Multiple AAA franchises regularly starring a female protagonists now and forever

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white_wolf

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Rebel_Raven said:
white_wolf said:
I mean, there's
http://www.themarysue.com/e3-games-female-characters/
that offers a list of 31 games that, at the least, have gender select, and it's not terribly complete, but lemme ask you this, how many have you honestly heard of?


Of that list alone I know: 17

Of those I didn't even know you could play as a woman for 3 of them. Devs however need to stop assuming players will know that you can pick your gender (in SP or MP) games and advertise it on every commercial, article, on their own websites, during interviews potential players can't be expected to figure it out post launch when pre-launch is the place to do that.
Not necessarily that far, but yeah, I agree that advertisement can often make or break a game. It's not like GTA, CoD, and Battlefield became juggernauts of the gaming industry by not having commercials that are getting bigger and better.
COD communicates boys will love this because action and explorations if for some reason they place a fem lead or the option in SP players who want to play main campaign COD as a woman would love that however by not telling them she's even a possibility the to be players might not figure it out because the ads and articles sure won't tell them and pre-launch there isn't word of mouth for a feature the devs aren't highlighting. Then the players who say, " Oh I'd try COD again if it had a woman lead" will definitely not know it got one because they didn't show and tell them that or they'll keep assuming fem characters after ghost are confined to MP that wasn't enough apparently to get them to put down their money but a femlead COD would.

Its the reason why in ME you can run into three categories of people 1. ones who never played but say while the commercials looked awesome they didn't want to play as Mshep and are surprised when you say well you could've played as fshep, 2. only know it as the game where you can be a chick in the third game then state they would like to play it but want to do so with her for all three titles and then you have to tell them she was in all three or 3. the ones who play the series and know and love her but wounder why BW's players for fshep were so low yet her popularity so high.

Well for 1. Poor advertising it showed mshep all the time for every product save the last game box art (if retailers switched the jackets) and one internet only ad this type of gamer didn't see. So BW obviously needed to communicate off the internet in commercials, articles, FB, ect 2. These people saw that ad but due to poor advertising of fshep for 2 titles they didn't know she was even available for the trilogy and hence withheld their buy. Again BW can solve this and other companies as well, 3. BW gimped their own numbers they stated they only used XBLGold members to pull those numbers from so XBsilver and no internet users don't get counted. What are those numbers? Well in ME2 she was 20% XBLG players, in ME3 18% XBLG (But wait there's more BW didn't tell us? Why yes there is!) XBLG also customized ME3's fshep 80% to mshep's 42% and a BSN popularity ME3 poll that includes all types of players polled 27% always pick fshep while 25% usually pick her to play as but have played some mshep meaning she's really freaking popular and her add to the game was worth it but if BW doesn't advertise the fem hero for ME4 they will not gain players of the above 1 or 2 because they won't know about her again. They'll only gain players they already had and didn't lose with the endings debacle. On another note retailers also stated if they switched the cover to fshep they could sell the game to women and men who didn't know about her or the game existed! Because she was on the cover of a game they could like! Of course this isn't confined to just BW most co-gendered SP or MP games are failing to tell players about their fem options.

Its a simple fix for the entire industry when at least it comes to SP and MP gender options its so simple just say you've got it and where is it MP only or SP and MP? Players want to know and you need to tell them its the same way you say we've got customization on guns or we've got great weather you need to say you don't have to play a dude! You don't need their own trailers include them in the same one with concept art or a mention or state it when devs say, " Our hero is the monster slayer," this statement just assumes everyone knows what you know and they don't so instead say it as, " Our players can be the male or female monster slaying hero," this communicates simply you can choose! Thats all they need to do.

E3 this year actually tried however if you lived in a area that didn't showcase the event on TV all day long what you got was 4 hours (or so) of TV air time and the rest you had to stream live from the internet which means the first 4 hours had the largest viewing audience convenience wise not many games, interviews, and live demo features showed up with the fem options (or fem leads) during this time they mainly showed up later on the internet meaning if you didn't log on you missed the news and that needs to be worked on. Steps are being taken with last game trilogies but devs all across the genres need to keep making those steps and not stop talking about their women heros or PCs because its a new game of a current gen trilogy.
 

Eve Charm

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LifeCharacter said:
Eve Charm said:
Then at the end of the day it comes down to , You don't want it bad enough. If you know these games exist and you have a platform to play them on and haven't bothered at all just means ya, Female protaginst is a nice choice, but It's not going to gain any sales but it sure will lose them.
So because I won't throw money away at games I don't even fucking want, it's female characters fault? How nice of you to give all those people who want something different the option of either shutting up forever (because how dare they bother you with wanting something different?) or wasting their obviously infinite amounts of money on games they don't even want to play for the sake of making a point the industry probably won't even care about. How about we stop pretending that the failure of shitty games is due to the vaginaed protagonist when there's really no reason to assume that.
Ya thing is, The games I listed, don't really have much difference in GAMEPLAY and such as -The Games With Male Protagonists!- Heavenly sword, female god of war. Wet/Bayonetta/Drakengard 3, female character action game. Metroid prime, Female Fps. Hyper nep/atelier Female focused JRPG. Hell it even works the other way With Uncharted being "The Dude Raider"

I haven't listed any game that hasn't been listed before when the topic comes up and frankly if you don't know ANY, you either haven't asked or done anything to try to or it's something you don't care enough about. There is a difference between " I'd like that option," and "I'd pay for that"


But really just take a look in the mirror, because this is it, Your on your soapbox screaming for Diversity in games, Yet you won't buy a diverse game. While most of the games I've listed do have similar gameplay, The Stories are off the god damn wall in a whole other tangent. Screaming wanting diversity and not even willing to try going into the diverse end of gaming is hypocrisy at it's finest and frankly YES I am sick of hearing about it.

Your Never Ever going to see what Diversity is in gaming just complaining about the AAA market isn't putting female,black,LGBT or whatever, Your just going to see the same game over and over again this time with a different skin and maybe a shallow stereotype.
 

Rebel_Raven

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white_wolf said:
Rebel_Raven said:
white_wolf said:
I mean, there's
http://www.themarysue.com/e3-games-female-characters/
that offers a list of 31 games that, at the least, have gender select, and it's not terribly complete, but lemme ask you this, how many have you honestly heard of?


Of that list alone I know: 17

Of those I didn't even know you could play as a woman for 3 of them. Devs however need to stop assuming players will know that you can pick your gender (in SP or MP) games and advertise it on every commercial, article, on their own websites, during interviews potential players can't be expected to figure it out post launch when pre-launch is the place to do that.
Not necessarily that far, but yeah, I agree that advertisement can often make or break a game. It's not like GTA, CoD, and Battlefield became juggernauts of the gaming industry by not having commercials that are getting bigger and better.

COD communicates boys will love this because action and explorations if for some reason they place a fem lead or the option in SP players who want to play main campaign COD as a woman would love that however by not telling them she's even a possibility the to be players might not figure it out because the ads and articles sure won't tell them and pre-launch there isn't word of mouth for a feature the devs aren't highlighting. Then the players who say, " Oh I'd try COD again if it had a woman lead" will definitely not know it got one because they didn't show and tell them that or they'll keep assuming fem characters after ghost are confined to MP that wasn't enough apparently to get them to put down their money but a femlead COD would.

Its the reason why in ME you can run into three categories of people 1. ones who never played but say while the commercials looked awesome they didn't want to play as Mshep and are surprised when you say well you could've played as fshep, 2. only know it as the game where you can be a chick in the third game then state they would like to play it but want to do so with her for all three titles and then you have to tell them she was in all three or 3. the ones who play the series and know and love her but wounder why BW's players for fshep were so low yet her popularity so high.

Well for 1. Poor advertising it showed mshep all the time for every product save the last game box art (if retailers switched the jackets) and one internet only ad this type of gamer didn't see. So BW obviously needed to communicate off the internet in commercials, articles, FB, ect 2. These people saw that ad but due to poor advertising of fshep for 2 titles they didn't know she was even available for the trilogy and hence withheld their buy. Again BW can solve this and other companies as well, 3. BW gimped their own numbers they stated they only used XBLGold members to pull those numbers from so XBsilver and no internet users don't get counted. What are those numbers? Well in ME2 she was 20% XBLG players, in ME3 18% XBLG (But wait there's more BW didn't tell us? Why yes there is!) XBLG also customized ME3's fshep 80% to mshep's 42% and a BSN popularity ME3 poll that includes all types of players polled 27% always pick fshep while 25% usually pick her to play as but have played some mshep meaning she's really freaking popular and her add to the game was worth it but if BW doesn't advertise the fem hero for ME4 they will not gain players of the above 1 or 2 because they won't know about her again. They'll only gain players they already had and didn't lose with the endings debacle. On another note retailers also stated if they switched the cover to fshep they could sell the game to women and men who didn't know about her or the game existed! Because she was on the cover of a game they could like! Of course this isn't confined to just BW most co-gendered SP or MP games are failing to tell players about their fem options.

Its a simple fix for the entire industry when at least it comes to SP and MP gender options its so simple just say you've got it and where is it MP only or SP and MP? Players want to know and you need to tell them its the same way you say we've got customization on guns or we've got great weather you need to say you don't have to play a dude! You don't need their own trailers include them in the same one with concept art or a mention or state it when devs say, " Our hero is the monster slayer," this statement just assumes everyone knows what you know and they don't so instead say it as, " Our players can be the male or female monster slaying hero," this communicates simply you can choose! Thats all they need to do.

E3 this year actually tried however if you lived in a area that didn't showcase the event on TV all day long what you got was 4 hours (or so) of TV air time and the rest you had to stream live from the internet which means the first 4 hours had the largest viewing audience convenience wise not many games, interviews, and live demo features showed up with the fem options (or fem leads) during this time they mainly showed up later on the internet meaning if you didn't log on you missed the news and that needs to be worked on. Steps are being taken with last game trilogies but devs all across the genres need to keep making those steps and not stop talking about their women heros or PCs because its a new game of a current gen trilogy.
I agree that the Industry would do well to advertise gender selection as Saints Row did, off and on, but to the point that they released their character creator as a demo. It'd make my decisions on buying a game easier in that I won't have to google/youtube, often intensely, to find the depth of character customization, or to even find out if it has any.

As much as I try, and research, there's no telling how many games I've miseed that I might've liked, and it's not really my fault since those games are extremely obscure.
 

white_wolf

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Rebel_Raven said:
I agree that the Industry would do well to advertise gender selection as Saints Row did, off and on, but to the point that they released their character creator as a demo. It'd make my decisions on buying a game easier in that I won't have to google/youtube, often intensely, to find the depth of character customization, or to even find out if it has any.

As much as I try, and research, there's no telling how many games I've miseed that I might've liked, and it's not really my fault since those games are extremely obscure.
I agree the customization should be shown way more I can't tell you how many times I've seen PC customization and went if only I had a decent laptop to support that game! On the console end I'm left wondering if its going to be a robust or lackluster affair. Really its another great way to sell the game to show players what they'll get in both the male and female customization options because nothing is worse if you want to play the gender they aren't showing! Even if its only like 3 hair style examples, 2 preset face examples, and if they have clothing or armor you can customize show like 3 options of that.
 

Pogilrup

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Eve Charm said:
Ya thing is, The games I listed, don't really have much difference in GAMEPLAY and such as -The Games With Male Protagonists!- Heavenly sword, female god of war. Wet/Bayonetta/Drakengard 3, female character action game. Metroid prime, Female Fps. Hyper nep/atelier Female focused JRPG. Hell it even works the other way With Uncharted being "The Dude Raider"

I haven't listed any game that hasn't been listed before when the topic comes up and frankly if you don't know ANY, you either haven't asked or done anything to try to or it's something you don't care enough about. There is a difference between " I'd like that option," and "I'd pay for that"


But really just take a look in the mirror, because this is it, Your on your soapbox screaming for Diversity in games, Yet you won't buy a diverse game. While most of the games I've listed do have similar gameplay, The Stories are off the god damn wall in a whole other tangent. Screaming wanting diversity and not even willing to try going into the diverse end of gaming is hypocrisy at it's finest and frankly YES I am sick of hearing about it.

Your Never Ever going to see what Diversity is in gaming just complaining about the AAA market isn't putting female,black,LGBT or whatever, Your just going to see the same game over and over again this time with a different skin and maybe a shallow stereotype.
Supporting indie games can only do so much.

At some point we have to consider moving the seemingly unmovable.
 

Eve Charm

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Pogilrup said:
Supporting indie games can only do so much.

At some point we have to consider moving the seemingly unmovable.
I didn't name a bunch of indies I named a bunch of companies "B tier" line-ups that using baseball here, don't get to see the Majors when they can't even cut it in the Minors. Sony, who makes god of war, tries out heavenly sword, don't see anymore heavenly swords, but plenty of new god of wars. Capcom who tried remember me, A big flop, went back to sticking with DMC. Assassin's creed, Brings back out liberation due to demand for it because people don't want a vita, obviously it did bad.

Even good games people want, Like Beyond good and evil and Mirrors edge, have sequels stuck in development hell.

On Indies I doubt people are even supporting them.
 

Pogilrup

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Eve Charm said:
Pogilrup said:
Supporting indie games can only do so much.

At some point we have to consider moving the seemingly unmovable.
I didn't name a bunch of indies I named a bunch of companies "B tier" line-ups that using baseball here, don't get to see the Majors when they can't even cut it in the Minors. Sony, who makes god of war, tries out heavenly sword, don't see anymore heavenly swords, but plenty of new god of wars. Capcom who tried remember me, A big flop, went back to sticking with DMC. Assassin's creed, Brings back out liberation due to demand for it because people don't want a vita, obviously it did bad.

Even good games people want, Like Beyond good and evil and Mirrors edge, have sequels stuck in development hell.

On Indies I doubt people are even supporting them.
Well we can't change the past.

The best we could do is support upcoming and future games that centered around female protagonist.

Or are you suggesting that those who criticize the strongest wouldn't end up support such a game in the future?
 

the December King

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Megalodon said:
Is Diet Coke targeting women for sexual reasons? Because to me it looks like they're using sex to market their product to women.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=diet+coke+advert&client=firefox-a&hs=Cf1&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:eek:fficial&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ddKyU8zAOqKK7AbErYGYDQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1195&bih=662

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/diet-coke-blokes-an-evolution#image-rotator-5
That ad was brilliant! The look on the girls faces when he took off the shirt- that was pure gold.

And for the record, it did seem to be targeted to women featuring sexual objectification- kinda reminded me of those old Marca Bavaria ads - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYK3D9EGIP8.
 

Pogilrup

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LifeCharacter said:
Yes, I really can't buy every single game with a female protagonist in it.

Besides, if anyone has to perform Keynesian spending to secure the presence of female protagonists in this medium it should be the publishers as part of their campaign to "appeal to a wider audience".
 

DrOswald

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Pogilrup said:
It is hard to measure the progress of sex and gender diversity in the videogames medium.

But personally I would see it as a milestone if we can get ad blitzes for big name games that feature a female protagonist, not named Samus Aran, Bayonetta or Lara Croft, not just one year or even one decade but every year til the end of humanity.

Now why AAA games? It is because characters of AAA games have a high probability of being ingrained in pop culture memory for years to come.

Many indie games may be successful but few that I know of can achieve widespread pop culture status. Mobile games can achieve pop culture status fast, but can they withstand the test of time?

Having many female protagonists in the medium is good, but having many memorable iconic female protagonists is even better as they would serve as a metaphorical anchor to inspire similar protagonists.
First of all, why exclude some of the already big female focused games? Why do they not count? I mean, I agree with the overall point, but why don't Lara and Samus make the cut?

Anyway, one of the biggest issues is probably lack of developer interest in making female protagonists. People who are passionate about female representation talk about games. People who are passionate about games make games. There is no reason to suspect that there is a higher than normal overlap between the two. And how many people are really passionate about female representation? Not just for it in general terms, but really, truly passionate about it, willing to dedicate significant energy and time to the issue? Maybe 3% of the population?

The chance of any development team having a significant portion of people who are passionate about female representation is very low. And if only a few people care then the group as a whole is not going to be pushing for it. They don't really care either way.

And if getting a female character is half as hard to get approved as we have been led to believe then there is just no motivation to use up publisher good will on something that the developer themselves really does not believe will improve the game.

Now, this doesn't mean they will just capitulate when it comes to any gender issue. Naughty Dog, for example, fought hard to make sure Ellie was on the box art. That was important to them. But it was important because they are passionate about games. Ellie was important because she was important to the game, not because she was a girl.
 

Eve Charm

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LifeCharacter said:
Pogilrup said:
Besides, if anyone has to perform Keynesian spending to secure the presence of female protagonists in this medium it should be the publishers as part of their campaign to "appeal to a wider audience".
Oh how I wish "appeal to a wider audience" actually meant what it sounds like it should mean instead of "appeal to the same audience of 12-30 year old white boys/men... but try to get more of them this time."
Alright fine, lets be productive here, So what games with white male protagonists that are actually people not floating guns do you like that you wish would have female protagonists and we'll see if anyone here can't find you a similar good game worth playing, since your too busy to.

And ya saying games are bad when you never played them is a bit of a cop out, how do you know they just aren't reviewed as well cause they aren't appealing to the reviewers reviewing them that are probably male. Hey you seen what happen when female reviewers didn't give GTA an 10.
 

gargantual

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LifeCharacter said:
Pogilrup said:
Besides, if anyone has to perform Keynesian spending to secure the presence of female protagonists in this medium it should be the publishers as part of their campaign to "appeal to a wider audience".
Oh how I wish "appeal to a wider audience" actually meant what it sounds like it should mean instead of "appeal to the same audience of 12-30 year old white boys/men... but try to get more of them this time."
Blame Microsoft, EA and Activision. They started this trend after the XBOX first launched. 'Just aim for the dudebros.' Before then with the PS2, Sony knew the game was not so much a market game, but a numbers game. Not pitting consoles against each other. I'm just saying in the west, we had very shallow marketing aspirations. Whoever puts out the widest amount of different niche titles wins.