I do get the impression that you are overestimating the amount of female protagonists.
Am I? I just went through and checked all the games I have on my computer and/or have played in the week past. Out of seventeen games, only one of them has a male-only protagonist. And incidentally, one has a female-only protagonist.
In the last month I've played Borderlands 2, Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead 2, The Binding of Isaac, Bionic Commando, Zeno Clash, and a tiny amount of Just Cause 2. (My steam account name is Tavros *KB*)
As you can see, the games we've personally played recently are not at all representative of the entire catalog of video games that are out there.
Even that list of supposedly female-dominated games contained more males than females.
Make up your mind what you're unhappy about. If you're now suddenly requiring that games be "female dominated" I think you may be crossing into territory very different from what you originally intended. If a game has either a female protagonist or the option to play one, ...but you still find it "offensive" because it has more secondary male characters than secondary female characters...at some point I think you're just trying way too hard to find something to be angry about.
I meant "dominated" in the statistical sense, wherein there are more of one thing than another. That list was supposed to show how common female protagonists are, and I was showing that many of the examples contained a majority of male main characters rather than female.
Again, the point was not that any game was sexist for having male leads. It's that female leads are rare, in general, when you look at video games as a whole. I fanboyed hard over Left 4 Dead and Borderlands, and they each have 25% female leads.
imagine your game collection is 10% as large, and you have to wait ten times as long before a new game you're actually eager for is released. It's not that the game industry is small or lazy, just that 90% of the games out there feature gigantic throbbing penises or something. For the sake of this example I'm going to assume that would be a distraction to you, and make it hard to get invested in the game. A lot of people don't even *want* the penises, but they keep buying because they like video games. You can either settle for the 10% of games that pander to you, or you can give in and fund more penis productions. (You'll probably have better luck with indie games, which is great if you don't need the production values, support, and online communities that come with triple-A titles)
I understand the analogy, but my sample group doesn't support that kind of view. What is the content that you're claiming that 90% of games have that corresponds to gigantic throbbing penises? Are you talking about boobs?
Sorta. Unrealistically large boobs, unrealistically revealing armor, even unrealistically perfect makeup. These things can distract from the supposed purpose of the games they're in - which is a strong majority of all games.
Too many strong female characters are bizarrely large breasted and underclothed, and we know exactly why. It's immersion breaking. *I* don't want to play as some teenager's wank-fuel. It's downright offensive to ME that the developers think I, as a guy, require every woman to look like this.
...ok. maybe you're talking about boobs. Personally, I like boobs.
Sure, boobs are pretty great. I'm talking about characters who are over-sexualized to the detriment of their character development and the believability of the narrative.
Bucket, the problem isn't with any individual game. It's that the majority of games have a huge majority of male characters.
Why is this a problem?
Because the huge majority of reality has a small majority of females?
There is a tiny amount of women in proportion to reality? What?
Would it make more sense if he said slim majority? He's saying that in reality there are slightly more women than men, in contrast to video games where the heroes (and even characters in general) are overwhelmingly male.
I thought the intention was pretty clear.
Edit: Can I just say that I love the Bionic Commando remake? It's a power trip in all the best ways. I get to swing through beautiful forests and buildings, fling people over ledges with a grapple, and absorb way more than the daily recommended value of lead. It's kinda like Just Cause, Spiderman, and Prototype. Women are out of luck, though, because there isn't a similar game with a female lead. How many times will the idea be rehashed with a male hero before, finally, they produce a badass female heroine... with jiggle physics and short shorts.
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Topic: Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games' (Read 304404 times)