The real significance of female protagonists

[Erttheking]

Snip

To quote a friend of mine "I don't consider a game where you have the option to customize your character to be a woman to be an example of a female protagonist the same way I don't consider a blank piece of paper to be an essay) Don't get me wrong, I like games that give you the option to do that, but it can't capture having a female main character who is a true character in her own right. Customizable characters barely have any personality to them, half the time they don't even speak even if every other character in the game has voice acting, and if they do they tend to have very bland personalities, usually to balance out the fact that the game is heavy on choice and branching paths. It's like talking about great male main characters and then pointing to Gordon Freeman.

As for Remember Me, I didn't hear very good things about it and I didn't get excited about it. Also, what is that supposed to mean? That people who want more female protagonists should just run out and grab every single game with a female character that they see? No thanks, I want games with good writing and fun game play. Games like Fallout New Vegas, and while it lacks a female main character, it's still very female friendly with a massive amount of female NPCs with a whole rainbow spectrum of personality. But despite the fact that I love Fallout, gaming seems to struggle saying "This character is female and ONLY female" while it has no problem doing it with men.

 

[Riot3000]

Honestly I think with Ubisoft thing is was more of bullshit something about "it being too hard". Its is not hard to make one I will agree Ubisoft dropped the ball with this one a four player co-op but with modifications of the same character and no customization? They can do that but still they pretty much dropped the ball.

I'd actually agree with this one. It can't be harder than dealing with the PR fallout.

I love Ubi I am big fan of their work and franchise but with Watchdogs and now Unity somewhere EA is dancing off the walls.

Right now Ubi needs to put money toward a better PR team which probably cost more than making two X chromosome models.

 

[mecegirl]

Of course, when you *do* have a game that meets most of the restrictions people like to place, it doesn't sell even when it should be everything they ask for. Duke Nukem Forever, a game that's generally the go-to example of development hell and AAA games going horribly wrong sold 4 copies for every copy of Remember Me that sold (which was middling but not bad but mostly failed to live up to the awesome potential of it's own setting). What does that say about the people complaining about a lack of female protagonists? Either there aren't a whole lot of them, or they don't put their money where their mouth is. For the record, I bought Remember Me new, and won't pick up DNF until it goes under $4.99.

It says nothing. You don't even have any proof that the people who bought DNF have any cross over with the people who bought Remember Me. It has also been proven that games with female protagonists get smaller marketing budgets than games with male protagonists.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/...ont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them

And with those two examples its even more apparent. In no way is it people's fault for not rushing out to buy a game that they don't even know exists. Ads for DNF were everywhere. That was not so for Remember Me. About the only publicity Remember Me got was about the devs talking about how no publisher wanted their game, and a trailer. Duke Nukem also comes from an older and quite infamous franchise. Remember Me is a new IP. Any gamer not continuously plugged into gaming "news" sites wouldn't have even heard of Remember me.

 

[wulf3n]

its funny how people will get angry and even volitile towards developers (see Bioware) but as soon as its in regards to a female issue its all Sympathy...

It's not really, because odds are they're not the same people.


It's not like person x got angry at bioware for the bad ending and is now asking for calm. Person X got angry Person Y is asking people to calm down, and I'm sure person Y was amongst those telling Person X to calm down.

The problem here is that people tend to view the internet as a single entity.

 

[Eve Charm]

Of course, when you *do* have a game that meets most of the restrictions people like to place, it doesn't sell even when it should be everything they ask for. Duke Nukem Forever, a game that's generally the go-to example of development hell and AAA games going horribly wrong sold 4 copies for every copy of Remember Me that sold (which was middling but not bad but mostly failed to live up to the awesome potential of it's own setting). What does that say about the people complaining about a lack of female protagonists? Either there aren't a whole lot of them, or they don't put their money where their mouth is. For the record, I bought Remember Me new, and won't pick up DNF until it goes under $4.99.

It says nothing. You don't even have any proof that the people who bought DNF have any cross over with the people who bought Remember Me. It has also been proven that games with female protagonists get smaller marketing budgets than games with male protagonists.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/...ont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them

And with those two examples its even more apparent. In no way is it people's fault for not rushing out to buy a game that they don't even know exists. Ads for DNF were everywhere. That was not so for Remember Me. About the only publicity Remember Me got was about the devs talking about how no publisher wanted their game, and a trailer. Duke Nukem also comes from an older and quite infamous franchise. Remember Me is a new IP. Any gamer not continuously plugged into gaming "news" sites wouldn't have even heard of Remember me.

You shouldn't need a big marketing budget when a game is targeting an audience that doesn't get catered to often, I.E. niche. The whole crux of the argument is here is this 50% of women gamers looking for games with female protagonists running out there you don't think if an half decent one shown up it would explode due to word of mouth.

Amenisa and outlast exploded thanks to word of mouth bringing horror back into a main genre, Tell tale games exploded bringing back point and click due to word of mouth. Hell even Gone home exploded but sadly you weren't even a damn character in that game. How much advertising was given to any of these, barely any but they found their audiences just fine because they existed.

To say 50% of main stream gaming out there is females, and over 100 million last gen consoles out there, for games like "Assassin creed : liberation, drakengard 3, Remember me, gravity rush, deception 4, Wet, bullet witch, Kameo, All those alchemist games, Beyond two souls, can't attract any audience what so ever, then people must not really give a damn about female protagonists, or at least enough to take out their wallets and buy and play a game they are so loudly pining for.

 

[wulf3n]

Games like Fallout New Vegas, and while it lacks a female main character

Uhhh, no it doesn't. I suggest you go back and play it again, paying particular attention to the screen at the start that says gender.

No thanks, I want games with good writing and fun game play.

Exactly. In the eyes of the publishers you Don't want games with female protagonists.

 

[clippen05]

Pardon my bluntness, but sadly, I much rather have a finished complete product than social justice. Would it be great to have gender equality in games? Yeah sure. But if Ubisoft, who has a history of rushing games, would have to devote that much time to it that it would potentially disrupt the game's launch or cause it to be unfinished at launch, I honestly don't care if there are no women. Not that I buy their excuse that it would require so much time and effort, because all it would require is new skins and models right? But if they are telling the truth, then I will accept that. Besides, the game is heavily based on history, and historically, the vast majority of participants in war, murder, and assassination are men. If it was most other games, I wouldn't give a pass; however Assassin's Creed has been a franchise that tries to be historically authentic.

But this is an opinion from a man... I'm sure ladies would feel differently, and rightly so.

EDIT: I just realised that the Assassin's Creed franchise has had a game with a female protagonist AND I read the story detailing that a female combatant in the French Revolution is more than plausible as it did happen. So, in that case, both my argument on the historical authenticity being a possible excuse to not do it as well as Ubisoft's excuse that it would 'cost too much' both garbage excuses. So... maybe Ubisoft should step up and change this...

 

[mecegirl]

You shouldn't need a big marketing budget when a game is targeting an audience that doesn't get catered to often, I.E. niche. The whole crux of the argument is here is this 50% of women gamers looking for games with female protagonists running out there you don't think if an half decent one shown up it would explode due to word of mouth.

Amenisa and outlast exploded thanks to word of mouth bringing horror back into a main genre, Tell tale games exploded bringing back point and click due to word of mouth. Hell even Gone home exploded but sadly you weren't even a damn character in that game. How much advertising was given to any of these, barely any but they found their audiences just fine because they existed.

To say 50% of main stream gaming out there is females, and over 100 million last gen consoles out there, for games like "Assassin creed : liberation, drakengard 3, Remember me, gravity rush, deception 4, Wet, bullet witch, Kameo, All those alchemist games, Beyond two souls, can't attract any audience what so ever, then people must not really give a damn about female protagonists, or at least enough to take out their wallets and buy and play a game they are so loudly pining for.

Any product needs a marketing budget. People have lives. People seek entertainment from other sources than video games. And the more games they see that don't look interesting to them the less likely they are to pay attention to video games for their entertainment needs at all. They will just see the swarm of ads for games with White male protagonists and assume that nothing has changed. Because, once again, people have lives. They are not gonna wait around for the scraps that the AAA industry sends their way. The AAA industry is going to have to do something to grab their attention. And unless a game leaves the few that did play it with a positive impression, the lack of marketing won't be counteracted with good word of mouth.

 

[wulf3n]

The AAA industry is going to have to do something to grab their attention.

Maybe if the AAA needed the extra audience. But it really doesn't. It's been shown time and time again that it doesn't actually have to be more diverse to make money.

The problem here is that you're assuming the AAA actually cares about grabbing the attention of other demographics... they don't.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

]Just... let people make the game they wanna make.

Really not in the mood to repeat the same reasons why Ubisoft should be able to make whatever Ubisoft wants.

If UbiSoft decides it wants to release a buggy game which looks way worse than the trailers, has mediocre mechanics, an awful story, or is just 3 hours long, will you jump to their defense too telling everyone that "Ubisoft should be able to make whatever Ubisoft wants"? Better yet, make this game the third game or so of a franchise that you love? Will you? No? I thought so.

Do all of you who keep making this argument have so little self-awareness that you don't realize this excuse, this reason for why people shouldn't critizice a game, (almost) always only comes up in one specific context?

Sigh... alright, I admit I didn't really think that comment through very well. I was offline for a week.

Honestly, looking at that comment, it kinda goes against what I usually think. I do think people should make what they want, but that never guarantees the creator knows what's best for their product. You do need other opinions thrown in to help you make the right decisions, especially if you're planning on selling your product or putting it out for the public.

In the end, though, I just want a fun game. I admit I'm not as big into gaming as I used to, so I usually play them for recreational purposes.

 

[Lupine]

]Just... let people make the game they wanna make. If someone feels like their story should have a male protagonist, then let them go. I rather them have four male characters than for them to shoehorn in a female character just for the sake of having a female character. It's like when people complain about too much white characters and want an ethnic one. It simply feels like they want an ethnic character simply for the sake of it rather than if or if not it'll work with the story/setting.

You know I'd agree with you maybe if we didn't hear stories like Ellie on The Last of Us box or Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite. That sort of thing makes exactly zero sense. Or cut to Remember Me and the whole panic over a woman being in a heterosexual relationship with a man and still being the main character...

Yeah, that sort of thing isn't exactly pointing to sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism when game creators are having their artistic vision impacted upon in the opposite direction already. That's not to say that I feel like you should force anyone to do anything artistically, but that doesn't mean that people can't ask why exactly you made the decisions you made.

As for the whole complaining about ethnic characters line being the same as with women, well I agree but...as someone who is considered ethnic, let me point out that I've had people give me the whole "hard to identify with (insert race other than Caucasian) argument before and considering I've been able to identify with caucasian protagonists just fine up until this point...yeah that seems like as much a cop-out as anything. Especially the part about ethnicity or gender working in the story's setting. More often than not most games wouldn't change even a little if the gender or ethnicity of a character were to change. I give you that point when a story revolves around a particular culture, but at the same time how many of those circumstances are we really dealing with beyond maybe the Women historically appearing less often on the battlefield argument.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

]Just... let people make the game they wanna make. If someone feels like their story should have a male protagonist, then let them go. I rather them have four male characters than for them to shoehorn in a female character just for the sake of having a female character. It's like when people complain about too much white characters and want an ethnic one. It simply feels like they want an ethnic character simply for the sake of it rather than if or if not it'll work with the story/setting.

You know I'd agree with you maybe if we didn't hear stories like Ellie on The Last of Us box or Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite. That sort of thing makes exactly zero sense. Or cut to Remember Me and the whole panic over a woman being in a heterosexual relationship with a man and still being the main character...

Yeah, that sort of thing isn't exactly pointing to sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism when game creators are having their artistic vision impacted upon in the opposite direction already. That's not to say that I feel like you should force anyone to do anything artistically, but that doesn't mean that people can't ask why exactly you made the decisions you made.

As for the whole complaining about ethnic characters line being the same as with women, well I agree but...as someone who is considered ethnic, let me point out that I've had people give me the whole "hard to identify with (insert race other than Caucasian) argument before and considering I've been able to identify with caucasian protagonists just fine up until this point...yeah that seems like as much a cop-out as anything. Especially the part about ethnicity or gender working in the story's setting. More often than not most games wouldn't change even a little if the gender or ethnicity of a character were to change. I give you that point when a story revolves around a particular culture, but at the same time how many of those circumstances are we really dealing with beyond maybe the Women historically appearing less often on the battlefield argument.

I guess my perspective when I made that comment was, well, what do you want them to do about it at this point? I mean, if they were to buckle to the demands now with the game coming out at the end of the year I'm worried that they'd half-ass it with the female character simply being, well, a female, with no real depth to her and simply being there to please the people clamoring for one. If they're gonna make a good, full-fledged female character then it probably will end up being a lot of work.

As for the ethnic thing, I'm ethnic, too. Hell, I'm half Hawaiian, and all the time when I see a movie that take place in Hawaii it always revolve around white main characters, but that alone never made the difference between a good movie and a bad movie. I simply care whether or not the character's any good. I was never bothered by what race or gender a character is, Hell, most of the stories I write usually star a female character, but I'm bothered when others feel bothered by it and turn it into a big arguement.

 

[Lupine]

]

]Just... let people make the game they wanna make. If someone feels like their story should have a male protagonist, then let them go. I rather them have four male characters than for them to shoehorn in a female character just for the sake of having a female character. It's like when people complain about too much white characters and want an ethnic one. It simply feels like they want an ethnic character simply for the sake of it rather than if or if not it'll work with the story/setting.

You know I'd agree with you maybe if we didn't hear stories like Ellie on The Last of Us box or Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite. That sort of thing makes exactly zero sense. Or cut to Remember Me and the whole panic over a woman being in a heterosexual relationship with a man and still being the main character...

Yeah, that sort of thing isn't exactly pointing to sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism when game creators are having their artistic vision impacted upon in the opposite direction already. That's not to say that I feel like you should force anyone to do anything artistically, but that doesn't mean that people can't ask why exactly you made the decisions you made.

As for the whole complaining about ethnic characters line being the same as with women, well I agree but...as someone who is considered ethnic, let me point out that I've had people give me the whole "hard to identify with (insert race other than Caucasian) argument before and considering I've been able to identify with caucasian protagonists just fine up until this point...yeah that seems like as much a cop-out as anything. Especially the part about ethnicity or gender working in the story's setting. More often than not most games wouldn't change even a little if the gender or ethnicity of a character were to change. I give you that point when a story revolves around a particular culture, but at the same time how many of those circumstances are we really dealing with beyond maybe the Women historically appearing less often on the battlefield argument.

I guess my perspective when I made that comment was, well, what do you want them to do about it at this point? I mean, if they were to buckle to the demands now with the game coming out at the end of the year I'm worried that they'd half-ass it with the female character simply being, well, a female, with no real depth to her and simply being there to please the people clamoring for one. If they're gonna make a good, full-fledged female character then it probably will end up being a lot of work.

As for the ethnic thing, I'm ethnic, too. Hell, I'm half Hawaiian, and all the time when I see a movie that take place in Hawaii it always revolve around white main characters, but that alone never made the difference between a good movie and a bad movie. I simply care whether or not the character's any good. I was never bothered by what race or gender a character is, Hell, most of the stories I write usually star a female character, but I'm bothered when others feel bothered by it and turn it into a big arguement.

Well, with the way that Unity seems to be going about co-op I'm going to say that depth actually doesn't matter. With Unity, the thing is that the player sees themselves as the main protagonist and other players as what are essentially color swaps of him. In most games I feel like no one would care, but they then went on to mod those color swaps to be a bit more individual and this is Assassin's Creed where we have had other assassins since Brotherhood with a portion of them being women as well as from quite a few nationalities. What then made it a perfect storm was the "it is too expensive to include female models" comment which only made things worst as developers pointed out that this was a lie.

So, we don't really need a fully realized character here, people would just have liked a bit more variety in their avatars.

As for the ethnicity thing...I am not saying that ethnicity makes good or bad characters. What I am saying however is that there are plenty voices against diversity for no other reason than, oh that is different and because different must intrinsically be bad.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

Well, with the way that Unity seems to be going about co-op I'm going to say that depth actually doesn't matter. With Unity, the thing is that the player sees themselves as the main protagonist and other players as what are essentially color swaps of him. In most games I feel like no one would care, but they then went on to mod those color swaps to be a bit more individual and this is Assassin's Creed where we have had other assassins since Brotherhood with a portion of them being women as well as from quite a few nationalities. What then made it a perfect storm was the "it is too expensive to include female models" comment which only made things worst as developers pointed out that this was a lie.

So, we don't really need a fully realized character here, people would just have liked a bit more variety in their avatars.

As for the ethnicity thing...I am not saying that ethnicity makes good or bad characters. What I am saying however is that there are plenty voices against diversity for no other reason than, oh that is different and because different must intrinsically be bad.

Yeah, like I mention in a previous post, I didn't really think that one through. I don't know a whole lot about Unity and was simply going off of when I see people usually react to this stuff. I understand where people are coming from now and I kinda agree with them in regards to the "Female characters are too much work" thing. In the end I just want a fun game.

And yeah, like I said, I don't care what gender or race a character is as long as the character itself is perfectly fine. My problem is with people who make a big deal about race and gender and how it distracts from the point. I guess it annoys me more than anything.

 

[Eve Charm]

Any product needs a marketing budget. People have lives. People seek entertainment from other sources than video games. And the more games they see that don't look interesting to them the less likely they are to pay attention to video games for their entertainment needs at all. They will just see the swarm of ads for games with White male protagonists and assume that nothing has changed. Because, once again, people have lives. They are not gonna wait around for the scraps that the AAA industry sends their way. The AAA industry is going to have to do something to grab their attention. And unless a game leaves the few that did play it with a positive impression, the lack of marketing won't be counteracted with good word of mouth.

Wrong, what kind of marketing budget do indie games have, Jack, But yet transistor just sold like crazy, octodad, braid, amnesia, Hell try to find a kid over 5 that doesn't know what Minecraft is, good luck. The best selling game on steam, the biggest digital distribution platform for gaming was "the forest" for over a month, a game no one heard of before in early early alpha and an broken save system beat out games like watch dogs because people seem to go crazy over horror crafting survival.

Also I highly doubt someone who's hobby is spending several hours a week playing video games, isn't going to take a bit of time looking over video games before dropping another 60 bucks on one. People are busy sure, but I don't know anyone that does there clothes shopping with enough tunnel vision that they only by what they saw in the ad and run out like your suggesting they do in video game.

Also you can't just flip my point if that there were people looking for female protagonists they'd go out of their way to find one the same way anyone else would when they are looking for a niche gaming experience would. Trying to flip it and saying the game would never go anywhere without a triple A marketing budget is basically saying no one is going to buy a game with a female protagonist in it with leading people with a stick with a carrot on the end of it. If you have to lead people to the game with a female protaginst to make it successful that just means the people playing video games are content playing as male leads or don't care enough to even bother to look for something else.

 

[mecegirl]

Any product needs a marketing budget. People have lives. People seek entertainment from other sources than video games. And the more games they see that don't look interesting to them the less likely they are to pay attention to video games for their entertainment needs at all. They will just see the swarm of ads for games with White male protagonists and assume that nothing has changed. Because, once again, people have lives. They are not gonna wait around for the scraps that the AAA industry sends their way. The AAA industry is going to have to do something to grab their attention. And unless a game leaves the few that did play it with a positive impression, the lack of marketing won't be counteracted with good word of mouth.

Wrong, what kind of marketing budget do indie games have, Jack, But yet transistor just sold like crazy, octodad, braid, amnesia, Hell try to find a kid over 5 that doesn't know what Minecraft is, good luck. The best selling game on steam, the biggest digital distribution platform for gaming was "the forest" for over a month, a game no one heard of before in early early alpha and an broken save system beat out games like watch dogs because people seem to go crazy over horror crafting survival.

How am I wrong? Everything you are blabbing on about I pretty much covered in the last sentence of my post. If the game isn't good enough it won't get a boost from word of mouth.

Also I highly doubt someone who's hobby is spending several hours a week playing video games, isn't going to take a bit of time looking over video games before dropping another 60 bucks on one. People are busy sure, but I don't know anyone that does there clothes shopping with enough tunnel vision that they only by what they saw in the ad and run out like your suggesting they do in video game.

I hate to break it to you, but not everyone who plays video games spends a lot of time on gaming websites. You do know that right? We, meaning those of us who frequent places like the Escapist, IGN, even Kotaku, are the minority of gamers. So yes, most will go to a store with $60 looking for a game that they have heard of. Why wouldn't they? This hobby is expensive, you can't expect people to take a chance on a game that they have never heard of.

Also you can't just flip my point if that there were people looking for female protagonists they'd go out of their way to find one the same way anyone else would when they are looking for a niche gaming experience would. Trying to flip it and saying the game would never go anywhere without a triple A marketing budget is basically saying no one is going to buy a game with a female protagonist in it with leading people with a stick with a carrot on the end of it. If you have to lead people to the game with a female protaginst to make it successful that just means the people playing video games are content playing as male leads or don't care enough to even bother to look for something else.

I live in this place called the real world. Where people have jobs, and school, and kids. Where people don't have masochistic tendencies. You see, the average person stops giving a fuck about things when they notice that those things don't give a fuck about them. It is no accident that there are less female gamers than male. Because most are following that golden rule of just voting with their wallet.

Some of those people may have moved on to independent games that suit their needs. Some may have given up on gaming altogether, because unlike when they were children they don't see anything that excites them anymore. Why spend 300, 400, even 500 dollars for new console and some games, when none of the games look interesting to you? When there are books and comics to read? Or movies to watch? Hell, a person could take that money and put it towards a really nice vacation. So yes, the AAA market would need to work to get their attention. They have to work to get the attention of gamers that do pay attention to the AAA market. Why wouldn't they work to get the attention of those who don't? Just like any industry needs to work to get the attention of the consumer. Every trailer, every press release, is jockeying for your attention. Every company is going to try to make their game look cooler than the other company's.

And as for the ones who are still paying attention to the AAA market and who do want more female characters in games. Some may feel like they have to buy every little thing regardless of how fun/ shitty it looks. But most have standards, and real lives, so budgets are a concern. Most have grown weary of table scraps and give no fucks about letting the industry know about it. Which is why we are in this thread talking about it now.

 

[Eve Charm]

Also you can't just flip my point if that there were people looking for female protagonists they'd go out of their way to find one the same way anyone else would when they are looking for a niche gaming experience would. Trying to flip it and saying the game would never go anywhere without a triple A marketing budget is basically saying no one is going to buy a game with a female protagonist in it with leading people with a stick with a carrot on the end of it. If you have to lead people to the game with a female protaginst to make it successful that just means the people playing video games are content playing as male leads or don't care enough to even bother to look for something else.

I live in this place called the real world. Where people have jobs, and school, and kids. Where people don't have masochistic tendencies. You see, the average person stops giving a fuck about things when they notice that those things don't give a fuck about them. It is no accident that there are less female gamers than male. Because most are following that golden rule of just voting with their wallet.

Some of those people may have moved on to independent games that suit their needs. Some may have given up on gaming altogether, because unlike when they were children they don't see anything that excites them anymore. Why spend 300, 400, even 500 dollars for new console and some games, when none of the games look interesting to you? When there are books and comics to read? Or movies to watch? Hell, a person could take that money and put it towards a really nice vacation. So yes, the AAA market would need to work to get their attention. They have to work to get the attention of gamers that do pay attention to the AAA market. Why wouldn't they work to get the attention of those who don't? Just like any industry needs to work to get the attention of the consumer. Every trailer, every press release, is jockeying for your attention. Every company is going to try to make their game look cooler than the other company's.

And as for the ones who are still paying attention to the AAA market and who do want more female characters in games. Some may feel like they have to buy every little thing regardless of how fun/ shitty it looks. But most have standards, and real lives, so budgets are a concern. Most have grown weary of table scraps and give no fucks about letting the industry know about it. Which is why we are in this thread talking about it now.

So at the end of the day your expecting the AAA studios to make games for an audience that isn't their normal audience, Then advertise the hell out of it spending tons of cash because in your words, the audience that wants this game, can't be bothered to go shop around or listen around for it but have plenty of time to whine about how they aren't being satisfied, and then there is not guarantee that even with the big marketing kick that they'll show up and buy it, but a mile long track record of when they didn't show up to buy it i.e. remember me, mirror's edge and so on.

That's an audience that doesn't need nor deserve someone's time/effort/risk and all, on a passion project. There are people chomping at the bits looking for their next Jrpg fix, horror fix, strategy game fix, able to make games like Bravely Default, Outlast, and Xcom remakes into best sellers without the help of marketing, just being in existence. UNTIL that audience gets "Hungry" like that, your asking for failure, and they know it's failure.

 

[Schadrach]

To quote a friend of mine "I don't consider a game where you have the option to customize your character to be a woman to be an example of a female protagonist the same way I don't consider a blank piece of paper to be an essay)

My problem is that such games will be counted against this topic though. Or to put it simply, games like the Fallouts, TES, Dragon's Dogma or Mount and Blade often get treated by the folks who complain about there not being enough female characters as though the games have male characters in order to make the problem look worse than it is.

As for Remember Me, I didn't hear very good things about it and I didn't get excited about it.

It had a brilliant setting and ideas that it failed to live up to. It's not really bad, but there's a lot of wasted potential. It's "passable", but it should have been much more.

Also, what is that supposed to mean? That people who want more female protagonists should just run out and grab every single game with a female character that they see?

What I was getting at was this: I make no special effort to get games with female characters, and have no specific desire to push the market to encourage more female characters. I am essentially gender neutral as far as protagonist choice, but I have a fairly broad taste in games (I really don't like grey-brown military FPSs with two weapons and regenerating health, but that's one of the few cases whee I can say something like that with a broad brush, and I love TF2 and Loadout).

All that said, I'd be willing to bet that I own more games with female protagonists that most of the folks complaining that there aren't enough such games. Because people who say there aren't any either have sufficiently narrow taste that they're really complaining that CoD and AssCreed don't have enough female characters, or they aren't looking.

The fact that games with female protagonists that should theoretically be getting a boost in sales from this massive untapped market simply don't implies that either said massive untapped market either isn't that massive, is sufficiently niche in it's tastes that the rest of the market shouldn't care. That's why I compared a game that's notorious for how utterly awful it is to a middle of the road game with a female protagonist and much better writing. That Remember Me was outsold by DNF by a factor of 4 says something, given that DNF is incredibly awful (the reason I picked it -- I wanted to compare a notoriously shitty game to a halfway decent action title by a major publisher with a female protagonist).

No thanks, I want games with good writing and fun game play.

OK, not sure why that would be a problem.

Games like Fallout New Vegas, and while it lacks a female main character, it's still very female friendly with a massive amount of female NPCs with a whole rainbow spectrum of personality. But despite the fact that I love Fallout, gaming seems to struggle saying "This character is female and ONLY female" while it has no problem doing it with men.

It also lacks a male main character. Question: How do you count a game with an ensemble cast (such as party-centered RPGs)? For example, does Bravely Default have a male main character, a female one, both, or neither? Does the answer change if we look at Final Fantasy VI?

Open world RPGs do tend to have a broad spread of NPCs in general. Of course, if you are an RPG fan and don't hate JRPGs, let me introduce you to the Atelier series which are pretty good JRPGs and every game in the series has a female protagonist, who the game is generally named for.

It says nothing. You don't even have any proof that the people who bought DNF have any cross over with the people who bought Remember Me.

...you realize this is the argument used behind claiming the ESA "nearly half of gamers are women" stat is irrelevant, right? Except replacing "mobile games, facebook games, and the Sims" in one side and "the rest of gaming" in the other.

It has also been proven that games with female protagonists get smaller marketing budgets than games with male protagonists.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/...ont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them

Yeah, it's not like in these days a game can sell astoundingly huge numbers of copies without a large and thorough marketing campaign, and everyone trusts advertising so thoroughly that no one ever looks into a game at all before making a purchase. Good thing too, or else trash without a marketing budget like Minecraft or Amnesia might have gotten pretty big.

And with those two examples its even more apparent. In no way is it people's fault for not rushing out to buy a game that they don't even know exists.

I must be the only person out there who doesn't wait for TV ads to tell me what games I should want to play, and then blindly obey. Then again, I don't really watch commercials any more (TiVo, I just FF through them) and I can just tune out most internet ads (unless they're especially awful, and then I simply don't go back to that site again).

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

As I said before, it's not that I don't enjoy these games, it's that despite the fact that there's an abundance of them, there are barely any games where you can look at the main character and say "That character is female, no ifs ands or buts." It's a step in the right direction, but we're still not there yet.

And I just can't bring myself to go out and buy it based on that alone.

Frankly I think everyone has a right to complain that Assassin's Creed doesn't have a female main character if the best excuse that the developer can come up with is "It's too hard". And this concept that if you didn't buy remember me or didn't buy the latest tomb raider makes you unable to complain about the representation of female main characters, it just infuriates me. I am extremely interested in the new Tomb Raider and I'm on the cusp of buying it, but it really rubs me the wrong way that "I bought more of x games" is considered a good counter-argument Also, Remember Me was outsold by Devil May Cry? I think that's because people didn't know that Remember Me existed. Think back, do you remember there being much advertisment for that game? I don't, maybe one or two banners on game websites. Heck, Metro Last Light, which I consider to be rather obscure, got more advertisement than that did. It's because whenever there's a game with a female main character, they get the shaft when it comes to budgets and as an extension, advertisement.

http://www.themarysue.com/why-games-with-female-protagonists-dont-sell-and-what-it-says-about-the-industry/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them

Because games with female characters can sometimes be messy hack jobs or unstable experiments. Just like how Liberation, despite being an Assassin's Creed game and having a female MC, was a Vita exclusive of iffy quality.

Yeah, but men have no shortage of main characters in video games, while the reverse can't be said for women. I haven't played bravely default (Even though I own it, because Fire Emblem and SMT IV are eating my soul) but I consider final fantasy 6 to have a female main character, as Terra is the one who is most central to the story events, is the one that spends the most time in the party, and is the first one who is introduced (usually a sign that they're the main character) Even then in the second half and a bit of the first when she is taken out, the mandatory character that replaces her is Celes, who is also female.

Ohhhhhhh, thank you very much for that, I will check it out (Used to play a lot of JRPGs, then lost interest, but now I'm getting back into them, you can thank a friend of mine who introduced me to Persona, SMT, Radiant Historia, Knights in the Nightmare, Suikoden, and the Tales of series,) I will check those out.

 

[hermes]

If Unity didn't have the four player co-op, I would understand having a male protagonist. Maybe having a female protagonist would have required the story being altered somewhere along the line. Maybe the game takes place over a couple of years and has a sexual subplot - all the Assassins tend to do it, given that they don't really do any recruiting. That, I would understand. Altair, Ezio, getting pregnant may have spoiled the parkour a little. I didn't mention Connor because he'd have to be likeable before anyone could spend that much time alone with him.

Whatever reasons they might have, I could get that.

But there are four players. Each player sees themselves as Arnaud and everybody else as the other assassins. There is literally no reason one of them couldn't have been female.

There is, and you said it yourself. You're all playing as the exact same guy from the story, just your version of him. He wasn't written as a female, he was written as a male. I don't understand how many people just don't seem to understand that. It makes absolute fuck all sense for Arno to sudden have tits in a co-op session when you're all supposed to be playing his story.

They could always have planned from the start to include a female character as well. Several games share protagonists or allow you to choose which one you wish to experience the game with (Resident Evil has always been good with that ever since the Jill/Chris selection that provided similar, if altered, experiences... and they've been doing that constantly for over 15 years).

I mean, nothing exactly lifts my skirt less than playing as yet ANOTHER dull white guy with a grumbly voice... and now there are FOUR of them.

Could they? Yes. Doesn't mean they have to. It's never been the way they create their protagonists. It's probably why we have this kind of co-op system instead of a separate one or a game co-written with 2. It's just how they do it and that's perfectly fine. They aren't required to create a female protagonist if they don't want to, and they sure as hell don't deserve this retarded backlash of "oh well it should of had a female from the beginning!"

Is that the way game announcements are going to be now? If someone dare creates a game where your protagonists happens to have a dick will they be condemned for it?

If Unity didn't have the four player co-op, I would understand having a male protagonist. Maybe having a female protagonist would have required the story being altered somewhere along the line. Maybe the game takes place over a couple of years and has a sexual subplot - all the Assassins tend to do it, given that they don't really do any recruiting. That, I would understand. Altair, Ezio, getting pregnant may have spoiled the parkour a little. I didn't mention Connor because he'd have to be likeable before anyone could spend that much time alone with him.

Whatever reasons they might have, I could get that.

But there are four players. Each player sees themselves as Arnaud and everybody else as the other assassins. There is literally no reason one of them couldn't have been female.

There is, and you said it yourself. You're all playing as the exact same guy from the story, just your version of him. He wasn't written as a female, he was written as a male. I don't understand how many people just don't seem to understand that. It makes absolute fuck all sense for Arno to sudden have tits in a co-op session when you're all supposed to be playing his story.

It also makes zero sense for there to be four of him.

It makes perfect sense. You're seeing your own Arno in the cutscenes, you're still experiencing the story from his eyes. It's the co-op mode of old. Singleplayer story with your buddies. It's the exact same just being able to play with friends but the crucial part (and I can't seem to stress this enough to anyone who argues it) you're all Arno so you can still experience the single player story as it was intended.

So why can't Player Model 3 be female? Player 3 doesn't need to see his own model as female. It wouldn't alter anything for anyone.

Though the better question is who thought that stupid fucking system up?

Because you're all supposed to be playing as Arno. What part of that seems to escape you and every other person who doesn't understand it? It's a single player story with the option of co-op with your friends yet also making sure that they're not skipping or missing anything out by playing as some random avatar instead of the main character. It's the best of both worlds.

Did you deliberately misinterpret what I said? Each player could see all the other players as giant fucking chickens and it wouldn't affect the gaming experience of the other players, because they'd all see themselves as Arno. I think it would make the game a little bit more immersive if you saw the other players as generic assassins of different genders, races and styles (y'know, to reinforce the lack of division among the revolutionaries) rather than three clones of fuckin Arno. Or does this routinely escape you? That there are FOUR ARNOS.

Well... That would invalidate the customization options. What is the point of customizing your character to your liking if every time you play with your friends, they see a random NPC doing assassins stuff.