Is it really an issue of gender equality?

[VanQ]

E.g. In Guild Wars 2 I keep switching my Elementalist (mage/sorcerer) between looking like this:

Spoiler

To this:

Spoiler

Depending on my flavor o' the month. I love sexy outfits

I love the first Elementalist, she looks fantastic. Third one is nice too, second one is kinda standard mage in a hood.

I do agree with you, to certain extent. For example, Tera online takes that chainmail bikini idea and cranks it up to 11.Female (and male) clothing options are ridiculous, but some of them are simply gorgeous, wildly creative while still being glorified and revealing armored underwear.
<img src=http://tera-online.cc/uploads/gallery/main/59/highelf_f_r27.jpg>
<img src=http://tera-online.cc/uploads/gallery/main/57/highelf_f_l21.jpg>
<img src=http://tera-online.cc/uploads/gallery/main/59/highelf_f_r19.jpg>

I'd also like to note that when talking about TERA, it's worth noting that the Male costumes are just as wildly sexy, revealing and outrageous. Stupid sexy manly Elf butts in cheetah print leotards.

Spoiler

It's kinda hard to find images of them on Google though. But let me assure you that that open front goes all the way down south but not quite over the border.

 

[New Frontiersman]

Many things seem to be pointing towards a general biological difference where women seem to overall gravitate more towards people-oriented things like nursing, teaching or social work, while men gravitate towards things like construction, engineering and IT.

That's not biological though, that's social factors influencing where people are able to work. Even with laws preventing people from hiring based on gender, there's still significant social stigma against women in fields like construction, engineering and IT. I have a female friend who spent a significant amount of time as an engineering major and was routinely marginalized and had her answers and solutions to engineering problems routinely ignored by her male contemporaries, only for one of them to come up with the same answer later and claim it as their own.

Not only is their direct discrimination but the messages we receive from media and society often portray certain jobs as "for women" and certain jobs as "for men" even if there's no real biological reason that that should be. This causes women (and men) to not attempt to seek jobs or careers they perceive as not being "for them." That's also what leads to discrimination, as people (both men and women) will will stigmatize and harass those they feel are seeking a career that isn't "correct" for their gender;as can be seen in examples such as female engineers being discriminated against or male nurses being the butt of jokes.

It's social factors that try to keep men and women out of certain fields, not biology. People tend to assume it's biological because they assume that the social factors that shape their world are innate because it's hammered into their head by media, such as movies, television, and yes, video games which reinforce social norms rather than challenging them. That's why we discuss these issues, that's why people object to the common portrayal of women in video games, because they want to challenge the social norms they feel are harmful and restrictive. This applies both to women and to men, who in many cases want to break out of the social norms society has thrust them into such as saying men shouldn't be nurses, or women engineers.

 

[TehCookie]

If a writer can only write a fanfiction version of himself, games need to stop hiring people off the street and get professionals. Think of a book you like, I'm going to guess it has a good character that's the opposite gender of the author. You can do the same with movies or TV if you want. I don't see how games are exempt from that. I don't see anything wrong with gamers asking for a quality product. However throwing a fit and attacking devs is not the way to go about it.

What I wonder is how much of it is actually the devs fault? If they are making what sells the most, wouldn't the consumers who buy such games be to blame?

 

[carnex]

It's better to refer to more modern MMO's. For e.g. I'll list some of the top MMO's this year and how much "bikini armor factor" they have to my knowledge. The worse it is, the lower the score.

I meant it as in "how it looks like when it's taken to really extreme. Not where MMO's are heading as type of games. There are those even today. Scarlet blade comes to mind.

And I don't know where you get those marks. Lineage 2 and Tera are both popular MMOs (as far as typically far eastern type of MMO can be) and were before they went free to play. Scarlet blade is, on the other hand, built around sexy females.

 

[Psychobabble]

I mention this because I do believe gaming has issues. Gender/race/etc diversification is one, as is over-sexualization of females; they are issues because they "look bad", and as such are a barrier to the medium. But both of those are expected given the proportion of white male game developers - you write about what you know. You can't expect the creative process of game design to adhere to a numbers policy without that policy being somewhat draconian and restricting the creative process. It's already a problem in other areas of game design - do we really want to push gender there too?

Of course, this is a self-reinforcing problem. All the white men writing from a white male perspective means people who aren't white males are less likely to be involved in the industry. Perhaps something needs to be done in order to break the cycle.

But -what- is to be done?

The only methods that would be effective in combating the status quo would require affirmative action.

We can not try and police preferences.

Quite obviously what is needed is a mass firing of white male writers, for being white and male, and a forced press-ganging of a large number of non-white and non-male writers to take their place. Since apparently non-white and non-male writers can't be bothered to get involved in the games industry on their own. That's the only logical way I can see to fix this issue since white males are so obviously unable to write from any other perspective than their own white maleness.

 

[Ryotknife]

You actually put it quite nicely in TLDR.
For me it's not about equality or feminism or whatever. I'm just fucking tired of those countless half-naked, chainmail bikini female characters. "Oh wow, fantasy setting, what do females wear? Chainmail bikinis or revealing clothes. Woohoo". It's lazy and uncreative! It came to the point that a girl wearing a green jacket (you know who I'm talking about) is better designed that 90% of females in gaming! Give us better written and designed female characters. That's all I ask.

Well written characters is a problem in general, regardless of gender or race.

Also, have I been in a coma for 15 years? im wracking my brain trying to think of females in games in chainmail bikinis and only coming up with maybe a few. And a few of them are some of the best characters in the damn game....and most of them are Japanese games.

 

[Yuuki]

It's better to refer to more modern MMO's. For e.g. I'll list some of the top MMO's this year and how much "bikini armor factor" they have to my knowledge. The worse it is, the lower the score.

I meant it as in "how it looks like when it's taken to really extreme. Not where MMO's are heading as type of games. There are those even today. Scarlet blade comes to mind.

And I don't know where you get those marks. Lineage 2 and Tera are both popular MMOs (as far as typically far eastern type of MMO can be) and were before they went free to play. Scarlet blade is, on the other hand, built around sexy females.

Scarlet Blade isn't even trying to hide what it is, it aims DIRECTLY towards a very specific/niche audience, it's advertised that way and therefore it's utterly silly to bring it up when we're talking about big-name MMO's. You might as well criticize a strip bar for having naked females, or criticize a gnome for being short.

I meant MMO's which are aimed at a far broader audience and let you play as both male and female, full-blown proper MMO's in their own right with their list of positives and negatives.
I wouldn't seriously expect the average MMO player to have even heard of Scarlet Blade, let alone play it. That game has almost zero positives besides the character design which is it's sole selling point to it's specific audience, and I'm fine with that.

 

[M0tty]

I mention this because I do believe gaming has issues. Gender/race/etc diversification is one, as is over-sexualization of females; they are issues because they "look bad", and as such are a barrier to the medium. But both of those are expected given the proportion of white male game developers - you write about what you know. You can't expect the creative process of game design to adhere to a numbers policy without that policy being somewhat draconian and restricting the creative process. It's already a problem in other areas of game design - do we really want to push gender there too?

Of course, this is a self-reinforcing problem. All the white men writing from a white male perspective means people who aren't white males are less likely to be involved in the industry. Perhaps something needs to be done in order to break the cycle.

But -what- is to be done?

The only methods that would be effective in combating the status quo would require affirmative action.

We can not try and police preferences.

Quite obviously what is needed is a mass firing of white male writers, for being white and male, and a forced press-ganging of a large number of non-white and non-male writers to take their place. Since apparently non-white and non-male writers can't be bothered to get involved in the games industry on their own. That's the only logical way I can see to fix this issue since white males are so obviously unable to write from any other perspective than their own white maleness.

Or maybe a mass firing of incompetent writers unable of writing anything from their own perspective, you know, like writers are supposed to be able to do. Or a change in the leadership which is restricting what the writers can write to hulking meat slabs of men.

Or you know, a much more passive method than the false dichotomy of quotas or do nothing. Simply a large number of gamers making it clear that a long succession of protagonists who are power fantasies for white teenage boys is perhaps not preferable could make a positive difference. Particularly if we point out we might be disinclined to buy games with such lazy, uninspired writing.

 

[Nuxxy]

This is a complicated issue. There are many facets, and I couldn't mention them all in the introduction - it already had a tl;dr. But part of the reason I created this thread is because I believe the problems need to be broken into components if they are to be dealt with. There is too much lumping everything together as "sexism in games", with the seeming hope being that naming it like that will make it disappear. It won't. It actually prolongs the issue because people end up talking past each other, each wanting to focus on an individual facet that the other doesn't.

Let's start with criticism of the creative and design teams. It's easy to assume that it's white male designers writing for white males; horny men designing big-breasted semi-nude women because that's what appeals to them; insecure men designing muscular assertive male protagonists as their own wish fulfillment. But do we really know how much input a model designer has into their individual design? Are they told to design a "competent warrior woman" or a "sexy fighting chick"? Are the script writers given the freedom to write diverse casts, or are they given lists of:
1 x hero, white male
1 x love interest, sexy female
1 x buddy warrior, black

I feel that a lot of criticism towards design teams is unwarranted, and that the the problem lies in the bankrollers looking at "what sells" without considering the diversity of the content (ie: they only consider the $ numbers) and this being passed on to the design teams who then say "well it's my job". In a way, none of them are in the wrong. The bankrollers are allowed to aim for what sells. The designers should be listening to their bosses. But at the same time all of them are in the wrong, in that they have a responsibility towards the progress and integrity of medium as a whole.

Maybe a temporary solution is to do something like they sometimes do in the film industry. Have the design team say "we will design the project you have requested by the numbers, but give us a little extra budget so we can release a DLC pack that uses the same engine to tell the story we want to tell". It may not always sell, but it may lead to some real progress. Basically allowing developers to make more Blood Dragons, and things like that.

 

[sweetylnumb]

You actually put it quite nicely in TLDR.
For me it's not about equality or feminism or whatever. I'm just fucking tired of those countless half-naked, chainmail bikini female characters. "Oh wow, fantasy setting, what do females wear? Chainmail bikinis or revealing clothes. Woohoo". It's lazy and uncreative! It came to the point that a girl wearing a green jacket (you know who I'm talking about) is better designed that 90% of females in gaming! Give us better written and designed female characters. That's all I ask.

Thats all any reasonable female asks!

 

[bunnielovekins]

It seems to me that we've actually moved backwards in this respect. Look at PS1-era protaganists: a dragon, a bandicoot, a gecko, barely a white male meat slab to be seen.
Overall, it's just a sign of the times; with the economic crisis, companies are far less likely to take risks and far more likely to tend towards the easy middle. Games become more uniform, with the individual aspects of them even more likely to be uniform even if the central concept of the game itself is not.
As a result, they're cynically trying to appeal to the one userbase they know is nice and simple to appeal to, and that they're good at appealing to: frat boys. The ones who always go for the average. The only other source of guaranteed income is in sequels, and we all know they've become annoyingly frequent these days, as they have in movies.

Still, there is hope: whenever the economic crisis finally ends, when the distribution of wealth has tipped itself slightly less towards the super-rich, people will have a little more disposable income and as a result we'll get some more diversity in games. We'll also most likely move away from the "gritty realism" that has been infecting our games and movies this past decade or so and everyone can stop being so damn miserable all the time.

 

[Lieju]

1) There is a reason why females are dressed skimpier than males even in gender neutral games. Adn that reason is how male and female sexual preferences work. I remember from long time ago reading social study done through grading photos of opposite gender. In case of male subjects, they graded young fit women in skimpy lingerie or naked as most desirable and sexy. In case of female subjects most desirable were photos of fit 25-40 males that had clothing that represented wealth, power or authority and also showed their fitness. After days of digging through Google, could not find that study, yet I remember it clearly. If you take a look at male and female magazines, they reflect this notion to the letter.

And that's problematic in itself.
Let's ignore the difference in how the genders are represented for a moment.

And ask why would the sexiness of the character be that important? Sure, there's room for impractical hot fantasy babes and dudes, but why all of them?
The lack of diversity is an issue, and a big part of the problem is 3D and improving graphics.

You know what game I recently played had equal amount of male and female opponents, young, old, overweight, pretty, posh, poor, creepy etc?

Pokemon White.
And that's because they were 2D sprites.

In a big game like Skyrim where you'd need to do much more work to make different character-models in 3D, they just reuse them, leaving all the women (and men) with the same physique, hairstyles etc.

 

[Maximum Bert]

It seems to me that we've actually moved backwards in this respect. Look at PS1-era protaganists: a dragon, a bandicoot, a gecko, barely a white male meat slab to be seen.

That may have something to do with graphics tho try and create a human looking character and they looked like shit especially in early 3D (check out Virtua Fighter one) its much easier to create a nice looking character when it dosent have to adhere to human qualities as you can distort them to do what you want i.e make their eyes huge so you can show emotion easier and they dont look retarded when moving because you dont have any preconceptions about how they should move.

I suppose they will just make what sells. Recently I have bought Guacamelee, The Walking Dead (telltale games all episodes), Dragons Crown, Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate, Fly me to the moon and Skullgirls and have enjoyed everyone of them immensely (except fly me to the moon havent had chance to play that yet). I just hope we can continue to get games of this diversity.

 

[bug_of_war]

I'm just fucking tired of those countless half-naked, chainmail bikini female characters. "Oh wow, fantasy setting, what do females wear? Chainmail bikinis or revealing clothes.

I come down firmly on the side that wants more female protagonists and less playboy bunnies wearing three links of chainmail.

I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I would like to know what games recently have portrayed women like this. Please respond.

OT: I'm at the point where I would like female characters to be more prominent simply so that we can stop talking about this whole issue. It's gotten to the point where people are saying the same thing over and over and over, and it's getting real tiresome.

I'll support a game with a good female character any day, but the likely hood of me paying for a game with a female protagonist as the selling point is pretty slim. Make a good game, make good game mechanics, make an interesting character, those are my preferences for how games are made, and I think it should be most peoples.

 

[Jenvas1306]

I guess Im going to quote myself here, from the thread for the recent Jimquisition:

Well, you gotta make a difference there depending on the type of game. In a jump'n'run the protargonist really isnt important and could be just a ball of goo (just dont call it gooboy or something), I doubt anyone would criticize the lack of a gender.
Now when it comes to rpgs then its clear that its easier to get into a role if its closer to you. Like I naturally create a fem shepard or hawke, because that just works better for me. Same goes for any mmorpg.
When I play saints row 3 and (hopefully) soon saints row 4 with my boyfriend, it would feel odd if either of us was forced to not play as the fitting gender.
There are also games where its weird for me when I'm playing a male protargonist (elizabeth needs my help to pull a lever? I doubt I'm much stronger than she is, but the brown-haired, white, 30ish guy im playing naturally is) yet I tolerate it as its necessary to define the PC to be able to tell a story like that (or just makes it way less of a fuzz...).
Its even easier to tolerate that when I know there are games like the new tomb raider, mirrors edge and remember me which turn that around.

I think it is necessary in the current state that we ask why the creators decided to give the protargonist the gender they gave him/her. making just another 30ish, white, male guy is really lazy and I'd prefer if they just run a random generator to get atleast some personality (random being better than bland to me).
But we have to ask in any case, not just when the decision was made to make the PC male: Making a female character just to make a female character is just as bad.

So in conclusion: some games dont need a gendered PC and it might be good to just dont give it a gender at all.
some games benefit a lot from giving the player the choice.
and some games need a more specified protargonist, which is alright if that doesnt automaticly mean hes gotta be male.