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Video Games Need A Woman's Touch
hattan wrote to mention an AP article going around detailing one woman's frustration with the roles for women in games. From the article: "Tara Teich enjoys nothing more than slipping into the role of a female video game character. But the 26-year-old software programmer gets annoyed by the appearance of such digital alter egos as the busty tomb raider Lara Croft or the belly-baring Wu the Lotus Blossom of 'Jade Empire.' Don't even get her started on the thong-bikini babes that the male gunmen win as prizes in 'Grand Theft Auto,' which was sent to stores with hidden sex scenes left embedded on the discs by programmers. "
She walks 15 hours a day and spends the other 3 fighting. She's wearing her world's equivalent of a sportbra. That's normal. Move on.
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Really, I'm offended whenever I sit down and play a video game and my character is always some macho, buff Alpha-male with sweaty, glistening pecks and hard hard washboard abs, tight leather pants and boots, tasteful tattoos and with a face that looks like he doesn't take shit from anyone and he'll make them pay...oh yes, he'll make them ALL pay! MWHAHAHAHAHA!!!...cough...you get what I mean.
Er...perhaps games are more fantasy than reality. Though in some games like Star Wars Galaxies you can modify your character to be a overweight housewife if you want. But lets face it, most video games are made for the young male.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
That is a shame... reminds me of the article that was linked a while back, where John Davison described an experience going on a TV show where they were supposed to give him time to talk about the future of games, and instead the show was centered entirely on violence, and the role of video games in violent behavior, etc... and he ended up walking off the set.
And like he said in the article, about his reason why he didn't want to talk about violence and video games: "that's been done to death, it's boring." Same goes for the completely stale "female gamers appalled at scantily clad women, violence in games" retread.
Oh well... seeing this come from the mainstream media (ABC 6 *Action* News!! Dunn dunn DUNNN!) is nothing new, really.
Being an independent developer, we have an enormous amount of freedom in how we can portray our in-game characters. In our most recent action title, we made sure to portray male and female characters in a fairly realistic fasion. The result was that a major gaming magazine chided us for a female protagonist that wasn't busty enough. Apparently our undersexualized portrayal of women is a turn-off for males.
Similarly, we've noticed that for our puzzle games (where we portray no people), women make up roughly half of our customers. This drops way down for our action titles (where we do portray people). I must guess, then, that our undersexualized portrayal of men in these games has been a turn off for women. As such, starting with our next title, we will implement the Five Foot Phallus rule.
Let me explain.
- The Five Foot Phallus - All major male characters will possess a phallus at least five feet in length.
- Minor Characters may have phalli that are 3-4 feet long, which is closer to the human average, so nobody can complain about that.
- Gameplay - It should be noted that such a member is soley for aesthetic presentation, and will not affect gameplay. Players will not be able to walk up to enemies and beat them to death with their enormous genitalia. This only goes along with the industry trend, since in most video games, you can't use a female character's ridiculous bosom to suffocate opponents.
- Simulation - We're currently researching how we might most naturally present this, and are looking into licensing various engines for rigid-body physics.
I'm convinced that this move will bring the female demographic for our action games up in no time.What do you think?
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.