blog好き

Jul 21 2003

Categories: l33t

3 Comments »

There was this talk at Stanford a few months ago about gender and videogame character design. It’s an interesting read. I personally think the author makes a few good points, like how Tomb Raider sucks and DOAX is a pin-up game. I’m not going to debate those points.

My problem with the article is how it assumes guys pick female characters to be “different from the norm”. We pick them because, well, would a guy rather stare at Sophitia’s unhumanly figure or Voldo’s absolute freakishness? My Soul Calibur 2 user data seems to vote for Sophitia. So why shouldn’t I expect a girl to pick someone bishoujo-ish like Kilik or Yunsung? Why do girls have to pick another female character? I mean, X picks Dizzy; HB picks Anji, and all’s right in the world.

Since generally there are more male characters in a game than female ones, then this should be more eye candy for the ladies– come on, Mario, Link, Fox, Pikachu (?), Ganondorf, Bowser, Marsh, Wario, and the rest of Nintendo’s franchise stars are all male, except Samus, but know knew before that Justin Bailey code?

And don’t forget games like James Bond Nightfire and X-Files Resist or Serve which are only vehicles for showing off how studly Pierce and David can be in polygonal glory. Take away the violence, and all you have left is the female-centric version of Tomb Raider. It’s not my fault that girls don’t play these games. I guess they’re smarter than the rest of us and won’t be tricked by sex appeal.

But– wait– how many games are really based on sex appeal? Did my roommate pick up Dark Alliance because of the innkeeper babe? Or did he buy it because he likes action RPGs as evidenced by the 1000+ hours that he has logged on Diablo 2? Or do people play Metroid just to see Samus in her undies? Or is it for that “gameplay” that’s so overhyped. I disagree with that “how difficult it is to play as some female sorc” and “we need more Sophitias”. Well, let’s just say that Virgina’s storyline is the easist of all the Wild Arms 3 characters. For every example of some “hard difficult” female selection, there’s an opposite example. The author just doesn’t play as much as I do, I guess. And I still haven’t seen a girl pick Sophitia on Soul Cal 2. Where is this logic that girls want to play as butch girls? I think the Anji/bishoujo angle is much more realistic.

For the most part, sex appeal seems to be an afterthought. Most games are devoid of it. In fact, there’s only one genre that requires it– fighters. I’m not sure why, but each fighter must have some betty factor to make it popular. Maybe this is why MK tanked but GG keeps going (surely it can’t be the fighting system). For a fighter like DOA that does have an incredible betty factor, who the hell uses Hitomi in the game? All the guys use her in DOAX, but when it’s time to play DOA2, no one picks her.

I think sex appeal is greatly overrated in games. It’s not something that I go, “Wow, Dizzy has a nice tail so I think I’ll play that over Mechassault right now.” It really does seem like an afterthought– in Initial D Special Stage, the focus is correctly on the arcade-style racing, but, for some ungodly reason, sometimes before a race, it’ll show a pic of the two girls from the anime in bikinis. It makes no sense in the context of the game, but it’s in there. Is it there to drive sales? I doubt it. Is it there just to offend girls? I doubt that too. Is it there because of some horny programmer? Heck yea.

The whole problem is that girls see gaming as primarly a male activity. Yet, it’s a great bonding and social activity, as evidenced by Rag Online communities and War3 clans. The article fails to mention that the popular games are the ones like War3 which strike a wonderous balance of gameplay and online interaction. This doesn’t even touch the surface. I’ve met a lot of people over Live through Mechassault, and X has done the same through GG. Gaming is now more social than ever, and this is what should be stressed in trying to appeal girls to gaming. Maybe if they stopped focusing on how bad Tomb Raider is and how excellently addicting killing porings can be, we may just get somewhere with this. I don’t really feel gaming to be a solitary activity even when playing something single player like FFX-2. I still hop online and chat with people about how kawaii Rikku looks as a black mage.

The problem really stems from the perception of gaming. Games are not about boobs and being alone in a dark room. (I play my DOAX in a brightly-lit room, thank you very much.) Seriously, with the internet and online play, games are very much a social activity, and gameplay drives sales, not breasts, jiggles, or xtreme Jello action.