"I don't need games to have more female characters because I need to see myself reflected in them to enjoy them. One of the reasons I love games is because I get to be someone else. I feel very strongly that the ten-foot cow-man I get to be in World of Warcraft is as accurate an extension of my inner personality as any realistic avatar I've ever fretted over. And I don't need games to have more female characters because it's unjust or unfair if they don't. Games ought to be defining their own realities and making their own rules."
19 comments:
That post is highly quotable. I love:
"Ultimately, though, I need games to have a few more girls in them because it's just downright *weird* that they don't. Girls are pretty much an epidemic. We get everywhere. We do all kinds of stuff. There really are an awful lot of us around."
This is such a wonderful post. Thanks for bringing my attention to it.
That's all lovely, but I myself do need women to be represented in games. Don't know about bovines in blizzard games, but gender neutral characters tend to be male-centric, and even though I myself use video games as a medium for escapism sometimes, I certainly do not want to be alienated from the experience ALL of the time, and not for reasons that are sexist.
Diversity over narrowcasting is the key here; I'm soooo sick of hypersexed femme avatars as the ONLY option. It's not a 'numbers' issue as much as a 'choices' dialog, imho.(that said, I think numbers matter to reduce genre typecasting and invisibility; normalizing 'girl gamers' as a core part of 'the market')
I want more 'bitches' to vicariously live through. [http://is.gd/2Qsmm] ^_^
I love this quote and the comments thus far are awesome. That's why it pains me to be this blunt.
Samus is a female character, yet my wife would much rather parade around the universe as a fat little plumber in overalls.
Meanwhile, I'm utterly, unflappably, infatuated with the Metroid franchise.
BTW, I see that digital painting of Samus damn near everywhere and I've grown to dislike it because of the blatant scaling issues in it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, compare the sizes of the green rings on the left and right shoulders.
Oh, and one more thing, I like these. Keep it up.
He's just talking about Avatars versus Characters.
An avatar reflects the user and a character is a character.
It's his preference that he could live without playable "characters" in games. but Millions of people enjoy playing as Snake or Dante or Master Chief.
I think that he's ignoring how characters improve narrative driven games. Would Monkey Island be the same?
Realistic female character would force variety in characters. So I look forward to more games adopting character like Alex from Halflife2 or Tifa from FF7
I never really care wether or not I'm a girl or a boy. For me the fluidity of the game... the gameplay.... and especially the art direction (I've come to REALLY appreciate that in the last couple of years) are important.
Whether or not the protagonist is a girl or not is semantics... that, for me, is part of the art direction. I don't care whether it's prince or princess of persia....
Great quote. :)
I grew up as the oldest of three sisters. As the oldest and strongest, and probably because of my personality, I always played the hero rescuing the princess. I ran around the room as Mighty Mouse and The Underdog. (We're talking late 70's to early 80's...)
Today, I'm a wife and mom. And I LOVE that I can still play the strong, male hero when I play video games. If there's a Barbarian with a giant axe or something, I am SO there.
I do think, though, that it would be nice to have more choice when it comes to playing female avatars and game characters. I can't relate to a character that's got a large chest and acts like some kind of sex-crazed femme fatale. On the other hand, a character that isn't fantastic in some way would be boring, and I play games to feel like something other than just a real life human.
To be totally honest, I'm not sure why it's easier for me to relate to a male hero. It probably has something to do with how my brain stereotypes things, based on conditioning and external environmental factors. And when there's an awesome female character, I love playing her, too. As long as I'm the one saving the world, I'm totally happy. =)
In games where I was given the choice, I used to always play as a male character. Recently, though, I switched that around. It turns out it's much more fun to play as a female protagonist simply because it makes the stories they're in more original. For instance, playing Mass Effect as a female Shepard: it's much more evocative to play as a female Jack Bauer-type character, because you just don't see women cast in that role that often.
I'm looking forward to Dragon Age: Origins for that reason. You can play as a female city elf whose wedding is disrupted by some racist humans who kidnap her and kill one of her friends. Once you get your hands on a blade, it's payback time... It's a great setup to be able to play as a woman out for revenge.
Can anyone think of a game with a well-written, non-passive female protagonist (so no Samus or Lara Croft, and also no supporting roles)?
Oh yeah! I'm obviously looking forward to playing as Madison Paige in Heavy Rain, too.
I've been playing as a girl since I knew Street Fighter 2 existed.
But still there aren't that many girls out there. Almost all RPG's have male leads and Dissidia made it clear that they are more recurrent as antagonists.
I keep my stand, I want more mentally complex women starring my games!!!
...and I'm a little tired of boobs by the way...
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I want more kickass women in games. My renegade female Shepard in Mass Effect was awesome, and I'd like games to have more female characters like her, but *not* because I need to see myself reflected in them. I am nothing like Shepard! I got to be a completely different type of woman to the kind of woman I am.
finally someone said it! And i'm so glad it wasn't a man 'cos he would be crucified.
I want proper women in games, and by proper I mean non streotype boy fantasy women. Alex can go away because she is a streotype(watch a bit of anime and you'll spot an Alex like character in quite a few of them)
In Mass Effect I played a women and I didn't mind I thought it was actually better then the male character, brought in a bit more emotion into the procedings. I think more protagonists should be women as well. Not just men.
10-foot cow-men are awesome :D
An avatar is an extension of one's personality - we need more variety in our avatars because games should be exploring different avenues of personality. Anima as well as animus, etc. etc.
I really appreciate that this is a more thoughtful argument on this often-argued-but-seldom-discussed topic.
Random aside: I often evaluate arguments about group representation in media by putting them through the "MadLib test". Replace all instances or references to the intended group or subject with something else.
It doesn't perfectly prove that an argument is valid, but it does weed out a lot of sympathy plays and weak/flawed arguments. For the record, I usually use "overweight people" for this test, since most americans seem totally at home with marginalizing and/or demonizing them.
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