That's my problem with vg storytelling, characters are too black and white! And when someone says "Hey, we need female characters", they usually just draw a pair of boobs on Marcus Fenix and call that equal!
What kind of character would you rather see? A beefed up Anya-type character from GOW3? A strong, intelligent, yet vulnerable lara croft-type? Bayonetta femme fatale? Dead or alive extreme beach volleyball? It's honestly hard to conceive original ideas for female characters. But then again maybe originality in itself is just dead.
@BloodyAura @SoreBastard I'm just calling em' like I sees em'. Of course you're going to find an abundance of female gamers in the comments section of a Gamespot article on the discussion of female leads in video games. What I wanna know is how they compiled this data. Does being a gamer girl mean that you like playing angry birds on your iphone occasionally? Or that you've been a hardcore counter strike player since it's inception? And it's not like I said that there aren't many female gamers, I'm just making an observation based on my experiences.
As far as GOW3 goes, I think they made the marketable decision to include female characters in the game. In my opinion it feels tacked on. Like every other depiction in mainstream media, there is always the pressure to please every demographic out there to make things seem "fair". That's why when you look tv adverts or billboards you almost always see a person of every gender, racial background, sexual orientation etc. But where do we draw the line when it comes down to the integrity of the project? Should we include black lesbian protagonists just because? Or does it need to be justified? The recent tomb raider is an example of a believable female lead that you can both care about and expect. They made the new lara a 3 dimensional person rather than a beefed up equivalent of male fantasy. It's all about context!
According to a study conducted by the Entertainment Software Association in 2012, "Forty-seven percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (30 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent)."
47%!? Hmmn... I'm kind of skeptical. That would suggest that there is a nearly equal interest for woman as men, but seldom do I ever meet a "gamer girl". I mostly play online shooters like bf3, blops2, and halo4. Every now and again a girl can be heard talking over the microphone, which often leads to them leaving because other male gamers tend to harass them. I would think that kind of behavior would be enough to deter most women from ever picking up the controller. Most women I know HATE video games and most conversations end up going like: "He just sits there for hours playing those stupid video games". I've even heard one girl say that violent video games are an example of men living out their primal urge to hunt and kill. The girls I do know that play video games typically like rpg's like skyrim or Wow. Amongst others are the little big planet series (cutsy slapstick games) or the dance rhythm and singing variations. But even with those titles I just don't see as much enthusiasm from girls as guys in regards to video games. Last year I was shooting photos at EVO and I definitely don't remember half of the crowd being female, though there was a female competitor that represented the team I traveled with. Most of the time girls who like video games will likely pick up a ps3, but end up using it mostly for netflix and blurays. I think some of these statistics need more depth.
Why do intelligent people cling to such outlandish beliefs!? And why would he quit his job because of them!? Religion of any kind usually has some sort of barbaric roots that are typically sugar-coated as the times adjust. So it's no surprise to me that people can perceive faith as being damaging to the secular notions of society. One thing I know for sure is that in a time of poverty and peril, man will cling to whatever ideology he/she finds reassuring. We see this in war-torn parts of the middle-east and other poverished third-world countries. Being an atheist, I can say for a certainty that the existence of any god-type deity is entirely man-made, just as those with faith can say with a certainty that there is a god. But this issue itself isn't the beliefs, it's the distinction between how things function in the real world and how things function in religious dogma. Claiming to have all the answers when you don't have all of them is a dangerous thing ya know... But I digress. Bioshock had an perspective on religion from the very start, so it's unfair to say that Ken Levine and the whole production team are uninformed about theology. It's getting harder and harder to defend religious views as they make such little sense. Sure the image of the "Christ Figure" set a standard for character story arcs, but it's starting to become all too apparent. Simply put, quit bitching and accept that no idea is safe from criticism, especially Christianity. I'm getting sick of apologizing for using common sense. "No Gods or Kings...Only Man"
SoreBastard's comments