Does it matter? Does it destract on the character " you " play? If Bethesda wants to have a male then fine, if they want to use a female then fine, heck if they want to use a lizard then fine. What I'm trying to say is what is used in the promotional material dosen't matter, it doesn't dictate on what character " you " play. When they advertised Morrowind it was a Dark Elf, when it was Oblivion it was a Imperial, when it was Skyrim it was a Nord, discounting that their male, it didn't force players to play the advertised character. Me personally sometimes I play a female character and sometimes I play a male character depending on what story / on my mood on who to play.

To be fair, I was personally offended when there was no Dunmer trailer for Skyrim. Dunmer master race.

Doesn't the Atombomb Baby video have a short scene of a female winning some sort of pit fight and cheering?

Edit: at 1:20.

So question: if it doesn't matter at all why do so many trailers default to men? Even with games where you can choose your protag? If it doesn't matter but the group who isn't being represented says that they like to be wouldn't it just be a generally nice thing to include them? Why do so few people do that?

I mean there's Lester from GTA but he was a hacking "god" and they portrayed him as some kind of crippled pervert.

XD, was more of a crime that they didn't have their old morrowind ashened voice

As explained elsewhere, because it sells better. Companies prefer "safe" marketing to pushing any boundaries.

Right! But! If they'd help push boundaries, which is happening anyway, they'd suffer an initial drop of sales maybe but only to be compensated by a bigger share of a new(ish) market. And the initial drop of would stop dropping off once they got over with the hissy fit. The world's not static and games don't exist in their own separate, untouchable sphere. They're influenced by social dynamics like everything else. So why not try to tap into that and manipulate to their gain instead of focusing myopically on immediate sales?

If the developers want to put a particular race or gender in " their " game to show off " their " game then let them. It doesn't detract on who / how " you " play, especially a game with thousands of varaitions to play it. Making a big deal out of something that doesn't detract to the overall game itself.

Prisoner's dilemma. It'd work out best for everyone if they all did it, but if one publisher does it and the others don't that publisher suffers a loss.

Businesses don't like taking risks and gambling their money like that.

You didn't answer the question tho.

As a slight aside what's with the rule about thread's getting locked when they near 200 posts?

EDIT:

Businesses are doodie-heads.

Women outnumber men. Women control more wealth than men. Women keep men in a perpetual state of confusion and lead men around by their noses. You even have us wearing dresses in game trailers, now. I beg of you, can't we just keep this one small vestige of our former greatness.

I did... I was stating that it's the developers decision whether to do it or not, I didn't say that they shouldn't. It doesn't matter to me either way if they do or don't, I'm not going lose my mind if they decide to potray it one way or another.

Also the mod has to lock a thread once it reaches the 200 thread count mark.

No one does. Bethesda, Bioware, any game with gender selection in character creation never markets a female protagonist. I think Skyrim launch trailer show a nord woman controlled by the player for like 4 seconds.

I think this is crazy. They could easily show the wife in a gameplay trailer or in the Xbox Conference.

My question was more along the lines of WHY devs so often choose to make males their default but I've already gone that rabbithole in my other post so nevermind.

And why do mods have to lock the thread when it reaches 200 replies?

It reaches the thread count max, so that the thread doesn't bloat up the servers from what I think I remebered from years back.

I think it just comes down to which population is more likely to play Fallout. There are female gamers, but they tend to stick more to mobile games. If there came a day when 51% of Bethesda's gaming community were women, we'd see more female representation.

Wouldn't a repeat thread do the same if the topic isn't talked out yet though? Honestly I thought it was a way to diffuse contentious issues. Like 'let the kids rant until 8 but then they have to go to bed.' It doesn't always work obviously but I could see how it often would. Snekky.

But what if part of the reason why Bethesda doesn't have a larger female base is cuz the representation is absent?

The idea is that these large threads tend to keep picking up steam. Forcing somebody to start a new thread kind of breaks that up unless the topic itself is really hot.

Anyway, I'm sure what you said there is part of it. There might be slightly more female gamers if they had more representation, but making another trailer might not justify the expense it would take to make it. Men and women, for whatever reason, tend to have different tastes and preferences when they're in societies with greater free choice.

Don't care whos in the trailer.

I'll be playing my own character, not the guy from the trailer, and if thats not an option I won't buy the game.

You know, if I were in charge of making the promo material for this game and had been working on the game since it's inception, I would want to use whatever character I had been building during the whole process. If that were a male or female would never cross my mind. It would just be the one I had made.

I think we overthink stuff alike this all the time.

They wouldn't have to make another trailer (and they don't like at all) if they just included it in this one. Or the next one.

Anyway you're on point about the sixes/genders having different priorities and interests, seemingly inherently. But IS it inherent? In a way, yes. There are the obvious brain differences between men and women and these have an influence on us from a very young age like there was this one study which showed that boys and girls have a natural inclination towards certain toys shortly after birth. But are these alone to explain the pretty huge differences between men and women and their respective interests? Not... really [especially because of something I'll get to a bit later]?

There's another pretty famous study about societal influence or maybe peer pressure or something. Point is they had people pick which stick or ruler or whatever was longer BUT! the caveat was they had a couple of people say the short stick was longer and the person they tested was always the last to answer and you can guess what happened right? People, vastly, VASTLY, complied with popular opinion. Despite the truth staring them in the face. And the groups saying the short stick was longer didn't even have to be particularly big. Now this is all culture is, a bunch of people saying the short stick is longer. Not to imply that there's a correct answer when it comes to gaming but you get my point yeah? A bunch of people with a slight preference for something precede a general opinion. It snowballs. 'I don't like games' said Susan to Beth, Beth high-fives her and says 'Damn skippy betch neither do I!' they stare expectantly at Ann, Ann actually likes games but now it seems like she shouldn't so 'Yeah home slices games svck.' And so it goes until it becomes a cultural monolith.

Now both of those things (inherent genetic preference + culture) tie into the massive plasticity of our brains. And our brains never stop being malleable, changeable. There's drop off the older you get (I'm not sure how severe) but it never stops. So a common subjective truth gets iterated and iterated and iterated and it becomes a Truth. It gets entrenched in our culture regardless of how broadly true it is or how (like intensity) true it is. And from there it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy yeah? Because of the malleability of our brains. If it's a cultural more that girls aren't really supposed to play games less of them do, if they don't their brains start trimming those neurons to use their capacity for other, culturally kosher things. When the girl then tries to play games she's 'bad' at them or finds that she's genuinely not interested. Even though she might once have been. We literally fulfill our own expectations. It's a feedback loop and we're holding the ends together.

SO! My point is that if trailers showed female protags more often that would help shift cultural expectations as to what's acceptable (cuz representation. There's reason so many people automatically think 'man' when someone says 'surgeon' but you'd be less inclined to make that automatic connection if you watched a lot Grey's Anatomy), if it shifts cultural expectations it'd allow more girls to play games sans societal judgement which would allow them to form the neural connections guys seemingly have by design (which they do, to an extent [also varying depending on the kind of game] but it's also culturally amplified waaaay beyond what's natural) and thus women who play games would be more common which would mean a larger fanbase for Bethesda and other game devs to make use of. It's kinda a farsighted goal but that doesn't make unrealizable.

Does it really matter? Seriously... It's a trailer nothing more.

Stop the need to feel legitimized just because the trailer wasn't a sammich maker 馃槀

If I was doing concept art/testing the game, I think I would have had several versions of 111 to use. If only to add some variety in my concept art and showcase the fact that... you know... I can draw more than white dudes.

I'd like to see it, yes. It's not a big deal but would be nice.