Why, IMO, it's hard finding a game to like as a female gamer

[Aleema]

... of course, many people *like* that femShep has more masculine body language than the oversexy slinky walk some women in games get, and there are men who'd like their male characters to be able to saunter around sexily too. Proper equality, they should both have options!

I was more thinking about the Fable series, or just about every gender-changeable PC cutscene where the PC is walking around like a space marine ape, despite the only female costume option being very feminine.

It seems like a lot of guys I know are like "You're a girl that thinks like a girl? Go away. You wouldn't understand. Oh, you're a girl that thinks like a guy? Great to have you! Hey, by the way, why don't more girls like video games? I'm going to be forever alone!"

That's the general attitude in the gaming industry. Most of the sexism in gaming comes from the community, ranging from outright ignoring any problem, dismissing those who say there is, to those who see it and then justify it.

[AxemRed]

I still don't see it. What's so overwhelmingly male about the storytelling in those games that it makes them hard to enjoy?

Because you have the privilege not to see. Your views and needs must be being catered to, because you don't see or feel a lack of it. That's not your fault, but, again, open your mind a little to pretend you are someone who is not you for a moment.

>Because you have the privilege not to see.
Condescending and spiteful.

>Your views and needs must be being catered to, because you don't see or feel a lack of it.
Where did this come from? How is it related in any way to anything I said?

>That's not your fault, but, again, open your mind a little to pretend you are someone who is not you for a moment.
I ask because I don't see the insurmountable issues preventing females from enjoying the majority of video games. Telling me I lack empathy isn't helpful.

[Aleema]

Mm hmm, sure. Picking me apart doesn't make what I said any less true, you know. Have you read the link Camille posted? I totally didn't write that!

The reason why male privilege is so insidious is because of the insistance that it doesn’t exist in the first place. That willful ignorance is key in keeping it in place; by pretending that the issue doesn’t exist, it is that much easier to ensure that nothing ever changes.

[papillon]

This is one of the problems with using the word 'privilege' in discussions - it has a specific academic meaning for a specific group of theorists, but unless you are already on the inside of understanding the issue, it sounds like an attack word and tends to get people's hackles up and prevent them from hearing what you're actually saying.

I ask because I don't see the insurmountable issues preventing females from enjoying the majority of video games. Telling me I lack empathy isn't helpful.

Women are not prevented like a roadblock from enjoying videogames, but they do often face a hostile environment.

Many video games, all female characters exist primarily for sexual purposes - they prance around in skimpy outfits, they offer themselves sexually to the PC and other men around them, while male characters do not behave similarly. That can be grating, especially if it keeps happening.

Many video games even if you do have the option to play a female character, you are singled out as an 'exception' - the rest of the world is made up entirely of passive or sexpot women, and you face hostility or surprise from other characters you meet. Some people enjoy this sort of plotline, being a trailblazer in a hostile world. Others find this to be a huge downer in a game where they're trying to be a hero and have fun.

Some games intentionally make female characters weaker or give them different gameplay - there are RPGs which have romance options only for male characters, or entire quests only for male characters, or didn't bother writing the dialog to notice the PC's gender so that you get called 'he' all the time, there's harvest moon games that ended when you got married if you were female but let you keep playing if you were male.

Many multiplayer games come complete with a bunch of complete jerks who harass anyone they think might be female and say rude things about women when they don't think any are present. That's not the *game's* fault, but it's one of those 'hostile environment' things.

I can't speak to those individual games that were originally mentioned as very male-focused because I haven't played them, so I can only talk about generalities.

I've been watching my husband play LA Noire off and on. I've seen only tiny snippets of the game, and I know I'm not getting the whole picture, but what I keep seeing time and again is Men Doing Man Things. Men yelling at men, men chasing men, men shooting men. Women, as far as I can tell, exist only as background NPCs jumping out of the way of his insane driving, or as corpses. Generally naked corpses. Now, he insists there are female characters in the game who have important parts and are even villains at times, and I'm not doubting it, but all the time I've watched him play I've never seen one. That's a very male-focused game. Does that make it a bad game? No. Does that mean that it shouldn't exist, or should be forced to be more inclusive? No. But it's certainly an experience that is going to resonate a lot more with some people than with others.

[Aleema]

I've been watching my husband play LA Noire off and on.

Oh god, LA Noire ... I was playing it with my friend, and I'm glad I borrowed it, because there was a very certain line (when you get to Homicide) where the cases began to really, really make us comfortable. There were a few too many raped (including statutory) and murdered women cases ... Someone on the internet mentioned this was uncomfortable to them, too, but they were immediately met with snark, like "oh yeah, they should have totally just focused on car thefts instead," or something. Like the constant naked female disfigurement cases are totally like real life and that someone didn't purposefully design them. As a woman, I put down the controller and sent the game back. It was not entertaining anymore.

[KimiYoriBaka]

There were a few too many raped (including statutory) and murdered women cases

actually, isn't that realistic for the setting? As far as I'm aware, in most cases in which men are killed in a criminal context, it's during some heated argument where the murderer is obvious and thus doesn't need a detective to find him. I haven't actually played the game myself, though, so I don't know how deep it goes into that sort of thing

about that article Camille posted, I do think that it is a reasonable argument to say that the guys are portrayed in an exaggerated form as well. It's just that those characters are also pretty one-dimensional. Somehow, the entire argument of "it's for guys" seems less like sexism and more like an attempt to ignore the fundamental lack of writing quality present in most games. I don't know if I'm just an exception, but I've found the characters in video games to be pretty weird in most cases, regardless of gender.

[papillon]

in most cases in which men are killed in a criminal context, it's during some heated argument where the murderer is obvious and thus doesn't need a detective to find him.

In most cases in general murderers are pretty obvious. In most cases in which women were murdered, you don't need a detective, because it was the romantic partner/ex-partner. Sad but true. Men are much more likely than women to be killed by strangers, which therefore might be a bit harder to track down, and a lot more men than women are murdered anyway. (Similarly, when women do kill people, they are vastly more likely to kill someone they know, whereas men are more likely to kill complete strangers.)

But this isn't reality; this is what the writers have chosen to make the story they want to tell. And that's okay. It's not that their choices are wrong, but their choices are definitely going to make some people feel uncomfortable.

[Aleema]

@KimiYoriBaka: If you play the game, you'll see what I mean by it being very uncomfortable. It's not a "btw she was raped" (which is just as awful), you have to man-handle naked, defaced dead bodies and their torn underwear. At one point, you have to go into a secret pervert room with cameras on the "casting couch" and the girls' restroom, which we know was used by under-age children. Until this point, me and my friend were enjoying the game and laughing at how bad our driving was. Nervous chuckles and finally never returning the game happened thereafter. That aside, if you're going to be that realistic to that time period - a time when explicit sexism and racism was rampant and dangerous, then I definitely want no part in it.

As for your "exaggerated" comment, there's a difference between idealization and sexualization. The big-muscled deformed guys are to make the male players feel empowered, not to showcase themselves for the lady-fans. Whereas the women are exaggerated sexually for the sake of eye candy for straight men. They can both be horribly exaggerated, but for the same demographic's benefit.

[Auro-Cyanide]

[You misspelled every game title except Skyrim
I find the claim of "most games" dubious, but let's ignore that for now.

I still don't see it. What's so overwhelmingly male about the storytelling in those games that it makes them hard to enjoy?

My apoligies, I was in a rush when I was posting and didn't check. I also called Uncharted 'Drake' by mistake too lol. I'm gathering you knew what I meant anyway.

Those games are not entirely unenjoyable, that would be one of the God of Wars which I stopped playing after a couple minutes (pretty much directly after he had sex with some random women). Those games are generally fun to play, but like I said, because female perspective isn't even on the radar, response to the actual story and characters can vary from disconnection to eye rolling.

Have you tried thinking about it from a female point of view? How a female might feel about the characteristation of the male and female characters? How they feel about the story? It's very easy to dismiss a point of view if you don't consider it. We aren't randomly going on for no reason, we actually have reactions to what is displayed in these games that causes us to feel maginalized.

I could literally write an essay on why I think these games cater to male ego exclusively, but people have already brought up good points. In short, main male characters are ego boosters for males, females are objectified, emotions are limited to sarcasm and anger, feminine is weak and the entire story usually revolves around the main character and his ego. In games like Fallout or Skyrim, choosing a gender is moot because you are going to be treated like a guy anyway :/ Why bother? Equality and respect doesn't mean we want to be treated like men, that trivialises our gender and basically says we shouldn't be part of these worlds. Equality and respect is simply people understanding and acknowledging that our point of view is valid. It isn't weird, it isn't weak, it isn't out of place. Right now we don't get this from a vast majority of games. Thus you have women raising eyebrows and asking questions.

The attitudes of male gamers range from dismissive to outright hstile also aren't helping the issue. Every time a female raises a point she is meet by a lot of angry males who don't want things to change. I want to know what they are so scared of?

This isn't just a gaming issue however, it's just a lot more openly aggressive. 'Male Privillage' displayed in one of the previous articles is something breed from many long years of patriarchy and it grew old a couple hundred years back. The problem isn't going to get any better until guys and girls out there start actually considering how others might think instead of presuming their point of view is default for every body and that is the natural state of the universe.

[kara24601]

I play a lot of different games, but even games I can love or like a lot can be / seem sexist to me on some level.

The various issues I can have with various games plays a big part in why I like to try my hand at making games.....

Just remember a game with female character is not the same as a game for female player.

Yeah, and that's part of the problem. I think creators should still , (especially male creators), think more often....longer.. and harder about certain things....

To a certain extent, I don't mind playing as a guy. To a certain extent, I don't even mind if he is a playboy or something. But it can get old, boring, annoying, and stupid fast when you're a female playing these "obviously geared for a male player" type games and you're having a hard time finding a game that you would enjoy playing more. And a lot of games I end up thinking "Why isn't there a game like this but with a likable / strong female as the PC instead of a male character? Why is it so hard to find a game similar to this in some ways but either gives me the choice to play as a female or lets me play as a female?"

And then when there ARE games that you give you the choice of playing as female, it's often like the creators added them in as an afterthought and it can be hard to like any of the female npcs and sometimes it's even hard to like your female player character. Sigh.

It's very easy to dismiss a point of view if you don't consider it. We aren't randomly going on for no reason, we actually have reactions to what is displayed in these games that causes us to feel marginalized. Dismissing how we feel isn't going to make us magically feel better about these games that don't even consider us an audience. The attitudes of male gamers range from dismissive to outright hostile also aren't helping the issue. Every time a female raises a point she is meet by a lot of angry males who don't want things to change. I want to know what they are so scared of?

*nods in agreement* (sorry for any bad spelling)

Women are not prevented like a roadblock from enjoying videogames, but they do often face a hostile environment.

This! This is is how I feel! It's hard for me to enjoy various games because I either get mixed messages or am being bombarded with offensive things like when I m bored enough to play certain games...they're mostly about things like cooking, shopping, being pretty, ect. Gender stereotyping oozing from the game on so many levels. Ever been to a website that loudly and proudly proclaims itself as a "GAMES FOR GIRLS!" site yet immediately upon entering you're bombarded with a painful Pink themeed layout / site with tons of cooking , flash dress up, kissing, shopping related, ect. games? And many of these games are also drenched in Pink.

To me one of the saddest truths I've found is that young girls fall for this crap too. I apparently must've loved Pink when I was younger because I had so much Pink crap and my room was soooo stereotypical "girly" in pictures.

I kinda consider myself a fan of survival horror but the genre makes me angry a lot too. Even the games that have a female lead / PC , like Haunting Ground for example....oh....I have a love-hate / hate-love thing for it already. I have a love-hate / hate-love thing for sexy alternative costumes and outfits and sexy female characters sometimes. Especially when you're not allowed to fight the monsters if you're playing as a female. No, we have to go run and hide. We don't get to use violence like the male player characters in survival horror. Haunting Ground is a strange mixture of interesting, beautiful, insulting / offensive to me (and I'm sure other female players) and "omg such a totally awesome game" all at once.

So if you're a woman, and if you're having trouble finding video games which appeal to your interests, then this (along with other factors) is why you can't have nice things. I wish fandom were better... We gotta improve it one day at a time, one game at a time.

While I kinda agree with the last bit as a wannabe game creator, I find the bulk of this offensive. Unless I'm somehow misunderstanding, to me it seems like this is your way of saying "You're too picky. There's nothing wrong with various games/ the current state of gaming and there's no need for things to ever change.." and that's a load of bullcrap... "You're a bad fan because you want change." I seriously hope I'm wrong about this and that is not how you meant it.

As for your "exaggerated" comment, there's a difference between idealization and sexualization. The big-muscled deformed guys are to make the male players feel empowered, not to showcase themselves for the lady-fans. Whereas the women are exaggerated sexually for the sake of eye candy for straight men. They can both be horribly exaggerated, but for the same demographic's benefit.

Exactly. (although some women are into overly muscled guys...I'm usually all "eww" about muscle / overly muscled guys....sorry muscle fans)

It's funny that somebody mentioned Mario and Pokemon. Mario is a little sexist / offensive to both genders and racist too if you wanna be super serious about it and all. Think about it. The main guy is a stereotypical brooklyn / italian guy and so is Luigi , Waluigi, and Wamario. The girls? Princesses. And they wear dresses for nearly everything. Peach is the worst offender in that her clothing is almost always Pink. Birdo, who was once a male creature but is now officially female? Pink creature with a Pink bow on its head.
Birdo and Yoshi are strange anyway. So they end up not really counting because both of their species don't even make sense.
Strangely enough, even though people usually make fun of fat people in their games and / or include offensive fat stereotypes (Mother/Earthbound series for example)
I love Mario. Everybody loves Mario. We love him even though he's a bit of a stereotypical character. But him having tried different jobs and saves a mushroom kingdom on a regular basis makes him a non-stereotypical character at the same time.

Pokemon games? Didn't have the option to play as a female until later on in the series. In the anime, the show centers around Ash. The "main" girls are sidekicks -
Misty, May, and other girls are depicted as stupid and annoying. So yes, Pokemon can be a little sexist. I hate how they made it so that on the show nearly all pokemon can only say their name. I love it when the episode has a talking pokemon and I love the movies more than the anime series. And aside from these few things, I love Pokemon.

anyone would care about the genders when it's the game play that counts

Apparently I do. And other gamers. For us, it all counts or a lot of it counts. Not just the gameplay. We care about the graphics, we care about the music and sound effects (if there are any and / or lack there of) , and as a female player I care about gender roles and relationship issues between the npcs and pc and other "silly" things like that in games. It may be a trivial issue and silly to some, but it's not to me. (of course I wouldn't have posted and complained at all if I didn't care....)

(why human? why female? why amen? )

[PyTom]

The problem that I have with this is the implication that game-makers are somehow required to cater to a broad audience - that there's something wrong with deciding that their goal is to appeal to audience Q, even if making that decision means that their audience is less appealing to audience R.

But that's kind of silly - creators make these sorts of decisions all the time. When you choose to make a life sim rather than a first-person shooter or a tower defense game, you're alienating one audience and gaining another. When you go with 2d rather than 3d, anime-style art rather than western art or photos - all of those will increase the appeal to some people, and decrease it for others.

And I think the decision to try to appeal to people of one gender, or one orientation is a legitimate one. And if that means that other people are offended, or don't consider themselves part of the audience - that's a price that's acceptable. I'd rather there be a world with one in ten games appeals to me on a fundamental, visceral level and nine that don't appeal to me, then a world with 10 games that kinda-sorta appeal to me.

Talking about the issue, in terms of equality or obligation, isn't the way to get games you'd like to play made. There's isn't any sort of obligation to be equal in creative media - it would be horrible if there was, as it means that would that people were being forced to create things they didn't want to - either because the thing is fundamentally interesting to them, or because they want to be compensated for it. (Or both.)

Trying to convince people there's a market is more likely to work - once people are convinced there's going to be a market, the invisible hand goes to work. But talk is cheap - you need people investing their time and money to make the games they want to play. You need to get the audience for those games buying them. You need to do the work to build that audience, if you want things to change.

[Auro-Cyanide]

...

Which is why we probably see so many girls making otome games here

I don't feel terrible offended that games are being made for guys. It's natural to have target audiences. What gets girls upset is the denial of the problem. Girls bring up issues that they find offensive/dismissive/hard to connect with that makes them like a game less. This is the same as bringing up an issue you might have with the control in a FPS or the camera movements in a RPG. But instead of getting consideration and respect for our point of view, on the way we feel, we are constantly told that what we think doesn't matter and not only does it not matter, but it's actually offensive that we might want things that we like. You can probably understand how this can make girl gamers feel, regardless of the nature of developers. To be ignored, dismissed and trivialised is not a nice thing for anybody and when you are talking about 50% of the population and a massive social issue, it can get a little tiring standing on the wrong side. We understand that developers need a market to sell to. What we don't get is why they don't see us as a market, or how considering us is deterimential to male gamers. Will it really make a game worse for male gamers if a female perspective is considered? Would it really hurt their market so much that it isn't worth trying to bring on board a female market as well? Surely male audience + female audience would result in more sales than a singular male audience. Unless there is something about female perspective that guys find offensive or uninteresting?

[papillon]

The issue is not that you shouldn't make games that appeal to the "core" audience - the issue is that when the vast majority of games are all targeted at the exact same audience and ignore all the others. The issue comes when a large number of people are having trouble finding even that one-in-ten, and are told that they should just deal with it.

And the 'fairness' aspect makes it all the more obvious. Sure, it's a pretty tiny segment of your audience who are black polyamorous bisexual pagan women, it's not surprising that a game representing them would be rare. But "women", that's a pretty big group there... if everyone is time and again choosing to exclude them, that's a sign of a problem.

Overall industry statistics are not the fault of any one developer, obviously, that's why they're overall industry statistics.

There's isn't any sort of obligation to be equal in creative media - it would be horrible if there was, as it means that would that people were being forced to create things they didn't want to - either because the thing is fundamentally interesting to them, or because they want to be compensated for it. (Or both.)

If you saw the linked article, there are known cases of developers who wanted to write a female-protagonist game and were forced by the people in charge of money to change it to something more targeted at the "core audience". That's still going on; the devs behind "Monster Tale" on the DS also reported having big problems getting their publisher to let them release a game with a non-stripperific female lead.

[PyTom]

Which is why we probably see so many girls making otome games here

Sure. And that's the eventual solution to this problem, at least for girls and women that want to play otome games. If you want female-centric FPSes, you'll have to get people to invest their own time and money making the games they want to play, to prove that the market exists.

I don't feel terrible offended that games are being made for guys. It's natural to have target audiences. What gets girls upset is the denial of the problem. Girls bring up issues that they find offensive/dismissive/hard to connect with that makes them like a game less.

The problem is, many of the things that girls find offensive/dismissive/hard to connect are things that appeal to guys. Men enjoy looking at women - the more scantily clad, the better. (I've heard that men are more visual then women, when it comes to attraction - but I wouldn't know for sure.) The "magical girlfriend" type character - a girl who comes out of of know where and falls in love with a guy without him having to change his life in any way - is unrealistic, but also appealing. And so on.

I think many of these things fall into the subjective target audience portion of the issue - you like the game less, I like it more, and the designers had too choose who they wanted to appeal to.

To be ignored, dismissed and trivialised is not a nice thing for anybody and when you are talking about 50% of the population and a massive social issue, it can get a little tiring standing on the wrong side. We understand that developers need a market to sell to. What we don't get is why they don't see us as a market, or how considering us is deterimential to male gamers. Will it really make a game worse for male gamers if a female perspective is considered? Would it really hurt their market so much that it isn't worth trying to bring on board a female market as well? Surely male audience + female audience would result in more sales than a singular male audience. Unless there is something about female perspective that guys find offensive or uninteresting?

I think that it often is the case that - to myself, and probably other guys - a game that caters to the female perspective will be less interesting then a game, written as well, that caters solely to the male perspective. I mean, let's take a dating sim. I have $50 to spend on two games. One of them has 6 winnable girls, one of them has 3 winnable girls and 3 winnable guys. They both have the same quality writing, the same quality and quantity of art, and so on. The former has more content that appeals to me, and the latter has half the appealing content - plus more negatives, since I don't want have to clear Jim, Leonard, and Spock's paths in order to unlock the true ending.

Dating sims make it really obvious, but I suspect the same sort of concerns are also of issue in mainstream games.

The issue is not that you shouldn't make games that appeal to the "core" audience - the issue is that when the vast majority of games are all targeted at the exact same audience and ignore all the others. The issue comes when a large number of people are having trouble finding even that one-in-ten, and are told that they should just deal with it.

I think it depends on what's meant by "just deal with it". If it's to say - the current condition is perfect, and there's no need for anything to change at all, that's silly. But if it means that it's up to the people complaining to change things - I think that's a fair response, as any other means that people are forced (by some outside means) to change how they allocate their time and resources.

If you saw the linked article, there are known cases of developers who wanted to write a female-protagonist game and were forced by the people in charge of money to change it to something more targeted at the "core audience". That's still going on; the devs behind "Monster Tale" on the DS also reported having big problems getting their publisher to let them release a game with a non-stripperific female lead.

I think the same argument applies to the publishers as well - can we really force them to invest in games they do not want to invest in? If there's a pent up demand that publishers aren't meeting, why wouldn't a new publisher form to better meet it?

Again, I'm not really against the ultimate goal - games that appeal to everyone is fine with me, as long as that doesn't mean every game less appealing until they're all equally unappealing to everyone. But I think this is best addressed by growing supply and demand together, rather than trying to pressure the supply side into doing something that they don't think is in their best interests.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I think it's a bit of an assumption really that making something more tasteful for girls will mean less enjoyment for guys. Dating sims are a bit of an exception because everything revolves around sexuality (since the name of the game is dating, it makes sense people want to go for what they are attracted to on some level), but other games don't have that need to do so. Women love sexy women. There is nothing wrong with them. Women are more likely to look at another girls chest than guys are. What women get up in arms about is that sexy women being treated as an object, which I'm sure most people will agree isn't a good thing. Treating any human like an object is a bad thing. Sending the message over and over again that females are objects and tools to be used and won? That's a social problem and I disagree that this is what men want. I don't believe that the majority of men don't respect women and that they only see them as tools. So I don't see why the majority of females in games must be presented that way all the time.

Women are doing everything they can to get more representaion in games. We buy games, we are vocal about what we want, we make games. There isn't much more we can do. We also have to deal with a lot of aggression and denial. The majority of male gamers don't even think it's a problem. At all. Nothing should change according to them. But it's very easy to say that when you already have what you want.

Like I said, I'm not so much against the idea that games are being made for males. There is some logic to the idea that markets must be built etc. What I am very, very much against is the culture that surrounds all these decisions and the support it has from males. It's not even restricted to games. That's what scares me a little as a female, the total disregard of our opinions and the deliberate choices to objectify and isolate women. It's like we haven't gone very far from the dark ages with the way some people carry on. I'm guessing that is the underlying issue as to why girls are vocal about this issue, even more so than just wanting games that they like. It's a very deep and complex problem.