Hey, they’re working on more realistic female characters…
Wow - you have never read a book written by a man, that has a female narrator ? Or vice versa ?
What story could not be told from a male/female/genderqueer/intersexual/transexual/ and/or asexual perspective ? Or from the perspective of a thing that does not have a gender like a gun or a house or a virus ? A man writing as a woman may have some flawed assumptions - and the thing about writing that is not journalism or a scientific report is that it is FICTION. Not everything in writing is perfectly true, or correct, and characters are often written with deep flaws that make them compelling.
Yes, there are many valid concerns with regards to appropriation in writing from the perspective as a character that is not you, or from your culture, especially when there is some cherry picking and stereotyping going on. BUT - if no one can tell any story except their categorically approved one then that’s how writing, gaming, movies, etc. get real boring, real fast (see: Hollywood since the mid 70’s).
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Yes, after a virus has swept the planet that killed off all the non-male doctors, scientists, shopkeepers, sewers of underpants for testicular cancer survivors, etc.
Is this game a super sexy male supremicist sexathon ? Is that why no girls or women exist ?
Of course there exist stories where the gender of the protagonist is a factor. But does that somehow magically make it not problematic that the VAST MAJORITY of stories people elect to tell with the medium are stories where the character is male? You do realize that people decide what stories they’re telling, right? Asserting that some stories require a protagonist of a specific gender doesn’t get the creators of those stories off of the hook for telling almost exclusively stories that “require” a male protagonist, or which don’t, but still have a male protagonist anyway.
For example, of course in film or literature, the audience doesn’t expect to choose the gender of the protagonist. That doesn’t mean that it’s magically not an issue that protagonists in film and literature are still mostly men.
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Sigh. As much as I would like to blame sleep disruption, children and un-caffeinated state, I only have myself and haste to blame. Damn you pride.
Still, I am not a freaking girl nor am I a lady, I am woman and implore folks to be careful to not infantilize adults.
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Saying that things “suddenly get out of control” is very problematic, and reflects a fundamental lack of knowledge of the industry. It’s probably a slip-up, a phrase hastily chosen with implications you didn’t intend, but it made me facepalm a bit.
Does having male and female skeletons cost money? Yep. Does it cost more depending on how different you want to make the animations, how you do your armor rigging, whether you do voice acting, etc? Also yep. But saying things get “out of control” is complete nonsense. These costs are very well known, and very much under control. At this point, you have to make a conscious decision whether the known, under control costs of having a female playable character are worth the known cost of having something else: ten more armor sets, three more creature types, whatever.
If Capcom came out and said that: “We figured out that having a female character would mean that we could have 3 fewer creature models, 10 fewer male armor sets, and 4 fewer voiced NPCs, and that cutting these things from our game was not worth it.” then that’d be one thing. People could still argue, but they’d be arguing based on reality. Or if they used the more common and less specific “budget limitations,” that’d be different as well, but that’s not what they said.
Basically, you’re making up an inaccurately phrased excuse that has no relation to the excuse the company gave, and are using that as the basis for arguments that vaguely resemble - but do not precisely reflect - a potential reality.
I’ve been in the game industry for about eight years. Any company working with any engine knows precisely how much it would cost to add another gender PC. This is not about worries that costs would get out of control, and the developer has said nothing whatsoever about cost. Stop making up a version of reality and acting like it represents the truth.
Journalists question their “story” excuse because none of the press about this game has implied that story is a huge part of the experience, so saying you chose not to include a major feature because of “story” rings false.
If they cited cost, as many studios do, then it would be a different discussion, and the questions might be “what would you have had to cut to get a female character?” That’s kind of the question female gamers want answers to these days: what are we less important than, in your eyes?
In most of those situations, it turns out the answer is “we didn’t think you were important enough to even think about, until it was too late to implement something in a cost-effective manner.”
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Dishonored only has one character you can play, and he’s a specific individual with a backstory, at least one key reason to be male, in an incredibly detailed universe with related information built into almost every moment of the game.
Deep Down has randomly generated levels containing random layout and random enemies, in the service of a story that is, I rather strongly suspect, really not going to be the game’s major selling point. And you can make an arbitrary male character.
I’ll put my money on the table now: if there’s any way in which the plot “requires” the protagonist be male, it’ll be a lazy plotline about rescuing a girlfriend, or similar. Something that could easily have been written to include female characters, if the writer had actually bothered to care. (Let’s make a specific prediction, if you like: it will take me not more than 5 minutes, from the moment I first read the plot, to point out easy ways to adapt it for a female protagonist. Without concentrating too hard.)
Care to take that bet?
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What would happen if there was a female protagonist added, but she had realistic physical stats? Shorter, smaller reach, lower strength, etc. Would the complaints stop?
Make her the equivalent in the magic department, but what would happen to a woman (one who was trained in combat) in that situation?
Your coy attempts to feign ignorance are themselves hardcore evidence of misandry.
hence, this
You could hope for better, but I would not expect it. I would not be surprised if it’s a lousy place for women to work, given the seemingly ingrained sexism apparent in their games. It would take a pretty major change to shakeup their corporate culture at this point.
Say hello to my lil friend, the one that makes a laughingstock of “plausibility arguments”.
Wherever a kid with pipecleaner arms can whip around a 500lb sword, I think the female equivalent will be okay if all else is equal.
But hey, let’s keep video games plausible, where it’s convenient, right? Realistic even. NO WAY A GIRL COULD DO WHAT HE-MAN DOES. Right?
LoL
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I’ve shipped multiple games.
Yes, adding features costs money. Yes, often gamers wonder why features that would be prohibitively expensive aren’t added.
But this particular feature may be on its way to becoming an industry standard. In any game where story doesn’t dictate a single protagonist, people are starting to ask why only a single gender is available. MMOs and customization-based CRPGs have had this as a standard feature for decades - why isn’t it cost-prohibitive for them?
Deep Down is an RPG where players create custom characters. I can’t think of many other RPGs with this kind of character creation that didn’t allow both genders, at least not in the last ten years. If they’re going to neglect a feature that has become the industry standard for a game of their type, they pretty much have to justify why.
The games this most superficially resembles based on the trailers are Dark Souls and Monster Hunter. Both include both genders as playable options. When you’re bucking an industry standard by going LESS inclusive, you’re going to have to give a pretty good explanation as to why. This isn’t a scenario where suits are asking you to include a pricey feature that nobody else has, this is fans asking why you aren’t offering a basic feature that almost every game you’re competing with has been offering for years.
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Oh, I would never take a bet that a game would have a decent story, whatever the criteria for decent was. I just said I couldn’t condemn them yet and presented Dishonored as an example of a game that seemed to have no good reason for sexing the main character until you had finished playing the game. Since nothing has been released about Deep Down story it’s possible I will be surprised there too. Using randomization in the presentation has nothing to do with the story or it’s merits. The narrative arc could still end up requiring a male protagonist. If it looks like a fun game closer to release (right now it really doesn’t) I I might play it and get back to you about whether they had a good reason. My guess is they don’t, but today I just don’t know that. What I do know is that games overall need more better non-dude characters. I can say that without bringing any specific game into it.
may I quote your link?
thanks
Jeanne’s suit of armour remains is unknown, and we may never know exactly what happened to the armor. Her armour may have looked like the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman’s armour worn in the Victor Fleming’s 1948 film Joan of Arc sold at auction june 2011 for $50,000
I have friends that work at a gaming company and are female. They are doing very well and seem to be strongly supported by their peers. Change has to start somewhere, no? Capcom though… who knows.
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It’s a big game company. It would be surprising if the working conditions were good for anyone. They probably have routine 100-hour “crunch time” weeks on salary after which half the team is laid off.
I don’t see how this is sexist. At least they won’t be able to objectify any female character on this, which is a much worse problem than having no females. And hey, a game without a tacky romance subplot can be refreshing once in a while.
I wasn’t aware that Capcom owed Brenna Hitler anything.
It’s become a tricky minefield. Thanks in part to “critiques” of women in games such as the Tropes vs Women video series, it seems that it would be next to impossible to write a female character into a game that would not immediately fall fowl of dismissive criticism over some arbitrary aspect or another, so I wouldn’t blame them for wanting to avoid all that…
