Brink : No Girls Allowed

[Farseer Lolotea]

Wholly agree I really wish more game developers jumped onto this train of thought, look how amazing the new Laura Croft looks when being modeled abit more realistically. Game developers have a rather unique position in that they can shatter the gender stereotypes rather than using the big fat woman or muscled woman as comical relief she could easily be idolized when in the context of a video game showing a rich character.

Trust me, I've heard people complaining about the new Lara Croft (some even going so far as to say that the game was going to be "boring" because of her changed look). I've also heard similar complaints about the female models in Rift.

So the question is what actual percentage of gamers would actually find "unconventional" female characters that off-putting. Maybe I'm an idealist, but my guess is "fewer than one might think."

Honestly if developers gave these ideas a chance I think the whole gaming as art thing would have much more value.

And that's just the thing: Until one of the big companies actually tackles it, we'll probably never know how well such a game would be received.

I still think it might be something of a hard sell (see above). It'd have to be a very good game.

TF2 "completely based on customisation"??!?!?

Huuhh? A few alternate weapons with tweaked stats and some different hats is not in any way "complete" for customisation. It's hardly a reason or excuse for lack of female characters.

And the fanbase clearly really wants some female characters as there are dozens of mods and skins to turn the characters female.

Mods are more than just a release valve they are a damn good indicator of where developers should put their efforts in updates and sequels as mods can only do so much as amateur projects. A LOT can be done but Narbacular Drop didn't become Portal till it had a fully equipped development studio behind the idea.

Game companies will make ill-advised decisions, and will make excuses for said ill-advised decisions. And fans will make excuses of their own. But when all is said and done, there's really no such thing as a good excuse for something like this. It's a copout.

And it's ironic that it was supposedly done for the sake of "depth of customization." The end result is customization that's just a different sort of shallow.

 

[Blobpie]

You have to take into account to body sizes
Heavys: The big strong tough guys
Medium: They're medium, nuff said
Light: Fast and agile.

I can see medium and light female characters, but i just don't see a female heavy.

Besides whole the men are killing each other, the women are probably trying to solve this democratically! Probably... maybe...

This post is so sexist I'm not even sure how to respond to it. All I'll say is, female bodybuilders and women in the military.

This isn't sexist at all! Have you SEEN the heavies in Brink! Imagine the hulk... but less green. That is a heavy in brink.
I have only met one person whom can fit this characteristic, the guy was a giant among men, he was over 6 feet high, and built like a tank.

Now i don't know about what you've seen, but i have never seen a female body builder who had the same amount of mussel as that man.

The reason i can't see a women as a heavy in brink is because women cannot build as much mussel as a man can.

And so i can give you an idea how big my friend was, his calf looked like a giant knee cap, his thigh was the size of a child. Nice guy though.

And when did i SAY that women were inferior to men, i only said they were smaller.

 

[Smiles]

Personally I am very happy about this. I am sick of introvert gamer nerds playing sexed up caricatures of fake ass females that have no purpose in the game other than to be sexy toys. I can't stop them from playing as their female fantasy, but this game forces them too!

love it.

 

[fingerbang143]

The problem is that a lot of people that play as females are just doing it for what they think is a smaller hit box. When truly in games like Halo Reach it makes no difference.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

This isn't sexist at all! Have you SEEN the heavies in Brink! Imagine the hulk... but less green. That is a heavy in brink.
I have only met one person whom can fit this characteristic, the guy was a giant among men, he was over 6 feet high, and built like a tank.

Now i don't know about what you've seen, but i have never seen a female body builder who had the same amount of mussel as that man.

The reason i can't see a women as a heavy in brink is because women cannot build as much mussel as a man can.

The argument here is still that the model would have to appear just as bulky as its male counterpart. As long as the hitbox is the same size, it shouldn't matter.

Personally I am very happy about this. I am sick of introvert gamer nerds playing sexed up caricatures of fake ass females that have no purpose in the game other than to be sexy toys. I can't stop them from playing as their female fantasy, but this game forces them too!

love it.

The logic here seems to be that including female avatars would necessarily require them to be horrible pin-up caricatures, and the only solution to avoiding horrible pin-up caricatures is to exclude female avatars altogether.

And I'm sorry, but that logic is screwy. Horrible pin-up caricatures and the complete lack of female avatars both reflect poorly on companies.

The problem is that a lot of people that play as females are just doing it for what they think is a smaller hit box. When truly in games like Halo Reach it makes no difference.

There may be a significant number of people doing this, but I doubt that they (or the aforementioned kids playing female characters to drool over them) actually make up the majority. And if the hitbox is actually the same size, I don't see how it matters.

 

[Treblaine]

And the whole 'well this game is based on customization so therefore there MUST be females' is bullshit. And I have said it is bullshit. Why? TF2. TF2 is completely based on customization, hats, guns, special medals and what not. Also, if all of you are really wanting female models then please, use a computer and BUILD FUCKING MODS. That usually seems to help.

TF2 "completely based on customisation"??!?!?

Huuhh? A few alternate weapons with tweaked stats and some different hats is not in any way "complete" for customisation. It's hardly a reason or excuse for lack of female characters.

And the fanbase clearly really wants some female characters as there are dozens of mods and skins to turn the characters female.

Mods are more than just a release valve they are a damn good indicator of where developers should put their efforts in updates and sequels as mods can only do so much as amateur projects. A LOT can be done but Narbacular Drop didn't become Portal till it had a fully equipped development studio behind the idea.

Definition of Customization: To make or alter to individual or personal specifications

Does TF2 do that? Yes. Does Brink? Yes. Comparisons are there, you are just being damn picky.

And you said: And the Fanbase clearly wants some female characters as there are dozens of mods and skins to turn the characters female.

AND I SAID: BUILD SOME FUCKING MODS

See, developers will be happy to get there game released (which would take another 4 to 5 MONTHS to build all the females you keep whining about and put them in the game, spending millions and could possibly make them GO UNDER which is not good) and you SHOULD be happy if you get off your lazy ass (Directed towards everyone whining) and instead of complaining build a fucking mod if you care so much about a damn model THAT YOU WILL NEVER FUCKING SEE.

Also, I have posted this in 12 other topics and only now is it being nitpicked to death. Weird.

Straw man argument. I never said there was NO customisation in TF2, I'm saying the customisation was not to such a significant extent to preclude female characters and wasn't even present in the game when it launched with the original 9 classes. It is irrelevant to the debate to bring up TF2 as a reason why not to include female avatars.

You can't see your hats in TF2 yet what do so many players spend their money and time getting a hold of? Even in first-person game people care how they appear to others.

You are ignoring my argument and simply repeating your previous case in a more antagonistic way, mods won't do it here as they they are so limited in their potential. Re-skin Mods of course would NOT be seen by other players, only oneself if you ever went into third person mode. Mods are not the be all and end all, developer updates or sound vision from the start from the studios is far more cohesive for an online experience.

The problem with your argument is it is a stream of excuses that mean females will NEVER be represented in Multiplayer games, it's apparently worth spending another couple months on any number of other trivial improvements.

PS: I'm not nit-picking for me to refute the entire body of your argument.

Nit picking would be attacking you for poor spelling, grammar or a little mistake that doesn't really affect your central argument.

 

[Jumplion]

Well, it's pointless to inject my own opinion on the subject, but whatever;

I don't buy the "it would take too much time and resources to make completely new female models!" because they could have easily planned it from the start. If you do the math on the "106 Quadrillion" customization options, you would find that there are only 3 body types, and is an extra, slightly longer-sleeved shirt more important than including an entire gender? Splash Damage should really get their priorities straight.

Also, don't give me the bullshit excuse of "would there really be women in a resistance/policing movement?" Of course there would be women, and denying so would be incredibly shortsighted and, dare I say it, somewhat sexist/misogynistic.

So, yeah, I'm a little disappointed by the developer. When they claim that they have "106 Quadrillion" customization options, and yet not even half of said "106 Quadrillion" involves the opposite gender, that's just fucking pathetic. If they could fit in over "106 Quadrillion" customization options, it is not unreasonable to assume they can put a goddamn gender switch option as well.

 

[Lood NL]

Please read this: http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/index.php/2010/05/sgc-interview-brink.html/2

Richard Ham, Creative Director of Brink: From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.

Ultimately, we didn?t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Basically, they had no choice. So would you kindly STFU about it being unfair.
Ps: What difference does it make if you are able to play as a woman. You're still basically shooting the same enemy with a different skin. Just get over it. Please.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Please read this: http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/index.php/2010/05/sgc-interview-brink.html/2

Richard Ham, Creative Director of Brink: From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.

Ultimately, we didn?t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Basically, they had no choice. So would you kindly STFU about it being unfair.
Ps: What difference does it make if you are able to play as a woman. You're still basically shooting the same enemy with a different skin. Just get over it. Please.

Your reading comprehension seems to be somewhat below par. Basically, they had a choice and decided that ditching the female gender was a better solution then creating variety by giving you two genders. Arguably, if they had planned for female models with the same level of customization from the start this would not have been a problem because they would still offer the same (if not more) degree of customization only it would be divided upon 6 variations (female/male and 3 different body builds per gender) instead of 3.

As the explanation is presented here, they are basically either admitting that their artists or modellers couldn't produce art assets for female models with the same quality as for male models or that they couldn't come up with as many art assets for female models as for male models.

So what difference does it make? When you tout "customize your avatar any way you want!" as an important feature and then add "(But not if it you want a female avatar)" you are sending a very strange message. At best it is simply an amusing quirk or trivia. At worst it is indicative of the sexist attitude in the gaming industry. Especially when you try to argue that you cut out a significant customization option because it would diminish the amount of customization.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I think people who are complaining about this are being unreasonable. The excuse they came up with is fine by me. By being whiney you are just making female gamer's look out of touch with the planning and reasoning that goes into a game.
There are plenty of games with male only protagonists why is this one so special?
I love playing as a female but I've decided that I'm just gonna make a cool looking guy. At the end of the day it's an fps and only other people will see you. It's not worth the time everyone is spending arguing about it.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Personally I am very happy about this. I am sick of introvert gamer nerds playing sexed up caricatures of fake ass females that have no purpose in the game other than to be sexy toys. I can't stop them from playing as their female fantasy, but this game forces them too!

love it.

Agreed. Also, if you ask me it is just an excuse to complain. In fact, this is a caricature of what I have been seeing.

"There many, many character combinations that you can make with."
"I WANT MOAR!!!!"
"But no two characters will look the sa-"
"I DONT GIVE A FLYING FUCK! I WANT MY CHARACTER TO HAVE A VAGINA!"
"I'm sorry, but this was a very hard deci-"
"SEXIST!"

 

[Flac00]

I apologize if this had been done before, I did take a look at the forums to see but I might not have looked back far enough.

The upcoming title Brink is based largely upon customization. You can be just about any race, with any style of clothing, hair, the works. But you cannot be female.

Now I?m sure we?ll see a lot of retaliation against what I?m about to say, such as adding in females would have taken time the devs didn?t have. Such as more males game then females. As true as they may be however they do not make the fact that a game, largely based on customization, is excluding half of the human race.

It?s true, we have seen this before in many games. But even shooters such as Halo and Gears of War have stepped up to include female avatars or multiplayer options. Those games don?t have customization passed some colour and load outs.

I am personally very, very disappointed that you cannot play a female in a game based on customizing your character to represent what you want.

Discuss your thoughts on the topic.

Well it is "realistic" in the fact that women are not allowed to serve in direct combat. Wether the reasons behind that are good, it doesn't deny that one fact.

 

[icame]

This thread has been done before and I'll agree with what was said before.

I'd prefer to see one full assed customization as compared to two half assed ones.

And the first post wins the thread yet again

 

[CarlsonAndPeeters]

It would take an incredibly long time to add girls to Brink. Men and women move completely differently. Since Brink is very movement-heavy, the inaccuracies in movement for either gender would be very apparent. The team would have to re-do every single animation to make it look natural for a woman, and obviously they don't have that kind of time or money. So either they stay all-male or re-skin the male animations with females, which would look awful (thats why the female skins in Uncharted seem so awkward).

Can't blame a new IP for keeping it simple(r).

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Please read this: [Old, tired excuse snipped].

Basically, they had no choice.

That's bull. And I mean that both their false-dichotomy excuse is bull, and the idea that they "had no choice" is bull.

Now, I don't agree with everything posted at The Border House (they called Rift, of all games, "misogynistic" over a few plate bikinis and an NPC's cheesy pick-up line). But when it comes to putting why, exactly, that excuse is bull into perspective [http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2027], they called it in one.

So would you kindly STFU about it being unfair.

1) Since you asked nicely instead of just demanding? No.

2) Would you kindly refrain from telling people to STFU?

 

[dancinginfernal]

Said it before, will say it again.

Don't give two shits.