[ SECRET POST #3312 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3312 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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12. http://i.imgur.com/v42amcn.png
[link for anime porn ... type stuff? I'm not even sure what's going on here]















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #473.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. BUT, why should we be the ones who always have to step out of our compfort zone and identify with male characters? Would it kill men to not have every fucking thing go their way for once? Would it really kill men to not have gaming as their exclusive fucking bubble? Would it really be such a big deal if they didn't enjoy games as much if it meant we could enjoy them more?

[(Anonymous)]

From a social perspective, you make sense.

From the perspective of a company whose job it is to make money, that's more difficult.

I'm not absolving the companies, but there's a financial reality there.

[feotakahari]

Counterpoint: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-percent-people-playing-games-women-industry-doesnt-know

[(Anonymous)]

Terrible counterpoint.

52% of gamers may be women, but if you're making a triple A FPS, 52% of your players are not going to be women. Not every game company makes every kind of game.

[(Anonymous)]

You're still leaving money on the table when you don't look for ways to include the 'hidden' demographic, which has been there amid male gamers for decades already anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

If you go by what that article considers games for gamers, then you're going to have to count every single female main character in a fashion dress up game as a "female protagonist."

The numbers even out vastly, then.

And are completely inaccurate to the state of gender dynamics in gaming.

[(Anonymous)]

I am actually completely okay with including the Style Savvy protags because those games are fucking awesome and if the US doesn't get Style Savvy 2 (it's out in Europe now), I will cry.

[(Anonymous)]

We are talking about actual games here, not the smartphone crap. I wish we were the majority in pc and console games, but unfortunately we aren't.

[(Anonymous)]

take your head out of your ass and understand that mobile games are the demo now. Japan learned. We're learning.

There are actual games on phones. It's the new field. It's where the first consoles were a decade ago. It's our turn to get off the kids' lawn.

[caerbannog]

Hey, pocket frogs is awesome :(

[(Anonymous)]

Right? Because there's no money to be made off games you play on your phone, so they don't count when the context is companies making money off gamers. Oh wait...

[ypsilon42]

I am very reluctant to accept this kind of argument, bc coming from a purely capitalist perspective making more games for women & with female protagonists would open up a wholey untapped market. The idea that games are a medium that are inherently more appealing to men, is one that imo at least is mostly created by the existing supply and the surrounding advertising. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you create and market your games with a male audience in mind, the male audience is (almost) always going to be bigger.

(I acutally read a very intresting article about this some time ago, where a women talks to her sister about how from a certain age onwards they felt games weren't made for them. I'll try and find it, but if someone else has a link....)

[(Anonymous)]

I agree on a broad scale.

On a narrow scale of one company, are you going to be the one that takes the risk? How many will fail before the big bust happens, and are you willing to risk being one of them with shareholders breathing down your neck?

[(Anonymous)]

^ This is why indie studios are much freer to do what they want and try innovative things: they don't have a board demanding profit to answer to. Lots and lots of indie devs make interesting and unique stories and characters every day.

Expecting a huge company to spend tons of money and losing it all by doing so is unreasonable.

[ypsilon42]

Yeah, that is true especially for small companies. But considering that many video game companies are really huge with many titles a year and corresponding advertising campaigns, personally I just don't believe that this isn't connected to their own internal biases at all.

After all that is a phenonmenon that is known from a lot of branches; movies, comics, comedy, etc. When Catwomen does badly the reason is that female lead superhero movies have no market, when Batman and Robin bombs the reason is that the market is bad and so on.

[ypsilon42]

Ok, found it.

http://boingboing.net/2015/08/08/no-girl-wins-three-ways-women.html

[(Anonymous)]

The real issue is that AAA games are such big budget affairs that they just can't afford to take any risks at all.

It's possible that widening your demographic could help, but historically, that's a risk. Marketers will point at Beyond Good & Evil and Mirror's Edge, neither of which met sales expectations despite being outstanding games, and shrug their shoulders. I like to believe that they'd be wrong, but marketing and financial are never going to put "rightness" ahead of locking down profitability.

It's rubbish, but corporate will tell them that female protagonists are a risk that can't be eaten. It's the same reason that AAA games have cookie-cutter gameplay, dull interchangeable protagonists, predictable twists and highly streamlined immediacy in the gameplay.

"Is that a risk? Cool, take it somewhere else."

[(Anonymous)]

Cont.

See also: Big-budget movies that absolutely refuse to feature a female lead.

The massive inflation of budgets has created irrational risk aversion. There's a cargo cult of pointing at what has worked in the past as being the "safe option", and refusing to deviate from that by more than some minimum necessary amount.

[ypsilon42]

I'd be more sympathetic to this line of reason, if those exact game companies weren't the ones who created that exact risk in the first place, by creating a market that specifically targeted men and excluded women.

While this argument might hold up when looking at the bigger picture, it doesn't when you look at the development history of so many games. The reasons companies give for the lack of female options, or sexist outfits or and story lines range from bad to laughable. I firmly believe that doing better in these departments would lead to a bigger number of women that are intrested in games, while not overly alienateing the existing male customer base.

[dancing_clown]

1. Who's this "we" supposed to be? I enjoy games with male protags wonderfully and have no trouble identifying with them, given that they're more than a cock and balls and I'm more than a vagina and ovaries.

2. Games aren't here to make you feel better about your status in the world.

[(Anonymous)]

Games aren't here to make you feel better about your status in the world.

And that's the problem with gamer culture. Games are there to reinforce and make men feel better about their status in the world. But when women want some of that support, gamers come out with this "We're not here to help you" bullshit.

[dancing_clown]

That's a nice ass-pull. Games are there to entertain and make the most amount of money possible and lose the least.

[(Anonymous)]

Games are there to reinforce and make men feel better about their status in the world.

I wouldn't say that's why games exist, but I agree that this is one of the major functions that games fulfill for many gamers.

[(Anonymous)]

THANK YOU. <3

[(Anonymous)]

As much as I love having relatable female characters in something or a female character to play in game, I don't really have a problem with male protagonists as long as they are likeable? I don't know, maybe I'm just old, but I've always liked characters like Luke Skywalker regardless because they were...well, good.