mstickle said:
I'm a gamer, I'm female and I have a love of FPS based games. I play Halo 3 online and recently Modern Warfare 2. These games and many other I enjoy are very much aimed at the male demograhpic, with males overwhelmingly dominating the player base it's pretty obvious that this is the right group to market to. But there are girls that play these, I'm one of them and very occasionally (maybe once a week) I come across another girl.
There are some games that cater to the rare female, L4D has Zoey to play, Borderlands has lillith, Fallout 3 and a many others allow you to create you own character male or female.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that some games seem to forget about girls altogether. Halo has some inclusion, you have the ability the change you death screams to female. I guess what annoys me about that is it seems a little like a half baked after thought. If you play as an elite you still have the Spartan female voice, the elite death screams are the funniest in the game and I don't think I should have to change to male just to have them.
But then we come to Modern Warfare 2. The only real customisation of your dude is the weapon you choose can dictate the camo you wear (snipers wear ghillie suits for example). Of course there are the call signs, I currently have Compainion Crate (pink hearts) and the pink soap emblem - but that's a bit of an overgirly for me because I don't have any other 'girl' options, but then I've seen guys use those too. The thing that actually got me think about all this was one of the accolades - ALPHA MALE: Killed most of lower rank, I in jest said to my husband "that's a bit sexist". As I thought more about it I wondered why there was no option to have a female charater in multiplayer, obviously the story is based on specific people so I don't expect it in campaign (come to think of it the only females I remember in the single player were the victims from the airport. Odd, women join the military now right?)
Funny, I just remembered something from COD4 too, the only female I remember managed to crash her heli only to have you risk your life to save her...
So, Escapist community, what are you thoughts on this? Do you think the could be a little more for those of us females that enjoy these games? And, what are your thoughts on the portyal of females in games?
I view such issues as being similar to allegations of racism in games which can be argued in similar terms: almost without exception ridiculous. In fact I generally feel that trying to cater to such "complaints" actually causes more problems and thus should be ignored entirely.
Now before you or anyone else get upset with me, I will point out several things:
#1: Many games include a pre-designed protaganist, around which they carefully construct a world and/or personality. Some characters are men, others are women. Saying that it's somehow "wrong" for Master Chief to be exclusively male, is like claiming that it's wrong to have Lara Croft or Bayonetta be women. The company tries to cater to those making complaints by adding a female voice and of course there are more complaints connected to this (like the comments about the elite). Simply put trying to make a friendly gesture towards a group of people even with ridiculous complaints just means that they were heard and they complain more.
#2: Like it or not you live in a sexist world. In general there are at least massive efforts made towards "Womens sufferage" throughout the first world, but still like 80% of the globe has women as second class citizens at best. A lot could be said about this, but I'm not about to write an essay on feminism and discrimination since it would make a long rant even longer.
What this means in simple terms however is that for certain game concepts a female protaganist can destroy the entire concept, especially in a context where the game is trying to be realistic. For all the comments to the contrary there are a lot of women's issues in Russia (never mind The Middle East, and Asian). The CIA for example (to referance Modern Warfare 2) is not going to get an "inside woman" in a terrorist organization, or at least not as easily as they will a dude. As a result having the protaganist of Modern Warfare 2 being a dude makes perfect sense. If they were striking to be more campy (like say the TV show Alias) then they could easily have a female agent option with little difficulty, but they aren't trying to really go that route.
#3: In contrast to points 1 and 2 I will say I'm all about character customization. Truthfully I consider being handed a pre-made character like "You are Lance Studdly" or whatever a strike against a game, given how games like Saint's Row 2 have demonstrated that it's possible to customize a game around differant voice tracks and apperances. Thus I feel there is increasingly less excuse for people to say be strapped into the role of Nico Bellic" or whatever instead of creating their own dude or dudette. That said however in some cases I can see where things might be limited by point #2 above especially when trying to deal with things like the modern infiltration of a terrorist organization, or even most organized crime syndicates (all comments about gun molls aside, the odds of the mafia ever recruiting and eventually 'making' a girl off the street are pretty much zero for example).
I won't be playing MW2 for a while, but honestly I see this as a non-issue.
... and honestly I kind of would like to see a protest cry by "manly men" to have an option to replace Bayonetta with a male lead when the game comes out just to see if the company can be forced into a compromise for yucks.
