Gaming and Catering to Smaller Consumer Groups

[Waldorf and Statler]

So I went ahead and made a thread for this topic. It came into my mind recently after seeing people complain they didn't get to play as a woman in Dishonored so the statement by editors that the game "let's you choose how you want to play" was not entirely truthful. This brought forth a discussion that quickly boiled down to people insulting each other and some groups claiming they have a right to be represented as well.

 

An example I would personally like to use is the FemShep supporters. While there is nothing wrong with using her, and by all means do since the option is present. I cannot agree with their claims that there should be more advertisement done with her as the center-piece. Statistically thinking more people play as BroShep so it is, in my honest opinion, the right decision to not take away commercials/ads with him to favor the smaller group.

 

Another branch to this argument dealing with the Mass Effect series would be making the male Shepard homosexual. Personally in this case I can let them do it since the game is all about option and it doesn't force you to choose a relationship with a man. I was uncomfortable with the fact they chose that after 2 games where he showed no hints of being interested in males or even curious/unhappy with his sexuality that all of a sudden one piece of dialogue decides if your male Shepard is gay.

 

Would it be statistically sound to make a game starring a lesbian over a gay male? I don't agree with it but unfortunately yes. The crowd video games, especially mature ones, tend to advertise and direct games to is still in their teens and early 20's. They like lesbians and feel uncomfortable with homosexual males. Personally if they made a game where the main character was a homosexual male and I didn't have an option to not pursue a relationship I would feel uncomfortable. As simple as that.

 

Guys don't mind playing as females though. Not if the game was designed with a strong female lead. I would rather play as a Jade than a pre-reboot Lara Croft. I like strong women who don't feel the need to slut it up. More attractive. I'd argue that playing as a race minority isn't a problem either. Hollywood has shown, though less frequently that I would want, that a non-caucasian lead actor can do plenty good box-office wise.

 

What are your thoughts? Any other recent example you can think of that applies to the topic?

[TheMightyEthan]

I think it depends very much on each game. Overall I would like to see more representation of demographics outside of straight white males, but that doesn't mean that every single game has to give you the option to play as something else. To say that Dishonored doesn't let you play how you want because you can't play as a girl is ridiculous. If it had been advertised as having complete character customization then they might have a point, but it wasn't.

[Thursday Next]

I don't think there is any reason that you couldn't have a variety of skins but yeah, if you go for male / female, then you have to justify not having black / white, then it's why not Asian? Mixed race? Etc. In the end you'd need every game to have a full character creator.

 

It's the author that owns the story, so it's up to them if your character is a boy, girl, alien or blank template for you to fill in.

 

Personally, when I have a character creator, I tend to go for a female build anyway. I'd rather see something I find attractive on screen and narratively, I have no problem with Shepard being a girl. One of the side affects of this is that my RPG characters usually end up gay because I find it less... odd? To flirt with members of the opposite gender to me (who are therefore the same gender as my character).

Edited October 15, 2012 by Thursday Next

[deanb]

On a technical level of making a game the difference between male and female isn't exactly just a case of swapping out skins, they move completely differently. Can be quite a lot of work re-rigging, especially if you've some fancy melee fighting system going on too.

 

I am of the same boat as Ethan: It'd be nice to see a wider range of characters but they don't need to be crowbarred into everything nor do I think games need to have choice of characters. I also bring my issues over from the "LGBT in Games" thread n say that minorities can be covered rather badly within games, at least videogame "WASPs" are something game studios seem fairly comfortable and skilled with using.

[TheMightyEthan]

Personally, when I have a character creator, I tend to go for a female build anyway. I'd rather see something I find attractive on screen and narratively, I have no problem with Shepard being a girl. One of the side affects of this is that my RPG characters usually end up gay because I find it less... odd? To flirt with members of the opposite gender to me (who are therefore the same gender as my character).

 

This always happens for me too. For the most part I just like girls better than guys, even putting aside sexuality, so when given a character creator I make girls more often than not (though in games with high replayability I usually end up doing at least one run as each sex). Then for the same reason I like the girl NPCs more than the guys, and because IRL I'm a straight male I find them more attractive so they're the ones I flirt with. So I end up playing lesbians a large amount of the time not because "HOT! LESBIANS!" but for much more low key reasons.

[Thursday Next]

On a technical level of making a game the difference between male and female isn't exactly just a case of swapping out skins, they move completely differently. Can be quite a lot of work re-rigging, especially if you've some fancy melee fighting system going on too.

 

Only if you do it properly. I was thinking more "Mrs Pacman" than anything else. Though she did have a really cute wiggle....

[Hot Heart]

It's certainly a tricky topic, and one in which it is hard to stay objective when a lot of western media is catered towards your own demographic. Once upon a time, I attempted to write an article on the topic, but it really is such a large, branching and tricky topic. So I'll just pour out my brain here and hope it makes some sense.

 

As WaS said before, it is a bit shallow if you're saying you can't relate to a character if they're not exactly the same gender/race/sexuality as you. But, on the other hand, I can understand if people look at certain games and think "I want that", or question why a story has to evolve a certain way. It's not just about inserting token characters or 'catering' to minorities, but having more people in the industry taking steps towards creating a diverse gaming landscape. Fortunately, the industry is maturing, and more and more talented creators are sprouting up, each capable of realising their own different perspectives. It's not an overnight process, and it is already occurring.

 

Technical limitations are the reality when it comes to the business side of games. If we're using Mass Effect as an example, it's fairly flexible with incorporating race and gender but your English language male Shepard will still sound like a white Canadian man. It's acceptable because it doesn't really affect anything. The same goes for the actual body shape. Shepard is a soldier, thus, requiring a physically fit body. The character will never be exactly you, only ever an idealised one for the purpose of the story. Ultimately, the main character's social/cultural/biological/sexual background becomes irrelevant in the face of technical limitations, so a developer reverts to the 'norm' as the safest starting point. It doesn't matter whether your character is male/female, gay/straight/bisexual, there's an alien invasion that must be stopped!

 

When you consider something like a female Shepard, there is the positive in that it shows women are just as capable as men, with the game's universe not even questioning that. However, in a negative light, you could argue that having a female Shepard is not really as much about making a statement as it is pursuing a potentially larger audience. Either way, it's important that it does normalise that sort of presentation where it allows.

 

The thing is, gender/race/sexual politics is a volatile subject matter and not a high priority for most mainstream developers. If tackled, it's usually done under the guise of a fantasy setting and in an RPG (Dragon Age, The Witcher). Most mainstream games stick to a simple formula where the story is about good triumphing over evil, and are player power fantasies more often than not. The rift between the mechanics and storytelling make it hard to create a coherent theme compared to a film or novel, and subtext is almost impossible for many.

 

So, I wouldn't begrudge people wanting to see a wider representation of different cultures, races, genders, etc. Just that, they shouldn't expect to see it overnight or shoehorned in with little to no relevance. The industry is still evolving.

 

Boy, I hope some of that made sense.

[TheMightyEthan]

tl;dr: Hottie agrees with me.

[Hot Heart]

tl;dr: Hottie agrees with me.

 

Pretty much, yeah.

[Waldorf and Statler]

It made sense. On the topic of choosing females for games I tend not to because I usually play RPG's. And rpg's tend to have customization and armor. And when that happens, I won't give you a statistical figure but I think we can agree a lot of the female armor is ridiculous. I feel both ashamed for the female community that their best armor is a metallic bra and for myself because I know that at the end of the day my perverted 20's mind would probably choose that specific armor. Dragon Age II took away my liberty of slutting up my npc's [to be fair, they were already slutty except for butch knight lady] and I both hated and liked that.

 

In short I have male guilt but that wouldn't stop me from slutting up my female characters so I tend to stay away.

[TheMightyEthan]

I think the slutty female characters is more of a JRPG thing than a WRPG thing. In DA:O with few exceptions the female armor was no sluttier than the male armor, same with Fable, Mass Effect, Fallout, TES, etc.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

If I'm using a character creator, I tend to make a female because I role-play within the role-playing. But do I think the option should be mandatory, or that not playing as a minority somehow detracts from a video game? That's silly. You shouldn't shoehorn a minority simply because. You should tell your story. Whether that stars a purple, pot-bellied people-eater is up those with the creative power.

 

That said, there should be an option to play as the race/gender/sex you want if a game is offering customization in that respect. Though people should also take into consideration the work that goes into implementing these things.

 

Of course, I'm not a minority. Apparently, I'm an unfeeling, privileged white male. Suffering, empathy and all facets of human emotion are beyond me because of that. So I could just be missing their plight.

[TheMightyEthan]

I agree. And with Dishonored specifically (the game that set off this debate) there's no character customization at all beyond skill selection, so it's not as if they let you customize your character but then left out women or something.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I wish more games gave us interesting female/minority characters. Chell being my favorite. Usually the games I play where the character is a female doesn't have romance. I don't enjoy that sometimes the only way to have a strong female character is to have a wimpy male to contrast against her. But until gaming can afford to not cater to the lowest common denominator and do their own thing, we'll usually have male characters. My hopes for Kickstarter to eventually have enough of a crowd to crowd-fund large games are too hopeful but still...

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't really see how Chell is an interesting character. She's a non-character, like Gordon Freeman, except even less developed than him.

 

Not that there's a problem with that, and I do think it's cool that the game has a "silent protagonist" archetype without it being a SWM.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Maybe I've read too much background of the character and the universe and was blinded. Maybe a better example would be Faith.

[Eleven]

Commander Shepard! My Shep was always female, and they did give us femshep boxes for ME3.

[TheMightyEthan]

Faith is a very good example.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Came across this while browsing Tumblr for Dishonored stuff:

 

“I’m really glad that the game was in first person only, it was easier for me to immerse myself into the world, and even though I know Corvo is a male character, it didn’t matter, because I was Corvo.”

[madbassman39]

When using a character creator I do one of two things. 1) try to make the character look like myself, or 2) allow randomization and see what comes up. Hell, my Saints Row character I nicknamed "Fat T" because character randomization made a very large Mr. T character, and he was great.

 

My big thing about characters is they need to be interesting. If they are interesting enough then I can get behind them, their race, gender, sexual preference, doesn't matter to me, as long as that character is a strong character. This means that I have to either identify with them or find them different enough to make me care.

 

The things I find interesting is that race can determine a character, if we consider the culture that the story takes place with. Some areas, such as a modern urban location, race and gender don't matter as much, because ideally people have grown past those things. Games set in historical periods or even fictional worlds, or even racist locations, can make a characters race and gender tell their backstory.

 

Hell one of the most exciting things to me about Connor was his backstory, being raised in a Native American culture during the American revolution. That already tells you his character, does not like the colonies or English, he is automatically treated poorly by those surrounding him, he has no interest in the conflict, but he has to care about everything that is going on around him because what will happen after the war will affect him and his people. Now throw in that he's also half English and you've got even more depth to him. Does he respect the English because he is one of them, or does he resent them more because they are not like him, yet he is a product of them? All of this can be said by his cultural background, and if none of that is touched on in the game, frankly AC3 dropped the ball on a very interesting character development opportunity.

[Mercurial]

I just like lesbians.

[Eleven]

Came across this while browsing Tumblr for Dishonored stuff:

 

“I’m really glad that the game was in first person only, it was easier for me to immerse myself into the world, and even though I know Corvo is a male character, it didn’t matter, because I was Corvo.”

 

Are there mirrors in Dishonored?

[TheMightyEthan]

I never found any.

[Waldorf and Statler]

If there are any they wouldn't allow reflections. Only time I ever saw someone looking at themselves in mirror is was in the whorehouse and even then they didnt reflect.

[Hot Heart]

Heh, someone just retweeted a link to this article from a while ago.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134818/moving_forward_on_race_in_games_.php