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Genderplay in Videogames
thenovacrisis writes "Game Girl Advance has an interesting article about the various female characters in videogames. She talks about the important balance between alienation and identification, the Aesthetics of Sexy Girls, and various MMORPGs. An interesting read for all." A lot of games are compared, and issues raised. Good food for thought for character design.
Metriod. Samus is both a complete badass and sexy to boot.
Yeah I'm all for gender play. Remember when Tomb Raider first came out and you tried to get her backed into a corner so the camera would focus in on her wonderful coneshaped cleavage?
:)
Yeah, we need more gender play.
Come on, Tinkler, Tink!!
In RPG's, MMORPGS and Sims Online (I am the person you heard about that actually enjoys it :) Don't worry, I start medication next week) I almost exclusively play as a female character.
And yes I am male.
The number 1 reason I do this is because I would rather be staring at a sexy gal while I waste my life on these games then a male character.
Besides isn't the point of RPG's to pretend to be something you are not?
The best equality computer game was Leisure Suit Larry. Plenty of chicks in that game!
Thats about as close as a gamer will ever get to a good-looking woman.
why didn't you just get the nude patch, you freaking idiot!??!
it is available for download here
Hm, Game Girl Advance....I know! They put out this little gem.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
'cos they certainly don't use sexuality to push their own site.
Banaaaana!
That site obviously promotes sexuality since it covers all kinds of bikini girls and none of Syberia, The Longest Journey, and other women, I said WOMEN of computer gaming.
Let the women stand up, don't degrade them as sexual tools.
Has anyone else noticed that everyone in videogames is idealized? Men are all super muscular or pretty boys, girls are all tall and big breated. Videogames are meant to be an escape, not a acurate depiction of life, that is boring.
mod parent up!
WAY UP.
The real question is when are we going to see quality X rated games. With engines like those running UT and NWN, not to mention the great artwork, one would expect more that cyber equivalents to paperdolls. >
Looking through this article, I find myself wondering exactly what is going on that this is the first major posting such as this that I've seen. (Or maybe I'm not looking in the right places.)
Of course, games are generally a reflection of what the public demands, but have they also conditioned the public to expect sexy vixen heroines?
Another thing I find interesting is the inclusion of playing crossgender. I tend to do this simply because it helps me learn interaction skills on the other end and thereby get a better play experience all around.
The suggestion towards the end "Set up some rules and let the players play with both the gamespace and the genderspace, however they wish. Don't push girls away from games like Tomb Raider just because you're afraid boys won't like to identify with Lara. Don't insert gratuitous sex - or for that matter, violence. Make it *mean* something. Don't bind gender with too many built-in characteristics, but let girls be girls in your game. Allow a lot of different types of female characters, not just thin, pretty, busty ones." is a great one, and something I think might be incorporated into future RPGs and MMORPGs.
Getting things politically correct is all nice and good, but games are meant to be fantasy. For the average person it is a fantasy to be a huge muscle bound superhero or a sexy woman that can domainate.
__
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Now there really are a large majority of right-handed persons on earth, but the gender balance is 50-50. So when you are designing games that appeal to young males, but seem odd and obviously sexist to young femails, you turn off (or just marginalize) potentially half of your paying audience.
Wait, you say! Games are geared toward males because that is overwhelmingly who play games. Could that be a chicken-and-egg thing, even if true? If so many popular games weren't so obviously geared toward male sensibility and away from female sensibility, perhaps that breakdown of gamer gender demographics wouldn't be so pronounced.
How do tools get built for lefties? Either because left-handed people demand it, or by empathy on the part of right-handed tool builders. 'If I were left-handed, how would this tool work for me? Hmm..not very well. I'd better make an adjustment.' So too with game designers. If you want to capture the other 50% of the market, can you empathize with that other half? Can you think about how they view those images and gameplay strategies?
Interesting article from that perspective. It's good to remember how others think.
-------------
the laughably phallic joystick
Yes, just like the laughably phallic handle on my frying pan, the laughably phallic handle on a tennis racket, or the laughably phallic bannana I had for breakfast today.
Though I would love to see the laughably feminine controller.. a "happypouch" perhaps?
No wait, actually I guess "game pad" is the feminine version.. Get it? Pad? But when it comes to game pads, never mind, because they are TOO BIG for her hands. Guess what! I'm a man and I find ALL modern gadgets, including game pads, TOO SMALL. I guess you can't please everybody.
The only argument against it could be that in any society the very first way you orient how you will treat someone is based form their gender. If people cannot pin down the gender of a character, or person, they often get very disturbed. Many people have trouble functioning in such an environment. It makes one realize how much of society and behavior is based off of our perceptions of gender.
When you learn how to undo MILLIONS OF YEARS of evolution, please let me know. I treat women differently than men. Women I know treat me differently than they treat other women. Who cares?
When designing characters, it's important to keep in mind the tension between identification and alienation, because the player is both actor and spectator.
I'm using the somewhat clumsy term "genderspace" because "gender" connotes an either-or, black and white proposition, and I think that we often see in games a more fluid range of gender construction, within prescribed limits.
blah blah blah
Look, no matter how much you intellectualize it, the games that are put on shelves are the GAMES THAT SELL.
I like women in my games to have big tits and small waists. I like the men in my games to have broad shoulders and strong arms. I don't really care if they are "Actualizing A Constructive Gender Space" or whatever she's talking about. I have no interest in exploring "in-between" genders. Just like when I watch talk shows on TV, I have no interest in the moderate viewpoints. I like to hear people with extreme viewpoints yelling at each other (I HOPE that the politicians are more moderate, but for entertainment, I like the simplification and polarization). Same with any entertainment.
If women don't like what's in games, then they shouldn't buy them.
If I want speeches on "gender theory" I'll go back to college. Actually not a bad idea, the girls in my English class were pretty damn hot.
Feh.
I head over to slashdot thinking that for once, i can read news that doesn't have the word utilitarianism in it, but looks like my hopes are dashed :-(.
You gotta love CowboyKneel's whoring attempt at sounding all sensitive and open to the issues raised in whatever article this was:
"A lot of games are compared, and issues raised. Good food for thought for character design."
Uh, yeah, real insightful.
Something you hear over and over again in the research around what girls want out of games are themes like "open-ended" and "less-goal oriented" and "co-operative play".
So girls want to play SimCity and The Sims.
Yeah, I can get behind that.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
After spending more time in UO than anyone should, over 5 years and 10+ accounts, I've done everything from Player Killing, House Decays and Sales to being Mayor of Oberon Pass a small player run town from way back when. And so I shall dispense words from on high as to how gender works in UO.
Only idiots allow the fact that an avatar is female to sway their behavior. With a signal to noise ratio inherent in a MMORPG, there are alot of idiots doing it and I've had idiots act differently towards my female chars. You can actually bring in quite a bit of loot bank crawling with a female in distress, I've known many who've gotten away with outright scams this way.
Everyone else pretty much ignores female/male, since they know it doesn't matter what the avatar looks like it's the personality and skills behind it. This is probably most of the UO population, especially since there is very little "suspension of disbelief" or "game immersion" when playing within UO except on certain rare occasions.
The Role Players are a subset of the above, they however make a point to play RP in appropriate situations to the gender of the avatar. So even though they may be acting like their judgement or actions is swayed by gender, in reality they are going to roleplay such events as they see fit, and not be coerced into giving away valuable items as the idiots are likely to do.
Jonah Hex aka DogMeat of Oberon Pass [MoO]
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
I think that we have to note who these games are being targeted at. Let's face it most gamer's are male. Most of them are teenaged. Most of them wouldn't have anything to do with an unattractive female in a video game. The problem now is that girls do not want to play these game because of the way women are depicted, and women will not be depicted in a way suiting to the people who share the views of the author until girls become a sizable part of the market for computer games. And there is no right answer to this problem.
GameGirlAdvance has been in the spotlight once before, because of her review of the Rez Trance Vibrator. Go ahead and give it a read, it might get you a bit how under the collar, so to speak.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The original Metroid, released in 1987, was among the first major video games to feature a female protagonist. This was soon followed by Dokidoki Panic, released in the USA as Super Mario 2, which allowed you to play the role of Princess Toadstool.
Since then, Nintendo has continued to be a trailblazer for featuring females in prominent roles in games, and that is something I am quite proud of.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Looking at the response of gamers so far.
No.
The funny thing is that one person insulted gaming geeks as not every getting any play.
That is odd because many gamers I know are more social and apt to do things outside of computers like actually dating. Other types of geeks like comic book geeks or programmer geeks etc..etc.. tend to stereotypically have a bit more trouble in this regard. Notice it is all a stereotype and I myself fit into a couple of the above categories and I have a wife, kids and I actually weigh under 250lbs.
Everyone wants the ideal. They want to play the bulked bad ass kicking rear and taking names.
Do you really want to play a short hairy balding character with dark circles under your eyes from lack of sleep?
No, that is the villian you kick the crap out of on the third level of the game.
The weird ones are the ones that play the opposite sex and really get into it and off on it. They worry me.
ACK
I thought it was talking about those weirdos who play as women characters in UT2003 or something...I'm pretty sure 9 out of 10 people who play UT2003 aren't women.
Why, will clicking on this link give you a clue?
Who wonders how those game chicks with 40DDD bazooms and the 20 inch waists can do flips and the like without falling on their faces?
Yeah, I thought I was. Carry on.
Alienation vs. Identification: Necessary Tension
She is right, this is very important. All female characters clothing needs to be very tense in order to show off the cleavage they have underneath.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Well, if there was ever a way to get girls interested in games. Gotta get me one of those!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Jeez. I thought the /. crowd was supposed to be a bit intellectual, but most of the posts I've read about this thus far are mostly knee-jerk, anti-PC, mysogony.
The article isn't claiming that she feels victimized or 'whining' about the portrayal of the female body. It's actually quite good, IF you're capable of turning off your 'the world hates me for being a white, middle-class, male' alarms. Show some dignity and don't have a hissy-fit over a woman commenting on gender in games.
Getting to her final comments I think she has some well formed points, and I agree whole-heartedly:
"I don't want to see a shelf of pink boxes of "girl games". I just want to see better games in general - games which are more thoughtful, more provocative, more interesting, with better character design.
Something you hear over and over again in the research around what girls want out of games are themes like "open-ended" and "less-goal oriented" and "co-operative play". These are also the themes which most adult gamers seem to want, too. Talking with my friends who are game developers and designers, they don't want to see bouncy boobs, necessarily (although there's a place for that, sure); they want evolved gameplay, emergent gameplay - with great characters. Set up some rules and let the players play with both the gamespace and the genderspace, however they wish. Don't push girls away from games like Tomb Raider just because you're afraid boys won't like to identify with Lara. Don't insert gratuitous sex - or for that matter, violence. Make it *mean* something. Don't bind gender with too many built-in characteristics, but let girls be girls in your game. Allow a lot of different types of female characters, not just thin, pretty, busty ones.
The end result isn't just going to appeal to women, it'll appeal to a lot of people across the board who want smart, fun, engaging games."
Anyone who likes games can relate. This isn't femi-nazi rhetoric, so allow yourself to ponder it a bit before being a reactionary.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
well, i like the whole idea of having really hot chicks in games. I'm a dork in real life, and could never achieve quality ass (ie Laura Croft). I think many of us play games to escape our patheticness in real life, well at least i do, lol.. But in all seriousness, who would want a dull plain looking chubby chick ---> real life, and who would want an exotic hot chick ---) game life/dreams (well for most of us who post here :) ) to look at. i motion the second suggestion
My biggest fear is that the hotness of the chicks in games will become government regulated somehow
I'd like to know how she proposes to design a non phallic joystick.
Also, the color scheme is "male friendly"?
How is a primarily colorless (black) console biased towards men? Judging by the number of goth chicks around here I would have thought it was as gender neautral as you could get.
First, the jokes!
;)
the original Xbox controllers which are too big for my hands,
actually, that should read too big for human hands.
Regardless of the veracity of her points her delivery was flawed.
For example: the laughably phallic joystick,
with subjectivity bleeding through in the first paragraph, you know you aren't being given a fair shake- this is not a truly academic analysis- this is just a rant. Joysticks haven't been phallic since the war pilots who came up with the name.
Most controllers have some variation on the 4-way cross, or a small, stubby analog thumb controller. These modern day controllers can only be construed as phallic by those with millimeter peters.
And around every corner is a highly personal take.
For example:
"
But the hype surrounding Lara Croft was gross. The hype undercut
her image as strong smart archeologist. The hype made her into a
sex kitten. "
I had no idea lara croft was an archaeologist, so you are correct that the 'hype' (or 'advertising', as I like to call it) under cut that. But she wasn't presented as merely a sex kitten. No, she was presented as a BAD-ASS Sexy action hero. NEWSFLASH! Strong is sexy- always has been, always will be. THe strong/sexy woman has been a dominant character type in contemporary fiction; especially science fiction (with the venn diagram of Sci Fi lovers and gamers being significant).
While I admire someone's effort to bring to light something I take for granted (gender issues in games) I really would hope for a bit more rigour in the work (and no, defining "genderspace" doesn't count as rigour unless this is a freshman year undergrad writing course. and then you would only get a C...)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Acclaim has taken great pains in re-enforcing strong role models for young girls especially in BMX XXX :)
An ugly old witch, to go along with the ugly old wizard characters. Who needs looks when you have MAGIC!
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
uhh.... are you going to click the link or not?
I'd like to hear the rest of that Baldur's Gate conversation.
"I've got rats in my basement - can you help me?"
"Sure. Just let me get this snake out of my pants..."
*slap*
"Tell me, is that a bum in your shirt?"
*slap*
Nevermind that!
Where are the the pornographic games for PS2. Where are the games whose sole purpose in life is to get people off?
Common on! PS2 is a game platform not a morality platform.
And on gamefaqs message board has TONS of "is this game too girly" posts.
I think people needs to stop stereotyping things into "girls stuff" vs. "boys stuff," and instead just into "good stuff" and "crappy stuff."
Granted, most gamefaqs kids are in the midst of their teenage-hood so probably still searching for "oneself." But anyhoo - these stereotypes should not be propagated in the first place. I do wonder where they start.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'm a hardcore RPG gamer. That's not all I like, but every now and then I go off on a major binge.
The problem is this: while a whole bunch of gender stereotyped Lara Croft clones with huge tits and wierd dialog might be great for 13 year old boys, its really jarring to those of us who are buying it more for the escapism than for the battle cleavage.
I don't want to get jarred out of whatever minimal plot they've kludged together by something SOOOO campy I can't even willingly suspend my raucious sarcastic laughter, more less my disbelief.
I'm not saying no softcore and no random bimbos, but it needs to be balanced and used intelligently. (If that isn't inherently contradictory.) The best selling games are those that have either phenominal gameplay, or acceptable gameplay with great plot. Over and over you see games that are technically mediocre and well written crushing games that are technically superior and thematically challenged.
Just my opinion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Indeed this was a solid piece of work, but it raises far deeper issues with the direction games journalism, and the general perception of the medium, is now taking.
I have followed GGA for quite a while and whilst I appreciate Jane's enthusiasm, I do feel that her take on games journalism is particularly exploitative.
Moreover she has the annoying habit of selling her work off to the reader as an academic piece. If she wants that type of prestige, that an academic career offers, then she should follow that (she is eminently capable of this). The halfway house she occupies at present only acts to accentuate her apparent insidious vapidity.
I am all for constructive academic discussion on the medium of videogames, but I will not advocate frustrated games journalists who feel slighted by their chosen career path.
Do not get me wrong, I agreed with everything that article puts forward. It is just the execution that I contest to being overtly manipulative.
Cacophanus
http://cacophanus.net/
I think it'd be pretty dope to do a reading of http://www.creativestudios.com/r1d84cxt01c/write_7 .htm because it's actually the person writing the poem arguing with the person being written about in the poem.. it'd be so dope to do w/ 2 diff people but it'd be hard
This is more of a complaint about a common practice on Slashdot, rather than this particular story.
When posting stories, the original poster often puts in too many links. For example, the above story has a link to Game Girl Advance even though it has the link to the story itself, making the first link redundant.
Enough with the promiscuous linking!
I got three titles for you. "The Longest Journey". "Syberia". "Duke Nukem". The first two games are great games with leading female charaters -- emphasis on "great games" first and "woman power" a distant second. "Duke Nukem" is the male version of "Tomb Raider", stereotype-wise.
You may point out that games like "TLJ" and "Syberia" are exceedingly rare in today's market. Guess what ? So are good movies. Last time I checked, most modern movies feature explosions and sex, or emotional whining (depending on the intended audience). So what ? These movies are made to generate money, not to make some sort of an artistic statement. So are most games.
Funny thing, though -- most people I know find Duke Nukem funny, not offensive. Does it mean that men are less full of themselves than women ? We are able to laugh at ourselves without starting a "help, I am being oppressed !" movement...
>|<*:=
In games like diablo, I pick a character that matches my physical disposition, mental state, and so on. I guess I don't have much to be ashamed of or I am very confident in myself if I want to portray myself as best as possible. If I could put my face on UT2003's characters, I probably would.
One of my favorite games, and a classic RPG is the original Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System. It was released in 1987 and was way ahead of it's time in gender equality.
The lead character of the game was a woman named Alis. Later a cat name Myau joins your party as well as a somewhat androgenous character named Noah (it is never explained whether Noah is male or female).
Reading it like that you'd think the game was a rather sugar coated girly game, but it's not. It's a serious RPG. And it's excecuted so well that any notion that this is somehow "less" of a game because it stars a woman is just not there because of how strong of a character Alis is. There was no sexism in the game, no larger than life boobs, no skimpy clothes, none if it. Alis was taken seriously in the game, and the designers allowed the player to take her seriously as well w/ the way the portrayed her.
In a time, especially in the 80's, when female leads were not even heard of, let alone designed w/ dignity, this was one game that really got it right. I was very surprised when, even today, there are very few games that take women lead roles seriously, as something more than just sex objects, floozies, etc. Indeed, Phantasy Star was well ahead of its time in that sense.
It's been said that real equality will be achieved when a female schmuck moves up the corporate ladder as fast as her male colleagues...and makes the same sexist decisions that sell like gangbusters.
Y'know, when Ms. Movie Executive says to her assistants, "Why don't we have her take her top off in this shot. It's going too slow." Then women will have reached parity with men.
Otherwise all this blather about gaming equality is as useless as forcing boys to play with barbie dolls.
-- We're not civilized. We just have better toys.
You never hear about guys complaining about all the muscular male characters with ripped abs and legs like oak. Why's that? HMM?!!?
super mega lame
Characters that are more like the gamers themselves
Example character : timmy
intelligence: superior
eyesight: poor,
posture: next question
athleticism: next question
social skills: excellent if debating stregths of comic book characters, or other nonexistant situations
Ok, nevermind, I think I answered my own question!
I stopped at the above quote. So much for objectivity. I think the author needs to get laid.
You know, almost every food sells more with cheese on it (except root beer).
And everything sells better with a girl on it.
I'm going to start renting cheese-covered girls to auto shows.
-- We're not civilized. We just have better toys.
A lot of people don't know about games like The Longest Journey.
And personally, I've never heard of Syberia.
The bikini-girl games are the ones that get a lot of press. TLJ, I never would have heard of if a guy at work hadn't had it and offered to let me borrow it.
Here's a novel idea, though.
Women are not sexual tools. They are, however, sexual. Every portrayal of a woman doesn't have to deliberately throw that away in order to be 'serious'. Which seems to have been part of the upshot of the article--it's not inherently evil that these things happen. There just needs to be an awareness that women are people. That even incredibly model-gorgeous women are people.
Okay, granted, I'm not one of them myself. I wear glasses and a size 15. I have hips. I even kinda like my hips. And what the gaming companies may eventually get is that there are women *like* me out there who'd pay through the nose for a character who was strong, deep, and not in the least bit asexual.
The thing about being a woman is that a woman is not somehow gendered but sexless. Trying to insist that we *should* be is no better than saying we should be sexy but mindless.
One great game for gender equality and realistic physical features was Tony Hawk 3. I have a friend who is, basically, short and round, but she could play with the player edit settings and make a character that looked pretty much just like her, and she was thrilled. Unfortunately, TH4 has lost the "extremes" of height and weight, and characters must be mostly middle of the road, ideal shapes. Pity.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
I hear that the character in Adventure was female. And that was like 1980?
:P
Atari was way ahead of it's time.
Don't thinkit was a girl? Prove it wasn't.
No, I don't think that girls in video games is deserving of being called an "issue." Video games, in this respect, are no different from the television/movie industries (and sadly, the the music industry as well): Get the hot people, they sell to the opposite sex.
It really is as simple as that, folks. Are you raising any "tough issues" by noticing that Lara Croft is well endowed and wears skimpy clothes? Of course not. There is no point to churning out this pseudo-intelligent crap.
OMG! Wau!
First, it's been brought up that Duke Nukem, with it's tight-shirted muscle man didn't offend guys the way Tomb Raider offended some women. However, Tomb Raider didn't present the option of paying male strippers. For that matter, you spend all of Tomb Raider starring at Lara read end, while you spend Duke Nukem starring at Duke's boot.
Next, on the whole issue of out-of-place sexuality in games, just think how many gamers were pissed by the Hot tub scene at the Honey Bee in Midgar in Final Fantasy VII. If it had been hot chicks in skimpy swim wear we probably wouldn't have heard as many complaints, but the instant male gamers are forced to deal with a hyper-sexed male game character, they freak.
On the whole issue that people go to games for fantasy, and expect fantasy style characters, I find mostly plausible. However, it breaks my suspension of disbelief when my knight's armor offers as much protection as my female assasin's bikini. Also, when you read classic (aka. good) fantasy and mythology, you don't find hot chicks, you get beautiful women. Helen of Troy didn't have the 'Ass that Launched a Thousand Ships'. Odysseus' Penelope kept well clothed. Tolkein's Arwen could sleep on her stomach. You can still have attractive female character, just try and follow the rules of human anatomy.
Finally, the comments that 'Teenage Males are the video game market' is absolute heresy, considering how many anime fans Slashdot has. You know how the cycle works:
- American Business declares that American's don't like Anime, so they put out a lousy translations with bad voice actors.
- People get pissed by the bad translation and voice acting and don't buy the video.
- Sales come in slow and American Business declares that American's don't like Anime.
Teenage males buy the games because the games are oriented towards teenage males.Of course, looking back over the NPC list, it appears an unusually high number of female characters in BG1 were thieves. Maybe the author had something with that stereotype after all...
Microsoft delenda est!
Metal Gear Solid from the playstation has a "vibration test" option in the menus that you can hold down continuously... more fun than the game itself!
I'm a girl too! See naked chicks in my journal!
If we apply the lessons learned to the game market, we discover that men will continue to be the predominant buyers and users of computer games, while women will continue to form a much smaller market. There is a market for specialty games that cater specifically to women's needs (communication, socialization, etc) and MMORPGs could be a big part of that due to the social factor, but on the whole men's needs (sex, hunting, competition, 3d coordination) will drive game design in "their" larger segment of the market as the male segment is easier to address with a computer.
IMHO, this will only cease to be an issue when we genetically alter how the brain forms under influence of testosterone and other sex specific hormones. In other words, get used to it - as politically-incorrect as that sounds. You can't erase millions of years of evolution with wishful thinking.
Yes, I'm a guy. My wife has her own computer but rarely uses it for playing games. They just don't interest her. I don't touch her romance novels either. Yet we lead a happy marriage.
Fundamentally, it's not a problem of the majority of gamers being geeky teenage boys. You could have a majority of gamers being well balanced, thoughtful sorts who are tired of misogyny and brainlessness in games, and we'd be in the same situation. Why? Because well-adjusted people have something other than games to balance their life, and so they'll buy a fraction as many games as hardcore nerds with no other life.
Hmm. That's somewhat opaque. What I mean is that it's selling to a market of sales figures, not a market of players. You only need a small fraction of "hardcore" gamers who thrive on blood, guts, and T&A to be buying 75% of the games, which will drive out a HUGE fraction of the buying public.
And let's be honest--it's easier to throw some jiggly cleavage and 'real life blood splatters' into a game than it is to come up with a convincing and immersive world. Easy, guaranteed sales vs. difficult, small sales and a rewarding game. Not many publishing houses are going to support the latter.
As an aside, there are two EXCELLENT games which have important female characters, although not the main character. One is System Shock 2! Blood and guts, first person shooter, with a few women scattered throughout, and...Shodan.
The other is Grim Fandango. Just about as wonderful (and funny!) as an adventure can get, and several women are pivotal to the whole game.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Games are marketed at guys,
the hardware is made for guys,
girls have to live up to unrealistice imagges..
I know just as many girls who have these nice
new consoles and play the games as guys,
they dont seem to mind..
The Xbox contorller being too large for them??
Its tooo small for me, and every guy i know..
And where not talking 6' 6" guys built
like brick shithouse hear..
im under 6' and wieght in at nothing..
As for the images..
if the female chrs are marketed to be
''sexy'' to guys and unachivable to girls,
WTF about the mail ones..
Yerh, You too guys can be 7'6" tall,
weighing in at 400lbs and all of it
musscle quite realisticaly..
Gender issues shoot both ways,
and ive yet to see an artical by
a girl realising this..
And im not eveing going to go into
''histoircal/fantasy'' argument..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
No, not me, silly!
m er spot.jhtml?article=spotlight_girlpoll_results
Sega did a survey about a year ago (possibly longer) to find out what girls thought. While the demographics on their survey are a little skewed towards the younger set, they are still interesting. Then again, people 'my age' have to go do joblike things and don't have as much time for games.
http://www.sega.com/community/gamerspot/post_ga
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While searching around, I found this link, too.
c ts /women/wcgames.html
http://www.sacbee.com/static/archive/news/proje
While this page is on girls and video games, there are other sections that are also interesting. Read the previous article on programming classes.
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
I know people have brought up Samus Aran....but for some crazy reason the article seems to forget about the Metroid series.
Probably because such a thing totally destorys their warped view point. Guess what? About 90something% of gamers are 13+ males. Also not every game is T&A...just the bad ones.
Well im glad they didnt find dating sims and Kiss Files (paper dolls for your comp) anyway No shit most Video game women arnt relistic the target audince is MEN!
I agree that in most games both the male and female characters are often physically appealing, but one game that comes ot mind that really broke that mold is also my favorite game, and arguably the best game of all time, Half Life. Instead of being some super human soldier disgruntled sniper marine commando, you were a nerdy scientist. Ordinary guy in extraordinary cicumstances. I think that contributed a great deal to game. Maybe one of the reasons it did so well was because people could actually identify with the protaganist.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Even if there were no female game players (and there are) it's still desirable to have an interesting and diverse array of characters. It's not just a matter of not buying something - society has a greater good and we're entitled to discuss the issues. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having a bit of fun but it's good to have healthy debate.
What I found somewhat interesting, is that in Japan, the original Tomb Raider actually received the kind of marketing (at least in its TV spots) that the author of this article wished it had in the states. The TV spots featured an average Japanese girl (i.e. not some ultra-cute girl used to attract a male audience) running around, emulating some of the actions of Lara from the game. The ad basically did what Jane was hoping--it presented Lara as a strong avatar for a female audience to identify with.
That's 100% accurate, except you are missing the fact that the fantasy/idealization is almost completely from a male perspective.
"It's Dot Com!"
Yes, just like the laughably phallic handle on my frying pan, the laughably phallic handle on a tennis racket, or the laughably phallic bannana I had for breakfast today.
Oh come on, I'm sure the handle on your frying pan or tennis racket don't look like this.
And if your bananas do, you should seriously consider shopping somewhere else.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I basically tried to set up my roommates as friends who got along well and they started making out and sleeping in the same bed.
That game is shit, though, I got bored of it after a day.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
J.C. Hertz covered this much better in "Joystick Nation". And GrrlGamer is back up.
When I play video games like Quake III, or whatever I choose player models that that are all beefy or cool looking. Sometimes I even choose female models, and at one point I was a milk carton from Evan Dorkan's Milk & Cheese comics. I can't say that I am or will ever be beefy, or cool looking, probably will never be a girl, and definatly not a carton of rancid milk. What does this mean? Probably that I use the player models to project a certain part of me, and or I get to live vicariously for a few moments as some beefy gun toting manly man(or girl as the case may be), or a dairy product gone bad.
The point is that IT'S NOT REAL, and that's the draw. I get to pertend that I am something that I'm not. Deal with it, enjoy it, whatever, just don't be dumb about it.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!
Tell that to the Victorians, who were of an opinion that tuberculosis was a romantic disease, and that women who fainted a lot and couldn't do anything on their own were ideal.
Tell that to many of the older scifi authors, for whom the 'strong' heroine always fell into the arms of a stronger male in the end. Maybe she did save the planet, but she still couldn't live without a man. And ignore all the scifi which has barely any female characters at all.
Strong isn't even really sexy *now*, not for a lot of people. I have no idea of the gender of the parent poster or how much involvement they have with the opposite sex, but at least in my generally college-age social contacts, the ideal is still a girl who's thin, dresses up, isn't too 'pushy'. Athletic is only okay if it's a "girl" sport. The guy gets uncomfortable if his girlfriend drives. Oddly enough, this attitude seems to vanish somewhat when dealing with who ought to *pay* for the date. But, still, god forbid she even *look* at anyone else, while he's heading home to play Bikini Action Sluts 2000.
'Strong' women appear in fiction plenty, but it's almost always using somebody's fucked-up idea of what a 'strong woman' is. Save the world, sure, but her basic role doesn't change. She still doesn't stand on her own. And that's the problem in video games, too. Female characters are much more two-dimensional, much more likely to serve largely as somebody's love-interest even if they can kick ass themselves. Fix that, it doesn't matter what they look like, whether their breasts are cartoony H-cups or bound with duct tape.
Unfortunately, it's not going to become widespread anytime soon, because among other things, Japan is one of the least gender-conscious post-industrial countries. And they still have a tremendous influence on our games.
For some reason some space simulators have a trend of, I guess, getting this more or less right.
Independence War I - You are male but you have very little character development so all it really affects is the voice when your character narrates. The engineer on your ship, one of the main characters, is a woman and some one-mission characters are women. (example: A scientist who you help survey a newly opened system.) You hear their voices or see a grainy video of the engineer, nothing sexual.
Independence War II - You are male again and your character is developed very much. Two of the main characters on your ship are women. They work your turrets and the fighters that are docked onto your ship. They may or may not have some sort of prison-dyke (literally, you start the game breaking out of prison) relationship going on, but it's rather subtle. You see them in cutscenes and stuff and it's not very sexual.
X-Wing Alliance - You are male and your character gets some development. One of the main characters is your sister. You only see her if I remember correctly inside a spacesuit. Some of the rebel pilots flying with you will be female, you only hear their voices.
Freespace 2 - Your character could be anything. Some of the people flying with you and the captains of a few ships are female. You might see grainy green comms video of them.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
What about Neverwinter Nights? About 3 / 4 of the plot deals with the "fall from grace" of a female paladin, Aribeth de Tylmarande. She was one of the best characters in the game, second only to, in my opinion, Linu La'neral. Neverwinter Nights had mostly realistic armor, and very good female characters. The only complaint about the whole game was that the female portraits seemed to be much higher quality than the male portraits.
I am a big fan of Dealta Force Land Warrior. In this game a lot of people play one of the female characters. The game has several characters to choose from devided equally in males and females. The males and females differ in sound when commenting or dying. Some people choose a female character in the game because the female audio comments are much more cooler than the male ones. Some simply choose a charachter type they like (and their abailities!). I personlly play a female because I like playing the Close Combat character; a female...
I think what's missing from the article is the place of gender roles in the various RPGs that have dotted video game players. I remember playing Final Fantasy II for the SNES (IV in Japan), and the whole story with Rydia, and the love story between Rosa and Cecil. Past that, the Final Fantasy games have given us strong female characters that didn't function as Sex Symbols (until FF VII, that that wasn't direct). Then there was Parasite Eve, and Resident Evil that gave us strong heroines.
Of course, Tomb Raider wasn't just about sex appeal, it was putting a female character into a strong role as well. With the upcoming FF X-2, I'd be curious to see how Square handles the female role. My experience with computer entertainment, outside of Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and similar games, most female characters are set as a little more "immature," being more motivated by clothes, boys, and giggling (Say, DOA Beach Volleyball) than by actual Plot.
Did anyone else catch this quote in the article? "I never played this game."
So, her review of it is based on the cover and what she heard about the game. I think there are valid points to be made (and some of the people on here have done that better than she did), but I'm not sure how you could actually do that without playing the game.
Well, I was gonna read "Pride and Prejiduce" but the cover looked boring and a bunch of guys told me it was a chick book so I didn't bother. But, here, let me tell you what was wrong with it...
In these science-fiction and fantasy-themed online worlds, it's perfectly plausible that ungendered, ambiguously gendered, or bi-gendered races could exist.
I know plenty of ambiguously and bi-gendered people in real life. I think this article is great, but I also think that it's a mistake to stick all feminine traits on girls and masculine traits on boys. I think it would be really cool to be able to create a hetero male fighter that runs around in a dress in the next Baulder's Gate or whatever.
Gender is really just what you make of it. Every man who wears a tight shirt or crosses his legs isn't a faggot. Every girl with short hair and her sleeves rolled up isn't a dyke.
A really good book on feminism from a male perspective is Refusing to Be a Man by John Stoltenberg. I don't agree with everything he has to say, especially RE censoring pornography, but it is a very interesting read.
Raise boys and girls the same way!
I got too distracted by this article. I especially liked the pictures.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It seems everyone OUTSIDE the games industry realizes the fallacy of targeting women gamers or even more generally minorities. It is that you are creating and enforcing gender and racial discrimination.
Take affirmative action as you may, but this poster calls bullshit. It creates a language and a mindset that there are differences between people and that these differences must merely be handled with care and "fairness."
Instead of internalizing their philosophy of equality they externalize it to profit from special treatment (minority rules) or a niche market for their lobbying group to exist. Or in the case of women gamer societies, a niche audience and divided market where they take the one less fraught with competition.
Dark Alliance is related to Baldur's Gate in name only. It is a completely different game engine, story, even developer.
The game isn't even remotely similar in gameplay, items system, or even level systems. It doesn't even resemble 1st, 2nd, or much less 3rd edition rule sets. It almost makes me wonder if it was made for something entirely different then the guys decided they'd make more money if they got a D&D licence for it so they signed on with Bioware.
And, for your information, there are no women characters in the game and the one woman at the beginning of the game is mere eye candy. She has huge breasts that simply do not stop swaying. Most animated breasts in a video game. Ever.
The other players will treat you better.
The other players will hesitate long enough for you to blow their heads off with the shotgun.
The other players will always underestimate you.
You can get free stuff by acting clueless, because the other players will want to keep you around.
It's easier to make alliances with other players.
Etc.
Wow, I never realized videogames are made to appeal to men.
Big guns, big boobs, and big explosions... gee, that sounds a lot like a hollywood blockbuster. Except you're not limited by what actors you can find to play your roles, just by your imagination. What, is she insecure that every woman is like a 40DD-20-30? Has she ever noticed every guy is like 60-40-50? I don't know any guys that this seems so much of an issue to, and I certainly don't know any that look like that. Ok, there's the "mysterios wanderer" characters, but they are as often guys as girls - and hey, why do the old men always have canes and walk hunched over? Shouldn't she be getting her panties in a bunch over that too?
And I'd just like point out a quote from her article, "the laughably phallic joystick". Yeah, because most gamers I know love fiddling with phallic objects for hours on end. If she'd think about it from any other angle than how the gaming industry is out to get her, she'd realize that a making a control phallic would turn away more gamers than it encourages. Maybe she's referring to a different type of joy-stick than I'm thinking of.
Oh, and I'd like to point out that video games are played for pleasure. And beautiful characters (male, female, alien (crystaline, robotic, whatever) ) are more pleasing to look at. Take the Final Fantasy series. Why is a 5' man swinging a 10' long, 1' wide sword? It looks cooler! I don't know about you, but eye candy is a big part of my graphics score; and better graphics means the game is more pleasing to me. So am I going to have to deal with some unrealistically proportioned women in the name of artistic license? Sure, but I'll make that sacrifice.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
"Killing time at the airport the other day, I got that whisper of a question in my head -- that whisper I'm sure we've all heard... the one that says:
Now, I'm talking about arcade games where the only possible protagonist was female (unlike games where you could choose a different character one of which was female Gauntlet, or games where you were female for just one particular part Return of the Jedi, or games where player one was female, but player two was male Aliens). I'm also not talking about games where the gender could have been either Space Invaders, Asteroids, PONG.
Searching my little mind I could come up with only the following:
I'm pretty sure this was a female spider because I think it had the "hourglass" mark (which I believe the male lacks).
Here are games that I have been /msg'ed about:
If you can get past the comment about "phallic joysticks" (patently ridiculous, supposedly a joke, but didn't apppear to be) you're doing better than i did at first. Saying things like that shows a heavy bent towards a priapic mindset or a staggering lack of understanding of both history (of flight control sticks and video games) and ergonomics.
.. because I don't know if they did.
It gets worse further on, though. The writer states about Tomb Raider: "I never played this game" and then goes on to say "Eidos, you really blew it - you alienated all the girls who would have *loved* this game." Excuse me, but how do you know? You never played it, remember? Maybe the gameplay wouldn't even have been of the sort that girls enjoy? I've never played Tomb Raider either, so I certainly won't bash Eidos for "blowing it" in any aspect of its gameplay
Following along she makes a good point about the DOA Volleyball game, but then blows it with a rant about a barmaid in Baldur's Gate. Okay, I don't know about you... but when I play some game with medieval feel I expect my barmaids (wenches) to be ditzy, busty, and generally exactly like the description she gives. It sounds like a perfect fit in that kind of game to me. Guess what, sluts and whores are real and they are a part of the collective group of women on this planet no matter how embarassed you might be about it.
Also, who the hell is "Justin"? I have a hard time taking an article seriously when the writer talks about random third parties without any introduction. (I do know who Justin is from reading other stories on the site, but I might as well not from the article. it's bad writing.)
Moving along I see another thing which frustrates me. She makes a comment about the genderless trolls of Tolkien's world and how they are "inherently male." Okay, fine, let's say I take that at face value (I don't, if something is genderless than it is genderless). Then she goes on to say that she "would like to see more experimentation with genderless or gender-ambivalent characters" Well, which is it? Pick one, please.
Okay, other than that she doesn't trip up. However, I have another major gripe with this article and another point which keeps me from taking it seriously. She never mentions the "male stereotype" that is just as easy to find in videogames. Main characters are always buff and bronzed, always fighting their way through situations. Very rarely if ever will you find a male protagonist in a videogame who is a scrawny 5'2" pasty-faced kid with glasses. Or a chubby awkward boy. The main characters as adults and children are idyllic, and anything that diverts from the stereotypical perfection is villainous or sinister (evil genius plotting destruction) or comic relief (fat person struggling to keep up, always wanting to eat).
She really blows it here. Instead of taking the issue of female stereotyping and the overall shallowness of most videogames (I agree with her) and using it as representative of the greater problems with the total lack of realism and sensibility she totally ignores every other slight to every other class of people because, in typical human fashion, she portrays the injustices as directed primarily at her chosen group of identification. It's a very human thing to do, but also extremely frustrating for someone trying to find some subjective analysis and critique where it is sorely needed.
At any rate, if she had just been up front about wanting some more intelligent, realistic, and more engaging games to go with the testosterone infused ones I think this article would have read much better. However she didn't, and the article (and her cred) suffers because she attempted to take a good point and emphasize it with good evidence (ample in the world of gaming) but instead beat it into the ground with some bad examples and a terribly shallow view. It's a definite shame.
you can take the road that takes you to the stars...
I think this empathy you want is very difficult to reach. The producers, designers, programmers, graphicers, ... are nearly all male and as you know there are little males who understand the opponent gender.
I think until there are more female game developers we won't see games girls like.
Girls seem to like Myst and alike and Commandos and alike. Anno 16/15something had a high rate of female consumers too i think. What can we conclude from this?
Most women I talk to actually do fall into the category of the second... (that should be a clue to all the comic book guys out there) If someone spent all the time setting up the details of toe-cheese on the second orc from the left, the one right in front of the troll with that club that has three 2" notches approximately 3/4 circumlateral from his thumb and 4" from the top... see where this is going? How can that situation then overlook that some valkeryie type chick is running around with only a bra and panties for protection? What is funnier is that said bra and panties are actually metalic. Hmmm, why use heavier, restrictive and light reflecting metal when you can just use that "magic armour" to allow a cloth set (basically a magic bikini)?
Such magical cloth should be handed out to all as then full movement is allowed but with full protection... hmmm, battle-body condoms. Perhaps the artists should go and first spank to some pr0n and then once that is out of their system come up with something less stupid in regards to armour. Or at the very least just have the ingame rules reflect the choice of armour. If heroin Bob... I mean Beatrice decides to wear matching metalic panties and bra and runs up to the front of the battle against the evil Orcish hoards then she should not be too surprised to have her intestines soon hanging outside her body.
I don't find any of this sexist or insulting on those grounds (then again I am a guy) but I find it intellectually insulting. I can suspend my disbelief for fictional FTL space travel and fantastic realms of elves, dragons and magic. What I cannot do is be confused when physical realities are only partially paralleled (i.e. need for hard armour to deflect strikes and absorb energy from blows)
Maybe I don't understand a lot of what's being said here because I'm a young woman with a very sexy husband at home. But it seems all the guys here say that video games are about fantasy and not supposed to be like real life, hence there is a lot of sex in the game. Are they not getting any, or is it just not as good as having total control over a female with a perfect body? Maybe if they were interested in seeing women as complete people, they wouldn't want to spend so much time playing games becuase they would have a pair of real, live boobs (attached to a talking, thinking human being) in the bedroom waiting for them. Or is drooling over a big-busted cyberchick better than sex with a real woman?
I know lots of desperate young women out there. Please fill them in on why you're inside with video games instead of with them....
Sony asked me to participate in a questionnaire asking about online play. I explained that I didn't have the PS2 network adaptor, for the single reason that I don't see any reasonably priced games with co-operative explorational online play. I have zero interest in "deathmatches".
(EverQuest Online is arguably co-operative, but the pricing is ludicrous.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
You got me there, bub. That "Thrustmaster" was pretty penis-tacular. I've been living a dual shock, gamepad pro existence.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I figure we need to get some good investors (as in stock market and such) to help clue in the suits as to the difference between high, mid and low risk ventures. If they want big dividends then they had best avoid the current trend as market saturation will kill any good profits. They have in the past successfully banked upon the mentality of "gotta have all the latest gadgets" that many had during hmmm... the dot com era. Other than teenagers who have parental units that believe in parenting through the random shelling out of cash an items, I think there are not that many around who will snatch up all the games as before.
Going back to investment theory, it seems to me that unlike low risk/stable stocks there is no real long term for games. MMOG's one were thought to have this potential but seeing how much money they daily pour into those scares some off. (however, MMOG's are the trend now apparently) Eventually a really good MMORPG will come out and through its compelling and unique environment draw away a lot of business from the other games. Sad thing is, then those other games will migrate over to the new one instead of wisely focusing on niches and doing what you do best (don't try to be a bit good to everyone, be the best to some)
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
Let me first say that everything I'm about to say is the product of my mind/imagination; there is no hard and fast research to back me up (I've got too much going on at work and I'm finishing up my masters in the next two weeks, I just don't have time for it!)
Tell that to many of the older scifi authors, for whom the 'strong' heroine always fell into the arms of a stronger male in the end. Maybe she did save the planet, but she still couldn't live without a man.
This is the same thing with James Bond women/villans who are women.
But is it so bad that "she still couldn't live without a man"? Given the biological imperative to procreate and how it is hardwired into our lives, there is a grain of truth to that. And if you do a lot of dating, you see a ring of truth to this- being strong and confident gets your foot in the door. (For an almost hysterical look at some people who take this idea too far, check out alt.seduction.fast)
So does it necessarily undermine someone's character because they need to have a mate?
How many strong women do you know who have weak boyfriends? And how long do those last?
And those woman who aren't allowed to look at other guys, do they complain about how there are expected to be loyal dogs? ANd do they DO anything about it, after they have complained? If they don't, then maybe that should tell you something. Either they're 'weak' (which then begs the question 'ARE there any strong women out there?' which I don't really agree with) or maybe this is something they want and are willing to compromise on.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
An old cartoon has a woman at a wishing well, throwing in a coin while asking for "the ability to use logic and reason, have good driving skills" and such and then *POOF* she turns into a man. Then of course we have the "silly little woman" who lets her emotions get the best of her always and cannot understand long term and complex situations. If women want to NOT be viewed like this, then they should proactively shut up stupidity that pits them as such whether from a man or a woman. (the "guilty white man" syndrome is just as dangerous)
"Pandering to sex drives" is a dominant theme in everything in western culture. Its perhaps done in a slightly 'classier' fashion than the game industry in most other cases, but only marginally so, and in fact the more I think about it, not at all. Just look around. Look at a typical magazine section in a store. Almost all of the womens' magazines (e.g. Cosmo, Femina etc) feature sexy, photoshopped women wearing almost nothing. And so do almost all of the (adult) mens magazines (FHM, GQ) etc. So do the magazines for teenage girls. So do the magazines for bikers. So do the porn mags (of course). So do the photography magazines. So do the frikkin comics! Look at television and movies - most of the shows are full of sexy women, and many of the shows don't even try to pretend that they're not just displaying sexy women to attract viewers. Yes, go into a video store and really take a look, you will find that MANY of the non-adult shows are flaunting beautiful women (and NOT just the obvious movies like Blue Crush). Look at the music industry, almost all our female stars are damn sexy. Look at their music videos, they all have to dance around wearing practically nothing, grabbing and touching their breasts and genitals and writhing sexily. Even trade shows in other industries (e.g. mining/defence) have their "booth babes" - some shows may do it slightly classier than others, but a booth babe is a booth babe. No matter how classy she is dressed, you know she is only there for one reason (and its not for her knowledge about the mining or defence industries).
Everybody does this, EVERYWHERE in society, and nobody sees it as out of the ordinary, having long discussions about it on sites like /. In fact, the field of computer games stands out as being quite singular in the fact that people do see it as something unusual (and in some cases see it "as a problem", like this website).
People still seem somehow awed by the idea of sexy women in computer games. Get over it, the whole of western culture is fascinated by boobies. To make a fuss over the fact that this would apply to computer games too just seems prudish (and thus a bit immature) to me. Think about this, does society consider mags like GQ "immature"? No? Then why are tits in computer games considered "immature"?
Perhaps the funniest is when posters come to various websites and make (to them) a serious post about the pathetic freeks hanging out at those sites yet through their statements it is patently obvious that they gathered such insight through themselves hanging around those sites. Hmmm, its the old church scene of one kid tattling on another for looking around during a prayer.
Oh and in case you wonder this is from someone rather athletic, in good shape and would gladly play many games if he didn't have so much damn crap taking up his time. (I never got into anime, comic books or for that matter sports because of how it is all so pathetic)
I'm very glad that this person is catching flak for not mentioning Samus Aran. Samus is the original Video Game Asskicking Gal (TM) and I don't know how anyone could write an article about women in video games without her.
Conglom-O: We Own You (TM).
Chock up another score for the "Japanese are perverts" tote board.
WoW. That is totally weird.
<a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I bought Baldur's Gate... There are a few "overly-sexy" characters in the game which seemingly are there for men's eyes only. The game itself is outstanding. I played it all the way through with my girlfriend [its cooperative action RPG ... great fun]. I could see she was visibly upset at the jiggling boobies in the game. It totally took away from her experience.
:)... but that's besides the point. I think the field is missing out on contributions of the female gender and until we stop buying this rubbish the publishers will give it to us cuz it sells. Welcome to Capitalism :{
My point is GOOD GAMES DON'T NEED to throw sex in our face to make us play. I mean really... who played Zork or Space Quest? Was there a ton of sex in those games? Did a lot of people play them? I *know* we can do better than this.
Video games were a gateway for me into computer science and programming as a child... by appealing only to men you add to the problem of pushing the feminine percentages down in this field.
I have to admit that this is because I find somewhat nerdy girls attractive
it only sells cuz they keep buying it, and how do you know about all this stuff? You're just like everyone else, admit it, your human somewhere deep down there in that geek think (tm) well of yours :-D
although i will admit a lot of sexual appeal oriented stuff is pants that is designed to ride on the fact they have hot birds in their mag./movie/etc.
Back in the day, it seemed to make sense to play as female characters in games. They tended to have speed or firepower advantages over male protagonists. Specifically I am recalling Chun Li and some of her crazy SF moves, and Princess Whatshername in Super Mario 2, who, although slow at picking things up, was a fast runner and could levitate for several seconds at a time. I think there were some other 8-bit Nintendo games at the time that featured female playable-characters, usually as "Player 2" in a co-op game.
I clearly remember reading a review with one of the Core Design bigwigs prior to the release of the first Tomb Raider game in which he explained that the game was designed for the at the time novel third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective, and that he'd much rather look at "a shapely female bum" for all those hours of play.
My mom would be disgusted with DOA if she ever looked at it closely, but all the female gamers I know fall into two classes with regards to the late-model female characters - they don't care, Girls Just Kick Ass In General; or they think it's really uproariously funny the way they jiggle.
And this is just parroting everyone else's view on male characters, but a couple of years ago my brother created a playable "me" in WWF Smackdown, and when I saw him, the first thing I did was go back into Create-A mode and take about six inches off my virtual gut.
"There are some people who, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em." - Louie Armstrong
I suppose this has a bit to do with the difference between consequence and intent. In the case of the former, the new-style badass female hero, at least superficially ceases to portray the female gender as subordinate and prone to victimization. However, I feel that sometimes, perhaps even often, this is done the purpose of boosting the "sexiness" of the particular character. I think that one characteristic of the contemporary male worldview is that a certain aggressiveness in females is desirable and sexy. And not that making females sexier, by whatever means, is necessarily a bad thing or a form of discrimination. I think that the intent behind this, though, might be seen as a new way of emphasizing female characters' sexuality in a way that appears to be feminist.
Maybe to put it another way: can I ask the males out there if they think girls with guns is sexy? I used to joke around with my friends about making the ultimate sell-out movie and calling it "Breasts with Guns." It's not just that guys like guns, it's that women with guns is sexy idea. To guys.
And so what if it is? It's okay to be sexy. But seen from another point of view, I think there is a certain novelty factor to the supremely empowered female heroine, and sometimes this is done so deliberately and exaggeratedly as to emphasize their femininity. When I say sexiness, I mean both "sex appeal" in an obvious sense, and more importantly, I also mean the strengh of the sexual identity of the character. I guess what I'm proposing is that the empowered female character appears to the audience first and foremost as a powerful female and only secondarily as a powerful person.
As a comparison I might bring up the Chinese term "nu3 qianq2 ren2", or "strong women", which is used to describe the liberated modern female. You'll often find it used when people mention famous female politicians or busniesspersons. I've talked to some of these women (not really famous, but successful), and they've claimed they don't like the term. Of course, on the surface, it's a term of praise. It lauds courage and success. The problem is that it uses the term woman and emphasizes their gender. There's no corresponding "nan2 qiang2 ren2" ("strong man") term.
I'll admit this isn't a perfect comparison to buffed-out women characters, since there's no obviously stated emphasis of the gender of the character, but I get that feeling nonetheless when I see some of the female characters in videogames and movies and whatnot. It's really hard to pick and choose between examples...it's simply a sensation that I get. This feeling is also reinforced when I know that certain works are created by males for males. It's not fair to say men can't imagine women in a reasonabl sex-objective way, but I do think that this is frequently the case in pop-culture works.
Targeting the average girl or woman with a video game is pretty risky, isn't it? If they don't already own the console required, then that game ends up costing the person over $200 USD.
Would it be a good idea to target *couples* first? Note that couples can mean a lot of things. A girl playing DDR with her boyfriend at an arcade is an excellent example. I think things would start easiest at the arcade, because the investment by the players is so small. After spending a hundred dollars in quarters, they might reconsider buying it.
A joystick is shaped the way it is presumably because it's an easy way to control a game. My guess (although I admit I'm not certain of this) is that the idea of a joystick is just borrowed from the flight stick in an airplane.
That said, the only control device I've ever seen that's shaped like a female reproductive organ is the "clit mouse" that used to (and maybe still does) come with IBM Thinkpads -- that little red eraser thing in the middle of the keyboard. Those things are, quite frankly, almost worthless as a control device, their only redeeming value being that they are very small. Even then, most people prefer touch pads on laptops.
Is that like cockboys?
Honestly, isn't it kind of redundant?
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Link fixer to the rescue!
Link!
Seriously, no need to thank me, ma'am. Just doing my job.
but Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System was released in 1998 and the main character was a Girl. Alis. If you've never played Phantasy Star. It is without a doubt the best RPG for any 8-bit system.
She was another of the 'strong' woman types that people should look to when talking about the influence of women gaming.
If the statistics I've heard are correct, TheSims from Maxis is the best selling (PC) game of all time. It also is one of the few games to have mor women players than men.
TheSims, and all its add-ons, is a pretty nice market in itself. It managed to do something fun, and avoid overt sexism, even while approaching the idea of sex itself.
I'd say its commercially viable, the problem is that its risky. For a while, making a game with big-breasted women that beat things up is a more "sure bet" than going the other way. As with most things, competition is changing that, and I think we're starting to see more people willing to take a chance on writing games that appeal to both sexes. I for one, think we're better off for it.
Now if only the medieval rpgs would get the idea that a hole right over a woman's chest is not really an intelligent way to build plate armor...
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Seriously, why does anyone want/need a character they can identify with. If you have a strong sense of self this is a non-issue.
Do men identify with paunchy short plumbers who are italian? Because small children most certainly do, Mario is a big time character.
Do men identify with fuckiong Bandicoots and skunks and whatever else video companies create characters out of?
I mean really, why do women need a "strong female they can identify with?"
Sounds like lame ass excuses. Women in general do not play video games, they have no desire or interest to. Just as they do not play logic games or sit around all day writing code. As a rule men and women have different type brains and different interests because of this (and many other factors.)
Why do we feel it is necessary to try and politicize everything. Can't we just own up to the fact that women and men are different and that men like video games, where as women do not?
I'll also add that just because some business feels they are losing out on 50% marketshare is not enough of a reason for anyone but those marketdroids to care about.
Later skaters!
GQ panders to adolescents boys, which are anything but mature. Just like GQ, most computer games are immature because their target audience is immature.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
Note to self: When I invent the Time Machine, I'm going back to the Victorian era and becoming a doctor.
The "cure" for "hysteria" was probably the best-kept secret of Victorian women... and the best-kept secret of Victorian doctors, too. :) :) :)
It's pretty obvious there's quite a few (the vast majority, even of) Slashdotters who are single males with little or no respect for the true sexuality of the female half of the population. This probably explains why they're on Slashdot and not with a woman.
Married 5 years and VERY happy. What about you ?
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
IMO this is one game that got it right. Sex in games is fine as long as it isn't the defining point of the character. In Oni you were aware of the character first and the gender second, it's when the point of the character is to be a sex symbol and not a person that problems arise.
All this happened in a situation where there is practically ZERO advertisement by Eidos (because of piracy). So the game actually spoke for itself, was able to make a very favourable impression and again presented Lara as a strong female character that girls and women can identify with.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Think about this, does society consider mags like GQ "immature"?
Yes, pretty much. Maybe it's a little upmarket from Maxim, but not much. However, more to the point, you're comparing one title with an entire industry. GQ is a niche publication. So is Playgirl. Magazine publishing in general, however, does not have such a heavy emphasis on catering to heterosexual male desire. The gaming industry does.
Besides, if you go to a video store, you'll find a few titles that are flaunting the T&A line. That's fine. The fact is that there's "pandering" or reference to the sex and emotional drives of just about everyone, though - the adolescent T&A crowd is just a niche; Hugh Grant romantic comedies are another niche, and bittersweet post-feminist tragic romances like Jane Campion's "The Piano" are another one.
The point is that if I go to a Blockbuster, I don't get the message "testosterone space!" If I go to an EB Games, the environment is completely different, and far less universal. Compare E3 to a trade show or conference about film, and you'll see that E3's whole economy of "who desires what" is so constricted, so stereotypical and limited, that there's no comparison.
Super Mario Bros. Think about it: Mario looks exactly like Ron Jeremy in suspenders. He's a plumber, and what do plumbers do? They "lay pipe". He runs around eating mushrooms that make him grow in "stature". So basically you play a drug-addled, size-enhanced porn star in suspenders who chases after a girl. Pretty disturbing stuff, if you ask me.
Do they really want to portrait the female video game characters after the typical geek female? Who would want to buy the game then?!
Wouldn't it be far less time-consuming and dangerous to just get a girlfriend?
*snickers*
mod parent down
I don't agree with your point. I think there is a diference between the sexy "babe" that stars in a videogame just to show her boob and ask for help with rats and the sexy characters in many action movies or the sexy pop stars. Womem want to be sexy, it empower them, but they don't want to be objects, with no face or depth.
My point is that nobody is saying that there should not br sexy or provocative womem in games. But there should be good feminine characters. Character that bring something to the storyline, without being the same old stereotype.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
>
>*snickers*
Yeah, but there's no way I could do insider trading with her :)
Simple, instead of a stick, it would have a hole you put your finger in and wiggled around. Oh, and the buttons would be very hard to find, and in a different place on every controller.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Of course I like it =) No secret there. I'm perfectly aware of it, but I wasn't complaining :) Sex/sexuality are normal, natural aspects of human behaviour, I think it would be unnatural to try separate it from our media and to try compartmentalize it into things like "adult sections". "Sanitized, this side. Sex, that side". Why separate it as if it were some unnatural, seedy thing? In real life its just a natural and integrated part of our complex relations. Our brains don't have a discrete, binary "sex-mode" and "non-sex-mode".
I find it a little odd that people hold different standards for different media. People are generally OK with, say, the obviously semi-porno nature of music videos, and some movies, like say Blue Crush, as well as a lot of advertising. But in other situations people dismiss basically the same thing as tacky and cheap, e.g. computer games or biker magazines. All of them are very obviously flaunting sexuality if you think about it, but I think the fine line between them lies with the degree to which the creators try to pretend that they're being classy and not trashy. I guess thats the thing, there is a rather thin line between classy-sexy, and trashy.
The reason I say peoples reaction to it in computer games is immature/prudish is because, if you look at say, tits in European magazines - guys don't pick up those magazines and say "oh wow, tits, OMW, uhm, should this be here?". They pick it up and look at it without that internal reaction, in other words, they are comfortable with their sexuality. Where-as those that pick up a computer game which has, say, a female character with big breasts and say, "oh wow, tits, OMW, should this be here?" are not comfortable with this display of sexuality (typically either kids or prudish people). But on the other hand, those same people might watch an overtly sexy music video without batting an eyelid, strange.
I read this article, I read some comments, I went to her web page (and her s.o.'s web page) and yes, I admit, I had time to do that. But WHERE in the WORLD do these people get the time to MAKE THEIR WEBPAGES and write all that stuff?!? I mean, wow, I want that kind of time. Shit.
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
Not very hard to do. Just don't assume they work analytically at all. Because they think on an entirely intuitional level (although some do cross over and do some analysis), they make judgements based on the information they have at the time. They don't self-train very well, either, so their implicit biases come out very clearly. When it comes down to it, honestly, you understand women as well as women understand women, except for the fact that you probably think analytically and they think intuitively. That intuitive thought is all that separates us.
I'm an intuitional thinker. I'm also confused as to why everyone finds women so "un-understandable". I have no problems of the sort. I have difficulty understanding guys a lot of the time, though.
Helen of Troy didn't have the 'Ass that Launched a Thousand Ships'.
6 40-2003Apr18.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53
TV Previews: 'Helen of Troy': A Long, Silly Iliad
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 19, 2003; Page C01
Perhaps the most striking thing about "Helen of Troy," the new USA Network miniseries based on
very old tales from Greek mythology, is -- to put it bluntly -- Helen's fanny. It makes a
conspicuous appearance in Part 1 (tomorrow night at 8) and returns for an encore in Part 2
(Monday night, same time, same network).
The semi-nudity is actually icing on the ratings cake; the film may do well on the basis of
its sex and violence alone.