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[i2amroy]

Can you think of any games in which two named male characters talk about something that isn't a woman? Most games that have dialogue, and 2 or more characters satisfy this.

Now, can you think of any games in which there are two named female characters, who talk about something that isn't a man?

Any Fire Emblem game ever passes both of those with flying colors. Some of the Final Fantasy games pass one or the other. Many of the Tales series (Tales of Symphonia, Vesperia, etc.) pass both rather well.

The main problem with applying that test to videogames is that most videogames really only have 3 characters, the hero, the villain, and the love interest. Most of the time the hero and the villain are the same, but since their dialogue usually boils down to "I'll defeat you!" and "Curses! Foiled again!" I'm not really sure if that should count or not. Also there are several games where you can certainly "interact" with the same gender not about the opposite one (pokemon, the newer harvest moons), but you are limited by the fact that you are a silent protagonist so it's a very one sided conversation.

The only cases where you can really get a game that passes one of those tests is when you have a large cast game and the focus of the game is on the party, not a single character (such as FE and ToS as I mentioned above).

[Max White]

Is this reasonable discussion I should be reading, or just some mindless bullshit like trying to blame sexism in games on the number of males in the industry?

[Vector]

Either is cool, though I still think we should not be working with instances so much as percentages (from all my dealings with you, I get the feeling that you, like I, have a freakishly good memory for stuff that may or may not be actually helpful to work with a general point).

[i2amroy]

Also to name some others that pass both tests:
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Midna and Zelda interact a few times throughout the course of the game (in a sense this one passes the female one better then it does the male one, since all Link can do is scream at people apparently )
Chrono Trigger
Super Princess Peach
All the Golden Sun games
Yggdra Union

[Max White]

See to pass this test you need two female characters.
When you have a very minor cast, sometimes that doesn't work... Now in Super Mario Bros 1 on the NES, you never, ever see two guys having a conversation that isn't about a women. Does that make it sexist against men?

I don't feel discriminated against. I just feel it had a pretty simple story.

[Vector]

Max, I suspect you don't feel discriminated against because you see enough guys talking about guy stuff in other media that your "I exist in these fictional universes" meter is satisfied.

Like, if women at large are not satisfied with their representation in media, and folks think they're just a bunch of blowhards, what does that say about said folks' opinions of women in general?

[Max White]

Well that is pretty damn sexist, and a serious issue.
But once again, you are focusing on the industry, rather than any single game. The 'Two female characters talking but not about a male' test is designed for a single game.

[Vector]

Ah!  Here.

It's designed like this.  You have a body of games.  You run the test on each one of the games.  Then you look at how many games return "true" as a percentage of the total games tested.  That's how the test is supposed to be used--outside of looking at plot considerations, outside of looking at individual media, just looking at how much women tend to be portrayed across titles created.  It is, in fact, designed to be an industry test more than a test of specific games (though some people do tend to look for Bechdel-positive media as one of their search criteria).

Does that make more sense?

[Neonivek]

Heck Amroy often even in games with a LOT of characters you rarely get people who talk to eachother.

Puttputt joins the parade for example doesn't even have two characters speaking to eachother unless one of them is Puttputt. If we excluded Puttputt we end up with a game where no one talks to another person.

Is this reasonable discussion I should be reading, or just some mindless bullshit like trying to blame sexism in games on the number of males in the industry?

Honestly, no. While I did touch upon filtering some of it on the basis that most games are marketed towards males and thus... women cannot have hero roles. I don't think we ever blamed it on men in this whole topic.

Either is cool, though I still think we should not be working with instances so much as percentages (from all my dealings with you, I get the feeling that you, like I, have a freakishly good memory for stuff that may or may not be actually helpful to work with a general point).

Ok American games where two females talk about not a man: Kings Quest 7, Kings Quest 6, Kings Quest 4, Laura Bow, Day of the Tentacle, Freddy Fish, Mortal Kombat, Psychonauts, Kings Bounty 2, Resonance, Blackwell, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, The Silver Lining, Jagged Alliance 2, Skyrim, Oblivion, Dark Resonance (cannot remember exact name).

It's designed like this.  You have a body of games.  You run the test on each one of the games.  Then you look at how many games return "true" as a percentage of the total games tested.  That's how the test is supposed to be used--outside of looking at plot considerations, outside of looking at individual media, just looking at how much women tend to be portrayed across titles created.  It is, in fact, designed to be an industry test more than a test of specific games (though some people do tend to look for Bechdel-positive media as one of their search criteria).

Does that make more sense?

It REALLY doesn't work well on games. Since outside the "hero" there is rarely conversation and if we excluded the main character we would often not even have the reverse.

The test was always, to me at least, more of a test to see if the female characters were A) Characters (and not foils) and B) Had dialog that didn't deal with men.

[Pnx]

I think the Bechdel test thing and other issues probably stems from the writing staff for them is predominantly male. They have a lot of experience with men and men talking, and maybe even men and women talking, but not a lot of experience with women and women talking, especially in private.

Since it's just not something that happens much in their world, this tends to carry over into what they write...

[Max White]

Ah!  Here.

It's designed like this.  You have a body of games.  You run the test on each one of the games.  Then you look at how many games return "true" as a percentage of the total games tested.  That's how the test is supposed to be used--outside of looking at plot considerations, outside of looking at individual media, just looking at how much women tend to be portrayed across titles created.  It is, in fact, designed to be an industry test more than a test of specific games (though some people do tend to look for Bechdel-positive media as one of their search criteria).

Does that make more sense?

Yea that makes perfect sense.
But you understand that if I ran this test over a number of games, and then disregarded any games that didn't comply to to a given output, instead compiling a list of only games that returned the result I was looking for, that wouldn't exactly be a fair test, right?

That is pretty much what this video series has been so far. Granted it is only the first video, and there are more to come, but I am going to judge what I have seen, not what I might see.

[i2amroy]

The real problem I see is that something like 95% of games return False, both for the male and female versions of the test (excluding the hero screaming "NOOOOO!!!!" and the villain's evil laughter in response). Most games just don't have any interactions between two real characters at all, since the only real interactions in the game occur between a voiceless protagonist and a flat caricature of a villager/shopkeeper. In fact for those games that do return True to the test the majority that I can think of return True for both the male and female test.

Personally I would be very interested if somebody wanted to assemble a list of games against the test, so we could see what the actual difference between the male and female tests were. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the total percentages came out to much closer then people think they are.

[alexandertnt]

I dont think the Bechdel Test works overly well with video games in general, because unlike most media (movies, books etc) video games dont require a story. So applying the test may result in interference caused by examples of games whose female characters are flat and one dimensional because all of their characters are flat and one dimensional due to an intentionally underdeveloped story.

On plot-heavy games like Mass Effect etc, sure. But its not really applicable to something like Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft.

I still think we should not be working with instances so much as percentages

Yeah. Single examples are a bit difficult to use except in some exceptional circumstances.

It works both ways of course. A single example of a female in a quality role does not mean much more than a single example of a "damsel in distress".

Quote from: Max White on Today at 15:05:18

    Is this reasonable discussion I should be reading, or just some mindless bullshit like trying to blame sexism in games on the number of males in the industry?


Honestly, no. While I did touch upon filtering some of it on the basis that most games are marketed towards males and thus... women cannot have hero roles. I don't think we ever blamed it on men in this whole topic.

Its a bit weird. More females in the industry could help a bit, but it is not the fault of any individual regardless. In other words, a male game developer is doing absolutely nothing wrong by being a male game developer, nor is it "mens" fault, but an increase in female game developers in a purely hypothetical situation would probably reduce the issues in the industry.

[Ogdibus]

.

[Neonivek]

I think the Bechdel test thing and other issues probably stems from the writing staff for them is predominantly male. They have a lot of experience with men and men talking, and maybe even men and women talking, but not a lot of experience with women and women talking, especially in private.

Since it's just not something that happens much in their world, this tends to carry over into what they write...

Well it certainly wasn't made with videogames in mind. Where the perspective is a lot more forced.

Personally I would be very interested if somebody wanted to assemble a list of games against the test, so we could see what the actual difference between the male and female tests were. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the total percentages came out to much closer then people think they are

I'd like to add another condition that they have to state whether or not it was a main character conversation or not.

As I said "Puttputt joins the parade" fulfills this for males but only because the main protagonist is male as otherwise no one talks to another character (admittingly the joke box in the game does feature male and female characters telling jokes and they all do have names... but they arn't "characters").