To paraphrase

[etherial]

"Due to our commitment to a rich, detailed experience, we decided to write out half the population of the universe".

h/t kadath

Comments

[etherial.livejournal.com]

There are legitimate cost requirements for detailed boob physics, it's true. But to put "realistic drawbridge physics" as a higher priority than "having women at all" is nonsense and the line I paraphrased above is an absolute lie. You can't have a "rich, detailed experience" and have no women in your game world.

[nightskyre.livejournal.com]

You can't have a "rich, detailed experience" and have no women in your game world

I completely agree; halfway. I would argue that you CAN have that experiene in a war game. It completely depends on the genre. However, if you want a realistic game environment WITH women in it, you can't have your women walking like John Wayne. The question of whether it is worth the money to engineer proper female movement if they're going to be involved in the actual gameplay. Would a woman in a game as an NPC that only appears in pre rendered sequences satiate you?

[etherial.livejournal.com]

you can't have your women walking like John Wayne.

Actually, yes, you can, because it's far better to look wrong than it is to not exist at all.

Would a woman in a game as an NPC that only appears in pre rendered sequences satiate you?

A game? No. Every game? No.

[nightskyre.livejournal.com]

Actually, yes, you can, because it's far better to look wrong than it is to not exist at all.

This is an opinion. If you have a problem with it, make your own game.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Actually, I do make games, and they have gender balance, gender equity, gender neutrality, etc. as the norm, unless I'm particularly trying to emphasize something. It's not a serious design problem. It's not a serious overhead problem. Those people are just making excuses for their male chauvinist laziness.

[nightskyre.livejournal.com]

I couldn't disagree with you more. If their goal is to #1 - Make money (and it is, even if the actual designers want to tell a story, the financiers #1 goal is that income > expense) then they're going to perform a cost benefit analysis.

They cater to a demographic in a way that is designed to achieve their ultimate goal. I think MTV should stop with reality shows and instead just play music, but people eat that crap up, so they keep making reality shows.

If you were throwing stones at merely the author, that would be fine. Your game making and their game making aren't even remotely the same in terms of scale and expense.

What's with DICE anyway? It's not fair that Faith is a girl and I have no choice in the matter. You don't even see her except in the cutscenes.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Your market driven argument requires evidence because in at least one nearby case, it's dead wrong. Every single year, the American public polls that it wants more, better, more serious news coverage and it will pay a premium for it. And every year, the news media gets dumber, constantly rehashing the same old same old. Serious market research data shows that profitability is not the driving force behind our news media. I've seen no reason to believe that's the case in video games either.

[nightskyre.livejournal.com]

The video game market is seeing a definite trend towards including women in strong antagonist or protagonist roles. I can cite many examples, as I am well educated in the subject matter (I would conjecture moreso than you)

I don't think it is a coincidence that this is a trailing indicator on the percentage of "hardcore" female gamers.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

The stories we tell shape how we see and think about the world. The more rich and detailed the video game setting, the more impossible it becomes to pretend that a game where men do everything important in the game world is an accident or a cost-cutting measure. It becomes clear that a world where women have anything important to do or say is simply not one that these people have considered.