand one single thing of all that I have written, choose this paragraph. "Robust organic systems" fall into local maxima very easily, exactly for the reason that you point, "small tinkering" does not allow to jump those valleys. We are in 2015, we can do better, we have science and research, that insight, with intellect and intelligence should allow us to find greater maxima, across the valleys. You say we have "no knowledge" on some stuff, that's arguable, but more in my favor, because what I'm pointing from the very beginning is that: we should have more knowledge, we should discuss certain topics and we should study (rigorously, scientifically) those topics. The impact and the motivation should be clear by now, but let me know if I should elaborate more.

Microeconomics and macroeconomics: sorry, what's the point here?

Model Thinking: A "market" is almost like a tautology, as soon as somebody thinks of something they want, then a "market" is created(though not necessarily satisfied). The use of models apart from entertainment is in ability to explain a priori or to accurately predict. Now if you think a specific model has a good track record then it is perhaps worthy of discussion but from what I remember, that course had no credible models.

Market Design: "We should be promoting more risky games?" Why? Investment has an opportunity cost, you cannot talk about the whole industry, only yourself. Saying you want more variety in gameplay doesn't mean the rest of the market will reward it. I don't see your digital distribution point, I am talking about the market design(also known as auction theory) relevance of digital distribution, which requires a limit on how many copies of something can be used simultaneously.

You can call VAT market design if you want to but it is not a useful way to describe its purpose or properties. The purpose of any intervention is either an equity one or an efficiency one. Market design in a game theoretic(auctioning, bargaining, etc) which is how the word is used is ONLY about efficiency of outcome. In most cases the need for such economists arises because of transactions which are looked down upon, which is what the whole nobel prize was about, people view selling kidneys as repugnant so the only way to do is it to have that algorithm, but like he said, just having the market be free in the first place would give a much better outcome. Yet regardless the market existed before this economist came along, people get kidnapped and wake up without their kidney quite often(sometimes they don't even wake up), the market is independent of any one person organizing anything.

Distribution: 100k being the total cost is highly unlikely. Some games might require this much investment but that is not their total cost, competent programmers have an opportunity cost (i'd say at least 30k a year). (only the total cost matters because if they don't invest the total cost then they will get a fraction profits which are mathematically equivalent if you do this investment a bunch of times).

PP: It is true that organics can sometimes get stuck on local maxima but I think you would be hard pressed to find examples of this, more often organics get stuck paying a slightly higher cost than they need to(like a couple of inefficiencies in the human body which Dawkins describes). Yet a slightly higher cost, is still viewed as a fixed cost in each iteration so it doesn't quite affect the marginal benefit of each new characteristic. In humans it probably just means that we have to eat like 1% more food to make up for such inefficiencies. However firms aren't even subject to the same limitation as organics, although it is still true that the best way to evolve is with small shocks here and there, firms have the ability to completely be restructured, a gene generally cannot make massive leaps(and if it does it does not stick to the gene pool) but a firm can and it is both why it is both superior and yet more fragile(if misused), a CEO can easily come in and correct inefficiencies that reduce his costs. Firms are generally not subject to local maxima, because although knowledge of the market is path dependent, firm structure is only so to a limited extent and can be changed. The important thing to ensure this is occurring is what economists call "capital mobilty", which is how quickly cash can be turned into capital and vice versa.

Economics: You were the one saying that economics has been proven wrong right? I am just saying that while some results are fragile due to behavioral assumptions, others are not.

edit: corrected typos. Bolded them to make it clearer

Looking into these seven pages, I come to think this thread is what's unfair to women.

Giantbomb needs 1-2 Japanese games people so that eyes can be opened. It would be a shame to not have Omega Quintet (coming April) covered.

Eh I think this is something that is already gradually improving, kinda following the footsteps of the film industry. As time goes by we will see a better representation of people in our games, not just women but also other races (seriously, I don't think I own a single game where the player char is not white). Will it ever be truly representative? Probably not, at least not in AAA games but on the whole I'm not concerned about the future of gaming for women (I am one btw), as I see it things are moving in the right direction.

Yes I would like to see more female leads, especially ones who aren't overly sexualised (not that there's not a place for 'sexy' leads too) but making blanket statements is silly - personally, I do like a bit of eye candy in my games so I'm happy to play as a good-looking guy, in fact on my first play-through of RPGs I almost always choose to play as a guy, just as I know some guys nearly always play as girls. There's nothing wrong with a stereotypically 'good-looking' character or a 'ugly' character, taste varies massively and as long as the character is more than their looks its not a problem.

My main issue is all the internet bullshit, like the death threats and stuff. I think everyone who's not a juvenile twat agrees that that crap is utterly ridiculous.

First, people need to try to understand what sexism, sexist, misogynist, feminism, feminist and whatever bullshit social study 101 taught you last week actually means before pointing fingers.

Second, yes there are a lot of problem with the representation of minorities and women in gaming. Same with any other format really, except maybe not as bad as sports. And yes we can do better but if history have taught us anything. Getting on your high horse, pointing finger at people, do not solve problem. Hell it worsen it. Imagine if MLK Jr. got to washington and start his speech with "I have a dream about how the white man is keeping me down, FUCKING STOP IT." The point is don't preach, inspire.

Third, what we need is more games that cater to women. I am of a mind that we should just objectify everything. Companies clearly cant stop catering to the lowest common denominator so.....don't. Just cater to ALL the lowest common denominator.