3 is not a good sample size to identify if female characters cause fewer copies of a game to be sold in the FPS genre.
3 isn't, no, but a hundred or so (spread out over a few generations of games) is probably fine. As long as the other sample(s) (male protagonist games, or games with a choice or protagonist genders) are controlled to ensure that they are demographically similar, you should be able to get a pretty solid set of results.
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I like playing hot female characters for two reasons:
1. The same kind of idealistic fantasy that makes guys like beefy gun nuts.
2. Lesbian. :)
That said, I tend to get turned off by things that are ridiculous in that regard, like DoA Volleyball.
Normally us guys have to choose whether to indulge our juvenile power fantasies or our desire to stare at a girl's butt all game, but you have the best of both worlds!
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I really wish I hadn't read the comments in the linked article about Bioware's rebuttal. I'm tempted to pick up Remember Me out of spite now.
I know both my wife and several friends play Female Shepard largely for her voice actress, preferring it over the male version's voice. They are also jealous of my relationship with Tali.
I have to admit that Tali's heterosexuality was a major factor in my Shepard's monogamy.
(thankfully Liara did develop more as the games went on)
That said, I tend to get turned off by things that are ridiculous in that regard, like DoA Volleyball.
Those faces...
Y'know, I'm no sex-negative prude (points at sordid post history) but I had kind of the same reaction with Bayonetta. I've yet to play it because the lead character is such a turnoff. And I'm someone that enjoyed the first Bloodrayne and mains Ivy in Soul Calibur. I don't know exactly why I find it so offputting. Maybe it's because it feels like it tries to pile on one or five too many fetishes.
Or maybe it's the beehive.
There is a belief in the videogame industry that girls and women do not enjoy games with violence.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, there is a significant gap in how much boys and men value violence in their video games versus how much girls and women value violence in their video games.
So, a belief, certainly. But a belief grounded pretty firmly in reality.
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Hmm. Do you mean 'combat' or 'gore' when you say violence? I'm a big fan of games that involve combat (which is pretty much all of them, so that isn't saying much) but I don't particularly care for gore one way or the other. It doesn't bother me, but I'm not super excited when a game's selling point is hyper-realistic entrail-ripping.
Actually, when I see a creature's innards burst out in game, I'm more likely to stop and investigate the polygon and texture work than marvel at the viscerality.
3 is not a good sample size to identify if female characters cause fewer copies of a game to be sold in the FPS genre.3 isn't, no, but a hundred or so (spread out over a few generations of games) is probably fine. As long as the other sample(s) (male protagonist games, or games with a choice or protagonist genders) are controlled to ensure that they are demographically similar, you should be able to get a pretty solid set of results.
I'll be impressed if you can compile a list of 100 games with female only protagonists.
I predict at around 50, you have to start adding obscure, Japanese-only (and by obscure, I mean obscure even in Japan) releases to keep going.
3 is not a good sample size to identify if female characters cause fewer copies of a game to be sold in the FPS genre.3 isn't, no, but a hundred or so (spread out over a few generations of games) is probably fine. As long as the other sample(s) (male protagonist games, or games with a choice or protagonist genders) are controlled to ensure that they are demographically similar, you should be able to get a pretty solid set of results.I'll be impressed if you can compile a list of 100 games with female only protagonists.
I predict at around 50, you have to start adding obscure, Japanese-only (and by obscure, I mean obscure even in Japan) releases to keep going.
It's really not that tough. Some of those are female-and-male games, but a lot of them aren't. And that list has nearly 800 titles on it. Hell, Tomb Raider alone gives you more than a dozen.
If I'm looking at data across time then I'm going to need some kind of estimate on what proportion of the gamer population is male and female at different points in time. If those ratios have been changing over time then I need to know that when considering the results.
Great post, but one nitpick here: while that might be useful for explaining the reasons behind the fact that games that feature female protagonists sell fewer copies due to the protagonist's gender, it should have no bearing on a finding of whether or not games featuring female protagonists sell fewer copies due to the protagonist's gender (at least, no bearing on a finding that satisfies the null hypothesis). I would be tremendously skeptical of any results section which tried to play down the effect that a protagonist's gender has on game sales by drawing upon consumer gender fluctuations. If consumer gender fluctuations are demonstrated to have an effect on gendered title sales, that's already evidence that the protagonist's gender influences sales volumes.
You didn't prove anything, since that list includes games with playable male characters, which does nothing to prove your point. Show me a list of 100 games with female only playable characters.
You didn't prove anything, since that list includes games with playable male characters, which does nothing to prove your point. Show me a list of 100 games with female only playable characters.
I went in and counted, manually, the titles that I was - off the top of my head - certain featured a female-only main protagonist. I went three pages in, and counted 33. That number is probably low, since I was not familiar enough with some titles to make a call one way or the other, but I'll stick with it. If we assume that's representative of the whole list, that gives us over 250 games with female-only protagonists. Even if those first few pages are wildly non-representative (double the average, for instance) we're still looking at over 100 titles, easy.
Go ahead and make your list if you think it's going to be so simple. Make me look like a fool.
Your link, page 1:
30 games
7 haven't been released yet, so a couple I'm not sure how you know for sure they only feature female playable characters (several of them appear to not)
1 game, Gunmen Clive, the primary playable character is male
1 is a puzzle game without a protagonist, but the puzzle pieces are people
9 you can either play both genders, or the characters are genderless
So, of the first 30 I looked at, at least 11 don't qualify, probably more.
Also, we were talking about console games. Only 10 are console games. A couple are handhelds, but most are PC.
I didn't change the rules, you guys are by promoting that list. But hey, lets go ahead and use your new list.
By the way, your list of ~800 games is being culled from a total of 39556 games. That's 2.02% of games. Never mind the fact that there are games on that list, such as Dragon Crown and Resident Evil 6, which have playable male characters, so they clearly don't qualify as "female protagonist only".
The data being talked about on the first page was primarily dealing with console games. The 669 number is from the current generation of consoles (360, PS3 and Wii). That gives us a really nice workable definition of what we're talking about, and we don't have to debate whether Japanese visual novels should be included.
Do you think this conversation would be improved by debating whether Japanese visual novels should be included as video games for purposes of this debate, which is talking primarily about an American audience?
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Hmm. Do you mean 'combat' or 'gore' when you say violence? I'm a big fan of games that involve combat (which is pretty much all of them, so that isn't saying much) but I don't particularly care for gore one way or the other. It doesn't bother me, but I'm not super excited when a game's selling point is hyper-realistic entrail-ripping.
Actually, when I see a creature's innards burst out in game, I'm more likely to stop and investigate the polygon and texture work than marvel at the viscerality.
People have to remember that the discussion is about large numbers. While Umbral Reaver might be ok with violence, without more serious research it's hard to say if most female games prefer it or not.
Same goes for the first link of the OP. You can't just look at 3 good seller with female characters, and then at 3 bad seller without female characters, and say you have proof of anything. What you need to do is show that games with female characters are selling as well or better than the mean, or median, or expectancy, of other games. It's all about statistics, so you have to know statistics to be part of the discussion.
I just finished playing Tomb Raider, which was flawed in many ways, but I appreciate the intentions (and it was a fun game!). I would really like to see many more female protagonists in the future. Not only protagonists though - it would be nice if more of the nameless NPCs would be females too. It's all nice and dandy that Lara is a strong female lead, but why is she only fighting male thugs all game long? females can be thugs, too.
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I really wish I hadn't read the comments in the linked article about Bioware's rebuttal. I'm tempted to pick up Remember Me out of spite now.
I know both my wife and several friends play Female Shepard largely for her voice actress, preferring it over the male version's voice. They are also jealous of my relationship with Tali.I have to admit that Tali's heterosexuality was a major factor in my Shepard's monogamy.
(thankfully Liara did develop more as the games went on)
That said, I tend to get turned off by things that are ridiculous in that regard, like DoA Volleyball.Those faces...
Y'know, I'm no sex-negative prude (points at sordid post history) but I had kind of the same reaction with Bayonetta. I've yet to play it because the lead character is such a turnoff. And I'm someone that enjoyed the first Bloodrayne and mains Ivy in Soul Calibur. I don't know exactly why I find it so offputting. Maybe it's because it feels like it tries to pile on one or five too many fetishes.
Or maybe it's the beehive.
I love bayonetta. Noone here should be surprised by this. Also the action really appeals to me. Doa volleyball is a misunderstood game.
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Well, the story explains why there aren't any women on the island, Snow.
Really? I must have missed it. Either it was on one of the ledgers I didn't find or I just wasn't paying attention.
Why weren't there any women on the island? Lara is there, along with two other female crew members of the endurance, so obviously women *can* be on the island... what am I missing?
Go ahead and make your list if you think it's going to be so simple. Make me look like a fool.
Your link, page 1:
30 games
7 haven't been released yet, so a couple I'm not sure how you know for sure they only feature female playable characters (several of them appear to not)
1 game, Gunmen Clive, the primary playable character is male
1 is a puzzle game without a protagonist, but the puzzle pieces are people
9 you can either play both genders, or the characters are genderlessSo, of the first 30 I looked at, at least 11 don't qualify, probably more.
Also, we were talking about console games. Only 10 are console games. A couple are handhelds, but most are PC.
This is a stupid conversation. I gave you a resource and a solid way of estimating an answer, and that estimate (a purposefully conservative estimate) supports my theory. It's silly of you to try and cast doubt on that estimate, and if you insist on doing so, you're on your own. I'm not going to help you, aside from to say that your job is now to comb through all 26 pages and put together a list of all games with female-only protagonists, and to prove to me that it doesn't hit 100.
Ball's in your court.
I think the conversation would be improved if if you didn't change toe rule when your statement was proven wrong. Now if you you want to talk about why female protagonists are less common the male protagonists across all media, that would be something, I don't know, useful.
Oh, and I ignored visual novels, RPGs where the main character was male (with two exceptions where you chose between two main characters who have very different stories), porn, the Bikini Samurai series, DOA, Resident Evil, The Atelier series, Bloodrayne, media tie ins like thee Kim Possible games or Barbie. I also ignored cooking Mama, Yar's Revenge, and various bullethell or shooter games. I left out the Sakura Wars series, things that don't have an english language release, and games like FFXII where the protagonist of the story is female, but the main character is male. Just to be doubly sure I didn't count Bayonetta or Lolipop Chainsaw.
Many of those games are nitch. But I have heard played a lot of them and am familiar with the rest.
You made an explicit statement that you can't find 100 female protagonist video games. You're wrong. Even ignoring a decent number of games that I could have counted, you're wrong.
A quick list:
** spoiler omitted **...
Again, it's not changing the rules. Pointing out the context under which I'm making the statement is not changing the rules, it's pointing out things that have already been said during the conversation. For example, when I said "24 in the current generation" what do you think that meant? Or when Scott said "including all generations", does that not imply only console games? I've never heard the term "generation" to be taken to widely refer to PC, handheld and cellphone games (which your list includes).
Anyways, thanks for the list. You proved me wrong. I was willing to be proved wrong. I do find it interesting that in having to expand the scope to reach 100 games (or more), the % of games featuring only female playable characters shrunk.
Go ahead and make your list if you think it's going to be so simple. Make me look like a fool.
Your link, page 1:
30 games
7 haven't been released yet, so a couple I'm not sure how you know for sure they only feature female playable characters (several of them appear to not)
1 game, Gunmen Clive, the primary playable character is male
1 is a puzzle game without a protagonist, but the puzzle pieces are people
9 you can either play both genders, or the characters are genderlessSo, of the first 30 I looked at, at least 11 don't qualify, probably more.
Also, we were talking about console games. Only 10 are console games. A couple are handhelds, but most are PC.
This is a stupid conversation. I gave you a resource and a solid way of estimating an answer, and that estimate (a purposefully conservative estimate) supports my theory. It's silly of you to try and cast doubt on that estimate, and if you insist on doing so, you're on your own. I'm not going to help you, aside from to say that your job is now to comb through all 26 pages and put together a list of all games with female-only protagonists, and to prove to me that it doesn't hit 100.
Ball's in your court.
I concede. I made the comments earlier based on the assumption we were talking about console games. When you expand to PC, handheld and mobile games, the list will easily top 100.
but a hundred or so (spread out over a few generations of games)
To me, that implied console games, since that's what I had been discussing earlier. You are correct, looking at all video games, there are definitely over 100.
It's also reduced their share of the games to less than 2.02%, based on the 800 out of 39556 games. (I'd estimate closer to 1.5% based on the rate of games with playable male characters and gender-less characters on the first two pages).
It's also reduced their share of the games to less than 2.02%, based on the 800 out of 39556 games. (I'd estimate closer to 1.5% based on the rate of games with playable male characters and gender-less characters on the first two pages).
No one's going to argue that the ratio is anywhere close to even. But it doesn't need to be; studying relative sales figures based on gender of protagonist is possible no matter what the ratio is.
Well, the story explains why there aren't any women on the island, Snow.Really? I must have missed it. Either it was on one of the ledgers I didn't find or I just wasn't paying attention.
It's also reduced their share of the games to less than 2.02%, based on the 800 out of 39556 games. (I'd estimate closer to 1.5% based on the rate of games with playable male characters and gender-less characters on the first two pages).No one's going to argue that the ratio is anywhere close to even. But it doesn't need to be; studying relative sales figures based on gender of protagonist is possible no matter what the ratio is.
Feel free to show us.
I'm really hoping you didn't fight to expand the definition, only to not use it.
People hated on Noriko, b#$&+ing endlessly about 'Goddess of War'. It was a damned solid game that was derided because o waif-fu. Never mind that the protagonist trained as a warrior for all of her g*%@&&ned life.
Golden Axe: Beast Rider was a bomb, and using Tyris Flare's T&A was not enough to fix that.
Enslaved focused less on the dame, and more on the Goku-expy, but there were other issues happening therein.
A substantial portion of the gender disparity issue comes of making games with female protagonists that turn out subpar, not because of who is the lead, but because the game is freaking subpar.
Taken another way - People LOVE Saint's Row 3 & 4, and gladly make a female protagonist in that game. Some dialogue changes, but otherwise, same freaking game. Maybe if the attitude was not 'ZOMG GURL MOAD' we could get more well done games with female protagonists.
Tangent - Sengoku Basara 3/Samurai Heroes had THREE playable female characters. One is a female mercenary who fights with guns, who in the competing series Sengoku Musou/Samurai Warriors is a guy with gun instead. One is a semi-comedic-relief shrine maiden who fights with a bow, who is also one of THE MOST ANNOYING CHARACTERS IN THE GAME. And the third is the little sister of Oda Nobunaga, who suffers from extreme doormat syndrome, has gone b$$%~&! insane, and fights with arms made of shadow that carry and move her like she's a broken doll. For all that, she's one of the most interesting characters in my far from humble opinion.
Back on topic, and lest I forget - Evaline, from Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation was an awesome character that NO ONE will ever play as because it's on the Vita. Ditto Kat from Gravity Rush, which is a far better game than credited. Red Ninja never got the love it deserved. And I'm read to place bets that people never freaking bothered with The Third Birthday, never one considering that the PSP could be home to the SEQUEL TO PARASITE EVE.
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Yes, I agree with the critics that the methodology is incomplete, but there does appear to be something to this.
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Special mention should probably be made towards the new Tomb Raider game.
Consider me biased and maybe a bit uneducated towards other games, but I don't think a game with a female protagonist has had such a high level of story quality as this game had.
I don't think it was just about attractiveness either, which I think hurts the whole argument to a degree, but it was just a fantastic, action-packed game that had some real emotion-turned-hardened character throughout it. It could've been done with a male protagonist, but I can't imagine it would have been done nearly as well.
I don't think it comes down to Lara being protrayed as "weak" either. The opening cutscene stresses how survival instinct is the key theme, and those cut scenes are powerful.
The game does explain why there's no female thugs
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Yes, I agree with the critics that the methodology is incomplete, but there does appear to be something to this.
Of course it was the result of focus group testing. That stuff usually turns up these kinds of results, and is also the reason why so many games we got lately are just repackaged Call of Dutys.
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Special mention should probably be made towards the new Tomb Raider game.
Consider me biased and maybe a bit uneducated towards other games, but I don't think a game with a female protagonist has had such a high level of story quality as this game had.
I don't think it was just about attractiveness either, which I think hurts the whole argument to a degree, but it was just a fantastic, action-packed game that had some real emotion-turned-hardened character throughout it. It could've been done with a male protagonist, but I can't imagine it would have been done nearly as well.
I don't think it comes down to Lara being protrayed as "weak" either. The opening cutscene stresses how survival instinct is the key theme, and those cut scenes are powerful.
The game does explain why there's no female thugs ** spoiler omitted **
Personally, I found the Tomb Raider game to have a shallow, cliched mess of a story that had no characterisation in any of the characters aside from Lara, who's character goes from normal girl to mass murdering psychopath in a few moments. It didn't help that the gameplay was mostly lifted straight from the far superior Uncharted series.
Which is a shame, because the previous games were quite enjoyable.
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Sounds a lot like the work done on showing a link between violent video games and violent impulses in the real world.Yes, I agree with the critics that the methodology is incomplete, but there does appear to be something to this.
In other words, completely invalid.
Of course it was the result of focus group testing. That stuff usually turns up these kinds of results, and is also the reason why so many games we got lately are just repackaged Call of Dutys.
Same problem as Hollywood. Which is why we are getting re-make after re-make. :(
First they put the movie in front of a focus group made out of "lowest common denominator" people, who always complain that every element that was even slightly challenging (a character with personality, a story with a neat twist, a scene where someone gets an idea without associating it to a strange word someone spews out etc) is incomprehensible, that there aren't enough pirates/vampires/aliens/ninjas/whatever the latest big-selling movie was about in it, and that any scene where someone does anything that even hints about not living in an ultra-conservative monogamous relationship is "perverted". All these things get slashed and added in without regard to how they fit the rest of the movie. Then the sorry mess is sent to the butcher, sorry, ratings institute, where EVERY SINGLE SCENE is autmoatically shortened for no reason, another check for "perversion", especially consensual such, is made. Those changes, too, get inserted (because the movie gets an R rating otherwise, which means it won't sell). In effect, then, we as audience are guaranteed to get movies where every sort of deviation from the genre conventions has been faithfully removed, where no serious characterization takes place, and where plots are hackneyed and baloney.
Yeah. Not many movie-makers that make me want to see a movie today. Pacific Rim was okay.
The 1980s version of little shop of horrors was to originally have Audrey and Seymour be killed by Audrey II and the plants taking over the world. Thanks to focus group testing we got a standard cliché happy end instead.
Just remembered that.
Bad marketing practices ruin everything.
This just adds to my own personal, deeply held belief that "video game publishers are stupid." Even with my kickstarter fatigue I can see myself in the future mostly buying games that are crowdsourced or otherwise funded without the "help" of a publishing company.Are "video game publishers stupid" or unwilling (as I said above) to "to risk another break out success (like Tomb Raider) in what is a 'male club'"?
Think about what they're going to do to Thief. What they almost did to X-Com. Remember the ending of a certain series and the massive efect it had on the fanbase. Remember the XBone debacle. The answer is obvious.
They are all stupid. Systematically and shamelessly stupid.
This just adds to my own personal, deeply held belief that "video game publishers are stupid." Even with my kickstarter fatigue I can see myself in the future mostly buying games that are crowdsourced or otherwise funded without the "help" of a publishing company.Are "video game publishers stupid" or unwilling (as I said above) to "to risk another break out success (like Tomb Raider) in what is a 'male club'"?Think about what they're going to do to Thief. What they almost did to X-Com. Remember the ending of a certain series and the massive efect it had on the fanbase. Remember the XBone debacle. The answer is obvious.
They are all stupid. Systematically and shamelessly stupid.
Yes. BAD focus group testing, combined with FEAR of losing money.
Of course, this ends up causing the game to lose money, but no one appears to be looking at the data.
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Well, nobody ever put me in a focus group. I guess I am not fundamentalist enough, intellegent enough or prudish enough to fit their bill.
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Well, nobody ever put me in a focus group. I guess I am not fundamentalist enough, stupid enough or prudish enough to fit their bill.
FIFY :)
I am prudish enough, at least. The rest of the stuff I mostly don't care about.
But then again I'd also like more stories that have no sexuality or romantic relationship drama at all. And still actually be good stories, natch. Or at least be entertaining (see: Pacific Rim - the lack of a romantic involvement between the two main characters was a major plus for me). But that's just me. I'd just like to have stories that don't have segments devoted to who's trying to get into who else's pants.
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I remember reading about the Marketing team for Last of Us not having Ellie on the cover. It was just the guy. The development team had to fight them on it to put her on the cover because she's so important to the story.
Don't know if it was because she was a girl, a kid, or both but I'm glad the developers got what they wanted.
Well, nobody ever put me in a focus group. I guess I am not fundamentalist enough, stupid enough or prudish enough to fit their bill.FIFY :)
I just don't like saying stupid, so I try to find... other ways of saying it. But... yeah.
I wasn't trying to. I was trying to spell "intellegent". It is a word that has... Special connotations.
Lord Of The Rings: Laurelin - 2 female, 1 male character; Whitywindle - 2 female, 1 male character (who happens to be dwarf and thus with only one gender option); Landroval (which is the latest server I joined) - 3 males, but one of them is dwarf (again no choice) and the last one ended being elf and I already had female elf and wanted a male elf for a change.
Never mattered much to me...in fact, when the game allows me to design my own character, I usually make a chick.
Same more often than not
