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[Leafsnail]

Well there is that godawful CDI one!  That totally counts, right?

[jester]

Personally I think imposing human values including gender roles on non human species (like whatever sort of farie people link and zelda are meant to be) is horrible specism and we need to stamp out this bigotry with fire and sword.

[Servant Corps]

Link and Zelda are Hylians, which can serve as the human analogs in LoZ, even though the Hylians are technically elves. The "farie people" are called Kokiri, but LoZ: OoT made it clear that Link is a Hylian, not a Kokiri.

[Leafsnail]

And they very, very clearly have the same genders as human beings.

[Neonivek]

Actually Humans and Hylians are both called "Men"

Afterall the first Link was "The Hero of Man"

[kaijyuu]

Peach actually had a half decent game where she was the main character (Super Princess Peach), unlike Zelda. Also she kicked butt in SMRPG with that frying pan.


My biggest beef with female characters in video games is that 90% of them are booblicious. I'm sick of skintight cat suits and half naked elves. Gimme a rough and tumble female character that isn't a toothpick in hotpants, please.

Personality wise, designers have been improving with their portrayal of female characters, but we're still stuck with maybe a half dozen "acceptable" female character types. The rest are filled with men.


So I guess I support that kickstarter in spirit, though I'm too poor to donate.

[Levi]

So I guess I support that kickstarter in spirit, though I'm too poor to donate.

Me too, but replace poor with cheap.   

My biggest beef with females in video games is that they never actually seem like real people.  They almost always feel either shallow or like they are trying to appeal to me personally(usually by being eye-candy or trying to get me to feel sorry for them). 

One of the ones that annoyed me the most was Samus in "Metroid: Other M".  In my mind at the time she was a badass loner bounty hunter, but in that game she was just eye-candy with daddy issues. 

[MorleyDev]

It's almost like the target audience for most video games is 12 to 25 year old males...you know, the 13 years where breasts are the centre of most males universe. Breasts and explosions.

As a well-adjusted 20 year old heterosexual male for whom neither of those are the centre of my universe, it does make me sad. But having interacted with the primordial slime of mindless vagina hunting that is thought of as the "average" 20 year old COD-playing male, I can understand it.

Wow that came out really bitter...

[kaijyuu]

Frankly I find that over exaggerated. Yes sex sells, but men won't turn up their nose to a female character who isn't two breasts stuck to a toothpick. You can have a normal looking (and by that I mean real life normal) female character and it won't hurt your sales. Hell, you can even cast them as the lead.

There's a place for titillation but it doesn't need to be more common for female characters than male ones.

[jester]

Ill agree there are some fairly glaring stereotypes for females in games, but that said, the males are pretty much exactly the same the only games that I can think of where the lead male doesnt have chiseled abs, are the ones where he is a mutant, and even then.......

[Willfor]

The fact that these games have unrealistic portrayals of men does not in any way diminish the fact nor excuse the problem that they portray women in a very sexist fashion. That is like saying "Well, it doesn't matter if government is using money in corrupt ways, they're also enforcing a police state, that it makes it totally fine."

When a problem is pointed out, the solution is not to point smugly at another problem. That is never the solution. The solution is to fix the problem.


Edit: Sorry, I may have come off a bit strong in this post. I've just been watching my friends talking about how they hate that kind of argument/stance with a fiery passion, and it's rubbed off on me.

[penguinofhonor]

See, the difference is this: the male stereotypes are designed for men. Men eat them up! Why wouldn't you want to be the super badass guy who saves the day and gets the girl? They're male power fantasies, and there's no inherent problem with that.

The problem is that the female stereotypes are also designed for men. If they were female power fantasies instead of male sex fantasies, things would be fine.

[Willfor]

Dammit, poh explained it better than I did and kept his tone reasonable. I'm a terrible ally.

[Leafsnail]

I think you both hit on different (but valid) reasons why "Men are stereotyped in videogames too!" is not a useful response.  Willfor's is why the argument in general is disingenuous while PoH's is why it's even more problematic in this particular case.

[kaijyuu]

When a problem is pointed out, the solution is not to point smugly at another problem. That is never the solution.

More people in the world need to realize this.




Re: "They're just conforming to what they believe their target audience wants."

This is true, but it doesn't excuse it. Not for the portrayal of women, nor the portrayal of men. Reasons:
1) These sorts of stereotypes are self-perpetuating. If men are indoctrinated that they want to have booblicious women in their game, they're probably going to want to have booblicious women in their game. Humans are conformist creatures. It's a cycle that needs to be broken, not excused.
2) Stereotypes, being stereotypes, are non-indicative of any individual person. They are trends at best, outright fiction at worst, and definitely not facts. I'd find a women in a suit of practical full plate far more attractive than one in a "breast" plate for example, so telling me they know what I want based on my gender is laughable, and the same can be said of any person.
3) Point #1 isn't all-powerful. If big media creators make what they think the majority wants all the time, than significant numbers of people are going to be left out. It's better for everyone involved if the big media creators branch out and stop trying to follow trends and stereotypes; they innovate, leading to the chance of getting the "next big thing," while the minorities in their target audience are occasionally catered to.


There is one reason why game developers stick to the comfortable idea of catering to stereotypical men (besides having their heads stuck up their ass), though. Video games are ridiculously huge investments. This is an enormous problem, as investors are going to want to play it safe. They will demand that the game stick to well established methods that work, and that includes scantily clad elves and muscle bound men that daringly save them. The only big name companies that consistently try to innovate (valve, blizzard, etc) are ones with good track records. No one else is willing to take the risk... well except in indie gaming, which is mostly ignored outside of the gamer crowd.