I wonder if game designers all watched The Sopranos and decided that criminals only hang out and make deals in strip clubs. Hell, I don't know that many criminals - maybe they do.
Oops, my bad, it wasn't interplay it was Infogrames. Now known as Atari... if they even still exist? But yeah it was their marketing department that did it all as far as I know.
Pretty sure it was just the Star Wars cantina idea with the mandatory "ok let's make it edgy and mature enough to thrill a 12 year old" flavoring.
On the less edgy side, partway through Forza Horizon it struck me that it's got to be weird for any women playing it, given how it forces you to use Generic White Guy as your character, and how the radio DJs and race organizer subtly and not-so-subtly hit on you along the way. It's not even like you're playing a fleshed-out character where your gender is important, as all it really affects are some brief prerendered cutscenes and that radio chatter, so it shouldn't have been that difficult to include a female option.
There are a lot of games you could say this for. As an example off the top of my head; would Dishonored really be any different if you were a revenge-seeking ass-kicking woman instead of a man? Also, interesting article about female protagonists. For once I was actually able to read the comments and not get depressed. EDIT: Also this is the original article that it's replying to (and its follow-up).
In terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, no. In terms of backstory for some of the main characters in the game, yeah, I think so. I agree that in general, more games should make more of an effort to accomodate female players. In this particular case, Arkane would need to change some things about the characters and their lore to retain the relationships, I think. (Apologies for being vague, I'm both trying to avoid spoilers and I'm hedging my assumptions as I haven't finished the campaign myself.)
Yeah it all really depends on how specific and detailed the character history is. You couldn't really turn The Nameless One into a woman without rewriting the entire game, but there's zero reason that the characters in, say, Diablo 2 had to be fixed genders. I think Very Specific Protagonists is not a problem in and of itself, the problem is that they just don't make very many games with A Specific Woman Protagonist, and when they do they often do things like Rape History Woman and make it worse.
Well, a male amazon would be a bit weird. But yeah, female barbarians or druids or whatever the other classes from Diablo 2 were shouldn't be an issue. Now, on the other hand, that was a sprite based game, if I remember correctly, so that would've been an utter nightmare as far as assets are concerned. But for a game where the character is a pilot of some sort (mechs, cars, whatever), it's very little work. Though needing two entire sets of dialog, especially if the game is fully voiced, is expensive. I think that is probably why most games don't go the multi-gender route, it can be expensive and time consuming to do, and it's a gamble whether or not it will be worth the extra sales.
Well if you've got to choose one gender, then why not an exclusively female protagonist? Also, thinking about the things on this list would, I think, be very helpful for developers who don't want to alienate the women in their audience (taken from the Mary Sue article I linked upthread).
Don't they always say, write what you know? =) PS. I do like that list though, and when/if I ever get to the story part of my side project, I plan to keep that stuff in mind. (And it's a mech game, so yes, protagonist will be whatever the player wants)
Kind of a tangent, but this is my pet-hate worst writing advice. Not because it's entirely wrong, but because the core of what is meant comes along with a parcel of negative stuff that often makes writers worse. The best modification I have heard: don't write what you know; write what you want but bring what you know to it.
But women aren't aliens or some sort of incomprehensible separate species. Plus, you probably know some women, even if there aren't any at your workplace. If you're unsure about how to write from a woman's perspective, then talk to some women, lay out your problems, ask for some advice. Awesome! I love mechs.
I think the root of the problem is not so much people 'writing what they know' but the fact that nothing about being a good game designer means you necessarily have the skills to be a good writer (and vice-versa) but very often game designers are doing the writing too (and they're also often geeky guys with the baggage I mentioned in an earlier post). That's changed a lot over the last decade or so but it's still an issue that crops up. I doubt the industry is very good at spotting and developing people with good talent for game writing yet, too, and we know it is bad at encouraging and reaching potential women designers/writers/whatever, and it all just kind of snowballs.
And better yet, hire more women to do your writing, game developers! (Oh wait, your industry is shit for women, hence the #1reasonwhy tag. Full circle, we have come.)
Wait, this was well before WoW came out, so, back then, it really did matter, and is probably a good reason why Diablo3 divorced the sex from the class.
Yeah, I guess Diablo and Warcraft 2 didn't do spectacular sales - just very good. They probably didn't have more money than God yet.
Okay, srs bsns time. I've gotten hubby to the point where he can recognize and acknowlege his privilege, at least when being coached about content. He's basically of the stance, "I understand where you're coming from about sexism and objectification of women but I don't understand why you're so worked up about it, and also I have no incentive to change my consumption behaviors because I happen to like the blatantly misogynistic products that come out of the gaming industry." What am I supposed to do to light a fire under his butt about this issue? Or at least get him to the point where he can identify sexist themes in games on his own when they aren't blatant (Duke Nukem was all he could come up with on his own... sigh).
Do you have an example of a game you don't want him to play? I have to admit, there are so many games that could be put on a blacklist that I could see someone being wary of changing their purchasing habits.
At the moment, nothing in particular. He's (thankfully) not an owner of Duke Nukem or even Tomb Raider. Most of the games we have and play frequently are relatively innocuous--Mass Effect, Borderlands, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls franchises.
Yeah, then I think your fine, but I could see someone being Gung Ho enough to ban Mass Effect for it's Miranda Ass Shots, for example. In the end, I think you'd have to do it as a case by case basis for the games, and you may be better off just doing the opposite and making sure you guys buy and promote the games that celebrate roles for women, rather than just banning the ones that don't. Especially since idiotic marketers/publishers seem to blame the strangest things for the failures of their games and ideas. (it was piracy's fault! It was the stolen elemental materials fault!)
I'm trying to ignore Moxxi because Tiny Tina is awesome shhhhhhh Miranda's ass was one of the things he could identify as sexist, so we get to keep it xD Most of the conversation was actually about the things that were problematic in Mass Effect, but that overall it was a pretty good game because it did so many things that most games don't (have a female badass protagonist that isn't hyper-sexualized, and flexible romance options, for example). He also corrected me in that the first Asari you meet is the councilor, should you ignore Avina and the one at the embassy desk and do a more direct story route instead of going to see the consort. So he does have attention to detail if he wants to use it.
Moxxi could be a lot worse, I don't think she's an actual prostitute, just slutty, and I think she's technically like 80 years old or something. (though yes, borderlands is..haha, on the border, when it comes to misogny)
An interesting article on how women are treated as sex/love vending machines in Bioware romances. Having never actually played a Bioware game myself, I'm not sure how much of that it true, but it's somewhat surprising because I was under the impression that Bioware's writing team had plenty of women on it. I also wonder if the phenomenon is just limited to Bioware games, or if it's a trend in games where a male protagonist can pursue female love interests in general (I'm thinking that the male side of Persona 3 also has this pitfall, given that you can only social-link with your female party members and that all of those SLs are compulsory romance).
I just wonder in my head how she ever gave birth to Ellie. And I guess Scooter too. I also really like Ellie's quest where she's like "I think the bandits are trying to make fun of me for being fat with these hood ornaments BUT FUCK THEM I AM AWESOME GO BLOW UP THEIR CARS" I think the article does make valid points, and to some extent those are countered in ME (you die if you insist on romancing Samara or her daughter; Traynor is not an option for Manshep; EDI and Kasumi are not options at all; Ashley/Kaidan "break up" with Shep in 2 over Cerberus affiliation). It would be nice to see some of those situations more prominent though, for sure. Also, in 1, if Shep yells at Ashley for being a species-est jerk, her romance thing becomes unavailable (Mr. A got a forever alone ending because of it). I think if Garrus had cheated on Shep with Tali in 3 (or vice versa, for Manshep), I would have been SO PISSED on top of all the other horrible shit in that game, it probably would have been the final straw for me. MY EMOTIONS, AUGH. In 2 though, I probably would be more able to deal with it, and in retrospect find it absolutely hilarious. But not in 3.
That's only misogyny if you don't count that their entire relationship engine is done that way. Not even the sexual relationships, I remember the first Dragon Age, I got so annoyed with that guy who-could-be-king, because he's a sarcastic guy, he has some funny lines, but god forbid you respond to sarcasm with sarcasm, or you get minus relationship points. I just wanted to have some witty banter back and forth, but I got penalized for it. Japanese dating sims tend to have the same problem, at least the very, very few I've played, maybe they've evolved since then, but they basically revolved around doing the things that you think the other person wants you to do and being rewarded when you're correct.
To stretch this just a little... Most annoying gaming experience lately as a gay dude was in the beta for The Secret World. I started a Dragon character (hell, I lived in Seoul for a bit over 7 years, I wanted to see how they did it). And then came that cutscene with the lady in the red dress basically climbing all over my character. I esc'd out of it, exited the game, and uninstalled it. Complete immersion destruction.
Actually, to me, that's an example of how it's weak, in that you lose relationship points for disagreeing with her, and you can't try to convince her that her ways are wrong. You're basically stuck agreeing with her if you want to romance her, and being a yes man. I wanted to reply to the KOTOR2 thread but lost it in the mists, because I was suddenly reminded why it was so damned good, and better than KOTOR1, and it was because you could actually influence the characters, it wasn't about getting them to like you, you could actually convince them to do things your way. It felt less like the Japanese dating sim style.
As a married guy, I totally disagree. My wife still likes to rag on me about the things I did 'wrong' while first dating her. I laugh, though, because she still dated and married me, so how 'wrong' could those things have been?
