No, it matters to the mainstream. You have an untapped market in women because the content and characters don't appeal to them, often because there's no representation of them.
If you want the industry to keep growing you'll need to aim for wider audience.
Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed having female enemies for you to fight was also quite a big thing, even some "inclusive" developers like Naughty Dog refuse to do that. Female enemies are even rarer than female protagonists.
ND said that Uncharted 4 will have female enemies. The sniper buddy in the beta was likely an example. It was RAM limitations that kept them out if TLoU since they couldn't afford the extra animations and voices due to hardware.
No, it matters to the mainstream. You have an untapped market in women because the content and characters don't appeal to them, often because there's no representation of them.
If you want the industry to keep growing you'll need to aim for wider audience.
No, it matters to the mainstream. You have an untapped market in women because the content and characters don't appeal to them, often because there's no representation of them.
If you want the industry to keep growing you'll need to aim for wider audience.
Which is exactly why we have so many great female chracters in video games - mainstream and indie. I just don't get how people can deny that.
Plus, in most of the countries, there are MORE female gamers than male ones... unless you are some kind of elitist and don't want to count mobile games So I don't really think it's matter of "something not appealing enough".
We had a non-straight relationship portrayed in Wolfenstein The Old Blood in a very natural way that took Nazi rule under context *SPOILERS*[video]. There are some more female characters like the rambunctious agent/nurse Pippa. The ending personally made me emotional.
We had a female hero in Toren who was the only one prophecised to save the world, and she's just a kid with a sword too heavy for her. Nice subversive and pretty dark twist on Legend Of Zelda. Pretty sad game, similar to Team Ico titles, but with added surrealism.
Cibele had a dating relationship play out in a believable even if unorthodox way of a girl chatting with a guy on a MMO and finding the courage to take the next step even if not everything goes as planned. It's frankly pretty brave that the game went with live action and an autobiographical approach.
Ronin does a very Metroid thing of
revealing your gender at the very end
, while she's a badass stealth biker assassin. If you liked Kill Bill, check it out.
Fran Bow showed what mental illness might be like from the perspective of a girl, kinda like Alice Madness Returns. It's sometimes cute but also brutally graphic simultaneously. Although horror does tend to have more female protagonists. Seriously, has some of the most gruesome imagery in a game.
Her Story is another live-action tale from a woman's perspective, this time on a possible murder. It won Best Performance at the Game Awards.
Also, it gave us this amazing reaction GIF (Viva Seifert, the actress from Her Story excited to win while typo says she performed in Witcher 3 so Witcher developer is confused [video]).
Jotun is a Viking action game, with Thora as the hero instead of a dude. She packs a mighty punch with that axe!
Lemma is recommended if you liked Mirror's Edge and are up for a more surreal world that wants to kill you in inventive ways. You play as Joan Emerson, a physics grad student. In more relaxed times, you converse with Mark, your colleague, through your mobile phone by texting through dialogue choices. It loses steam and all the endings are unsatisfying, but still worth playing.
Beyond Eyes has you playing as a blind girl trying to find her lost cat. It's a short tale of adventure, danger, senses, illusions, and loss. It's really bittersweet, the ending had me welling up a bit.
I'm sure others have mentioned Life Is Strange by now. We haven't had a naive opinionated teen girl like Max Caulfield since maybe like The Longest Journey. Really well observed examination of school life, even if the dialogue can be a bit twee.
Dreamfall Chapters hasn't finished yet, and I haven't played all of the episodes, but that game is chock full of interesting female characters of different races and sexualities along with Zoe the protagonist. Nela the marxist street chef, Mira the hilariously sweary Indian garage owner (if you're indian/pakistani you'll recognise the insults in that video ), , Na'aine the shy but powerful mage, Ada the icy muslim scientist, and many others. I loved the relationship stuff in Episode 1. Has quite a few gay characters, like one of the playable protagonists
Kian
and Hanna/Abby are a couple.
Damn it, now I want to play more Dreamfall Chapters.
We had a female hero in Toren who was the only one prophecised to save the world, and she's just a kid with a sword too heavy for her. Nice subversive and pretty dark twist on Legend Of Zelda. Pretty sad game, similar to Team Ico titles, but with added surrealism.
.
This was a damn good year overall, and you're deluding yourself if you don't think all the "complaining" in years previous had an effect on that
Of course criticism doesn't end, and it never will because there's always something to react to. Progress is made and we hold ourselves to a higher standard next year
It has been getting since the start of this generation I would argue. Specifically this year, I will say the stuff that impressed me .
-Fallout giving people the option to play as female characters for the first time
-FIFA having female teams
-Neir 2 having a female main character
-Assassins Creed having a big main character being female and playable
-Female foes appearing in more games like Call of Duty
-Japanese developers aware of backlash against female designs (sees the DOA:Extreme PS4/Vita threads)
-Tomb Raider 2013 Sequel is less violent toward Lara (I think?)
So while work still needs to be done (female foes in Uncharted for example), its getting a lot better than it was in the past .
It has been getting since the start of this generation I would argue. Specifically this year, I will say the stuff that impressed me .
-Fallout giving people the option to play as female characters for the first time
i'm always confused by threads like that. Why we cannot we act like female protagonist/character is something normal (cuz it is normal)? Instead, we are making some specific calculations which is creating the atmosphere where it's NOT normal and deserves special praise.
There are over 1300 video games with female protagonists and yet, some people are acting like it's one-of-a-kind miracle when it happens.
And why it even matters if protagonists is male or female? This type of thinking is not better than "hur dur, im not playing as chick".
Just get over it and play the god damn game without categorizing characters.
It's hard to tell if there are more female roles or main characters than last year, or better ones, you'd need an actual study to determine that, but when games like FIFA and Call of Duty start including women, it at least feels like the industry has overall significantly improved this year.
They kind of backtracked with the bonus costumes, but most of the playable characters in Resident Evil: Revelations 2 were female (2 women and one young girl), plus the main villain was a woman. Competent as hell, too. I love jaded, survivor Claire
Japan hasn't been terrible, but it could be so much better. I don't mean to extinguish fanservice games, but it'd be cool if we could get, say, a new Tactics Ogre along with waifu Emblem Or a new Virtua Fighter along with Strip Fighter V.
I think that representation, objectification and all the bad shit for women is still going strong, but I also think this year got better even if things aren't amazing right now. Moreso I see small changes here and there that are encouraging for the industry in general. It's not where it should be, but these things take time and I think we're starting to see movement towards better representation.
I kinda figured someone thought it'd be hilarious to make villains with "ugly" faces but "sexy" bodies. See the female Prone enemies for example. At least you barely see those two villains and I didn't realize there were even female enemies until I checked the Enemy Index lol. The amount of "sexy" armor is kind of annoying too but at least the default looks for all of the playable female characters are terrific and thank god for fashion armor.
Elma is great though. She's a 29 year old woman in a position of power who never feels like some exaggerated FEMALE EMPOWERMENT stereotype and never has her authority undermined by a male subordinate and never needs a male character to save her. I like Irina and Lin as well but I haven't really spent as much time with the other female characters yet so maybe I'll like them a lot too.
This is slightly off topic, but I am kinda bothered by the fact that the a lot of the homosexual representation in games are lesbians. Can anyone give an example of a homosexual relationship between two men?
This is slightly off topic, but I am kinda bothered by the fact that the a lot of the homosexual representation in games are lesbians. Can anyone give an example of a homosexual relationship between two men?
I was wondering what GAF thinks about 2015 as far as how women have been portrayed this year?
Imo, there has never been a better time to see such varied roles for women in gaming:
-We have CoD allowing you to pick female soldiers. Who look kick ass, and look like they kick ass. MGSV allows you to play fem soldiers, and they kick ass too!
-We have Assassin's Creed with a kick ass.... assassin lady now.
-We have our RPG fix with fallout 4 continuing tradition by allowing you to create your own character. Fully voiced this time around.
-We have the "masterpiece" The Witcher 3 with its varied representation of women of all shapes and ages.
-We also have Linkle, which I think is pretty neat that she even exists for real now.
-We also have upcoming games like the new Mirror's Edge Catalyst/New NiER which I'm sure will do a well enough job.
But... What does gaf think of 2015? Are there any titles I missed? Were you disappointed? Were you pleasantly surprised?
Of all the things to be proud of undertale for, "Making people i disagree with salty" is the most childish, petty and sad reason ever.
How about giving it credit cause it's an amazing game?
Coincidentally, how'd characters like Frisk rank in this sort of polling? Frisk is intentionally never reffered by any pronoun other than "Them" to mantain gender neutality at all moments (and armor equipment in the game includes both male and female clothing, since basically could be argued that Frisk is a kid who likes to play dress up).
This is slightly off topic, but I am kinda bothered by the fact that the a lot of the homosexual representation in games are lesbians. Can anyone give an example of a homosexual relationship between two men?
Two male guards in Undertale are gay, you beat them non violently by making one confess his love for the other, however since they're a minor encounter, they don't get as much attention as the lesbian couple since those are major characters.
Mass Effect 3 has a canon gay male and a character that you can make him go gay for you if you're male shepard.
I think people don't give them much credit because the former was just inserted to be male Shepard's boy toy should you choose to go gay, and the other gets really weird when you take in account that in the previous games he was straight.
Jennefer of vengerberg and Triss Merigold were absolutely amazing in the witcher 3, ciri too. Damn, all of them, even Cerys. Loved the female characters on the game, charismatic, memorable, strong.
Try it out, Toren is pretty cheap and is just about 3-4 hours. It's janky but has a lot of heart for being a first for some Brazilian devs. There's quite a bit going on with the story and themes that I don't want to spoil. It's pretty far out there.
AC Syndicate should've just been entirely about the sister, quite frankly. She was the better half.
And yeah, despite many of the playable females in Nintendo games generally being the same usual ones, it's pretty fantastic the de-facto mascot for Splatoon is the Inkling Girl.
Speak for yourself, I prefer Jacob as a character. Evie is great too but I only play her when I need to. I prefer Jacob's fuck it let's do this attitude over Evie's calcuated approach.
I gotta agree. Ciri was great (and I'd love to play a Witcher with her as the main character) but in general I wouldn't hold Witcher up as a great one for good representation of women and it is a game that is still very obviously aimed more at guys with females more treated that way. Other than Ciri who is one of the main characters (to the point you even play her some).
Anyways, not sure though some of the problem with that is just due to the source material they use for the story though.
This is slightly off topic, but I am kinda bothered by the fact that the a lot of the homosexual representation in games are lesbians. Can anyone give an example of a homosexual relationship between two men?
But yes, lesbians are more accepted than gay guys. I think partly cause a lot of guys seem to have some sort of fantasy about them. Also... my theory that gay people in general are seen as being more like the opposite gender (gay guys are seen as "sissy" and gay females seen as butch). It's more ok for a female to be more male like cause they are "elevating" themselves than it is for a guy to be feminine "cause they are lowering themselves". So lesbians aren't looked down on as much.
I mean as a tomboy I got this a lot where I would get this attitude (and I had it too honestly until some one pointed it out to me) that it was good that I liked good things that guys like, not silly things that females like. Being a tomboy in general got me seen as being cooler. But be a guy who liked female stuff? Yeah, good luck on that. Female stuff is inferior and only ok for females to like.
