Female Protagonists In Gaming

[jazzflower92]

Although she had some good points about damsels in distress.I think she forgets that distressed dudes have also been a trope that has been in storytelling for a long time.And actually in some fairy tales it is actually the female main character that saves the hero.Older fairy tales actually have some girls/women who actually do get into pro active.Most of the fairy tales we hear today are watered down ones that came from the Victorian age.

 

[Deleted member 546]

This is why Tenchi Muyo needed a game (probably was one in Japan, I dunno), lots of strong and varied women characters. The men were funny and had their own qualities, but the sheer lady numbers meant that depth, humour and individuality were a must.
I know I've mentioned this one before (aeons ago admittedly), but once again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_9 . The characters were brilliant and each made up a level. The bios on the wiki page aren't very good admittedly. Aha:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wild9
Not much depth to the characters, I'll concede, but definitely inventive which IMO goes a long way.

 

[Ghost X]

Thunderf00t certainly wasn't making use of ad hominems, eg: "You're a hypocrite therefore your argument is wrong". Yes, he was pointing out her hypocrisy amongst other things about how she does stuff, but merely as a statement. You'll have to see some of his other videos to understand the background. There's a bit of a rivalry. If anything I think the issue was that his arguments were strawmen, though he does make some interesting points.

Defending the damsel-in-distress storyline as easy and profitable is not a good counter argument though. I don't think thunderf00t addresses why it is easy and profitable, which I think was the intention of the feministfrequency video.

 

[looneymoon]

I generally don't really agree with Anita Sarkeesian a lot of the time, so I didn't really bother watching the video tbh. She tends to approach her analyses in a way that doesn't address a lot of the literary context. Idk.

 

[null]

Whatever the speaker's agenda, the first video was articulate and straightforward. She identified what she considers to be a problem, explained why it's a problem, and provided supporting examples of the problem. She made her points in a manner that can be either verified or refuted in an orderly fashion. That lends itself to productive discussion. Most importantly, she didn't overtly insult my intelligence. I thought there were a few glaring omissions but then she's apparently doing a series, so I'll withhold criticism for the moment.

The rebuttal video would have been much better served if it had responded in kind, counterpoint by counterpoint. Instead the speaker did the forum equivalent of flaming a few cherry-picked phrases from a very long post, while attacking things she said outside the thread or even the forum. His rebuttals are mostly condescending straw men.

But *shrug* I know nothing of the two speakers outside the videos. For all I know the feminist could be a huge douchebag and the second could generally align more closely with my views.

 

[Hisako]

I generally don't really agree with Anita Sarkeesian a lot of the time, so I didn't really bother watching the video tbh. She tends to approach her analyses in a way that doesn't address a lot of the literary context. Idk.

One of my favorite videos is of the one where she accuses Zack Snyder of using Sucker Punch to indulge his "teen-adolescent male fantasies" and complains that the film lacks substance.

It's just the perfect example of how obviously biased she is, and how she either purposefully ignores (or just doesn't do enough research to see it) context and meanings that might contradict her views/opinions.

It also shows how much she likes to say "I'm not going to talk about what X Thing is actually about because I don't want to bore you with details/I'm so personally offended by it I don't want to give it any more thought or attention".

 

[null]

I watched a few more of her videos and yeah, there's some doozies out there. She picked some over-the-top comments about Twilight and used them as a basis to lecture men everywhere about how to properly criticize the movie. Literally, she me gave instructions on how to talk to my buddies. "Just repeat after me...". with the exact words to say on the screen.

Also, she needs to read more comics.

 

[Hisako]

Yeah also I can't put up with her condescending bullshit and the things she says that seem like she thinks she's the thought representative of the greater majority of women (hint: probably not)

Anyway, enough about shitty extremist feminists, back to the OT

 

[Deleted member 546]

This is a revelation to me: I did not know people actually watch opinion videos.

 

[Ghost X]

You haven't seen the news lately? It is almost all opinion pieces these days =p.

 

[Cthulhu]

You haven't seen the news lately? It is almost all opinion pieces these days =p.

"In my opinion, Korea's running nuclear tests"?

 

[Ghost X]

^An off-topic response: All opinion pieces have elements of truth in them . I'm sure you weren't being serious, but taking the North Korean example, why is there not more scrutiny in the media of the world's approach to them? If you read the news you'd think Iran was the world's more imminent threat, not North Korea. Iran is no where near capable of killing millions upon millions, North Korea is. North Korea's military force isn't anything to laugh at either. Thousands of political prisoners die in its concentration camps every year alone in horrid conditions, and that isn't half of it. North Korea is not near Isreal though, therefore the news don't care; the news organisation that are an opinion piece of western governments and corporations, that is (the difference between the two is often blurry). When it comes to safety, I'd rather live in Israel than Seoul.

 

[Deleted member 546]

Pissed that I can only thank once. ^ All of this.

 

[Jiro]

I'm looking forward to more strong, female-driven games. I like to look at the fairer sex when I play games, ya know? :p

 

[jazzflower92]

Yeah,I say more female main character games and that also includes middle age and elderly women too.I think player elderly and middle age women should appear more in fighting games because why not elderly and middle aged men do all the time.

 

[looneymoon]

^
Which is why I get so dumbfounded when people say "well, the representation of male bodies in media doesn't vary a lot either!!"

Yeah ok. Talking about games, you tell me that as soon as there's a beloved female lead who is old (Solid Snake) or fat (Mario) or just generally unattractive in the conventional sense (Nier or Kratos) without there being a big huge uproar made about it.

Yet somehow in the Mass Effect world there's a huge trend where people laugh at how "ugly" Miranda Lawson is.

Laughs into space.

 

[jazzflower92]

^
Which is why I get so dumbfounded when people say "well, the representation of male bodies in media doesn't vary a lot either!!"

Yeah ok. Talking about games, you tell me that as soon as there's a beloved female lead who is old (Solid Snake) or fat (Mario) or just generally unattractive in the conventional sense (Nier or Kratos) without there being a big huge uproar made about it.

Yet somehow in the Mass Effect world there's a huge trend where people laugh at how "ugly" Miranda Lawson is.

Laughs into space.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Miranda_Lawson

They call that "ugly".Man,whoever is calling her ugly must be very shallow.

 

[Hisako]

I call it poorly face-modelled.

It's an interesting point you bring up about elderly women; there's only been a few videogame examples I could ever think of and almost all of them are simply delegated to the stereotypical wise-shaman-helper role.

It's all a matter of character archetypes and an unwillingness to think outside of what's comfortable, I guess.

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

Yeah ok. Talking about games, you tell me that as soon as there's a beloved female lead who is ... fat (Mario) ... without there being a big huge uproar made about it.

 

[Jiro]

My joking shallowness aside, I think it is important that we don't set our industry up as bigoted. We want representation of men and women and they really shouldn't all be perfect and attractive. I mean, there's obvious reasons why attractive player characters are a good thing (or at least a desired thing), but look at Marcus Fenix - that guy was about as attractive as having your scrotum set on fire and GoW was still a massive hit*.

*Mind you, the scarred war veteran tough guy shit is overdone too but at least it's one example of non-attractive leads. Fat Princess, as mentioned above, is a really awesome example too, without the roidrage.

 

[Strangelove]

There isn't really a need for characters like Marcus Fenix to be attractive, because the audience that they target--straight males--aren't bothered about the looks of the male characters. As long as the women are pretty, all's good.

 

[Cthulhu]

Fenix - and pretty much all the other characters in GoW - are caricatures of manliness; square jaws, enormous chest/shoulders/muscles, chainsaws, giant weapons, one-liners, acts of epic, etc. Those probably appeal to teenage men (i.e. all men) as much as scantly clad, long-limbed women with giant boobs do.

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

Now something I'd like to see, which I don't think has ever been done before, is a game with a hermaphrodite protagonist. Screw indecision over whether or not your protagonists should be male or female, let's make it both!

 

[Splintered]

Now something I'd like to see, which I don't think has ever been done before, is a game with a hermaphrodite protagonist. Screw indecision over whether or not your protagonists should be male or female, let's make it both!

Granted, she's not the main character but oh well

 

[ForceStealer]

Off topic, but I can't stand the characters in Gears of War. Constant guttural yelling and maybe it'd be okay if they weren't pretending there was good characterization happening. It grates on me to no end, they're just obnoxious frat guys, not manly men. If I want a manly character, give me Auron, Barret, Garrus, James Bond, and so on.

Sorry, carry on.