The Designer’s Notebook: We Don’t Need the Haters (and I Can Prove It)
Oh, please do.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Erne...e_Dont_Need_the_Haters_and_I_Can_Prove_It.php
The haters are simply infuriated at the suggestion that games might be improved by making them more appealing to women, and they’re warning us that they’ll do something about it. Apart from the abuse and threats, they say that they’ll stop buying games if the industry changes anything to makethem more popular with women, and we’ll lose a lot of money. I decided to find out if we need to take this seriously, not just by arguing hypothetically, but by looking at some real numbers.
I believe they are infuriated at the shit quality games, but please, go on.
What Changes Are We Talking About?
So who is asking for a change, and what exactly are they asking for? I’m going to call them “progressive gamers,” for want of a better term; they’re both men and women. With respect to gender in games (the treatment of racial minorities or under-represented sexualities is a separate, but related issue), their requests are simple and few:
- More opportunities to play female protagonists in AAA titles.
- More female characters—especially protagonists—who are not hypersexualized and whose clothing is appropriate for their activity.
- More female characters portrayed as strong and competent people rather than victims, trophies, or sex objects.
Now let’s take a look at what they’re
not asking for.
- They’renot proposing to turn Duke Nukem female.
- They’re not proposing to ban or censor Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball.
- They’re not proposing to kill off Princess Peach. (Well, most of them aren’t. There might be a radical wing that is.)
- They’re not proposing that games should suddenly all be about traditional female role activities such as cooking and sewing. It shouldn’t even be necessary to say this, but there are a few dimwits around who seem to believe it.
That's quite the interesting list. But guess what the list doesn't have:
- Less shit DLC like day-one nearly plot essential shit.
- Less shit casual games with little substance.
- Less F2P and pay-to-win crap.
- Not having to be on-line to play said single player game.
You know, the stuff we care about.
Your graphs are shit, but on a glance it sounds like the under-representation of females is not as large as I thought it would be. Interestingly enough it's been going DOWN recently (
?)
It looks like most games are gender neutral. Isn't that what you guys and gals really want?
Aren’t the Gender-Neutral Games Enough?
The reactionaries will also undoubtedly argue that there are lots of games that are gender-neutral, and women can just play those. (This is that 90% group that I hypothesized.) There are plenty of RPGs in which you create your own character, male or female; isn’t that enough? Or Bejeweled. No protagonist at all in puzzle games, so no problem, right?
No, and here’s why. Interactive storytelling is hard enough to do well when the player can influence the plot (which is why many games still tell linear stories), but it’s extremely hard to do well when the designer knows nothing about the protagonist, including its sex. This is why adventure games, in which story is paramount, almost always have a predefined protagonist. The stories in games with a predefined protagonist (such as the Silent Hill series) are generally better than those in games with generic avatar. Telling female players that they have to be content with gender-neutral games consigns them to a second-class status in which they don’t get the best stories.
So what about games that have female characters? If I'm not content with those, I'm suddenly second class?
The Arguments Against Doing Anything
The next question is whether we should do anything about the problem. If you visit YouTube or the gamer message boards frequented by reactionary players, you encounter, again and again, the same set of arguments for not building any new games that the progressive players might like. I’ll summarize them here:
- Dismissive: They’re only games; they’re not important, so it doesn’t matter if there aren’t many women or their portrayal of women is unrealistic.
- Male chauvinist: Feminazis are pushing their way into the game industry with their political correctness, and they’re going to ruin games and (male) gaming culture.
- Ignorant: Asking for female protagonists in games is a violation of game designers’ freedom of speech.
- Misogynist: “Wherever there are happy men there will always be a woman there to ruin it.” That’s about the mildest quote I could find.
- Financial: Male players don’t like to play female characters, and they like to see the women in games eroticized. The game industry will lose a lot of money if it stops catering to those men.
We can write off the first four arguments pretty quickly:
- Dismissive: If the content of games doesn’t matter, why are you objecting to some new ones?
- Male chauvinist: This is identical to the argument that people used to use to keep Jews out of the country club, and it deserves the same response. If gaming culture will be “ruined” by making it a little less hostile to female players, then what you value in gaming culture—bigotryand exclusion—is not worth preserving. Let the ruination commence.
- Ignorant: Asking for female protagonists in games is an exercise of freedom of speech. Consumer activism is not censorship.
- Misogynist: Please join a monastery where you can lead a completely happy, woman-free life.
That leaves us with the financial argument, which is the only one that deserves serious attention.Let’s assume for a moment that the game industry is ruled entirely by money, and that profits are oursole consideration. Does the game industry stand to lose a lot of money by alienating men who don’t want games to have strong female protagonists?
Here are my counter arguments:
Dismissive: Because the content of the game does matter. The problem is you are focusing far too much energy on the wrong stuff.
Male chauvinist: Except the country club for men is about 1/10 the size of the country club for everyone. You're complaining that an exclusive club is too exclusive while you have a perfectly large and varied non-exclusive club.
Ignorant: Right back at you. Those numbers are a direct result of Consumer activism. Forcing your beliefs onto me is a restriction of my freedom.
Misogynist: Excellent strawman you fucktard. No one said that. What we don't like playing are games aimed at a female audience because, surprise surprise, men and women tend to have different tastes in regards to games. We blame feminist women AND men because you morons are making the industry worse with shit like ME3 and DA2.
Financial: The market is the way it is because it is free. Meddle with it and bad stuff will happen.
“Male Players Won’t Play as Female Characters”
Oh look, another strawman.
but David Gaider developed this point at length in his brilliant 2013 GDC talk “Sex In Video Games,” which you can see
here. Well-made games sell well regardless, as the better
Tomb Raiders have shown.
and now I understand why your article is shit: you're a moronic PR white knight of fucktary.
I'll never understand why feminists use so much double-speak. If the goal is equality it looks like we are already there or very close to it. Sure, there exists a % of games with more male leads instead of female leads, but the vast majority of games are gender friendly (ironically, some of the best games let you CHOOSE your gender). You can't force markets to subscribe to your ideology: such a idea is just Communism.
Anyways I thought you guys might be interested in this article. I thought about responding to this guy via e-mail or something, but probably a waste of time.
