=GabrielKnight=
Member
Oh no Neogaf is turning into resetera, please stahp
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Why is it that in every game that give you an option to play as female, the "Male" character is ALWAYS considered the Default?
- Thread starter levyjl1988
- Start date
tassletine
Member
It's designed to annoy you. People who complain too much are irritating so we all got together and hatched a plan against you.
Thomish
Member
Very funny how just the very mere act of asking this question is seen by lots as GAF turning into ResetEra lol. The only ResetEra-ey thing about this thread is people telling OP to essentially shut up for asking a question that for some reason irks their world views... Which is more ResetEra than actual question OP asked imo.
On OP's actual question - I think it isn't a crazy question to ask, but obviously it's due to the fact that video games market has always been predominantly white and male, thus most of the main characters we see are exactly this. Representation has only been in the spot light in the video gaming world recently (as with the rest of the world really) so I'm guessing from now onwards we should begin to see a shift (already seeing a lot more female protagonists or let me say, non white male protagonists) and in my opinion, this is a good thing.
Some will probably call this post SJW, but I don't give a shit tbh. As someone who isn't a white male it's refreshing to see different people as protagonists.
On OP's actual question - I think it isn't a crazy question to ask, but obviously it's due to the fact that video games market has always been predominantly white and male, thus most of the main characters we see are exactly this. Representation has only been in the spot light in the video gaming world recently (as with the rest of the world really) so I'm guessing from now onwards we should begin to see a shift (already seeing a lot more female protagonists or let me say, non white male protagonists) and in my opinion, this is a good thing.
Some will probably call this post SJW, but I don't give a shit tbh. As someone who isn't a white male it's refreshing to see different people as protagonists.
Revolutionary
Member
Because of a little something called demographics
German Hops
GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
No, it's clearly misogyny.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
I’m pretty sure it’d be the same side screaming
royox
Member
Star Wars Squadrons has a super retarded sistem when creating character.
It gives first "head Option" and gives 4 options called "A,B,C,D". A and B are female heads and C and D are males.
Then it gives "Body Options" and gives 2 options. Female body type and Male body type. Both of them with the pilot suit and BOTH OF THEM ARE LITERALLY THE SAME.
Then it gives "Voice options", and you get a bunch of weird code names for the voices like "A heroic, B heroic" where A always is Female and B is always Male.
So if I have to choose between "Male is the default" or this retarded inclusive progressive clusterfuck of senseless shit...then keep giving me default male or no options at all (force Male or Female, I don't care).
It gives first "head Option" and gives 4 options called "A,B,C,D". A and B are female heads and C and D are males.
Then it gives "Body Options" and gives 2 options. Female body type and Male body type. Both of them with the pilot suit and BOTH OF THEM ARE LITERALLY THE SAME.
Then it gives "Voice options", and you get a bunch of weird code names for the voices like "A heroic, B heroic" where A always is Female and B is always Male.
So if I have to choose between "Male is the default" or this retarded inclusive progressive clusterfuck of senseless shit...then keep giving me default male or no options at all (force Male or Female, I don't care).
MMaRsu
Banned
Really? Im a guy but id always rather play as a woman
RJMacready73
Simps for Amouranth
This is a fucking issue? either you're bored as fuck and trolling or you need help... who cares who the default is, some of us dont give a shit
MMaRsu
Banned
Bc men are better than women
Diddy X
Member
That's okay, but still majority of gamers prefer playing as a man hence they treating the male option as the default.
scoobidoo112
Member
This is about as valid a complaint as people that unironically complain that the the terms "history" and "humankind" are male-oriented words. All this exposes is your own insecurities and fragility. The vast majority of AAA games are predominantly played by men, thus the male option is the default. Making the female option the default creates the exact same problem in the opposite direction.
Just give it a few years when games feature integrated A.I. and proper voice recognition, so you can simply state your sex out loud, without being presented a default selected option. Until then, there is no viable solution, aside from no default selection being made, and both options being presented at the same time, which tends to lead to other UX / UI issues, which is why barely anyone does it that way.
Just give it a few years when games feature integrated A.I. and proper voice recognition, so you can simply state your sex out loud, without being presented a default selected option. Until then, there is no viable solution, aside from no default selection being made, and both options being presented at the same time, which tends to lead to other UX / UI issues, which is why barely anyone does it that way.
ptuck874
Member
What fucking gives?
Female characters are considered optional, often an alternate box art from behind rather than the default.
Trailers always see to have the male option as the default.
As a male heterosexual, I dunno about you, but I like looking at a female character when I play video games.
Why the fuck would I play as a Male and see a man's junk during character customization like in CyberPunk 2077, at least when I play as a female character at least there is some eye candy to look at.
Sex sells, we need more attractive women on covers.
ptuck874
Member
edit here, op, you are a closet tranny, just dress in women's clothes, must cheaper and you wont have to deal with surgery issues, its ok, just be a crossdresser, you can be hetero and a crossdresser, no problems with it at all!
oh they did have a game right up your alley to try:
en.wikipedia.org
maybe start a kickstarter to get the game updated by that sony studio that updates games so well!!!
holy s word!!!
www.rockyhorrorgames.com
they are doing an update, op do not buy anymore games that show either men or women on the cover, just the words unless you support and buy this one!!!
oh they did have a game right up your alley to try:
The Rocky Horror Show (video game) - Wikipedia
holy s word!!!
About The Game | Rocky Horror Games
www.rockyhorrorgames.com
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Mister Wolf
Member
Most men would rather roleplay or experience the story as a man. Gaming is largely male dominated on the creation side and consumer side.
German Hops
GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
Member
Did you just assume their gender?!
Brock2621
Member
I was going to respond but... no need, this is everything that needs to be said. I don’t even know what the next 3 pages could possibly be
Beer Baelly
Al Pachinko, Konami President
I only play as a woman when I have no choice. Except for Immortals. They made the male characters deliberitly ugly. Fuck you Ubisoft
royox
Member
Thats a super interesting thing to me. For example in english you say "Left and Right" but in spanish we say them in reverse "derecha (right) e izquierda (left)" and this shit usually causes me to say left when I want to say Right.
Fbh
Member
Because that's what you do when data for games like Mass Effect, Assassins Creed Odyssey, Dragon Age Inquisition, and Baldur's Gate 3 keeps showing how, again and again, the vast majority of players prefer to play as male characters.
You sell and promote your stuff to your audience.
You sell and promote your stuff to your audience.
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Majukun
Member
demographic.
is not really that hard of a concept, a product gets primarely sold to the biggest demographic
also, we are having a BIG influx of female protagonist in teh future judging by the game announcements in the last year or so, so if that floats your bot, you are gonna have your faair share of female protagonists
is not really that hard of a concept, a product gets primarely sold to the biggest demographic
also, we are having a BIG influx of female protagonist in teh future judging by the game announcements in the last year or so, so if that floats your bot, you are gonna have your faair share of female protagonists
//DEVIL//
Member
Same . Like wtf gtfo with this shit :/
DavidGzz
Member
Imagine playing as a female. The only one my wife approved of was Abby since she looks like she could spot me.
On a serious note, I don't mind playing as a female but when given the option I'm playing as a dude. I think many of us like to visualize ourselves in the game or play as someone resembling us at least. It's why I also pick a human or elf in RPG's. I don't play games to stare at polygonal ass.
On a serious note, I don't mind playing as a female but when given the option I'm playing as a dude. I think many of us like to visualize ourselves in the game or play as someone resembling us at least. It's why I also pick a human or elf in RPG's. I don't play games to stare at polygonal ass.
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Captain Toad
Banned
Because men are superior to women!
Go share that quote with ResetEra, so they'll start bouncing off the walls in anger.
Go share that quote with ResetEra, so they'll start bouncing off the walls in anger.
DavidGzz
Member
Wasn't there an exodus because of the Cyberpunk hate. This was bound to happen...
Sander Cohen
Member
So, top selling games every fucking year are, resoundingly, Call of Duty, FIFA, NBA, GTA, RDR 2 (recently), bunch of Nintendo kids games etc. Do you really think even 10% of that falls on female gamers? Probably 5% or less. Yet, some keep insisting on pandering to a gender that just doesn’t play games (generally speaking) and usually it shows in sales numbers.
Girls just have different interests, norms and expectations from guys and that’s fine. Well, just look at this forum, there is like 3-5 girls posting here regularly, right? What percentage is that? C’mon now, we can be honest with each other or just bury or head in the sand and keep pretending it’s 50/50 or something.
I actually would like to see some huge shift where girls suddenly start playing games but can’t see it happening, sorry.
Girls just have different interests, norms and expectations from guys and that’s fine. Well, just look at this forum, there is like 3-5 girls posting here regularly, right? What percentage is that? C’mon now, we can be honest with each other or just bury or head in the sand and keep pretending it’s 50/50 or something.
I actually would like to see some huge shift where girls suddenly start playing games but can’t see it happening, sorry.
Vaelka
Member
I prefer to play female characters but the answer is quite obvious.
Even in games like AC: Odyssey where basically everyone only talks about the female protagonist the reality is that a majority played the male protagonist.
Something that really bothers me too is that in terms of gear the default is always considered to be the male gear too.
So when people complain about gear differences it's ALWAYS framed as the male being the default and that the female gear is '' the other '', EVERY time...
Instead of asking for options all-around the complaints are always that the female gear should be like the male gear, even when the female gear is infinitely more varied.
Look at the complaints about it in Monster Hunter World for example, the female gear is by far much more varied than the male gear but it's always just people complaining '' why do the female characters not wear the same as the male characters? ''.
Same in WoW and how people keep harping on about the five gear pieces from freaking Vanilla for being skimpy, instead of bitching about it being different then maybe people should ask why there's no such variety with male gear?
Imo it just adds variety and more options, but somehow that's bad and the gear needs to be just as boring and samey as the male gear?
I see it sometimes in FFXIV too if female characters gets shorts or a skirt, people bitch about it not being pants instead of the fact that male gear is actually less varied and just got pants for the billionth time.
It's just really annoying to me, I have no problems with people being given options.
But usually the '' solution '' is to just take the feminine things and masculanize it.
Which I also do think has to do with something sorta connected to the majority of players being men, devs/ publishers don't want to make men '' feel gay ''.
There's a very large group of men who are very insecure and have very negative reactions to these things.
Not talking about men simply with preferences, but there's a very large amount of men who gets unironically triggered by femininity that would just refuse to buy/ play something where a male character was sexualized in a less stereotypically dudebro way.
It's the same reason why lesbians in media are more common than gay men, because '' lesbians are hot, and gay men are icky ''.
And all the same there actually does exist a pretty large group of people who refuse to even entertain the idea of playing a female character, just as how some women refuse to play male characters.
And men are the primary demographic.
People often deny that this is true but I see it quite frequently.
The ironic thing is that in reality when developers masculinize female characters they appeal more to the dudebros who are offended by femininity and turn most women away at the same time.
Part of me think they're aware of this and that progressiveness is just a convenient shield to hide behind while pandering to the average joe who '' doesn't like no girly things ''.
Even in games like AC: Odyssey where basically everyone only talks about the female protagonist the reality is that a majority played the male protagonist.
Something that really bothers me too is that in terms of gear the default is always considered to be the male gear too.
So when people complain about gear differences it's ALWAYS framed as the male being the default and that the female gear is '' the other '', EVERY time...
Instead of asking for options all-around the complaints are always that the female gear should be like the male gear, even when the female gear is infinitely more varied.
Look at the complaints about it in Monster Hunter World for example, the female gear is by far much more varied than the male gear but it's always just people complaining '' why do the female characters not wear the same as the male characters? ''.
Same in WoW and how people keep harping on about the five gear pieces from freaking Vanilla for being skimpy, instead of bitching about it being different then maybe people should ask why there's no such variety with male gear?
Imo it just adds variety and more options, but somehow that's bad and the gear needs to be just as boring and samey as the male gear?
I see it sometimes in FFXIV too if female characters gets shorts or a skirt, people bitch about it not being pants instead of the fact that male gear is actually less varied and just got pants for the billionth time.
It's just really annoying to me, I have no problems with people being given options.
But usually the '' solution '' is to just take the feminine things and masculanize it.
Which I also do think has to do with something sorta connected to the majority of players being men, devs/ publishers don't want to make men '' feel gay ''.
There's a very large group of men who are very insecure and have very negative reactions to these things.
Not talking about men simply with preferences, but there's a very large amount of men who gets unironically triggered by femininity that would just refuse to buy/ play something where a male character was sexualized in a less stereotypically dudebro way.
It's the same reason why lesbians in media are more common than gay men, because '' lesbians are hot, and gay men are icky ''.
And all the same there actually does exist a pretty large group of people who refuse to even entertain the idea of playing a female character, just as how some women refuse to play male characters.
And men are the primary demographic.
People often deny that this is true but I see it quite frequently.
The ironic thing is that in reality when developers masculinize female characters they appeal more to the dudebros who are offended by femininity and turn most women away at the same time.
Part of me think they're aware of this and that progressiveness is just a convenient shield to hide behind while pandering to the average joe who '' doesn't like no girly things ''.
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TriSuit666
Banned
Mass Effect 3 had a reversible cover with Male and FemShep on.
Also Ass Creed: Odyssey, the story is written from Kasandra's perspective, she is the default character.
Also OP - do better.
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Topher
Gold Member
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eyesabitdull
Banned
Wtf am I reading?
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