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Female Gamers


Domi

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Somebody posted a link to this article at Bio site and what I found the most interesting is that the article was written in 1999 in that 'but the things are changing/ should change very soon' style, but truly, it's 2008, and the CRPG world looks just the same. I dunno about other female modders, but this realization makes me want to just work on female protagonist stories. It's just kind of sad that the half of humanity is so poorely represented in the gaming fantasy genre.

 

http://www.womengamers.com/doctork/market.php

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It's funny. If you play Neverwinter Nights at all, you know there's a lot of male-only modules out there, as in, stories that were written intended to be played with a male character, wether it be for romance reasons, or, in once case, "it suits a reflective, thoughtful man more than a woman" (I still never figured out how that worked in the mod itself). However, there are maybe one or two mods out there that are female only.

 

I'm not saying it's because we're being restricted as a gender. I think it's because simply more men have gotten out there and actually put something out than we have so far. A lot of women seem more disposed to actually playing games than making them (not all, but a lot). Come on, ladies! Put down your Lady Bic and pick up your toolsets! Join us! If you want it to be out there, you need to make it yourselves and not complain that nobody else is!

 

 

Of course, that's just NWN. Still, I do think the times, they are a-changin'. There are certainly more options for female players to actually PLAY a female in a lot of games out there, wether console or computer. (For me the big breakthrough was when they finally made a Harvest Moon especially for females. Yeah, I'm lame) And then, yes, there's a lot of heaving bosoms in games these days . . . but if anything, there's almost an equal amount of eye candy out there aimed at women. (Anyone played the Resident Evil series? Every one of those boys is strapping, gorgeous and bright, with Pantene-Perfect hair.)

 

It all depends on how you look at it, I guess. I think there's room for improvement, but I don't think it's hopeless.

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I dunno. NWN2 didn't really regal us with any sort of non-cut or not afterthought female content, and the Witcher was downright male-only and incredibly proud of it. That Book 1 game that came out just now was male only. JE, despite it's awsome awsomeness didn't even bother with a female-specific romance and the story set-up favored a male with quick accomodations made for a female PC (ie princess situation). Maybe it's the genre, I dunno.

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I thought that Sky's m/m romance was added on afterward. it felt like it was :band:

 

There is a very male orientated (or at least heterosexual male) bias in RPGs, i recently had the misfortune to encounter an unpleasantly misogynistic freeware RPG series by name of Laxius Power. the whole thing had a sort of geeky, lives on own at 40 in flat tone to it. It was swiftly deleted ;)

 

ON the upside, while not strictly RPGs, The Longest Journey and its sequel Dreamfall, feature main, strong female protagonists, and the two games are the best written I've ever played. I'd strongly recommend them

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I'm afraid I'm too busy playing and modding the crpgs I like to worry too much about what gender they are aimed towards/who plays them more statistically. This is not meant to be rude, but really, it doesn't matter to me if it is a male or female protagonist.

 

Rather, I think it is rather silly to go all out the other direction and have super incredibly strong female protagonists that would "beat the crap" out of any male protagonist out there.

 

"We're all equal, but *we* should be treated special."

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I've mentioned offhand to some of the "girls + games = win!" sites that roughly half of the TBH contributors are women, but they don't seem to care. I took that to mean they felt the situation was well in hand.

Estimated release time? Year at least?

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I played Jedi Empire (Xbox version) after Domi's recommendation.

 

Good game with a solid atmosphere and some faults.

 

I played as a female heroine and, as usual in this kind of games made by Bioware (NWN, KotOR) I felt that the whole NPC thing was rather weak. I mean, I never have the feeling that I am being part of a group. Perhaps because of the one-NPC-only-comes-with-you limitation or I don't know...

 

Baldur's Gate, thanks to its mods, feels still much better NPC-wise, than the newer games by Bioware (the ones I played at least).

 

Jedi Empire romancing and banter was barely okay, in my opinion.

 

Excellent visual and very good level design (never too big a area, never really boring) and some good tunes.

 

Rather poor minigame (still better than KotOR's infamous Pazak).

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"We're all equal, but *we* should be treated special."

 

I feel that this statement is true for the male PC in most of the gender-neutral games I've played (BG1 and KOTOR being the notable exceptions).

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Estimated release time? Year at least?

 

Since I'm so bad at estimating how long it's going to take I'm tempted to say "before I die" but the way I've felt the past week and a half, I should probably bite my tongue.

 

Now accepting slave labor applications.

 

(on topic: I join with Ace in being uneasy about this notion that the gender of the protagonist is somehow directly related to the quality of the experience delivered by the game. I continue to point this out even though everybody's younger than the game now and hasn't played it and doesn't care, but it never bothered me in the slightest that three of the four characters in Zak McCracken were female. Although I guess you could just dismiss me by saying my male ego was satisfied by the fact that the man got top billing.)

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It generally never bothers men to play as females, or so they say. I wonder if they would think differently, if 90% of the games with pre-defined protagonists were females, and every male character in them looked like a wide-shouldered Adonis wearing a pair of tight leather pants. Or, if say, in Jade Empire, their 'friend' to rescue was a cute and melancholy man, and their contact in the palace was a handsome and dangerous prince :band:

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It generally never bothers men to play as females, or so they say.

 

Yes, my brother can never understand my general lack of interest in games that do not allow me to play a female protagonist. He'll usually look at me and say "But I've played as a woman!" Yes... usually on his third or fourth play-through, if the game is worth replaying. His *first* game is always as a male.

 

I don't generally feel "offended" by the exclusion, though sometimes opinions *about* my preference can get annoying. Mostly, I'm just not interested. I've other ways to spend my time.

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My first playthrough of BG2 was with a female character. I had a fun concept for the character and went with it. Then again, I tend to enjoy reading books with female protagonists as well, though I'll admit I don't seek them out for that quality, rather for the general quality of the story/characters.

 

I'll agree that there should probably be more balance in the protagonists of games, and as the storytelling in games improves this should be hopefully be the case. I do not agree that games need to offer both a female and male protagonist if the story doesn't call for it. Writing a story to be gender neutral, or to make the protagonist's gender largely irrelevant leaves fairly large gaps or a vague narrative and prevents some of the more personal characterization. For example, consider the "choose your own adventure" stories. There really doesn't tend to be a lot to them, and I'd argue that this is because they tend to be completely plot driven and lacking in characterization.

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