Who is following #1 reason

[Ford Prefect]

Remember how his elder sister was killed by prostitution? And remember how this was used solely to fuel Wei's 'badass' 'revenge'. As though an abused woman only exists to give a man ennui. Christ.

[The Yosemite Bear]

great, looks like he needs to have a run in with Liam Nessian just because....

[Grumman]

I think I already know the answer, but has there ever been one of those Call of Duty-type games with a woman as the player character? A sniper on the Russian front, a US soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, or something like that?

[The Yosemite Bear]

closest would be Heavenly Sword with Kai whose got sniper powers with a crossbow, and isn't mentally evolved beyond a kid. (Twang, Twang) <six axis controls the arrows in flight)

[Vendetta]

I think I already know the answer, but has there ever been one of those Call of Duty-type games with a woman as the player character? A sniper on the Russian front, a US soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, or something like that?

No. Women are only allowed to be the protagonists in third person games, so we can appreciate how inappropriately dressed they are for the task they are performing. I do have a world war 2 game with a female protagonist (she's even French), but it's a flight combat game.

The last straight up FPS games I can remember with a female protagonist are the No One Lives Forever games, and they were literally a million years ago. (Discounting Metroid Prime because Samus started out as a 3rd person game character)

[TheFeniX]

No. Women are only allowed to be the protagonists in third person games, so we can appreciate how inappropriately dressed they are for the task they are performing. I do have a world war 2 game with a female protagonist (she's even French), but it's a flight combat game.

Lumping 3rd person games into one large group really isn't fair. A lot of companies seem to think Tomb Raider was popular because Lara Croft, ignoring that the games (at least some of them) were just good games. Croft also managed to be pretty modestly dressed, at least in earlier games. I can only assume the rest of these companies making dungeon runners figured TnA was the main seller behind Tomb Raider and went the skimpy armor direction. Those games also ended up being pretty terrible all around.

Female protagonists however only seem to be popular in games where you're allowed to chose your gender and these games tend to handle it pretty well. Oblivion, Skyrim, Mass Effect, KOTOR, Fable, I could go on. And yes, they tend towards the RPG side of things. But even though Skyrim managed to have numerous strong females (and yes, the storylines were pretty weak), you find articles such as this attacking either motivation of the developers, the modding community, or just poor storyline writing which really has little to do with the gender and also ignores the numerous women in power and/or those that accomplish feats to help the Dragonborn in Skyrim. These types of articles attack optional content for supposed sexism, then say other examples of strong females don't count... because they are optional content.

There seems to be this idea that if a male character is terribly written, then it's just terrible writing, but if a woman is written poorly it's automatically because it's sexist. While there is a lot of sexism (and racism as well) in many mediums, there also seems to be a large overreaction in labeling content as such.

As for hard-written characters mostly being male, an issue I've dealt with back in UT99 was with a friend who played exclusively with female models. He was routinely considered either a pervert or a closeted homosexual. While it seems a lot less prevalent today, in earlier MMOs: men who play as female characters weren't looked upon all that kindly. I was personally called "weird" in vent by two different women because (out of 4 characters) one of my alts was a female Night-elf. Whereas, women playing male characters doesn't carry that same stigma. Now, I'm just spitballing, but it could be that developers don't want to alienate certain FPS bases that might not cater well to being "forced" into a female role or if so, try and rely on TnA to keep them interested due to their own bias.

[xthetenth]

No. Women are only allowed to be the protagonists in third person games, so we can appreciate how inappropriately dressed they are for the task they are performing. I do have a world war 2 game with a female protagonist (she's even French), but it's a flight combat game.

Lumping 3rd person games into one large group really isn't fair. A lot of companies seem to think Tomb Raider was popular because Lara Croft, ignoring that the games (at least some of them) were just good games. Croft also managed to be pretty modestly dressed, at least in earlier games. I can only assume the rest of these companies making dungeon runners figured TnA was the main seller behind Tomb Raider and went the skimpy armor direction. Those games also ended up being pretty terrible all around.

Female protagonists however only seem to be popular in games where you're allowed to chose your gender and these games tend to handle it pretty well. Oblivion, Skyrim, Mass Effect, KOTOR, Fable, I could go on. And yes, they tend towards the RPG side of things. But even though Skyrim managed to have numerous strong females (and yes, the storylines were pretty weak), you find articles such as this attacking either motivation of the developers, the modding community, or just poor storyline writing which really has little to do with the gender and also ignores the numerous women in power and/or those that accomplish feats to help the Dragonborn in Skyrim. These types of articles attack optional content for supposed sexism, then say other examples of strong females don't count... because they are optional content.

There seems to be this idea that if a male character is terribly written, then it's just terrible writing, but if a woman is written poorly it's automatically because it's sexist. While there is a lot of sexism (and racism as well) in many mediums, there also seems to be a large overreaction in labeling content as such.

The thieves' guild example is pretty strong, though. There's a woman there who just steps away from her job just to get out of your way. That is an unfortunate bit of writing, because male high ranking characters delegate so you still have the same contact, they don't basically abdicate in favor of the ever awesome and super player character. The fighter's guild example is weak because Skyrim is masturbatory fantasy and of course you become leader, and there are a good few good examples of women in high places who earned it and women with actual character who are more than just gameplay elements or scenery (like Aela, and like Lydia who could so easily have been adoring and submissive but instead had actual personality considering the small number of lines she has).

What really merits comment about Skyrim though is the modding subculture. It's ridiculous. Most of the time someone takes a screenshot of a mod, it's got a scantily clad female player character in what is a nearly invariably modded outfit from a different mod. They're demonstrating their mod and it's like here have a look at the options I give you and Ass, my ass elf with the amazing ass in modded content that isn't part of the mod. Mod screenshots for the purpose of showing off that mod should be screenshots of the mod and the mod only. But no, we need gratuitous ass in our shots of menus.

[TheFeniX]

The thieves' guild example is pretty strong, though. There's a woman there who just steps away from her job just to get out of your way. That is an unfortunate bit of writing, because male high ranking characters delegate so you still have the same contact, they don't basically abdicate in favor of the ever awesome and super player character.

I got the impression Karliah bailed for a few reasons including her feeling the Guild was in good hands, her distaste for the Guild members after everyone believing Mercer (and Mercer's betrayal itself), as well as making amends with Noctural and protecting the Sepulcher. I was put off she went and hid in a cave doing nothing (she has "walk around and do nothing" AI package that doesn't make her leave the cave IIRC) wasn't a companion (without mods), but I never felt the writers did this was because she was a woman.

What really merits comment about Skyrim though is the modding subculture.

Yea, it's pretty bad. You have to search through loads of lingerie armor to find anything good for female characters, but you can't hold that against the vanilla game. I will say though that the nude male models came out at around the same time as the female models and are a Top 10 of all-time mod. I think they both dropped mere days after the game came out. This is pretty much the first go to for any game that can be modded.

But no, we need gratuitous ass in our shots of menus.

As with any product, even if it's free, sex sells. You find gratuitous ass shots to sell bottled water. This kind of shit is done with youtube previews, with hilarious resulting comments, all the time.

[xthetenth]

The thieves' guild example is pretty strong, though. There's a woman there who just steps away from her job just to get out of your way. That is an unfortunate bit of writing, because male high ranking characters delegate so you still have the same contact, they don't basically abdicate in favor of the ever awesome and super player character.

I got the impression Karliah bailed for a few reasons including her feeling the Guild was in good hands, her distaste for the Guild members after everyone believing Mercer (and Mercer's betrayal itself), as well as making amends with Noctural and protecting the Sepulcher. I was put off she went and hid in a cave doing nothing (she has "walk around and do nothing" AI package that doesn't make her leave the cave IIRC) wasn't a companion (without mods), but I never felt the writers did this was because she was a woman.

Yeah, I think it's much more unfortunate than anything intentional. Leaving it a bit less to interpretation could be good because that interpretation could be made but it's no stronger than that. In general, Skyrim is a pretty good one.

But no, we need gratuitous ass in our shots of menus.

As with any product, even if it's free, sex sells. You find gratuitous ass shots to sell bottled water. This kind of shit is done with youtube previews, with hilarious resulting comments, all the time.

Honestly, the nude mods are a lot less weird to me than going out of the way and using other modded content in their screenshots. It's distracting because it's modded in a way gratuitous ass isn't for other things. It feels even more gratuitous than most advertising because for example beer adds don't tend to prominently display the brand of swimsuit, while displaying modded content for a game is advertising it.

[Darksider]

I think I already know the answer, but has there ever been one of those Call of Duty-type games with a woman as the player character? A sniper on the Russian front, a US soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, or something like that?

I think the last FPS character I played that was female was the French Resistance chick from Medal of Honor: Underground, and that was in like 1999. I think one of the Russian POV characters in Call of Duty for XBOX was a female sniper.

They're sorely excluded from the medium. Whether that's because they don't want to do female characters if they can't show off their tits, or if they don't want to show women doing the sort of horrible things mains do in FPS' I honestly can't say.

[Grumman]

I think the last FPS character I played that was female was the French Resistance chick from Medal of Honor: Underground, and that was in like 1999.

Well that's one, so thank you for proving me wrong. Now if only they'd make more.

[xthetenth]

I think one of the Russian POV characters in Call of Duty for XBOX was a female sniper.

Yes she was, I think that may have been my last as well.

[Starglider]

In cinema, movies targetted at female demographics generally have more much more character drama / romance and much less action / explosions. The kind of computer games you're talking about here, AAA titles with 3D engines and movie-like storylines, fundamentally can't do that; we don't have the technology to make games composed of 30 hours of realistic character interactions instead of 30 hours of target shooting (L.A. Noire is the state of the art right now). Of course female gamers are a huge target market, but statistically women tend to play/buy casual, puzzle, social and simulation games, not AAA FPS/RPG games. So while yes game writers tend to suck and should work harder on putting in strong/realistic female characters, I don't see a problem with targetting single-player FPS games primarily at men. Conversely women play social / Facebook games significantly more than men do and hence it's reasonable for designers making those games to focus more on female players.

Behavior of game development employees to coworkers and online players to fellow players are separate issues.

[Losonti Tokash]

It's pretty likely the reason women are more attracted to those games is because they don't portray women negatively/as objects and their communites aren't as full of misogynist fat nerds, rather than anything inherent to the female condition.

[Starglider]

It's pretty likely the reason women are more attracted to those games is because they don't portray women negatively/as objects and their communites aren't as full of misogynist fat nerds, rather than anything inherent to the female condition.

Gender imbalance in fans of shooting/racing/fighting games applied before protagonist gender was a significant issue (Wolfenstien/Doom/Quake era). I admit that we can't make a strong statement without a controlled study, which would probably involve sitting a cross-section of players down in a lab and letting them chose between a pile of gender-neutral games of different genres. However from a game development perspective we care about the market reality not the root causes. As a developer you can't change the makeup of the FPS fan base and people who buy your FPS are very likely to be repeat FPS buyers not people you've lured into the genre for the first time. Your vauge opinion that it's 'pretty likey' that women can suddenly become 'attracted to' an FPS in droves (i.e. buy it) because the writing is better isn't going to convince any publisher risking a multi-million dollar budget; if it was that easy to sell more copies at least a few studios would have pulled it off.

[Losonti Tokash]

Your whole position is pretty funny since it ignores the changing demographics of gamers AND seems to argue these genres either just don't appeal to women or that it's just too much effort for the cost. AAA shooters and RPGs are just too difficult to be female friendly which is why Bioware's clumsy attempts at appealing to female gamers have made them hugely popular among women. It's actually pretty telling that your idea of appealing to women is "we have to make chick flicks into games."

[xthetenth]

Not being actively hostile to things other than bad caricature with the writing in half the games would be a very good start. They don't gain much by doing so and lose quite a bit. When we're talking about groups of people as large as the group video games could be marketed to, the number who fall through the gaps of "overall demographic trends" is huge. How much does it cost in terms of losses to the core market when you can get another huge fan base? Then again, considering how bad a quagmire the video game industry is in of refusing to believe anything has value unless it's already been done and proved to do well, that's probably a ridiculously hard sell.

Plus, as a fringe bonus, you know who else slips through the overall demographics? People like me. I'm a guy and I'm an absolute sucker for good characterization because it's a cornerstone of a good plot, and without a good plot, you'd better have some rich and varied action or I'm just not interested because shoot mans and grab ammos to shoot mans like some möbius strip of bland perfunctory action and excuses to show off nifty explosion effects is boring as hell.

[Darn]

I do have a world war 2 game with a female protagonist (she's even French), but it's a flight combat game.

Ok, I'll have to ask: what game is this?

Also, Rainbow Six: Las Vegas 2 allowed one to customize one's character, including gender (and race).

[Stark]

Its pretty obvious that games with customisation are irrelevant to the choices game developers make, because they didn't make one at all.

[Flagg]

Its pretty obvious that games with customisation are irrelevant to the choices game developers make, because they didn't make one at all.

Well, they chose to allow you to customize your gender.

[Stark]

Right, which means their story doesn't care, which means they're not expressing any values in that regard. Even giving character choices is more meaningful (ie, Marcus Fenix or Marlene Fenix) because they've actually considered that people might not want to be a huge macho man. A customiser is flat out saying 'we don't care we'll throw in some middleware and let them do what they want which will 80% be make chicks with huge tits and go for upskirt'.

If we're talking about the kind of preconceptions and broad standards and expectations that drive the game industry and its arguable hostility to complex female characters, I think its much more important to look at games that give no choice or a limited choice than simply sidestepping the whole issue (although obviously games like Mass Effect manage to be hilariously terrible regardless, but that's Bioware's amazingly terrible writing more than anything else).

MMOs that have character creation see really amusing statistics on gender and race; the 'pretty' races generally have heaps of women because nerds like to look at asses, but the 'ugly' races are more balanced (or male dominated). Dragons Dogma, for instance, has something like 75% of all pawns being female because people like to look at women and hear them say 'master' a lot. Only in warrior class is it nearly even.

[Darn]

Right, which means their story doesn't care, which means they're not expressing any values in that regard.

Except that making optional female player avatars (voice acting too, not a silent protagonist) costs money, so I'd argue that giving the option is kind of a value expression...

The main reason I mentioned it, though, was that as far as I know it's the only recent AAA 1st-person shooter (err, I think it counts as an AAA title? Is there some exact definition?) where you can play as a female character in single player. Well, Halo: Reach had the option too, but in my headspace it's not a call of duty-type game. Obviously.

[Stark]

Yeah, games without any method of expression through choice or dialog or whatever generally don't bother. Its important that many FPS games have a fixed story with existing characters you 'control' to uncover the thrilling tale of killing mexicans or whatever, while other games with player customisation generally have a story that is about 'you' and your self insert which is able to create their own story within the boundaries given.

Its those games with the totally fixed stories, the vast majority of which are about burly white men who are worshipped by women and punch out those bad guys, that are most gender insensitive. RPGs with customisation can still be massively sexist (and generally are) but its a different kind of thing where it generally encourages players to act like horrible wankers rather than presenting a pre-processed worldview of amazing macho bullshit and objectification of all women.