An Open Letter to the Gentleman Who Doesn’t Care About Women Gamers: The Argument By Finance

“Given that, don’t you find it weird that we have a storytelling medium that often ignores or misrepresents half of our entire species?”
Lol weird? As in… exactly the same as any other artistic medium for the past 2000 years?

Why not link to the comment? It’s not like you’re putting up the guy’s Facebook profile.

Yes, but MANY other mediums have been consciously attempting to remedy this. Even comics are doing a better job with female characters, especially with the rise of digital and small-time publishers. Yes, the big names still have an issue. And yes there still is an issue for female characters in all of publishing (including books, comics and games), but the video game industry AS A WHOLE still seems to have the greatest problem with it.

The page would probably be flooded with people giving him a hard time after reading this.

Becky, every essay you write is better than the one before, and the one before was extremely good.

Very good article there.
Anyway, I’m a man and I’m sick of all the male dominated games out there. The only games with women in them seem to be ones where the woman is a sidekick who wants to have sex with the protagonist. It sucks. Then there’s FPS which have men as the only playable characters.
I like a bit of variety in my gaming and I’d like to see more games with women as the lead characters, like maybe a GTA sequel with a woman as the lead. Why not? I’d buy it.

You could just as easily say the same thing about men. Despite popular belief, not all male gamers are red blooded, jacked up, chainsaw wielding deathbringers. To make a long argument short, the video game industry is a business, and their target audience is males between 18-35. I think reading into the ‘gender’ of video games is asking too much. A good game is good because of its parts (story, gameplay, innovation, etc). Take the original Metroid: one of the greatest games of all time, and until the very end you have no idea who/what the main character is.

In terms of video games being an “art form” sure, I would say they are just as much as films are. Look at the films out there right now and over the last few years, especially the ones raking in the dough. Now ask youself, is Transformers art? Most certainly not. Is Call of Duty art? No. They’re both explosion filled testosterone fueled wads of excitement. Now look at smaller, indy flicks. Oh hey, there’s the art. Now look at some of the ‘smaller’ games out there. Same deal.

I’m not sure who I necessarily agree with here. In the end, a game is fun because of its design. As an ‘art form’ it’s still very much in its infancy (although it’s maturing fast). Like all art, video games are echoing mankind’s most basic and well known stories (the hero fantasy, etc).

I guess what I’m saying is what you echo at the end of your article. Games right now are pretty dang sweet, but we’re on the cusp of the next age of gaming and from here who knows what’s next.

Yes, he is a Herbert. Herbert! Herbert! Herbert! Space Hippies rule – bad games drool!
If you want to know, ask a Vulcan.

I think the game industry is exactly like every other art form that has ever been created, the only difference is that it’s so much younger. Take film and photography for example – it was a very, very long time before anyone in the art world considered taking pictures to be an art. It was also a very, very long time before anyone considered that women could be into photography or cinematography as well as men.

Because the game industry is following the same patterns of illegitimacy and gender exclusivity as every art form that has come before it, I’d like to think it will eventually catch up – but when you consider that literature, film, photography, and the “high art” world have been around for decades/centuries and are still very exclusionary, I don’t have a lot of hope for the near future. Sure, the film industry produces films for women, but they’re all either patronizing romcoms or great movies that get swept under the rug. And sure, you have groups like the Guerrilla protesting the patriarchal*** reign over the modern art world, but how much change have they really made in the system?

We’re still (optimistically) decades off from having decent entertainment geared towards women in even the most mainstream and popular venues of entertainment like TV and movies. How much longer do you think it will take to include women in an artform that is still new, small, and considered completely male? The answer is a lot longer. Not saying it will never happen, and writing articles like the one above definitely makes a positive impact (as does more women getting into both the gaming hobby and the industry) – but don’t sit around waiting, you might go grey.
***I usually avoid the word “patriarchal” because it sounds silly, but if you take a look at the world of “high” art, there’s really just no other way to describe it.

“You could just as easily say the same thing about men.”

Completely true. Male characters are just as hyped up as the female characters in game. This article was focusing on how female characters are represented. I think what the author has to say is pretty fair. Thank you, Becky :)

On a note unrelated to my previous comment:

Now this is a genuine question, I’m not trying to troll in any way. What exactly would make a game more feminine or aimed at women?

I can only imagine what game designers think a “woman’s game” would be. Is it just more female leads? In which case, does that really make a difference? I point back to my previous example of Metroid. Did it matter who was under the armor? To me, the main character of a game is irrelevant to the adventure. I’ve always viewed myself as the main character, as gaming is the ultimate form of role play. Is it how female characters are viewed/treated? Because I feel, recently anyway, there have been a slew of strong female characters (both as leads and supports).

Part of the issue – an this is just one small thing – is the armor in fantasy games. Females wear almost nothing, and are rail-thin, tiny creatures that shouldn’t be able to lift a display sword, much less a real one. Add in that their tits are so big they[‘d be in the way, it’s insane. 

Men get full armor coverage, at least understandable muscles (Ok, the Conan look isn’t the strongest, but it conveys strength more than Twiggy does). Just make the women logical – Give me a choice on coverage – if I want to look like a hooker, or if I want to be a tin can, let me pick!

This is true. However, I think one of the issues we see in gaming is that while both male and female characters are often idealized, it is only the female characters who are constantly sexualized. This contributes to female characters as being perceived as simple objects rather than complex characters with emotions and motivations of their own, regardless of their bicep-flexing or chainsaw-carrying ways.

So, I’ve always hated FPS, which makes me a terrible person to give an opinion here. But I will, because I have a big mouth. 

It probably only doesn’t matter to you because the default gender in the world is male. So, unless a character is explicitly female, it is implicitly male. Even robots or animals are gendered, so it’s not as if you can get away from the default maleness or intentional femaleness. So a default male feels like a role you can play easily. Imagine for a second you aren’t a male. How do you think it might feel to not be allowed to play as a female? Maybe it feels like you don’t belong. Maybe it feels like this imaginary world you are trying to inhabit was not made for you and you should please leave, thank you. 

And yes, it is how women are viewed/treated. Mindless sex objects walking around as decoration, like blow-up dolls meet wallpaper. As a woman who has always been turned off from “hardcore gaming” by these things, I can tell you it seriously matters. I really liked the couple RPG’s I played that were mainly for kids, but I can’t take the adult versions, I just get terribly angry. 

And permit me to have even another opinion. “Strong female characters” does not mean what game designers think it means. An ass-kicking lady with huge guns and a string bikini isn’t a strong female character any more than the strippers in grand theft auto. She’s just a male character they slapped some boobs on and put in front of the camera to be ogled. So, it takes more than bad-assery and dominatrix sexuality to be a “strong female.” For a much better and funnier exploration of this, see here: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311

As for what might make a game more attractive to women, I guess I can only speak for myself. I would simply like to not be distracted and offended every 20 seconds by another hyper-sexualized, impossible, and sometimes infantilized female body. To be any more into gaming than I am, I would also need to hear and talk to a lot more women in the community, but like so many other places they seem to be constantly silenced.

My all time favourite games are Bioshock, Arkham Asylum and Super Mario 3, so I agree with you entirely. A good game is a good game is a good game, no matter who it’s targeted at. But for me having ALL of the female characters be dressed light slights with bouncy castle chests and little to no character development in relation to similarly positioned male characters in the same game does detract from the overall experience. And I actually find it hard to believe that none of you guys feel the same way. I don’t think that anyone is looking for games specifically targeted at
women, just something that doesn’t completely repulse us by portraying
us horribly and assuming that it’s okay because we don’t play games.

I really don’t think that the best approach overall would be to specifically gear media and art towards women. That just leads to almost the opposite, something that excludes the male audience. I just think that there should be less effort put into specifically trying to please what they assume to be an all male audience and put more effort into making good, well rounded stories and characters.

Exactly. I should have elaborated, but you explained it perfectly. 

It’s not about making a game for women, it’s about making a game that doesn’t actively offend us. That means humanizing the female characters, treating them like actual people and not sex objects. That could mean more realistic clothing and non-nympho personalities, about also just GOOD characters. Not perfectly awesome chars either; have female chars as flawed or as interesting as any other. And they’re NOT just there as the love interest. Token babe-ism is a major turn off.

On another note, as a developer, you also need to consider you female fanbase and not marginalize their concerns or potential. If you are making a equal gender considered game that involves romances, such as Bioware’s games, make the amount of content for each gender similar in number and quality. And that goes beyond what’s just in the main game, it should be a part of your company’s entire police. For an example of why, Bioware promised to keep releasing DLC for Dragon Age:Origins, but they stopped after the two female love interests were dealt with. Where are the Alistair and Zevran expansions? What is a female gamer interested in those characters left to think? I certainly know what I was thinking.

So again, it’s not about putting “woman” things in, it’s about not making a woman drop-kick her controller and spit on the screen.

Make your own games and promote them through channels such as this?

If they’re still predominantly selling to 18-35 boys, they’re going to cater to that market, which means bouncing boobies and armor that leaves the femoral artery open to attack.

I realize video games are a multimillon-dollar industry now, but ‘casual games’ such as Bejeweled seem pretty easy to write. Perhaps starting with a low-budget RPG such as Runescape and then building momentum? If there are enough women interested in games out there that there’s a market for this, that would be a way to start.

” Where are the Alistair and Zevran expansions? What is a female gamer
interested in those characters left to think? I certainly know what I
was thinking.”

DLC barely sells as it is. Bioware would have haemorrhaged money if they had invested time and resources into the development of said expansions.

It’s not guaranteed (not even highly likely) that the changes that are requested in the realms of this website and others like it – to encourage a higher level of female participation in ‘hardcore’ games – would have any significant impact. In fact, there is considerable risk involved when developers make a committed and conscientious attempt to alter the video-game landscape; a risk of alienating their primary audience and a risk of wasting resources.

You can theorise all you like, the fact remains that designing games around a core audience consisting primarily of young males sells incredibly well. Further innovation and encouragement of art within the industry is not dependant on a more “inclusive” gaming culture; In fact, it’s almost entirely independent of such a change.
Developer ‘Pseudo 51′ is a case-in-point.

The open letter makes one honest and vital assessment: change is most vehemently campaigned for by those who have the most to gain. The video-game industry wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a significant market-in-waiting at the dawn of its creation. The industry has steadily grown, and has been male-dominated from its outset.
Any further and more female-favourable change to the industry will require an identical catalyst to that which created it in the first place. If more women integrate into the core market, that will fuel a natural evolution in the style and content of video-games in the future.
At this point, catering to a small part of the support-structure that the industry depends on will require an artificial force that will inevitably stumble, and may quite possibly fall with collateral damage.

P.S. Before anybody whips out the “40% of gamers are women” statistic, be aware that the source of that study included facebook and mobile games in the criteria. The relevant number in regards to the subject discussed is much lower.

Your reply reeks of mansplaining, and if you don’t know what that is, a good Google search might help.

In regards to the DLC, your reply doesn’t correctly address my point. My point was that the female LIs were expanded upon, and the others were not. Even if Bioware declared bankruptcy thereafter and we never saw them again, I would still consider this something of a slight. They catered to the men first and foremost. Bioware *knows* it has a female base, because their game reflects it. Their games weren’t poor investments, not by a long shot. And DLC suits them just fine, which makes this even more a slight.

And I believe you considerably underestimate fangirls and their eagerness to throw money at things. Let me (wo)mansplain you for a moment, considering I’m actually in the indie gaming scene. Several gaming companies have SHIFTED from male-centric games to woman-centric games because of popular demand and high sales. Developers have been reporting their best sales in games that involve these woman-centric games (not talking the pink make-up barbie games either, just that the protag is female and has male LI), and that their most pirated games with the male-centric ones. Everything you have just said is as ancient a belief as the sun revolving around the earth. It’s wrong.

Please read the article again: there is an entire other half of the world that can support the game developers. That sounds like a lot more money. And all they have to do is not be sexists a-holes. That’s it. Why are you defending that? Why did you have to write that huge reply to my asking for some consideration towards female players? Why does it have to be a big fat “NO”? That sort of response is what makes this so difficult for women gamers. That’s why this article was written.
Decent change never happened when the victims were silent. You can say that something will have no impact, but there’s a reason the PSAs mention ripples in the water. There’s a reason there’s such a thing as democracy. People have voices, and they should  voice and incite revolutions. Risk. You need to take it. And it has been, and it does pay off. Please, come to the year 2011. We’re waiting for you.

P.S. It’s not guaranteed (not even highly likely) that any of what you just said will have any significant impact on me, or anyone on this site.

Yes, we should totally split gaming into boys games and girls games! That fixes everything!

Or, you know, we could compromise and say that both genders are equal human beings worthy of each other.

My sister has a wii and I hate to think of my niece being taught that she should need a man to save her when she could possibly save her self if she had to

“If there are enough women interested in games out there”

Why do you think there are sites like The Mary Sue and GirlGamer.com?  

I spend more money on video games and consoles than I do on shoes. Like, OMG I know right???

Uh… so what? That’s the cost of doing business.

Exactly.

I was interested in reading this article until I saw it didn’t link or even directly quote the comment it is refuting.

The moment I see something like that my first thought is “This person is hiding something.” They are misinterpreting something. They are misrepresenting what the original comment said. They are twisting words or even making shit up.

Not that I think the author is doing any of that here, but that doesn’t mean it’s not bad form when writing and a rather extensive “open letter” rebuttal.

Good argument, probably the wrong target. At best a satisfied customer is going to listen, agree, nod in sympathy then pick up the controller and go back to business as usual. Converting them into an activist for change isn’t very likely.

I’m not going to get involved in a long-winded argument with you, because I’ve been around feminist blogs long enough to know how intellectual confrontations invariably end.

As for my having an impact – it’s entirely irrelevant. I have a fixation for logic and rational thought-process, and this page had a deficiency of the two. I addressed that issue as a form of self-therapy; if you’re too caught up in a storm of narcissism to notice that the sun still rises in the morning and falls in the evening, that’s unfortunate.

Way to take the high road, dudebro.

This IS the internet, though. If you comment here, I assume that you have commented elsewhere  so you must have seen it happen. Someone says something that the majority disagrees with and suddenly they are FLOODED with hundreds of the exact same comment. Plus there is always a risk of white-knighting, especially since this site has such a female-slant. That wouldn’t benefit anyone and could even give The Mary Sue a bad name. No one needs that.

The fact that the article was not linked to does not change the depth, intelligence or importance of the reply, in my opinion. It could almost be read as an open letter to the many others that have the same or similar opinion (and there really are many).

Don’t worry, I caught what your reply said before you edited it. Funny. ;)

@maselphie:disqus  Bah. That edit was also highly therapeutic.
Your bringing it back to my attention?
Not.. so.. much…

Whatever happened to “the customer is always right” anyways?  All of us here are customers that are not 100% satisfied with your product.
But I get it.  It’s all about the muneez.  I’m a budding game developer, and for me, the millions of dollars the industry is making is not enough.  I want more.  Somewhere around 50% more.  Catch my drift?

Feminine and aimed at women… that I’d avoid anyway, TBH.  But here’s an example. 

I love Borderlands.  I always play as Brick, even though I like to play as my own gender in games.  I play Brick because I like to tank, and to feel powerful.  But, I have played all the other characters except the female one, whose name I haven’t even bothered to learn.  Regardless of how powerful her abilities are in-game, she doesn’t feel powerful to me.  She’s a heavily sexualised prop – myspace pout, bouffant hair that would never survive the world she is supposed to be surviving in, exposed midriff and cleavage. 

Dressing like that IRL would make me feel vulnerable, exposed, inclined to cower rather than fight, because of the RL reactions I’ve experienced to my clothing choices.  On a world like Pandora, where I appear to be one of less than half a dozen women on a planet of hardened, brutish criminals and “broken girl parts”?  Suspension of disbelief can only go so far, and more often than not it is the little things like that which make or break it for me.

I don’t want a feminine or woman-focussed game.  I just want games that don’t actively make me feel the opposite of what the games are ostensibly supposed to encourage.  Playing games, reading hero comics, it’s fun because we get to feel powerful in some way.  Whether we’re the tactical genius, the meaty tank, the noble hero or the self-indulgent junk food that is a Mary Sue character.  I just want to feel that, and having tits and arse shoved in my face, even as a woman that likes the ladies, doesn’t do that.

I think it’s also worth noting that some of the biggest games (i.e. Portal, Assassin’s Creed, God of War) have women working in important roles as developers, writers, producers, etc., and their interest in gaming had to start somewhere. Attracting more women to play hardcore games would probably inspire many of them to create hardcore games. The game industry can only benefit from an influx of fresh minds like that.

It’s not a very good business if it ignores all potential markets other than 18-35 year old males, is it? I mean, look how well that ended up for Playboy.

“I’m right because I’m the human incarnation of Mr. Spock, you emotional females.” Got it, dude.

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this is one of the things i loved about dragon age 2.. i mean the guard follower.. you couldn’t sleep with and she wore full plate but they had the pirate woman who didn’t cover up as much… and some of the male characters were premiscuous in the first one at least

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Well, one good example would be the Uncharted games. While the female characters aren’t controllable, they’re also not oversexualized cupcakes in ridiculous outfits, either — they’re developed as real people, who have just as much of a role to play in the story as male NPCs like Sully.

Did Naughty Dog set out to make a game for women? No. They just made one that treated women like real people, and despite the fact that the action/shooter genre isn’t one that’s thought to be as woman-friendly as say RPGs or MMOs, Uncharted and it’s sequels have an active and enthusiastic female fanbase.

And I won’t even go into Bioware, which has a huge female fanbase relative to most other major studios. Even though they do have the silly outfits for some of their characters, they have _options_, too — and I’d challenge anyone to call the female Commander Shepard ‘babe’. :P (Careful: my version likes to punch things.)

in the early years of gaming (when i played heavily and had more free time), women characters were treated with more respect. generally the storyline is affected minimally by the gender of the characters (including NPCs), which is just the way i like it. armour was proper armour, you know. albeit maybe it was also because animation back then was not that great, so you couldn’t realistically render a female body anyway. from relatively recent years, a game like oblivion is great – open-ended, engaging, and you could basically play as though you were the character in the game. i’m not put off by the game designer forcing me to step into the skin of some kind of over-sexualised person. the knights of the old republic games were brilliant. i’m sure there are still such games around (i hope). but i notice that even female side characters in basically RTS (not a genre where you normally care or even notice renderings of characters) games are now spotted showing unrealistically cleavage-baring or generally skimpy military uniforms that is difficult to explain in context. 

basically for a game to *not* put me off, it just needs for me to see the female characters in there as plausibly real people. i mean, surely the game developers know actual ordinary female humans, like their mothers, their sisters, nieces, cousins, friends, wives. coming from another culture, it makes me sometimes think whether american women are all like this, because if designers base these characters on their actual experience of sisters, daughters, mothers and nieces, what else would the conclusion be? i mean, are they born and raised in a vacuum? 

also, i used to buy a LOT of games. went through them fast. so did my brothers. even if i had more free time now, i would buy far less – and what’s more, once i am a mother, if this trend continues i will certainly curtail gaming for BOTH sons and daughters and i will certainly advise my more feminine and non-gaming friends on gaming options and what kinds of messages are typically embedded in different genres (not just a dysfunctional view of women, but also other things they may be concerned about that isn’t the subject of this article) – for THEIR sons, and daughters. and they will certainly share the warning within their own rather extensive circles. so that’s my custom gone, and then also where’s your demographic now? i loved gaming, but it’s not entertainment to sit and basically be insulted through the game.

It was awesome to have one of the four playable characters in Borderlands be a woman. It would have been awesom-er had she been fully dressed. (Or, for equality’s sake, let’s have the other three men all fight in thin, ragged loincloths. BECAUSE THAT’S HOW YOU GO INTO BATTLE. With your most tender sexual bits exposed.)

Or like in Fable 3, where even if you played the female protagonist you could wear the armor, clothing, mustaches etc. of the “men’s” outfits, too. It’s so tiring to get a new set of armor and realize that because your character is female, the armor is essentially a metal bra (BAD FOR FIGHTING WITH FIRE, DUMMIES)

Thanks Russell! When you put it that way, it makes it clear that we should never ask for anything ever. Men are happy the way they have it, so why would they give a shit? It’s not like this attitude is the entire problem with the whole world or anything.

Hey, aim that gun somewhere else. I’m in complete agreement that better women characters and less sexism is a win, in games or any medium. The only thing I was saying is that you’re not likely to gain a lot of traction trying to pry a satisfied customer out of his bubble of contentment and convert him into an activist for change, which is what I took the “open letter” as attempting to do.

As contrasted with rallying other women gamers, women would-be gamers and men who aren’t indifferent to the cause, then aiming the efforts at the developers and publishers who actually have the power to to effect change.