The real reason there are so few female protagonists

[Tenderizer]

The common assumption is that there is a lack of female protagonists because developers and publishers think that not many girls play games. I have always had an issue with that since there has been a statistic showing that girls do play games almost as frequently as men (Candy Crush counts as playing games in the study). There have been plenty of demands from the community about the lack of female protagonists in games also. This made me think that the issue isn't with developers and publishers getting false information.

I believe the real reason is that there are few female game developers/designers. It is much easier for men to write male characters and so we end up with so many. So the solution is to get more women involved in game development/design. There have already been plenty of efforts to do so by other people. Here are a few other ideas.

- The military is traditionally comprised mostly of men (There are a lot of military games)
- Men are usually physically stronger so the protagonists high health makes slightly more sense
- Men have often been the protagonist right from the start (I have no idea why)

[Aster]

If you look at all the recent ecchi anime games released on Steam, it's obvious that most games are tailored to a male audience. As for me, I don't really care what gender of protagonist I play as long as the story/gameplay is good.

Also, I think a lot of people think girls are only into games like Candy Crush or non-hardcore games which is why a lot of stuff is aimed more towards guys.

[AbedsBrother]

When BioWare kept tabs on who played as male or female Shepard in Mass Effect 3 (different voice actors, some different dialogue, but same story, i.e. equally capable), the balance one year after release was 82% MaleShep, 18% FemShep.
http://kotaku.com/5992092/two-thirds-of-you-played-mass-effect-3-as-a-paragon-mostly-as-soldiers

Draw your own conclusions.
Be interesting to see other stats from games that also provide a choice to play as male or female - like the upcoming Dishonored 2 will - but I don't know of any other publisher who has actually published statistics of this nature.

[Paintbrush Poltergeist]

Oh gosh. This thread will certainly end well...

[I would luck me]

Yes, Candy Crush is a game. However, for someone who just plays mobile games, why should we listen to them when it comes to consoles or PC gaming?

Also, have you checked E3 out this year? It's mainly all female protagionist. It's just too bad that isn't enough for some people(Anita).

[Guntzilla]

I'm a female and I prefer playing as a male protagonist in video games. I also played huniepop (and so did a lot of my other female friends) and we all enjoyed it for what it was. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that games are geared towards the male audience, as its only recently become popular for high volumes of ladies to play PC or Console games compared to how it was say a decade ago. It's all about marketing strategies to make money.

[Gooblings]

Originally posted by Linx77:

- Men are usually physically stronger so their high health makes slightly more sense

Connection to topic not established. Care to try again?

[Tenderizer]

Originally posted by Asterette:

If you look at all the ...

I mean that in the sense that the statistics are a bit fudged. As in it may factor in about 1000 PC and console players and about 10000 Candy Crush/other peasantly game players.

Originally posted by abedsbrother:

When BioWare kept tabs on who ...

I personally think the ration is about 30% women, this is based on personal experiences.

Originally posted by Fwuffy Foxeh:

Oh gosh. This thread will certainly end well... :cwat:

Who says it will end

Originally posted by I would luck me:

Yes, Candy Crush is a game ...

That's the point I was making about the statistic. I only counted 2 games (ReCore and Mirror's Edge 2) at E3 with a primary female protagonist and 2 (Dishonored 2 and The Division) with optional female protagonists.

Originally posted by hotel:

I'm a female and I ...

I'm a male and I prefer playing as a female protagonist in video games.

Originally posted by Saieras:

Originally posted by Linx77:

- Men are usually physically stronger so their high health makes slightly more sense

Connection to topic not established. Care to try again?

Characters in games generally have obcenely high health. Having a male protagonist makes it slightly more realistic.

[I would luck me]

Originally posted by Linx77:

That's the point I was making about the statistic. I only counted 2 games (ReCore and Mirror's Edge 2) at E3 with a primary female protagonist and 2 (Dishonored 2 and The Division) with optional female protagonists.

I believe Horizon is one of them.

I also saw that it was around 33 games that had a female influence to it(main character and such).

Also, don't go by studies anymore. I don't know how many times I've seen, "Well, actually, this study shows that more males play games than women." or, "Females make for half the gaming community." Actually, it's kinda odd I never see more females play games than males in any study.

[Tenderizer]

Originally posted by I would luck me:

I believe Horizon is one of them.

I also saw that it was around 33 games that had a female influence to it(main character and such).

Also, don't go by studies anymore. I don't know how many times I've seen, "Well, actually, this study shows that more males play games than women." or, "Females make for half the gaming community." It's just so silly. Actually, it's kinda odd I never see more females play games than males in any study.

The issue with some of these studies is that they delibrately try to make them suit their wants. They want people to believe that women make up half the gaming community so they count Candy Crush as "gaming community".

[AbedsBrother]

Originally posted by Linx77:

Originally posted by abedsbrother:

When BioWare kept tabs on who ...

I personally think the ration is about 30% women, this is based on personal experiences.

As long as you are open to admitting that others' personal experiences are as valid as your own, this topic should stay open for a while :)

[Gooblings]

Originally posted by Linx77:

Originally posted by Saieras:

Connection to topic not established. Care to try again?

Characters in games generally have obcenely high health. Having a male protagonist makes it slightly more realistic.

Not how injury works. If it's serious, you can't just tough it out, which is part of what makes the unrealistic movies and comics from which action games borrow so compelling. The protagonist has high health not because he's male, but because he's a superhero... and most of the famous superheroes are male, so if we circle around a bit, you may be on to something.

[supertrooper225]

Companies have focused incredibly hard on what they believe to be trendy archetypes. As much as people claim to hate it the highest selling games feature a brown haired white man, for instance. I am not hating on it, I am a brown haired white guy myself. But companies are investing so much in games now that they are naturally risk adverse to changing formulas these days.

Tomb Raider showed what could be done when a female is the main character of a game. There used to be far mroe female main characters, but recently the entire industry went generic.

[C4Warr10r]

The real reason there aren't as many female protagonists or gamers is the most obvious one that has been staring you in the face the entire time: they're women. They are mentally and physically different from men. Observe them for five seconds at any age, but particularly after the males hit puberty and it's very apparent. They assume different roles all by themselves, whether alone or together, no matter what they've been exposed to.

This should not be surprising to anyone at all. Nature didn't evolve two sexes or more because they could be totally interchangeable. In a large, slow-growing species like us, it's not like anything was designed to be moved around a whole bunch, either. We'd spend half our adult lives changing sex if we were a fungus. And it's not like you see a great deal of nature documentaries about other animals where the narrator says "The male lion (or whatever complex animal) is remarkably similar to the female in behavior and appearance. It's just clear form observation.

So what, then? The reason this issue is even an issue is because of a very powerful force - the desire for equality, which itself is just the desire for power, really. it can be further reduced to the desire of an organism which recieves positive or negative feedback for actions figuring out that if it could control what gives the feedback, it can forever get good feedback. Pavlov made a dog salivate, rats will press bars to shut off electrical current on cage floors, monkeys will actually fecking lie to humans (and I swear domesticated animals do it too) and the cleverest schemes in all of our history, not to mention what we just naturaly do still boils down to people trying to control their environment.

So what happens when one part of the species, even just a few members, want to do something they can't? Let's take a woman who wants to be a Marine for an example. I love female Marines if they're any good. They have a viciousness the men lack, almost to the point where employing them in combat would be a problem because of war crimes. Yes, I'm talking about US Marines, who see themselves as snarling dogs waiting to be unleashed or Grim Reapers or whatever other stupid crap they paint on their bodies. Some women are worse than that, and I welcome them. Now go pick up that Mk-19, mount it on that truck, and let's roll.

Can't pick it up? (and some can, but very precious few) Well that sucks, but if you can't be a gunner then the military doesn't need you here. It's that simple, but people try to make it more complex because that's how the gain power. It's not her fault she can't carry the gear, it's mine for making her do it in the first place. She doesn't have to comply, she doesn't have to be part of the unit, she's not equal but we're going to force it.

And there's the reason for your assumption that there would be more female protagonists in games. It's been forced. There aren't as many women as men who play games, and even if there were, the games they play often don't feature protagonists. They don't want to be sword-wielding heroes or machine-gun toting badasses, and the market responds to those demands. Did our train of logic ever stop at the station marked "Why don't we have more games where men play as home-makers?" Probably not because it never occurred to you, whereas the desire for equality does. The reason is just as obvious, too, such games would suck for us. We wouldn't buy them. It can be done, the Sims was a hit, but mostly with girls and it doesn't really have a protagonist except for you doing boring ****.

What you're basically asking is why not as many women want to be ship captains or metalworkers or hunters or killers or anything men usually do in greater numbers. Then you're asking why the industry doesn't reflect such an obviously artificial bias. Women are women, men are men, and while we should never try to insitutionalize that, we can't institutionalize the opposite, either. But you've been told so often that it can work, despite how readily it does not, that apprently you believe it, at least a little.

Here's a thought - how about just let people be free and who cares who likes what? They have their own minds, they'll work things out. I can't be the President of Space but you don't see me whining about it. If I can't do something, I rely on other people for it, we work together respecting each other and our differences, and in the end that's far more human and right than trying to make everyone the same. Isn't it?

[Lycairin]

Originally posted by Fwuffy Foxeh:

Oh gosh. This thread will certainly end well... :cwat:

tell me about it. Sooner or later some flags would be waving around feminism.

[MuscularMelvin]

The REAL real reason there are so few female protagonists is that no matter how hard designers will try, internet feminists will still find a way to complain about them. Too feminine? Weak stereotype. Too gender neutral? Mrs. Man. Too dumb or incompetent? Misogynist. Too smart or hypercompetent? Positive Discrimination. Too modest? Oppressing female sexuality. Too sexy? Pandering male gaze.

It's easier for game developers to go with a male and not hear the end of it. The Last of Us tried so hard to write a story from a feminist standpoint (confirmed by devs) to the point where the girl was revealed to be homosexual, and feminists still complained about her needing a grown man to protect her.

The only way for us to see more female protagonists is for feminimity not to be more acceptable but for feminimity to become more mundane. We need the inclusion of women (and minorites) to be completely natural and not a political statement. As it is, female and minority characters only seem to exist for political reasons and not just to tell a story about them. We need to go back to the days of Ellen Ripley and Danny Glover's character in Predator 2 where the sex or race didn't matter, only the actions of the characters.

Originally posted by Linx77:

- The military is traditionally comprised mostly of men (There are a lot of military games)
- Men are usually physically stronger so the protagonists high health makes slightly more sense
- Men have often been the protagonist right from the start (I have no idea why)

Originally posted by C4Warr10r:

Holy redpill, Batman!

Uh, guys? Video games are not meant to be realistic. They're ****ing computer programs you play with a controller. Do you people get mad when Samus explores space caverns and fights space pirates with an arm cannon? Do you get mad when Chun-Li, a Chinese woman with big boobs and impossibly-proportioned thighs can defy gravity and spin upside down? Do you get mad when 10-to-16-year old girls capture animals with godlike powers inside red-and-white orbs? No, because it's a game and you should just relax. Gender politics mean nothing in Pong.

Especially you, C4Warr10r. Stop playing linear, brown, military corridor shooters with regen health and buy yourself Shantae or Mighty Switch Force or something. It's not healthy to fantasize about shooting Middle Easterners for long periods of time when life has so much more to offer.

I'm so sick of the modern, brown, realistic trend in video games. It's pathetic looking at Naughty Dog's collage of uncanny valley humans and remembering they used to make Crash Bandicoot when you were a kid. Not that Crash was ever high-art, but at least it was fun and new at the time.

Then again, ex-Naughty Dog developers made Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric...

Originally posted by Linx77:

The issue with some of these studies is that they delibrately try to make them suit their wants. They want people to believe that women make up half the gaming community so they count Candy Crush as "gaming community".

GO HOME GAMERR GIRLLLLLLLLLL

Holy crap, man. Just because Candy Crush is noob crap doesn't mean it's not a game. That's disrepectful to the original '90s Japanese game they plagiarized it from. Candy Crush is a game. Counter-Strike is a game. But just because they're both games doesn't mean they appeal to the same demographics. Looking at your Steam library, would you ever play a Persona game? How about Animal Crossing? Exactly.

Originally posted by Saieras:

The protagonist has high health not because he's male, but because he's a superhero... and most of the famous superheroes are male, so if we circle around a bit, you may be on to something.:ladykatarina:

Ever played Rainbow Six? Realistic health in video games is NOT fun.