Also online is video of the Jesse Schell talk I told you about recently -- have a look if you get a sec. Finally, I also recently published an analysis on the state of games for social good, with a list of the Games For Change Festival winning games.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sup Ladies
The feature on female protagonists I wrote for OXM is now online, featuring thoughts from Hideki Kamiya, Valve's Erik Wolpaw, Crystal Dynamics' Darrell Gallagher and BioWare's Mac Walters. In it, I aimed to take the standard wisdom about how to make good female characters from "cover their boobs and make them admirable" to "let female protagonists be people above all." Okay, so it's a bit more complex than that, but the industry folk I spoke to for the piece had some pretty interesting thoughts, and I'd be psyched for you to give it a read.
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7 comments:
I'll read them shortly :) . In other news, I see you also got a brief mention here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/3607-Metacritic-Isnt-the-Problem
What the guy said above.
Thanks for this, I'm going to shortly write a personal rant about the state of female protagonists, and how "sexing them up" automatically detracts from an otherwise good character... *cough* Elizabeth in bioshock infinite *cough cough*
Good article; I especially like the point that some of the games mentioned were made with the idea of a good story and concept and not a purely physical character.
The dilemma is two-fold, though: if the heroine is sexed up, she's simply fodder for the male audience; if she's covered up in order to be a human character, one runs the risk of implying that sexuality is a negative trait for women. That's not the case at all. The shift that needs to occur is that a woman's sexuality is not for men but for herself - that's empowerment.
Of course, that's a larger issue that games alone can't tackle. It is, sadly, the mentality of the world at large. Still, it's always a good idea to show that a woman is more than her outer shell. Her avatar, perhaps?
Hey, regarding the "Top 5 Cool Ladies", you mention "Heather Morris" from Silent Hill 3 - her name is Heather MASON.
If possible, you ought to fix that :-)
Otherwise, an interesting read.
J.A Chavez, It has more to do with the relationships of games and deep American religious fears of sex . The Subconscious idea that sexuality of woman will unravel the good of all society (Can’t speak for the UK but Sexuality and Woman are Evil in the USA, pretty simple message in a deeply Christian society if her breast are big she not human . A woman with sexuality can't be human in a Christian American Culture and showing cleavage is testament to the worse kids of explicit pornography, spiritually corrupt even worse than depiction of murder and gore and violence(Think Janet Jackson Fiasco) (Or even worse remmeber the controversy of a teacher who lost his job , Because someone found out his wife some 20 years ago starred in an old Porno.Had to leave town unforunately)
. This leads most of argument Woman equality in games to be very shallow ,predictable and repetitive Junk . Once you crack through the shallow surface you find the same religious engrained puritanical American complaints about female sexuality dressed up in new political correct shoes American
Glad you wrote that article leigh lol.It is miles ahead of most of the junk on the internet It a breath of fresh air .
Hideo Kamiya responses doesn’t surprised me though
I've watched plenty of anime that had stylized and sexy character. Japanese don't seem to have any problem developing a character as a subject Male or Female and has little to do with Gender of the Manga creator and more to do with a culture where sex isn’t as demonized or associated with evil. But for whatever psychological reason for a lot of American game developer the major impediment to any female character development boils down to how discussion of breast size or will she offend the social insecurity of the little boys playing COD and Killzone or the soccer moms looking to hold games as the worse form of child corruption
Damn...
That song...
Madoka... it really...
Damn....
...
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