Here, think of it this way to understand the complaint of those who don’t like this development.
Capcom is an artist working in clay, but here they stand before you, demanding you examine this latest piece, of clay, all the while demanding it is made of crystal.
& some people think it must be crystal, because they are told it is crystal.
Everyone else can see.
seemingly, not in this threadlol. it's like the misogyny gif all over again. I have found the one thread on the whole internets where my point of view represents less than 50% of the total! Must rectify!
Anyway, there are some plot hooks that work better for males - the most obvious one I can think of being that the character has a kid he doesn’t know about, but when your premise starts from time travel, I’m sure you could work something out.
And yes, having two genders of main character can cost more, especially if you don’t want to half-ass it, although sharing animations is not as horrible as it sounds.
But I think the most important thing here is context. This is a discussion that we (game players, makers, critics) have been having for quite a while now. If capcom got to the end of development and suddenly realised that they didn’t build support for anything but male protagonists, that is their fault. This is not a new issue in the world of video games. I just can’t believe that any developer is so tuned out from the world that they did not see this coming.
I’ll believe the decision was made without deliberate malice, but you can’t say it wasn’t a decision that they made. If they wanted to tell a story without having to support two protagonist sexes, why not go with the path less traveled?
If you want to claim that all statements about pairs of groups apply equally aptly to all individuals within all groups, you need to go argue with Aristotle and Cantor, not with me. 
I see you’re wielding Trollsbane.
I think you need to see some movies and read some books written from a woman’s perspective. If they are boring or unengaging - that is the fault of the writer !
Female perspective is not somehow automatically boring, unchallenging, safe, or concerned with long solliloquys about purses, footwear, breastfeeding, tampons or romance.
I was wondering if there was in Prison Architect but it seems not.
… Are you replying to the correct post here? I said nothing about anything being boring or un-engaging. I was trying to make the point that there are some stories that can’t be told from a female perspective, just as there are some that can’t be told from a male’s perspective. Or even that they can’t be told in the same way.
Borderlands comes with a big helping of “lame joke”, for better or worse. The Gunzerker in B2 has skills “Money Shot” and “Sexual Tyrannosaurus”, f’rex. To me, the key point is that Borderlands shows what’s possible. They’ve had great success with a lot more diverse characters than you see in other major-label games. They aren’t all the way there, but what they’ve done undermines almost every excuse I’ve ever seen for not including interesting female characters in games.
“Find[ing] it hard to worry about stuff like this” is almost the definition of privilege. “I find it hard to worry about all those black people in prison - I don’t have any trouble not getting arrested, so why do they?”
Like you seem to, I enjoy playing games that afford me the perspective of people and other entities different than myself. It stretches both the imagination and empathy. However, being a white cis-gendered straight male, I find that overwhelmingly games afford me perspectives that are either similar to my own, or are hackneyed to the point that even if they are different than my own, they are boring as shit at this point (I’m not a very militaristic person, and playing Spec Ops: The Line was an interesting step in someone else’s combat boots, but I have no interest in playing the jillion other games where some muscley warrior guns down countless bad guys).
So even from a self-centered “Waaaah! I’m a man who wants more variety in my games” perspective, this is a problem. If I exert the mental and emotional energy to think about other people born into other circumstances - say, women - the problem becomes even more dire, as it extends beyond simply a reduced number of options for me, and instead becomes a symptom of a suffocating and overwhelming cultural ill which seems especially endemic in games.
MAYBE someday when half of all game developers, and half of all game characters, are women, your point will be valid. But right now - no. No, it isn’t.
Type any one of those names into google followed by the word ‘sexist’ and have fun reading what pops up!
More google time: type “sexist movies” or “sexist books” or “sexist tv” and see what you get.
There’s also a bunch that don’t. You might be seeing a pattern here: go to google and type “sexist indie games” and read the results.
In short, stop living in a box.
Uh, they’re not?
Why are video games the only thing than constantly elicit whiny, pained, cries of misandry from culturally ignorant fanboys?
[quote=“girard, post:152, topic:23151”]
Why are video games the only thing than constantly elicit whiny, pained, cries of misandry from culturally ignorant fanboys? [/quote]
Uh, they’re not? This is a common refrain across all forms of media and beyond when these issues arise.
If I’m playing a female character, but the story is identical, what’s the use of gender?
Um, because almost all humans have a gender, so a human character is likely going to have one? Or are you so beholden to the idea that “man” is the default mode of humanity, that a character only reads as having a “gender” if the developers decide to make it female? Because that’s pretty fucked up.
If gender has no impact on the narrative THAT’S MORE OF AN ARGUMENT FOR LETTING THE CHARACTER BE EITHER, NOT LESS.
Your response conveniently ignores the glaring issue that in “becoming orders of magnitude more complex” there is ZERO reason why that complexity could not include more complex and varied representation of characters. You’re acting as if it’s totally self-evident and unproblematic that “simulation of viscera splatter” has had dollars and decades invested in its development while “including decent female characters” has fallen by the wayside.
Let’s give CAPCOM the benefit of the doubt when they say that the story demands that there be no women. Maybe the adventurers are searching for magical cures for their testicular cancer or something?
And you do realize your argument could just as well assert that making the cast all-female is the most economical option? Because you could share models and voice actors and so on? And yet that NEVER, EVER, EVER happens. Gee, I wonder why?
If the only thing keeping developers from including player characters of different sexes is cost, why do all the games that ‘cut costs’ with homogenous rosters all seem to be exclusively male?
Yeah, I believe it was said - already, you missed the point of that sentence. And to clarify, misandry is the hatred, dislike, contempt for or ingrained prejudice against men and/or boys. This was from the point of view of the game creators or people reading it who think women and gaming don’t mix. The full sentence, instead of selectively parsed: “If you feel that gaming is the one thing remaining to men and girls should stop spoiling it with political correctness, then please go boil your head because I see no point in debating with people incapable of basic logic and lacking humanity.”
We should still expect better.
Women are so much more vocal a minority than otherkin! It must be because they’re so whiny!
…or, maybe it’s because half of all people on the fucking planet are women, and they’re not a minority to be ‘catered to.’
While we of course need more and better representation of, say, LGBT folks both making games and in games, I don’t think it’s controversial to acknowledge that the number of games with a queer protagonist, or the number of queer characters in games, will always be in the minority. Queer folks are underrepresented, and poorly represented, in games, of course. But they are also a minority in the real world, and would probably have minority representation even in an understanding and inclusive media culture.
It’s ridiculous, however, for women to be so sidelined in media in general, and games especially. Women, who comprise not a minority, but HALF OF HUMANITY.
Have penis - will travel
