Why aren't female character options good representations?

I play a lot of Bioware games. (In fact, I just preordered Dragon Age: Inquisition, for good or ill). As such, I tend to make a lot of different characters and see the differences between the playthroughs. For example in Dragon Age: Origins, I might make a Human Noble male in one run, but try a female mage in another run. However, even as I swap genders on my character, there seems to be relatively little difference in the way the game plays. A male Shepard will still shoot his way to victory as a female Shepard would.

However, I noticed a lot of pop media critics are saying that simply swapping genders doesn't make a good representation of female characters or just having FemShep doesn’t fix the problem. The critics say that simply making the gun wielding soldier female is not female representation and is just reinforcing masculine traits.

Now, I’m a bit confused by this. I thought stuff like aggression or toughness or strength of will was simply gender neutral traits that males or females could have. There are female combatants as well as male ones. Since when was wielding a gun or a sword or a staff (if you’re a mage) or even having super strength in a Superhero MMO be considered masculine?

For the most part, when you play either a male or female in a Bioware game, your character’s goals remain the same. For Shepard, it’s to stop the Reapers, for the Warden, it’s to stop the Blight, etc. So, why would a woman trying to fulfill that motivation the same as a man would be considered masculine, as opposed to being gender neutral?

Also, if we keep in line of thinking that toughness is a masculine trait, what about other female Bioware characters that display the same traits? What about Ashley Williams, Aveline Vallen, Cassandra Pentaghast or Akaavi Spar (Yes, I play SWTOR. Yes, you may point and laugh at me.)

In other games, like Skyrim or The Sims or Fallout or Dark Souls, your gender really isn’t touched upon and your player character, at times, can still be presented with the same amount of moral choices that the player can choose between. Bioware takes this a step further by making NPCs recognize differences between genders such as romances and voice actors.

(There are romances that are only exclusive to one particular gender that may reinforce a heteronormative bias, but that’s another can of worms that I don’t want to touch on today.)

To me, biological factors such as skin tone, sexual orientation, race and gender are interchangeable in character creation and keeps said character’s role in the story in the same, that it doesn’t become an issue, at least for me, until the narrative and context within the game make it an issue.

I also stumbled upon this quote from Tumblr.

http://greenwolfmusic.tumblr.com/post/55263325859/so-i-want-to-introduce-you-to-two-characters-on

That having been said, these characters (Claire Augustus from Questionable Content and Alysia Yeoh from Batgirl, two male to female transgender portrayals) do frustrate me a little. While on the one hand they represent very character driven portrayals, I'm concerned with how insignificant their genders are to their stories as a whole. Both authors use "coming out" as a trope to solidify the friendship between the protagonist and the trans side character. However, beyond this, these characters' trans status is not used for any other sort of development. These characters could very easily be replaced by cis characters without dramatically affecting the narrative of the stories they appear in.

Are things like gun wielding and punching things masculine or have I gotten this all wrong?

I don't think the games you're talking about are really the ones that catch a lot of criticism when it comes to female representation in games.

However, I noticed a lot of pop media critics are saying that...

And there you have it. Its trending to barf at things like this right now and it doesnt matter if you have something clever to say about it or not.

As I get older I am coming to the conclusion that a lot of people will just go out of their way to find fault with anything and everything. People just like to bitch. That isn't to say that there aren't problems that need to be addressed but seriously, people with an agenda will find fault with anything they want to find fault with.

I play games to have fun, if a game isn't fun, don't play it. If it offends you in some way, don't play it. If you think there is a problem with certain characters in games (or media in general) then I invite you to go and write/create better ones.

I don't think many people are saying that?

I've heard these things before and I believe a gender toggle will never fix all the problems with equality in games.

Those who have a problem with the female not being characterized properly because of male traits have a point. That point though is resources are not being made to change the role beyond voice and adding boobs but this is still a valid female characterization. The world is a diverse place where gender roles are not the rule.

FemShep is the tomboy I want to play and I'd rather they don't just slap on what is currently understood as female traits.

Gender isn't binary and gender/sex/sexual oreintation does not enforce any traits 100% of the time.

The same can be said about message boards :p

If your female character is strong only by merit of the fact that one script was written and it was predominantly written with the male avatar in mind (Mass Effect) that's less female empowerment than it is just a residual effect of laziness. You shouldn't only be able to write a strong woman if the script is written for a man. That's silly, Bioware get too much credit.

@bargainben: How is the Mass Effect script written for a man?

@brendan said:

It actually wasn't at all. The writer has gone on record (I have no idea where, but I also have a Twitter reply from him saying the same thing) saying that the script was written for an either-gender character. I would call it neutral, not written for a man.

This part of the issue gets a little messy and when looking at something like this, I always find helpful to try to interpret what someone is saying. Because people aren't always the best at articulating what they exactly mean in circumstances like this.

I think there's a couple central points here

first off these complaints are usually implicitly intended for big-huge AAA games only. I don't think many folks level these as much against indie games for a variety of reasons.

1. If the player protagonist has a very detailed and defined character in AAA games (e.g. Ezio from Assassin's Creed, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid, the GTA protagonists, Master Chief from Halo, Geralt from Witcher, Mario from Mario Bros. etc), they most always often are male . Lara Croft and Samus Aran are two very notable exceptions. These types of games is largely where this complaint is intended. These types of games often have some of the best defined plots and stronger stories in AAA games.
2. Games like Dark Souls, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Saints Row, Dragon's Dogma and Dragon Age with robust character creators are characters that by definition don't tend to have much personality and also are thereby kind of neither gender. Which make some of the interaction with NPCs feel a little wooden and off in places. These characters don't really have the traits or nuanced experiences of either gender. However those games almost always tend to use a Male Default version most prominently in marketing materials (cover art, characters, commercials, ads, default choice at selection etc) so they do suggest that they are still primarily intended for men. Eventhough you can play as either much of those games rolls off the assumption that the Player Character is male and when a line of dialogue is out of place or some such it's usually in a manner that conveys that. So while you can play as a female it's not the same kind of detailed and nuanced narrative experience that only comes from games that have defined characters and when the game does have any (usually unintentionally) of that it tends to be slightly masculine which might cause some dissonance for a player rolling a female character.

Thus what you don't have is many Female characters in games with defined protagonist that have a story and world that is tailored to what it's like to be one. I.e. for people who want to play the type of games that point number 1 references as a female character, the type of games that Point 2 references are poor substitutes. The games in Point 2 are good (in many cases very good) games and they may enjoy them, but it's different kind of experience that doesn't address the core of the want.

In my mind the best representation of a strong female option was in Persona 3 Portable. It's a bit hard to explain if you haven't played it, but the small differences in how a female PC interacted with characters (and conversely, how they interacted with her) was what made it stand out in my mind. When I spent time with the other female characters it really felt like it was "just us girls" hanging out, and when I interacted with the male characters there was that oh-so-subtle difference that occurs when dealing with the opposite sex. But even with all that extra "girlishness" I never once felt like I was being pandered too. The game let me feel feminine AND heroic at the same time, whereas in BioWare games I find the female PC always ends up being some shade of tomboy.

Male Shepard is on the cover. "Fem Shep" (the need for a qualifier, again, makes it clear the male is the default) didnt even get an official design until the 3rd game. People say a lot of things 'on the record', Bioware staff in particular are especially good at bloviating in interviews, but its pretty clear that script was written for a man. The dialog feels more in sync with the male NPCs than the females, who tend to be more poorly written and tend to be far more sexualized.

Male Shepard is based on a real human person physically, "fem shep", when they finally got around to actually designing her, was barbie doll parts. Its an afterthought, its the 'not default'.

@bargainben: You're not wrong on the design end of things (and on the fact that male Shep is the "default" character for the series), but I would still argue that the character is just written generically, not "for a man." Side characters, in general, are almost always worse at this. As you mentioned, female NPCs are much more inclined to flirtation; however, femShep is very rarely sexualized in this way in my opinion. So, I guess you're right in saying that the part of the script you hear from other characters is written as if you are a male character. This is where the work needs to be done, particularly in Bioware games.

I haven't play ME3 yet, but I would say that the Mass Effect series does a really good job at a main character where the gender doesn't matter, as opposed to similar games where I feel the character itself often doesn't matter.

It has to be the strongest example in games of it's ilk, though you can't say that it goes out of it's way to make any sort of actual female personality. Good voice acting helps a great deal though.

The hero / soldier persona doesn't really lend itself to character depth and as soon as you commit to a female character you are essentially writing a completely separate game. I would guess there must be some visual novel style games that succeed in this to some degree.

A female shepherd kind of character is a rarity and not a good representation for the common strong female outlook . She was more like "i can do it like a dude" kind of character .

Yep. This. You seem to misunderstand the goal of these 'critics' you speak of. They do not want any of the things they tell you they want, they just want to criticize stuff for the sake of it.

I would like to thank everyone for their constructive input.

People are weird sometimes and say weird things, it happens!

pretty decently put.

I don't think most are saying they are bad that they have both options but more so its not a representation of a good female character in video games. its usually not a representation of a strong character of any gendered. though there is something said about the default of those games almost always being male. wether each game made female characters as an afterthought is another discussion and is often unprovable so whats the point of talking about it

Also really sad a lot of people here are so dismissive of the idea that bringing something like this up is a legitimate complaint in games.

You bring up a good point about traits being defined as masculine or feminine. Our culture associates men with being strong, aggressive, and tough. I think the reason for this is that our culture reinforces these traits on us when we're growing up. We could very well associate women with these traits and men with the traits commonly associated with women. We just choose the traits for each gender. It's just how we think.

So screw whatever they think. If you can tell an interesting story with either gender, that's what matters.

It is true though that gender doesn't really matter in games when you can choose your gender from the start. If the story is going to be the same no matter which gender you pick, the character's experience will be the same too. At that point, the reason for including both genders as options is not to tell a story that is influenced by the character's gender but rather to be more inclusive to the people playing the game. (ie Mass Effect). If you wanted to tell a story that is influenced by the character's gender, it's easier to pick one gender for the story. (ie. Beyond Two Souls). Both options can be legitimate in games as long as the game tells a good story.

In that case, simply adding a gender toggle wouldn't work for all video games. The industry as a whole just needs to do a better job representing both genders in general. Stop telling the same stories, and give us some new ones. Maybe then the discussion about not properly representing females in games will end, which will only end once they are.

I'm sure this has already been said, but I kinda look at it this way. In games like you mention, sure you can choose your gender, but more often than not the writing for your character does not change based on that decision. You still have the same choices of what to say, how quests progress, how people treat you, etc

You could make the argument that it just means the writing is kinda lazy for both genders, but more often than not I get the sense that the writing in those games has a "male as default" lean to it rather than being truly gender neutral. Not surprising, since, well, most games do have a male as default thing going on, whether it's intentional or not. It also doesn't help that big budget games that don't let you pick your gender are overwhelmingly male. I could see why a woman would get frustrated like, "I can pick a girl in this RPG! Finally! Wait...none of these dialogue choices are what a girl would say. Nobody is treating me like I'm a girl. My protag is just a dude in women's clothing. Great..."

From talking to my girlfriend about this, there seems to besome basic societal traits that are almost always attributed to men and rarely attributed to women (whether or not it's healthy is a whole different topic, but it's the reality we live in). Misappropriation of these traits can make a character ring untrue to female players when it shows up in games with gender choice. Things like being too competitive and overly aggressive. Being confident without good reason. Not displaying emotion. Being unable to admit fault. Never showing remorse. Not placing enough importance on family ties, etc. I mean, when does the PC in DA: Origins ever really grieve normally over his/her family in the human noble storyline? It's all about revenge, and even then it's like, "meh, my family died. Whatevs. I'm a heartless killing machine, it's cool."

I've watched her play games with gender-choice, and heard her say enough times, "Well why won't it just let me say/do this?" that I know there are plenty of perfectly reasonable options that the creators just didn't think of or intentionally left out, and it's because they come from a female viewpoint in a male-dominated industry.

Then again she once burst into my home office crying her eyes out because some mission in Back Flag forced her to kill animals which she had been avoiding up until that point, so maybe she's not the example I should be using here, lol.

There are some games which do the masculine traits for female characters in more female ways, in Assassin's Creed: Liberation Aveline changes disguise to gain the upper hand on her enemies, mingling with high society to get to her targets one day, working to free slaves from the inside the next. In a more outlandish comparison, Dante does badass explosive things with brute strength, telling monsters to flock off, while Bayonetta still has considerable strength, but bolsters it with magic and a bit more finesse... and still tells monsters to flock off.

I don't mind creating a female character for a male role in video games, i say male role because in reality most women i meet struggle with basic strength tasks, like pushing shopping trollies, that's not me being rude it's just true, and as a smart man once said if you're going to stare at a character for hours on end, make them good looking.

I recently played through Saints' Row IV as a woman. When I "romanced" Pierce, he told me he "usually doesn't swing that way" but that he's "up for anything." Shockingly, Pierce has been gay all along. All the buxom strippers and hookers in previous games were apparently a cover up.

Note: given this game's sense of humor, there's no doubt in my mind this dialog was left like this intentionally, but it's still kind of a meta-commentary on how poorly women are often depicted in video games.

@spiritbomb: I feel like some of those options don't really matter. Should you really be treated all that differently in a Mass Effect game because you're a woman? No, absolutely not. The only times you would be treated different would be if a character was sexist or was a romance option. In Skyrim your gender doesn't matter as none of the stories have anything to do with being a woman: you are generic warrior who can be the best at literally everything.

I think its a relatively flawed approach to say "all games need to have drastically different experiences if you play a man or woman". I'm not saying that you said that, but I almost feel its at the core of the argument. What about people who are transgendered and want that represented? What if someone wants to play a character who decides their gender differently over the course of the characters lifetime? What if the person wants to play a character who decides they are genderless or whatever new genders are being brought up on Tumblr (google it before accusing me of something). All games cannot be all things.

99% of the time characters in games like those you mentioned are merely husks for you, the player. You are meant to interject yourself into the role and basically decide how nearly everything goes in terms of character decisions. I don't think they should be drastically different, outside of maybe a few specific mission that would be gender specific...You aren't going to please everyone, and I would dare say the vast majority of people playing these games are fine with it.

Let's also point out that Bioware's statistics about the Mass Effect games showed that around 22-25% of players, at most, played as female Shepard (Jane) over male Shepard (John). I am sure inside analytics like these effect some parts of game development.

It's all double standard bullshit. They want female characters to be represented properly, so they make femshep just as tough as maleshep, but then all of a sudden tough is just another male dominent trait...? Then make a female character more "femenine" from the male character there's complaints that they aren't held to the same standard as male characters and that they're not being portrayed as strong as males... Is there a problem with females in games sometimes, sure, but "femenists" go beyond it, they're kind of like religious nuts. Always screaming, but moreso just because they want to scream, than anything. They're the ones that scream when you tell them factual physiological differences between men and women... it.. I.. just... I'm so done with some of them... /sadpanda

@mrfizzy said:

This idea always seems to crop up in threads like this and I can never understand it. It's like saying Jeff should quit complaining about Destiny and just go make his own $500,000,000 shooter, or suggesting Dan has to create a MOBA before he's equipped to poke fun at Dota 2. Art needs criticism as much as it needs creators and an audience, and suggesting otherwise is aggressively myopic.

I must admit that of all feminist criticisms, the "Mr Man Trope" is the one that threw me off the most at first. Surely it's an implicit acceptance of patriarchal values to imply that female characters being independent, forceful and pragmatic are just "pretending to be men"? Men are granted a full array of character traits to explore, with an emphasis often being put on the acceptance of non-masculine traits (emotional intelligence and co-dependence come to mind); why shouldn't it be allowed the other way around?

I might be, and probably am, totally wrong on this!

I think the idea that assuming a man's role is not the point. The point is not to take the mantle of male domination but either subvert it or destruct it rather than it be a "I can too" scenario.

Sure they let me make my character look bald, but I know he's not, he's just got his head shaved and if he wanted he could grow a mane as fierce as a lion. He's the damned protagonist, what am I supposed to expect? Baldism is the real demon our society is yet to confront, and when we do I'll be hiding behind a dumpster somewhere in Detroit because it'll already be too late for me. Good luck future baldies, good luck.

Blank slate playable characters aren't what anyone is talking about.

@spiritbomb: Man, reading this made me think about how I've wondered quite a bit lately what exactly criticizers like those mentioned in this post want from female characters. On one hand, they seem to get upset when a female character is treated with seemingly extreme abuse (the new Tomb Raider comes to mind), or when the fact that she is a woman means she is given the option to wear dresses/apply makeup or the like - because "not all women wear that stuff". But then they get upset when their gender doesn't matter in a given situation.

Like, what? Do they just want scenes where for example, FemShep punches some dude and then says "I'm a woman, and I punched you simply because I am angry with you and don't need someone else to do it for me, not because of a societally normative male stereotype commonly applied to 'tough' women." At a certain point, come on.

For a Bioware game especially, I feel it would be a lot to expect them to have most scenes altered for both male/female characters without sacrificing other assets (although come on Bioware, you can fix the sitting animations in Inquisition, at least). Plus, the fact that this conversation is happening means that it would probably be difficult to please both sides using this tactic. Some would think gender-specific scenes were overdone and others that it wasn't enough. Probably why Bioware decided to just go with gender neutral scenes.

That's why I vastly prefer games written specifically for a female character, since this obviously means greater attention can be paid to how they want her to act, rather than how "a person" would act. Which I'm NOT saying means they can spend more time making her "act" like a girl; but rather being a good girl character. See the difference?

For example, I always play FemShep myself, because Dude-Guy who does male Sheppard is trash and also because it's JEN HALE. Like, duh. But you'll never be able to convince me that gender neutral FemShep is as cool as a Claire Redfield or Heather Mason.

Sure, maybe Claire never shows off her "girl power", but she's the only character from RE1-4 who doesn't have formal firearms training (besides Steve, and look where that gets him). Yet she kicks ass with the best of 'em all the same. There's a little more going on there intrinsically then one might see initially. But that doesn't mean Claire has to be terrified of the zombies and scream shrilly or be saved from the Birkin-Dog mutation by Leon. It just means she's a super-cool chick who can get shit done.

I don't get that cool-girl feeling from FemShep, but rather that she's a "person" who I happened to make female and has a great voice. It's a different feeling not because of her character, but how I know she's being written from the outset. That said, I sure don't blame Bioware. Good on them for trying to go the gender-equality heavy route. Lord knows in this climate it can't be an entirely poular decision. But I guess it just doesn't jive completely with me.

Also, stellar post, man.

To me, it's a matter of degrees. Having a gender option is better, for sure! But it's not all the way there.

Games with extensive character creators tend to not have a whole heck of a lot of personality in the main character at all. Even the ones that do like Mass Effect usually have the male version as the semi-if-not-totally-official version that is used in marketing materials and previews. I don't think it's asking too much for there also to be good female characters that are definitively female. When you talk about Shep, it's with the understanding that the picture in any given person's head might be of a totally different gender, and that makes it hard to say that she's a good female character since her gender cannot be a defining characteristic. She might be a good character in general, but especially because she's not the default it's hard to hold her up as a good example of a female one.

Having a gender slider on a game is good, and I don't think anyone would really disagree. It's just not really enough to fix the representation problem, and it's annoying when people equate them. You'll see lists of games that have 'strong female characters' that people trot out when the argument is going back and forth and there will be a smattering of ones in there that have a gender option which, to me, is a little disingenuous. Gender options are 'neutral' which is good, but doesn't really tip the scales either way. I don't like to put it in terms like that because it's not a competition, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a better way to describe the imbalance.

However, I noticed a lot of pop media critics are saying that simply swapping genders doesn't make a good representation of female characters or just having FemShep doesn’t fix the problem. The critics say that simply making the gun wielding soldier female is not female representation and is just reinforcing masculine traits.

Shepard is in the military of course she's going to be a gun wielding soldier. She shows compassion by making various paragon decisions or sparing the Geth and Krogan from extinction. Are these considered "feminine" actions? So men must be murders and any sense of empathy is discouraged in males? Bioware games do it right as far as I'm concerned, leave subjective traits for what men and women "ought to be" up to player choice.

Mass Effect is about the space military, you're going to be shooting fools. Play a different game if you want to do a different thing. Like costume quest, go trick or treating, create costumes, and imagine you're something different as either gender. Unless play fighting monsters as a unicorn and candy corn is too masculine....

The "feminist" argument comes from the wrong angle too often. If the goal is equality, it shouldn't favor any one side. Men can be just as sensitive to some issues of representation and women aren't so weak as to be offended by every little thing that gets talked about.

Here's some things to think about, most choose your gender characters default white male. The vast majority of set characters are male.

So maybe the argument isn't so much that having the option to play a woman in a game is a bad example, but more that it's only a small step towards equality in the gaming space.

Until there are as many positive examples of women in games as men, it's unbalanced. And constantly making the default choice male doesn't help that.

Mostly men make big budget video games. Women in those games are created by male views on what a woman is supposed to be like if they could design their fantasy woman. Sprinkle in the economic realities of having separate animations, dialog, and voices for giving a M/F option and you have your issue. Is this not obvious?

I believe the idea is that while it's unthinking to assign definite traits to characters based on their gender, it's just about as unthinking to not recognize that most societies have defined certain "feminine" and "masculine" traits. When a designer's/artist's solution to our preponderance of weak female characterization is to bestow "masculine" qualities to those characters, it demonstrates a confusion of traditionally-minded gender roles with societal purchase.

In other words, both femininity and masculinity can be emblematic of a strong individual, no matter their gender. One side of that truth is sorely underrepresented in games.

Nothing wrong with that, plenty of assertive women in the world.

Not aimed at you, but,

The whole sexism thing in video games is mind numbing at this point for me, developers will cater to their primary demographic. People like Anita should be looking at Hollywood instead, they are worse than video games for their stereotyping and tropes. We're always going to have games with some really shitty characters and eye rolling stereotypes, just because a lot of them happen to be women shouldn't be made into some big ordeal about equality. It's interesting that most of the people, be it feminists or those that agree with them refuse to acknowledge that male characters are just as stereotyped as women. Big biceps, surfboard abs, tall, rugged, you name it. A lot of the arguments boil down to "You don't have a character of X race or gender, you are actively refusing to include people from non-white male backgrounds." it's insane.

The male stereotypes are overwhelmingly positive across the board. To male gamers. That's the major difference.

And as far as primary demographic? I would be rediculously surprised if straight cis white men are a majority in gaming.

It's much easier and less worrisome to write what you know. Michael Crichton put a lot of medicine in his books because it's what he was familiar with. Most video game writers, lead writers specifically, are male, and since they're drawing from some sort of male perspective, experience, and mindset--these can vary wildly, but there are common threads and themes--you end up with male characters being the best and most realistically written. I don't buy into affirmative action; we don't need more women in politics since your sex shouldn't affect your decisions in office. If a group of people is getting tasks done, I don't care one bit how many of the individuals are what sort of people. But I absolutely think we need greater diversity in art and entertainment, because the only reason these things remain interesting, fulfilling, and expanding is because they show us new and exciting views and perspectives, and the greater the diversity the greater the range.

Get more women into media creation, because believe it or not women and men are different, and I want to see a plethora of outlooks.

I do agree female characters typically aren't good representations. But male characters aren't either. It's not like bald space marines represent men all that well. And although we're beyond that at the moment, It's not like Nathan Drake or Joel from TLOU (don't remember his last name) are really representative either.

The story is written with certain behaviors and traits in mind and then a character is force-fit onto this to help you identify with the actions.

In most games you're going to shoot other characters, no matter what sex your character is. That's just because shooting is an easily-understandable, effective mode of interaction and so games use a ton of it.