Games don't have problems creating good female characters...

[darlarosa]

No the main problem is gamers are whiny twats that jump on the first bandwagon to complain. This is how the devs envisoned their game , this is how they made it . Deal with it.

The audience has a right to demand more from the medium. People always have from literature, to film, to television, and music. All "artistic" vision should be questioned particularly when a medium seems stuck in a rut when it comes to characters, plot, or setting. That is how they evolve.

I really don't understand why there is such controversy about female characters, while there is almost none about the male ones. They also come in many different flavors which vary from being strong, weak, masculine or feminine, some fit the stereotypical badass hero, while some desperately need your protection, and I literally never see anyone questioning the qualities given to different male characters.

Actually in comparison there is a lot of variety with male characters as compared to female characters and even more so if you include race in that. That and while you do have macho-male characters they tend to at least become well rounded and not just fodder for the plot or protagonist back story. It is far more likely that a game will have a male protagonist with a varied personality than female.

There is a problem with characters overall though. However it is more prominent in female and minority characters because of their rarely being lead characters and there is a lot of baggage assigned to how we tend to depict them.


Personally it I feel like I see the same archtypes in video games without any attempt being made to make them real people. When it comes to gender I like the Extra Credits episode about gender in games. There's gender identity, biological sex, and also more importantly how individuals interpret society's view on both of those things while having society respond to a character in kind. Most games don't ever really deal with that level of their world beyond the shallow ways. That is why I think the "Male with breasts" argument comes up a lot. She's a complete badass, but she never really shows an enjoyment for anything traditionally feminine or in fact she may scorn it...I often call it the "Badasses can't love pink" argument. There are exceptions to this, but it is kind of prevalent.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Then there is also the fact that game developers cannot win.

An attractive woman? "She must be eye candy."
An attractive woman who is a kick ass heroine? "A male character with a female body."
An unattractive woman? "Oh typical, female leads can't be attractive or the men will feel threatened."
An unattractive woman who is a kick ass heroine? "Oh, so a woman can't be taken seriously if she is good looking?"
An emotionally cold woman? "Stereotypical ice queen, can't be having women with feelings can we?"
An emotional woman? "Oh, so she has to be weak then, can't have tough women showing up the men."

While I agree with the whole of this post, I really found this to be true, and a perfect illustration of the catch 22 developers are caught in.
I constantly hear and read that "female characters need to be strong, confident, clever, intelligent, capable." etc. etc.
Now see, that's a tall order, and is tricky to get to work out in a compelling way that balances out flaws and virtues to create truly engaging characters. But I feel I'm not making much sense with vague hypotheticals.
Let's take Rocky Balboa for example. One of cinema's most beloved characters. He's strong and determined, as well as good-hearted, but thick as a fucking brick. Lacks anything resembling finesse too. But you know what? That's part of what makes him so interesting to people. He has weaknesses. Flaws. Which create relatability and provide grounds for character conflict so he can grow and develop.
But try and take that same approach with a female (hard mode: video game) character. If she's lacking in the brains department, then you're accused of being back in the 50's, in the era of 'father knows best' and other such silly stuff. If she's lacking in power, you'll be accused of being afraid of strong women and being totally unrealistic. But god fucking help you if you actually do create their hypothetical flawless little mary sue. You'll be left with nowhere to go in terms of character development because you lack anything to improve or change, and the consumers/public will be bored to death by a constantly static character.
Also, it seems like men get scrutinized more and more often called out on (even the most minor) screw-ups when writing female characters, but nobody bats an eyelash at stephenie meyer cranking out Edward "disco fever" Cullen, or E.L. James' delusional rendering of Christian Grey.

This is why writers drink, people. Or at least I do.

 

[Lieju]

No the main problem is gamers are whiny twats that jump on the first bandwagon to complain. This is how the devs envisoned their game , this is how they made it . Deal with it.

So.. We should not be allowed to criticise games at all? Or even discuss them? Well, why are you registered on a gaming-forum with a mind-set like that?

And sure, it's easy to say that characters are just written badly, but that isn't very helpful criticism.
But analysing how things like gender-identity and sexuality can be presented and be a good part of characterization is helpful.

A lot of gender-stereotypes are based on the culture, but you don't need to ignore them and just assume everyone is equal to write a good story.

For example, wouldn't it be interesting to play a character that is the underdog? For example, have a fantasy-world based very much on medieval Europe, your usual fantasy stuff. But you play as a woman who has to face and overcome all these obstacles; she is considered to be not much more than a child, if she goes outside alone, people automatically assume she is a prostitute, because she isn't accompanied by her husband or a male relative, she has no equal opportunity to get education, or own stuff, and is expected to focus on getting a good husband.

Wouldn't it be interesting to play as this kind of hero who has to fight to get all this stuff we take for granted, and fight to get respect and power?

Also, it seems like men get scrutinized more and more often called out on (even the most minor) screw-ups when writing female characters, but nobody bats an eyelash at stephenie meyer cranking out Edward "disco fever" Cullen, or E.L. James' delusional rendering of Christian Grey.

Nobody? Where in the Internet do you hang out?
It's pretty much generally expected that Edward is a horribly written piece of wish-fulfillment, and I'm not even going to get to the whole issue of Mr. Grey...

Also, both Twilight and 50 shades are generally pretty badly written, it's not that the writers are especially ignoring to write the men as real characters, they are unable to write real characters, period.

Both are also books regularly condemned by feminists, but I guess I just follow that kind kind of stuff.

An unattractive woman? "Oh typical, female leads can't be attractive or the men will feel threatened."
An unattractive woman who is a kick ass heroine? "Oh, so a woman can't be taken seriously if she is good looking?"

Sure, beauty is in the eye of beholder, but how many female leads that are designed not to be good-looking eye-candy can you name? Just curious.

That is not necessarily a "problem". Granted, more female characters would be nice, but to say that there "should" be more, or "it is a problem that there are not more" is not something I can get behind simply because games are, when it comes down to it, a product.

I agree to a point.
The makers of the game want to make a profit.
I get that.
However, does that mean we can't criticise them for how they try to achieve it?
After all, it also is safe not to take risks with original ideas and just crank the same game with very little content out evry year, raise prises, separate important plot-details as a DLC, take established franchises and try to make them appeal to wider audience, adding multiplayer etc.

We should just not criticise?
Sure, it would be nice to have good games, but it's not like not having them is a 'problem'.

Why are people saying that that "gender x is always misrepresented" or "ethnic group is never portrayed properly" when now we have tons of games that allow players to create their own character and customize their wardrobe?

The issue is no longer relevent when you have almost completely control on how your character looks, acts and controll what they wear.

That's not the case. A lot of character-creators don't have particularly wide range of skin-colours (and making a character darkskinned can mess up the cutscenes because the lighting is designed for white skin. I made my character in DA2 as darkskinned as possible, and often her featorues were in the dark and not properly visible), and often you can't much change the breast-size, for example.
Not to mention the games usually have other characters too, apart from the ones you make.

 

[thejarofdirt882]

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You guys have pretty much taken the words right out of my mouth.

What I've found is that there's two situations that just you can't win: writing a female character and writing a gay character. And god forbid you ever write a lesbian because you will be absolutely fucking mauled for any little thing.

People just seem to read/see into things what they want to read/see in something, especially female characters. Feministic bull goes off the rails when the female character in a game is good looking. Well have they taken a look at the majority male characters in these games? Now I'm all for a bit of male eye candy for us ladies, but it's hypocritical. Games don't just have attractive females, they have attractive characters.

I do think it is a lack of focus on good writing/character 'design'. By 'design' I mean character arc, personality, flaws, phobias etc. it's not something that's seen to be a concern during production since there's so many other things to do & the issues of getting something to work in a game environment. And the standards imho in the games industry for story, script, characters is not really that good; there are of course studios that are an exception which have their own bar set a lot higher

And going completely off topic for the finale.

There's a cop out in the games industry that we sadly see applied in many games from Half-Life to Mario. It's the idea that you can't project onto a character with personality and so, none is given to the characters or world.

You want to know why Twilight is so popular? Is this. Right there: Projecting onto a bland character. Not only is Bella a Mary Sue but she's so bland that you can just insert yourself into her shoes - that folks is a self insert fanfic already written for you. (And reading those books is time I will never get back and wish I could bleach from my brain.)

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

No the main problem is gamers are whiny twats that jump on the first bandwagon to complain. This is how the devs envisoned their game , this is how they made it . Deal with it.

Heeey I just made out Noa in your avatar! I've been wondering why that seemed familiar to me. Great game!

 

[Krixous]

I liked the dead island statue although i love zombies i have zombie gnomes on my front lawn as a ornament greatest thing ever

 

[Vault101]

Games need better writing.

That about sums it up, yeah. "Games" don't make characters good, female or otherwise. A bad character is a sign of a bad writer. The industry eventually came to the conclusion they needed to stop giving their voice acting roles to Bob from accounting. One figures the same will eventually occur with writing.

really ? this old chestnut? i don't see voice acting as a issue generally. Can't remember any parriculy awful cases in any games I played recently or before

 

[Voulan]

I think the problem is that games are too short to have any real character progression, growth or even proper introduction, to the point that they have less importance to the actual game content itself. Games are more about gameplay in the end - it doesn't matter how wonderful the story is, if the gameplay is terrible, that's all the matters. And when this happens, characters don't really get a chance to flesh themselves out before the cutscene ends and the player starts doing things.

So, characters usually end up becoming either sterotypical, so that the player instinctively knows the character and fills in the blanks themselves, or they become overly stylised to disguise that they have no character. Or they become silent. On that point, silent protagonists are not good characters, because they have none. They're just models you use to run around their game world. I get so angry when characters like April Ryan lose out to Chell - where's the justice in that?!

Perhaps it's because of game length and the fact that these are games that characters fall short of what novels or even films are capable of. Their character and personality is displayed through action rather than dialogue and expression; which is why games with heavy dialogue (like The Walking Dead) are highly praised.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

really ? this old chestnut? i don't see voice acting as a issue generally. Can't remember any parriculy awful cases in any games I played recently or before

Well, Vault, I don't know how to break this to you, but your recent memory does not encapsulate the entire history of gaming. Go back as far even as the late 90's and early 00's and you'll find some truly epic voice acting that needs to be heard to be believed. I went looking for samples for you, and was pleased to find TV Tropes has an extensive library of examples of bad voice acting. I was particularly delighted that two of the games that leapt immediately to mind were on there:

Kings Quest V has a better excuse than most games here: the CD-ROM version was one of the first games ever to feature full voice acting. Unfortunately, this meant Sierra had to use its own employees, none of which could act worth a damn. Graham and the narrator were at least somewhat acceptable (although the narrator had several obvious page cuts left in). But on the other end of the spectrum, you had a helium-addled elf, an ear-bleedingly bad wolf, a "pOIsonous" owl (no wonder he's The Scrappy) and several people in between that could never read their scripts right, pronounced words wrong, and generally made most of the cutscenes a chore once the novelty wore off. The best part? You can't turn the voices off.

Sierra also apparently had no idea how to do voice recording. Much of the audio sounds like it was recorded in a closet with terrible acoustics and a $10 mike. You might cut them some slack considering all the audio is 8 bits 11kHz, but it sounds even worse than what you'd expect at that technology level.

One of the many, many problems with Ultima IX is the atrocious voice acting. The Avatar either sounds annoyingly dumb or like he couldn't care less about what's happening. Most of the other NPCs are done by actors who put absolutely no effort at all into their lines, and can't stick to a consistent accent. You could bump into people (that are all supposed to be from the same city) who have French, Scottish, American and British accents.

Things have really improved considerably. These days, bad voice acting means a performer is a bit flat, or someone flubbed their accent, or was really chewing the scenery. Back in the day, bad voice acting could make your ears bleed.

 

[Vault101]

That's not how gaming works. It's not one guys vision and a bunch of people bringing it to life. It's board meetings, focus groups and market research. It's target demographics, advertising and press releases.

I'm not sure how truw that is but there is still a creative process involved..granted female charachters may be "risky" but I hardly see it as an excuse when games seem so behined other media in that regard

its about games not sucking overall

sure some people don;t give a shit about story or charachters or inovation or get all defensive when people starting talking about art because its "gonna take their fun away"....those people are idiots

more variety in the kinds of storys games tell and yes, the protagonists too is a good thing. There are some instances that just make me sigh and shake my head...not only that bullshit with ICO...but Dead Space 3..now I'm actually looking forward to DS3 and I'm not going to knock the story or anything...but is there a reason Ellie couldnt be Issacs co-op partner? think about, she's a perfect fit...but no...for what ever reason we have to play as blandy mcbland space marine guy

we actually need more variety for BOTH men and women charachters
.

[quote/]Then there is also the fact that game developers cannot win.

An attractive woman? "She must be eye candy."
An attractive woman who is a kick ass heroine? "A male character with a female body."
An unattractive woman? "Oh typical, female leads can't be attractive or the men will feel threatened."
An unattractive woman who is a kick ass heroine? "Oh, so a woman can't be taken seriously if she is good looking?"
An emotionally cold woman? "Stereotypical ice queen, can't be having women with feelings can we?"
An emotional woman? "Oh, so she has to be weak then, can't have tough women showing up the men."[/quote]

What I've found is that there's two situations that just you can't win: writing a female character and writing a gay character. And god forbid you ever write a lesbian because you will be absolutely fucking mauled for any little thing.

its no excuse, being over sensitive about thease things is just as harmful as being sexist in some cases, but the only way that will change is if somehow the creators grow some balls, put in a female character (where applicicle) and stick by their decision, as in having more female charachters people wont see it as such a huge deal

[quote/]People just seem to read/see into things what they want to read/see in something, especially female characters. Feministic bull goes off the rails when the female character in a game is good looking. Well have they taken a look at the majority male characters in these games? Now I'm all for a bit of male eye candy for us ladies, but it's hypocritical. Games don't just have attractive females, they have attractive characters.[/quote]
do I have to explain the difference between attractive charachters and objectification? or why skin tight suits and high heel are painfully fucking stupid?

let me put it this way...Marcus Pheonix is an ugly ************, Kratos is both an ugly ************ and a sociopath, Nathan Drake is your standard "guy" but his looks is not what I'm thinking about as he goes about doing his thing and he is such a fucking annoying little shit I wish he would he hugged by a head crab, Ezio....well ok thats more like it, but he's an assasin in a hood first a foremost, not "male model"


[quote/]You want to know why Twilight is so popular? Is this. Right there: Projecting onto a bland character. Not only is Bella a Mary Sue but she's so bland that you can just insert yourself into her shoes - that folks is a self insert fanfic already written for you. (And reading those books is time I will never get back and wish I could bleach from my brain.)[/quote]
sometimes yes silent protagonist can work but dear god sometimes it pisses me off that the character I am stuck with the entire game has no personality, eather way though thats somthing up to a developer and a personal taste thing

 

[Vault101]

snipd.

well...yeah but those are from back then, I'm well aware there was more sub-par voice acting in the earlyer days, but the way I read what you said made it sound like its still an issue when...really it isn't, granted theres the good to the mediocre but again nothing that level of awful

 

[Vault101]

snip

part of the reason people are so hypersensitive is that it has to be a big deal if a charachter is female, because there barley are any

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm well aware there was more sub-par voice acting in the earlyer days, but the way I read what you said made it sound like its still an issue when...really it isn't, granted theres the good to the mediocre but again nothing that level of awful

But that was my point, yeah? Sub-par voice acting WAS very common, and eventually they wised up and started hiring actual professionals instead of having their staff yowl into microphones for pennies on the dollar. I expect the same will occur with writing. The standard of writing in most games is absolutely embarrassing. As the quality of writing increases, so too should the quality of the characters.

 

[Vault101]

I really don't understand why there is such controversy about female characters, while there is almost none about the male ones.

there is....its called "games need better writing"

 

[maninahat]

The problem is two fold: Firstly, when devs make the protagonist a female, they often don't dare write in actual character quirks or flaws. Instead, they make bland, perfect, badass, pretty women with no interesting character traits beyond being tough and independent. They end up being indistinguishable, and whilst that is just as much a problem for every male, grunting space marine out there, writers tend to write in some distinguishing features, and risk making them imperfect.

The second problem is that female characters are nearly always a minority in videogames. Even on those occasions where they serve as the protagonist, women are surrounded by men. By having lots of female characters, writers would be forced to give them distinguishing characteristics, which in turn, forces them to write diverse and interesting, unique characters. You know, as they tend to do with the male cast.

 

[II2]

I guess I agree with you, OP, in so far as that

Games don't have problems exclusively with creating good female characters, but good characters in general/b] (most male).

While I'd imagine most of us could rhyme off two dozen or so characters we felt were really solid, that stands against the GLUT of total releases, from AAA to indie, old to new.

----

That said, well developed characters of either sex are kinda incidental to their utility in a genre of game... Characterization is more important in RPGs or Tournament Fighters than Flight Sims or RTS's, etc etc... (always exceptions)

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

No the main problem is gamers are whiny twats that jump on the first bandwagon to complain. This is how the devs envisoned their game , this is how they made it . Deal with it.

Yup, for some reason there's a very strong "this is my game, make it for me!" attitude amongst gamers, almost like we're trying to maintain the stereotype that we're children and basement dwellers.

Yeah, they do females bad but the voice that shouts about it is louder than it needs to be. They are, at worst, empty characters that the developers haven't put much thought into past "it's a woman"; they aren't the anti-christ, the epitome of patriarchal oppression or the pent up misogynistic feelings of male developers. More often than not when the main character is female it's a fleshed out well written character.

 

[Austin Manning]

Okay, let me take issue with your defence of both cases.

1) The problem isn't just that they're sexy, it's that their only character trait is that they're sexy. They aren't a great, deep and interesting character who is also sexy, it's that they're just sexy. This is why the comparison to Brad Pitt and male characters isn't valid, because those characters aren't merely eye-candy.

This is the point I was trying to make in that it is writing that is knee-capping gaming's ability to create good characters. If more effort/resources went into writing, characters both male and female could be something more than eye candy (think Alyx Vance from Half-Life).

The comparison is valid though, I have yet to see a Brad Pitt movie where he does anything other than stand around looking good. As I outlined, the majority of male characters are also designed to be good looking and many are used as eye candy such as Sephiroth or the new Dante.

The problem is with a lack of emphasis on writing and characterization. More of that would give characters that weren't just there to look pretty.

 

[Ryotknife]

Games need better writing.

That about sums it up, yeah. "Games" don't make characters good, female or otherwise. A bad character is a sign of a bad writer. The industry eventually came to the conclusion they needed to stop giving their voice acting roles to Bob from accounting. One figures the same will eventually occur with writing.

really ? this old chestnut? i don't see voice acting as a issue generally. Can't remember any parriculy awful cases in any games I played recently or before

count yourself lucky that you never played Star Ocean The Last Hope then. The voice acting of Edge, Lym, and Serah were so bad that I had to switch to japanese....and then eventually mute it because even those were terrible.

Also obligatory

 

[bug_of_war]

Some people just want a subject for their oh so insightful essays.

HAHAHA! love this comment!

OT:
I agree with the guy I just quoted, this is more a "I'm so insightful" thread then anything else. There are many genres of games, RPG's have strong women, Action games have strong men, doesn't mean the two don't occaisionally change it up. Kinda like how Action films have strong men and drama/love films have strong/intelligent women.