Tensei

It's an interesting question, though kind of hard to answer for me (being a guy), but I'll give it a try anyway. If you go by things that enjoy a decent amount popularity among a lot of women, you end up with stuff like Twilight and other romance novels, which leads me to believe me that one possible female power fantasy is the kind of relatable, somewhat plain girl like Bella in Twilight, who then gets romantically involved with some mysterious, exotic stranger.

Please go read the rest of the thread. You keep rehashing points that have been answered several times already, and are arguing semantics. The sexism stems from the fact that there is little to no variation in the portrayal of women (which mostly translates to making them eyecandy/sex objects), which sharply contrasts with the portrayal of male characters who are all over the place in terms of bodytypes and character writing.

Oh, in response to all the people complaining about the stereotypical portrayal of men as huge and muscular in videogames; let me just remind you that the most popular videogame character of all time is still a short overweight plumber with a mustache.

Fortunately you have thousands of games with male protagonists to pick out from that aren't overly muscular space marines. Female gamers don't really have that luxury when it comes to sexualized characters!

Point me towards any post in this thread where someone said or implied this. That is a strawman argument. Nobody ever said that, what people have been saying is that the way a lot of female characters are portrayed in games could be considered offensive or sexist. The fact that you seem to equate sexism with violence says more about you than anyone in this thread. Male empowerment fantasy yada yada yada, please read this thread better because I talked about this in the OP.

The characters you've listed are specifically designed to appeal to a male userbase that is as wide as possible. The fact that the stereotype doesn't appeal to you personally is not really relevant to the discussion when I can list hundreds of games off the top of my head with male leads that don't conform to the burly muscular macho stereotype, yet are still portrayed as likeable and competent. This is the really the heart of the issue, because the variety between female characters is just so much narrower.

Which is sexist in and of itself, because you think that when one woman doesn't consider Lara Croft an offensive character, SURELY every other woman who has ever existed must agree with that, right?

So you're saying that people should not be allowed to be offended by works of fiction? Honestly, I'm getting kinda weirded out by the dismissive attitude towards this subject. Also yeah, I don't think the lack of women in the industry is necessarily the cause of the problem. Keep in mind that a lot of people, whether they be male or female, probably aren't that aware of the sexism in videogames, unless it's extremely blatant. I think it's much more a matter of raising peoples' awareness towards the subject.

We've been over this. Battle-worn, Hollywood-rugged male characters are very much intended as a male power fantasy rather than something that broadly appeals to female gamers. If you look at male characters in media that are specifically aimed at women, you end up with characters like Edward from Twilight or even friggin' Justin Bieber. No doubt there are women out there who are into gruff, hairy and muscular dudes, but I strongly doubt those make up the majority (or the characters from Twilight would look very different). Women CHOOSE to dress that way, or to get implants, or take a seductive pose. Characters are created by writers and designers. A fictional character doesn't stand in a seductive pose because she 'chooses' to stand that way (no matter what her backstory might say), but because her designer has explicitly portrayed her like that with a specific purpose in mind (most likely for cheap pandering!).

I don't think anyone is outright angry. To me, this is just an interesting topic that merits discussion, which is why I started the thread in the first place. Ad hominems aren't needed either.

I have to confess that gameplaywise, Tera Online is just excellent all around so far, but the character design bothers me immensely. At least Amani females are pretty cool! This all paraphrasing, but I've read some accounts from female HoN/DotA players (both very hardcore games that require a lot of vocal communication), and it basically came down to it that even once they got past the whole "Oh, you're a girl?" "You have a cute voice!" stuff (not to mention more insulting comments than that), they would always either be looked down on ("You killed me, not bad for a girl!") or actively mocked for their gender ("Oh, you died? See, this is why girls shouldn't be playing video games!") The community in those games is very hostile in the first place, but having to deal with comments like that I'm honestly surprised those games even still have female players.

It's possible that the implications are the same as with videogames; if a poll shows that women tend to dislike math, don't you think that it's more likely to be caused by a society that insidiously discourages and mocks women who choose to pursue a career in maths? Or do you genuinely believe that there is some evolutionary psychology that dictates that women are just bad at math? Please stop implying that a topic that got 11 pages in a few hours and is still going strong is not a topic worth discussing, because evidently, it is.

The second part of that sentence is where the problem lies. Obviously the character itself most likely serves some function towards the plot of the game or whatever, but the whole aspect of physical attractiveness generally shouldn't be necessary for that!

You used it as a means to support your argument that gaming as a medium is not sexist. "Even Luiza said that the assumed sexism in games isn't what turns girls away. Go ask a girl why they don't play video games, I guarantee you that they won't respond with "Because they're sexist." That is what you said. You can literally guarantee that no girl in the world is turned off from a particular videogame because of sexism.

You do realize that the assumption that any individual can speak for women as a whole is pretty sexist in and of itself right? ...except in actual fantasy games where some people throw a hissy fit when they see a woman in any kind of position of authority, 'because it's not realistic'. That is actual criticism I've seen aimed at games like Skyrim for example. Ultimately, yes, you're kinda right in the sense that it's probably more profitable at the moment to make games that outright pander to a male audience, but that doesn't make it a good thing!

Woops, too late. That aside, this Kate Beaton comic is kind of overused, but I feel like it sums up the issues pretty well, so it's relevant to the thread:

I don't think neither me nor Bleck are arguing that there should never be attractive or sexualized female characters in videogames at all. The problem stems from the fact that sexualized female characters seem to make up the overwhelming majority by far! Yes, "It's a fantasy and escapism, so they can dress up in high heels and boobplate and still be effective in battle.", but it's almost exclusively a MALE fantasy, which is where the problem really lies. I would like to remind you that we are on a forum about music and videogames, two things that ultimately have very little bearing on 'serious issues' like debts and health insurance. I don't think any of us are in a position to be cherrypicking topics that are worthy of discussion, because evidently this topic IS worth discussing with the amount of posts we're getting. If you want to talk about the presidential elections, you could go to PPR.

I don't believe Samus is that great of an example though. She was pretty progressive in the first game, but even then the fact that she happened to be female was more like a surprise twist at the end than any significant part of her character. In fact, she never really had that much character to begin with. She was a cool stoic bounty hunter in the minds of many gamers, but that was probably because they never really bothered fleshing out her character and she barely had any spoken lines. What's worse, over time they actually did begin sexualizing her more and more with the Zero Suit. Finally, we got Other M where they intended to finally give her at least something of a personality, and well, it didn't turn out well.

No, you're right. I didn't mean to imply in my post that we've reached gender equality as a society, I just wanted to point out that on the whole, videogames seem more regressive when compared to other media or society itself. Your second point is good too, that's kinda what I was referring to by the vicious circle: if Activision claims that games with female protagonists sell less, they will produce more games aimed at the male demographic, which in turn will most likely result in fewer females buying their videogames, which in turn will lead Activision to conclude that female gamers aren't a viable market. I feel like it's really the indie games (Dungeons of Dredmor comes to mind), as well as games by companies that have less of a need to 'play it safe' like Valve (I guess) that seem to be more socially progressive in regards to gender. I don't get the Sarah Palin comment, but for the rest: It's perfectly fine to enjoy the escapism of videogames. If you enjoy being a badass space marine and curbstomping an aliens skull, that's great! I'm even willing to concede that if a game like Duke Nukem models itself after 80s action flicks, it can get away with a bit of sexism because the whole damsel in distress trope was a pretty big part of that style of movies. What I'm arguing for is that there should be more games with strong, well-written female protagonists. I do not believe most female gamers are less inclined to be competitive (which seems to be what you're implying), but that many of them simply dislike the idea of either having to play a gruff space marine guy, or a high-heeled supermodel with her tits hanging out. I can imagine that a lot of women, upon seeing something like that will conclude "Well, this game is obviously made specifically for men so there's no point in me playing it.", which in turn leads to the whole 'Videogames are for guys' stigma. Imagine only being able to play games where the main character is a twinked out, barechested pretty-boy wearing asstight leather pants (i.e. something that would stereotypically appeal to a wide range of female players). I think that that is how a lot of women perceive the way female characters are presented in most videogames.

Yes, let's open up this can of worms and have a nice discussion about it! So, what it comes down to, is that I feel that women are treated pretty terribly in a lot of games/communities, whether that be as ingame characters, or actual female gamers. You would think that as society progresses with regards to gender equality, games would at least somewhat mirror that, and while it's certainly true that in the last 15 or so years, there have been quite a few games with 'strong' female characters (Hell, even Lara Croft was crazy progressive for the time), it only takes something like a stupid Namco ad campaign to show that gaming is still largely targeted at the male demographic. I feel like it ends up being a bit of a vicious circle, as evidenced by Blizzard Activision claiming that games with female protagonists don't sell as much. Most issues I have with the contemporary representation of women in videogames can be condensed down to two points: marginalization and sexualization. Regarding marginalization, there are simply fewer female characters and protagonists in videogames than there are males. In fact, tons of singleplayer games across multiple genres seem to default to 'white male' for the protagonist. Even in the case of games where your characters' gender is customizable, the standard protagonist will be a white male (as seen in Mass Effect, Skyrim, Saints Row 3, etc.) There is also the problem with the fact that even when there are female characters, they will usually fall into a very small selection of cliched archetypes, while male characters seem to have a much greater variation, and often are simply more interesting. This difference does not only extend to the writing, but also the character design as a whole, which brings me to my second point: sexualization. Female characters as a whole seem to default to a supermodel/pornstar-like hourglass figure as their bodyshape, while males seem to be much more varied. Even in games where this isn't the case and males are all very burly and muscular, it's much more of an empowerment fantasy aimed at men who want to imagine themselves as this ripped badass. Huge bulky guys are not designed to be titillating towards female gamers, while this is definitely the case when it's the other way around; Female characters tend to be very idealized and scantily clad so they appeal to the male fanbase, they typically aren't an empowerment fantasy for women. I actually strongly suspect that if male characters in videogames were sexualized in a way that specifically appeals to female gamers, most male gamers would be pretty disturbed/grossed out. Which brings me to another issue. High heels, boob plate, bare midriffs. Sound familiar? There is this tendency in a lot of games to sexualize female characters to such a degree that it overrides any practical concerns. Who cares that she would break her sternum if she falls over, we gotta emphasize her boobs somehow! Granted, fantasy armor is generally pretty silly for both genders, but again, in the case of the males it serves to make them look more badass, while for females it just ends up making them look sexier. Taken to an absurd degree in where wearing higher tier armor results in less clothing!Of course, all of this is not to say that there hasn't been any progress whatsoever. The Portal series is amazing for many reasons, but one of them is the fact that it's explicitly about women: GlaDOS is a brilliantly written character which really wouldn't work as well if she were written as a male, so in that sense her femininity is of definite importance to her success as a character. Valve in general gets a lot of points from me for designing female characters that, while attractive, aren't very sexualized at all (Zoey, Chell, Rochelle, Alyx to a degree). Anyway, share your thoughts, show me some examples of games that handle female characters either poorly or amazingly, or tell me how wrong I am!

I feel like they only really need to nerf the Tornado+ EMP combo because fuck that shit. 3k range, 2.5 seconds worth of AoE disable, and 400 mana burned.

Three words: EDI sex bot.

Outworld Destroyer and Single Draft mode got added to the game, as well as tons of other features. Not bad! Now we can finally reliably counter antimage. Also: yesssss

http://blog.dota2.com/2012/02/you-are-our-valentine/ I guess Lycan, Sillybear and Shadow Demon will be getting released soon too!