RPG tie in media and sequels eliminating diversity

[Talakeal]

Has anyone else noticed that CRPG makers treat diverse player characters as somehow "playing it wrong" when it comes to tie in media or sequels?

Lots of RPGs allow you to create a wide variety of characters and make choices in the game, but treat those choices as "non canon". I can't think of a single tie in novel or sequel where they didn't default the protagonist into a straight, white, male of "good" alignment. Also usually a human fighter in settings which have classes or non-human PCs.

Does anybody know why this is? I assume to is to make it easier for what they consider their largest demographic to identify with the character?

Can anyone provide any examples of franchises where this is not the case?

[The Glyphstone]

I generally don't read tie-in fiction of any kind, so can you give examples of when this is the case for contrast?

Baldur's Gate jumps to mind as a 'yes', but I'd call Drizzt far more iconic of the D&D brand than Adrian, and he is neither white, human, or a fighter. Good, yes, but that's because he is a protagonist.

[Giggling Ghast]

That's not really the case with extended media in the Dragon Age universe. Generally speaking, the casts of the various comics and novels have been pretty diverse. There are some straight white dudes, of course, but they don't form the majority.

[Talakeal]

That's not really the case with extended media in the Dragon Age universe. Generally speaking, the casts of the various comics and novels have been pretty diverse. There are some straight white dudes, of course, but they don't form the majority.

I am mostly talking about the PC.

The first Dragon Age kind of turned me off hardcore, so I never played any of the sequels, but do the comic and novels ever reference the game's PCs or give them cannon identities?



I generally don't read tie-in fiction of any kind, so can you give examples of when this is the case for contrast?

Baldur's Gate jumps to mind as a 'yes', but I'd call Drizzt far more iconic of the D&D brand than Adrian, and he is neither white, human, or a fighter. Good, yes, but that's because he is a protagonist.

Baldur's gate for sure.

Well, for example, in Fallout 2 we are told that the PC of the first game is your grandfather despite being given the option to play female or gay characters in the first game.

In KoToR I know that despite playing a female who was in a relationship with Carth and chose the dark side ending. Then we are told in the MMO that Revan was a male who chose the light side ending and fathered children with Bastilla.

[HolyDraconus]

I am mostly talking about the PC.

The first Dragon Age kind of turned me off hardcore, so I never played any of the sequels, but do the comic and novels ever reference the game's PCs or give them cannon identities?


I never read the comics or novels of DA but the games have the PC of DA as generic fodder who hugely doesn't matter, and Hawk's only real customizable facets are gender and who it slept with, according to DA 3.

[Dire_Flumph]

In KoToR I know that despite playing a female who was in a relationship with Carth and chose the dark side ending. Then we are told in the MMO that Revan was a male who chose the light side ending and fathered children with Bastilla.

Given all the choices in Star Wars, it's a disappointing trend.

X-Wing - Keyan Farlander, officially White Human Male

TIE Fighter - Maarek Stele, officially White Human Male

X-Wing: Alliance - Despite not getting a first name, "Ace" Azzameen's in-flight character model looks pretty White Human Male

KotOR - The Republic Soldier is a White Human Male, romances Bastila

KotOR2 - Only aversion I can think of, the Exile is in canon Meetra Surik a Female Human (still white though...)

Jedi Academy - Jaden Korr, officially White Human Male


- Edited KotOR entries as I suppose they could still be considered spoilers.

[Fyraltari]

In KoToR I know that despite playing a female who was in a relationship with Carth and chose the dark side ending. Then we are told in the MMO that Revan was a male who chose the light side ending and fathered children with Bastilla.

KOTOR II makes the player choose Revan's gender and alignment at thz beginning of the game but defaults to Light-Side Female. It was the MMO's tie-in book, Revan that establishes him as male (and the Exile, the protagonist of the second game, as female and named "Meetra Surik").

The Elder Scrolls series absolutely refuses to canonize any of the choices the player make with regards to their protagonists, to the point that when the Nerevarine show up in the semi-canon... thing C0DA, they appear as an amalgamation of every possible race/gender they could have been. Also Skyrim hints that the protagonist of Oblivion completed the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood series of quests and (confirmed by a tie-in book) that whoever did Clavicus Vile's quest (might not be the protagonist) chose the bad ending.

[Hopeless]

Are you familiar with the Scourge of Worlds dvd tie in to the 3.0 Greyhawk setting?

[JadedDM]

I seem to recall that the Default Warden/Hero of Fereldan from Dragon Age Origins is a female Dalish elf warrior. That said, the character was depicted as a white human male warrior in all of the trailers and marketing materials before the game came out.

[Kitten Champion]

I seem to recall that the Default Warden/Hero of Fereldan from Dragon Age Origins is a female Dalish elf warrior. That said, the character was depicted as a white human male warrior in all of the trailers and marketing materials before the game came out.

That's true of Mass Effect as well. There is alternative box art with the female Shepard on it, apparently, but I haven't seen it in person.

Still, trailers and most of the game art is that white marine-looking dude usually standing in front of space that we're familiar with.

I actually read a ME novel a long while ago for whatever reason, Shepard wasn't in it and I don't think they specified anything about him/her. Which was probably for the best.

[druid91]

I mean, the novelization of Shadowrun Hong-Kong turned the main character into an archetypal murderhobo with no real description of who he was beyond his callousness towards death and magpie-like attraction to loot.

[The Glyphstone]

I mean, the novelization of Shadowrun Hong-Kong turned the main character into an archetypal murderhobo with no real description of who he was beyond his callousness towards death and magpie-like attraction to loot.

So, your typical Pink Mohawk shadowrunner then?:smallwink:

[J-H]

The examples I was going to cite have already been mentioned. I have bought fewer than ten games in the last decade.... and Factorio, Civ4, and CK2 don't count for this discussion!

Business decisions are made with an eye towards safety.
Made a Native American character, but you're not Native American? Appropriation, insensitivity, yada yada.
Made a Bantu character, but didn't consult tribe members from the authentic area, and got some of the religion wrong? Prepare to be excoriated.
You wrote a female character, but she's too masculine? Insensitive and inauthentic; she's too feminine? She's weak and dependent or something.
Made a bland, boring white guy? Congratulations, 80% of the industry is doing it, so your risk of being the designated target for the daily hate mob goes down substantially.

[Rynjin]

That's true of Mass Effect as well. There is alternative box art with the female Shepard on it, apparently, but I haven't seen it in person.

It's just on the reverse side of the cover; the little paper slip inside the plastic sheet is double sided.

[J-H]

(semi-OT)
I miss the days when games actually had physical packaging and manuals and CDs and stuff. It's all digital purchases nowdays, and most publishers are too lazy to provide a nice 30-60 page written manual to read and refer to before playing.

[False God]

Given all the choices in Star Wars, it's a disappointing trend.

X-Wing - Keyan Farlander, officially White Human Male

TIE Fighter - Maarek Stele, officially White Human Male

X-Wing: Alliance - Despite not getting a first name, "Ace" Azzameen's in-flight character model looks pretty White Human Male

KotOR - The Republic Soldier is a White Human Male, romances Bastila

KotOR2 - Only aversion I can think of, the Exile is in canon Meetra Surik a Female Human (still white though...)

Jedi Academy - Jaden Korr, officially White Human Male


- Edited KotOR entries as I suppose they could still be considered spoilers.


Star Wars is a HUGE offender on this subject. If we include some of the EU game material with no character choice (Force Unleashed, Fallen Order) we end up with at least 2 more straight white male protags, probably more but I don't play many of the "you can't customize your character at least a little" titles.

----
I think the OP got it spot on, our corporate overlords want to appeal to the most generic user-base, which they still see as largely white and male. I'm not going to get into if it isn't or isn't, only that I suspect that's their perception.

[Kitten Champion]

It's just on the reverse side of the cover; the little paper slip inside the plastic sheet is double sided.

Oh, that would explain why I've never seen it despite seeing lots of game boxes on shelves over the years and owning the game myself. I knew it existed because there's clear images of it online by online retailers, but I was thinking it was maybe for later releases like the ME collection box set.

It doesn't seem like they did that for Dragon Age II. Which, considering there is a default look for Hawk of either gender and you're purely limited to a human character like with ME, it doesn't seem like a herculean task to include both of them in the art. Especially as the DAII cover is so boring especially compared to the stark simplicity of Origins or the neat silhouette of Inquisition, it's just the pre-gen warrior dude ambling towards you.

Then there's this PC box I found in a brief google search --

https://vgboxart.com/boxes/PC/45422-dragon-age-2-full.jpg

I thought "oh, they have both Hawks but they're in different classes" but then I took a second glance and realized that's Isabela... for some reason.

[factotum]

This happens in any genre. I heard, for instance, that the "default" character in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey was supposed to be Kassandra, but the powers that be at Ubisoft insisted they make it Alexios instead, which is why he appears in the game's loading screen.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

On this one has to take some historical aspects into account. Pretty much it is correct that the white male protagonist is the safer route most most companies take nowadays. In the older times white males were the majority of target consumers of the product regardless of what form it took. That is not say individuals of minority groupings didn't read, play, or watch such things but white males were the majority. But as time moved forward more people of every background are getting into it as "nerd" culture became more of the norm.

[Devonix]

On this one has to take some historical aspects into account. Pretty much it is correct that the white male protagonist is the safer route most most companies take nowadays. In the older times white males were the majority of target consumers of the product regardless of what form it took. That is not say individuals of minority groupings didn't read, play, or watch such things but white males were the majority. But as time moved forward more people of every background are getting into it as "nerd" culture became more of the norm.

Chicken or the egg. Is it all they pick because it's the safer. expected route. Or is it the safer, expected route, because it's all they pick.

People don't see an idea as the norm, unless they see people using it everywhere.

[Rodin]

It's worth noting that a lot of these games are relatively old - 10-20 years for most of the ones listed. "White male protagonist syndrome" started getting major attention about 5 years ago. Companies are becoming more aware of this, but change will be slow as shown by the Assassin's Creed example.

Are more recent RPGs engaging in this? I've largely fallen out of the Western PC RPG genre, so I'm not familiar with games like Pillars of Eternity I and II. Is there continuity between those games, and if so is there a default protagonist?

Wasteland 3 doesn't address the issue...I think. There were Rangers in Wasteland 2 but you don't get more specific info than that. Your custom character(s) do not get mentioned by name or gender.

[Talakeal]

Another classic example would be the original Diablo. Three PC options, white male fighter, black male wizard, white female rogue. Guess which one the sequels decided was canon?



On this one has to take some historical aspects into account. Pretty much it is correct that the white male protagonist is the safer route most most companies take nowadays. In the older times white males were the majority of target consumers of the product regardless of what form it took. That is not say individuals of minority groupings didn't read, play, or watch such things but white males were the majority. But as time moved forward more people of every background are getting into it as "nerd" culture became more of the norm.

Yeah. But the example games I am talking about didn’t necessarily have a white male PC, but they then later went back and clarified that anything else was “nom-canon”.

[Peelee]

Star Wars is a HUGE offender on this subject. If we include some of the EU game material with no character choice (Force Unleashed, Fallen Order) we end up with at least 2 more straight white male protags, probably more but I don't play many of the "you can't customize your character at least a little" titles.

Shadows of the Empire. Jedi Academy, I think (haven't played).

[Talakeal]

Shadows of the Empire. Jedi Academy, I think (haven't played).

Jedi Academy was mentioned upthread. Dark Forces / Jedi Knight do indeed have a white human male protagonist without customization options iirc.

[Kitten Champion]

Another classic example would be the original Diablo. Three PC options, white male fighter, black male wizard, white female rogue. Guess which one the sequels decided was canon?


They all are. The Rogue became Blood Raven, the Sorcerer becomes The Summoner, and the Warrior obviously became Diablo.

In both Diablo and Diablo II the canon explanation is a party defeated Diablo, but in D1 they all ended up as monsters while in D2 it's largely implied they all went on with their lives with some being referenced indirectly in D3.

[dancrilis]

If you have tie in media which references an individual person then telling us some characteristics of that person makes sense - and I suspect that Lesbian Black Halfling Women are less common for players then Straight White Human Men, so it makes sense that when choosing the canon character you don't select a Lesbian Black Halfling Woman (or other potentially rare build).

Further to this nowadays having a Lesbian Black Halfling Woman is also likely to come with additional grief from some people saying 'you should have done W, X, Y and Z better' and from other people saying 'you are pandering' - hassle you can largely avoid by sticking to a semi-default set of expected characteristics.

Now you might decide that your tie-in work will tell the story of a Lesbian Black Halfling Woman as the PC in the wider work and that is your decision (along with whoever is paying you etc) but if you do so you know it (and you) will be graded on a number of elements which might have very little to do with your actual tie-in work.

[Talakeal]

They all are. The Rogue became Blood Raven, the Sorcerer becomes The Summoner, and the Warrior obviously became Diablo.

In both Diablo and Diablo II the canon explanation is a party defeated Diablo, but in D1 they all ended up as monsters while in D2 it's largely implied they all went on with their lives with some being referenced indirectly in D3.


That is implied, but afaik never actually confirmed. Still, my point stands, it was the straight white male who went on to be the "main character" who defeated Diablo and went on to be the main villain of the sequel while the rest were, at best, mini bosses who were defeated early in the game with no real fanfare.

[Drascin]

If you have tie in media which references an individual person then telling us some characteristics of that person makes sense - and I suspect that Lesbian Black Halfling Women are less common for players then Straight White Human Men, so it makes sense that when choosing the canon character you don't select a Lesbian Black Halfling Woman (or other potentially rare build).


Thing is, statistics seem to point out that by now there are more women playing rpg videogames than men. So if you were really concerned with representing demographics, main character would probably be a straight woman, not a straight man.

The difference is that most women are generally willing to shrug and play a dude, because, well, with the way the industry has historically been if you weren't willing to deal with being a dude you couldn't have gotten into rpgs in the first place - but a lot of dudes will simply not play your game if you have a girl in the cover.

[KillianHawkeye]

a lot of dudes will simply not play your game if you have a girl in the cover.

Why, though? I've never understood this.

As a straight white male, I actually prefer playing a female character for variety's sake at the very least.

[Peelee]

Why, though? I've never understood this.

Imean, I know why, even if I don't understand why.

[Talakeal]

Thing is, statistics seem to point out that by now there are more women playing rpg videogames than men. So if you were really concerned with representing demographics, main character would probably be a straight woman, not a straight man.

The difference is that most women are generally willing to shrug and play a dude, because, well, with the way the industry has historically been if you weren't willing to deal with being a dude you couldn't have gotten into rpgs in the first place - but a lot of dudes will simply not play your game if you have a girl in the cover.

Which is wierd, because in MMOs guys playing female characters is common, the other way around not so much.

[JadedDM]

but a lot of dudes will simply not play your game if you have a girl in the cover.

That's certainly the industry assumption, but is it actually true? Did a lot of guys refuse to play Tomb Raider, Mirror's Edge or Horizon Zero Dawn because the lead was a woman?

It reminds me of how the industry assumption is that single player games are dying (or already dead), but there's quite a bit of evidence that isn't the case, either.

[Cikomyr2]

Thing is, statistics seem to point out that by now there are more women playing rpg videogames than men. So if you were really concerned with representing demographics, main character would probably be a straight woman, not a straight man.

The difference is that most women are generally willing to shrug and play a dude, because, well, with the way the industry has historically been if you weren't willing to deal with being a dude you couldn't have gotten into rpgs in the first place - but a lot of dudes will simply not play your game if you have a girl in the cover.

That's just not true. And it's a made up argumentation by dumbasses who like to project identity politics in video game debates.

[KillianHawkeye]

How do they even get these statistics?

Is it wrong to wonder if some part of an alleged female gamer audience is just kids using their mom's credit cards to buy their games?

[factotum]

Which is wierd, because in MMOs guys playing female characters is common, the other way around not so much.

Didn't somebody quite famous say at one point that they always played female characters in third person games, because if you're going to spend a considerable amount of time looking at someone's backside, it might as well be an attractive backside?

[Rodin]

Which is wierd, because in MMOs guys playing female characters is common, the other way around not so much.

I'm the opposite.

In a singleplayer game, I default to a female character unless there is some compelling reason to pick a male character (class or some unique backstory locked to a male that I am interested in).

In a multiplayer game, I almost never play a female character. The multiplayer character is me, whether or not there is any actual roleplaying associated with it. This only becomes more true if it's open multiplayer - I don't want to represent myself as female to people I do not know.

In an MMO? Oh hell no. Every account I've heard of female characters in MMOs shows them getting harassed and propositioned based on their name and gender, and if they reveal their true gender they're attacked as sickos and perverts. Even if I was female you could not pay me to play a female character in an MMO for an extended period.

[KillianHawkeye]

Didn't somebody quite famous say at one point that they always played female characters in third person games, because if you're going to spend a considerable amount of time looking at someone's backside, it might as well be an attractive backside?

Well... that's not the ONLY reason! :smallbiggrin:




In a multiplayer game, I almost never play a female character. The multiplayer character is me, whether or not there is any actual roleplaying associated with it. This only becomes more true if it's open multiplayer - I don't want to represent myself as female to people I do not know.

In an MMO? Oh hell no. Every account I've heard of female characters in MMOs shows them getting harassed and propositioned based on their name and gender, and if they reveal their true gender they're attacked as sickos and perverts. Even if I was female you could not pay me to play a female character in an MMO for an extended period.

Yeah, people can be problematic. I'd probably never RPG with someone online that I don't know. Other games are probably less of an issue? I can't imagine anyone caring as much if you pick a female character in an online fighting game or online shooter.

[Rodin]

Yeah, people can be problematic. I'd probably never RPG with someone online that I don't know. Other games are probably less of an issue? I can't imagine anyone caring as much if you pick a female character in an online fighting game or online shooter.

Fighting games are a bit different because there is a mechanical difference between the characters. When I see someone playing Princess Peach in Smash Bros I don't assume that player is female - I assume they are really good with Princess Peach.

[Vahnavoi]

Thing is, statistics seem to point out that by now there are more women playing rpg videogames than men. So if you were really concerned with representing demographics, main character would probably be a straight woman, not a straight man.

A question that ought to be asked: how strongly do women even want female characters?

Consider: in literary circles, in fanfiction and in comics there is a notable segment of the female fanbase who obsesses over male characters, in both romantic and sexual ways. I don't think this is sufficient explanation for lack of female characters. I'm just saying that if you give them Cloud and Sephiroth, a lot of women won't miss Tifa and Aerith.

---


Didn't somebody quite famous say at one point that they always played female characters in third person games, because if you're going to spend a considerable amount of time looking at someone's backside, it might as well be an attractive backside?

I don't know who said it first, but ironically, the one person who said this to me verbatim in real life was a woman, explaining why she didn't want ugly female characters.

[LaZodiac]

A question that ought to be asked: how strongly do women even want female characters?

Very. Next question.

[Fyraltari]

Very. Next question.

What's the deal with airline food?

[Peelee]

What's the deal with airline food?

Why don't they make the whole plane out of it?

[Dragonus45]

A question that ought to be asked: how strongly do women even want female characters?


Hard to say, from a pure "what are we spending money on" perspective women are traditionally more likely to buy baby groot then actually support women lead media en masse, but most of that history also comes from an industry trying to commit Electra or Catowoman onto an unsuspecting populace then assuming the failure meant no one wanted women lead comic movies. With stuff like Wonder Woman out the story seems to be changing and if nothing else the second Wonder Woman movie and Black Widow literally cannot fail as some of the only highly anticipated movies coming out any time soon.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Fyraltari
What's the deal with airline food?

Airlines still have food?

[Cikomyr2]

Airlines still have food?

There are still airlines?!

[Keltest]

There are still airlines?!

Food still exists?

[Kitten Champion]

Food still exists?

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

[Lord Raziere]

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Or third option: is it..... SURREALITY?

[Vahnavoi]

Very. Next question.

That's not a sufficient answer for analyzing consumer behaviour of large masses of people.

Compare and contrast:

"How much water does growing rice even need?"

"A lot. Next question."

The answer may be correct in a trivial way, but nobody's growing any rice with that level of knowledge.

[Fyraltari]

That's not a sufficient answer for analyzing consumer behaviour of large masses of people.

Compare and contrast:

"How much water does growing rice even need?"

"A lot. Next question."

The answer may be correct in a trivial way, but nobody's growing any rice with that level of knowledge.

This is a false analogy. You have near-limitless number of options when it comes to the quantity of water you can give to a plant, while, when it comes to making a female protagonist you only really have three* choices: A) The game has a male protagonist, B) the game has a female protagonist, C) the game allows the player to choose wether they want a female or a male protagonist.

Also one can't quantify how mych they want something with greater precision than "very", it's a subjective feeling, it can't be objectively measured.

*Nonewithstanding non-binary protagonists.

[Vahnavoi]

This is a false analogy. You have near-limitless number of options when it comes to the quantity of water you can give to a plant, while, when it comes to making a female protagonist you only really have three* choices: A) The game has a male protagonist, B) the game has a female protagonist, C) the game allows the player to choose wether they want a female or a male protagonist.

The point being made was LaZodiac's answer isn't informative enough to answer the question, the comparison is about logical form of an argument, it's not analogy about game making at all.

Also, there are more than three possible answes to the question I posed. You aren't answering it, you are substituting it with a different, easier one. You are also wrong: you omitted options D) game has a protagonist without sex, E) game has a protagonist of ambigious sex, F) game has no personalized protagonist.


Also one can't quantify how mych they want something with greater precision than "very", it's a subjective feeling, it can't be objectively measured.

You can when you are talking about masses of people instead of individuals. Nevermind that for other subjective things, such as pain, we do have quantitive measurements. "How much does this hurt on a scale of 1 to 10?" is a useful measure of pain and when you repeat it the question with enough people, in enough situations, you start to get generally useful and predictive information of how people experience pain.

You can do the same thing with wants. You can also look at how people prioritize conflicting wants in their actual behaviour. If people say they want healthy food, but repeatedly buy pizza instead, clearly how much they want healthy food is not enough to overcome how much they want pizza. When you say we can't measure this, you aren't providing an answer, you are excusing yourself from giving one because you think it's hard to get.

[Peelee]

The point being made was LaZodiac's answer isn't informative enough to answer the question

What kind of answer were you hoping for?

[Vahnavoi]

For example, any analysis of relative amounts of male, female, etc. characters in fiction written by women for women.

That's why I brought up slash fanfiction etc.,: there is a well-known segment of fiction which is written by women for women that's centered on male characters. If your answer to "how much women want female characters?" is "Very", it explains nothing of this.

Fanfiction in general ought to be examined in greater detail, because last I checked, literary fanfiction (and writing in general) is female-dominated hobby. Fanfiction is self-indulgent, not made to be marketed, and the barrier of entry is owning a keyboard and having free time. So if you want an idea of how common different kinds of protagonists are in absence of market pressures, that's closest you can get.

[Peelee]

For example, any analysis of relative amounts of male, female, etc. characters in fiction written by women for women.

Far be it from me to speak for women, but that seems like a remarkably unexpected response to extrapolate from "how strongly do women even want female characters?"

[LaZodiac]

Far be it from me to speak for women, but that seems like a remarkably unexpected response to extrapolate from "how strongly do women even want female characters?"

As a woman, I can tell you that slash fic and "wanting to be represented in media" are not comparable. They're not even relevant with each other, especially not in the way being presented. There's no reason to give a more detailed response because the premise from the outset is inherently flawed, to the point of feeling like it is being argued in bad faith. I'm not saying it IS that, but it sounds like it, because as said "fan fiction involving male characters" is not indicative of how many women want male protagonists.

You know what it DOES indicate though? That there are enough male protagonist led pieces of media that even women will end up writing for a male main character more often than female.

[Vahnavoi]

Far be it from me to speak for women...

This isn't a matter of "speaking for women". The question was posed for everyone reading.


... but that seems like a remarkably unexpected response to extrapolate from "how strongly do women even want female characters?"

Okay? Take a moment to actually consider the question seriously and then tell me, what's your standard for a useful answer to it?

---


As a woman, I can tell you that slash fic and "wanting to be represented in media" are not comparable. They're not even relevant with each other, especially not in the way being presented.

False. They are comparable because satisfying those wants pulls from the same, limited pools of resources: time, money, etc.

Because of this, how much people want this or that is supremely relevant for explaining and predicting what actually makes it to the final product, how well the final product does, etc. For example, when an author sits at the keyboard to actually write a story, whether they want a gay romance more than a triumphant tale of social justice decides which makes it on the paper. Which the audience wants more decides which story gets remembered and which one is forgotten. I'd like to say "it's that simple" but the real point is that it's anything but.


There's no reason to give a more detailed response because the premise from the outset is inherently flawed, to the point of feeling like it is being argued in bad faith. I'm not saying it IS that, but it sounds like it, because as said "fan fiction involving male characters" is not indicative of how many women want male protagonists.

This why we can't have nice things. Because a question looked and felt dishonest, you didn't actually try giving it a serious answer. Also, look at the part I underlined. While writing, you replaced the question I asked with a different one. I didn't ask "how many". I asked "how strongly". How many people want a thing and how much they want that thing are two different questions, with different answers and different implications.


You know what it DOES indicate though? That there are enough male protagonist led pieces of media that even women will end up writing for a male main character more often than female.

You aren't wrong, but you're still answering the wrong question. Again: fanfiction has a really low barrier for entry. You need a keyboard and free time. There is limited external pressure to make female fanfic writers write about male protagonists, so the simplest explanation for female writers writing male protagonists is that they want to stronger than they want to write female protagonists. Because, again: if they wanted female protagonists more, they'd write that instead.

You can start analyzing this by taking any female author and looking at how much time they spend writing what types of stories. Do this enough times, with enough authors, and you can start spotting real trends among female authors. Repeat with enough people reading those stories, and you can start spotting real trends among female audiences.

I'd like to say "it's that easy" but the real point is anything but. The basic principle is easy, gathering data and properly analyzing it is hard. That's why big companies sometimes fail to meet consumer needs and wants: they are constantly expending more resources on analyses like this than any of us have, and they still get it wrong.

[BeerMug Paladin]

On the forum topic, I'm always rather baffled at the lack of diversity in RPGs, but haven't played much of those choose-your-character based sequel ones. I did recall when I played Bloody Roar being rather enamored with a couple of the unconventional characters included in the game. The sequel removed those characters and replaced their moveset-inherited counterparts with more conventional stock characters, which I was rather disappointed to see done.

This why we can't have nice things. Because a question looked and felt dishonest, you didn't actually try giving it a serious answer.

I'm not sure that question is possible to give a serious answer.

There's all sorts of issues comparing fanfiction to original fiction as you propose. For one thing, most established franchises have way more male characters that could be chosen as the focus. So if we assumed that the choice of characters a fan may write fanfiction around was actually totally random, the result would still be to write mostly male characters.

In order to consider fanfiction production any kind of relevant measure, we'd have to find some way to account for that kind of inherent bias. And there just isn't one. How are you going to guess- en masse- the motive fans have behind the choice of character to focus on in a fanfiction? And even if you did that, how are you going to rate how "badly" the community is wanting that representation? With fanfiction you can't even use the (extremely poor) justification of looking at how well it sells.

By the way, just speaking of myself, my ideal would be to see more main characters in proportions that more accurately reflect the global human population, rather than a subset of a subset of a privileged one. That would include all kinds of identity backgrounds, various disabilities and life conditions.

[JadedDM]

I don't know who said it first, but ironically, the one person who said this to me verbatim in real life was a woman, explaining why she didn't want ugly female characters.

Interesting. So just to be clear, in this particular instance, a single woman making a claim was a 'sufficient answer for analyzing consumer behaviour of large masses of people,' in your view?

[Dargaron]

You know what it DOES indicate though? That there are enough male protagonist led pieces of media that even women will end up writing for a male main character more often than female.

That's an extremely dishonest conclusion to draw, because it presupposes cause and effect. It assumes that any woman-written piece of fiction with a male protagonist was not a choice of the woman, but either generated by random chance or compelled by outside forces. It denies agency to women who did knowingly and intentionally write with a male protagonist by slying implying "You didn't really want to do that."


Interesting. So just to be clear, in this particular instance, a single woman making a claim was a 'sufficient answer for analyzing consumer behaviour of large masses of people,' in your view?

They never said anything of the sort. The quote in question was talking about how men tend to play as female characters in MMOs and their general (memetic) reasons for doing so. Vahnavoi responded that, in their experience, those reasons are not male-exclusive. They made no claim that women in general play female characters because they prefer to look at an "attractive backside," or that men do not.

[Rodin]

By the way, just speaking of myself, my ideal would be to see more main characters in proportions that more accurately reflect the global human population, rather than a subset of a subset of a privileged one. That would include all kinds of identity backgrounds, various disabilities and life conditions.

So why do we not get that, especially in videogames?

Broadly speaking there are two main appeal factors when it comes to videogame characters: Wish fulfillment and Identification.

Wish fulfillment is escapism. Bob the 42 year-old accountant with a bald spot doesn't want to play a balding accountant in a videogame. He wants to play Krug the Exterminator, Scourge of the West. An oiled up barbarian that can do all the things he can't in real life.

Identification is playing someone who resembles you. At the most basic level this comes down to gender - males are more likely to play males and females are more likely to play females. I'm more likely to play a techie character in a game because I'm a techie person in real life. Etc.

This is by no means universal - the human experience is a rich rainbow so diverse in color we can never hope to see all of them at once. However, it works as a good general rule when you are designing something with universal appeal.

And therein lies the problem. The people who write videogames are the people who make them. For a variety of reasons that quickly delve into political depths best not discussed the vast majority of video game creators has historically been white, nerdy males. As far as I'm aware this is still largely true, especially at the upper levels.

These writers create what they find appealing, which leads to the huge swathe of white male protagonists. When someone suggests a minority group (including *gasp* female) the "universal appeal" argument comes out. The demographic charts come out and the marketing department gets called in.

The only solution is getting true representation within the companies that create these products. We're still a long way off from that, and I don't see it getting fixed any time soon. If we have proper representation in 20 years I'd be happy.

The good news is that the Internet and social media appears to be accelerating this process. Digital distribution makes indie and amateur games more accessible. Social media is making companies warier of appearing to lack diversity.

I'm hopeful for the future. It's just going to take a while to get there.

[Mechalich]

And therein lies the problem. The people who write videogames are the people who make them. For a variety of reasons that quickly delve into political depths best not discussed the vast majority of video game creators has historically been white, nerdy males. As far as I'm aware this is still largely true, especially at the upper levels.

Historically a large proportion of popular video games have been and are made in Japan, so actually a great many video game creators are nerdy Japanese males, not white ones.

[Rynjin]

You aren't wrong, but you're still answering the wrong question. Again: fanfiction has a really low barrier for entry. You need a keyboard and free time. There is limited external pressure to make female fanfic writers write about male protagonists, so the simplest explanation for female writers writing male protagonists is that they want to stronger than they want to write female protagonists. Because, again: if they wanted female protagonists more, they'd write that instead.

You can start analyzing this by taking any female author and looking at how much time they spend writing what types of stories. Do this enough times, with enough authors, and you can start spotting real trends among female authors. Repeat with enough people reading those stories, and you can start spotting real trends among female audiences.

I'd like to say "it's that easy" but the real point is anything but. The basic principle is easy, gathering data and properly analyzing it is hard. That's why big companies sometimes fail to meet consumer needs and wants: they are constantly expending more resources on analyses like this than any of us have, and they still get it wrong.

Fan fiction is inherently constrained, in some ways. It works with a base canon as a starting point.

This means that anything beyond that base canon is a CHANGE. Something someone would need to go out of their way to do.

Since most media is led by male characters, most fanfiction is going to be about those same male characters as a matter of course.

A more interesting tangent would be to look at web serials, which have the exact same barrier for entry.

Of the current top 10 serials, 7 are female led, 2 are male lead, and one is ??? lead (Super Minion). A similar trend is seen with the all-time top 10, which are 60% female led as well.

The authorship is there. The audience is there. The only thing that isn't there is willingness from publishing companies to capitalize on it as a widespread trend.

[Mechalich]

I think there's an issue involving conflating issues of media with issues of genre here.

Since fanfiction has been brought up I'll use that as an example because I have written a lot of fanfiction and I am active in fanfiction communities.

Yes fanfiction, as a whole, is dominated by female writers and female readers. But that's dependent on genre, not the genre of the source materials mind you, but the genre of the fanfics themselves. Specifically, fanfic is dominated by females writing and reading romances (this includes numerous sub-groups includes mush, slash-fic, shipping, and many more). Fanfic written in other genres, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror, whatever, has a much more balanced gender breakdown in terms of both authorship and readership. This situation is perfectly reflective of existing print media in basically every way, so it should surprise no one.

Video games are a medium, but each video game also has a genre, and male and female interest simply is not evenly distributed across different genres. There are genres with a heavily male-skewed player base, genres with a heavily female skewed playerbase, and genres that are more mixed.

Consequently, questions regarding representation in video games are actually two questions: representation within genre and representation between genres. You can make games that have been traditionally favored by one genre more appealing to the other, or you can simply make more of a type of game that appeals primarily to the traditionally underrepresented gender.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Dargaron
It assumes that any woman-written piece of fiction with a male protagonist was not a choice of the woman, but either generated by random chance or compelled by outside forces. It denies agency to women who did knowingly and intentionally write with a male protagonist by slying implying "You didn't really want to do that."

I’m glad someone called this out.

I know women who are professional authors who choose to write male protagonists. That is entirely their choice, not forced on them by anything or anyone, only the concepts that appealed to them and the stories they wanted to tell.

[druid91]

So why do we not get that, especially in videogames?

Broadly speaking there are two main appeal factors when it comes to videogame characters: Wish fulfillment and Identification.

Wish fulfillment is escapism. Bob the 42 year-old accountant with a bald spot doesn't want to play a balding accountant in a videogame. He wants to play Krug the Exterminator, Scourge of the West. An oiled up barbarian that can do all the things he can't in real life.

Identification is playing someone who resembles you. At the most basic level this comes down to gender - males are more likely to play males and females are more likely to play females. I'm more likely to play a techie character in a game because I'm a techie person in real life. Etc.

This is by no means universal - the human experience is a rich rainbow so diverse in color we can never hope to see all of them at once. However, it works as a good general rule when you are designing something with universal appeal.

And therein lies the problem. The people who write videogames are the people who make them. For a variety of reasons that quickly delve into political depths best not discussed the vast majority of video game creators has historically been white, nerdy males. As far as I'm aware this is still largely true, especially at the upper levels.

These writers create what they find appealing, which leads to the huge swathe of white male protagonists. When someone suggests a minority group (including *gasp* female) the "universal appeal" argument comes out. The demographic charts come out and the marketing department gets called in.

The only solution is getting true representation within the companies that create these products. We're still a long way off from that, and I don't see it getting fixed any time soon. If we have proper representation in 20 years I'd be happy.

The good news is that the Internet and social media appears to be accelerating this process. Digital distribution makes indie and amateur games more accessible. Social media is making companies warier of appearing to lack diversity.

I'm hopeful for the future. It's just going to take a while to get there.

I mean.... this is a nice theory and all....

But doesn't it kind of fall apart when you run into the issue that most games aren't about white males? And this isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Sonic the Hedgehog has been around for decades. Pong doesn't have any recognizable people at all, Echo is a dolphin. One of the biggest games of the decade was about Cartoon birds being catapulted at pigs.

Not to mention that a lot of the games in question that people complain about are made in Japan rather than America.

[Lord Raziere]

I’m glad someone called this out.

I know women who are professional authors who choose to write male protagonists. That is entirely their choice, not forced on them by anything or anyone, only the concepts that appealed to them and the stories they wanted to tell.

Well of course its their choice, they aren't a powerful corporation who has so much power that they influence society as a whole with the media they put out and thus can drown out whatever they write with the sheer amount of resources, and thus has more collective responsibility than these women. individuals aren't the problem, its forces and organizations who write not for the sake of the story itself but because they do so in a targeted away to control others, especially when they do so at kids and teens. the goal of such representation is to make sure that we get the right morals out of it at least. if we're going to be dominated by corporate overlords we might as well make sure they have to adhere to the highest standards so that society does to.

[druid91]

Well of course its their choice, they aren't a powerful corporation who has so much power that they influence society as a whole with the media they put out and thus can drown out whatever they write with the sheer amount of resources, and thus has more collective responsibility than these women. individuals aren't the problem, its forces and organizations who write not for the sake of the story itself but because they do so in a targeted away to control others, especially when they do so at kids and teens. the goal of such representation is to make sure that we get the right morals out of it at least. if we're going to be dominated by corporate overlords we might as well make sure they have to adhere to the highest standards so that society does to.

I... Really don't think Nintendo or Sony are trying to control society with subliminal messaging in videogames. They make games they think will sell. That's all. They try to guess what will bring them the most money for their time, effort, and money invested in making a game... And do that.

Not to mention that several pop culture juggernauts came from the equivalent of fan fiction. Dungeons and Dragons being the big example.

[Lord Raziere]

I... Really don't think Nintendo or Sony are trying to control society with subliminal messaging in videogames. They make games they think will sell. That's all. They try to guess what will bring them the most money for their time, effort, and money invested in making a game... And do that.

Not to mention that several pop culture juggernauts came from the equivalent of fan fiction. Dungeons and Dragons being the big example.

there is no need for subliminal messages. they were never mentioned and are not relevant. here is the thing: your only looking at one side of the equation, when society is a cycle just like nature is: the company produces a work they think reflects society as it is NOW. the people think that is what society SHOULD BE and thus imitate what is given to them, especially if they are young people in formative years who don't know how society works yet and thus look to any example to figure it out no matter how badly advised. they are kids are teens after all and are not adults like you who get the complexities and thus make responsible choices.

thus if society is bad, the company will sell what is bad because they don't care about how it should be, they just want your money which IS a form of control, because it drains power from you, because money is power, as is the image someone or something projects to get money. to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. thus to control money and what people think of you is power and control. if left unchecked, this cycle of appealing peoples base natures will produce bad things to young people who won't take it as an option of many one can responsibly indulge sometimes but as an ideal to follow and perpetuate. thus to rectify that we make sure that they instead appeal to our better natures. this creates a cycle of positive tradition to perpetuate, as people taught positive things will perpetuate positive things. media is a form of communication. it an artistic, entertaining form of communication but something is being communicated nonetheless. there is no escaping that a message is communicated as people read into something whether you like it or not, and that message can be damaging or detrimental if not caught and corrected in time.

the only way to not send a message is to not make a story. the only way to not influence another is silence. these are just facts as I know them. thus we need to make sure that our media portrays how we should be to some extent. do you propose to let such things decay instead?

[J-H]

A more interesting tangent would be to look at web serials, which have the exact same barrier for entry.

Of the current top 10 serials, 7 are female led, 2 are male lead, and one is ??? lead (Super Minion). A similar trend is seen with the all-time top 10, which are 60% female led as well.

The authorship is there. The audience is there. The only thing that isn't there is willingness from publishing companies to capitalize on it as a widespread trend.

Huh, I hadn't even noticed that. Of the original web serials I'm reading:
Vaudevillain - Male lead, but could just as easily be female without changing anything important
Practical Guide to Evil - Female lead, could be male without changing much
Wandering Inn - Female lead, Erin wouldn't work as a male character.
Last Angel series - Female-ish AI warship is lead.
Worth the Candle - Male lead.

60/40 female-led split, and I hadn't even noticed. Worm and Ward also had female leads; Pact didn't, but I didn't like it and will never re-read it or anything in that toilet of a universe. I am keeping up with Super Minion, but it's still relatively short and slow-updating compared to the others.

I don't really care whether a story is about men or women, as long as it's well-written, has character development, and is fun to read... which is why "Pride and Prejudice" (old BBC version) is interesting to watch, even though it's essentially a "slice of life" story with nothing epic in it.

Now, if a story gets preachy about social or political issues (most likely pushing values opposed to mine), or has too much weird stuff or sex content or gore or is too depressing (I'm never getting into WH40k), I'm out.

[Vahnavoi]

Interesting. So just to be clear, in this particular instance, a single woman making a claim was a 'sufficient answer for analyzing consumer behaviour of large masses of people,' in your view?

Haha, no. I was remarking on the irony of only personally encountering (alleged) stereotypical male behaviour in a female person. I do not know how well her behaviour matches general trends.

---


I'm not sure that question is possible to give a serious answer.

Of course it's possible. Are you sure you aren't conflating "serious" with "correct"? Because I freely admit, and admitted in my last post, that giving a correct answer is hard.


There's all sorts of issues comparing fanfiction to original fiction as you propose. For one thing, most established franchises have way more male characters that could be chosen as the focus. So if we assumed that the choice of characters a fan may write fanfiction around was actually totally random, the result would still be to write mostly male characters.

What you are doing here is laying out a particular null hypothesis. What you are not doing is putting numbers on your hypothesis and checking how well it compares to reality.

Put differently: you are taking step 1 out many to answering my question... and then turning around as if it's an obstacle to answering it. When what you should be doing, if you wanted to get any knowledge out of this, is continue with steps 2, 3 and 4: quantifying your null hypothesis, gathering data from real character distribution in fanfiction and comparing the gathered data to it.


In order to consider fanfiction production any kind of relevant measure, we'd have to find some way to account for that kind of inherent bias. And there just isn't one. How are you going to guess- en masse- the motive fans have behind the choice of character to focus on in a fanfiction? And even if you did that, how are you going to rate how "badly" the community is wanting that representation? With fanfiction you can't even use the (extremely poor) justification of looking at how well it sells.

I already gave you two metrics you can use: time spent writing and time spent reading. You can contrast that with surveys on fanfiction authors and readers, explicitly asking their motivations. You say there's no way to account for bias. I doubt you thought about it too hard, because there's an entire field of statistical analysis dedicated to solving these kinds of problems. There is existing methodology for this.

Nevermind that you can still get information out of a biased sample: a study on motives of female fanfiction writers and audience might not generalize across all of women, but it can still yield accurate information on what fanfiction writers and audience. The way to find out, is to take another sample, like Rynjin suggested to do with web serial producers.

But the most important point here is this: you can't know how well your sample matches reality before you actually go through all this work. So how do you know motives and wants of female fanfiction authors and audience don't match up with general female population if you didn't already do all this work?

Because if you did do the work, please post it. It would be an excellent answer to my question.

If you didn't: you are banging your head against a basic problem of basic research: you can't tell how relevant your research untill after you've done it.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Of course it's possible. Are you sure you aren't conflating "serious" with "correct"? Because I freely admit, and admitted in my last post, that giving a correct answer is hard.
You're asking me to develop a method for an objective measure for a subjective thing. Academics in the humanities generally don't work that way. How badly do people want the color blue to be used in art?

Sure, I could spend some time to justify some method to create numbers to talk about, but the question itself represents a failure to grasp the subject matter on its own terms, so it's pointless to engage with that approach. I'm not interested in talking about numbers and I don't think talking about numbers will improve anyone's understanding. All it would do is serve to obfuscate the real understanding.

I think that the original answer of "very" is sufficiently precise and detailed. Representation matters unless you're already represented well.

[Vahnavoi]

You're asking me to develop a method for an objective measure for a subjective thing. Academics in the humanities generally don't work that way. How badly do people want the color blue to be used in art?

Did you miss what I pointed about measuring pain? We can put numbers on subjective experiences, carry out surveys on how people feel and derive useful results out of that data. You're also ignoring my proposed method of measuring time used on a behaviour without any real comment.

Also there are studies on human color preferences. It's an important field of study not just for art, but for designing indoor lighting and computer screen.Seriously, Google "studies on color preference".


Sure, I could spend some time to justify some method to create numbers to talk about, but the question itself represents a failure to grasp the subject matter on its own terms, so it's pointless to engage with that approach. I'm not interested in talking about numbers and I don't think talking about numbers will improve anyone's understanding. All it would do is serve to obfuscate the real understanding.

I think that the original answer of "very" is sufficiently precise and detailed. Representation matters unless you're already represented well.

Uh huh. Sure. No numbers, no analysis, no answer can be better than "very".

I highly doubt it.

[warty goblin]

Did you miss what I pointed about measuring pain? We can put numbers on subjective experiences, carry out surveys on how people feel and derive useful results out of that data.

I've worked with reported pain score data; it's not quite pure garbage, but it's very, very close. Leikert scale preference reporting is somewhat useful, but quite difficult to get much out of in practice; most analyses just combine strong and moderate agree/disagree so you can do rank-sum type analyses. And when comparing multiple options this way you generally end up having to make a strong and untestable assumption of stochastic ordering.

None of this even touches on the often substantial gaps between reported preferences and what people actually do. This can be because the person thinks there's an answer they should give, or simply that the people who self-select to answer surveys are very much not representative of the general population. Modern surveys usually operate at a single digit response percentage, which means selection bias can be catastrophically huge, even if people are honestly describing their preferences.

So yes, you can do these things, to an extent. If you have access to a validated survey frame, the expertise in survey design to not hopelessly bias your instrument before you even deploy it, the technical staff to collect the results, and a PhD or two to adjust for non response, deploy an appropriate imputation method, and generally crunch the numbers.

But hey, if that's your standard of evidence, go for it. I'd suggest looking at the romance market for starters, which is majorit written by, read by, edited by, and published by women. And i guarantee features a strong majority of female protagonists, particularly in the subgenres targeted at women. Myself, I'm pretty happy to accept the radical premise that "people generally like to see people like themselves in their media" as not needing anybody here deploying a $50k survey instrument to verify.

[Vahnavoi]

$50K study is lot for an individual, but approaches a routine expense when you get to market analyses done by corporations.

That's the thing. There are people out there who are already collecting relevant data and doing relevant work. It's depressing that never makes it to public fora and instead I get "numbers can't give you information, just asking the question shows you're wrong!"

Also, here:


None of this even touches on the often substantial gaps between reported preferences and what people actually do.

Why'd you think my suggested measurement for collecting data was time used on behaviour, with survey as contrast? I know full well teasing correct information out surveys, especially with small sample sizes, is hard. That's grounds for doing or at least hoping for better surveys, not proclaiming it's impossible to get anything useful out of them.


Myself, I'm pretty happy to accept the radical premise "people generally like to see people like themselves in their media"

I wasn't asking whether women want to see female protagonists, I was asking how strongly. I already pointed out these are different questions with different answers and different implications. Accepting that premise leaves the answer to my question still hanging in the air.

[Giggling Ghast]

The first Dragon Age kind of turned me off hardcore, so I never played any of the sequels, but do the comic and novels ever reference the game's PCs or give them canon identities?

Sorry I missed your question earlier. The answer is a hard no. The DA tie-in comics actively avoid referencing the games’ three protagonists except in the most general way.

[Keltest]

Sorry I missed your question earlier. The answer is a hard no. The DA tie-in comics actively avoid referencing the games’ three protagonists except in the most general way.

This is a specific intention by the developers, because they dont really want to canonize the Warden to that degree and invalidate the choices of players who made something different.

[Cikomyr2]

This is a specific intention by the developers, because they dont really want to canonize the Warden to that degree and invalidate the choices of players who made something different.

Which, paradoxically, then invalidates *all* players choice because the story never ever show any consequence or importance of these choices. So the choice might just never have happened in the first place. Everything these choices touch just becomes a small filler box that is swappable between two outcomes - like who is the dwarf at the Empress of Orlais's court. Is it a representative of Harrowmont or Bhelen? Yay, consequences!!

[Keltest]

Which, paradoxically, then invalidates *all* players choice because the story never ever show any consequence or importance of these choices. So the choice might just never have happened in the first place. Everything these choices touch just becomes a small filler box that is swappable between two outcomes - like who is the dwarf at the Empress of Orlais's court. Is it a representative of Harrowmont or Bhelen? Yay, consequences!!

I mean, within the games, thats what Dragon Age Keep is for. Theyre the representative of whichever one you set up as the canon timeline for your current playthrough. As far as putting the Warden in the games, i think its just that theyre so much more variable that the resources needed to let you customize them for a hypothetical DA4 just arent there.

Also, they totally canonized at least some story elements. In the book canon, Alistair became king. Even if you play Inquisition with him as a warden, he's king in canon.

[Giggling Ghast]

Also, they totally canonized at least some story elements. In the book canon, Alistair became king. Even if you play Inquisition with him as a warden, he's king in canon.

Yes, and the Dark Horse comics are also written based on certain assumptions (Anders died and Fenris lived; in fact, Fenris is starring in his own comic coming out in March).

HoWEVER! The “canon” of the books and the comics are still not the “canon” of the games. Player canon still takes precedence over whatever is in the extended media.

Also, even with certain choices being made, they deliberately avoid any reference to the race, skin colour, gender or sexuality of the Warden, Champion or Inquisitor. And that was the OP’s particular bugbear.

[Keltest]

Yes, and the Dark Horse comics are also written based on certain assumptions (Anders died and Fenris lived; in fact, Fenris is starring in his own comic coming out in March).

HoWEVER! The “canon” of the books and the comics are still not the “canon” of the games. Player canon still takes precedence over whatever is in the extended media.

Also, even with certain choices being made, they deliberately avoid any reference to the race, skin colour, gender or sexuality of the Warden, Champion or Inquisitor. And that was the OP’s particular bugbear.

Well, in DA2 Hawke's family will actually change appearance based on the player's customizations. So if Hawke has dark skin, his siblings will also have dark skin, for example. Other than that, i dont think anybody ever mentions skin color or gender of anybody in Thedas except as a literal physical descriptor when it becomes relevant.

[Giggling Ghast]

Yes, skin colour is pretty irrelevant, outside of the odd reference.

Gender does matter a wee bit more in Thedas. In the Chantry, men cannot be priests or sit the Sunburst Throne; the reverse is true in the Imperial Chantry. Also, gender determines your role amongst the qunari.

But in general, no one gives a fork about gender or skin colour. Race, social class, nationality and magical ability are far more important.

[Keltest]

Yes, skin colour is pretty irrelevant, outside of the odd reference.

Gender does matter a wee bit more in Thedas. In the Chantry, men cannot be priests or sit the Sunburst Throne; the reverse is true in the Imperial Chantry. Also, gender determines your role amongst the qunari.

But in general, no one gives a fork about gender or skin colour. Race, social class, nationality and magical ability are far more important.

And even among the Qunari its flexible. They dont quite use genders the same way that we do. It might be more accurate to say that your role determines your gender, and that sometimes your physical attributes obfuscate things a little bit unless you speak up about it.

[Giggling Ghast]

And even among the Qunari its flexible. They dont quite use genders the same way that we do. It might be more accurate to say that your role determines your gender, and that sometimes your physical attributes obfuscate things a little bit unless you speak up about it.

Well, they do have a work-around in cases where a qunari's talents don't really match their gender, and that work-around is basically "We made a mistake on this form, you're actually a woman/man."

Which would be great if you actually wanted to be the opposite gender, but maybe not so great if you prefer the gender you were born as.


Which, paradoxically, then invalidates *all* players choice because the story never ever show any consequence or importance of these choices. So the choice might just never have happened in the first place.

Tell that to every Dragon Age player who romanced Alistair in DAO and then had to choose between sacrificing him or Hawke in DAI.

[Keltest]

Well, they do have a work-around in cases where a qunari's talents don't really match their gender, and that work-around is basically "We made a mistake on this form, you're actually a woman/man."

Which would be great if you actually wanted to be the opposite gender, but maybe not so great if you prefer the gender you were born as.

Contrary to what Solas says, the Qunari do actually have some choice here. If you like being a man and you like being a soldier, then even if youre also wise and intelligent, they arent going to force you to become a priest instead. Iron Bull only touches on it, but you need both aptitude and desire before theyll have you switch jobs up like that. They dont want people being miserable in their day to day if they can help it, that leads to bad work even from skilled workers.

[Giggling Ghast]

Contrary to what Solas says, the Qunari do actually have some choice here. If you like being a man and you like being a soldier, then even if youre also wise and intelligent, they arent going to force you to become a priest instead. Iron Bull only touches on it, but you need both aptitude and desire before theyll have you switch jobs up like that. They dont want people being miserable in their day to day if they can help it, that leads to bad work even from skilled workers.

Mmm, that was not quite my read on the situation. From what I understand after speaking with the Iron Bull, all qunari are assessed by the Tamrassans for what role they might be best suited for. Bull was initially slotted for the military until they figured out he had a talent for spywork on top of fighting, so they put him in the Ben-Hassrath. But choice never really entered into it — Iron Bull compares it to being like a block of stone and being sculpted into the shape you were always supposed to be.

And while I haven't really had a chance to question any at length, the Tal-Vashoth I have encountered have generally expressed dissatisfaction with their role under the Qun.

There is also the fact that the qunari practice eugenics, specifically breeding qunari for certain roles. So in a sense, it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy — I would imagine if I was as big and muscular as Iron Bull, I would probably prefer being a warrior over, say, a scientist.

[Keltest]

Mmm, that was not quite my read on the situation. From what I understand after speaking with the Iron Bull, all qunari are assessed by the Tamrassans for what role they might be best suited for. Bull was initially slotted for the military until they figured out he had a talent for spywork on top of fighting, so they put him in the Ben-Hassrath. But choice never really entered into it — Iron Bull compares it to being like a block of stone and being sculpted into the shape you were always supposed to be.

And while I haven't really had a chance to question any at length, the Tal-Vashoth I have encountered have generally expressed dissatisfaction with their role under the Qun.

There is also the fact that the qunari practice eugenics, specifically breeding qunari for certain roles. So in a sense, it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy — I would imagine if I was as big and muscular as Iron Bull, I would probably prefer being a warrior over, say, a scientist.

It comes up when Bull is describing the Aqun-Athlok. He says that you can request to be transferred to a different role for another gender that you normally wouldnt have been considered for, and it may be allowed if you show aptitude for it. Its not just something that they declare for you while youre growing up.

[Giggling Ghast]

My view on the Aqun-Athlok is that it's basically the qunari's way of "cheating" their own very strict roles on gender and not letting particularly talented individuals go to waste. Oh, this woman is really good at fighting? Well, this woman is actually a man! And this man who shows an aptitude for medicine? Clearly they must actually be a woman!

Of course, if you actually are transgender, then you're probably happy to live as the opposite gender. But I would hesitate to suggest the Aqun-Athlok system works for everyone, or that it's an easy path to switch jobs. Dissatisfaction in one's role would generally be dealt with through re-education.

[Keltest]

My view on the Aqun-Athlok is that it's basically the qunari's way of "cheating" their own very strict roles on gender and not letting particularly talented individuals go to waste. Oh, this woman is really good at fighting? Well, this woman is actually a man! And this man who shows an aptitude for medicine? Clearly they must actually be a woman!

Of course, if you actually are transgender, then you're probably happy to live as the opposite gender. But I would hesitate to suggest the Aqun-Athlok system works for everyone, or that it's an easy path to switch jobs. Dissatisfaction in one's role would generally be dealt with through re-education.

Speaking as a non-trans individual, my understanding is that "transgender" as we use the term wouldnt even apply to Qunari society because their gender roles are basically job qualifications that, as you note, can be cheated anyway. For something that both genders can do like (presumably) being a baker, there wouldnt be any gender lines to cross to begin with.

[Giggling Ghast]

Well, keep in mind that not all Qunari (followers of the Qun) are qunari (giant horned humanoids). There may be converts to the Qun who just feel like they were born as the wrong gender. Krem would be an example, if he ever felt like converting.

That said, I don't think the Qunari are accepting of people who identify as genderfluid, non-binary, genderqueer or whatever. That sort of thing doesn't really jibe with Qunari society. Any Qunari identifying as such would probably be sent to a re-education centre or just get their minds wiped so they're docile labourers.

[Keltest]

Well, keep in mind that not all Qunari (followers of the Qun) are qunari (giant horned humanoids). There may be converts to the Qun who just feel like they were born as the wrong gender. Krem would be an example, if he ever felt like converting.

That said, I don't think the Qunari are accepting of people who identify as genderfluid, non-binary, genderqueer or whatever. That sort of thing doesn't really jibe with Qunari society. Any Qunari identifying as such would probably be sent to a re-education centre or just get their minds wiped so they're docile labourers.

I dont think that would be accurate, because the Qunari wouldnt understand what being "non-binary" for example would even mean to the Qun. Youre a soldier and therefore a man. Youre a priest and therefore a woman. Youre part of the Ben-hassrath so it doesnt matter. Genderfluidity and being non-binary require a societal context that just isnt present for the Qunari.

[dancrilis]

That's the thing. There are people out there who are already collecting relevant data and doing relevant work. It's depressing that never makes it to public fora and instead I get "numbers can't give you information, just asking the question shows you're wrong!"


You can also gather such information fairly easily.
For example go on Steam and use the tag 'Female Protagonist' and you can see a wide list of games (currently 3,339) which feel it is worth listing themselves under that category (out of 78,502), those figures change to 1,098 and 15,728 if you add the RPG tag.

So it is not a major element which is worth highlighting at least and that is despite some games on Steam being solo developers with no ties to established media so they could develop/highlight such if they wanted.



I wasn't asking whether women want to see female protagonists, I was asking how strongly. I already pointed out these are different questions with different answers and different implications. Accepting that premise leaves the answer to my question still hanging in the air.

Taking the above as a guide I would say 'not very strongly' seems to be the answer as some of the games above do have Female Protagonists but don't feel it is worth including the tag (so they show up in the wider search but not the narrower search), and the majority don't have them at all.
But if you wanted more completeness you might need to do a deeper dive then I am willing to do (and look places other then Steam).

However all of this seems non-relevant to the topic of tie in material when choice is allowed and when the main character is referenced.

[Giggling Ghast]

I dont think that would be accurate, because the Qunari wouldnt understand what being "non-binary" for example would even mean to the Qun. Youre a soldier and therefore a man. Youre a priest and therefore a woman. Youre part of the Ben-hassrath so it doesnt matter. Genderfluidity and being non-binary require a societal context that just isnt present for the Qunari.

I agree with you. That's why I think if you had, say, an elven convert telling their new superiors that they were neither male or female, they would probably be forced to conform to a certain role or just have their brains erased.

[Keltest]

I agree with you. That's why I think if you had, say, an elven convert telling their new superiors that they were neither male or female, they would probably be forced to conform to a certain role or just have their brains erased.

I dont think there would be much trauma. If they were a female Ferelden soldier who converted, then they would just join the Antaam and maybe trip over pronouns in qunlat for a while. When Sten tried to explain it in Origins, it really did seem as simple as "You are a warrior and therefore male". There just arent enough moving parts in terms of Qunari gender roles for the issue to get caught on, i think. I think the perception of it being alien and different and oppressive would be a significantly larger obstacle to conversion for an LGBT+ individual than the actual day to day experience would be.

[Dragonus45]

Which, paradoxically, then invalidates *all* players choice because the story never ever show any consequence or importance of these choices. So the choice might just never have happened in the first place. Everything these choices touch just becomes a small filler box that is swappable between two outcomes - like who is the dwarf at the Empress of Orlais's court. Is it a representative of Harrowmont or Bhelen? Yay, consequences!!

Yea, it's one of the key reasons the series fails at having any real narrative across games.

[Vahnavoi]

You can also gather such information fairly easily.
For example go on Steam and use the tag 'Female Protagonist' and you can see a wide list of games (currently 3,339) which feel it is worth listing themselves under that category (out of 78,502), those figures change to 1,098 and 15,728 if you add the RPG tag.

So it is not a major element which is worth highlighting at least and that is despite some games on Steam being solo developers with no ties to established media so they could develop/highlight such if they wanted.

If you want to do the analysis I suggested on Steam games, this a start, but it's just half the puzzle: we'd also want data on playtime female gamers use on these games.


However all of this seems non-relevant to the topic of tie in material when choice is allowed and when the main character is referenced.

We don't know if it is relevant before we answer the question. I'll sketch a few hypotheses to explain how it could be relevant:

If women want female protagonists strongly: we'd expect the ability to choose a female protagonist to serve as a selling point to female audience. We'd also expect carry over to tie-in media: the presence of the female protagonist ought to be a selling point to female audience. So if tie-in media does away with a female protagonist, we'd expect a smaller female audience for the tie-in media than the original game.

If women want female protagonists weakly: we'd expect the ability to choose female protagonists to not be much of a selling point. This carries over to tie-in media: we'd expect the removal of a female protagonist to not impact size of female audience; presence of the female protagonists wasn't why women played the game and it isn't why they consume the tie-in media.

The core hypothesis here is that strong wants influence behaviour more, while weaker wants get drowned out by others.

[Talakeal]

Also keep in mind confounding factors. Elektra and Cat Woman being terrible movies kept us from getting Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman for years after all.

[Lethologica]

If you want to do the analysis I suggested on Steam games, this a start, but it's just half the puzzle: we'd also want data on playtime female gamers use on these games.
Uh uh. You've been insisting on downright professional standards of rigor from others, so consistency requires noting that this characterization of the puzzle is woefully inadequate by those standards.

For a somewhat out-of-date example, EEDAR in 2012 found (https://web.archive.org/web/20130321064024/http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them) that female-led action, shooter, and RPG games were few and far between, reviewed about as well as (slightly better than) their choice- and male-led counterparts, and sold less well. However, they also found that female-led games in these genres had less than half the marketing budget behind them. (These are just averages, so unfortunately don't tell us much about the distribution.) So we can't say much about how the disparity in per-title sales reflects gamer preferences (never mind just female preferences) based on that data, due to the substantial confounding effect.

To address that question is worthy of, well, a $50k study, I think you'll agree.

For the record, another notable omission in this discussion has been not insisting on the same degree of rigor for the thus-far underexamined assumption that of course men prefer male characters. If we are putting all this effort into trying to show that women would be okay if they only had Cloud and Barrett, we should put the same effort into showing that men would be okay if they only had Tifa and Aerith.

Now that the issue has been appropriately generalized, let's take a look at some of those $50k studies:


A 2015 survey of 1,583 U.S. students aged 11 to 18 by Rosalind Wiseman and Ashly Burch indicated that 60% of girls but only 39% of boys preferred to play a character of their own gender, and 28% of girls as opposed to 20% of boys said that they were more likely to play a game based on the character's gender. The authors interpreted this as meaning that the gaming industry's focus on male protagonists stifled sales to girls more than it promoted sales to boys.[105]

In a 2017 survey of 1,266 gamers by Quantic Foundry, 89% of female gamers considered the inclusion of female protagonist option in games somewhat, very or extremely important; 64% of male gamers expressed the same views. Self-identified "hardcore" gamers of both genders, on average, considered a female protagonist less important than "core" or "casual" gamers did.[106]
Source: Gender representation in video games - Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_video_games)

Of course, there are reasons to be suspicious of this data as well. Many of the caveats about survey data mentioned upthread could apply here. Also, for example, it may be that women are more active in their gaming gender preference precisely because it is scarce, and this effect would disappear or reverse with more parity in the medium. I'm sure the studies themselves discuss other limitations, and that someone reading said studies with a critical eye could find more. And I haven't exactly done a literature review to find out whether these studies represent the general academic consensus on this topic, or how it relates to the industry consensus. I'm just doing a little googling.

Still, thus far, it appears to be the case that most women consider female representation important, a majority (of teens, anyway) express that in their choice of protagonist, a substantial fraction explicitly adjust their purchase preferences for this reason, and women outstrip men on all these measures.

Is that enough to satisfy this tangent? If not, I would suggest that the only person in this discussion you can count on to deliver the rigor you desire is yourself. Surely that will prove more fruitful than hours - days - of dismissing other people's comments because they have not yet handed you rigor on a silver platter.

EDIT: Haha, I totally forgot to ask whether anyone even bothered to verify that the Female Protagonist tag on Steam is the least bit comprehensive before using that data to conduct analysis. But that seems like a hard question (which is to say, I haven't been able to say yea or nay after ten minutes of poking around). Never mind the difficulties of comparing to the nonexistent Male Protagonist tag (there are not only two options here, so it's not like we can just take the complement).

[Sapphire Guard]

Going back to fanfic for a moment, some franchises do have a wide array of characters of both genders with elaborate backstories.

Danganronpa for instance is built on a premise of eight girls and eight boys with elaborate backstories (plus a spinoff with two female leads), but the male characters are generally more popular fanfic wise.

Resident Evil Games all have a male lead and a female lead, things like Valkyria Chronicles have a giant multi gendered cast with elaborate backstories. But generally the most popular characters in fanfic, (at least going by the blunt instrument that is the character tags on AO3) are male, and not necessarily the leads.

About those webserials, do we know the gender of the creators?

[Vahnavoi]

Lethologica: sincerest thanks for those links. I won't comment on them because I'll be busy reading them. Instead, I'll comment on the point that's... well, arguing about arguing.


Uh uh. You've been insisting on downright professional standards of rigor from others, so consistency requires noting that this characterization of the puzzle is woefully inadequate by those standards.

[...]

Is that enough to satisfy this tangent? If not, I would suggest that the only person in this discussion you can count on to deliver the rigor you desire is yourself. Surely that will prove more fruitful than hours - days - of dismissing other people's comments because they have not yet handed you rigor on a silver platter.

Pro-tip: if someone presents a hard question to you on the internet and you have neither means nor time to answer it... you can just not answer it, for zero time and effort spent. Nobody here has to give a satisfactory answer. I already noted midway through I don't expect people reading this thread to have resources to answer the question flawlessly.

But, and this is a pretty important but, even a few links to out-of-date studies is better than "we can't do better than 'very', numbers don't give you information and you're wrong for even asking the question". Even if realistically the only publicly available information I can expect to see is someone finding a link I missed on Google, that still makes the discussion better. You made thus discussion better; for that, again, you have my sincerest thanks.


For the record, another notable omission in this discussion has been not insisting on the same degree of rigor for the thus-far underexamined assumption that of course men prefer male characters. If we are putting all this effort into trying to show that women would be okay if they only had Cloud and Barrett, we should put the same effort into showing that men would be okay if they only had Tifa and Aerith.

Yes, the complentary question is equally important. So props to you for beating me to pointing it out.

[LaZodiac]

No one was saying "numbers don't give you answers". We were saying that these points were self evident.

It's cute how you want to reframe things as if you're the noble and unabashed good guy here, when you are the one who came in here with weaselly "just asking questions" style complaints about how clearly, if women wanted women protagonists, they'd simply make them. To quote: "A question that ought to be asked: how strongly do women even want female characters?

Consider: in literary circles, in fanfiction and in comics there is a notable segment of the female fanbase who obsesses over male characters, in both romantic and sexual ways. I don't think this is sufficient explanation for lack of female characters. I'm just saying that if you give them Cloud and Sephiroth, a lot of women won't miss Tifa and Aerith."

You are the one who raised this issue, and provided nothing beyond anecdotes for this. You are the one coming into the thread about how we really wish there was more girl protagonists and saying "actually if we give you more boys it's okay because you're just horny for boys". Everything that follows was because of your taking offense at being dismissed, and it suddenly became our burden to prove you wrong with numbers.

In short; you got the answer you deserved.

[Lethologica]

Pro-tip: if someone presents a hard question to you on the internet and you have neither means nor time to answer it... you can just not answer it, for zero time and effort spent. Nobody here has to give a satisfactory answer. I already noted midway through I don't expect people reading this thread to have resources to answer the question flawlessly.

But, and this is a pretty important but, even a few links to out-of-date studies is better than "we can't do better than 'very', numbers don't give you information and you're wrong for even asking the question". Even if realistically the only publicly available information I can expect to see is someone finding a link I missed on Google, that still makes the discussion better. You made thus discussion better; for that, again, you have my sincerest thanks.
I spend entirely too much time on Quora. I have a lot of practice skipping over questions I'm not equipped to answer even if I think the answer should be clear. So I hear that.

However, it goes both ways. If the goal is to obtain a satisfactory answer, the appropriate investment into the discussion is a clear ask that outlines the satisfactory standards of rigor from the outset, and further engagement only if satisfactory answers appear forthcoming. Engaging in other ways (to wit, badgering people who give unsatisfactory answers) is somewhere between unproductive and counterproductive, and gives the impression of other motives for engagement.

[M1982]

Jedi Academy was mentioned upthread. Dark Forces / Jedi Knight do indeed have a white human male protagonist without customization options iirc. JK2 Addon had a white female protagonist who also rose to much fame in the extended universe

[Dire_Flumph]

JK2 Addon had a white female protagonist who also rose to much fame in the extended universe

That was Mara Jade, and she had been a prominent EU character for seven years by that point. Unfortunately that's probably the only reason a female protagonist got greenlit for it.

[Dragonus45]

No one was saying "numbers don't give you answers". We were saying that these points were self evident.

Self evident is a bit strong.