Getting the Girl 528
1up.com has a great article up entitled Getting The Girl. Zoe Flower discusses female gaming stereotypes, the role of women in gaming, and the mythical "girl formula" for gaming success. From the article: "Lara Croft continues to personify an ongoing culture clash over gender, sexuality, empowerment, and objectification. It was while standing in my first-ever ladies' room line at E3 2004 as I pondered the Playboy bunnies, the return of Leisure Suit Larry, and the slew of buxom virtual ladies headlining each booth that I questioned whether the industry had evolved at all."
Target Audience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Target Audience (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Target Audience (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the studly men!? (Score:5, Insightful)
To which I have to say "Do you see any short bald dudes with a big pot belly on any of these boxes either? No, it's all he-man looking dudes busting at the seams with muscles".
These games aren't any different than music videos or movies. Do you see any ugly people in music videos or movies aimed at 18-25 audience? Of course not. No one attacks the music industry for using half-naked chicks and musclemen with abs-o-steele to get teenagers to watch their videos...
Sheesh (Score:4, Insightful)
If Lara Croft was a fat bull-dyke noone would buy or play the game.
BTW, before you start crying "sexism", you might want to note that male characters are invariably the 6'4 rugged Dirty-Harry type.
I've never seen an FPS where you play a myopic, balding, fat kernel hacker.
Half Life was as non-stereotype a lead character as I've seen, and that's only because Gordon wears glasses.
Re:Target Audience (Score:2, Insightful)
Newer market research is proving that as the gaming core is aging, the late 20s are a valuable portion of this market.
-Game developer doing an M-rated game
Please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully some publishers/designers will realise that they're excluding potential customers with such tactics like those who now release for Macs as well. But realistically, there will always be a probably large section of the industry [just like the movie industry] which will focus on their core target audience: horny, horny young men.
Re:Target Audience (Score:5, Insightful)
The Doom Guy
Serious Sam
Duke Nukem
I've never heard another male video gamer complain `Duke's arms are too muscular!` or `Look at those pecs, they're unnatural!`.
They're charactures. It's like complaining that cartoon characters don't look like real people.
I bet "girl games" would have girls on them too (Score:5, Insightful)
When you look at the women's trashy magazines, they have pretty girls on them (occasionally men). You know, the ones that tell you how to make your butt smaller, charge your cell phone, run a fortune 500 company, and get that cute guy, all before lunch?
Getting The Woman Gamer (Score:2, Insightful)
No mention of HL2? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you can find stereotypes in trashy games like BloodRayne and various fighters, but there are plenty of male stereotypes to be found over there as well.
Why should it evolve? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing. Unfortunately, there are many more video game customers who would like their female characters to have cartoonishly large breasts than there are video game customers who would like their female characters to have folds and beards.
The difference is that guys don't get their panties in a bunch because all of the male video game characters have cartoonishly large muscles.
Ms. Flower is trying to manufacture a double standard where none exists - male and female characters are treated the same; they're made to look perfect.
As for video game themes, Ms. Flower is simply outvoted. Our culture uses sex to sell. We sell stuff using attractive people, choosing gender based on audience. Complaining that video game conferences have booth babes is like complaining that there are no fat guys in soap operas.
Equal Opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Target Audience (Score:2, Insightful)
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The Doom Guy
Serious Sam
Duke Nukem
I've never heard another male video gamer complain `Duke's arms are too muscular!` or `Look at those pecs, they're unnatural!`.
They're charactures. It's like complaining that cartoon characters don't look like real people.
Well, actually, they are caricatures of what a man's fantasy man would look/act like. So they are still marketing toward male fantasy there. I don't know that anything is really wrong targeting men, but those are poor counterexamples.
Re:What about the studly men!? (Score:2, Insightful)
So you're saying it's okay to objectify women if we also objectify men?
Re:Target Audience (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm...
Re:Target Audience (Score:1, Insightful)
A Little Older (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Zoe's website (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Department... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Target Audience (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick of hearing about how MEN are responsible for the sexual stereotyping. What about Cosmo and all the other mags dedicated to helping women look as much like the sterotype as possibe?
Spatial Coordination (Score:1, Insightful)
The answer is obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
My belief is that there is a small set of games that appeal primarily to males, a large set of games that appeal to both males and females, and again another small set that appeals primarily to females. So far, the vast majority of games have used violent conflict as a central progression indicator. This includes everything from duck hunt to Doom 3. I believe this sort of game falls under the category of being primarily enjoyed by males. It is the auxiliary features that distinguish each game within this theme and make it interesting.
Lately I have started playing World of Warcraft, which, at its essence, is merely another way of slaying endless adversaries. The rewards are different, and the audio/visuals and networking are different, but it's still about killing things. Now I would be willing to bet (without knowing the actual player demographics) that the vast majority of WoW players are male.
Now, in my opinion again, not only does this concentration on one type of game lead to unbalanced player demographics, but it also leads to a severe draught of innovative and fun games. From the perspective of a male, female gamers most likely just want "fun" and "innovative" games. They don't care if the lead character (if there is one) is a strong female or how big her boobs are, and they don't want to only ever play the Sims. I think when developers find time to give up on striving for better graphics, better physics, and better gore simulation and instead try to make a game that is not a puzzle game that doesn't involve violence of any sort (not because it's offensive, but because it's been done ad nauseum) then female gamer numbers will just rise of their own accord. No need to be targetted by a marketing department. Male and females can even play the same games! Imagine that, just like they enjoy lots of the same movies!
Why does the game industry as a whole have this fixation on violent games? Well recently, I would imagine it's because companies don't like to take risks, and violent games are a proven formula. But why in the first place did everyone have this obsession? Well, my guess is that because games were always terribly constrained by the hardware on which they were running, some sacrifices needed to be made to the gameplay in order to have a complete game. Conflict is easy to simulate. There are two statuses I can think of: winner and loser. Alive and dead. How binary. But now we have machines capable of simulating much more and yet we don't. Anyway, that's my take on why we still do so many violent games.
Re:Target Audience (Score:3, Insightful)
Double standard? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I want to play an overweight computer programmer, I'm not going to buy a game to do it.
Come on... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm, I haven't played "Death by Degrees", but I somehow doubt there's a blurb in it that amounts to sexy outfit = power fighter. What the heck is wrong with sexy outfit = sexy outfit?
Beyond Good & Evil's Jade bucked the trend of buxom and deadly heroines; the game was critically acclaimed, but sales proved disappointing
Riiight... Beyond Good and Evil's low sales was due soely the to fact that the lead girl wasn't hot enough. Why, I sure know that's why I didn't play it! How about the fact that it was a niche adventure game with decidedly average scores across all the genres? Nah, couldn't be that.
This ain't news, this is just someone on a rant. And for crying out loud, will the "grrlgamers" out there STOP using Lara Croft as an example? Nobody has cared less what Lara Croft does for ages now. Nobody cares less what Bloodrayne does either, it's a sub-par slasher barely worth bargin bin prices.
Maybe I should have been offended when playing through Prince of Persia, that game was obviously sexist! Why didn't the female lead lose clothes throughout the adventure as well?
Re:Target Audience (Score:3, Insightful)
I beg to differ about women being a large market, they are actually a very small market. Lots of women play videogames but how many actually buy them ?. Most women who play videogames only do so because they have access to them through a male in their life (boyfriend, brother, father). How many of these would actually be willing to plonk down the money required for a console and buy games regularly ?.
Boys are willing to spend large on a console and buy games fairly regularly, developers would be insane to ignore the way the market works.
I do think that girls are getting more into games though, witness britney's dance game and the karaoke games. More importantly games are starting to have a larger cultural impact, GTA San Andreas my be a strange example to cite considering the violence level but everyone (girls and boys) of a certain age (that 12 - 25 demographic) has heard of this game. It's cool cause its got gangster themes and hip hop influences. Games will get more and more mainstream and will eventually be just like movies (IMHO).
Re:Why should it evolve? (Score:4, Insightful)
You've missed a very interesting point - perfect to who? It's not that there is an impossible image. It's that this image is a distorted view from a male standpoint. Or is it? There are a couple interesting, if somewhat subtle, points to consider.
First is that the author feels that there is a certain degree of misrepresentation to begin with. I'm not saying she's "right" per se - but it's not an unheardof view among female gamers.
Second, females involved in producing some of these images defend these images and feel that they are actually positive or even well recieved That seems to be the author's point; suprise. Again - no right or wrong... just interesting. Of course, executives involved with Barbie see the product as a role model and there is certainly some disenting opinion on that.
Finally, you'll note that among the featured female character models was one who wasn't all skimpy outfits and buxom bounce. Yet the model still represented a physical ideal (even as a toned-down example, the character still had physical atributes of a model or actress). It just wasn't the same ideal as all the others.
Re:Target Audience (Score:2, Insightful)
Evolved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Men do not have to stop acting like men just because a few women (I say "few" because I most women I know are OK with guys looking at girls, as long as it's not overt and rude) take offense. I say, let 'em make games w/beefy guys as the characters, if the female market will bear it.
Suppressing biological drives is tough... attempting to suppress the most important drive is a futile exercise.
Re:What about the studly men!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have a gardener? We have a pretty big lawn, so we had to get a gardener. Our's is pretty good, I'll give you a number if you're interested.
Notice I didn't say "person who tends your lawn". I said "gardener". Just as I would say, "do you have a lawn mower?". I treated the person as an object, and object whose sole purpose was to care for my lawn. Of course, if I hadn't read into that statement, you'd never have given it a second thought, because it's a completely normal process. There is no malice in it, it's just a matter of reducing the amount of information we have to consider.
Except for the ones we know most closely, we consider everyone to be objects, various lumps of matter whose lives are inconsequential to us beyond the singular role they play in our own. The fact that we do so in entertainment and advertising is not only not shocking, it is to be expected, and perfectly natural.
Re:Target Audience (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not necessarily the size of the breasts that bother me. I have large breasts (and shock horror! I'm blonde!), and I don't consider myself particularly empty-headed.
What bother me, is the lack of proportion between the breasts and the hips. If my hips were a size 0 with the chest that I have now, I'd fall over!
Small breasts, large breast. I don't care. Just make the bodies a little more real.
Re:Target Audience (Score:2, Insightful)
I beg to differ about women being a large market, they are actually a very small market. Lots of women play videogames but how many actually buy them ?. Most women who play videogames only do so because they have access to them through a male in their life (boyfriend, brother, father). How many of these would actually be willing to plonk down the money required for a console and buy games regularly ?
Next you'll be saying we don't know how to code, and we're merely vessels for the opposite gender to dump sperm in. I own an original Gameboy, a SNES, an N64, a PS-One, a Gamecube and a GBA SP. I'm a Nintendo fan. I bought every one of those consoles myself. There might not be many girl gamers out there, but we're certainly not dependant on the male population to provide us with our games.I do think that girls are getting more into games though, witness britney's dance game and the karaoke games.
Oh please. Because we don't play Final Fantasy, or hold 50% of the market for The Sims. We don't know how to play FPS, or RPG's, and god forbid, we couldn't possibly understand MMORPG's. But hell, you're a Slashdot poster. You probably don't even know what a girl looks like.Re:Target Audience (Score:1, Insightful)
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