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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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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
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 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...
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I think the problem is more intelligent people being a small demographic, games are targeted towards teenage boys because they make up the majority of game players. It is like TV, it sucks if you are smart but thankfully there are a wide variety of entertainment options.
I would like to see more intelligent games and I think there are more intelligent games out there than DOA, that volleyball game and Tomb Raider, and I think that men and women alike know where to find those games.
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.
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
To expand, it seemed that the writer was expressing something many of us have expressed: We want gaming environments (virtual surroundings and people) to respond to us in a realistic fashion. For example, if I'm playing an RPG as an exceedingly beautiful female elf and engage a male halfling NPC in conversation, the halfling could be expected to stutter and fawn a bit, and be willing to provide just about anything I want. If I engage that same NPC as a human male in tattered clothes, that halfling should respond more negatively and require a bit more "convincing."
Nowhere in that article did I get the impression that she was calling for more realistic female character models, nor did she seem to be complaining about the types of games being released - she even seemed gleeful that while playing Arcanum her character had to sleep with someone to get what she needed.
I found the article to be a breath of fresh air in terms of the "female gamer perspective" (which all too often can be dominated by the more militant feminist viewpoints) and I'll certainly be checking back to read some more. I enjoy reading the opinions of smart gamers, and she's certainly one of those.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to try again to get Hitomi to wear that Venus swimsuit.
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
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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.
You did know that the ultra-girly characters of Sailor Moon were designed by a Manga house made up entirely of women artists, right?
To say nothing of what you see when you flip through the magazines that most women choose to read.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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!
My wife is a great example of what's needed to get girls into computers! She's younger than me, but went to mostly the same classes that I did, hung out with the same type people. She'll spend hours online searching for recipes, diet tips, etc, she'll spend hours in Illustrator getting a picture just right. But...Puttin a little HTML or PHP in front of her scares her off! Why? That's a millon dollar question. There's no doubt she can do it; she's more than smart enough, but what makes her think she can't do it, doesn't want to? She's dying for her own web page/ web page business so she really does want to.
Girls are somewhat scared of the tech. If a game hangs up, most aren't going driver hunting--it's just not their bag. They won't be playing again till someone fixes it. Too often & they just give up! Put girls in front of the 3Dmark 2001 nature demo, and they'll get going...of course there aren't any games like that yet... Again though, girls want gameplay, not just eyecandy. Girls approach problems differently than boys. Most games don't begin to offer alternate options for radically different gameplay, maybe even multiple interwined games! For instance, an RPG where the girl characters win the game thru some other means [magic, politics, healing, etc..] they'd rather collect potions, interact with NPCs than spend the whole game fighting monsters! That'd be a challange for game designers! Build a handful of characters that would rarely fight monsters. I'm thinking a "Charmed" or "buffy" kinda thing where who & what you know are just as deadly; they rarely win by outright fighting the monsters. Running from the combat is wise untill you find/learn/make the tool to win.
That said, there's need for new types of 3d games only recently creatable. Girls tend to like games that smaller kids would like as well. Designing a decent 3D game for the non-fps, PG crowd would probably sell tons--look at sims, but there's so much more you could do! It'd be a good challange for Carmmack! A non-horror 3d game! [Chronicals of Narnia or Mother Goose would be really cool done properly! Again, check why chicks dig Winne-the-Phoo!] Since Ramero went back to the "minors" the monkeystone games are quite interesting-quick, simple, and engaging. You can play for hours, but you can get up and leave any time you want with out loosing your place.
This is too long, gotta go!
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.
Uh, actually, I'd venture a guess and say that about 75% of movie covers in a rental store have sexy women on them. I'm not talking about the 'romantic comedy' or 'drama' sections either.
Face it, the minute the marketroids in this country decided that sex sells, it was all over. Even Baywatch, with zero content, sells T&A worldwide and is still really popular.
There will always be those who grab something for the cover and those who grab something for the content. Same goes for books or anything else. I'll take my movies in a plain brown box with a decent (i.e. not the asinine Blockbuster-esque) summary on the box. Ever notice just how many sci-fi movies have shiny reflective covers? Future = sci fi = shiny metallics.
Unfortunately it's like this everywhere. I'm a big fan of Sport Compact Car but couldn't care less about the boobgirls they have on every freakin' ad.
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....
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).
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 did RTFA, and what got me most about the Tombraider part was that this GameGirl isn't really a gamer at all: she's influenced by what the press says, and didn't play Tombraider at all!
I mean, Tombraider was a good game. Even if you replace ms Croft with a stickfigure, the game was actually good and groundbreaking at the time. To streer clear of it just because the press mentioned boobies tells me that this girl just doesn't appreciate games for the sake of games.
And yeah, I've read quite a few of the articles there...they're mostly interesting and at least thought provoking, but it's also politicising and buzzword compliant.
It just seems to me at times that GameGirl is more interested in everything around the game, with the exception of the actual game itself.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
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!
i like the way you use creative line breaks and terrible spelling to make all your posts look like retarded poetry.