At the end, what do we really want?


Strong female protagonists with their own wants and desires, well-developed with a satisfying character arc, they just so happen to be black?


A black woman who runs around reminding everyone of the fact that she's black and the whole story is about how she is black? She's just there so the creator can point and say, “Look! Look! I've got a black lady in my story!! Look how progressive I am!” Her being black is the only thing that's making her interesting.


Because, no offense, the former is a hell of a lot more interesting to me than the latter. The former, to me, shows the strength in women, the latter is just cramming in minority characters for the sake of having minority characters into your story.


@Crippknottick- Well, yeah, it's Saints Row 3. Do a black lady + black lady voice play in Saints Row 2, that game takes itself more seriously than its successors.

I'll tell you what I want. I want a good game that's fun to play. It doesn't matter what color or six the main character is. For example when I played Tomb Raidsr 2 for the PS2, I thought of the character as Laura Croft. She could have been white, black, blue or what ever. Or it could have been a guy named Larry Croft. I would not have cared.


My point is that I care only about the gameplay. I don't give a damn about my avatar's six or color.

Though I have to say, when they force something into the game just for the sake of it, that′s when I begin to care. And look for another game.

And they shouldn't be doing that but atm an ethnic minority or female character is most likely to be included in either a stereotypical role (black criminal, Asian shopkeeper, female nurse etc) or in a role where the story is about their race/six, their struggle etc.

Writers should stop thinking about minorities fitting roles and just include them as a matter of course since they are a part of our societies.

What writers should do is write their stories exactly how they want to, especially if it is a work of fiction. I could make a game that has all shop keepers as Asians, all criminals black, and all nurses female. No one would buy my game and I would go bankrupt lol, but as a writer, no one could tell me how to write my story in the first place.

My point is that no one has the right to tell a writer how to write a story. It's the writer's freedom to put down what ever they want.

Wow that is a solid argument. Thanks for that insightful input.

1. Yes they had. Oblivion had an imperial and Morrowind a dark elf.

2. Thus they have always gone for the same commercial narrative. An mmo relies on a number of characters playing together who are all naturally going to be different. I didn't see a female character in any of the Fallout trailers. Maybe it was a US only thing.

3.Not funny at all. I don't mind playing a different nationality whenever it makes sense. I didn't mind playing as guy of middle eastern descent (altair) too as it fit into the story. Is it not normal to want to role play as the character. Thus I prefer games that have characters as similar to me as possible in the context. Hence I prefer tall characters who are young advlts etc. I don't enjoy pretending to be a woman. With Horizon there is no reason the character needs to be a woman so I don't want to play it. I want it to be as close to me as possible and changing the gender crosses the line for me.

4.Trying to use anomalies really doesn't do much for your argument. Of the 102.4million soldiers mobilised Soviet women made up 800,000 in mostly non combatant roles. Thus if you were playing a WW2 game you would expect to fight as a man. Just because Germany mobilised Hitler Youth in the late stages of the war doesn't mean it would be a good idea to kill 14 year olds in a WW2 game. How many female brigades did America field? Or Britain? Or France? Or Japan? etc Does this mean we could play as a female Russian sniper. Yes if there was a market for it. Does this then mean we should play as an Austrian women fighting for Germany in WW2? No.

Except those were never designated as the player character as they did for the TV commercials for Skyrim / FO4. The Imperial character that you claim is meant to represent the player character is clearly an Imperial Guard.

It could have been an US-only thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5aJfebzkrM is the Fallout 4 Launch Trailer, found on YouTube. Is it a commercial? No. But this was what Bethesda wanted to show the core Fallout fans.

So you have no problem playing as a different nationality, but playing as a woman is a step too far? Ok. I can understand that. But what about all the female gamers who have to constantly play male characters? I guess they just have to deal with it?


I am honestly flabbergasted by your reasoning. "There is no reason the character needs to be a woman"? Really? Whatever happened to allowing the game writer / developer the freedom to do what they wanted?

Wow.

I think Rockstar would love to have you develop future GTA games. “Quick, we need a stereotype to make fun of! Get Fantasyjunkie to draft up a list, STAT!”


But seriously, I agree with you. Well said.


@ChapTES- Is this more of a personal preference? It's OK if you only want to play as males in your games, I prefer to play as non-white ladies in TES and Fallout. No real reason, I just prefer it that way. Doesn't mean I hate my own race and gender. I'm not gonna wax lyrical, so I'll just leave this note: It's OK to have your own personal preference on who you want to play as. It's not OK to force everyone else to like what you like. Can we agree on this?


Also, to the general everyone here: we all get to have our personal likes and dislikes, we all get to have our own preferences. It doesn't make us bad people because of it. We get to play our own games the way we personally want without being judged for playing a character we wanted to play.

Well in your opinion it is an imperial guard, but what it is exactly is up to bethesda. The reason why it makes less sense for there to be fewer female characters is that there is a much, much larger male audience. Simple statistics. Sure it would be nice for women to have more options, but it would be preferable to have new IPs with female characters than detracting from an existing series. Having more character options in games means more work and thus less work going into other arguably more important parts of the game. Maybe that's why Assassin's creed felt like such a horrible disjointed mess. It is not efficient to implement things that costs thousands of dollars for a tiny percent of your audience.

Strong strawman. Obviously in context I meant there was no requirement for there to be a certain gender. IE A british soldier in WW2 would have to be a man. Playing as Lara croft you have to play as a woman.

No, it is most definitely an http://nerdtrek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/OblivionD1.bmp.

So the biggest group wins always. Lovely.

So basically, from my understanding of your viewpoint, is that female lead characters should really only be created when 1) They are "realistic" (no WWII female British soldiers) and 2) They don't detract from pre-existing game series that previously had male characters as leads. Got it.

It is pretty hilarious to see all the hypocrisy though.

"A writer can write what they want."

"But only if it panders to me."

Could you give us a few examples of games which suffered because of greater character customization? You only mentioned combat, which is a very different thing.

How could a Bethesda game suffer with new races being added? I'd get a kick out of playing a Ghoul for once. Sometimes I get tired of playing as a smoothskin. For the Elder Scrolls, I wouldn't mind the ability to play as a Snow Elf, though that may hurt the lore all things considered...

Now OK, you may have a point, a historical game should probably stick as close to history as possible, but I must make a notion that there are examples of women in real life who served in a war either openly or in disguise*.

* and no, it wasn't so they could get close to their man. Most of the time, it was because they wanted to fight for their country and didn't let the fact they were women stop them from taking up arms. With that in mind, I would not be miffed to play a game where we play as a lady fighting in the Roman legion. Of course, she might have to disguise herself as a very feminine-looking boy, as I'm not sure they allowed women to openly fight on the fields, but I could see a woman going to fight in a pre-modern time war if she felt patriotic enough to risk it all for her country.

EDIT: As for existing characters being women? Are you talking like if Nathan Drake underwent a six change, or a pre-existing female character/new female character took the helm and became the protagonist of a new line of Uncharted games? Or if a new Zelda title featured a female Link? Not all protagonists are alike.

Hah, i'd like Zelda game where you play as Zelda, or a Mario where the Princess saves Mario

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Princess_Peach

Huh, that's new to me

I don't know how it works in game development but in film and tv a writer is more often than not required to constantly revise story and script from before filming starts right through to post production, if screen testings go badly then the studio may order entirely new endings shot. Before and during production massive changes in story may have to be made to fit the budget the makers have been given - example Ghostbusters: Dan Akroyd's original script was nicknamed 'The Phone Book' as it was a huge futuristic epic involving multiple teams of ghostbusters that would have cost hundreds of millions to produce. So that's one factor. On the film set actors will often prompt changes in script and ad lib as they get a better feel for their characters. Directors will ask for changes to the script for reasons of pacing as well as loads of other stuff that occurs to them as they go along. A director may change a characters race and gender from the original story, for example Red in the Shawshank Redemption was a red haired Irish guy in King's original novella. Casting Morgan Freeman in the role was an inspired decision, though you have to wonder why he seemed to be the only black prisoner there.

As long as it's done in a context sensitive way there really isn't a problem with changing elements in a story to get a higher representation of women and black people in media. Writers are used to having to make massive compromises to their original vision in order to see it onscreen. Those who can't deal with it would be best sticking to writing novels, self publishing and refusing to sell the film rights.

In the 1980's comedy group The Comic Strip Presents brilliantly and hilariously portrayed the travails of an idealistic but hopelessly naive writer in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP3o0Bf3Zt0

Well worth watching.

Surprisingly a rather solid game. As for the game where you play as Zelda, would like it, but what we got was a CDi game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlqPXtBESFc She is pretty awesome.

Dual crossbows? Show off