Game developers are only encouraging sexism in gaming communities

@SethPhotopoulos said:

@Napalm said:

What the fuck did I just say? Fucking come on, people! JESUS.

Calling people straw man because I guess you just heard of that phrase recently and wanted to use it then call people names.

You're not very good at listening. If the kid in the corner tells you to stop poking him with the stick, what do you do? STOP POKING HIM.

@SethPhotopoulos said:

@Napalm said:

What the fuck did I just say? Fucking come on, people! JESUS.

Calling people straw man because I guess you just heard of that phrase recently and wanted to use it then call people names.

You're not very good at listening. If the kid in the corner tells you to stop poking him with the stick, what do you do? STOP POKING HIM.

I feel like the title was made with a poor choice of words. "Encouraging" implies they are actively trying to incorporate sexism, which isn't really the case; there just happens to be a lack of good female leads (in comparison to the number of males). Perhaps something more along the lines of "I'd like more games to have engaging female protagonists" would be better suited as the title... But that's just me.

It's already been mentioned here about the male protagonists. You seem to be so focused on the lack of female leads that you're disregarding just what kind of characters a good number of male leads are...

@FengShuiGod said:

If there were more female leads I'm sure people would be complaining that those leads are sexist stereotypes. I mean, most male leads are "sexist." Gravely voice, muscle toned bodies, square chins, too much HGH, ect. Sure, you get the Heavy Rain-esque fat cop once in a while, but most characters are more like Duke Nukem. It's the same with most female characters. They often wear ridiculously tight clothing (i.e., Bayonetta), big boobs, ect.

It's certainly something that could use a bit of variety, in both gender and ethnicity perhaps, but there is no encouragement of sexism. Instead I ask you this: would you rather have rarer, though particularly well done female characters, or said characters hidden within a multitude of other mediocre, perhaps laughable or embarrassing female protagonists? Also, what does the seriousness, amount of focus on story, or genre placement have to do with the characterizations of female protagonists? If it's good, it's good, regardless of where it takes place. I'll say again, while it's something I'd like to see the less traveled road more often, the road we're on now is not encouraging sexism nor misogyny.

@NovaDTH said:

@Lazyaza said:

The new tomb raider looked like it was going to finally give us a game with a strong female protagonist but that whole e3 demo was basically torture porn and I suspect it wont change in the final game >_>

So you want more female protagonists. But you want them to never be endangered, never want to have to overcome adversity and never want them to become stronger characters for it? It's not torture porn, it's a trial she has to overcome.  You can't want a female protagonist AND want them to be treated like fragile weaklings because that IS sexism.

I never said that.  Theirs nothing wrong with women being injured and hurt in a game within the context of whatever is happening. It is very much a big part of what the new tomb raider is about, I wouldn't buy their theme of survival for a second if she weren't being constantly hurt.  The point I was making however is that she did not sound like she was being injured.  Her voice actress did a terrible job of portraying someone in pain and it ended up ruining the illusion at best and sounding like torture porn at worst.   I'm sorry you misunderstood, I should have clarified. 

@Lazyaza said:

@NovaDTH said:

@Lazyaza said:

The new tomb raider looked like it was going to finally give us a game with a strong female protagonist but that whole e3 demo was basically torture porn and I suspect it wont change in the final game >_>

So you want more female protagonists. But you want them to never be endangered, never want to have to overcome adversity and never want them to become stronger characters for it? It's not torture porn, it's a trial she has to overcome.  You can't want a female protagonist AND want them to be treated like fragile weaklings because that IS sexism.

I never said that.  Theirs nothing wrong with women being injured and hurt in a game within the context of whatever is happening. It is very much a big part of what the new tomb raider is about, I wouldn't buy their theme of survival for a second if she weren't being constantly hurt.  The point I was making however is that she did not sound like she was being injured.  Her voice actress did a terrible job of portraying someone in pain and it ended up ruining the illusion at best and sounding like torture porn at worst.   I'm sorry you misunderstood, I should have clarified. 

Ah ok, when you say the whole demo I naturally don't automatically assume you're just singling out the voice acting. I will agree the voice acting seemed meh at best but that could be said for a large percentage of games these days.

It video games really are sexist, then they're sexist towards males more than anything. But they're not, anywhoo, so 

Whatever

I think you're being a bit selective. Many major games are war games, where obviously the main characters are male, because that's how shit works. You mentioned Gordon Freeman, well remember that Alex is arguably the biggest character in that game. Additionally both Samus and Lara Croft are major video game characters who are female. There's usually a reason game developers choose a male over a female. Take for example Deus Ex, that guy beats the shit out of ton of people, brutally. Now I'm not saying a girl couldn't do that, but it would look really strange. The first couple of times it would look cool because 'hey, chick kicking ase', after that it would be a bit strange though. Furthermore he has to make some pretty fucked up moral choices, and even if girls are capable of it, society is still not comfortable with women being put in that position. Look at films and television. Sure you have the occasional strong female role in action movies, but otherwise it's mostly male. 
 
Another point is that most major games are marketed all around the world, including in cultures where women kicking ase is considered non-kosher. 

The ESA put out some interesting statistics about the demographics of the video-game playing population in the US, which are quite a bit different than the statistics people are making up. http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf

Males 17 and under only represent 13% of the game-playing population, and there is a overall 58%/42% male/female split. That's far from an overwhelming majority.

The ESA put out some interesting statistics about the demographics of the video-game playing population in the US, which are quite a bit different than the statistics people are making up. http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf

Males 17 and under only represent 13% of the game-playing population, and there is a overall 58%/42% male/female split. That's far from an overwhelming majority.

honestly, at this point i would be satisfied if game designers stopped putting boob plate armor on their female characters. it manages to be both sexist and hilariously impractical at the same time.

Just gonna say that Wet is a pretty cool game where you play as a lady

@actionTACO said:

honestly, at this point i would be satisfied if game designers stopped putting boob plate armor on their female characters. it manages to be both sexist and hilariously impractical at the same time.

It's not entirely untrue. It's restrictive and even painful to force boobs down under tight armour. Maybe not all of those chest plates need to be Triple-F cup sized, but there does need to be room for accomodate the physical differences between male and female. It's no different in principle tan a cod piece.

I don't buy the "girls aren't allowed to kick ass because thats just not how it works in the real world and society couldn't handle it if they did" argument. Why do games have to be based off of reality? fuck just make the main character a woman. you act like women have never brutally killed before. i want to see more female lead characters!

I wouldn't go as far as to say that they are encouraging sexism, but games are made by people and people are part of society. If you want to change the norm, then, you know...fix society first?

They're not all sexualized, helpless or stereotypes though. Lightning from FFXIII is a good example. It's just not as common.

Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Oblivion.. Various Tomb Raider games, WET.. There are lots of games with a "strong" female protagonist. To say that the games in which you can select your gender doesn't have a focus on story is just silly. Mass Effect for example is one of the greatest games of all time (in my humble opinion at least) and as I went with a female Shepard, the male version doesn't even exist to me. To me, commander Shepard is a woman, and as such she is the protagonist in a game with a heavy emphasis om story. Also, the games that lets you chose your gender treat women the same way they treat men. As in NPCs react differently depending on it, there's no sexism to be found in those games. Furthermore, I always play as a woman if I have the option and I have done so much to the ridicule of friends for about 15 years or so. I started doing that much because of the same reasons that you bring up, I pretty much felt that there are hardly any games in which you play as a woman. That was true of the time, but it's not true today.

@The_Nubster: Yup, I think we're on the same page. I'm not even gonna say that forums are difficult to read for others, because we all make that mistake/misunderstanding. They'll get it.

So the fact that there aren't many non-stereotyped protagonists that are not white promotes racism in gaming communities, right? Logic?

@FluxWaveZ said:

So the fact that there aren't many non-stereotyped protagonists that are not white promotes racism in gaming communities, right? Logic?

Well I am still waiting to play a game that lets me play as a strong Namibian woman, a Romanian superfreak, a Vietnamese soldier, etc. Why do I always have to play as a white American male?

I always play lady characters, so I guess it's not something I noticed.

@Tsoglani said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

So the fact that there aren't many non-stereotyped protagonists that are not white promotes racism in gaming communities, right? Logic?

Well I am still waiting to play a game that lets me play as a strong Namibian woman, a Romanian superfreak, a Vietnamese soldier, etc. Why do I always have to play as a white American male?

What's your point here?

@Abigailnn said:

So i started playing dues ex and i realized that I cant think of one serious or realistic story-focused game (or even one that had a decent story that wasn't the focus of the game...) thats come out in the last 10 years that has a female protagonist. Beyond good and evil and alice: madness returns are the best examples i can think of, but they are both more fantasy games (even though alice is still really dark) and the only real examples i can think of at all...

Yea there are games that let you pick your gender, but those mostly aren't story or immersion based games. If you let the player change a big part of the main character like that you cant really customize the game around the protagonist that well.

I mean bioware does an ok job in their games letting you pick stuff like background and then changing bits of the game around that, but if there was a specific hero you played as through all those games i bet they could do a lot more with the detail and immersion

Which is probably why a lot of games don't let you customize your protagonist. And 90% of the time, you play as a guy.. I mean i realize that its a male-dominated industry, im not expecting games like call of duty and gears of war to have a female protagonist. There's always gonna be games that naturally attract the kind of crowd who would think its "gay" to play as a girl, but i don't get why games that are bit more -cough- mature have to pander to those people as well...

The only time anyone plays as a female in a video game is when...

1. It doesn't matter (Oh, you picked female, now sometimes the npcs will refer to you differently. yay.)

2. Its a gimmick, overly sexualized, a totally crazy game, or a combination of the 3 (tomb raider, bayonetta, blood rayne, dead or alive, ms splosion man)

3. Portal. Chell could really be replaced with anything, just like gordon

Im just a bit sick of playing as a guy and then being smothered in female love interests left and right. If it keeps up im going to turn into a lesbian. I can totally understand why a lot of my friends aren't interested in playing games made for guys

Heavenly Sword

Final Fantasy XIII

Metroid Prime Trilogy

Heavy Rain

Jeanne D'Arc

All of those came out within the last 10 years, and all have a strong female protagonist.

We are not going to see a "serious" female protagonist in a retail video game until women take themselves seriously, and so do men. How is the mainstream nation suppose to view an average girl running around in a game with no sexual content as interesting when the entire world seems to be exactly that? I will admit, when a female pops in a game, I want her to fall in love with my character or another (well mannered) character for the sake of love, which sure, can be sexualized by her beauty.

No one really wants to look at an average or below average female in a game, just like ugly men, so the art designers got nuts with sexualizing the female figure. It has been done since the dawn of time, not sure why people would think it would stop now in an aspiring art genre such as Video Games.

I believe my point to be pretty obvious... but here I go again: why does nearly every game have to feature a white American protagonist?

 There's usually a reason game developers choose a male over a female. Take for example Deus Ex, that guy beats the shit out of ton of people, brutally. Now I'm not saying a girl couldn't do that, but it would look really strange.

@Tsoglani said: 

I believe my point to be pretty obvious... but here I go again: why does nearly every game have to feature a white American protagonist?

Uh, sorry, I thought you were being sarcastic because some of those examples you were giving out were done before (Niko Bellic = Romanian superfreak...).

I think in the same way that video games are not responsible for violence in the real world, video games and game developers are also not responsible for sexism.

@Napalm said:

@SethPhotopoulos said:

@Napalm said:

@The_Nubster said:

Besides, what game could be made better by jamming a female into the lead's shoes? Dead Space? Brutal Legend? Bastion?

Who the hell said anything about "jamming" a female lead into a male-centric role? Talk about a fucking straw man. I can't even tell if people are being serious or ironic anymore. This topic sucks.

A lot of people in this thread are saying "This game would be better with a female lead just cause." In fact the guy he quoted said a similar game could be better just by having a female.

Some of those stories can be repurposed to support a female lead, but you can't just literally drop a female in there and have it make absolute sense.

That's not the point at all. The point is whether the story would be better inherently because of a female lead. And the answer is a no for almost all games. Repurpose the plot to support a female lead and you bring equity to the two potential plots. Gender usually does not make things better.

@TwilitEnd656 said:

I feel like the title was made with a poor choice of words. "Encouraging" implies they are actively trying to incorporate sexism, which isn't really the case;

Not quite. Note that the thread starter made another post questioning how the lack of female leads was not encouraging sexism. She's obviously very clear on what point she is getting at, and being quite wrong at the same time.

Alice is a trash series though. :|

Also I don't understand this complaining.

While the gender split of gamers is nearly 50/50 i do believe (don't quote me on this) that only a tiny amount of people directly involved with the creation (concept to completion) of video games are female, most female gamers don't seem to care that much, or that loudly, and so they put out the games they are better "equipped"(dick joke)  to make.

Final fantasy is probably the closest example you guys have given, even though lightning is definitely sexualized (just not as obviously)

So far, all there is is Alice, Lightning, and Jade. I dont know how you could consider fallout, oblivion, etc. particularly in fallout and oblivion being female just means sometimes npcs call you lady or women. Yeah that totally counts. Id give mass effect a halfsy, especially if they build up the female shepherd thing in ME3 like they seem to be doing.

And people mentioning heavenly sword.. HA! omg! really? shes almost naked and she kills guys, definitely a strong female hero in a story driven game >.>

@SethPhotopoulos said:

@The_Nubster said:

@Little_Socrates: I don't know about the rest of the world, but Canada opened all positions, including combat roles, to women in 1989.

I thought that was true for America as well, if not all most in the 90's. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/us/17women.html?pagewanted=all

While it is still true that sometimes women are in battle zones, the official rules/laws still state that women do not engage in direct combat with the enemy (which is at least mentioned in the article you linked.) Society (or, at least, American society) has not officially accepted women in combat roles, and that's made clear by our laws and by our fiction. The other main culture making video games, Japan, also doesn't allow women in its military; the anime subculture supports women in combat, of course, but anime is also has never been about seeking "realism" in the sense Abigailnn is referring to.

It's this in particular that make most horror films feel generic and the ones that put a twist on gender roles like Alien so effective. We are accustomed to male-dominated fiction where women are terrorized and men must be strong because that is the society we have bred, and the best work does put a twist on these roles. This twist breeds tension, and a game looking to emulate the tension of a film like Alien or Die Hard would probably do well to twist these gender roles.

However, tension is not generally the reason people play games these days. I, personally, do, and I imagine many people on this message board do. But most people are playing games specifically to relax or to succeed. As our own Ryan Davis has said many times, "games aren't challenging anymore, they're thrill rides," and the consumer trends generally reward this. While I appreciate more tense and diverse games and am very much interested in the genre evolving, I definitely think the bigger and more interesting issue is finding more ways to make games about something other than combat, platforming, simulation, point and click adventure gaming, or block puzzles so that we can have more diverse characters (read: personalities) in them.

Final fantasy is probably the closest example you guys have given, even though lightning is definitely sexualized (just not as obviously)

So far, all there is is Alice, Lightning, and Jade. I dont know how you could consider fallout, oblivion, etc. particularly in fallout and oblivion being female just means sometimes npcs call you lady or women. Yeah that totally counts. Id give mass effect a halfsy, especially if they build up the female shepherd thing in ME3 like they seem to be doing.

And people mentioning heavenly sword.. HA! omg! really? shes almost naked and she kills guys, definitely a strong female hero in a story driven game >.>

@Abigailnn said:

Final fantasy is probably the closest example you guys have given, even though lightning is definitely sexualized (just not as obviously)

So far, all there is is Alice, Lightning, and Jade. I dont know how you could consider fallout, oblivion, etc. particularly in fallout and oblivion being female just means sometimes npcs call you lady or women. Yeah that totally counts. Id give mass effect a halfsy, especially if they build up the female shepherd thing in ME3 like they seem to be doing.

And people mentioning heavenly sword.. HA! omg! really? shes almost naked and she kills guys, definitely a strong female hero in a story driven game >.>

There aren't a lot of examples being given because the statement that video games have a lack of female protagonists in general is a true one. But then again, there is no link between the number of female leads and the encouraging of sexism, hence any examples given don't address the assertion made in the OP. Further, neither have you given any convincing argument of how this encourages sexism despite the multitude of arguments made against that assertion.

The main character in Diner Dash is a female, she cooks food in the kitchen.

surely its not the lack of female characters that is sexist, but more the way females are currently portrayed, all skinny attractive (if you can call a collection of polygons attractive). but then the same can be said for many of the male chracters. its the same with films and comics and tv. there is a image being sold and if you buy it it will always be sold. only place you can get your average guy/girl protagonist is books and that dost really count as thats up to your imagination. all of these are escapisms unfortunatly we enjoy escaping in worlds with pretty people.

I wouldn't go as far as to say they are "encouraging" it. It is just an unfortunate fact that the huge majority of the market are male so businesses will only tailor games to a market to  make more money. This is also caused by  a lack of female developers, with the majority of videogame devs being male. The only way this will change is if females just try and put up with it by playing games that are tailored to a male audience and more female devs are recruited. After a while, the scales will probably tip in favour of a balanced market. 

If it keeps up im going to turn into a lesbian. 

And I would like a game where the male protagonist isn't a musclebound, invulnerable meat head who has no realistic emotional depth, but videogames.

And I would like a game where the male protagonist isn't a musclebound, invulnerable meat head who has no realistic emotional depth, but videogames.

@pixieface: Longest Journey is actually a great example.

I only skimmed over this thread in order to see if anyone posted this, but surprisingly nobody bothered to, so... http://www.giantbomb.com/female-protagonists/92-2287/

May it aid you all in shouting at each other.

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

@ARTB said:

And I would like a game where the male protagonist isn't a musclebound, invulnerable meat head who has no realistic emotional depth, but videogames.

Emotional depth? Dude, as a dude you're only allowed to show anger.

This makes me angry. OH NO I'VE BECOME THE THING I HATE!

@Mordukai said:

@Abigailnn: I fully agree with your frustration. The main reason for it is that the video game industry is mostly composed of men and therefor they will create a main character that they can identify with.

On a different note I would like to add Madison Paige from Heavy Rain as a strong, believable female lead. If you haven't got the chance to play that game yet then I recommend you do.

I don't think "identify with" is the proper term here, it's more like "have experience with." But yes, I agree with that sentiment.

@Abigailnn said:

So i started playing dues ex and i realized that I cant think of one serious or realistic story-focused game (or even one that had a decent story that wasn't the focus of the game...) thats come out in the last 10 years that has a female protagonist. Beyond good and evil and alice: madness returns are the best examples i can think of, but they are both more fantasy games (even though alice is still really dark) and the only real examples i can think of at all...

Yea there are games that let you pick your gender, but those mostly aren't story or immersion based games. If you let the player change a big part of the main character like that you cant really customize the game around the protagonist that well.

I mean bioware does an ok job in their games letting you pick stuff like background and then changing bits of the game around that, but if there was a specific hero you played as through all those games i bet they could do a lot more with the detail and immersion

Which is probably why a lot of games don't let you customize your protagonist. And 90% of the time, you play as a guy.. I mean i realize that its a male-dominated industry, im not expecting games like call of duty and gears of war to have a female protagonist. There's always gonna be games that naturally attract the kind of crowd who would think its "gay" to play as a girl, but i don't get why games that are bit more -cough- mature have to pander to those people as well...

The only time anyone plays as a female in a video game is when...

1. It doesn't matter (Oh, you picked female, now sometimes the npcs will refer to you differently. yay.)

2. Its a gimmick, overly sexualized, a totally crazy game, or a combination of the 3 (tomb raider, bayonetta, blood rayne, dead or alive, ms splosion man)

3. Portal. Chell could really be replaced with anything, just like gordon

Im just a bit sick of playing as a guy and then being smothered in female love interests left and right. If it keeps up im going to turn into a lesbian. I can totally understand why a lot of my friends aren't interested in playing games made for guys

Heavenly Sword

Final Fantasy XIII

Metroid Prime Trilogy

Heavy Rain

Jeanne D'Arc

All of those came out within the last 10 years, and all have a strong female protagonist.

@Abigailnn said:

Final fantasy is probably the closest example you guys have given, even though lightning is definitely sexualized (just not as obviously)

So far, all there is is Alice, Lightning, and Jade. I dont know how you could consider fallout, oblivion, etc. particularly in fallout and oblivion being female just means sometimes npcs call you lady or women. Yeah that totally counts. Id give mass effect a halfsy, especially if they build up the female shepherd thing in ME3 like they seem to be doing.

And people mentioning heavenly sword.. HA! omg! really? shes almost naked and she kills guys, definitely a strong female hero in a story driven game >.>

I'm not going to stress on how flimsy I feel your argument is, and how you appear are constantly picking apart legitimate examples just to ensure that you have as few cases as possible.

But, I'll play along.

We'll play by your rules and for some reason ignore oblivion and fallout for no legitimate reason what-so-ever. Let's go through the list of strong, non-sexualized female protagonists in games.

• Aya Breau in Parasite Eve 1 and 2.
• Jill Valentine in Resident Evil 1, 3 and 5.
• Rebecca Chambers in Resident Evil 0 and 1
• Claire Redfield in Resident Evil 2 and Code Veronica.
• Samus in any Metroid
• Terra/Tina in Final Fantasy 6
• Ceres in Final Fantasy 6
• Chell in Portal
• Ayame in Tenchu
• Heather in Silent Hill 3
• Jade in Beyond Good and Evil
• April Ryan in The Longest Journey
• Nico Collard in Broken Sword
• Rayne in BloodRayne
• Madison in Heavy Rain
• Carla in Fahrenheit
• Jennifer Tate in Primal
• Faith in Mirror's Edge
• Alice in Alice: Madness Returns
• Hana in Fear Effect
• Jennifer and Helen in Clock Tower 2
• Alyssa in Clock Tower 3
• Regina in Dino Crisis
• Zoe Castello in Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
• Jennifer Mui in Mercenaries
• Lisa in House of the Dead 2
• Alexandra Rovias in Eternal Darkness.
• Jessica Alkirk in Lunar Silver Star Saga
• Joanna Dark in Perfect Dark

That's a good list of female leads off the top of my head, and that's not including the near hundreds of other games that give you the option of choosing your gender. Out of these, there are even MORE non-lead protagonists in games who are non-stereotyped, multi-layered characters.

That's... not encouraging sexism.
 
Duke Nukem Forever, should you be stupid enough to take it seriously, would encourage sexism. Probably. I haven't played it yet.

@allworkandlowpay: you obviously have absolutely no idea what i was trying to say... like, totally, 100% completely missed the point