Female Protagonists In Gaming

[jazzflower92]

I've always found the lack of female protagonists in gaming disappointing. When I try and think of some, the main answers I come up with are Lara Croft, Lightning and Ruby from WET.

Hoping that two games I've preordered in the future, Remember Me and Beyond: Two Souls, have some great strong female protagonists. It feels like this is the one industry I'm frustrated with that doesn't have them. The TV and movie industry have them, so why not the gaming one?

I even heard Remember Me was rejected by several publishers because of the lead's gender and wouldn't be successful. Quite sexist, if you ask me.

I'd also post the link for the above, but unfortunately, I need at least 5 posts to do so. xD

I think the publishers underestimate the male audiences too much.A lot of guys will play a girl if she is interesting as a character and can hold a story.Sometimes maybe publishers should step out of their comfort zone and try something new.Trying something new can start new trends and widen the gaming audience.

 

[Mage]

Yes.

I'd say that Ayla in Chrono Trigger is a perfect example of a scantily clad female character being totally justified in wearing her fur bikini, because that's what all of the other people from her time are dressed like. Come to think of it, I'd say that Chrono Trigger did a pretty good job with having a good diversity of likable male & female characters who are all appropriately designed.

I'd even say that Chrono Cross also did pretty decently in this respect. There are a good number of other awesome female characters (my favorite characters from that series are actually the girls). Hell, Schala & Kid both needed rescuing, but I wouldn't totally qualify them as damsels in distress, because they're trapped by single-handedly restraining the most powerful evil entity ever. Cross isn't quite as good as Trigger for that reason, but I'd still say that they're pretty good about having awesome female characters.


X

Fuck, you beat me to it and put it far better than I would have.

I can't remember if anybody mentioned Suikoden (long thread is long). There's a whole variety of costumes there appropriate for the characters.

@ Danseru-kun: I've never seen the Saber Lily character you posted (AFAIK anyway), but her armour is uncannily similar to the design I did for my Dissidia /Lost Souls character (apart form colour).

 

[Cthulhu]

I should seriously play Suikoden again, liek zomg . I played 2 some years ago, but at one point my game stopped working properly and all the characters were invisible. Try playing a character-oriented games without any of the characters except the one you control.

It was kinda eerie,

 

[Splintered]

I think the publishers underestimate the male audiences too much.A lot of guys will play a girl if she is interesting as a character and can hold a story.Sometimes maybe publishers should step out of their comfort zone and try something new.Trying something new can start new trends and widen the gaming audience.

There is some evidence that this is the case

As detailed in an editorial earlier this week, Kuchera contacted Geoffrey Zatkin, Chief Operating Officer of EEDAR, essentially the market research firm for the gaming industry.

In terms of pure sales numbers, in the first three months of availability, games with only a male hero sold around 25 percent better than games with an optional female hero. Games with exclusively male heroes sold around 75 percent better than games with only female heroes.
By looking at these trends two things become clear: games that give you a choice of gender are, on average, reviewed slightly better than games with male-only heroes, but the games that sell very well are almost all led by male heroes. If you’re funding a large-budget game and you see these numbers, you see that you lose sales by adding the capability to choose a female hero, and you lose significant sales by releasing a game with a female hero.
​

But the report later goes on to say

Games with only female heroes are given half the marketing budget as games with male heroes. That’s an enormous handicap that cripples their ability to sell well. “Games with a female only protagonist, got half the spending of female optional, and only 40 percent of the marketing budget of male-led games. Less than that, actually,” Zatkin said.

Take the report as you will, it could mean that they know games won't sell as well so they don't tend to market them as strongly, or that it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

But overall, I don't take this as sexism as much as game companies just never take risks, either in marketing or trying to push new IP. It's a symptom of how our big budget games act scared of its own market.

 

[Hisako]

Yeah no as much as I find those trends and figures genuinely interesting, there is absolutely no way I'm going to come to a single, broad generalisation about the relationship between gender and gaming sales.

 

[Danseru-kun]

Nice study

"How Males Gamers see Non-Sexualized Females in Games" - paraphrased

So there’s this scientific study which actually looks at what people think, instead of making assumptions. Isn’t it interesting how game publishers just assume what the market wants instead of, you know, research what the market wants?
While this study is limited to Sweden it actually does something. The results are actually overwhelmingly surprising.
Abstract: “Some game publishers and developers do not think that games with non-sexualized female protagonists are worth making because they would not sell. With close to a half of gamers being female (47%) it is a bit puzzling that they are not catered to. This could be because publishers think that male gamers, who they perceive as their main demographic, would not buy games with non-sexualized female protagonists. A study was done to see if that statement is correct. By questioning 91 Swedish male gamers, aged 18 and above, it was found that in games where one can choose the character’s sex 46% of the subjects play as a female character at least half of the time and in total 90% of the 91 subjects have at some point chosen to play as a female character. No one of the subjects have any negative thoughts about there being more games with non-sexualized female protagonists who are heroic in their own right and not a trophy, when asked 47% said it would be “Very good”, 24% said it would be “Good” and 29% said that they have “No opinion” in the matter.”
Follow the link to dowload the PDF and read the thing. It’s no more than 15 pages (excluding references and appendices) and if you want, at least read the “Conlusion” part.
http://hgo.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:630847&rvn=1
Could I get some help spreading this please?

 

[jazzflower92]

Yeah,now gaming companies have no excuse for making female characters hyper sexualized in order to sell games.

I am happy that it shows that male gamers will play a female because they like her as a character.

 

[Splintered]

Interesting study. I think most gamers are grown up enough that they don't need to have an over the top cover to buy the game at all. I wish marketing would just grow up with it.

That said, Remember Me was brought up not too long ago, and that made a lot of waves. I think Jimquisition sort of brought it up best

If you can get passed the smarmy personality, it's part of his shtick, he actually says some interesting things. Jimquisition is sometimes a bit ragey at the publishers but he knows his stuff.

 

[Hisako]

Jimquisition makes some decent points, but I just wish he didn't have to look like such a smarmy, smug fucker to do it.

 

[Splintered]

Jimquisition makes some decent points, but I just wish he didn't have to look like such a smarmy, smug fucker to do it.

I know, but he's so much better now than when he was when he first started out. I seriously found him unwatchable when he first popped up in Escapist (never read his stuff in Destructoid), and only recently picked up watching his stuff again. I'm glad he toned it down because I like some, if not a lot, of the points he makes, but it's hard to pay attention with his smarm. I know that's just his persona but christ.

He's got some follow ups to this discussion that are good too, but the smarmyness is even stronger there. I like the videos that Moviebob and Extra Credits do better, but he's the only one that specifically cites Remember Me, and the problems that Bioshock and The Last of Us had.

I feel like The Last of Us fought particularly hard this time around. Not just to keep Ellie on the cover, but they fought to get female focus testers when they were refused. Then this happened.

Spoiler

I really respect them. When they have a vision they stick with it.