Why does gender only have to be asthetic?

[zeldagirl]

As others have already sad, if you were to actually have 'realstic' depictions of the inequalities between men and women then you'd have mass outcry from women about how the game is sexist or have a negetive depiction of women

Wrong on two counts, I'm afraid. The outcry wouldn't happen in, say, a fully randomized system in generating npcs in an rpg or characters in The Sims or whatever. Y'know, doing things on the scale where statistics would actually have a point. The problem would arise when saying that women can only reach Strenth 17/18 and can't go below Charisma 2/18. Because it works against the entire purpose of having a character creation option.
The second misassumption is that the outcry would come from women alone. I know I'd see it as a load of bollocks intent on forcing me to play a game shaped by stupid gender conservative ideas.

Even the usual way of trying to imply a difference between the sexes (that being with men gaining a boost to physical strength and women gaining a boost to mental capacity) is something a double standard because it's only half true, on average men are in fact physically stronger than women (there are exceptionally strong women but they tend to be exception rather than the rule, I have heard that women do poesess a greater level of pain tolerance and durability than men however) however it would be something of an inaccuracy to say that women are on average smarter or wiser than men (I'd say that they're fairly equal in this department, main difference being the areas and ways in which they're smart or wise).

I like how you defend implementing one statistic into gameplay while discounting the other. Girls have better grades than boys in school, for one thing. There are few facts as satistically proven as that one. And this is true pretty much everywhere where women are allowed to educate themselves. Now, I'm not the one defending implementing statistics as attributes in a game, but if you are going to do that then you need to own up to all statistics, not just the ones that wouldn't be insulting to you.

Now, I'm not saying that because you're a guy (I assume) you did bad in school. But that's exactly the same kind of assumtion you're making in the rest of your post. Because most men are stronger than most women you assume that every female character should be penalized. That's like saying that just because males statistically have a higher level of criminal behaviour every male character in a game should have +1 Crime Points, or whatever. Now re-read that last sentance and add the word "black" in front of where it says "male" and I think you ought to begin to see where the problem is.

4- Women gain a bonus to any skill/ability/task that revolves around persuasion/reasoning/talking (most people percieve women as being less threatening and more caring and social).

Uhm. So women have an easier time to persuade people to listen to them? I think you'll find that this assumption flies in the face of pretty much every workplace investigation, ever. One of the most commonly cited complains of women in workplaces is the fact that they have such a hard time being heard compared to their male counterparts.

5- Men are harder to panic or break the morale of (in the past men have been expected to lay their lives down in large numbers to protect women and children and as such are seen as being much more expendable, this results in men usually being the first to investigate or take action in a potentially dangerous unknown situation, eg. hearing someone break into your house during the night).

Jesus, women don't get the smartness thing because "this one is more down to individual differences and upbringing in my experience than gender" and you still let this fly?

I have heard quite a few people denounce the femininity of Samus Aran from Metroid because 'it's just an extra detail, it doesn't affect the game and she could just as easily be a robot').

I've said more or less the same thing, but meant it as a positive. As Yatzee said "She's a lady, just deal with it, yo!"

Okay, this is an awesome post and more articulate than I could be in response on this topic. And you should feel awesome for it.

 

[Innegativeion]

I like the idea of character interactions varying based on the protagonist's gender. Maybe Alexander mchero's best friend is, in a different play-through, Alexandra mcheroine's lover or something like that. Doesn't have to be so extreme. Maybe the big macho knight approaches Alexandra warmly, but is unimpressed by Alexander's talents and is cold towards him.

However, things like this,

for example, females...just all round are weaker, less strength and they will never be strong as males

especially how you worded it, just seems... wrong to me. I don't think performance need be affected by gender. But story and character development definitely should be, at least in some way.

edit: in other words, gender should affect other characters' reactions to you, but not the other way around.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

It would make for a much harder game to program, but I think as people stop focusing on graphics it should become more of a concern.

I can remember playing GunValkyrie way back when, and they actually did have a difference. The male character was a bullet soaking tank with a big gun. Slower, heavier, but stronger and with more health. The female character was nimble, fast, less health and less powerful weapons but no less useful.

The problem with a lot of games that try and have female and male characters with differences is that they make the females weaker, but not sufficiently fast to make up for it, so the only reason to play a female character is for special moves or just the challenge of it. In GunValkyrie, the male character could not avoid gunfire, he was just too slow, so you had to get used to shooting from a distance, ducking behind cover, and absorbing the fire, whereas the female was quick enough (as long as you were skilled enough at playing her) to avoid every gunshot sent her way, even in te thick of battle. It wasn't about the challenge, it was just whichever style of play you preferred.

I think the obvious choice is to make female characters, especially if they have a smaller build, have less strength, or if it's an RPG and the player chooses to have a strong build, people should comment on it. In real life if a woman is notably as strong as the male protagonists of videogames people will comment on it, because she will have massive muscles. But having less strength shouldn't mean being a generally worse build. The speed decrease on men vs the speed increase on women needs to be enough that playing a female is not necessarily a more challenging way of gaming, just a different one for different players.

 

[zeldagirl]

What is it about men being physically stronger on average that you find so unbelieveable?

Have you seen female body builders? They're scary and aren't too far away from looking like men with long hair and make up (if you don't believe me then do a google image search of 'female body builders', you'll probably wish you hadn't afterwards).

I actually did alright in school (for the most part) but I do still have to question why it is you so staunchly defend the notion of women being smarter than men because they do better at school (a statistic which actually reverses itself when we start looking at higher education such as college and university), something you fail to acknowledge is that schooling and academics doesn't actually reflect a person's intelligence (don't get me wrong, it can help but it isn't the be all and end all), it's rare that I will say this but in this instance you are wrong.

Intelligence is a very hard thing to measure because it's definition is so wide, there are different kinds of intelligence, not all of which are focused around the school model of remembering and regurgitating facts for the examiners to mark.

A doctor and an artist both are argueably intelligent people but the thing is that they would posess different forms of intelligence and express it in different ways, unless you're trying to tell me that women are smarter in every way possible in every field and understanding than men are universally then I think my statement of them being fairly equal and it being based more on individual differences is a closer representation of reality (sorry, but muscle mass is something that is reliably measureable, mental capacity is largely intangible).

The argument you use for intelligence can be used for strength too. There are DIFFERENT types of strength - not all of them rely on 'muscle.' You can also complement different kinds of strengths with different types of weapons, equipments, and powers.

That being said, that I don't think was the point. The point was, there are ALWAYS individual differences - and therefore, there are women who exist who are stronger than men. Incorporating this idea into games is not difficult at all.

And that piece of evidence flies in the face of a lot of psychological studies and investigations which have shown that women are more approachable and open, they tend to share and discuss their problems with others (groups of friends who are referred to as 'social networks, and not as in Facebook for clarity), women are also noted as on average posessing a greater command of language and speech than men (due to how they utilise the different halves of the brain differently to men).

Let me put it to you like this, if you were stopped by a woman in the street and asked for directions, would you help?

Now what if you were stopped by a man who asked for directions? (I had to do a study on this, in most cases I found that people were more friendly and open to the women asking for help).

Context is everything. When talking about issues of 'power' - which is where you seemed to be going with your original statement about persuasion/talking - I believe Veterinari's point holds more water. And it's in that context that many video games take place in.

Seeing as I already debunked your issues with the difference in intelligence then yes, I'm still going to let my previous statment fly about men being more proactive in dangerous situations. Historically (don't believe me then look up incidents like the Titanic), in a disaster involving people the top priority was to evacuate women and children first, men were also expected to sign up en mass for both World Wars (and not doing so was percieved as a sign of cowardice and weakness, in other words, you weren't a 'real man', in some ways this expectation for men to be brave and steadfast is still in place today).

For a long time bravery has been held as a very manly virtue and this probably goes to explain why the majority of protaganists and heroic individuals within games are men, it's a standard that our culture has held for a very long time, of course you get exceptions but women are under less impetus to posess this characteristic, it's ok for women to stand back and let the man go first and men have to accept this as just being the way things are.

The instance you mentioned, while certainly beneficial to the woman and children, is still at its core a sexist principle - men have historically been 'brave' for women due to the perception that women couldn't be brave on their own. Just because it's a standard in society, that doesn't make it a just or right standard. It's an unusual example of how male sexism actually harms males while protecting (and insulting) women at the same time. It's borne from the idea that women cannot contribute in any way during times of emergency, and in the end, everyone loses.

As with strength and intelligence, there are different kinds of bravery. It's already been mentioned in this thread how women do better under pain and duress. And women have ALWAYS been brave - look at childbirth, for goodness sakes! Yet, our society doesn't really value that kind of bravery. And that's wrong! Just because media has traditionally represented males as predominantly being 'brave' doesn't mean it's right, nor that it should be perpetuated. The game industry should take this opportunity, as other media have, to change the script on gender roles and stereotypes.

 

[Vault101]

Because the new generation of "GUUUUURRRRRRRRL GAMERZZZ" would ***** and whine.

...not sure I like the implications there

I like the idea of character interactions varying based on the protagonist's gender. Maybe Alexander mchero's best friend is, in a different play-through, Alexandra mcheroine's lover or something like that. Doesn't have to be so extreme. Maybe the big macho knight approaches Alexandra warmly, but is unimpressed by Alexander's talents and is cold towards him.

However, things like this,

for example, females...just all round are weaker, less strength and they will never be strong as males

especially how you worded it, just seems... wrong to me. I don't think performance need be affected by gender. But story and character development definitely should be, at least in some way.

edit: in other words, gender should affect other characters' reactions to you, but not the other way around.

yeah your probably right, I mean the idea of the "physical" side of things is definetly flawed because of balance issues

anyway really I just thourght it would be interesting to experience a game like fallout NV with the added issues of being female, and having extra obsticles to overcome (like hardcore mode)

 

[pakker]

Problem is people are arguing "female should be better at X and weaker at Y". IMO the biggest problem with alot of these "there should be a difference between male and female in games" is that both gamers and the industry still tries to balance around the male figure, making female getting strengths and weaknesses compared to the male character.

Sure you can have "rape squads" come after you in Fallout, but make the people who choose male be ambushed by women who wants revenge on men for exactly that...

After playing alot of solo adventure rpgs, changing stats, potential exp, loot options, and so on based solely on gender, would skew both balance and difficulty, as well as make as make 40-60% of the player base miss the "weaker" genders (be it male or female for whatever reason) because of powergaming, as long as main story remains the same.

So I say, leave everything that can skrew up the balance and in the end make one gender weaker than the other. If games, especially the epic roleplay-esq story, wants to explore how a female fares in the wasteland after a nuclear war, don't give the player a choice, make the play female. Thats the way we need to go if we are ever to get any further than a slider in character creation...

My 5 cent...

 

[AtheistConservative]

I think it counters it perfectly. Men are stronger on average and also have greater maximum capacity. Therefore are stronger, therefore should be represented as such in a game that aims to reflect reality.

No-one wants to play an average person in videogames. Being average is what people play videogames to get away from.

Any character you play as in a videogame where this kind of physical prowess matters is already an exceptional specimen, so the concept of what is average for men and women does not apply to them.

While its true that there are very strong women in the world, that still doesn't change the distribution of strength. For instance if you look at the amount that a female who is 1.96 standard deviations above the mean (top 2.5%) and what a male who is also 1.96 standard deviations above the (male) mean can lift, there will be a noticeable difference. Thus not only would a 5/10 for a male would mean a higher strength than 5/10 for a female, but a X/10 male vs. X/10 female as well.

What you're describing though is a system that goes from "weakest person alive" to "strongest person alive", and no game that I know of claims to operate on that scale. I'll take Fallout as an example - the scale goes from 1 to 10. Now, a character with Strength 10 is obviously not meant to be the strongest being alive, they've just decided that after that point additional strength won't affect game play. The choices they're left with then is either to ignore gender altogether, making the strongest woman in the game stronger in relation to the "realistic average" than the man, or penalizing the weaker gender to symbolize the average distribution. Personally I'll take the latter option any day of the week, because it gives more freedom to the player.

Hell, even in a game that DID operate on a "weakest-to-strongest person alive" scale I would still want the character creation to be gender-neutral, giving me the option to play a hormonially rampant, hulking she-beast on stereoids if I wanted to.

Going back to Fallout, I'm not saying that a 10/10 is the strongest person alive, however there going to be in really high percentile. Nor does this mean that female characters can't be stronger than your average male, they would just have to invest extra points to do so. A corollary would be male charisma. First lets assume that we have a non-biased method of measuring a person's charisma, with a boundary of 0 and no defined upper bound. Now a character is in a situation that requires a charisma of 50 (i.e. getting information), and the male average (5/10) is 40 and the female average (5/10) is 60. The male character would have had to boost his stats to be able to do this, while a female could have reduced her charisma during character creation in exchange for some other boost and still have been able to complete the task.

In a more extreme example say a character needs to deadlift 900lbs. This where the difference at the tails comes into play. This is well below being the strongest man alive http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9ac_1243842033 however it would still be something reserved for a 10/10, it is however past what even the strongest woman in the world can deadlift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becca_Swanson

 

[Exterminas]

Funny how the op doesn't consider the powder gang raping a male. Apparently in the future prison inmates will be a lot more heterosexual than today.

 

[squid5580]

Leave it up to the player pure and simple. If I wanna make a weak smart attractive female in fallout I can. Don't ask devs to be sexist. Let the players express their individual sexism. Nothin wrong with that.

 

[Terminal Blue]

hell, in Oblivion it pretty much outright says that the Redguard, AKA the black dudes, are mostly only ever good at hitting stuff really hard and aren't capable of being powerful mages.

Go talk to the Redguard Mage in the Mages guild. It becomes perfectly clear that Redguards have no problem being Mages, they just have an ingrained and fairly well justified cultural dislike of magic because it warps people's minds and summons demons.

The differences between the human races can be seen as largely cultural. Sure, Nords might have slightly increased strength because they're taller, but it's also because they're a warlike culture where everyone trains for battle to some degree.

So no, it's not that they're black and are thus distracted from studying magic by thoughts of fried chicken. They're a warrior culture and they don't like mages, it dates back to their original conquest of Hammerfell from the elven magiocracies who lived there.

While your overall point makes sense, there's a big difference between this and playing on real life identities and inequalities.

 

[SinisterGehe]

I would like to see something like this, I would love have gender based variables in a game, it would add more perspectives to look at things. since the only thing I keep hearing from the feminist is that how women are equal but different.

The issue is that it must be executed with deadly precision, the pros and cons of both (or more) genders must be equal and must have equal amount of content to be explored. And by developing the character player must be able to access same stats.

This would be easier if there would be some kind of "personality" or similar system in which the content quests and reactions of the npc would be different by the "personalty" of the player's character. Example if character would be short and small framed people wouldn't take him seriously as a opponent. Or if character would be young people wouldn't take him seriously or if he would be old people would rely on hes knowledge - Older age would give benefit to magic/knowledge but weaker physical, younger learns faster and is more resilient, etc...

It would be a massive task to do, but possible. And the developer must be ready for the attacks of the media. Because someone will ALWAYS be offended. I think a system like this should be done by female developers, since it would lighten the image of the system and reactions of the media.

 

[thejboy88]

I think the reason people want it to be only an aesthetic difference is the perception that anything else would be sexist.

People don't like the idea of their genders being assigned various non-physical traits like, mental or physical ability, prospects in life etc.

 

[Iron Mal]

I did find your counterpoints to be interesting to think about and read I'm afriad that I still have to disagree with the thinking behind them.

I appologise for the incoming wall of text.

The argument you use for intelligence can be used for strength too. There are DIFFERENT types of strength - not all of them rely on 'muscle.' You can also complement different kinds of strengths with different types of weapons, equipments, and powers.

That being said, that I don't think was the point. The point was, there are ALWAYS individual differences - and therefore, there are women who exist who are stronger than men. Incorporating this idea into games is not difficult at all.

To be fair you can objectively measure physical strength quite easily, there are various forms of strength (physical strength, mental strength, emotional strength...the list goes on) in the context of video games 'strength' is almost always in relation to the raw physical power that a person can summon for tasks such as hitting, lifting, pushing and carrying items.

In other words, for the purpose of this discussion, strength does in fact rely on muscle and no amount of fancy wording or hypothetical contexts will take away from that fact.

The raw muscle power that a person has is very easily measured (give me a bunch of weights, a bench and a pen and paper and I could give you a rough estimate of whether I'm stronger than you are and make a strong case either way), this isn't a vague or esoteric quality like intelligence, another person on here made the valid point of fighting sports usually have divisions between weight classes for a very good reason.

About the idea of there being different fighting styles that work with the lack of strength a person may have, my own experiences learning various martial arts and getting into fights have taught me that this is completely and utterly rubbish and that fighting someone bigger and stronger than you places you at a considerable disadvantage no matter how agile or nimble you may be.

Yes, I mentioned that a character creation system must cater to enableing someone to create an exceptional individual but I also stressed the importantance of having a default 'base' statline for NPC's and non-extraordinary people (not everyone will want to play as He-Man or Merlin in their game) or for a game or setting surrounding a more realistic setting where players are not going to be taking the role of exceptional individuals.

An interesting thing to note is that the supposedly 'sexist' divide of stats that people complain about such an idea being associated with is somewhat done already but in a not so subtle way.

Look at most fantasy RPG games, who are the most prominant races outside of humanity?

Usually Elves and Dwarfs, Elves often being a very feminine and graceful people (soft features, slender, fragile, insightful, caring, innocent and pure, womanly and with males often posessing an effeminate or androgynous appearance), Dwarfs are often very masculine and grizzled (stout, stubborn, steadfast, rugged, resiliant, brave, often drunk, industrious, proud and always posessed of massive beards and definately look like manly men).

Now think about how most RPG games deal with these groups statistically, Elves (feminine) often suffer a penalty to strength and durability but gain points in dexterity and intelligence while Dwarves (masculine) suffer a penalty to things such as dexterity or charisma but gain points in things such as strength and toughness.

Context is everything. When talking about issues of 'power' - which is where you seemed to be going with your original statement about persuasion/talking - I believe Veterinari's point holds more water. And it's in that context that many video games take place in.

When we look at the way in which persuasive talking and reasoning works in video games (I find it funny that everyone so far has latched onto the word 'persuasion' and hasn't addressed reasoning ability) it is most often connected to one's charisma, charm or personality (their social skills and appearance in other words), what you're trying to connect it to is percieved authority (which is something else completely).

As I previously mentioned, women have been shown to have stronger social bonds with others, have a greater command of speech and language as well as the general perception of women being 'safer' and more open and friendly.

This harkens back to the time of our evolution where men would (according to what I've seen and read during my time studying evolutionary psychology) go out and gather food whilst women would stay and look after and raise children, the ability and capacity to socialise and interact with others was an important part of our survival as a species back then, although no longer as vital now as it was back then we still do retain a lot of traits and features that seperate the sexes (even if they are now obsolete in our modern day and age).

The instance you mentioned, while certainly beneficial to the woman and children, is still at its core a sexist principle - men have historically been 'brave' for women due to the perception that women couldn't be brave on their own. Just because it's a standard in society, that doesn't make it a just or right standard. It's an unusual example of how male sexism actually harms males while protecting (and insulting) women at the same time. It's borne from the idea that women cannot contribute in any way during times of emergency, and in the end, everyone loses.

As with strength and intelligence, there are different kinds of bravery. It's already been mentioned in this thread how women do better under pain and duress. And women have ALWAYS been brave - look at childbirth, for goodness sakes! Yet, our society doesn't really value that kind of bravery. And that's wrong! Just because media has traditionally represented males as predominantly being 'brave' doesn't mean it's right, nor that it should be perpetuated. The game industry should take this opportunity, as other media have, to change the script on gender roles and stereotypes.

I believe I was one of the people who mentioned the average women's pain tolerance being higher than that of most men, in fact, it was a point I made directly after the comparison of physical strength.

Bravery in the context of childbirth is inherantly different from bravery in the context of grabbing a nearby blunt object and searching for the potentially dangerous man who's broken into your house, and it's often the latter form of bravery that actually arises in video games and it is also this form of bravery that is attributed to men.

Yes, it is likely a social construct that made it this way but such social constructs may have their roots in older behaviors we've had carried over from the earlier days of our evolution, we naturally look to the biggest and strongest of us to protect us in a dangerous crisis and the biggest and strongest of us tend to be men and so on and so forth along the way until we reach the point where this becomes a justification for the usual clause of 'real men are brave and steadfast'.

As I also previously stated, there's absolutely nothing wrong with stereotypes provided that they are handled with caution, we need stereotypes.

Here's a test if you don't believe me, for the next twenty-four hours you have to give every single person you meet, in person and online, the benefit of the doubt and get the know them completely as a person before you can make any judgements about them (even small ones like if they seem like a nice person at first glance or if you think they might turn rude or unpleasant, if you do have thoughts like this, you're disqualified).

I guarantee you that trying to do that is more trouble than it's worth, we need stereotypes because, frankly, there just isn't time or oppertunity to get to know everyone and give them all a fair chance.

We will always have gender roles, the roles may change but we shall always have them. Men and women are fundamentally very different kinds of people and as such their roles in friendships, relationships or even just in conversation will always be different and thus unbalanced (that's just the way we people work). We subconsciously form gender roles based on observing our parents, siblings and friends while growing up and it's based on these interactions that we make our own descion on 'how a man should act' or 'what it is to be a woman', I think you'll find it's people who influence the media and not the other way around (do you think people change to fit the media or that the media changes to fit the people who consume it? I personally believe the latter and the fact that styles, tastes and trends change so often supports me on this).

 

[Aerograt]

Look, this feature would be (sort of) interesting in a super realistic RPG (ie, something that hasn't really been made yet, or at least I haven't heard of it), but it would be a really stupid way to balance a game since most people that play chick characters are going to be discouraged from doing so if they're always at a disadvantage. I'd have never made a female character in New Vegas, M3 or Oblivion if my stats and faction interactions were permanently borked.