Anime Another Gamasutra Article! "We Don’t Need the Haters"

[Dexter]

It is irrelevant if the thread had over 50k worth of posts and has 150k members, in the end the author of that blog numbers is more reliable then the forum you are basing your argument on. What you are doing is something called "convenient sampling" which is stat 101 stuff. Hell if I wanted to do something like that I could have linked that twitter of females in the industry complaining about harassment .

Except I haven't mentioned any stats and haven't made up any graphs (I don't have any, I would love some), nor have I made any sweeping statements towards the prevalence but pointed out that SJWs pretend said market doesn't even exist (in the same way they attack models working as "booth babes" as tools of the evil publishers but largely ignore the ones voluntarily dressing that way since it would lead to friendly fire) since it wouldn't help their reasoning.
The sheer existence of such a market invalidates a lot of their arguments and makes it a matter of taste even among those the SJWs are trying to white knight for.

 

[dnf]

More female characters—especially protagonists—who are not hypersexualized and whose clothing is appropriate for their activity.

Why would anyone want that?

Oh, right.

Faggots.

Indeed. Sexy clothing is a necessity to point out why we allow females doing men's jobs in the first place. A realistic portrayal of how woman suck at men's jobs would make much butths hurt

 

[Azarkon]

I have zero issues with developers making games for women.

I don't see why this thread was tagged Anime, but given that it was, it's relevant to state that in the Anime/Manga world, there was a male/female split in the content targeting from the very start. Marketers understand that males and females enjoy different subjects, though at times those subjets overlap.

I am a bit worried that this is going to result in an endless stream of gay boy love games, because that's what we're increasingly seeing in the Anime/Manga world when it comes to what female fans want. But hey, to each their own. Beats the endless stream of CoD clones.

 

[evdk]

I am a bit worried that this is going to result in an endless stream of gay boy love games, because that's what we're increasingly seeing in the Anime/Manga world when it comes to what female fans want. But hey, to each their own. Beats the endless stream of CoD clones.

You mean those aren't gay BL games?

 

[Grimlorn]

From an essentialist point of view, this article evokes a strong "Yeah...and?" response. Given that most games are all about combat or conflict, it's not a surprise that men are often the lead character(s); they more naturally fall into the roles. Attempts at shoehorning women into these roles often result in the "man with tits" archetype; a female body absent any feminine behaviors or personality characteristics. But, hey, having the body and being "strong" is good enough for Last-Men marching in the tumblr-brigades who fetishize this type.

Exactly. There is also nothing wrong with appealing to your target demographic also. When you try to include more and more different groups of people things become shallower and shallower. You can look at anything mainstream and see it.

They changed the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 so they could make money in China on the film. Pretty much any action film where they shoehorn romance into the plot to appeal to women sucks.

The stats don't lie either, more men play these games than women and the minority are asking for equal treatment and equal consideration. I remember someone posted in the Bioware thread, women were demanding to have a female Shepard on half the boxes instead of just a male Shepard. Meanwhile 60% of the players played male Shepard, and 40% female. That's 50% more men, and not including the guys who always like to play as females. the discrepancy is probably much larger. There's nothing wrong with appealing to the majority of your customer base.

Some men wear makeup and women's clothing. Do you think they should change these products to fit men more? Do you think half the company's advertising budget should be directed at males wearing that shit so it's equal and no one is not being represented even though a small minority do it? I'm sure these feminists wouldn't agree to that for the sake of equality.

 

[Azarkon]

If you want female leads in games, make games with female leads. This is not brain surgery. FF6 had a female lead and was the only one besides 13 to do so... 6 was the best in the series, but 13 was shit. I think the trend in the industry is to pump out shit under the guise of "progressiveness" instead trying to put in the effort to make good games. Mirror's Edge 2 will probably suffer the same fate, because of EA trying to improve its image.

The angry reactionaries are usually responding to changes in franchises they already experience... so making new franchises would help side-step the dumb fucks. This is not brain surgery.

The bigger issue isn't female leads, and this is where the article misses the mark. Male nerds' caricatures of female leads =/= what appeals to them. Whether a game has a female lead has less to do with its success with women than whether it hits the correct themes and styles.

To hit the female demographic, they need developers, both male and female, who understand what those fans want. I mentioned the gay boy love genre in Anime/Manga above - this shit is incredibly appealing to female fans of Anime/Manga, yet doesn't feature female protagonists at all. Thinking that you're going to get a legion of female followers just by having female leads is incredibly naive.

The success of mobile social games, which were shown to be biggest among women, are of greater usage to armchair designers looking to target the female demographic than Lara Croft. The writer of the article, from what I'm seeing, is simply a tag along whose genre of choice missed the boat and is now bitching to an audience full of male gamers about why they have no womenz.

 

[Dexter]

The stats don't lie either, more men play these games than women and the minority are asking for equal treatment and equal consideration. I remember someone posted in the Bioware thread, women were demanding to have a female Shepard on half the boxes instead of just a male Shepard. Meanwhile 60% of the players played male Shepard, and 40% female. That's 50% more men, and not including the guys who always like to play as females. the discrepancy is probably much larger. There's nothing wrong with appealing to the majority of your customer base.

I'm not sure where you got those confusing numbers, also 40% to 60% is 50% more? I don't get it. xD
But the actual numbers are actually worse with only about under a fifth of the player base playing female shepard in both Mass Effect 2 and 3:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-20-bioware-18-percent-play-mass-effect-as-femshep
http://www.gamespot.com/news/mass-effect-3-players-prefer-male-shepard-6405842

And remember that they specifically pander to that audience like almost no other studio out there and there's also quite a lot of fans that like the female character because of Jennifer Hale.

 

[Grimlorn]

Yeah I may have gotten my numbers mixed up. Haven't been able to focus lately. They actually had this little image with all the percentages stats on players' games that they posted in their forums. This was before ME3 though I think and was stats on ME2. Seeing those articles say 18 percent though is interesting. I know whoever posted that image on their forums said more.

Regardless, when a lot of women aren't interested in action games, you don't put money into making the game for them. You put money into appealing to the consumer base that is purchasing those types of games. Males. Yeah there are females interested in this stuff, but they're bitching about not being equally pandered to when they pay a lot less. Game developers are usually giving you a female option when start a new game anyway. The problem is like Edward said, when portraying women as equal to men in these games, they come off as men with female bodies. And most women aren't going to be able to relate anyway, because women aren't like men physically or mentally.

And we can see the same stuff in films. We get romcoms every 1-2 months because women enjoy that crap and drag their boyfriends to it. Men enjoy action movies. Things will never be truly equal and we should ignore the "vocal minority", because that's who these people are.

 

[J1M]

I look forward to the day that all of these social justice fags realize that even the ugly feminazis they parrot cannot have sex with them through the internet. Nor would they, once men invent said technology.

 

[Azarkon]

The "genres" in which women are more numerous have shown to be fads or are severely falling, just ask Zinga. Also in many cases they are profitable because of the so called "whales", which are almost entirely men. App store kind of games don't make those who make the games run huge risks, but they don't offer enough revenue to make 98%+ of studios gain a living wage due to race to the bottom prices and the sheer flood of offerings making it impossible to stand out.

Women do not spend a lot of money on games on a regular basis, it is still almost entirely men who make this industry viable, outside of a few niches. Good viable games require real money to make, huge amounts of money, so they have to be more expensive, and it isn't women who buy millions of copies of Grand Theft Auto or Uncharted. Nor is it women who pay for small, avant garde Kickstarter projects.

While Zinga is failing, I don't think it's correct to say that social/mobile games are merely a fast fading fad. There are a lot of very recently rich people out there who beg to disagree, and plenty of Zinga replacements. Casual/mobile/social gaming is here to stay, and with declining AAA sales across the board and the rapid climb of tablets and phones, these games and their F2P model are only going to take on greater importance.

There are tons of industries that keep themselves fed off of the disposable income of the other gender, and no it's not just Sears and Victoria Secrets. One look at the film and publishing industries and you see the effect of the female movie goer and reader. Same goes for TV, music, and - in the end - why not video games?

You won't appeal to them by having a female lead in an action game, but saying they won't ever be a huge segment of the industry is naive. They're already here.

 

[Gurkog]

i could see fantasy games that revolve around riding strange and beautiful creatures to be popular among women. Any combat would be mounted and revolve around the creatures instead of the women. The displacement of focus on mounts instead of the player character would probably make the experience more enjoyable. Especially if there is a lot of upgrading, training, customization and whatnot for the mounts. Open-world exploration would be a must, too.

EDIT: The player character could cast support magic and healing or whatever on the mount.

 

[DragoFireheart]

i could see fantasy games that revolve around riding strange and beautiful creatures to be popular among women. Any combat would be mounted and revolve around the creatures instead of the women. The displacement of focus on mounts instead of the player character would probably make the experience more enjoyable. Especially if there is a lot of upgrading, training, customization and whatnot for the mounts. Open-world exploration would be a must, too.

EDIT: The player character could cast support magic and healing or whatever on the mount.

Sounds like Pokemon.

 

[Gurkog]

i could see fantasy games that revolve around riding strange and beautiful creatures to be popular among women. Any combat would be mounted and revolve around the creatures instead of the women. The displacement of focus on mounts instead of the player character would probably make the experience more enjoyable. Especially if there is a lot of upgrading, training, customization and whatnot for the mounts. Open-world exploration would be a must, too.

EDIT: The player character could cast support magic and healing or whatever on the mount.

Sounds like Pokemon.

Is that a bad thing?

 

[Overboard]

...

Sounds like Pokemon.

Is that a bad thing? I want to be a mount.

 

[Hirato]

I don't see why this thread was tagged Anime, but given that it was, it's relevant to state that in the Anime/Manga world, there was a male/female split in the content targeting from the very start. Marketers understand that males and females enjoy different subjects, though at times those subjets overlap.

And yet amusingly, Shounen is more popular with the ladies and Shoujo with the guys.
I think both groups have a 60% vs 40% split too.

I look forward to the day that all of these social justice fags realize that even the ugly feminazis they parrot cannot have sex with them through the internet. Nor would they, once men invent said technology.

I think the tech's already been invented; they're usb devices that two people plug in and connect to each other over the internet. One's a onahole and the other a dildo.
The device tries to transmit and reproduce the sensations on one side on the other, but latency apparently makes this rather weird.

Or did you have something else in mind?

 

[Borelli]

More female characters—especially protagonists—who are not hypersexualized and whose clothing is appropriate for their activity.

Why would anyone want that?

Oh, right.

Faggots.

For me personally it depends on the tone of the story. If the story is non-serious like Godhand's then i give zero fucks how females are portrayed. But if somebody is trying to sell me a serious story and puts pin-up girls everywhere i would start thinking that yes, maybe videogames aren't the best place to be looking for good stories.

 

[Konjad]

More female characters—especially protagonists—who are not hypersexualized and whose clothing is appropriate for their activity.

Why would anyone want that?

Oh, right.

Faggots.

For me personally it depends on the tone of the story. If the story is non-serious like Godhand's then i give zero fucks how females are portrayed. But if somebody is trying to sell me a serious story and puts pin-up girls everywhere i would start thinking that yes, maybe videogames aren't the best place to be looking for good stories.

Annah looked terrible in PST and was totally out of place with her outfit. But hey, there must be a sexy and nearly naked wimmyn so players has something to fap to! doesn't matter that it's fucking retarded, let's include it in our game!

 

[Athelas]

It lets her skin breathe, you idiot!

Spoiler

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Annah looked terrible in PST and was totally out of place with her outfit. But hey, there must be a sexy and nearly naked wimmyn so players has something to fap to! doesn't matter that it's fucking retarded, let's include it in our game!

Actually, those clothes seem to be high fashion in the Hive.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Annah looked terrible in PST and was totally out of place with her outfit. But hey, there must be a sexy and nearly naked wimmyn so players has something to fap to! doesn't matter that it's fucking retarded, let's include it in our game!

What about that 9/10 naked gray dude?

 

[mondblut]

For me personally it depends on the tone of the story. If the story is non-serious like Godhand's then i give zero fucks how females are portrayed. But if somebody is trying to sell me a serious story and puts pin-up girls everywhere i would start thinking that yes, maybe videogames aren't the best place to be looking for good stories.

Annah looked terrible in PST and was totally out of place with her outfit. But hey, there must be a sexy and nearly naked wimmyn so players has something to fap to! doesn't matter that it's fucking retarded, let's include it in our game!

Yeah, a seriushly seriush story totally requires run of the mill 40+ years old overweight hags as support cast. God forbid seriushly seriush stories have attractive females.

Spoiler

Faggots