next »

[gimymblert]

So what should a proper female lead look like? Where do you draw the line between “attractive” and “cheap pandering cheesecake”? Which female leads resonate with women? Which ones repel them? Is it better to have a variable gender protagonist like in Fable II where you can choose a gender that basically doesn’t matter, or is it better to have a protagonist with a specifically crafted character? What genres of action-type badassery are most attractive to females, and would make a good starting point for a developer looking to court a female audience?

http://www.themarysue.com/what-women-want-in-female-video-game-protagonists/

[flowerthief]

For some times I've been wanting to design a game in which the protagonist is an old grandma simply because I've never seen it done. (Has it been done?)
But that would be too much work, so maybe modding Zelda 2 to have the grandma townsperson as the player's sprite would be my best option.

[s0]

(Has it been done?)

the graveyard

but that might actually be the only one lol. right now i cant even recall a middle aged female protagonist in a gam. i tried making and old woman character in dragon's dogma but only sort of managed, not least because all the voices sound young.

probably a bit off topic but yeah...

[flowerthief]

There's something wrong here. Old and middle-aged ladies have problems in their lives, dreams, aspirations, and probably more time to pursue them after they're done raising kids. That is a huge demographic not being portrayed seriously!

[Muz]

Take an average attractive woman, keep her realistic. Boobs can't be too big. Dress her up in something... normal. No bikinis, no skimpy chainmail, just typical armor. Bikinis are fine too, but not as standard uniform, more like a cutscene thing (like in Tekken). Actually, I think Tekken has it about right.

I think no matter what you do, someone will be a little offended about it. I had an ex who said that the media is biased against ultra skinny girls like her. Some will say they're too skinny, but if you look at the Olympics girls who actually swing swords and kick balls, they're skinny too.

I find that women's health magazines (not tabloids) show an ideal of what's very sexy but not slutty. You'll find naked women all over men and women's magazines, but the poses make all the difference.

[hanako]

I think Musenik's old game "The Witch's Yarn" would count for a middle-aged female protagonist?

I think no matter what you do, someone will be a little offended about it. I had an ex who said that the media is biased against ultra skinny girls like her. Some will say they're too skinny, but if you look at the Olympics girls who actually swing swords and kick balls, they're skinny too.

Having a range of body types instead of "Generic Thin Booby Attractive Model" would help in some ways. If you pick only one depiction of women, no matter what that one depiction is, some people will be annoyed. If you show a range it looks less like you're trying to make a statement with any one particular entry.

I don't have a link at the moment but I recall there was an image going around during the Olympics showing the HUGE range of variation in female olympic athletes, from the tiny little gymnasts to the lanky track runners to the stocky weightlifters and shotputters...

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

this one? was curious so i googled for it:



there's also a male one:



found another one, seems similar to the first one:



that last one doesn't seem to be exactly to scale -- the height difference between the last two women looks much larger than the numbers, and the second to last woman is shorter than the third to last, even though in numbers she's taller

[gimymblert]

Strength is not about apparent muscle too:

[ClayB]

that waist line is crazy wrong but I think full armor/costume is the way to go for "badass" female characters.

[Landshark RAWR]

I find it incredibly annoying when character creation option are incredibly robust for males, and yet practically non-existent for females. The only game I can think of where you can customize female characters to the same extent as male characters is Phantasy Star Online Ep:1&2

PSO1&2 is the the only game I can think of where one can actually make a fat woman

[SundownKid]

I don't really agree that a scantily clad woman is necessarily eye candy for guys (at least, to a point - some outfits are just stupid). It might be unrealistic, sure, but being sexy is not always a "negative" trait for a character to have. Of course, I wouldn't really care whether said character wore full body armor and a mask to hide their gender completely, as long as they were well-written.

I also don't believe that female characters should automatically be "optimal" to cater to what women (or men) want in a protagonist, because then they become two-dimensional. A character should have weaknesses and flaws and should not automatically become a badass, self-sufficient protagonist to an unrealistic extent.

I also wouldn't care if the character creation options had every possible body type. If anything, it would make things interesting versus all kinds of clone-type characters running around. But, don't expect most people to want to play as fat versus fit.

[Preece]

I think when you speak about "resonating with women", it's kind of silly because it 1) treats women as a homogeneous group, 2) implicitly idealizes women (which is nearly as bad as being biased against them). Let's be honest, plenty of women like silly caricatures of men just as much as men like silly caricatures of women. Twilight? No man acts like Edward (an unmovable, infinite, absolute adoration and desire for the main female protagonist). It's not reality. Just like a buxom woman with a tiny waist is not what real women are like.

So really, the next obvious position is that both are wrong. But this is quite fascist to say whether what people like is right or wrong. People like what they like, and they have always striven to emphasize those prototypical features of themselves. In reality and in their art.

This idea of "courting" the female audience is also absurd. Good games are made by people deeply in touch with what they enjoy about games. They use that intuition to create something worthwhile. The same is true for any art. You can create some Zynga schlock that shoots so wide female are generally going to be part of the player base. Or you can have a designer who understands what she likes about games and puts it into the design.

The only problem is, the discourse of video games has been so male dominated for so long, the discourse is also dominated by what males enjoy. And few designers have had the chops (and desire) to dig down and change fundamental things about games.

TLDR: If you want more female gamers you need more female designers.

And to answer the question: the female should look like whatever the game and it's aesthetic demand. Same is true for the look of all things. If you're making a cutesie game where you bake and sell cupcakes, the characters might be served by a "chibi" look. If you're making a post-apocalyptic horror game, the characters might be best served with a haggard look. And, some aesthetics demand men with massive bulky muscles and women with huge breasts and minimal clothing. If women with massive breasts, tiny waists, and little clothing don't fit with the rest of the aesthetic then it's simply poor design. That is where you draw the line with cheap pandering cheesecake.

[feminazi]

match their male counterparts, reverse roles etc. quit worrying about "pandering" or "courting" to women like this guy above. quit worrying about "tokenism," that's just an excuse to not do anything.

"I want a character who makes me feel emboldened on sight. If I’m a soldier, I want to look like the rest of my squad. If I’m escaping a zombie apocalypse, I want shoes I can run in and clothes that minimize the likelihood of getting bitten. If I’m a warrior of song and legend, I want a set of plate mail that will silence a room when I walk in. None of these things require a trade-off of my sexuality or femininity."

edit: by quit worrying about that, i mean quit thinking that designing a female character to be less offensive is "pandering", quit thinking that including a female player option is "tokenism"(someone fucking tried to argue this with me) and just fucking do it.

[Landshark RAWR]

Bravest warriors pretty much nailed female character roles

[Sharkoss]

Something that you haven't already seen before, basically.
The last time people tried to check as many boxes as could practically be checked, we got Alyx Vance/Jade from BG&E and The Boss in a short space of time.  It was pretty funny if you like boring jokes.
I reject the 'attractive' part though.  That is not something that needs to be balanced, or even considered at all.  Appealing - yeah, I guess.

[starsrift]

Generally speaking, most characters whether male or female, are fit or semi-athletic looking. Kinda cuts down on body types.

Last time I made a female protagonist, she was a short, fit black spaceship captain who was in a race to save her son's life while telling her ex to fuck off.

I guess that would be seen as pandering these days.

[randomnine]

Been working on this lately myself. Cardinal Quest 2's more about customisation than defined characters, so has male and female characters for each class:



Sure, they're 16x16 sprites, but there's still plenty of room to express character, physique, outfit, etc. The main rule I was going by was: what makes sense from the perspective and culture of the character? How do they need to dress to do what they do, how do they as a person want to dress and how do those two things interact? The character has to come first. Gender is important only to the extent they want it to be important.

I've ended up with two classes strongly gender differentiated, two classes where the genders primarily differ in physique but wear roughly the same outfits and two classes who carefully avoid gender signifiers, each for their own reasons. Still trying out ideas at the moment but it feels good to me so far.

Also, The Boss is one of the best game characters of all time, male or female.

[hanako]

Generally speaking, most characters whether male or female, are fit or semi-athletic looking. Kinda cuts down on body types.

Protagonists tend to be fairly fit, yes, but there are NPCs, and there are different ways of BEING fit, which was the point of the olympics image. Those people are all extremely athletic and they are not the same body type. (Breasts also give another dynamic to the female body which can be varied separately from the overall body shape.)

I'm pretty sure there are players who are sick of playing interchangeable shaved-head muscly male heroes too.

In JRPGs there are a lot of the big-dumb-muscle character type who is vastly different in body shape from the rest of the party and treated somewhat as comic relief; these are almost always male though. And, of course, they tend not to be the only guy in the party. If the only male in the standard RPG party, game after game, was the Big Lump, that would get annoying.

There's nothing wrong with any individual presentation of a male or female character... there's nothing wrong with having a game about a stark naked maenad running around attacking people by swinging severed heads at them although you might have trouble getting it past the censors. The complaints are really about overall tendencies, either within a game as a whole or within "gaming" as a whole. By displaying contrast within your game you knock out most possible ways for people to get upset that "You think all X are Y!" or "You think all X should be Y!"

... it would be wrong for me to try and encourage you to make Maenad Rampage now, wouldn't it?

[starsrift]

... it would be wrong for me to try and encourage you to make Maenad Rampage now, wouldn't it?

Not me, I'm not an action gamer by preference so I tend not to make those kinds of games..

[gimymblert]

http://www.fmapulse.com/content/fma-corner-filipina-ritualist-and-warrior




also