Bizzama

@biggiedubs said:

@Bizzama said:

@biggiedubs said:

Me too and to be brutally honestly, I've seen way more men do amazing parkour stuff than I have women; but whatever.

The only reason I said it to begin with is that I imagine nine times out of time that protagonist is made to be a male one, purely because it involves something vaguely physical. Is was nice that they made her a female protagonist, but it would have been even better if she was actually a well-rounded and interesting character. Baby steps, I guess.

And what it's worth, I'm a dude currently in college who still wants to get into the games industry, despite all of those stories.

Good to know there's someone out there in the same situation I am! I think you're right about developers choosing a male protagonist for physical situations, but while that choice does make sense on a fundamental level, I'd argue to those developers that that argument doesn't hold up now that we have so many women soldiers and women in other physically-based fields. But you're right, baby steps... Though really, character depth would've been nice.

It's kind of depressing when we're 'congratulating' a game for even doing the bare minimum of female representation in a game, but I guess you have to when you look at the rest of the games put out at the moment.

You know, it would be pretty awesome if there was a female protagonist in a Call of Duty game, or any modern FPS. I think they still keep the female soldiers away from the firefights as much as possible, I still don't think they're allowed to be infantry or Navy Seals or anything like that, so maybe they've got a ready-made excuse right there. But then it would be cool to play as a female soldier on a routine patrol, that turns into a fight or something like that. Might give those games a bit of much needed downtime too.

And yeah, I think we both need good luck to get into the games industry at the moment. I want to be a writer, which I've found almost impossible to get any kind of experience for. Especially when I'm suggesting such blasphemous thing as 'putting a female protagonist in a FPS'......

I think a female protagonist in an FPS would be really interesting and would definitely add an interesting spin on the tired FPS formula. I'm pretty sure you're right about women generally being kept away from the front lines, but I think that lends itself to an even more interesting premise, having a soldier who never even expected to see combat end up in the center of a major conflict and seeing how that soldier adapts to that situation.

I'm studying animation, so I've probably got it much easier than you do. But I hope you stick to your goal and make it someday- clearly, we need more people who would get behind such a blasphemous idea in the industry.

@Grimluck343 said:

I wonder what the sales are like for games with female leads, or if there are even enough to come to any sort of meaningful conclusion.

I'm pretty sure I saw a link that had this kind of information on Twitter while I was looking through the hashtags, let me see if I can find it...

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

In terms of pure sales numbers, in the first three months of availability, games with only a male hero sold around 25 percent better than games with an optional female hero. Games with exclusively male heroes sold around 75 percent better than games with only female heroes.

It's also got some data about the marketing that games with female protagonists get, which is significantly less than those with male protagonists.

Games with only female heroes are given half the marketing budget as games with male heroes.

@takkun169 said:

@Bizzama: Unfortunately, too many times it is the publishers who make the call for male protagonists. I read an article in, I think it was Edge Magazine, about it and a few developers had sounded off on the issue saying that their games were originally designed with female protagonists and the publishers (I'm sure we could all guess which ones) came in and told them to change it because games with women leads don't sell. It's a pretty ugly state of affairs in this industry and I really hope that the more attention being brought to it through efforts like this have a positive impact.

Ugh. If they don't let these games go through with female protagonists, how do they expect the fact that games with female protagonists don't sell to ever change? It's comforting to know that developers are trying to make games with female protagonists, though.

@biggiedubs said:

Me too and to be brutally honestly, I've seen way more men do amazing parkour stuff than I have women; but whatever.

The only reason I said it to begin with is that I imagine nine times out of time that protagonist is made to be a male one, purely because it involves something vaguely physical. Is was nice that they made her a female protagonist, but it would have been even better if she was actually a well-rounded and interesting character. Baby steps, I guess.

And what it's worth, I'm a dude currently in college who still wants to get into the games industry, despite all of those stories.

Good to know there's someone out there in the same situation I am! I think you're right about developers choosing a male protagonist for physical situations, but while that choice does make sense on a fundamental level, I'd argue to those developers that that argument doesn't hold up now that we have so many women soldiers and women in other physically-based fields. But you're right, baby steps... Though really, character depth would've been nice.

@biggiedubs: That makes sense to me, though I have seen men do some amazing freerunning/parkour.

This seems weird to me. Surely it's easy enough to find a used Wii and a controller for $100 at this point, right?

@NDart said:

@biggiedubs: alleged physical advantages

Is this a joke?. There are always exceptions to the rule but males are, in general, more physically capable than women. This can be seen in virtually any species on the planet. What everyone involved in this sort of social justice issue needs to understand is that, while men and women are NOT equal in a lot of ways, they always have equal worth.

This, a thousand times this. As a female, I understand that I'm physically less capable of doing certain things, i.e. lifting large/heavy boxes, and it drives me nuts when other women get all offended when a clearly more physically capable man offers to help. I can understand why they get upset when the man makes it clear that he's only offering to help because he thinks she couldn't do it without a big strong man to save her, but when it's just an offer of assistance to make her life easier, there's absolutely no reason to get angry. However, as a woman, I'm physically smaller, so I can fit into smaller spaces or under things where a larger man wouldn't fit. Focusing on the physical discrepancies between the sexes is idiotic. Like you said, the focus should be equal worth.

That said, as a woman who is currently going to college in the hopes of entering the gaming industry when I graduate, these stories are discouraging, to say the least. I won't let myself be driven away from the industry because of this, as having more women in the industry should make this less of a problem and I absolutely love games, but it still makes me nervous. However, it's a good thing these stories coming to light to increase awareness of the issue. I agree with what some people are saying that these women should start taking action, but raising awareness is just as important. I also agree that there seems to be a prevalent theme of, "YOU DON'T HAVE A UTERUS SO THEREFORE YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING AND YOU MUST BE AN ASSHOLE TO ALL WOMEN BY DEFAULT," which I certainly hope isn't what people take away from this. Really, I'd say all of the male gamers I've met are wonderfully nice people who don't harp on my gender in the slightest, with maybe one exception. The real message people should get from this is to not be an asshole, men and women alike.

As a huge P4 fan, I figured I'd add a female perspective on the matter- I find it weird, especially with Naoto. I understand that other countries have lower ages of consent and that this is pretty much par for the course with anime, but it feels really out of place in P4. Yeah, there was some fanservice in the original game, but not on this level. Getting shots of Naoto's boobs just really weirds me out, especially because I know that she's 15 and struggling with her sexuality. Plus, in the second screeshot, she's just hanging out, like nothing's wrong, which is completely out of character for her, especially considering how she reacts to the beauty pageant or even that same scene in the original. Really, I'd say the way they're just standing there completely naked is at least somewhat out of character for everyone except Rise, though Naoto is definitely the worst offender- boobs are a pretty personal thing for high school girls. It just comes off as really blatant pandering to people who would be into that sort of thing, and the 15-year-old sideboob grosses me out.

I don't have as much of an issue with the in-battle outifts because it seems like everyone has something like that (hey Kanji) and they're so ugly that I can't take them seriously. (Seriosuly, that asscrack.) Plus, they're entirely optional, so I'll just avoid them. That said, those suits are fucking awesome.

Funky Student.

I believe I heard somewhere that Yu/Naoto is popular in Japan, but it's probably nobody. If it had to be someone, either Yukiko or Rise. Personally, Naoto is my favorite

Most good PS3-exclusive games, especially Journey because that game looks really interesting (not to mention gorgeous)

Also the whole Halo franchise- I tried to play the first one once and got stuck in this area of super dark tunnels really early on, and trying to find my way out made me feel so sick that I had to stop. Haven't gone back to it since. Really, there's a lot of first-person games that I'd like to play but simply can't because they make me feel so ill.