RPG tie in media and sequels eliminating diversity

[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 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

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.