Nobody's afraid of them. This article created its own problem to complain about.
Lae’zel and Shadowheart
This feels a lot more like the author is upset by the way these two were done, and is in turn projecting that upon "other gamers".
You never met one of those capital G Gamers who have never seen a woman that's not their mom? The ones that get mad if there are black/gay/trans people in their videogames because of "muh escapism"?
Sure, but I've also just read about a black gay Trump voter. Extremes exist, it is upon the one presenting a theory to show the extend of the problem.
I'll readily believe that focus testing and the safety-only design of companies such as Ubisoft augments any problem massively but it's still easy to accept "Oh it's because gamers are too afraid of powerful women in their games!" as a rhetoric without having anything indicating it's actually happening.
The whole gamergate thing lends some credence to the words of the author I would think. A lot of the big gaming influencers are toxic, racist and misogynistic. Remember when people freaked out about some unflattering screenshots of female characters in a lot of games? Like Aloy in Horizon: Forbidden West, MJ in the new Spiderman game or even Abby in The Last of Us 2. There are surprisingly many people that don't like any western games because they "push their woke agenda" or some such bullshit.
It is the same in many online games, although that has gotten a bit better over the years, where you get berated, insulted and catcalled if you dare to have a feminine voice.
Of course, I'm not saying that it cannot be the case, but it's also not something I'd leave just standing.
Just from the examples you list, the same issues essentially show up:
Again, totally not saying that it's not very much a relevant comment that is being linked to here, but to me what is weird is that it presents an idea as fact with absolutely no evidence that the basis that fact would need to be true even exists. "Gamers" is not a single group of people. And the implication that this in turn affects game design is also entirely unverified and not something a reader can verify or falsify for themselves.
gAmErS were shitting their pants over the mere possibility of choosing "they" as a pronoun in Starfield. Also apparently voice actors having accents is "woke"
I've never seen a hill as ridiculous for anyone to die on besides "they."
those gamers wouldn’t be the ones who want powerful women in the first place. The article is imagining gamers who want powerful women AND are afraid of them.
Nope!
Then you are luckier than me.
Thankfully, I only know those gaymurrs from youtube videos that are brightly titled as [game] IS WOKE PROPAGANDA, so it's easy to avoid them.
The least important part of a character is their sex.
Well that’s not true at all. Men and women have different life experiences and that often is what drives a narrative.
So you can't have a good character or story unless it's centered around whether the character is a man or a woman? You're gonna lose your mind when you hear about aliens, robots and other non sexed characters.
So you can't have a good character or story unless it's centered around whether the character is a man or a woman?
Where on Earth did you get that from my comment?
You're gonna lose your mind when you hear about aliens, robots and other non sexed characters.
….which often is attached to specific unique narrative concepts for those types of characters, since they too share a unique world view that is helpful or even necessary to set the background and future specific storyline.
Mate, you’ve gotta be trying to be offended to misconstrue what was said so badly.
What...? This isn't a real issue
I would add another thing to this I wish the author would talk about instead of immediately projecting onto their own prejudices: People generally prefer the "good" option in games.
And I don't even necessarily mean whatever the game calls Paragon-vs-Renegade. I mean the fact that for a game where you recruit characters to your "camp", naturally losing characters feels like a fail state. Like you messed something up. As a result, players will intuitively lean to options that present the least "bad outcome", in this context meaning the less often NPCs leave your camp the better. Recruiting someone is a victory, someone leaving is a defeat. The games present it as such, so it's no wonder players err towards wanting everyone there.
I know it's very hard for me to care about Mass Effect 1 Ashley Williams.
I know she's supposed to turn good (maybe?) in sequels, but, hey, you've got to sacrifice someone, because cheap emotional engagement trick.
May as well send the one-dimensional specist asshole with absolutely no other character trait.
the one-dimensional specist asshole with absolutely no other character trait.
I used to think that about Ashley until I did what I nicknamed my Asshole Run. I was an Adept, so I usually had Ashley and Tali around me. I ended up listening to their elevator conversations, and Ashley treated Tali a lot differently than she did Wrex or Garrus (the ones she saw as a military threat) - she warmed up to her and treated Tali like a little sister. So when Tali died in that run on 3, Ashley was gutted and was crying when you go talk to her afterwards. Seeing her actually have a character arc made me like her a lot more.
I know she’s supposed to turn good (maybe?) in sequels, but, hey, you’ve got to sacrifice someone at the end of 1, because cheap emotional engagement trick.
Yeah but that's the other thing, that's how you get gamers to let somebody from their group go: You force an obvious "One or the other"-pick. I can totally see how we as consumers can more readily accept that than we can accept the very understandable part of Karlach leaving as that was not presented right in the moment you made the choice. It didn't feel like there should not be any Option C at all.
That made me think about the most arbitrary and broken player "moral choice" I know : the end of Fable 2.
spoiler
Bad guy enslaves lots of people for years for his project, killing many of them. Then kills your family and your cute puppy because fuck you.
After you beat bad guy, magic ascended girl appears, rewards you with one of three wishes for post-game : revive everyone enslaved by bad guy, revive your family and cute puppy, or give you lots of useless monies.
The player is not really responsible for the slave deaths. The ability to "fix" ten years of history by magically erasing all the deaths is weird and undermines the impact of the whole story a lot.
Also, and perhaps more importantly on the player's side of things, the dog is a freaking gameplay mechanic, not having it prevents some actions and blocks a few minor quests.
Well, sorry, nameless, faceless theoretical people who died years ago, I really need my cute puppy.
Really, the game never even establishes why that very specifically determined choice has to be made. It feels very rushed, very cheap and the whole thing is over in 5 minutes.
Look, I'm a lesbian, all hot girls intimidate me.
Do people actually have a problem with them?
I'm ~~aroused~~ impressed by strong women, physically and emotionally. And in a world that can do better by them, this is balancing the scales.
I also want to say that as we saw with Legend of Korra, if they're interesting characters and are 'cool' nobody will care about gender.
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