Sweetheart? Lol. Nice leveling of casual sixism at me. I am actually male. I just think equality makes the world nicer. But your use of words does actually reinforce my point about how women gamers are treated.... there really is no equivilent patronising word that gets thrown at men. It isn't a matter of it being "traumatizing" for women to play male characters. Clearly women play male characters all the time. If they didn't it would be near impossible for them to be gamers due to the clearly skewed stats on games that have male vs. those that have female characters.

In fact women have been FAR better at handling male characters then the reverse being true. Just look at all the comments on this thread that argue that you need a male hero promoted because you need to market games towards men! The point is that games should be marketed towards all demographics and part of that is VARYING what player character gets shown!

Sure you will never please everyone, but isn't the best way to please most people to actually provide variety??? Where as you set yourself up for complaint if it is the same demographic represented over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again! People may have criticisms but at least they can appreciate effort, where as showing the same demographic again and again is lazy sixism.

What don't you believe, that there are 2 games being made with blind protagonists? Just type either name into google and you'll get the full story.

The mascot of the Fallout series is Vault Boy. Maybe they are playing on the theme.

So this one time there was this one feminist critic who made a game that even I don't know anything about and some people complained about it... so there for this is proof that we can never do anything.

You lost me after dragon age 2, I've played all three games and i was always a female from the start?, i even had my hawk/champion made into DA:I. Unless they added an update 24hours after that game was released to make female characters cause i didn't get the game till two days after it came out

Even though I don't play as a female. It'd be nice to showcase the female protagonist for those that do.

You missed, old, little person, southpaw. (among other things).

This is why I suggest not putting the protagonist in trailers at all. It isn't like someone is going to get confused as to what game is being revealed.

Dog, check

super mutant, check

ghoul, check

power armor, check

no vault suit, check

Sweet, I finally get to play Halo on a PC.

hey, now you mention it - i want vault girl collectibles

Bioware was on point with ME3 marketing by showing both M/F Shepherd's in trailers. Hopefully Bethesda's marketing team will follow suit in future titles, if not FO4.

Exactly. Just show male and female Vault 111 PC of all the races possible and they should be fine.

Actually, that line was conciously included for two purposes: to possibly coax you into admitting to being a male, and to show off how one simple word can send you into a tirade about how that word means that women are oppressed and I'm deeply sixist and blah blah blah. Three reasons actually: it's just fun to press your buttons when you're that easy to upset. Anyone with some knowledge of my post history and speech patterns on this forum could probably tell you it's not normally something I'd do.

And lo and behold, predictably you're yet another male trying super super hard to be offended on behalf of a group of people you do not even belong to. Do you not realize how ridiculous that makes you look and sound? Meanwhile, you have not one but two disabled people in this thread who regularly have to play characters that are nothing like us, and we're both telling you it's no big deal, it means nothing and there's no reason to be upset.

Quite frankly? I've come to believe that people like to believe they're doing something good. They like to validate themselves as good people and feel important. And I think that's exactly what you're doing. You go out and go on a crusade against sixism and look for sixism everywhere, even insisting on it's existence in places where it isn't even there. I say all this partially because you yourself are not a part of the female population, yet you attempt to speak on their behalf and be offended on their behalf. When I was in high school, some group picked me out and wanted to sponsor me and help me get scholarships and such. Why? Because I had good grades.....and probably because I was disabled. Looking back on it, I was nothing but a feel-good tool for these people. I say this because they became frustrated when I didn't need much of the help they wanted to offer and because omg my politics weren't perfectly aligned with theirs. They disappeared on me, actually causing more damage than any help they provided. I've learned that....while of course this doesn't always apply, one should be very wary when you encounter someone who has no practical motivation to try and help a group you belong to. Practical motivations are greedy, but rational and make sense. When there's a lack thereof, then the person's motivation is probably to use you and the group you belong to achieve a feel-good high, the problem being that they'll skip out the moment that stops happening (usually inconveniencing those they promised to help) and it can often make them the most overzealous of the bunch, AKA while I can look at my disability and say "I just want better healthcare and then I'm happy," someone who wants to help the disabled but doesn't live as a disabled person themselves might go screaming at people for not holding doors open for me or something; I wear a fake leg dude, my arms didn't fall off. True story: once knew a person who would get outraged because not everyone on the street would move out of my way even though I had a limp/was on crutches. Ultimately it just annoyed me because this person was creating unneccesary drama and attention for me, and by NO MEANS were any of the people that got chewed out getting in my way or posing problems for me. It was a city ffs, EVERYONE bumps into each other and EVERYONE has to move over and get out of the way of someone else here and there; I'm not special and I don't get a "I never have to move ever and I demand a portion of the sidewalk for me" card.

Finally, you should re-read what people have said. People are saying they're marketing towards men because most consumers are male. They're not saying men are underrepresented, they're saying it's a marketing decision because marketing towards the largest demographic makes the most money. They're saying you've got a fat chance of convincing a business to make less money by purposefully partaking in counter-intuitive marketing.

Furthermore, no where did I say diversity was bad. Infact, I said I for one would support a female protagonist for the very same reason. A lot of people echo my same concern, you just seem too busy trying to find a reason to go on a holy crusade against sixism to realize that. No, the issue isn't that men are crying if the protagonist is a male, the issue is that the company has every logical reason to make a male and that's that. You yourself claim to be a male; do you cry and get upset when the protagonist isn't a male? No? Then why the hell are you assuming other men do? Chances are most people think like you...

Yeah, how dare people care about anyone but themselves!

Seriously, you live on a planet with other people with different opinions, deal with it.

And the same could be said to you.

I agree with what Longknife wrote, and I actually read each line and didn't skim over it so I got the point he was trying to make in using the term "sweetheart" . Lots of people read, very few comprehend.

At what point did I ever imply or say people are not allowed to have another opinion?

Caring about others is welcome, but understanding why someone cares about someone else is important. Unfortunately, I must say that I've encountered quite a few people who are only involved in such caring efforts for the praise and to feel special, and the moment that's gone, so are they. It feels so insincere to me; when I help people, I do so because I truly want to, not for praise or to reassure myself I'm a good person. I realize it's a bit controversial to dare criticize those who want to help a group they don't belong to, but I'd also say there's no purpose in just reacting with "How DARE you even consider doing that" instead of, yknow, hearing me out and judging me based on what I say on the matter?

Yeah let's bring it even further, lets have a separate trailer for every gender/race combination

I highly suspect at this point that when they make these trailers with what everyone calls a "generic white guy", they do it with the full intention of causing people to get upset and rant about whatever -ism they can get their hands on.

Why? Because it makes them giggle.

And let me just say that of course there will be female playable characters. Otherwise that's about 70% of the modding community gone right there.

Your whole comment came of as someone who get offended when someone else say they care about equality, are progressive, feminist, etc. Like when a person get called "PC" when they have a opinion about society a bunch of other people does not have.

Also we care about a lot of things we're not. I care about helping stray cats, I'm not a cat. Ridiculous example? The point is to show if everyone jut cared about themselves and/or the group they belong to than nothing changes for the better.

Or perhaps I'm not so fond of those who are so quick to play the sixism card, or so quick to throw around dramatic accusational statements in general? The discussion could be someone accusing Bethesda fans of being heartless, selfish capitalists or something because they don't care about if the protagonist is a communist or not, and I'd be pointing out how ridiculous that accusation is all the same.

There's a big difference between "my mother got passed up for a promotion despite being more qualified than her male counterpart and her employer has a history with poor gender ratios in the workplace and some sixual harassment cases, I call sixism," and "someone on the internet said they don't care what gender the protagonist of this game is, I call sixism."

For your cat example, arguing a hyperbole has never been a productive way to continue a debate. How about you focus on the specific examples I named rather than naming really dramatic ones that do little to contribute to the discussion? You're only taking us to the extreme ends of things ("no one can care about anything that isn't them EVER" vs. "we should ALWAYS care about other groups as much as possible") instead of focusing on where the discussion actually is.

The problem I have with this line of reasoning is, you can easily market your product towards male customers while also representing/marketing towards groups who don't fit the caucasian male demographic. Hell, most marketing panels would probably look at me and assume that I want to see caucasian, brunette, male protagonists because that's what I look like. But historically, these ads have been a turn off for me. Not because I'm some PC obsessed lunatic, but because I thought that they were showing me the character I was locked into playing as because, surely if you were able to customize and create your own character, they would show that in a trailer. I didn't want to be the Dovahkiin they were showcasing in Skyrim's trailers, and so it gave me pause regarding buying the game.

It wasn't until a while after seeing Skyrim's trailers and promotional artwork that I learned you could play as women, mer, and beast folk. Hell, I was originally unaware that changing your armor was going to be allowed to be a thing until I heard Todd Howard talking about it. He was talking about character customization like it was something they were really proud of at their studio, their whole idea of "Be whoever you want, do whatever you want" that he felt was a huge part of what defined a Bethesda game, yet wasn't represented at all in the trailers, advertisemants, and gameplay footage I had seen. I had to go out of my way to find out about a key feature that helped seal the deal regarding me buying the game that was also, apparently, a key feature in the minds of the game designers.

From a marketing perspective, that's insane.

And keep in mind that I am almost squarely in the game's target audience, with the biggest line of separation being I'm a light skinned hispanic rather than just "white."

And really, how much time would it take? A few minutes in the character creation menu if they're using in game footage and suddenly you have a new protagonist to showcase. Posters and artwork would take longer, but probably not so long that it wouldn't be worth their while.

Similarly, the reveal of Mr. 111 in the trailer svcks a lot of enthusiasm out of me, particularly because I feel, regardless of whether or not we get to play as other races and genders, if a canonical voice is riveted to the character this time around, character customization has been dealt a critical blow. I'm less excited for Bethesda's E3 stuff, and more anxious, because I'm worried that they're... whatever you want to call it enough to smother the stuff I liked about their games. Hopefully, they haven't, but if they haven't, it's still indicative of a major problem: Their trailer was likely made with the idea of reaching a large demographic that includes me, with the desire of getting me hyped and pumped up, and it's mostly had the opposite effect.

As a lefty, I'm offended at how often games force me to hold my weapon in my right hand! Finally in Skyrim I was allowed to swing my sword from the left! JUSTICE!!!

Kidding of course, but if FO4 doesn't let me rebind every key for a southpaw set-up, THEN I'll be on a crusade about poor accommodation of my marginalized group in games!

Yeah, but I will bet dollars to donuts you still can't get a decent set of scissors in Skyrim.

I'd be okay if they just released a trailer that showed off the depth of the character creator. I mean, I don't want it to focus on that specifically but it should show how aesthetically pleasing (or displeasing) you can make your characters while they traverse the wasteland leaving behind a path of destruction. I think they should do something like that for most games where you have the option to create your own character. Just show off the diverse characters killing things, talking about the story, etc. and hopefully everyone would shut up. As for disabilities being portrayed in a game, there was a game showcased at E3 where you play as a young girl who's blind. But I have to agree and say that disabilities are very poorly represented in a game. One game featuring a disability < nearly every other game featuring an able bodied character.

Despite what you might think, being different usually turns more people away than it attracts. There's an entire industry devoted to researching this stuff, and they've consistently found that advertising with a male protagonist leads to better sales.

Word to your mother. That or they're present but somehow they're compensated. Like the blind person who can see with magic. Or the guy in the wheelchair who can move things with his miiiiiiiiiind. Like tell me about your struggle bro. The only disabled person I can recall off the top of my head (in a game) is Joker from ME and even he got somewhat 'better' over time.

On topic: I wouldn't have mind seeing some more of the character creator in general but especially of the female. Instead of just inflating her lip. And I mean would it really have been so hard to do some of the kill scenes with a female character? Like would that have done someone bodily harm? Or even the intro? But that suggestion might be too radical. Don't wanna scare away the boys now.

Mostly by 6%

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