Are mainstream devs deliberately discouraging women from gaming?

[BloatedGuppy]

the funny thing is that chell is basically the female version of gordan freeman, who was labeled as the best hero of all time.

i personally liked all of the characters from left 4 dead 1. now, rochelle from l4d2 on the other hand was extremely bland.

Freeman is a fucking cipher too. I have no idea who celebrated him as an intriguing character, but they were very wrong to do so.

I don't have an issue with Chell, or Freeman, or using ciphers as heroes in games, but they shouldn't show up on any list of "great characters", because they're not really "characters" at all. They're avatars.

 

[infinity_turtles]

Spoiler: What women want a hero to look like

I personally find that to be better eye-candy then Ivy. That said, while story and character aren't that important to Soul Calibur, I find Ivy's exaggerated appearance actually makes her character more interesting, simply because they don't mesh as well as you might think. She'd come off as pretty bland if she looked and dressed more normal.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

the funny thing is that chell is basically the female version of gordan freeman, who was labeled as the best hero of all time on some gaming site poll.

i personally liked all of the characters from left 4 dead 1. now, rochelle from l4d2 on the other hand was extremely bland.

Freeman is a fucking cipher too. I have no idea who celebrated him as an intriguing character, but they were very wrong to do so.

I don't have an issue with Chell, or Freeman, or using ciphers as heroes in games, but they shouldn't show up on any list of "great characters", because they're not really "characters" at all. They're avatars.

Indeed, it's more the imagination of the people who create these characters, each person has their own image of what these characters are like whether they are role-playing as them or not. Considering that these are only imaginations, it is silly that they are allowed on "best characters list."

If they wanted to argue visual artistic design, they'd have something though.

Bringing up this, it's funny that I now realize that my image of Chell's personality is more interesting than say Alyx's depicted personality.

She'd come off as pretty bland if she looked and dressed more normal.

Well she had a nice pseudo-china dress as an alternate costume in SC2 which looked alright.

 

[Guilherme Zoldan]

I still just think the developers are mostly male so they just do stuff that they like. If most developers were female I dont doubt theyd cater to female tastes.

 

[MomoElektra]

Assassins Creed 3 said that a female protagonist wouldn't fit into the period of the game (yet a Native American would be acceptable and wouldn't rouse suspicion wherever he went?).

No, it makes complete sense. Women weren't allowed to do jack shit back then, Indians still could. Anyhow, to answer your question, no I don't think they are trying to discourage women to game, instead I think they are trying to build their games for a male audience. The difference is slight, but its still their.

If the game(s) can have a female Templar then by what logic can't they have a female assassin?
I don't get it.

 

[Lyri]

Lately I have noticed that female gamers are being discouraged for all sorts of reasons.

Assassins Creed 3 said that a female protagonist wouldn't fit into the period of the game (yet a Native American would be acceptable and wouldn't rouse suspicion wherever he went?).

The Witcher of course has Geralt whose misogyny is accepted because of the books. Meanwhile if developers made a Conan game would he be portrayed as a racist?

Kingdoms of Amalur treats the female character like she is a man (constant flirts from female characters) to the extent where she is forced to marry a women if she wants to complete a quest line, there is no option to just say 'No' and complete the quest that way.

Risen 2 has dismissed a playable female out of hand even though their protagonist is 'The nameless hero' and plenty of women were involved in piracy.

I don't mean to go into tin foil hat territory here but as someone who has been gaming for a very long time it almost feels like we are going backwards with gender acceptance in games (outside of Bioware.) and the mainstay excuse of devs seems to be that mistreatment of women is part of their universe or time period and so must be accepted out of hand. These are often in games where there are giant bug monsters or other fantastic occurrences.

Sometimes I wonder whether we will ever be accepted as part of gaming or the very excuse of 'men are our main demographic' is going to discourage women from playing games and therefore not allow the demographic to balance out.

I know that I'm in the minority here and I'm probably going to get shouted down pretty badly but please think about what it's like to grow up loving a past-time that no one seems to want you to be involved in.

Interesting theory I guess, I suppose you could take it that way but I'm not too sure. There are plenty of games today where you can indeed play as a women with little to no difference from being a male.
For instance the Elder Scrolls series is one such game where gender contributes to minor changes and doesn't impact the story one bit, this is however where we see females as accepted characters because it's our own choice and freedom to do so.
Certain RPGs just allow the player freedoms to choose, however I feel like you're talking about less open ended RPGs like (as you pointed out) The Witcher, where you play a male and a particularly horny one at that.

I feel as a male gamer that we're not doing enough to support female leading ladies yet I also feel like we shouldn't do much more either.
I'm not going to sugar coat my opinion but I feel like you'll only be sold out more and more and end up being objectified to make a quick buck. "This game promotes a strong female lead buy me because I'm a woman and I kick ass", it would be a sad turn of events where we go from pseudo sexualized heroes like Lara Croft to that belt wearing bandit from X-blades (google the cover art).
If we start making a huge deal out of promoting women in games, I feel like we could do more harm than good. I'm not really quite sure what to make of the predicament, I support the idea as I don't mind playing a female character at all but the road it could travel could be 10x worse than one we're on now.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I feel as a male gamer that we're not doing enough to support female leading ladies yet I also feel like we shouldn't do much more either.
I'm not going to sugar coat my opinion but I feel like you'll only be sold out more and more and end up being objectified to make a quick buck. "This game promotes a strong female lead buy me because I'm a woman and I kick ass", it would be a sad turn of events where we go from pseudo sexualized heroes like Lara Croft to that belt wearing bandit from X-blades (google the cover art).
If we start making a huge deal out of promoting women in games, I feel like we could do more harm than good. I'm not really quite sure what to make of the predicament, I support the idea as I don't mind playing a female character at all but the road it could travel could be 10x worse than one we're on now.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

This is a faulty line of reasoning. Under-representation of female characters is one form of bad design, and objectification of female characters is another form of bad design. Opposing one doesn't mean we oppose the other, and we are 100% free to oppose both.

 

[Lyri]

This is a faulty line of reasoning. Under-representation of female characters is one form of bad design, and objectification of female characters is another form of bad design. Opposing one doesn't mean we oppose the other, and we are 100% free to oppose both.

You're right, it is bad design on both account but this is just purely speculation and opinion on my part.
I do feel like if there was to be a sudden influx of main female characters then after a short period it would become the done thing to sell games with a female lead "because she's female".
I do partly put that down to how poor I believe character design is in this current generation of games, in RPGs where players don't get the say over their character like The Witcher, Uncharted I don't think we've had a really stand out leading character for a while.

I'd love to see a female character become the next leading lady, much like how Lara Croft came about at the right time not just in the gaming world but socially with the popularity of female pop groups like The Spice Girls came "girl power".
Yes she was a polygon set of tits but to the women, she represented a step forward in acceptance in games.
Lara Croft kicked ass, guys wanted to sleep with her and girls wanted to be tough, strong and have adventures like her.
So I think anyway.

 

[gideonkain]

"Are mainstream devs deliberately discouraging women from gaming?"
Short answer, yes.

Woman don't buy as many video games - to spend vast amounts of money to convince a demographic that isn't even listening to invest in something they don't have an interest in is counter productive. The Oxygen/Lifetime Networks could throw a billion dollars at the problem of not reaching male viewers but it would be wasted.

This isn't to say that plenty of men don't enjoy the Oxygen/Lifetime networks or that plenty of woman don't enjoy video games, it's just a money driven business which isn't concerned with being inclusive.

 

[stinkyrobot]

At op you lost me when you said Bioware.

 

[easternflame]

"Mainstream", ugh, ugh, ugh, I hate that word.

I think most of the things you said there have to be put in context. Take the witcher 2, the medieval times weren't the best for women (actually up until the second half of the 20th century, it was a bad 4000 years for women), it's like LA Noire, it's ok to have that, it makes more sense than the contrary, but still, they give us strong female characters like Ves or Triss.

In alamur, well, sloppy design, they should've added a man for that one unless the character has to be gay, still, needed a man, I can't defend that.

Oh, also, the assassin's creed 3 example is a bad one, It wouldn't make sense to have a woman! Put it in context. A woman who is british, posh and all, why would she fight? a woman who is indian? Why, again, why would she fight? And a woman who is british/indian? Who trained her? Why? I don't know, it would be forced.

[...]we are going backwards with gender acceptance in games (outside of Bioware.)[...]

You know this comment, it hit me. You know how sexist bioware are? Not only a woman thing more like a gay thing. In both mass effect 1 and 2 you could be lesbian but not gay... I don't really think we should forget that and just give it to bioware. Besides, their whole "look at miranda's ass" in both the second and third installment is really mysoginist don't you think?

Of course where I'm going is
a) The growing numbers disprove your theory that women will go away, %40 percent (and rising) of gamers are women
b)Don't you use the mainstream thing, you need to play more indie games to realize they do it too.
c) I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you're giving bad examples because you might be a bit biased with other companies to include them here
d) Games are not only played majoritarily my men (%60 gamers are men)but I think the growing question follows a more interesting path which is, soon, women will be %50 of gamers, this only means the whole argument will have to go away. What then? The devs will have to change, we will have more games with interesting cool female characters like Mirror's edge. Or not.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You know this comment, it hit me. You know how sexist bioware are?

Not very? Bioware are actually really good about equal representation of competent men and women. You're confusing the rampant objectification and pandering for sexism. The same is also true of The Witcher, another series often wrongly identified as "sexist" when there are other, more accurate labels for what's going on there. "Sexism" isn't a blanket term you're meant to throw over every and any gender related topic. It means a specific thing.

 

[easternflame]

You know this comment, it hit me. You know how sexist bioware are?

Not very? Bioware are actually really good about equal representation of competent men and women. You're confusing the rampant objectification and pandering for sexism. The same is also true of The Witcher, another series often wrongly identified as "sexist" when there are other, more accurate labels for what's going on there. "Sexism" isn't a blanket term you're meant to throw over every and any gender related topic. It means a specific thing.

Yes and no. I think we can both agree that sexuality is an important factor in gender representation, if you can be lesbian but not gay, there is something wrong.

The witcher, well, that's exactly what I'm saying but thank you.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yes and no. I think we can both agree that sexuality is an important factor in gender representation, if you can be lesbian but not gay, there is something wrong.

The witcher, well, that's exactly what I'm saying but thank you.

Well again though, that's not sexist. That might be considered poor proportional representation, but it's not really indicative of a negative attitude towards homosexuals, or lesbians, or gays.

About the worst thing Bioware can be accused of is excessive fan servicing and pandering when it comes to sexuality. They are, however, one of the few developers who will actually pander to women (Jacob, Vega) as nakedly as they do to men (Miranda, Allers). I suspect that's a huge contributor to their popularity with the fairer sex.

 

[omega 616]

Like your perfect game would be MLP, all nice pastel colours, everybody is always super happy, everything overly cute and rather sickening.

For what it's worth: My most perfect game would be a futuristic racer ala F-Zero...WITH PONIES D:

Like Mr toots flying round the track with a nyan cat rainbow coming out of his ass?

 

[omega 616]

Like your perfect game would be MLP, all nice pastel colours, everybody is always super happy, everything overly cute and rather sickening.

For what it's worth: My most perfect game would be a futuristic racer ala F-Zero...WITH PONIES D:

Like Mr toots flying round the track with a nyan cat rainbow coming out of his ass?

Huh? Wha? No...

Like I said: Futuristic racing like in that kind of light-dark universe like F-Zero, but then with ponies :3

Mr toots is a unicorn from a red faction game, he fires rainbows from his ass when you squeeze him. Just take the horn off his head and he is a pony.

I did say like Mr toots, not exactly like Mr toots. haha

 

[easternflame]

Yes and no. I think we can both agree that sexuality is an important factor in gender representation, if you can be lesbian but not gay, there is something wrong.

The witcher, well, that's exactly what I'm saying but thank you.

Well again though, that's not sexist. That might be considered poor proportional representation, but it's not really indicative of a negative attitude towards homosexuals, or lesbians, or gays.

About the worst thing Bioware can be accused of is excessive fan servicing and pandering when it comes to sexuality. They are, however, one of the few developers who will actually pander to women (Jacob, Vega) as nakedly as they do to men (Miranda, Allers). I suspect that's a huge contributor to their popularity with the fairer sex.

I can agree on that, they do accept gender equality I was commenting on the inequality of their gay/lesbian relationships.