Reconsider Female Characters!

(H0RSE) #401

Maybe because Samus is not a blatantly female character. I some people don’t even know she’s female until you tell them. All they see is robot suit and big guns. They look badass, so they really don’t care. Replace the power armor with say something like Princess Peach or an Anime chick, (I hate anime) or if her suit was hot pink with hearts on it, now things are bit different.

It could also be dudes just don’t care as much…but I have ran into my fair share of gamers who refused to play as chicks in games.

(.Chris.) #402

Yeah, not blatantly a female…

(tokamak) #403

[QUOTE=H0RSE;208417]Maybe because Samus is not a blatantly female character. I some people don’t even know she’s female until you tell them. All they see is robot suit and big guns. They look badass, so they really don’t care. Replace the power armor with say something like Princess Peach or an Anime chick, (I hate anime) or if her suit was hot pink with hearts on it, now things are bit different.

It could also be dudes just don’t care as much…but I have ran into my fair share of gamers who refused to play as chicks in games.[/QUOTE]

Mirror’s Edge than, you’ve got a a very visible female body underneath your point of view.

(Senyin) #404

Just speaking for myself here but no. In fact, rather not :eek:

[QUOTE=tokamak;208409]
Would Mirror’s Edge attract less female players if the character was male?[/QUOTE]
Definitely not, but again just me.

In general:
Honestly, I think most female gamers don’t care
and do not have any problems playing a dude.
Unless the game has some or eleborate customization features.
Customization is the key here.

Let’s build a custom avatar…
What’s one of the first things you would normally/naturally choose?
Gender right?
It feels very strange when one of the fundamentals is not there.

Other then that I like ‘being’ Gordon Freeman, Commander Shepard, Roach and who else
(I’m bad with names)

But again, this comes down to Single player VS Multi player, which makes a huge difference.
-In SP you crawl into the skin of the protagonist, male or female, it doesn’t matter.
-In MP you “show up as yourself”. The character represents you (more or less)
When a multiplayer game offers character customization, I don’t think it’s that weird to
expect choice of gender…

(Rahdo) #405

[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]
Funny you should mention that, since it’s in Saints Row 2 that you can do that. In Saints Row 1, the devs didn’t get female characters in, because, quite frankly, it’s hard to get that stuff right, and when you’re doing the first game of a franchise, and trying to get everything to work, you have to make compromises to get the game done.

Same things for Brink, unfortunately, as much as it pains us. But if Brink is a big success, and a sequel gets greenlit from Bethesda, we’ll have the opportunity to get all kinds of new features into the game, including ones we wanted for Brink 1 but had to drop. And you can bet that female characters would be high on the list of want-to-have new features :slight_smile:

(signofzeta) #406

[QUOTE=Rahdo;208442]Funny you should mention that, since it’s in Saints Row 2 that you can do that. In Saints Row 1, the devs didn’t get female characters in, because, quite frankly, it’s hard to get that stuff right, and when you’re doing the first game of a franchise, and trying to get everything to work, you have to make compromises to get the game done.

Same things for Brink, unfortunately, as much as it pains us. But if Brink is a big success, and a sequel gets greenlit from Bethesda, we’ll have the opportunity to get all kinds of new features into the game, including ones we wanted for Brink 1 but had to drop. And you can bet that female characters would be high on the list of want-to-have new features :)[/QUOTE]

yeah which goes to show that if you boycott brink 1 for not having female avatars, then there is a high chance that Brink 2 won’t have any either, because of the sales. We want Brink 1 to be a success so that one day there is more of a budget to work on Brink 2.

Is there a Brink 2?

[QUOTE=Senyin;208438]

-In MP you “show up as yourself”. The character represents you (more or less)
When a multiplayer game offers character customization, I don’t think it’s that weird to
expect choice of gender…[/QUOTE]

Not me, I treat my character in any game as a random soldier in the war, or something like that, and not as myself, because as myself, I am totally different from what the game character is in the game.

I guess I can say that instead of the soldier in the game being me, I can say that I’m a god controlling a certain soldier in the battlefield, or my computer is a mind control device or something, who controls a puppet’s teabagging, or a puppet’s dying all the time etc.

Even with customization, I can still make my character resemble myself, but I still treat myself as a god, or master to the character I created, it’s more of a frankenstein’s monster thing, except with mind control. I guess that way, I’m not fully immersed in the game, and I am fully aware what is in the game, and what is going on around my computer. I know for sure that when I get immersed into a game, I lose track of time.

I guess this is why when I create characters for RPGs, I can create any character I want, that the game allows me to create, and still won’t feel bad, because I know that I represent myself, and not the game character. And also this is why I can create the ugliest looking character just for the laugh and to other peoples’ reactions.

(tokamak) #407

[QUOTE=Senyin;208438]But again, this comes down to Single player VS Multi player, which makes a huge difference.
-In SP you crawl into the skin of the protagonist, male or female, it doesn’t matter.
-In MP you “show up as yourself”. The character represents you (more or less)
When a multiplayer game offers character customization, I don’t think it’s that weird to
expect choice of gender…[/QUOTE]

Yeah guys, I know, picked it up like a bad habit :slight_smile:

(Senyin) #408

[QUOTE=signofzeta;208445]yeah which goes to show that if you boycott brink 1 for not having female avatars, then there is a high chance that Brink 2 won’t have any either, because of the sales. We want Brink 1 to be a success so that one day there is more of a budget to work on Brink 2.

Is there a Brink 2?

Not me, I treat my character in any game as a random soldier in the war, or something like that, and not as myself, because as myself, I am totally different from what the game character is in the game.

I guess I can say that instead of the soldier in the game being me, I can say that I’m a god controlling a certain soldier in the battlefield, or my computer is a mind control device or something, who controls a puppet’s teabagging, or a puppet’s dying all the time etc.

Even with customization, I can still make my character resemble myself, but I still treat myself as a god, or master to the character I created, it’s more of a frankenstein’s monster thing, except with mind control. I guess that way, I’m not fully immersed in the game, and I am fully aware what is in the game, and what is going on around my computer. I know for sure that when I get immersed into a game, I lose track of time.

I guess this is why when I create characters for RPGs, I can create any character I want, that the game allows me to create, and still won’t feel bad, because I know that I represent myself, and not the game character. And also this is why I can create the ugliest looking character just for the laugh and to other peoples’ reactions.[/QUOTE]

I too create characters that are miles from who
I am, males and females, and I prefer as ugly as possible =D

This doesnt take a way the fact that gender is one of the primary choices
in character customisation. It’s not that unnatural or grazy that when you hear
‘character creation’ you unconsciously assume male and female is it?
It’s not an unreasonable assumption, at least not to me.

I mean, I would definitely go “WTF?!?” when I blindly bought a game that promotes
char customisation and found you can only make females :confused:
I would not if they didn’t have tattoo’s p/e, because that’s just secondary.

And so I did say ‘WTF’ when I first read Brink will have no female models.
Because I would prefer to have my main character in my own gender, which
I believe just comes natural for most people.
I get the feeling some find that unreasonable or something.

Nice one Tokamak :wink:

(PSG_Mud) #409

[QUOTE=Rahdo;208442]Funny you should mention that, since it’s in Saints Row 2 that you can do that. In Saints Row 1, the devs didn’t get female characters in, because, quite frankly, it’s hard to get that stuff right, and when you’re doing the first game of a franchise, and trying to get everything to work, you have to make compromises to get the game done.

Same things for Brink, unfortunately, as much as it pains us. But if Brink is a big success, and a sequel gets greenlit from Bethesda, we’ll have the opportunity to get all kinds of new features into the game, including ones we wanted for Brink 1 but had to drop. And you can bet that female characters would be high on the list of want-to-have new features :)[/QUOTE]

Well, what can you do to not allow this to happen other than not buy Brink1. Are you basically telling me to pirate the game? Not that I would in the first place. Obviously this topic is sensitive why not find some middle ground?

[QUOTE=Profane;207695]

Honestly, I’d just be happy with a non-gendered avatar. :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe a Scotsman and his kilt.[/QUOTE]

I agree, for example the pyro in TF2 is considered non gendered and is up the imagination without going into a morale dilemma of realistically killing women/children in a video game.

(H0RSE) #410

Morale dilemma? Is killing women and children in a video game really that bad? I would gladly play a game where you have to launch flaming newborns from catapults and hit pregnant women in their bellies, causing them to burst into flames and miscarriage, all while eating a baby seal sandwich and wearing a fur coat.

It’s a game, an escape from reality…morality is out the window. The only time I could maybe see it as a ‘morale dilemma’ is if the women/children are innocent bystanders. But if they were innocent bystanders, it would apply to men, aliens, animals, etc. not just women/children.

If killing women/children was the main point of the game, like my above example, or in Brinks case, a team vs team scenario, and a woman or child happened to be on the enemy team, I don’t see anything morally wrong with killing them.

(WhiteAden) #411

[QUOTE=H0RSE;208511]Morale dilemma? Is killing women and children in a video game really that bad? I would gladly play a game where you have to launch flaming newborns from catapults and hit pregnant women in their bellies, causing them to burst into flames and miscarriage, while eating a baby seal sandwich and wearing a fur coat.

It’s a game, an escape from reality…morality is out the window.[/QUOTE]

but any game like that would get the restricted rating, or would be banned by law… cause the people in charge of stuff like this, aren’t the people playing the games, knowing what it does to them -__-

(DarkangelUK) #412

megafacepalm

The topic isn’t sensitive except for a few people with an irk that can’t seem to let go… even though the news and decision is final.

(kamikazee) #413

[QUOTE=signofzeta;208445]Not me, I treat my character in any game as a random soldier in the war, or something like that, and not as myself, because as myself, I am totally different from what the game character is in the game.[/QUOTE]Interestingly, as playing a character not firmly ground in reality, you are in fact still showing a side of your personality.
If you start tea-bagging, you still show how few sportsmanship you can show at a given moment. If you go on a spawn-killing rampage on the outnumbered enemy, you still show that you only care about winning.

So in one way or another, we still express ourselves online. I could see how women may like to play using a female avatar, but loads of arguments can be made with most boiling down to taste and preference.

Have a fun discussion. :wink:

(signofzeta) #414

[QUOTE=kamikazee;209038]Interestingly, as playing a character not firmly ground in reality, you are in fact still showing a side of your personality.
If you start tea-bagging, you still show how few sportsmanship you can show at a given moment. If you go on a spawn-killing rampage on the outnumbered enemy, you still show that you only care about winning.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think you understand what I’m trynig to say. They want female characters so they feel comfortable being the character, or something like that.

I on the other hand, don’t treat the characters in game as myself, but as an outside character that I control, kind of control a known character in a single player game. If I TK someone, that is my hands clicking on that mouse button to do it, not the character pulling the trigger.

For example, let’s pretend that you want your character to be such and such because you want to step into that character’s shoes. It’s like saying you are personifying yourself as either:

a metallic thimble
a tiny figurine you spent time painting
colored plastic shaped like chess pawns

So I treat video games no different than board games, and I treat my character no different from any piece in a board game.

What I’m trying to say is, I use my mental strategies to control my character, and I don’t say that my character is me. I am not in the game. I am sitting on my chair, near a computer, playing the game. This is why I have no trouble picking whoever I want, and when there is nobody there that I really want, I’m just as happy picking whoever is left. This is also why when I play multiplayer games with friends, where they pick a character first, and it is blacked out, and you can’t pick that character, I don’t mind, I end up picking the character that is left on the screen.

When communicating with others online, I’m not talking to that avatar, and I don’t feel that I have to find that avatar with my controlled, and not me avatar, to talk to him. I in fact am talking to the man, or woman, sitting in his chair near the computer playing his/her game.

I find it odd that, people don’t personify themselves into board game pieces, and they don’t personify into characters in a TV show. But once you put them both together, they can easily personify themselves as a game piece inside a TV, or monitor.

I guess if you always attribute characters to yourself, I guess when you write books, make movies, or make games, they’d always be about yourself, and not imaginative character you made up.

I hope Splash Damage in the future makes a multitude of characters in future games too, just to keep things diverse, and I hope Bethesda or whoever in the future would fund them properly.

(DarkangelUK) #415

This thread was better when it was about to die… thanks for that Kamikazee :confused:

(signofzeta) #416

and you know how random I am. Once someone comes in and still can’t “walk it off”, then I would come in, stating that Splash Damage has already done whatever they did blah blah, and there is nothing that we can do about it, but to let the game be released blah blah blah.

Then I proceed to talk about random stuff that comes out of my head.

Then those people who couldn’t walk it off then goes back on whatever random thing I said, unrelated to the fact that Splash Damage already done their deed, and there is nothing we could do about it, then I would start a new random topic on the matter.

So, as a random person, if i don’t agree with someone, expect some hefty random posts.

We could let this thread die, OR we could steer this thread into randomness huh? huh? Because this is what this entire thread was about, and the answer to the female avatar thing was and has always been final. After MoP’s post in the beginning, the entire thread became random, with nail talking about differences in physical fitness, which IMO, has nothing to do with this thread, then this escalated into mental differences, and other random stuff.

With some people whining about how it isn’t fair, and the answer from SD was always, “it didn’t work out, or there wasn’t enough funding, or the files of the game would be too big.” They could step into a game character’s shoes, why not step in to a game developer’s shoes, and know who the target audience is, know the constraints and limits, and know what must be sacrificed to make a good game, and also make good games in the future.

But no, they just come back, and the thread just goes random.

(Ryan) #417

[QUOTE=signofzeta;209067]and you know how random I am. Once someone comes in and still can’t “walk it off”, then I would come in, stating that Splash Damage has already done whatever they did blah blah, and there is nothing that we can do about it, but to let the game be released blah blah blah.

Then I proceed to talk about random stuff that comes out of my head.

Then those people who couldn’t walk it off then goes back on whatever random thing I said, unrelated to the fact that Splash Damage already done their deed, and there is nothing we could do about it, then I would start a new random topic on the matter.

So, as a random person, if i don’t agree with someone, expect some hefty random posts.

We could let this thread die, OR we could steer this thread into randomness huh? huh? Because this is what this entire thread was about, and the answer to the female avatar thing was and has always been final. After MoP’s post in the beginning, the entire thread became random, with nail talking about differences in physical fitness, which IMO, has nothing to do with this thread, then this escalated into mental differences, and other random stuff.

With some people whining about how it isn’t fair, and the answer from SD was always, “it didn’t work out, or there wasn’t enough funding, or the files of the game would be too big.” They could step into a game character’s shoes, why not step in to a game developer’s shoes, and know who the target audience is, know the constraints and limits, and know what must be sacrificed to make a good game, and also make good games in the future.

But no, they just come back, and the thread just goes random.[/QUOTE]

Who likes pizza?

Do they have pizza character in the game?
Cause in real life I am a pizza and I would like to be represented in the character build menu!

(.Chris.) #418

Can we lock this thread now?

(Stroggafier) #419

Does playing a pizza help you identify with the game better and thus make it a richer experience for you? and are there enough pizzas playing this game to take a serious look at tattooed pizza toppings?

But seriously, you do have a point. Perhaps its a bit closer to a possible reality, had you said, “I’m a seriously obese, over-indulging, pizza eating middle-aged man, and I need an avatar that reflects my obesity, sloth, lack of hair and lack of social skills”
(Not talking about you specifically Ryan, its just a more likely example for the logic that is being used to support the argument that demographic should dictate the game design.)

(Ryan) #420

[QUOTE=Stroggafier;209162]Does playing a pizza help you identify with the game better and thus make it a richer experience for you? and are there enough pizzas playing this game to take a serious look at tattooed pizza toppings?

But seriously, you do have a point. Perhaps its a bit closer to a possible reality, had you said, “I’m a seriously obese, over-indulging, pizza eating middle-aged man, and I need an avatar that reflects my obesity, sloth, lack of hair and lack of social skills”
(Not talking about you specifically Ryan, its just a more likely example for the logic that is being used to support the argument that demographic should dictate the game design.)[/QUOTE]

Glad you think I had a point cause I got an infraction for that post, lol.

All I was saying with that post is that you cannot cater for EVERYONE from the real world. I just used the pizza as a general object that cannot be represented in the character build system while trying to be light about it at the same time.

If you replace pizza with male or female I guess I wouldn’t have gotten an infraction, but that wouldn’t represent the problem of not having everyting possible ingame. oh well :\

I am glad you DID understand the meaning of the post :wink: