i think the guy hoping for or commenting on the fact that he's never encountered a game with a transgender main character is pretty much in the same boat as gays wanting a gay main character who is not a hideous stereotype i.e. not going to come anytime soon (except for the sims of course)
bongi on
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited May 2007
I've never played it, but supposedly Enchanted Arms had a gay character that wasn't horribly off-base.
I guess the protagonists in JRPGs are as idealised as their western counterparts, but what's cool in Japan/Korea is different. Pop stars and actors here/there aren't macho - they're basically pretty androgynous.
It also might be to do with RPGs being comparatively popular with female gamers here (got no hard evidence for this - all the articles I could find mentioned this but without hard numbers) - trying to market to girls and boys.
i think the guy hoping for or commenting on the fact that he's never encountered a game with a transgender main character is pretty much in the same boat as gays wanting a gay main character who is not a hideous stereotype i.e. not going to come anytime soon (except for the sims of course)
I could see a non stereotype gay character as being a likely hood in the next few years. The percentage of homosexual/bisexual gamers is at least ten percent right? probably more from my anecdotal experience. That's a sizable chuck who are going to be annoyed by ridiculous stereotyping.
i think the guy hoping for or commenting on the fact that he's never encountered a game with a transgender main character is pretty much in the same boat as gays wanting a gay main character who is not a hideous stereotype i.e. not going to come anytime soon (except for the sims of course)
I could see a non stereotype gay character as being a likely hood in the next few years. The percentage of homosexual/bisexual gamers is at least ten percent right? probably more from my anecdotal experience. That's a sizable chuck who are going to be annoyed by ridiculous stereotyping.
i don't think it's likely, because gay gamers are much happier to play straight characters than straight gamers are to play gay characters
I would contrast Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - and then weep and weep.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is one of the best games ever. It has a very positive, strong female character, who the chauvinistic player character slowly falls in love with as his sexist presumptions are proven wrong.
It also subverts the "it's eye candy for men" approach by having Farah speak to you if you stare at her breasts in first person "I don't like it when you look at me like that" whilst pretty much playing to the female audience with a hot male lead who strips as the game progress (my gf liked that a lot). It even features a scene that could be interpreted as a sex scene (the baths) - but shows nothing but steam and a conversation and makes you fill in the blanks.
It treats the male and female leads as equals with strengths and flaws and ends beautifully.
Warrior Within (the sequel) on the other hand has a jerk calling women in metal thongs "bitches" whilst shity emo rock plays.
Then he fucks the a woman with which he has no reason to have a relationship with.
.
Great thanks thread. I'll cry myself to sleep again tonight now. Hating Ubisoft with all the bile my tiny frail heart can muster.
i think the guy hoping for or commenting on the fact that he's never encountered a game with a transgender main character is pretty much in the same boat as gays wanting a gay main character who is not a hideous stereotype i.e. not going to come anytime soon (except for the sims of course)
There will be if I can help it.. though it probably won't be mainstream. >.>
My wife wanted to play Crackdown. I was absolutely shocked when she expressed this interest, since the most violent game that she's played is PSO. Then she found out that there aren't any female characters to play as. And she was pissed, and thus she hasn't played it.
This is the same reason that she only really plays the Harvest Moon games that you can play as a girl. She wants to roleplay as a female, and she creates a play style that she would do as if she were in that world.
She prefers games that reward creativity, but allow for some destruction, too.
When she plays Oblivion, she buys houses and puts flowers and pretty things in them and arranges the furniture because she likes to do that, but she also goes out and slays some vampires. I'd like to see more games offer this sort of balance, and allow for the player to actually create his or her own gender identity.
Just because I buy most of the games in the house doesn't mean that the wife doesn't want to play them, too. But yeah, there is some serious lacking in options for women who want to play as female characters with any sort of depth, or the ability to create depth.
I don't know, tactical games aren't really my forte. Care to expand upon and explain your point?
In IV and V at least he's male, but only really as a technical notation of his sex (not gender). No romances with the hero to indicate sexual preference, pretty damned androgynous looking in both cases, the dialogue options pertain to the hero's quest, not the hero's gender. He's basically as much a non-character as is possible for the central protagonist of a J-RPG. They don't tell you anything about him except that he's courageous and a good friend, everything else about him is pretty much left to the imagination.
When she plays Oblivion, she buys houses and puts flowers and pretty things in them and arranges the furniture because she likes to do that, but she also goes out and slays some vampires. I'd like to see more games offer this sort of balance, and allow for the player to actually create his or her own gender identity.
Man, I had a house in an RPG once and I spent hours on interior decorating. That shit is fun. It was more fun than in real life because to pay for the furniture I had to go out and kill shit on the way to the shops.
Edit: Wait, does that mean I'm a woman in pants, or just my character? ololz!
When she plays Oblivion, she buys houses and puts flowers and pretty things in them and arranges the furniture because she likes to do that, but she also goes out and slays some vampires. I'd like to see more games offer this sort of balance, and allow for the player to actually create his or her own gender identity.
Man, I had a house in an RPG once and I spent hours on interior decorating. That shit is fun. It was more fun than in real life because to pay for the furniture I had to go out and kill shit on the way to the shops.
Edit: Wait, does that mean I'm a woman in pants, or just my character? ololz!
Looks like it's time to bring in the psychotherapists. "Tell me, how do you feel about your mother", and all that crap.
Moorening on
It would appear there ain't no rest for the wicked...who knew?
I would contrast Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - and then weep and weep.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is one of the best games ever. It has a very positive, strong female character, who the chauvinistic player character slowly falls in love with as his sexist presumptions are proven wrong.
It also subverts the "it's eye candy for men" approach by having Farah speak to you if you stare at her breasts in first person "I don't like it when you look at me like that" whilst pretty much playing to the female audience with a hot male lead who strips as the game progress (my gf liked that a lot). It even features a scene that could be interpreted as a sex scene (the baths) - but shows nothing but steam and a conversation and makes you fill in the blanks.
It treats the male and female leads as equals with strengths and flaws and ends beautifully.
Warrior Within (the sequel) on the other hand has a jerk calling women in metal thongs "bitches" whilst shity emo rock plays.
Then he fucks the a woman with which he has no reason to have a relationship with.
.
Great thanks thread. I'll cry myself to sleep again tonight now. Hating Ubisoft with all the bile my tiny frail heart can muster.
When she plays Oblivion, she buys houses and puts flowers and pretty things in them and arranges the furniture because she likes to do that, but she also goes out and slays some vampires. I'd like to see more games offer this sort of balance, and allow for the player to actually create his or her own gender identity.
Man, I had a house in an RPG once and I spent hours on interior decorating. That shit is fun. It was more fun than in real life because to pay for the furniture I had to go out and kill shit on the way to the shops.
Edit: Wait, does that mean I'm a woman in pants, or just my character? ololz!
Looks like it's time to bring in the psychotherapists. "Tell me, how do you feel about your mother", and all that crap.
Never eat out with her. No matter what service you get or what restaurant you go to, she will be taking an extra hour out of your day after the meal to complain about something to the management. Also doesn't tip well enough for me to feel comfortable coming back to the place ever again.
I'm going to throw in my two cents about the matter of whether or not it's a girl just because, you know, she's got two X chromosomes. This is more a matter of narrative philosophy than figures, so if the conversation has moved away from this I apologize. I'll even put the summary at the top for you folks, so you haven't got to read too far.
tl;dr: Traditional gender roles do not define what makes a man or a woman in a modern context; the "men in a dress" argument is meaningless. We are people before we are men or women.
Actually I shouldn't have put that at the top. But the point stands that to say that Samus is really just a guy in a bathing suit...in battle armor...doing ultra-manly adventures while fighting off gigantic symbols of phallic power is just ridiculous. This assumes that there is some inherent quality that would dictate she handle a given situation differently - like fighting a bunch of space pirates when she has a bunch of kick-ass weapons at her disposal. According to this line of thinking, Samus isn't unbelievable as a woman because of any specific thing about her, she's unbelievable as a woman for the simple fact that she gets up and kicks ass as well or better than Master Chief; the conceit we are supposed to make, for this line of thinking, is that there's no such thing as a woman who is a soldier, or that a woman who is a soldier will have inherently different tendencies from a man with the same training.
That's silly.
I think you've completely miss-understood my men in dresses arguement. The point was that nothing really changes in the game, so the player avatars gender is essentially meaningless in most games. i.e. it doesn't matter that metroid is a girl, or that halo is a dude. It could be the other other way around, would make zero difference to the game. So why is this kind of gender asssignment so hidiously screwed towards male avatars in games?
Men in skirts is not saying that omg female characters in games are displaying inherently male characteristics and that's terribly wrong. It's saying that game designers default to male characters out of habit/gender etc. It's not like you need woman on your development team to have a succesful female character. And it's not like your character has to change to be a woman.
The matter here isn't really one of gender roles so much as it is of aggression or passivity: in saying that Samus is a "dude in a skirt" because she goes around and doing "guy things" (which are defined by their aggressive nature), anyone making this argument is implying that a woman cannot be a woman so long as sheh as any degree of aggression because these are inherently manly things, which put hair on your chest, which women cannot have because their boobs are in the way. Samus should be filling out some other kind of role, then! Perhaps she is a diplomat, reasoning with the space pirates. Perhaps she should be a field medic tending to the wounded, or in some other role which doesn't infringe upon the womanly sensibilities of...guys who think that women are nurturing?
No, because at the same time I say Halo is a girl in a jockstrap. So what am I saying there? You're getting way to caught up on trying to appear morally superiour that you're just completely missing the actual point about men in dresses. It's not saying that they're really masculine characters, it's saying that all you need to do to put a female character in a game is to put a dress on whatever you were going to put in game. E.g. put a dress on mario, shave off his tache, bingo.
I know I'm not the only one calling bullshit here. The idea that men are aggressive and women are nurturing is ridiculous; this discounts the idea that a father can take care of his children and still retain his basic masculinity. It's like saying that women who join the army are getting penis transplants, because hell, turns out their own privates have simply ceased to be. What's going on for one side of this argument is that people are using arbitrary aspects of individuals to try to define the larger group of people to which they belong. That is to say, you are a woman before you are a person, and I am a man before I am a person.
Nonononono. It's saying that most roles in games are essentially not gender restricted.
That chick in Heavenly Sword? Obviously she's a dude in a dress.
Alyx Vance? Sure, why not, she's a mechanic.
Samus? You know it, baby!
Ashe? Well Hell, she's got a streak in her, she must secretly have a penis too.
At the moment Nariko pretty well exemplifies the point. Whether they bring something more into the game or not, and I'm guessing they probably won't.
Alyx most definitely doesn't work as a guy, because of the relationship with Gordon. There you have a destinct role for the gender in the story. (of course you can always argue that Gordon might be gay - that'd be interesting).
Samus, interestingly enough did start out as a guy. Then had a swimsuit put on her.
No idea who ash is sorry.
All of that's obviously ridiculous. What I'm trying to say here is that there's no difference between men and women (besides what we've got between the knees) so fundamental that the presence of an aspect or the fulfillment of a given role discounts one's actual gender. Samus is a girl. Is there any particular reason she's a girl? Well, no, not really. She just is, as women tend to be. But there's no reason for her not to be, either; there is no fundamental part of her personality that makes her a man, because that kind of thing doesn't exist.
You've said it yourself, there's nothing that makes her a girl. Her gender is essentially meaningless outside of visual characteristics. e.g. she may as well be a guy in a dress. (Which is to say exactly the same thing the other way around. There's often no particular reason that male characters in video games are male. So why is it so rare to see female characters in games.)
I'm going to bring up Kreia as an excellent example of my point again: there is nothing in her character, in her features or her personality or the role she plays, that makes her tend towards manliness or womanliness. She is your teacher, and nothing more; anything beyond that is just ancillary details. But I doubt that anyone would make the argument that she is a dude in a dress, because that concept doesn't apply unless you are actually a guy in a dress.
And we've only got a few game characters like that.
That is EXACTLY my fucking point. The gender of a character tends to be meaningless in many games. And this point doesn't just stop at gender in games. There's loads of things you could throw into games and just not change anything about the game, but they really don't. How many black lead characters are in games? How many jewish leads? How many gay leads?
If what you're changing doesn't have to effect the gameplay then why not? It'd be nice to have some more varied representation in games.
I've never played it, but supposedly Enchanted Arms had a gay character that wasn't horribly off-base.
You are wrong. Very very wrong. Mikato is a horrible stereotype.
Oh God yes. And partway through the game, he goes straight, becomes a total badass, and then goes gay again at the end because he "needed to do things that a lady just can't do."
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited May 2007
Eh, I thought I'd heard somewhere he was an example of a non-stereotypical one. My mistake.
Um.. I didn't read the whole thread, just the first two pages, but what instantly jumped out at me was the comment that MMOs encourage women to be support characters.
... Where the hell is this true? What MMO doesn't have men and women as exact equals? That's really retarded. If you see more women in support roles than men in MMOs, it's because the women themselves choose to do so. Nobody's giving them any bonuses for it. Nobody's encouraging them to do jack shit.
Sorry if this was addressed already somewhere on page 5 or 6 or something.
That's how I've seen it. If there are lots of MMOs that differentiate between men and women, I'll eat my cock.
I don't know, tactical games aren't really my forte. Care to expand upon and explain your point?
In IV and V at least he's male, but only really as a technical notation of his sex (not gender). No romances with the hero to indicate sexual preference, pretty damned androgynous looking in both cases, the dialogue options pertain to the hero's quest, not the hero's gender. He's basically as much a non-character as is possible for the central protagonist of a J-RPG. They don't tell you anything about him except that he's courageous and a good friend, everything else about him is pretty much left to the imagination.
Actually there is romance in V but its not very visible and they don't pop it up at every moment.
The Prince and Lyon. Look at both the endings. In either one he is there with Lyon but doesn't say "I love you". Its implied. The bad ending is a prefect example of this. He loses her and goes away never comming back. When its the good ending he is ther with her and they basically are happy.
I would contrast Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - and then weep and weep.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is one of the best games ever. It has a very positive, strong female character, who the chauvinistic player character slowly falls in love with as his sexist presumptions are proven wrong.
It also subverts the "it's eye candy for men" approach by having Farah speak to you if you stare at her breasts in first person "I don't like it when you look at me like that" whilst pretty much playing to the female audience with a hot male lead who strips as the game progress (my gf liked that a lot). It even features a scene that could be interpreted as a sex scene (the baths) - but shows nothing but steam and a conversation and makes you fill in the blanks.
It treats the male and female leads as equals with strengths and flaws and ends beautifully.
Warrior Within (the sequel) on the other hand has a jerk calling women in metal thongs "bitches" whilst shity emo rock plays.
Then he fucks the a woman with which he has no reason to have a relationship with.
.
Great thanks thread. I'll cry myself to sleep again tonight now. Hating Ubisoft with all the bile my tiny frail heart can muster.
That's because Jordan Mechner is awesome and he should have come back for WW.
In regard to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Mechner was quoted in the December 2005 issue of Wired Magazine as saying: "I'm not a fan of the artistic direction, or the violence that earned it an M rating. The story, character, dialog, voice acting, and visual style were not to my taste."
Right now, he's doing preproduction for the Sands of Time movie.
"EGM: Would you make a Castlevania with a female main character?
IGA: Hm, there are difficult problems with that. As a gamer, I think that you become one with the character, and since Castlevania has a lot of male players, it's natural to have male characters. In Rondo of Blood, Maria was a silly, cute aside, but you still had Richter to make it serious. Plus, Mr. Hagihara (the director) had a playful sense of humor. He worked on Symphony as well, and he made the telescope part where, if you pan over to the left you can see a little mouse, and also where Alucard can sit down on the chair and prop his feet up.
EGM: After Tomb Raider, don't you think a female character is more acceptable?
IGA: It's possible I guess. Although, I purposefully left the Sonia Belmont character (from Castlevania Legends for GBC) out of the official Castlevania chronology. (laughs) Usually, the vampire storyline motifs, females tend to be sacrificed. It's easier to come up with weak, feminine characters. I'll think about it more in the future, though. It's tough to fit a female hero into the early history of Castlevania, but as you move into the modern day, females can then more easily become a hero."
Yes, IGA can not IMAGINE a heroine in the FANTASY WORLD of Castlevania.
I haven't played Portrait of Ruin yet, how is Charlotte depicted in the story?
I think you've completely miss-understood my men in dresses arguement. The point was that nothing really changes in the game, so the player avatars gender is essentially meaningless in most games. i.e. it doesn't matter that metroid is a girl, or that halo is a dude. It could be the other other way around, would make zero difference to the game. So why is this kind of gender asssignment so hidiously screwed towards male avatars in games?
Men in skirts is not saying that omg female characters in games are displaying inherently male characteristics and that's terribly wrong. It's saying that game designers default to male characters out of habit/gender etc. It's not like you need woman on your development team to have a succesful female character. And it's not like your character has to change to be a woman.
No, because at the same time I say Halo is a girl in a jockstrap. So what am I saying there? You're getting way to caught up on trying to appear morally superiour that you're just completely missing the actual point about men in dresses. It's not saying that they're really masculine characters, it's saying that all you need to do to put a female character in a game is to put a dress on whatever you were going to put in game. E.g. put a dress on mario, shave off his tache, bingo.
Nonononono. It's saying that most roles in games are essentially not gender restricted.
At the moment Nariko pretty well exemplifies the point. Whether they bring something more into the game or not, and I'm guessing they probably won't.
Alyx most definitely doesn't work as a guy, because of the relationship with Gordon. There you have a destinct role for the gender in the story. (of course you can always argue that Gordon might be gay - that'd be interesting).
Samus, interestingly enough did start out as a guy. Then had a swimsuit put on her.
No idea who ash is sorry.
You've said it yourself, there's nothing that makes her a girl. Her gender is essentially meaningless outside of visual characteristics. e.g. she may as well be a guy in a dress. (Which is to say exactly the same thing the other way around. There's often no particular reason that male characters in video games are male. So why is it so rare to see female characters in games.)
That is EXACTLY my fucking point. The gender of a character tends to be meaningless in many games. And this point doesn't just stop at gender in games. There's loads of things you could throw into games and just not change anything about the game, but they really don't. How many black lead characters are in games? How many jewish leads? How many gay leads?
If what you're changing doesn't have to effect the gameplay then why not? It'd be nice to have some more varied representation in games.
Thanks for replying.
Uh, where are we disagreeing, exactly? I can understand where you might think I'm arguing with you, but my post isn't aimed specifically at you, more to the general assertion that girls in games aren't real girls because they do manly things, which is a point put forth by other posters in the thread.
I absolutely agree that the gender of a character has no effect on gameplay, and most of the time it makes no difference to the experience so there's no reason for there to not be more female leads, but the reason that there are not is an entirely different discussion. I was just pointing out, to the people that hold that girls in games aren't really girls, that this is a silly or even foolish thing to put forth. We are in agreement that there could easily be more.
As to the matter of transgendered characters:
I'm not quite sure I understand the complaint. If you're transgendered, that means you actually identify yourself as the opposite gender you were born as, right? Meaning you still identify yourself as a man or a woman: I don't know any transgendered people who identify themselves solely as being transgendered. If that's the case, what is wrong with characters who are identified as male or female rather than some inbetween-stage, as so few people actually identify themselves according to the fact that they are transgendered? The complaint seems intellectually bankrupt; unless you're actually a hermaphrodite, a transgendered person still tends to identify him or herself as a guy or a girl.
So, you know. Is what you want for a videogame character to be identified by the fact that he or she is living out the opposite gender, or do you simply want an actual guy who walks around in a dress? Either desire seems inherently shallow and cheap, because a transgendered person isn't defined in terms of characteristics by their transgendered-ness any more than a man is by his manliness.
Edit: Charlotte's a spellcaster who fills out the anime role of the bookish main character who tries to keep the male lead in line.
God I'm starting to hate the narrative of Castlevania.
Yes, IGA can not IMAGINE a heroine in the FANTASY WORLD of Castlevania.
I haven't played Portrait of Ruin yet, how is Charlotte depicted in the story?
Well, she's not a feeble, little virgin sacrifice. She is a bit of a stereotype, of the smart and bossy variety (though she's not quite as bad as, say, Hermione), but she's not all bad. Besides, you need her l33t magic skills rather than Jonathan's brute force to get the good ending.
Mind you, she doesn't hold a candle to Sypha Belnades. But that may just be the nostalgia talking.
When I first started reading this thread I thought the topic was "Gender in Video Games." IN video games, so, we're talking about characters here, right?. Them some of you people decided to play the real life gender game. What the fuck is the matter with you? GTFO of this thread.
So to the topic: You have to remember that women characters in video games are made by, surprise, men. That might be why they often have improbably massive tits and sport chainmail bikinis.
But there's also been a recent trend in games and the forums of the intertubes. You have characters like Samus and Alyx who are strong-willed, independent, and tough. These women characters are still designed, modeled, skinned, and animated by men, but I guess these are progressive 21st century men?
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But there's also been a recent trend in games and the forums of the intertubes. You have characters like Samus and Alyx who are strong-willed, independent, and tough. These women characters are still designed, modeled, skinned, and animated by men, but I guess these are progressive 21st century men?
Yes, Samus is very recent. Definitely a product of the 21st century. :P
But there's also been a recent trend in games and the forums of the intertubes. You have characters like Samus and Alyx who are strong-willed, independent, and tough. These women characters are still designed, modeled, skinned, and animated by men, but I guess these are progressive 21st century men?
Yes, Samus is very recent. Definitely a product of the 21st century. :P
Agreed. At least the iterations of Samus I've played (Prime 1 & 2).
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Like I said on the first page, I don't really think you can call Samus a good example of a "tough" or "independent" female character. I mean, yes, she is all those things, but that sort of gets canceled out by the fact that the primary easter egg of Metroid games is getting Samus to strip down for you.
I don't know if it was mentioned, but San Andreas (and all of GTA to a lesser extent) is a game to look at about how gender roles are treated. I don't believe there has ever been a lead character that was female (not that it's a particular problem), but in SA, some of the things that CJ would say to the first girlfriend during 'coffee' were pretty bad. I was hoping the lead in GTA4 would have been female. I still think it'd be different to see.
Another interesting take on gender in games is the Silent Hill series. The leads (except for 3) are men which plays against the typical 'damsel in distress' that seems to inhabit Survival Horror (RE goes back and forth). Granted, most of SH's major enemies/antagonists are female or female based (which could be interpreted in different ways).
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hahahahahahahah
AHAHAHAHAHA
no but seriously though the gay character in enchanted arms was about as hilarious a stereotype as you can conceive
It also might be to do with RPGs being comparatively popular with female gamers here (got no hard evidence for this - all the articles I could find mentioned this but without hard numbers) - trying to market to girls and boys.
I could see a non stereotype gay character as being a likely hood in the next few years. The percentage of homosexual/bisexual gamers is at least ten percent right? probably more from my anecdotal experience. That's a sizable chuck who are going to be annoyed by ridiculous stereotyping.
i don't think it's likely, because gay gamers are much happier to play straight characters than straight gamers are to play gay characters
but this is ot, sexuality!=gender
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is one of the best games ever. It has a very positive, strong female character, who the chauvinistic player character slowly falls in love with as his sexist presumptions are proven wrong.
It also subverts the "it's eye candy for men" approach by having Farah speak to you if you stare at her breasts in first person "I don't like it when you look at me like that" whilst pretty much playing to the female audience with a hot male lead who strips as the game progress (my gf liked that a lot). It even features a scene that could be interpreted as a sex scene (the baths) - but shows nothing but steam and a conversation and makes you fill in the blanks.
It treats the male and female leads as equals with strengths and flaws and ends beautifully.
Warrior Within (the sequel) on the other hand has a jerk calling women in metal thongs "bitches" whilst shity emo rock plays.
Great thanks thread. I'll cry myself to sleep again tonight now. Hating Ubisoft with all the bile my tiny frail heart can muster.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
There will be if I can help it.. though it probably won't be mainstream. >.>
This is the same reason that she only really plays the Harvest Moon games that you can play as a girl. She wants to roleplay as a female, and she creates a play style that she would do as if she were in that world.
She prefers games that reward creativity, but allow for some destruction, too.
When she plays Oblivion, she buys houses and puts flowers and pretty things in them and arranges the furniture because she likes to do that, but she also goes out and slays some vampires. I'd like to see more games offer this sort of balance, and allow for the player to actually create his or her own gender identity.
Just because I buy most of the games in the house doesn't mean that the wife doesn't want to play them, too. But yeah, there is some serious lacking in options for women who want to play as female characters with any sort of depth, or the ability to create depth.
In IV and V at least he's male, but only really as a technical notation of his sex (not gender). No romances with the hero to indicate sexual preference, pretty damned androgynous looking in both cases, the dialogue options pertain to the hero's quest, not the hero's gender. He's basically as much a non-character as is possible for the central protagonist of a J-RPG. They don't tell you anything about him except that he's courageous and a good friend, everything else about him is pretty much left to the imagination.
Because she was there.
Man, I had a house in an RPG once and I spent hours on interior decorating. That shit is fun. It was more fun than in real life because to pay for the furniture I had to go out and kill shit on the way to the shops.
Edit: Wait, does that mean I'm a woman in pants, or just my character? ololz!
I literally seethe about that game.
seethe
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Looks like it's time to bring in the psychotherapists. "Tell me, how do you feel about your mother", and all that crap.
to be fair, the woman in the thong was a bitch
Never eat out with her. No matter what service you get or what restaurant you go to, she will be taking an extra hour out of your day after the meal to complain about something to the management. Also doesn't tip well enough for me to feel comfortable coming back to the place ever again.
I think you've completely miss-understood my men in dresses arguement. The point was that nothing really changes in the game, so the player avatars gender is essentially meaningless in most games. i.e. it doesn't matter that metroid is a girl, or that halo is a dude. It could be the other other way around, would make zero difference to the game. So why is this kind of gender asssignment so hidiously screwed towards male avatars in games?
Men in skirts is not saying that omg female characters in games are displaying inherently male characteristics and that's terribly wrong. It's saying that game designers default to male characters out of habit/gender etc. It's not like you need woman on your development team to have a succesful female character. And it's not like your character has to change to be a woman.
No, because at the same time I say Halo is a girl in a jockstrap. So what am I saying there? You're getting way to caught up on trying to appear morally superiour that you're just completely missing the actual point about men in dresses. It's not saying that they're really masculine characters, it's saying that all you need to do to put a female character in a game is to put a dress on whatever you were going to put in game. E.g. put a dress on mario, shave off his tache, bingo.
Nonononono. It's saying that most roles in games are essentially not gender restricted.
At the moment Nariko pretty well exemplifies the point. Whether they bring something more into the game or not, and I'm guessing they probably won't.
Alyx most definitely doesn't work as a guy, because of the relationship with Gordon. There you have a destinct role for the gender in the story. (of course you can always argue that Gordon might be gay - that'd be interesting).
Samus, interestingly enough did start out as a guy. Then had a swimsuit put on her.
No idea who ash is sorry.
You've said it yourself, there's nothing that makes her a girl. Her gender is essentially meaningless outside of visual characteristics. e.g. she may as well be a guy in a dress. (Which is to say exactly the same thing the other way around. There's often no particular reason that male characters in video games are male. So why is it so rare to see female characters in games.)
That is EXACTLY my fucking point. The gender of a character tends to be meaningless in many games. And this point doesn't just stop at gender in games. There's loads of things you could throw into games and just not change anything about the game, but they really don't. How many black lead characters are in games? How many jewish leads? How many gay leads?
If what you're changing doesn't have to effect the gameplay then why not? It'd be nice to have some more varied representation in games.
You are wrong. Very very wrong. Mikato is a horrible stereotype.
Oh God yes. And partway through the game, he goes straight, becomes a total badass, and then goes gay again at the end because he "needed to do things that a lady just can't do."
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... Where the hell is this true? What MMO doesn't have men and women as exact equals? That's really retarded. If you see more women in support roles than men in MMOs, it's because the women themselves choose to do so. Nobody's giving them any bonuses for it. Nobody's encouraging them to do jack shit.
Sorry if this was addressed already somewhere on page 5 or 6 or something.
That's how I've seen it. If there are lots of MMOs that differentiate between men and women, I'll eat my cock.
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Actually there is romance in V but its not very visible and they don't pop it up at every moment.
Sure its not visible but there is a love story.
That's because Jordan Mechner is awesome and he should have come back for WW.
Right now, he's doing preproduction for the Sands of Time movie.
Yes, IGA can not IMAGINE a heroine in the FANTASY WORLD of Castlevania.
I haven't played Portrait of Ruin yet, how is Charlotte depicted in the story?
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Thanks for replying.
Uh, where are we disagreeing, exactly? I can understand where you might think I'm arguing with you, but my post isn't aimed specifically at you, more to the general assertion that girls in games aren't real girls because they do manly things, which is a point put forth by other posters in the thread.
I absolutely agree that the gender of a character has no effect on gameplay, and most of the time it makes no difference to the experience so there's no reason for there to not be more female leads, but the reason that there are not is an entirely different discussion. I was just pointing out, to the people that hold that girls in games aren't really girls, that this is a silly or even foolish thing to put forth. We are in agreement that there could easily be more.
As to the matter of transgendered characters:
I'm not quite sure I understand the complaint. If you're transgendered, that means you actually identify yourself as the opposite gender you were born as, right? Meaning you still identify yourself as a man or a woman: I don't know any transgendered people who identify themselves solely as being transgendered. If that's the case, what is wrong with characters who are identified as male or female rather than some inbetween-stage, as so few people actually identify themselves according to the fact that they are transgendered? The complaint seems intellectually bankrupt; unless you're actually a hermaphrodite, a transgendered person still tends to identify him or herself as a guy or a girl.
So, you know. Is what you want for a videogame character to be identified by the fact that he or she is living out the opposite gender, or do you simply want an actual guy who walks around in a dress? Either desire seems inherently shallow and cheap, because a transgendered person isn't defined in terms of characteristics by their transgendered-ness any more than a man is by his manliness.
Edit: Charlotte's a spellcaster who fills out the anime role of the bookish main character who tries to keep the male lead in line.
God I'm starting to hate the narrative of Castlevania.
Mind you, she doesn't hold a candle to Sypha Belnades. But that may just be the nostalgia talking.
Agreed, she is one of the best female characters in any game. So much better than any of the MGS2 women.
Ultima 7 and 7-part 2 have some interesting things.
The Avatar can be male or female, and have a lover of the opposite sex in the first part of Serpent's Isle.
Of course, there is also a scene later in that game where the avatar has sex with the Head-Mage's girlfriend, whether the avatar is male OR female.
So to the topic: You have to remember that women characters in video games are made by, surprise, men. That might be why they often have improbably massive tits and sport chainmail bikinis.
But there's also been a recent trend in games and the forums of the intertubes. You have characters like Samus and Alyx who are strong-willed, independent, and tough. These women characters are still designed, modeled, skinned, and animated by men, but I guess these are progressive 21st century men?
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Agreed. At least the iterations of Samus I've played (Prime 1 & 2).
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Another interesting take on gender in games is the Silent Hill series. The leads (except for 3) are men which plays against the typical 'damsel in distress' that seems to inhabit Survival Horror (RE goes back and forth). Granted, most of SH's major enemies/antagonists are female or female based (which could be interpreted in different ways).
Why?
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