Why are there so few male protagonists these days?

I’m just wondering why so games from the near past and future have a have decided that males are offensive. Why aren’t the feminist developers trying to create a state of relatively equal representation? Nier, Horizon, Darksiders 3, Cyberpunk, Uncharted, possibly the new Battlefront, that new vampire game, and a handful of others. I can’t even think of a single new ip (except Nioh) that features a male protagonist that isn’t rooted in history (CoD) or a series already long established (God of War).

Oh, wait, I forgot. Feminism isn’t about equal representation or equality…

already been done a few days ago pal

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/games-discussion-1000000/female-protagonists-33389108

Our brains must be connected to the same hive mind. I was about to make this topic about a week ago, but then got lazy. Made it today after seeing Darksiders 3.

it was made in your honour.

do you think female protagonists in the games you mention detracts from their quality? what's the right amount of female leads, percentage-wise, you'd like to see in gaming?

Well, if you've followed games journalism over the last 1/2 decade you probably already know that gamers+feminists (of both sex) criticized the industry for under representing women in AAA games. In the past year and going into the future we seem to be at the exact opposite side of the equilibrium. An overwhelming amount of games coming out have a female protagonist, and males are now the underrepresented identity. I'm just curious as to why there is absolutely no discussion regarding this. Also, will similar effects develop in non-gaming fields? Like, in 10 years will 70% of politicians be women, and if so, will anybody say anything? What happens if females start earning more than men, will people finally start discussing the extreme pendulum swings that we've seen as of late, or will anybody casting concern deemed a crazy, misogynistic looser?

there was a discussion just a few days ago :)

do you think if you took all games released in the last, say, six months and compared the genders of their leads that there'd be an overwhelming amount of female compared to males?

Yes, if you take all games released in the last 6 months that have only 1 protagonist, the majority segment is female.

Edit: Games, I mean games not based on older IP's that had a male to begin with.

In the case of Darksiders III, anyone who ever played the first two were expecting Fury to star in a Darksiders game at some point; apparently she was even literally shown in the very first game itself. Don't know why you would expect any different.

As for the general trend itself, eh, I'm not complaining. Still plenty of games with male protagonists, and I'm not bothered about it so much as to go counting exactly how many. Like I said in the thread Macutchi linked to, I always choose female protagonist when I have the choice anyway, due to aesthetic and personal tradition reasons. Yet I play and enjoy plenty of games with male protagonists, and have never complained when I didn't the option to do otherwise.

Ultimately, I don't give a damn what's between the legs of the clump of polygons and textures standing on the screen in front of me. They're just games.

I like creative minds to pick the gender that fits the game they want to make, and not feel threatened by people with too much free-time.

I have no problem when a game has both, but usually it's because the game is set around the world and not your avatar. When a game is set around the playable avatar? Gender is important depending on what the creators are trying to achieve.

I feel that the majority of responders don't get the purpose of this post. This thread is more about double standards than the actual number of female protagonists. What I'm saying is that just a few years ago many gamers and journalists were making posts almost identical to this one, except they complained that there were not enough female protagonists. Now that the pendulum has made a drastic swing, I'm curious as to why there is little to no discussion regarding the over saturation of female protagonists in most new IPs.

@whiteagle18:

Discuss what? That people come to the internet to whine? That a few years ago they whined one way, and now people seem to be beginning to whine the other way? That's just the nature of things. It's like a big equilibrium of whine.

Like I said, I have never whined about things like this in either direction, and I'm not particularly inclined to care about people who do.

Who cares?! I'm a male and I know that females have been overshadowed and underrepresented in games. Even if the amount of female protagonists is increasing males are still the overwhelming majority. You would've been better off using actual facts and statistics to prove your point. Just like I said in the other thread last week I'm pretty sure the male/female ratio in games is about 80/20

Perhaps I'm not following this issue closely enough but I really don't see this "over saturation" of female protagonists in gaming. I think I'm going to need to see some examples of it here.

Soon they will come for our testicles!

Because it was never a noteworthy discussion_

And I found those articles back then tedious as well. Internet-bloated-loud-mouths trying to take control of certain games. Because they felt they had the moral high-ground.

I don't want people like that controlling my favorite hobby. It's not a good idea, and I don't know who thinks it ever was. Hence why the topic died out.

Fair enough; if you want to have a constructive conversation, that sounds good:

I can sort of agree with @whiteagle18 on this aspect. I find many actions, debates, and arguments over "equality" in general to be hypocritical because they're generally not about equality at all, but reparations and tipping the scale; it's not about 50:50, but upsetting the balance to such a degree that it swings in the opposite direction.

For example, if you run a tech company and you only have 1% female workforce and a scandalous article comes out about how there are so few women in tech and it's because of discrimination, the dumb-but-normal thing would be to stop hiring men and to hire a lot of women, whether they're qualified or not. The smart thing would be to put out feelers for talented women, and say you are interested, but not make a knee-jerk reaction. I think getting more women into tech by encouraging them to do so is great; but by borderline forcing them, or hiring them under false pretenses, or hiring unqualified women....that's not great.

In gaming, same thing; suddenly we have a lot of women protagonists and imo I don't really object to their presence, but it's being done solely for the numbers. "Oh we had five guy heroes last years, we better do six women this years, ok?"; that's not right. What's worse, they generally lack quite a bit of character, and can even come off as sexist, cliche, or shallow. I don't feel developers are as invested in female protagonists as they are with male ones, but that might be because they are still relatively new compared to the male ones; I feel we are getting some really good, established heroines these days that will be around for a while.

Rarely are they done right, however; Alyx Vance was a great heroine, the new Lara Croft is great. Even Nariko from Heavenly Sword, despite being scantily clad, had a lot of depth of character and was a great hero. These are few and far between, however.

I think the fact is you just have to find the right blend of truth, market, and context. CoD WWII having female soldiers is just crazy; I mean I know there were the occasional female resistance fighters, there were a couple female OSS spies, but that doesn't mean you need to make a playable character in a shooter female. Conversely, in a sci-fi game where women just might be physical equals to men (due to any number of hypothetical, fun things such as cybernetics, telekinetics, biotics, what have you...), it would make sense for them to be front-line juggernauts fighting aliens twice their size; I love play FemShep in Mass Effect, much more so than a Male Shep.

SJWS is why.

Its a knee-jerk reaction, not done really for the benefit or advancement of gaming but simply to please a group of Tumblr feminists that mostly dont play games in the first place. Thats why this new trend is giving all the wrong vibes and come out all weird. You use to simply accept whatever protags and characters the game devs throw at you without question, now you cant help but feel its all part of some political agenda and message.

Gaming have long had their iconic female characters, many equally popular as male protags but suddenly everyone is acting like we only have our first female protags this gen.

TAKE THAT PATRIARCHY!

@mirgamer: to be honest, while I don't want nothing but female protagonists, I really don't want nothing but Duke Nukems and Marcus Fenixs, either.

So, no, I am not going to "just accept whatever protags and characters the game devs throw at" me, and I never really did. I just never had the internet back then :P

@mrbojangles25: I don't really see the connection myself. I feel a lot of the games that had female leads fit the role perfectly. Because it was worked with the concept and not forced.

And can think of many female characters which I liked just as much as male counterparts, and at times, more.

Nariko from Heavenly Sword, despite being scantily clad

I don't see the problem with that, considering what other characters in that game dressed like. Roach wore far less than Nariko, should I riot? lol. Showing the human body in certain cultures is a sign of confidence and strength. And not once did I find Narikos lack of clothes distracting. But perhaps I'm a pervert lol.

CoD WWII having female soldiers

I'm not against female soldiers, but that certainly an interesting move from Activision. Not sure if feminists got a say in that, or not. But seems tacked-on. Though as stated before, if the game is not set around the playable avatar, and instead the world, gender become irrelevant. And Call of Duty is about the battlefield, not the one soldier the player controls.

What I'm getting at is Developers shouldn't follow in that direction due to sensitive people who think the gaming industry is bias in any manner. Seems to me certain people are trying to turn gaming into politics and I don't care for it.

No one creative team is alike, and each have certain ideas which they wish to create, by forcing outside beliefs (usually from narrow minded bigots) it hinders a Developers vision.

Creative side of games shouldn't be changed for what >any outsider< thinks is right or wrong, unless it's the Developer, and in some cases the Publisher.

Otherwise what's stopping someone saying what you like is wrong and should be heavily changed for ______ reason.

So, no, I am not going to "just accept whatever protags and characters the game devs throw at" me, and I never really did. I just never had the internet back then :P

Seems to me you could just make your own game then, with a protagonist that fits your standards /thread

@RSM-HQ: Yeah I was agreeing with you mostly, I just quoted you since it was relevant, to continue the conversation. I don't have a problem with the scantily clad bits, either, but some people might.

Most feminists (the good ones, not the third wave) I know do pole dancing for exercise lol, and they wear almost nothing. And they're like "What, it's just my body". That is feminism to me. Bad feminism is like "EWWW YOU BOYS JUST WANT TO LOOK AT MY TITS!" those women should just be like "so what, they're just tits"

I don't care about the gender (or race) of a game protagonist, I care about how well-written he/she is. I'll take a well-written female over a bland male and a well-written male over a bland female any day. People who can only relate to a videogame character when said character looks like them are pretty pathetic.

@Black_Knight_00: That's pretty much where I am on the subject. I hate "diversity" being shoehorned in where it feels forced and preachy. But that said I don't mind at all playing as someone of any race or male/female as long as it feels right for the game.

THIS.

@whiteagle18: Locking because there's already a thread on this, and because you're version reads more like a rant against feminism as opposed to actually talking about games (which is the topic of the forum you posted in).

-Byshop