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[randomnine]

Sexy characters are artificial constructs, pandering to a niche audience, made by people within that niche audience doing what feels good and natural to them.

Reading, learning and thinking can absolutely lead to stronger characters. Not just characters with broader appeal but characters with more definition and individuality, too. See, there's nothing magically special about cultural naivety - it likely just means you'll retread ground others have trodden before you. You have to recognise clichés to move past them.

[Hythlodaeus]

Sexy characters are artificial constructs, pandering to a niche audience, made by people within that niche audience doing what feels good and natural to them.

That depends. There are plenty of sexy characters that are quite well-written despite being physically trying to appeal to consumer demographics. I don't see anything wrong with that. And sexy-looking characters aren't trying to pander to a niche audience, but quite the opposite: they're trying to please the great majority of video game consumers at this point.

Reading, learning and thinking can absolutely lead to stronger characters. Not just characters with broader appeal but characters with more definition and individuality, too. See, there's nothing magically special about cultural naivety - it likely just means you'll retread ground others have trodden before you. You have to recognise clichés to move past them.

True, but there's a difference between truly witty and well-written characters and those that are the mere fruit of a recent media controversy. This is why I initially stated one should be demanding with oneself, instead of trying to please the momentary opinions of others. That's the difference between being cultured and jumping into a fad.

[Schoq]

a recent media controversy.

You keep saying this as if anything of the sort is what's being discussed here.


Also, you seem to be saying there's nothing wrong with pandering to a demographic as long as it's the majority??

[Hythlodaeus]

a recent media controversy.

You keep saying this as if anything of the sort is what's being discussed here.

I'm saying it, because this issue has seen a more active discussion recently, due to an increased media coverage on the subject, like the link in the first post of this thread, and many other articles in popular video game related news networks, and because I believe overthinking is the worst way to tackle this sort of overly specific problem, that a)not only is being overexaggerated and b)is actually part of a larger issue that I believe to be far more important and less discriminatory.

For me the real question is not "How to write female characters in video games" but "How to write good characters in video games".

[feminazi]

fuck off.
creating unoffensive characters to a "niche" (fuck you) is pandering so let's keep making offensive characters because that leads to less stereotypical(lol what) characters.

also by recent media whatever you mean the whole 1reasonwhy thing and how you hate it. don't have to be so obvious

[Hythlodaeus]

fuck off.
creating unoffensive characters to a "niche" (fuck you) is pandering so let's keep making offensive characters because that leads to less stereotypical(lol what) characters.

I'm not even arguing on the matter of offensive vs unoffensive, but good vs bad writing. I merely believe pandering to recent media fads is far more likely to lead to poorly written characters, and that you should try to find out what makes a good character, instead of focusing on the issue of sexuality. So please explain me what do you understand by offensive and unoffensive characters. And please give me some contextualized examples.

also by recent media whatever you mean the whole 1reasonwhy thing and how you hate it. don't have to be so obvious

I don't even know what that is, to be fair.

[Schoq]

For me the real question is not "How to write female characters in video games" but "How to write good characters in video games".

Trying to do the whole "I'm above the feminist because I'm completely gender neutral" thing doesn't work so well after you've defended dressing all female characters like strippers as merely "trying to appeal to consumer demographics", and in the same breath saying that worrying about your character being insulting to half the population is "pandering", "trying to please the momentary opinions of others" and "jumping into a fad", etc.

pander
 — n
3. a person who caters for vulgar desires, esp in order to make money

Can you see how defending the former and calling the latter pandering could make you look like a little bit of a giant douchebag?

[feminazi]

your argument is 1)ignore all controversies because it doesn't exist, 2)don't think too much about being unoffensive because you're never going to make everyone happy so might as well never try

the conclusion i'm getting from that is keep making shit stereotypical characters because you're never going to make "niche"(codeword for women) happy.

all sources of your boringness

disregard all recent controversies regarding female characters being objectified fanservice dolls.

I merely meant to say it's best to ignore recent media controversies,

You're never gonna be able to make everyone happy, so instead of being demanding based on other people's standards, try to be demanding with yourself until you create a character you feel truly satisified with.

If you spend too much time thinking your character should obey to this or that so it wouldn't offend X or Y, you're far more bound to create a character that feels like an artificial construct, trying to pander to a specific niche audience, than something that feels actually good and natural.

because I believe overthinking is the worst way to tackle this sort of overly specific problem, that a)not only is being overexaggerated and b)is actually part of a larger issue that I believe to be far more important and less discriminatory.

[feminazi]

you haven't posted a single thing without slipping in a "this isn't a problem!!!!11 it's pandering!111" dismissal so your intent is pretty clear.

[Hythlodaeus]

Trying to do the whole "I'm above the feminist because I'm completely gender neutral" thing doesn't work so well after you've defended dressing all female characters like strippers as merely "trying to appeal to consumer demographics", and in the same breath saying that worrying about you character being insulting to half the population is "pandering", "trying to please the momentary opinions of others" and "jumping into a fad", etc.

Now you're just making a strawman. I don't recall ever saying that all female characters should dress like strippers. My favourite ones certainly don't.

pander
 — n
3. a person who caters for vulgar desires, esp in order to make money
Can you see how calling the latter pandering but defending the former could make you look like a little bit of a giant douchebag?

Please understand I'm trying to address the issue from a writing quality perspective here. I think nothing ever good comes from writing characters to match the specific tastes of a niche that believes to be misrepresented. You will get characters that feel inherently artificial, and that try to match such a number of specific conditions, they are left with no room for an individual personality. The difference between this and a character written for a broader demographic group (in this case, both men and women who play videogames), is that you have more room to create a character that feels more unqiue, precisely because broader demographic groups aren't so picky with having a specific set of conditions to like their characters.

As far as I'm concerned, even though women are not as frequent protagonist characters as they should be in video games, I think they're far from being misrepresented in terms of personality and looks. Of course that are a few gross examples of over-sexualization of female characters, but the same thing happens with male characters as well. This is why I feel this issue shouldn't focus on gender-specific conflicts.

On one hand I understand the presentation of beauty standards of media in general (not just video games, by the way) because companies are trying to make a profit. But on the other hand I also think that if we we're going to tackle the matter of gender stereotypes, it should be made considering the whole. The root of the problem at this point is how people are represented, and not just women.

Again, I'm sorry if I offended anyone, as that was not my intention. I merely believe that general audience character writing shouldn't try to focus too much on the specific tastes of niche groups, as I feel that can easily become detrimental to the writing quality.

[feminazi]

nah i think media should focus on my tastes and stop pandering to white men

[feminazi]

gee i didn't know putting some clothes on would be Over Thinking it... i wish some Man was here to tell me they were just trying to create some Unique Characters by deflecting all criticisms. just follow your penis, brave character designer dude.

[Hythlodaeus]

the conclusion i'm getting from that is keep making shit stereotypical characters because you're never going to make "niche"(codeword for women) happy.

No, in this case, niche is a codeword for "a small and very specific group of women who have little reason to be unhappy, because the kind of characters they would like to play with already exist".

[feminazi]

holy shit they already exist i must be blind or something. shut the fuck up your problem is solved you stupid niche group, you can play beyond good and evil 10 times a day!!!!

so that's why out of the 9 games i bought last month, only one of them even let me play as the kind of character i'd like to play as (a woman, let alone an unoffensive one)

Looking at a sample of 669 games that had protagonists with discernible genders, only 24 had exclusively female protagonists. Action had the most female protagonists, shooters had even less, and role-playing games had exactly one game with a female only hero.

[feminazi]

guess what i'm unhappy. i'm the niche now, keep telling me specifically media shouldn't pander to my tastes or some shit.

[Erobotan]

uh ... stop the double posting frenzy? there is a modify button, please use it .. . unless you're grinding your post count ... which is wrong ...

and Rikka is so cute <3 !!!

[Hythlodaeus]

holy shit they already exist i must be blind or something. shut the fuck up your problem is solved you stupid niche group, you can play beyond good and evil 10 times a day!!!!

From the top of my head

Samus Aran
Joanna Dark
Elaine Marley
Momohime from Muramasa
Amaterasu
Chel
Zoey from l4d
Sarah Kerrigan
Jade from Beyond Good and Evil

Not to mention that practically every RPG made nowadays, allows you to play as a female character.

so that's why out of the 9 games i bought last month, only one of them even let me play as the kind of character i'd like to play as (a woman, let alone an unoffensive one)

I still don't get what do you understand by "unnofensive".

Looking at a sample of 669 games that had protagonists with discernible genders, only 24 had exclusively female protagonists. Action had the most female protagonists, shooters had even less, and role-playing games had exactly one game with a female only hero.

Shooters make sense, as most modern shooters a) are specifically targeted to a male audience, as women tend to dislike them and b) tend to feature a realistic military settings which women also tend to dislike. In this specific case, from a developers perspective, it's pointless to waste resources on creating extra female characters that only very few will play with. Even so, you do get a few examples, Zoey I quoted above. As for RPGs, they must have been playing the wrong games, because almost every single classic RPG allows you to pick female characters.

[feminazi]

Shooters make sense, as most modern shooters a) are specifically targeted to a male audience, as women tend to dislike them and b) tend to feature a realistic military settings which women also tend to dislike. In this specific case, from a developers perspective, it's pointless to waste resources on creating extra female characters that only very few will play with. Even so, you do get a few examples, Zoey I quoted above. As for RPGs, they must have been playing the wrong games, because almost every single classic RPG allows you to pick female characters.

post evidence for every single claim you made here.

[Hythlodaeus]

post evidence for every single claim you made here.

Google them yourself, regarding shooters, if you're not happy with common sense. As for RPGs, even many from the 80s allow you to play as women, like the Ultima series. Then just to quote a few modern examples, like Baldur's Gate, Diablo 1&2, Elder Scrolls, the Divinity series, the Might and Magic series, and practically every JRPG ever made.

[feminazi]

nah, you have to post the facts.

and i didn't ask for what rpgs let you pick a woman, considering the study wasn't talking about gender choice games