nor those who buy games in many cases…
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[quote=“fewsursam, post:80, topic:23151”]I could imagine I’d be pretty disappointed if there was an option to play as a white and/or male character in Portal 2 just for the sake of pacifying everyone.
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I’m going to imagine that straight white guys don’t mind playing female characters once in a while because the vast majority of the time they don’t have to.
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How would having character customization in Portal 2 distracted from that game at all?
Has anyone here ever worked on any kind of project? I mean seriously.
If you do A you don’t do B. What do you cut to add character customization to Portal 2? It’s a large feature.
Actually it’s a bit funny how these comments are full of classic “clueless suit” demands with no awareness of how things actually get built or fit into schedules.
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Yes…and as long as the industry chooses to cater to that segment, they’re going to get called on it.
This is an industry where Ken Levine felt comfortable saying he was fine with Bioshock Infinite’s crappy cover art because “frat guys” would never buy a game with a cover of robot and a little girl (which explains, presumably, why the other Bioshock games were such sales failures).
Yes…if you market your game at the lowest common denominator of people who do not want to see women or POC on the cover of games (much less as playable characters), then you’re highly limited in the kind of games you can make or how you can market them.
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ME ME ME ME! I HAVE! I’m in my second year of studying a software development degree 
No, she equated men-who-bleat-about-misandry to worms. Non-bleaters need not apply.
You misread like that and now you expect to be taken seriously? At all?
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But if women or POC(?) don’t buy games or show any interest in games, why waste money trying to sell to them.
Chicken/Egg surely?
I didn’t say Portal/Portal 2 should have had character customization…in that game, I don’t think it matters much since that game is so much about the first person puzzle mechanic.
However, I don’t remember any point in playing Portal/Portal 2 where allowing character customization would have made any difference to the story itself. I’m not sure why Daneel would be disappointed if Valve had added character customization in either game.
(Frankly, I don’t think I even realized the main character was female until after I’d finished those games.)
The Rookie was a drama though. You’ll get the (still very) occasional male rape in drama.
“The Shield” had a male rape victim story line:
The day I make a videogame, I’ll let it customize the characters to allow them to cross dress, scratch that, let’s raise the bar, and instead of specifying a gender, I’ll just let you add boobs and penises to your heart content.
And even then I’m sure it will still be deemed offensive by a lot of people.
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Did I say that? I was just suggesting that there are reasons why straight white guys don’t complain about the odd exception to the rule.
Although, maybe forcing everyone to play female, POC or LGBTQ characters once in a while wouldn’t be a bad thing.
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We know thanks to data from industry groups that women and POC do play and buy video games. The issues is the publishers and developers, not the audience.
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OK, yea. The character is largely irrelevant so the feature would just be superfluous, and the choice slightly distracting. For me when I see things like that in games I like I don’t care much, but it is a little sad that instead of say another level or more unique art through the game I have this useless feature. Instead there is another bullet point on the back of the box. Doesn’t really raise itself to the point of disappointment for me. I’m more apt to laugh at the developers or managers who thought THIS game needed THAT feature and feel a bit sad for the poor saps who had to implement it. Realistically rump features like that are often the result of cuts back from some more grandiose scheme and nobody managing to decide to just cut the entire thing.
Then, by that same logic, any women who happens to be born infertile is a lesser being. Any woman who has a hysterectomy becomes a lesser being, right?
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Try to imagine, for example, that most books had few or no female characters, even though women bought and read many of those books. Many women also tried to write and publish books that included but did not exclusively focus on women. Every time that women brought this up, authors, publishers and printers would bring up elaborate excuses about why having female characters somehow cost them more money or lost them revenue - without ever having tried, except in the most trivial or dismissive ways.
Books, film, music, design and video games are the product of someone’s IMAGINATION. One person may do the bulk of the imagining - while a league of workers work to create the thing - in this case a video game. A bunch of statements here have suggested that having female characters would mean that characters would have to play the game differently, need special costumes, or face different threats (rape ? seriously ?) and that this would somehow be expensive or impossible to do.
This argument is as stupid as making a non-gendered toy like Lego gendered.
What is wrong with the companies who employ the people who are supposed to have imagination to write/script these games ? It is impossible for them to imagine female characters wearing the same armour as male characters, facing the same challenges ? It’s as bad/stupid as 50’s Hollywood that kept Tonto being a lesser-than sidekick wearing fewer clothes to the wise fully dressed white dude. Use your imagination. THERE ARE OTHER POSSIBILITIES.
Seriously - what do the female astronauts wear on the space station ? How are their jobs different from the male astronauts ?
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Make sure you have the option of more than the conventional number of boobs and penises !
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Hi! I’m female. Judging by your posts on this thread, it’s very likely that I’ve been playing video games longer than you’ve been alive. I buy a ton of games. Some are for me, some are for my SO, others are for my son and I to play together. One of the main reasons I’m not a fan of FPS is lack of playable female characters (well, and I get bored with “grind” play). I purchased most recent edition of Fallout New Vegas for my SO (such a romantic Valentines Day gift, eh?), and there’s a playable female character from the downloadable content. I now want to play this game, before I did not. See how that works?
Your arguments are worn out. The market is there, it’s simply being ignored. So much for maximizing shareholder value. Think about this a little deeper as you seek your degree. We’re out here, we buy more video games than men (because moms, duh,) and we’re more than a little tired of being told that video games are the last bastion of white male privilege and we should just shut up.
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Yeah… dismiss me because you think I’m young. I remember playing video games where the character was nothing more than a square, so don’t assume to talk down to me like you’re some sort of authority on not being represented in gaming.
