Reconsider Female Characters!

(signofzeta) #381

[QUOTE=SPC. Angseth;208279]That never stopped games like Saints Row 2, which let males and females use the same clothes, animations and voices.

But your right, the decision has been taken.[/QUOTE]

but in the future, there may be a game that there are female characters. I assure you Splash Damage, having attempted to try to fit in female characters, but has many reasons not to, like character height, and stuff like that, etc, will attempt to add in female characters in their next project. If they don’t, then we’ll just walk it off again. I’m sure the gameplay of whatever their next project will be will take your mind off whatever they didn’t do.

But if I designed it myself, I would have replaced the skinnies with females, because from the customization videos, the medium build is too skinny to my tastes, which led me to think what the thin build looked like. And then added the extra customization as a DLC. But it is their game and not mine.

It all comes down to what happens when the game is already out. I will find myself not caring about customization because I just want to get straight into playing, but there are others that aren’t like me, so there. If the sales are lacking, then maybe SD should have rethought some stuff, but once thing are started, they don’t redo anything or risk time and money.

Thread started from reason why female avatars don’t exist here, to differences in physical attributes between female and males, to differences in mental attributes, to the whole boycotting thing and starting a protest, to um uh what was the next part?

The final answer to those who still don’t get why SD made this decision is that, they weighed the pros and cons, and sad to say, they made that final decision based on who is going to play their game, their own skills in making the game, and other parameters.

It’s like the fitting a square peg into a round hole. It is a waste of time and resources to fashion that square peg into a round one, rather than just accepting the round pegs. Someday, that square hole will come. Or rollercoasters not accepting people of large girth, or something like that, because of safety concerns, and the waste of time and money constructing something at expense of safety just so some overweight people can ride.

Let’s just hope Splash Damage gets better funding for their next game, and hire some female minds to get some input from the opposite gender, and in case someone does not get what next game is, it isn’t Brink, but the game after Brink.

(-SSF-Sage) #382

SD is known as a company that produces high quality games. And they want to stay that way, and have as little compromises as possible. Adding both males and females would force them to make compromises in all series. That means male and female stuff, animations, code, performance/memory, sounds… everything. Not forgetting the money and time aspect. It’s a lot asked for a pair of titties.

(signofzeta) #383

it’s a shame in Wolfenstein’s case really. The developers there, ahem ENDRANT, who are ex-Splash Damage employees decided to make the game more like Call of Duty rather than RTCW. We all know that the RTCW fans are the people looking forward to Wolfenstein, and not the CoD fans, when we all know that Modern Warfare 2 is going to be released a few months after wolfenstein. You know what Endrant, or whoever worked on the Wolfenstein MP did? Took the biggest compromise and diverged from the basic formula that kept RTCW fans together. They thought they like the objective gameplay, but the RTCW fans love RTCW for much more than its objective gameplay. And to kick people’s asses further, the game costs $60.00US. Expensive game for nothing.

It all comes down to time and money. More time, more money = female avatars. We can say they can have all female avatars, but just think how many more males will be angry this way? And we don’t want Brink to cost $60.00US or more… isn’t that right SD?

I’m sure SD exhausted all possibilities in adding female avatars before jumping to the conclusion to not include them. I mean what game developer doesn’t do that? Well Infinity ward doesn’t do that, because there aren’t people who care enough to add female avatars into MW2 anyway. Even if there were, they weren’t vocal about it.

I do find it odd that Splash Damage is the only developer that I see gets picked on when it comes to female avatars, the other 2 team based shooter developers, DICE and Infinity ward, never gets picked on, unless I’m wrong, and there are an influx of female gamers picking on them too. I think that SD is getting closer to implementing female avatars into their games, but IW and DICE have a longs way to go, to the point of not having female NPCs.

But the best option is this. Take a photo of yourself, and get the game to analyze that photo, to make your character look like what you look like in real life. I think that is the best step, and I have all the patience in the world to wait for that. With Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo doing the motion controls, and the motion sensing with the camera, I’m sure they can make a mini mocap thing, where they transfer your own image into the game. I’m definitely sure that there are actually some games that capture images of yourself, and use that as a character in the game.

(.Chris.) #384

Correction, Activision decided to make the game not like RTCW.

Correction, game is nothing like COD.

Correction, only two maybe three ex-SD staff worked at endrant.

(-SSF-Sage) #385

And another correction. Endrant worked on it only for a short period of time (fairly too short). For their unluck they were the last ones to work on it, that’s why they got all the blames. My guess is that even SD would not had been able to fix the crap with that amount of time/money.

Thankfully Brink doesn’t have that tight timelimit. It’s out when it’s done.

(light_sh4v0r) #386

Female Characters, do they:

  1. improve gameplay?
  2. make for higher sales figures?
  3. make any difference apart from looks?

If you answered yes to all 3 questions, the Sims is your game.
If not, please let SD spend their time on useful stuff, like a SDK at launch.

(Blowfish) #387

[quote=light_sh4v0r;208321]Female Characters, do they:

  1. improve gameplay?
  2. make for higher sales figures?
  3. make any difference apart from looks?

If you answered yes to all 3 questions, the Sims is your game.
If not, please let SD spend their time on useful stuff, like a SDK at launch.[/quote]

  1. Yes. All these teenagers who buy it, will want to see them nonstop and return playing.

  2. Yes, More active players = more fun = more sold.

  3. Not really, but there are many girl gamers… so why not. Even if there are only a few basic females to pick from.

(signofzeta) #388

[QUOTE=chr1s;208287]Correction, Activision decided to make the game not like RTCW.

Correction, game is nothing like COD.

Correction, only two maybe three ex-SD staff worked at endrant.[/QUOTE]

That’s not what the whiners at wolfenstein.com/forum thinks.

(-SSF-Sage) #389

Blowfish… what are you still doing here? :magicpony:

(light_sh4v0r) #390

[QUOTE=Blowfish;208346]1. Yes. All these teenagers who buy it, will want to see them nonstop and return playing.

  1. Yes, More active players = more fun = more sold.

  2. Not really, but there are many girl gamers… so why not. Even if there are only a few basic females to pick from.[/QUOTE]

  3. I don’t see how teenagers returning to the game increase the quality of the gameplay.

  4. How active you are is of no difference, you’ve already paid your money when buying the game, this is not p2p.

  5. Why not: see the last line of my previous post.

(signofzeta) #391

It is Splash Damage’s decision to make in the end, and in the long run, if it is a bad decision, then it is their loss. If they lose money, it doesn’t affect us in any shape or form.

You could technically boycott the game, but I assure you, that is more loss than gain, because the net amount of sales probably be still increasing, just slower because of the boycott, rather than decreasing. Note that Increasing means earn more than spent making the game, and decreasing means earn less than spent making the game.

I’m sure not only probability on who is buying the game, but I’m sure they are thinking net gains and losses with their decisions. They just don’t think that there are enough females who care enough to play as female avatars to include them in the first place to risk using time and resources. That is my assumption considering how they never told us why they didn’t take that chance, when the chance of sales are slim if they added female characters.

I’m sure some of you are looking at specific situations, but I’m sure Splash Damage is looking at the broader picture.

(light_sh4v0r) #392

Right: I have nothing against female characters as such but:
SD have said multiple times that they’re working on a tight schedule.
imo they should spend the time they have on things that do matter.

I’m not lead developer though, so what do I know about it :wink:

(H0RSE) #393

They just don’t think that there are enough females who care enough to play as female avatars to include them in the first place to risk using time and resources.

I see a lot of statements like the one above…you guys do understand that not just females support the option to add female characters? It’s not about not enough females wanting female avatars, it’s more about, do female avatars really add that much to the game…and they don’t. And it wasn’t like they just scraped them and that’s that. They put the now saved resources to work.

(signofzeta) #394

I’m saying that there are some people here who’d rather have female avatars over anything else, while in fact, adding female avatars makes for a net loss than a net gain in the long run, at this moment in time. Maybe in the future, this kind of situation might be different.

I think adding female avatars add more to the game in terms of diversity, but based on limited time and resources, and that there are not enough people who care enough to add female avatars, then that is the route SD took, and so be it.

I know there are a lot of us who want female avatars, but the most of us don’t actually really want female avatars right away, and can wait for the next game, when the situation in the game suits female avatars better, and there are some of us who just have to have it now, and that is the kind of people I was referring to when I say not a lot of gamers care about female avatars.

I also said that since SD attempted to make female avatars in this game, and didn’t work out, there is a higher chance that in their next game, they might add them in.

(Dormamu) #395

Female Characters in FPS

quit-staring-girls-with-guns-demotivational-poster-1261684618.jpg640x640

(signofzeta) #396

There is a similar thread in the EA forums talking about Battlefield and Female avatars though.

And of course multiple threads in the infinity ward forums

http://www.infinityward.com/forum/search.php?keywords=female+avatars&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0

(tokamak) #397

I wonder if COD would attract more female players if it had a woman as protagonist, or is Gary ‘Roach’ female?

Would Mirror’s Edge attract less female players if the character was male?

(light_sh4v0r) #398

Dunno, all the ‘potential’ female players I showed the game to got dizzy :tongue:

(tokamak) #399

And why don’t male players have similar problems with playing Metroid?

(.Chris.) #400

Samus kicks arse!

First metroid game was 1986, still not many strong female leads in games all these years later. Doubt many females ever played the early games.