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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?

cormack12

Gold Member
Because default will always favour the majority choice for convenience. Its nothing sinister.

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Meesh

Member
As a man who definitely appreciates a strong female lead in much if not all my entertainment, and personal life, it's damn near offensive.
Lol not really, but we need more ladies. Im not talking about about female representation in the form of peelers who happened to be saving the planet.(not that there's anything wrong with that) I want average women tossed into unusual circumstances who end up becoming much more.

Im asking too much, I know.
 

Leosocial

Neo Member
No, if you've seen my past threads I advocate for furries and girls with pretty faces.


Almost no one wants to play as furries or be reminded they even exist, so I wouldn't hold my breath on that if I were you. Plus, a furry in any setting not explicitly furry based would look incredibly stupid and out of place. No one would take, say, Mass Effect or Metal Gear V seriously if the main char was running around like that.
 

Sejan

Member
I really don’t care what gender they feature on the cover. The thing that bothered me most was when AC: odyssey put the male option on all the marketing material and still tried to claim that the female option was the canon choice.

Make a choice and have the courage to stick with it.
 

carlosrox

Banned
As a male heterosexual, I dunno about you, but I like looking at a female character when I play video games.

I'm into guys and girls but I still almost never wanna play as a woman given the option.

I see it as either a tad effeminate or too thirsty when I see guys who always play as women all the time actually. Playing as actual female characters like Lara or whatever is cool, and that's another story. But choosing women all the time when you're a guy...

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Not sure why guys would wanna play as women when I figure people would usually wanna play as someone they relate to/can insert themselves into (I see your joke coming a mile away so don't bother).

Like are you staring at the woman's ass as you play? I enjoy looking at women too but it's not what I'm looking for when playing a game.

Given the choice I'll choose a man pretty much every single time.

Watch Dogs Legion lets you play as anybody and I've only gone with like 3 women so far and pretty much just stick with the guys cuz they look cooler/I'm a fucking guy the way I see it.
 
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Heylon

Member
Because the larger percentage of gamers are males, and they tend to prefer playing as dudes. It’s as simple as that.
 
I used to spend hours trying to make a hot woman in Dark Souls. Funny enough when you start the game she looks like a raisin.

Personally I dont play games for the immersion or escapism, except when I play Super Mario.
 

yurinka

Member
If you include mobile and web browser games, the players are almost 50% male and 50% female. If you only include home consoles and Steam, the big majority of players are male. So in AAA games they try to appeal their audience, which is mostly male.

Same goes with skin color. If you include F2P (mostly from mobile and F2P), the audience is pretty global, like the half of the players are in Asia and people who plays has any type of income. In AAA games, they require more expensive gaming devices (like more high end gaming PCs or consoles) and more expensive games. They are mostly played in Europe and North America by people with mid/high income, so a majority of white people. So again, they try to appeal their audience, which is mostly white.

So it isn't sexism or racism, it's marketing. Once they saw the AAA audience started to have more women and people with other skin colors, they started to make their games more diverse. But the 25-35 years old white male is still their main customer, so the default character traditionally is the type of character this type of customer prefers to play with (a power fantasy badass version of him, or a hot woman because most of these males like to see boobs).
 
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I gotta be honest I straight up don’t get the “I wanna play as a girl because I like staring at the girl lololol” idea. Like what? I’m a guy, I want to identify with the character, it’s difficult to put myself in the mindset of a girl. Especially if it’s first person like cyberpunk. I wanna feel like I’m there. If I wanna look at sexy girls I have plenty of options to look at real ones online and in real life.
 

Razvedka

Banned
Because the majority of gamers are guys and guys overwhelmingly prefer to play as guys and the primary job of cover art is to sell the game.

How this thread made it to 5 pages is a mystery. NikuNashi killed it right out the gate.

If a company has a choice between 'doing something that earns more money' or 'doing something that earns less money' they are always going to do the former. There's alot of money and professionals in the field of market research, so presumably they are basing the decision to show male protagonists as the 'default' for most game genres based on research data. Now whether or not the data being given to these companies is 'true' or 'the complete picture' is a separate debate and probably where alot of the discussion is.

But for the companies involved here, they likely determined, with data, that the marketing materials displaying men would appeal to their mostly male audience. Ergo selling better.

There's no secret misognystic plot here.
 
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Tmack

Member
1) Thats not true for all game genres.

2) Name me a single human endevour where you have equal distributio of genres and races. (ie: nba players, plumbers, etc). Expecting a 50/50 ratio is simply unnatural.
 
It’s to appeal to the mainstream and the vast majority of gamers despite what reports claim are male and most males hate playing as female characters because, I guess “reasons” and not being able to “relate” to the protagonist? I always found it silly to refuse to play a game because of a character’s gender, but some are just uncomfortable with playing the opposite gender so therefore the companies cater more to males. They probably figure using a male protagonist for marketing and the default creation is safer for the market.
 
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Javthusiast

Banned
Because the majority of gamers are guys and guys overwhelmingly prefer to play as guys and the primary job of cover art is to sell the game.

Which is funny, cause I as a guy prefer to stare at hot chicks for hours upon hours instead of generic white dude number 50.

If it is not a well made male character like Nate, Kratos, Snake etc., there is a choice and the female character is hot, I will always play as her.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
I feel like it's one of those situations where it's a "problem" in the eyes of people that make it a "problem", meaning the majority really don't pay attention to it. Men and women.

Things have changed over the years, and that's awesome. But there are still more male video game fans than female video game fans. A lot of the video games typically play out like power fantasies, so it just kind of makes sense. Their job is to appeal to fans and other potential buyers. There's no real intricate reasoning behind it IMO.

Because the majority of gamers are guys and guys overwhelmingly prefer to play as guys and the primary job of cover art is to sell the game.
/thread

There really are no other mental gymnastics to the simple form of tried and true marketing.
Bingo.
 

uncleslappy

nethack is my favorite dark souls clone
Remember the uproar around Bioshock Infinite not featuring Elizabeth on the cover? It’s simple marketing to the widest market. Majority of people who buy games like that are dudes. It may not be right, but it’s business.
 

Bryank75

Banned
You see... if female was the default, the footwear options would have to increase exponentially to meet demand. That would pull talent away from the main campaign and result in more of a fashion simulator than an actual game.

That's not even mentioning small bags that can't fit anything in them, that would have to be held in one of the weapon slots for some reason.

Dialogue options would have to include double-sided compliments and cutting fashion disses.

It's a real rabbit hole.
 

carlosrox

Banned
I always found it silly to refuse to play a game because of a character’s gender

I'm not sure how much of a factor this really is for most people.

Given the choice in a character creator or whatever I'll go with male but I have no problem playing as female characters in games.

I also wondered/guessed long before the latest rumor that GTA would sound have a female protag. I'm all for it.

I am not for gender swaps though, that shit is lame.

Playing as Zelda in BOTW2 would be cool, but if Link wasn't an option then that'd be kinda lame, but acceptable. We just had BOTW with Link so hypothetically if we just played as Zelda I'd be okay with it, but I'd still be missing Link.

On the other hand I have no interest in playing as anyone but Samus in a Metroid game, or someone besides Lara in a Tomb Raider game.
 

buizel

Banned
its the developers way of saying men are better then woman

SHUT IT DOWN

arent like 75% pokemon male 15 % female? wtf sausasge fest
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
More men than women play video games (especially this kind), and people usually prefer playing as a character they feel represent them in some way?

I have absolutely no issues playing as a female character if that's what the game designers want, but if there's a choice I'll be a guy every time. Because I'm a guy. I don't play video games to look at nice asses.
 
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And yet.

So 2/3 of the playerbase preferred ro play Alexios. So?

Kassandra is still the canon protagonist.

(Alexios is such a cardboard cutout douche of a character, I don't understand why you'd choose him over Kassandra)
 
What fucking gives?

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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.

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Sex sells, we need more attractive women on covers.
If I had to take a guess, it'd be a similar reason why there are usually women on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, which are usually read by women.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Because default will always favour the majority choice for convenience. Its nothing sinister.

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Because a female Spartan or Viking soldier makes no fucking sense. There might be some in reality, but must be extremely rare.

To me, it's an immersion killer.
 

Thomish

Member
It isn't because of popularity or marketing or catering to the majority.

It's mostly because game writers are majority white males so obviously it's easier to write about a protagonists that's that demographic.
 
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