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[nenjin]

Syntax and parsing fail, indeed.

[Neonivek]

Syntax and parsing fail, indeed.

Yeah I am not even going to defend it. It was pretty bad on my part. I am sorry to both you and especially Vector who likely had a similar reaction.

[Graknorke]

I think the ultimate solution is to not acknowledge the Damsel in Distress trope at all. Drawing attention to the subversion of that trope just makes it seem like the female protagonist is a novelty.

I don't know, would you say that the problem is that the trope exists at all, or that it's only that kind of representation that women tend to get in games? Because I would say the latter, and as far as I've picked up that's what other people have a problem with as well.

[alexandertnt]

I think its less "Most women are damsels-in-distress" and more "Most damsels-in-distress are women", i.e. Women are the general go-to for a helpless character.

[Neonivek]

I think the ultimate solution is to not acknowledge the Damsel in Distress trope at all. Drawing attention to the subversion of that trope just makes it seem like the female protagonist is a novelty.

I don't know, would you say that the problem is that the trope exists at all, or that it's only that kind of representation that women tend to get in games? Because I would say the latter, and as far as I've picked up that's what other people have a problem with as well.

We actually went over the female representation in this very topic and have found out that in spite of people's perception that women are in over 50% of videogames as protagonists.

Their days of always being the damsel has long since been diminished and the idea of male damsels is so common that I honestly believe the Damsel in Distress to now be a unisex one.

Not that it isn't an abundant role for women... but I am simply saying you are exaggerating Graknorke.

[Rolepgeek]

Wait when the fuck was this marvelous revelation?

Cuz' I sure as shit wasn't here for it.

Make me a list of male damsel characters, that only fill the damsel role, in similar manners to female damsels. Seriously, see how many you can find. It'll be like a scavenger hunt.

[Sheb]

Neonivek, what was found was that around 50% of games had either female protagonist or you could choose. While the other 50 where male-only.

[Dutchling]

yeah, male/both/female was like 50/45/5.
At least for me

[Reelya]

I'd like to see the raw data for that study, as we could pretty much make some predictions that would settle some debates.

To summarize, they found that male-only games had the biggest budget (call this 100%), followed by dual-choice protagonist games (80% of the baseline), and female-only protagonist games getting the lowest budget (50%). The split was 50/50 between male-only and male/female games, with female only games getting a "whopping" 4% of games.

One question we can ask is whether those dual-protagonist games are male-oriented with the female choice stuck on as an afterthought, which I'm guessing is the general "default" viewpoint, since "male is the default" etc etc. But consider this, if you're pitching a female-only game and you ADD a male option, you're almost doubling the average budget they throw at you, whereas if you're starting with a male-only game and add a female option as an afterthought, the statistics suggest you're lowering the potential budget they will allocate to you. So, from the perspective of how it affects your budget proposal, it'd make a lot of sense to convert a female-only game into a dual protagonist one. Hence, a LOT of the dual-gender games could have started out as a female-only concept, with the male as an afterthought to get it funded.

As for the raw data - it's fine to tell us that male-only protagonist games have a higher average budget, but what would be more convincing is to see the comparative sales figures for games that had the same budget.

There are games with both high and low budgets, and both male and female protagonists, so we can compare apples and apples, rather than apples and oranges - i.e. the chicken-and-egg question. Do male protagonist games sell better because they have a bigger budget, or do they get a bigger budget because they're better sellers - specifically, are they better sellers when the budget is equal.

If games with a male protagonist outsell games with a female protagonist when the budgets are equal, then that would explain why they allocate more budget to male-protagonist games purely based on the profit motive, rather than "they're dumb" or "they're sexist" or they're just "not thinking outside the box".

On the other hand, if games with a female protagonist are really under-represented - in MARKET terms - then you'd expect games with a female protagonist to outsell ones with a male protagonist - when the marketing spent on each is completely equal, purely because they're so rare, you'd expect the few examples to sell especially well for the amount of market exposure they get.

So, having the actual raw data would allow us to fairly conclusively choose between these scenarios.

[Sheb]

Wait, what study are you talking about?

[Reelya]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_video_games

According to data gathered by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), few video games have exclusively female heroes. This is in part because, according to EEDAR, "there's a sense in the industry that games with female heroes won’t sell", which Penny Arcade attributed in part to these games receiving much smaller marketing budgets than games with male heroes.[5]

In a sample of 669 action, shooter, and role-playing games selected by EEDAR in 2012, only 24 (4%) had an exclusively female protagonist, and 300 (45%) provided the option of selecting one. Examining the sales data and review scores of these games, EEDAR found that the games that included the option of selecting a female hero obtained better scores, but the ones with male-only protagonists sold better than the others. However, games with a female-only protagonist had, on average, only 50% of the marketing budget of female-optional games, and 40% of the marketing budget of games with male-only protagonists.[5]

The part I highlighted is the "chicken and egg" question that comparing sales-figures for equally-marketed games would answer - do they sell poorly because they're not marketed enough, or do they not get a big marketing budget because they're poor sellers?

If you spend the same $1 million marketing two different products and the first one heavily outsells the other one, then I'd sure as hell invest extra money marketing in the big seller before the poor one.

[Sheb]

Crap, if it's market research, they won't want to share their data. 

[Neonivek]

I'd like to see the raw data for that study, as we could pretty much make some predictions that would settle some debates

We just had everyone here get the ratio of their games.

It wasn't the "Womanless wasteland" as people have made it seem. Heck Reelya even THAT article seems to support this..

And it intentionally went out of its way to skew the results!

As for "Lower funding"...

It should be stated that there is a reason these games get lower funding beyond "Woman protagonist"... mostly because the games they are talking about are dreadful. That is where the skew and where developers get afraid, especially since most gamers know that if there is a woman on the box, stay clear!

Why am I saying this? Because there is a lot of "Chicken or the egg" deal with these discussions. It is a problem but that problem isn't "Producers are delusional and are making up results"

---

Also I am confused what is WRONG with male and female choice in games even if it means there are less solo titles?

[Rolepgeek]

There isn't anything wrong with dual-gender possibility storylines; but you need to take a look at the culture and context surrounding it. Most of the time, it's just to allow more options, but the male is still the default. Take Mass Effect 3, for example; I've never played it, and even I know the male is the default, if only from the name. Shepard is not a girl's name. Yet the female Shepard gets called that. Coincidence, I think not.

Womanless Wasteland? No. Scarily Skewed? Very much so.

[Lyeos]

^^ In regards to that, Shepard is the last name. First name is customizable, but like any game with voice acting, isn't stated. Similar to  Skyrim where your character is always referred to as "Dragonborn" and the like.

I just wanted to toss that in, because that example was silly.