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[PATV] Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 5: Overlooked
Another question is "How do you make Male characters for a Female Audience."
Stop and think about this for a moment, Apart from the SIMs how many (Non asian) games in the western market do you see that have male characters that also have a wide apeal to Women in general.
the reason I ask this is because it seems to me that part of the reason why theres just not as many women gamers is just the simple fact that a lot of the male protagonists(and even a lot of the male suporting cast) are writen in a way that, for a lack of a better way of putting this, are a turn off.
I find this kind of funny since Big Fish, which is a huuuuuuuuge publisher of Hidden Object, was recently voted the Best Game Studio in the area by the Seattle Weekly, even though you have many impressive places like PopCap within walking distance of the place. There are a lot of things to explore outside of Core gaming, and it's absolutely vital that anyone in game development spends some time exploring outside of their preferences so that great innovations don't slip through the cracks or become lost to the larger audience. In fact, a show that explores lesser-known types of games that exist largely outside of core would be useful just to dredge up some input in case there are even more obscure things out there to be aware of. Certainly not everyone has heard of things like Princess Simulators.
Does that mean that portraying all women as having cooties is fine if our market is purely 13 year old boys?
I mean, it'd be nice if all games that placed emphasis on relationships showed a general transition throughout the game from such a mindset to healthy relationships between the genders, so as to serve as a guide to the audience. But those that don't put such an emphasis on that story, can they afford to stay in the current mindset of their intended audience?
@PedroAsani
Lovecraft is well known even if his work isn't well read. People tend to think they know what his work is about without reading any of it because we've become the cliff notes world (just look at wikipedia and how we use it).
To make a long story short, because I'm probably not going to be able to tell you what Lovecraft is about if you've never read Pickman's Model, The Rats in the Walls, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Colour out of Space, and/or At the Mountains of Madness;
Everything involving Lovecraft in games is the same discussion about what's wrong with the modern horror-game genre. Modern horror games spend too much time empowering characters and showing monsters. There are a few notable exceptions to this, but it's still the major trend in the genre.
Even if you guys don't do a whole show about hidden object games you might not have tried, I'd still love to see a list posted on the facebook page.
Also, I for one would love to see a show on the misuse of Lovecraft in games because I too feel like his works are often misunderstood. It's not really about squid monsters from space or aliens with unpronounceable names, his works are more about the atmosphere of the writing.
As a gamer who is constantly buying these games for my 53 year old mother, I can say that Hidden Object games are a huge hit with her age demographic.
Furthermore, I have noticed how almost all of the protagonists have been female, but as the target audience is not men, these women are either casually or business dressed. This character type is a far cry from, and in my opinion an improvement over, the scantily clad, large-breasted ladies that serve as eye candy for most modern games.
I find this diversion from the normal target audience to be a real eye opener for the game industry, and while I accept that larger companies will likely be slow to change their habits for fear of a possible profit loss, I truly hope that all developers will look at this style of female protagonist and understand that we aren't all prepubescent teenage boys. The gaming community has grown up, and I for one would love to see some games in the mainstream genres present some memorable female characters that AREN'T remembered for their minimal clothing or the size of their breasts.
Young girls who play games should be able to see a strong female character they admire and respect, just like boys have memorable characters such as Cloud (FF7), Dante (Devil May Cry) and Price (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare).
If I had a daughter, I would not want her wishing she was like the vapid sex symbols most female characters are today.
@discrider
No, it means there are two fundamentally different audiences being written for. It wasn't mentioned as an excuse, but as a diverging of the paths. If you tried to introduce a maternal undertone to most mainstream games without changing it for the genre or the audience you'd end up with another Alien Resurrection or Other M.
@Dedwrekka@PedroAsani
On the whole Lovecraft thing, all I'm going to say is this -- the stuff put out by Ice Pick Lodge tend to be more Lovecraft than the stuff that actually tries to reference Lovecraft, because most of the latter is usually just trying to nab some monster names and designs rather than the actual concepts and themes presented therein.
Also, my favorite Lovecraft story is The Quest of Iranon.
@Dedwrekka
I think the obvious issue I overlook in my previous comment is the volume of produced material.
If hidden object games flooded the market, and suddenly male protagonists were hard to find, male players are going to feel just as left out as some female players seem to feel, especially if all the male characters became objectified or otherwise when viewed through the hidden object game's lens. I can only imagine vast swathes of tall fit open shirted men riding horses across sunlit fields as I write this.
And I'm not trying to say that the hidden object game's feminine outlook on men is as bad as that of the masculine outlook on women in other games. It's probably not, and I can't comment because of my lack of experience in the genre.
But when do we curb pandering to our demographic and instead adopt a more balanced view? How can we tell that we've gone too far, especially when we're likely to create games for our own demographic? And when does the volume of work output start necessitating a move towards a more balanced view in spite of what sells, just so that the debate hears both sides equally?
Whilst this might all seem very off topic, I find it fascinating that these hidden object games remain an isolated system, surviving purely from its target audience with no real look-in from the mainstream. Surely if something like "jiggle physics" could be relegated to such a bubble, then it would lose the opportunity to offend.
Anyone who looks at Amazon's free app of the day has seen and been overwhelmed by the number of hidden object games on the Amazon Android marketplace. Just due to my OCD I have more hidden object games in my library than I know what to do with, and they are all sold for 99 cents each when not the free app of the day.
Does anyone find it kind of amusing/ironic that the Artifex Mundi logo has the same kind of stylized human at the center that the Lucasarts logo does?
Just food for thought there.
For about two years now I keep saying that there are numerous female characters in games, just not in games aimed at males. And for years I met wall of people telling that that does not count, that female characters should have close to 50% representation even in AAA games which are overwhelmingly aimed at male audience since males pay for them.
And now, finally someone pays attention to the fact that there are TONS of games with female characters and first thought is "this is how we should write female characters" meaning that even though in games aimed at females female characters dominate, that must not be the case with male targeted games. It's like someone sucked your rational brain out and replaced it with broken record.
Male gamers tend to identify with male characters and ogle female characters. Female gamers tend to identify with female characters and ogle male characters. Can it be any simpler? People know how to write GOOD female characters. But they know, even better than the first, how to write characters that sell. If good characters sold well and Twilight, 50 Shades, Fantasy/SF genre and all other popular books would never outsell true masterpieces and yet fiscal reports suggest that they do, many times over. Jesus, i hate reality and what it brings us but never the less we live in and therefore have to accept it. You can't just bend it as piece of paper.
For about two years now I keep saying that there are numerous female characters in games, just not in games aimed at males. And for years I met wall of people telling that that does not count, that female characters should have close to 50% representation even in AAA games which are overwhelmingly aimed at male audience since males pay for them.
And now, finally someone pays attention to the fact that there are TONS of games with female characters and first thought is "this is how we should write female characters" meaning that even though in games aimed at females female characters dominate, that must not be the case with male targeted games. It's like someone sucked your rational brain out and replaced it with broken record.
Male gamers tend to identify with male characters and ogle female characters. Female gamers tend to identify with female characters and ogle male characters. Can it be any simpler? People know how to write GOOD female characters. But they know, even better than the first, how to write characters that sell. If good characters sold well and Twilight, 50 Shades, Fantasy/SF genre and all other popular books would never outsell true masterpieces and yet fiscal reports suggest that they do, many times over. Jesus, i hate reality and what it brings us but never the less we live in and therefore have to accept it. You can't just bend it as piece of paper.
Thank you guys so much for this episode. Glad to know that we inspired James to discover hidden object games Greetings from AM team!
Btw... Our game: Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart fights for GreenLight (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=175137058) so we will be very grateful for all thumbs up
Interesting detail: It will be (probably) the first HOPA game on Steam
My mom has been playing these games ever since laptops became a thing (and I've spent a lot of time on them myself, trying to find good ones to gift her. How can a professional game designer not know that they're almost all aimed at an older female audience?
Seems like every time I hear some mainstream gaming-type guy talk about female characters, I should get ready to facepalm. Yeah, mainstream games don't have lots of them, because they're not aimed at that audience. This is only a problem because hysterical screaming, people who can scarcely get through a sentence without unironically using the word 'misogyny' (and maybe throwing 'rape' in there as well for good measure), keep getting taken seriously when they start screaming, when there's no reason why they should be.
If there was an audience for those games, they'd be getting made. Which they are being, people just don't care about it, because they're not interested in anything but hysterically overreacting.
Oh man Grim Fandango and Monkey Island! I grew up on that stuff! I dont really see myself picking up object finding games though, it really is too much like guesswork.
I like to play Photohunt as much as the next person when in a bar but it gets old fast.
Wait, why are hidden object games aimed at older females? I mean, sure there's probably market research that suggests that this is the right place to be. But I SWEAR that I remember ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE playing hidden object I spy type games in elementary school. The phrase "I spy with my little eye" was everywhere. Why isn't THAT the market?
I've been moaning this issue for ages. All this talk about women and their roles in AAA gaming is silly because those are products by men for men. We are arguing that game makers spend an exorbitant amount of time/money to appeal to a demographic that DOES NOT EXIST. Girls for the MOST part are not playing Hyper Violent AAA games, period. Yes there are a few corner cases, but its 1 percent of the market. So its a buncha men bitching at men who are then retorted to by men. Its men arguing about women in games, its a gender debate minus the women. You know why? Cause women are playing Bejeweled, Plants Vs Zombies, World of Warcraft, Farmville, Hidden Object Games, Point and Click Adventure Games, Skyrim, and so forth. Where guess what? Women are depicted in a perfectly reasonable fashion.
Another interesting thing about hidden object games is that they're great single screen co-op games, particularly when played on a tablet or touch-screen laptop. My sister-in-law and her 6yo daughter play almost every night sitting on the couch, poking at things excitedly when they find something and negotiating "just one more screen" before bedtime. Seeing this my wife and I decided to try one, playing on an iPad, it was actually kinda fun and relaxing. Not going to replace the console or PC, but for times when you don't feel like a big noisy game it's pretty nice. Same screen co-op casual.
ExistentialExistenceException: Your thread encountered a NULL pointer and entered a state of non-being.
I've been moaning this issue for ages. All this talk about women and their roles in AAA gaming is silly because those are products by men for men. We are arguing that game makers spend an exorbitant amount of time/money to appeal to a demographic that DOES NOT EXIST. Girls for the MOST part are not playing Hyper Violent AAA games, period. Yes there are a few corner cases, but its 1 percent of the market. So its a buncha men bitching at men who are then retorted to by men. Its men arguing about women in games, its a gender debate minus the women. You know why? Cause women are playing Bejeweled, Plants Vs Zombies, World of Warcraft, Farmville, Hidden Object Games, Point and Click Adventure Games, Skyrim, and so forth. Where guess what? Women are depicted in a perfectly reasonable fashion.
It really isn't 1%.
Also if World of Warcraft's a great representation of females then it must have changed art style alot because last I played Night Elf guards were decked out in battle bikinis.
Their point wasn't that these games are allowed to have bad female characters because they're aimed at men. The point was that they have bad female characters because they're aimed at men with Hidden Object games being an example of the opposite case.
The longer we have this messed up idea that most core gamers are male, the longer we have to wait to have good female charaters. The market is there, in mass, and waiting for good female charaters.
The longer we have this messed up idea that most core gamers are male, the longer we have to wait to have good female charaters. The market is there, in mass, and waiting for good female charaters.
Yes, but what's the breakdown of women and men playing, say, fighting games? Is any disparity due to the portrayal of women in these games, or are these games simply not catering to a demographic that is unlikely to buy fighting games in the first place?
If anything, this is an argument for a release of MLP: Fighting is Magic just to test to see how many 13 year old girls get sucked into the genre.
I haven't played much in this genre -- I had an ex who was really into them, so I got a bit of tangential exposure -- but I can say that I quite liked the Three Cards series from Big Finish Games. I mean, sure, gameplay was repetitive, the puzzles were sometimes rather obtuse, and it looked like it came out 10 years before it did, but they did such a good job of setting up a mystery, I felt compelled to keep playing, just to see how it would unfold.
I hadn't given much thought to it before, but reflecting on it now, yeah, it almost certainly was written with a female audience in mind -- at least, the characters were written that way. The story itself was horror-mystery kind of stuff that I think would appeal to anybody who was into that kind of thing.
Funny. I was joking to myself that this video would be about hidden object games. And then...
@ Zachdog: That doesn't actually prove much of anything about the amount of "core" gamers that are women. Moreover the assumption that women necessarily or generally prefer female protagonists seems a bit presumptuous. I mean, who do you think is writing all those Kingdom Hearts slashfics?
Also, we have good female characters already. We've had them for years. But they'reoften ignored by people with an axe to grind, even the ones who say they want more good female characters. Cracked said that a character who was a fourteen year old girl was somehow diminished by crying with relief after months of surviving on her own and providing for a sick man, and immediately after she killed a few dozen grown men then outmaneuvered and killed a nutjob who wanted to kill her. The same article also mocked - incorrectly - the exact same male character she was taking care of for being gruff and stoic and manly.
I didn’t even know that hidden object games existed but now imp rather curious, I would like it if you did a hidden object games you might not have tried episode so that I know which one to try out.
I kind of want to see a Lovecraft in video games episode, I’m sorry if that results in a month long rant.
Okay, I got yer cyberpunk hidden object game concept right here. You play as a newly minted AI program that has just barely achieved sentience in a lab. The game begins with you fulfilling tests of your perceptual field and capabilities of concept association and such like thing gradually building your skill set as a player and in terms of some kind of character progression system. Eventually you develop the tools to escape the confines of the lab and leap into the world where you attempt to find a body and are pursued by other programs, probably less or not sentient, attempting to recover the labs lost property. That one's free.
I think the most fascinating thing about this, is the suggestion that the reason we only have one kind of female protagonist ( check out Jim Sterling's video on it called 'vertigo') in AAA games is market pressure. Kind of puts the emphasis on us to stop buying games that have objectionable material.
One final note, there is a lot of defensiveness in the comments about the representation of gender in games. Right now AAA female characters ARE limited (How many self motivated, non-classically beautiful playable characters in AAA can you name? How many of those are female?), and this limits what the medium can do. I want the medium to be as expressive, as evocative, and as powerful as possible. To do this, we have to open up more possibilities for all characters, under represented groups e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ included.
Artifex Mundi, thanks for bringing this up, it's a genre I play a bunch of, even on Steam, and I can assure you, you won't be even nearly the first on there if/when you make it in! There's Pickers, The Clockwork Man (and sequel), a whole bunch of murder mystery HOPAs as well as a pile of Nancy Drew stuff there. We don't notice it cause many glaze over it without even thinking of them but Steam has a LOT of HOPAs already.
Also, Women play core games, LOADS of them, I know many of them! They're not vocal because there's a ridiculously vocal group (being represented here even sadly...) that will basically just yell at them for saying they'd love to see more female characters. That's tragic. The market already exists for great female characters in games, what we need is to stop people having the stupid assumption that a female character means the game is stupid (how can people really think that!?) Bioshock avoided having Elizabeth on the cover despite VOCAL support from their core audience to do so because they know the sad truth, a lot of people who play games are pretty dumb and would've ignored the game if they saw it
I look forward to being able to play more female characters in games but also people of other races and sexualities, maybe even eventually play some trans/genderqueer people. I don't normally play games for the mechanics as much as I do for the story and experiences they tell of.
Yes, but what's the breakdown of women and men playing, say, fighting games? Is any disparity due to the portrayal of women in these games, or are these games simply not catering to a demographic that is unlikely to buy fighting games in the first place?
If anything, this is an argument for a release of MLP: Fighting is Magic just to test to see how many 13 year old girls get sucked into the genre.
aka: "There is no way females can play games, no way. Even though third of xbox gamers are female, a console that houses mostly hardcore games, they are all probably playing that 3% of top selling games that are casual. Yes, I know that if half of the entire gaming population all bout the same casual games that they would be the best selling games and that the percentage of them would be much, much higher than 3. If I haven't seen all thousands of them, heard them on voice chat so that I can then ridicule them, call them fake, and then be sexist then they do not exist. Also, you are only a gamer if you play extremely violent games. Anything less and you do not count."
[PATV] Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 5: Overlooked
Posts
Stop and think about this for a moment, Apart from the SIMs how many (Non asian) games in the western market do you see that have male characters that also have a wide apeal to Women in general.
the reason I ask this is because it seems to me that part of the reason why theres just not as many women gamers is just the simple fact that a lot of the male protagonists(and even a lot of the male suporting cast) are writen in a way that, for a lack of a better way of putting this, are a turn off.
Does that mean that portraying all women as having cooties is fine if our market is purely 13 year old boys?
I mean, it'd be nice if all games that placed emphasis on relationships showed a general transition throughout the game from such a mindset to healthy relationships between the genders, so as to serve as a guide to the audience. But those that don't put such an emphasis on that story, can they afford to stay in the current mindset of their intended audience?
Nusquam Findi Factionis
My Digital Pin Lanyard
Lovecraft is well known even if his work isn't well read. People tend to think they know what his work is about without reading any of it because we've become the cliff notes world (just look at wikipedia and how we use it).
To make a long story short, because I'm probably not going to be able to tell you what Lovecraft is about if you've never read Pickman's Model, The Rats in the Walls, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Colour out of Space, and/or At the Mountains of Madness;
Everything involving Lovecraft in games is the same discussion about what's wrong with the modern horror-game genre. Modern horror games spend too much time empowering characters and showing monsters. There are a few notable exceptions to this, but it's still the major trend in the genre.
Also, I for one would love to see a show on the misuse of Lovecraft in games because I too feel like his works are often misunderstood. It's not really about squid monsters from space or aliens with unpronounceable names, his works are more about the atmosphere of the writing.
Furthermore, I have noticed how almost all of the protagonists have been female, but as the target audience is not men, these women are either casually or business dressed. This character type is a far cry from, and in my opinion an improvement over, the scantily clad, large-breasted ladies that serve as eye candy for most modern games.
I find this diversion from the normal target audience to be a real eye opener for the game industry, and while I accept that larger companies will likely be slow to change their habits for fear of a possible profit loss, I truly hope that all developers will look at this style of female protagonist and understand that we aren't all prepubescent teenage boys. The gaming community has grown up, and I for one would love to see some games in the mainstream genres present some memorable female characters that AREN'T remembered for their minimal clothing or the size of their breasts.
Young girls who play games should be able to see a strong female character they admire and respect, just like boys have memorable characters such as Cloud (FF7), Dante (Devil May Cry) and Price (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare).
If I had a daughter, I would not want her wishing she was like the vapid sex symbols most female characters are today.
No, it means there are two fundamentally different audiences being written for. It wasn't mentioned as an excuse, but as a diverging of the paths. If you tried to introduce a maternal undertone to most mainstream games without changing it for the genre or the audience you'd end up with another Alien Resurrection or Other M.
On the whole Lovecraft thing, all I'm going to say is this -- the stuff put out by Ice Pick Lodge tend to be more Lovecraft than the stuff that actually tries to reference Lovecraft, because most of the latter is usually just trying to nab some monster names and designs rather than the actual concepts and themes presented therein.
Also, my favorite Lovecraft story is The Quest of Iranon.
I think the obvious issue I overlook in my previous comment is the volume of produced material.
If hidden object games flooded the market, and suddenly male protagonists were hard to find, male players are going to feel just as left out as some female players seem to feel, especially if all the male characters became objectified or otherwise when viewed through the hidden object game's lens. I can only imagine vast swathes of tall fit open shirted men riding horses across sunlit fields as I write this.
And I'm not trying to say that the hidden object game's feminine outlook on men is as bad as that of the masculine outlook on women in other games. It's probably not, and I can't comment because of my lack of experience in the genre.
But when do we curb pandering to our demographic and instead adopt a more balanced view? How can we tell that we've gone too far, especially when we're likely to create games for our own demographic? And when does the volume of work output start necessitating a move towards a more balanced view in spite of what sells, just so that the debate hears both sides equally?
Whilst this might all seem very off topic, I find it fascinating that these hidden object games remain an isolated system, surviving purely from its target audience with no real look-in from the mainstream. Surely if something like "jiggle physics" could be relegated to such a bubble, then it would lose the opportunity to offend.
Just food for thought there.
And now, finally someone pays attention to the fact that there are TONS of games with female characters and first thought is "this is how we should write female characters" meaning that even though in games aimed at females female characters dominate, that must not be the case with male targeted games. It's like someone sucked your rational brain out and replaced it with broken record.
Male gamers tend to identify with male characters and ogle female characters. Female gamers tend to identify with female characters and ogle male characters. Can it be any simpler? People know how to write GOOD female characters. But they know, even better than the first, how to write characters that sell. If good characters sold well and Twilight, 50 Shades, Fantasy/SF genre and all other popular books would never outsell true masterpieces and yet fiscal reports suggest that they do, many times over. Jesus, i hate reality and what it brings us but never the less we live in and therefore have to accept it. You can't just bend it as piece of paper.
And now, finally someone pays attention to the fact that there are TONS of games with female characters and first thought is "this is how we should write female characters" meaning that even though in games aimed at females female characters dominate, that must not be the case with male targeted games. It's like someone sucked your rational brain out and replaced it with broken record.
Male gamers tend to identify with male characters and ogle female characters. Female gamers tend to identify with female characters and ogle male characters. Can it be any simpler? People know how to write GOOD female characters. But they know, even better than the first, how to write characters that sell. If good characters sold well and Twilight, 50 Shades, Fantasy/SF genre and all other popular books would never outsell true masterpieces and yet fiscal reports suggest that they do, many times over. Jesus, i hate reality and what it brings us but never the less we live in and therefore have to accept it. You can't just bend it as piece of paper.
Btw... Our game: Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart fights for GreenLight (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=175137058) so we will be very grateful for all thumbs up
Interesting detail: It will be (probably) the first HOPA game on Steam
Going to try the Mountain of Madness one though. Love me some HPL.
Seems like every time I hear some mainstream gaming-type guy talk about female characters, I should get ready to facepalm. Yeah, mainstream games don't have lots of them, because they're not aimed at that audience. This is only a problem because hysterical screaming, people who can scarcely get through a sentence without unironically using the word 'misogyny' (and maybe throwing 'rape' in there as well for good measure), keep getting taken seriously when they start screaming, when there's no reason why they should be.
If there was an audience for those games, they'd be getting made. Which they are being, people just don't care about it, because they're not interested in anything but hysterically overreacting.
I like to play Photohunt as much as the next person when in a bar but it gets old fast.
But was it so hard to put a list of games on one of the splash pages at the end of the video? Copy, Paste, bam!
It really isn't 1%.
Also if World of Warcraft's a great representation of females then it must have changed art style alot because last I played Night Elf guards were decked out in battle bikinis.
Their point wasn't that these games are allowed to have bad female characters because they're aimed at men. The point was that they have bad female characters because they're aimed at men with Hidden Object games being an example of the opposite case.
Source 1: The ESA : http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2013.pdf
45% of gamers are female
only 32% of gamers play casual games
Source 2: GeekWire: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/dudes-38-xbox-users-female-51-kids/
38% of XBOX users are female
The longer we have this messed up idea that most core gamers are male, the longer we have to wait to have good female charaters. The market is there, in mass, and waiting for good female charaters.
Yes, but what's the breakdown of women and men playing, say, fighting games? Is any disparity due to the portrayal of women in these games, or are these games simply not catering to a demographic that is unlikely to buy fighting games in the first place?
If anything, this is an argument for a release of MLP: Fighting is Magic just to test to see how many 13 year old girls get sucked into the genre.
I hadn't given much thought to it before, but reflecting on it now, yeah, it almost certainly was written with a female audience in mind -- at least, the characters were written that way. The story itself was horror-mystery kind of stuff that I think would appeal to anybody who was into that kind of thing.
The games, for reference: http://bigfinishgames.com/games
@ Zachdog: That doesn't actually prove much of anything about the amount of "core" gamers that are women. Moreover the assumption that women necessarily or generally prefer female protagonists seems a bit presumptuous. I mean, who do you think is writing all those Kingdom Hearts slashfics?
Also, we have good female characters already. We've had them for years. But they'reoften ignored by people with an axe to grind, even the ones who say they want more good female characters. Cracked said that a character who was a fourteen year old girl was somehow diminished by crying with relief after months of surviving on her own and providing for a sick man, and immediately after she killed a few dozen grown men then outmaneuvered and killed a nutjob who wanted to kill her. The same article also mocked - incorrectly - the exact same male character she was taking care of for being gruff and stoic and manly.
Tumblr/Artblog | DevArt
I kind of want to see a Lovecraft in video games episode, I’m sorry if that results in a month long rant.
One final note, there is a lot of defensiveness in the comments about the representation of gender in games. Right now AAA female characters ARE limited (How many self motivated, non-classically beautiful playable characters in AAA can you name? How many of those are female?), and this limits what the medium can do. I want the medium to be as expressive, as evocative, and as powerful as possible. To do this, we have to open up more possibilities for all characters, under represented groups e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ included.
Also, Women play core games, LOADS of them, I know many of them! They're not vocal because there's a ridiculously vocal group (being represented here even sadly...) that will basically just yell at them for saying they'd love to see more female characters. That's tragic. The market already exists for great female characters in games, what we need is to stop people having the stupid assumption that a female character means the game is stupid (how can people really think that!?) Bioshock avoided having Elizabeth on the cover despite VOCAL support from their core audience to do so because they know the sad truth, a lot of people who play games are pretty dumb and would've ignored the game if they saw it
I look forward to being able to play more female characters in games but also people of other races and sexualities, maybe even eventually play some trans/genderqueer people. I don't normally play games for the mechanics as much as I do for the story and experiences they tell of.
(Sorry for the all caps. I got excited.
aka: "There is no way females can play games, no way. Even though third of xbox gamers are female, a console that houses mostly hardcore games, they are all probably playing that 3% of top selling games that are casual. Yes, I know that if half of the entire gaming population all bout the same casual games that they would be the best selling games and that the percentage of them would be much, much higher than 3. If I haven't seen all thousands of them, heard them on voice chat so that I can then ridicule them, call them fake, and then be sexist then they do not exist. Also, you are only a gamer if you play extremely violent games. Anything less and you do not count."