Character Gender, and the Picture on the cover.

[badgersprite]

It honestly doesn't bother me. There's probably no one in the world who has a Shepard who looks and acts exactly like my Shepard, so having the default "female" Shepard on the cover would be just as far removed from what mine is.

It's of no concern to me. But, for the record, yes, I consider canon!Shepard to be a male Earthborn Sole Survivor Soldier who made mostly renegade decisions, which is apparently what the game thinks too, just as I consider canon!Warden to be of Male Human Noble origin. The fact that I never played the game as either of these doesn't diminish the experience for me.

 

[Cain_Zeros]

The community is still largely male, and the developers and such probably assume those males will be playing a male character, so it's the same cover to go with.

 

[greenitedaze]

It's usually a demographic reason, just depends on the game, but if your lead character is male then
it would make sense to introduce that face asap.

 

[LHZA]

I don't think it's a big issue. My Shepard's female and she's the only one I care about. I'm not goin to nit pick about a non issues like cover art when I've been given the option to play as a female.

 

[Brandon237]

In a third world country, yes, they do.
For anyone who likes to have a hard copy and wants to see that box on their shelf, yes, they do.

ITT: People who don't understand humour.

With the number of idiots I have had the displeasure of holding a conversation with, you would be the same.

 

[Trolldor]

Makes no difference to me.

I liked New Vegas because your gender actually had an impact on the game - albeit minor, to avoid serious conflict. If you were a female you couldn't fight in the Arena at Caesar's Camp for example.
I'm tired of them ignoring gender as part of your character except for who you get to bonk.

 

[DTWolfwood]

my basis for the characters come straight form the cover art.

I normally play females in RPGs with blank slate characters. When the character is named and has a story of its own, then i play whatever gender the developer choose to put on the cover.

DA:O was the exception, i played a Dwarf so there can't be a female or it was too ugly for me to play as. XD

 

[Dragonborne88]

Male Shepard is canon to me, however, I much, much preferred Fem-Hawke as the canon character. Her acting is better, and it seemed strangely fitting to the story for some reason.

 

[kayisking]

In Dragon age 2, It doesn't really matter. All of them are bisexuals.

It doesn't matter in that sense, but isn't it a bit sexist that the "main" character is always male?

How is that remotely sexist?

Well, if there is a choice between A and B, and you always select A because A is what you always have chosen before, well then your are discriminating B. B might be awesome or better, but you still went for A didn't you?

Also:
We are constantly hearing games need more female protagonists, so why choose to put the male character on the cover every time?

Just saying it feels a bit sexist.

Thats not what sexist is, chosing A because of what A is isnt discrimination. Its called matching a criteria.

If you make a choice based solely on one criteria, it is discrimination. If your cooking school doesn't accept students without arms, it is discrimination. Not all discrimination is bad, but the word has gotten a bit of a bad taste because of the way it is used these days.

Ps. Please excuse my poor English, I am not a native speaker.

 

[Shilkanni]

I think for a game where you can customise your character it would make more sense to promote it without putting a face on the protagonist and emphasise the customisation or 'the hero is you!' angles.

In the Mass Effect universe we definitely have other interesting things worth putting on the cover (the Normandy, other major characters, Cool space stuff, the Citadel, President Bartlet).

The Dragon Age Origins cover was fairly attention grabbing and stood out a little.

Sure I read that article about '80% of players play a Male Shepard' but how much of that is influenced by the box and promotional art, and the in-game default. I'm sure the majority of players are male and the majority of males pick a male character, but stats like these are far more likely just to reflect which option was default or 1st in the list.

I started a female character as my first (and only so far) in Mass Effect because I had heard the female voice actor (Jennifer Hale) was better.

 

[AngryMongoose]

Really, they should Blizzard it, and release multiple covers.

 

[DustyDrB]

So I saw the thread "What gender do you consider Shepard and Hawke"

Which made me think the following "Well they are both male on the cover of the game, so male?"
And this brought me to the question:

Why, if I can choose the gender of my character anyways, are so many game protagonists pictured as a man on the cover?

Why not at least have two covers or something?

Bioware did a study, and found out that like 80% of the time, players play as a Male Shepard.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.230772-BioWare-Mines-Data-From-Mass-Effect-2

Why bother making half your boxart of a female character when only 1/5 the players will be playing as a female Shepard? The more important question is: Why do so few people play as a female?

Turn that around and you get: If ME did not have a prefab male Shepard on the cover and as the first character selection option, more people would probably explore other options.

Seriously, if Mass Effect started by first picking a gender and next and appearance, probably more people would go into character customization. In my opinion, this is one of the few things that Bioware half-assed with ME. Commander Shepard is like DNA, everyone has a different Shepard, so why they chose to market the game with a prefab gender and face is just something i cannot understand. And the fact that they did not create an equal female prefab saddens me.

It's purely for marketing, and it does make sense (even though I would like to see a female avatar more often than we do). This was posted on the BioWare forums in relation to Dragon Age 2, but it applies to Mass Effect as well.

They did have a female player character (as well as a male one) on the Jade Empire cover. Jade Empire didn't sell so well, though.

 

[aaronobst]

Wait wait wait wait

Games still come in boxes?

Indeed they do! You can keep your digital copies... Have fun lending them to a friend or selling them once you're done.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Why not do something like Fallout or Borderlands where instead of showing the protagonists you just show the NPC who you think has coolest outfit.

 

[Dunvi]

snip

This post from Priestly is very true. Also remember that the marketing team is a different team from other areas of the game.

The thing is, guys (white guys, to be precise) are so used to seeing someone who looks like them on the covers, or as the main character, that they don't know how to project onto a character that *doesn't* look like them. Because of the lack of good female, mixed race characters (Chell notwithstanding), I'm used to seeing myself in my character, even when playing as someone else entirely. (White) guys usually can't do this as easily, and if they don't see themselves on the cover, they assume that the game is not aimed towards them, or going to be fun to them because all of the games they've liked up to that point had them on the cover.

Now of course, part of the reason for this is that (white) guys don't have to learn how to do this because they always appear as the main character or character representation. But since they don't know, the safest way to not alienate as much of the base as possible, and especially the main target audience, they have to perpetuate the cycle.

That's life.

 

[kasperbbs]

I played those games with both genders, so for me it could be either one, i guess it doesn't really matter since most people wont play with the default preset anyway.

 

[Custard_Angel]

"Depict a person without any specific gender"

You are either David Hume or Square Enix.

 

[spaceghost88]

I'll be honest, the cover's pretty much the least important aspect of a game for me, especially considering the fact that I buy more and more of my games online.


I think Bioware has done more than enough when it comes to catering for people who want to play as women in their last few games if you ask me.

The Brink thread was a genuine eye-opener for me, I can't believe people really feel so strongly about these things.

 

[Projo]

Everyone who cares about this is a nit picking idiot. So what if it has a guy on the cover? So what if there's no option to play as a girl? It's not some chauvinistic propaganda, it just there. Shut up and go with it.

Besides, people will rag on the female covers for exploiting tits.