My Opinions on Female Characters - Part 1: Video Games, Freedom of Choice, and I want to be a robot. 6/3/2015

I am 2 days late with my blog, and I have no one to blame but myself.

However, that will not stop me from blaming everyone else.

THANKS, P. SHERMAN OF 42 WALLABY LANE, SYDNEY.

Asshole.

Anyway, what should we talk about today?

I don't know why I should always have to be the one to come up with the topic for these blogs.

Let's talk about me.

No, not that I am beautiful, but you really don't have to stop saying that you rascal.

No, not that I am possibly the most clever person ever to design a lever shaped like the letter C so we could effectively call all "levers" C-levers" and could phase out a whole word from the English language.

Not today, anyway.

I want to talk about women.

Not like, real ones.

You all know I don't know a single thing about them.  Ask any one of them and they will tell you.

I have a feeling they may be soft and smell good, but this conclusion is only derived through reading of YouTube comments and spying on my neighbors.  Both valid in scientific study, by the way.

No, no, I want to talk about those big screen beauties themselves - the female screen character.  I mean the way women are seen on the video game, the small, and the big screens.

Hey, girl.  Why didn't you Bacall me back yesterday?

This topic turned into a HUGE pile of words, so I am going to cut this into two parts.  

PART 1

Pixels in Distress

and

PART 2

I haven't thought of a title, yet.

So, this one will cover what I have noticed (as a massively attractive and very modest overweight white mid-30's male living in the desert...so you know this shit is going to be hilarious) in video games - pertaining specifically to the male/female main character in a game.

So what on Earth and I putting myself into this swirling fray for?

Well, to be honest, it all comes back to Alice in Wonderland.

Of course it does...

Before I read the book, I saw the Disney movie, then the other movies that trickled out over the years.

When I finally read the book.  I loved it!

I still love the offshoot movies and I still love the Disney version and I still love the books.  They are all so different, each one is a new take on a classic adventure.

What Tim Burton version?  I don't recall a Tim Burton version...

I like that.

So fast forward to about a month ago.  I made an impulse buy on my PlayStation 3.  I saw a game called "American McGee's Alice" which I had played when I was much younger.

It was free, but you had to buy the second game to get it, called "Alice: Madness Returns".  Okay, I went and looked at the game again and once I saw the cover the memories flooded back of all the fun I had and I picked it up right then and there.

Now I have very fond memories of the books, movies, and animations - and also this game.  It was an amazing take on the adventures of Alice, and I ate it up like all media covering the topic before, (this is pre-Tim Burton...you know, if there was a Tim Burton version).

So I opened my wallet and make the call to own and play this game again - I wasn't excited about the second one - I had never played it and honestly didn't hear much about it when it came out so, meh.

Like most things of memory, the memory itself is far greater than the actual experience.  The first Alice game was fun, you got to eviscerate Card Soldiers and the Cheshire Cat was as Sid Vicious as one could be.  But it lacked the punch that I had become very accustomed to over the years.

I played for a bit, then it kind of fell off.  A little while later I popped in the second game, Alice: Madness Returns, and I haven't stopped my amazing trip back down the rabbit hole ever since.  It has the excellent memories from the first game I remember, combined with the more advanced game-play I am used to after so many years.  For once, a perfect marriage of the old and new.

I had happily played about 4 to 5 hours up to this point, recording my travels through this dysfunctional and somewhat more sane-in-its-insanity Wonderland when it happened.  I was talking to my friend JP.  He is the other - if you could call us this - "tech" guy on the block I work with.  He knows his TCP and UDP, and while he does use a Mac I don't really hold it against him.

I told JP I was playing this game, and he said something that probably would have never occurred to me.  I would have blindly stumbled through this game I was absolutely enthralled with, and I would have missed this apparently unmissable concept:

The main character - the one I was playing, was...in fact...A GIRL!

I was not only playing, but I was connecting to and experiencing this epic adventure with a dynamic and impressive main character, and all the time she didn't have a penis!

What a bitch!

At first I just responded with something along the lines of, "Well, yeah.  It is Alice after all." and went about my merry way.

After work I went on home and got ready to record more of Madness Returns for my YouTube channel, (shameless plug?  You're damn right!).  I was testing the headphone and the screen flashed as it always does when the recording software shakes out the cobwebs and catches up to the game.

There I was.

I was a girl - I would guess between 15 and 20 - wearing this dress that was kind of blood stained and boots that would frighten Marilyn Manson.  This was not something you'd wear to a club...you know what, I will just show you.  I was this:

(Just a heads up - this game is a game where you have to fight and stab and slay monsters and beasts, so the images will not be the ones from the Disney version)

Alice, meet the blog readers.  Blog readers, don't piss off Alice.

Why didn't I see it?

And more importantly, why did I still not care?

And even MORE importantly...look at all my cool outfits!

squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

So I am doing something called a "Let's Play".  There are dozens and dozens of people who did it before me - years ago when it came out - so it is something I am mainly doing for me.  A Let's Play is simply where you play through a game and record it in chunks.  Mine are split into 12-18 minute episodes where I play and talk and commentate.

When you commentate through a game you are supposed to keep talking and talking to keep the viewer entertained and up to date with what is happening in the game etc.  I am not very good at it, which you can see at the bottom of the blog where I have posted my videos.  But I did it through about 6 twenty-minute game play videos up to that point.

But it never occurred to me playing as a girl should matter.

I decided to have a quick remember about the other videos.  I never once referenced getting my hair done, or breaking a nail, or anything other than the same badass one-liner super action hero comments I always make.  

I am so bad at those.

When I picked up the controller and started to play I simply was a main character, (the backstory is amazing - definitely worth a Google...never mind - I did it for you HERE) who had to find answers and kick some Wonderland ass. 

And off I went, swinging my Vorpal Blade and shooting sneezes from my pepper grinder into pig snouts to find secret passages like it was perfectly normal to do so.

It never occurred to me the gender of the character was anything other than a physical presence on the screen to house this backstory and give me someone to use with which to seek vengeance and bring a less violent insanity back to Wonderland...with a lot of violence.

I made the next 3 recordings in one sitting and wrapped up to get the video online and uploaded.  My fans demand it!  I had forgotten all about the "But you're playing as a girl!" comment.

But a few hours later it started.  The creeping, oozing though worked and wormed its way into my head as I got up to get some dinner. 

Why did it matter the main character was a girl?  

I mean, it must not - I was totally immersed in the story the second I started the game up and had another amazing time playing.  Should it matter?  

Would...should...men be less tempted to buy this game because it has a female lead character?

Shit.  I would actually have to think about this.

Before I thought you were crazy...

So I debated internally for a while.  Maybe it was my already great affection towards the Alice in Wonderland world in general that allowed me to look past it?  Maybe it was because I grew up in a house with a mother and a sister...even the damn basset hound was a female!

Maybe I was the best man....ever.

I really couldn't make a definite answer.  There were too many variables and I was stuck spinning my wheels.  But, luckily, something happened to burst through into the daylight I was trying so hard to bask in.

I played another video game.

Two, in fact.  It took two for me to realize and make sense of what was going on in my head.  I cannot say this applies to everyone - easy enough to see that my brain does not follow normal curves to arrive at an endpoint.  But I will share nonetheless...

I played a game called Diablo 3.  It is a game where you and some friends get into this world, and with a top-down view you all run around on the same screen slaying monsters and crawling through dungeons.  I was playing with my friend Tashy from Australia.  We were both Barbarians, (in the game) and she was a she-barbarian, and I was a he-barbarian.

We had beaten the game and were going to try two playing through again, only with different classes of characters.  There were ones that use magic and ones that use witchcraft, ones that use bows and on and on.  I selected the Witch Doctor...

Because hell yes I want to be a witch doctor.

You have to select male or female.

I picked male, of course.

Tashy picked female, of course.

As the game goes on you gather loot and as you add it on you look more and more awesome.  Male and Female characters wear the same gear, so what did it matter?  I figure most males picked the male characters and most females picked the female characters.

Okay, fair enough.

So what does that have to do with my point?

Believe it or not I still have one...

It didn't really have an impact on me until the weekend after.  Sure enough I was playing games online with Tashy and we picked up the Borderlands Pre-Sequel.  A fantastically drawn game with a lot of characters to choose from, both male and female.

I picked a character called a Lawbringer named Nisha.  She is the one in the cowboy hat on the right.  I didn't know the character would be a female, the game just had the class and Lawbringer sounded pretty awesome.

Because hell yes I want to be a Lawbringer.

We played and talked and talked and played...and afterward that damn thought popped back into my head.  I had just played a LOT of a video game as a female character, and never once did it change what I did, what I said, or how I felt.  But at the same time, I wasn't connected to the character and who I picked wouldn't have made any real difference.

Just like Diablo 3 I didn't really care one way or the other who I played as.

Had I seen this before, I would have chosen differently...

Taken from The Borderlands Wiki:

§  Athena the Gladiator - A former Lance Assassin turned mercenary, and armed with a versatile Kinetic Aspis shield.

§  Wilhelm the Enforcer - A Hyperion engineer with a predilection to upgrade his own physical form with robotic parts.

§  Nisha the Lawbringer - A gun-waving sharpshooter with a murderous streak.

§  Claptrap the Fragtrap - A Claptrap robot supercharged with an experimental software (malware) package.

You know which one I am going to be?

YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT I AM GOING TO BE THE ROBOT!

As far as I know it doesn't have a penis, anyway.

Why am I going to be the robot?  

I have a degree in Physics.  I have a Masters from Johns Hopkins University in the sciences.

I should CLEARLY be the engineer, right?

But I would push an old lady down the stairs to be first in line to be Claptrap the Fragtrap!

Why?  For whatever insane and odd reason, I feel most connected to that description.  I won't lie - I didn't really look too carefully at the two female classes that are offered.

But, LOOK AT THIS GUY!

With the Alice game I didn't mind at all playing as a girl.

Now with DIablo 3 and Borderlands, I clearly picked the male...or robotic...characters and didn't really consider the female option.  But when I accidentally selected a female character, I didn't mind too much at all.  I don't think it affected how I enjoyed the game at all.

WHAT WAS GOING ON?

I puttered around with these thoughts for a few days and finally it began to coalesce into something coherent.

With Alice, she had a great story.  A story that made you give a shit about her and the game.  If I picked up an Alice and Wonderland game and it didn't have a great story, I wouldn't really care about that particular Alice very much.

I know this because I have played some silly Alice games to test my theory - and I couldn't care one way or another about the game or that particular Alice.

Why?

No story.

They could have replaced Alice with a kangaroo and I wouldn't have questioned it.

But if they changed the Alice in the game I was enjoying - the one with the story - to some other character I didn't care about?  Maybe a few hours of game play as the Caterpillar for no other reason than having the Caterpillar be in the game?

No, no thank you.

Now, I want to say that again.  If I played an Alice in Wonderland game where they just replaced Alice with any character for no other reason than to do it - it would turn me off of it...and I really do love the Alice genre.

I liked being Alice in that game.  It meant something to be Alice in that game.

Okay, so one point down:

I think people will play anything if it has a good story behind it.

But would men not play the game because of the female lead?  I mean, men and women both enjoyed playing as a speedy hedgehog or as a fox with some of the worst pilot-friends anywhere, ever.  But those were critters, these were people.

Would a female main character do damage to the sales?

Wasn't the case for me...

And wasn't the case when Tomb Raider was released in 1996.  The first game had such a great story to start about Lara Croft and this artifact that was unearthed - it had adventure and betrayal and intrigue - and a female lead character.  Men played the living hell out of that game.  My dad did - and I tried but I was fairly terrible at it.

Yes, you could argue her curves had something to do with it - but when you are shooting tigers and grabbing ledges trying not to die, the last thing you're doing is checking out the pixelated 64-bit ass of what is essentially YOU.

I don't think that is it.

I don't think this is as sexy as people made it out to be...

I think Alice and Lara have something in common - something I would argue female characters don't have enough of...

A GOOD STORY.

The reason I didn't give a flying dead rats ass about if my Barbarian in Diablo 3 was male or female - the reason my Witchdoctor didn't make any difference - the reason I couldn't care less if I was a male or female in a game was that it didn't matter.  But I always seemed to prefer to pick the males.  I mean, that makes sense since I am one...

But since I wasn't invested in the story, who cares?

Now, given the choice in games such as these, I would reckon most men will pick men, and women will pick women.

Why?  

BECAUSE WE WANT TO BE CONNECTED TO THE CHARACTER IN SOME WAY!

We play games to "get away" or to "take a break" so it is very true - some games don't need this sort of treatment.  Tetris sure doesn't.

But if given no reason to care about the characters - we will try to build our own connection to make the game play even more relevant - and thus upping our experience.  

If I am going to spend any real amount of time playing a game, I am going to have to care what happens to the person I am playing as.  So when that connection isn't provided by a story of some substance, I feel we search for anything that can make us give a damn about the hunk of animation we are controlling on the screen.

So I pick a male character.  

Tashy picked a female character.

In Skyrim - one of the most sucessful games in a long time - given the chance to build a character I would wager at some point a vast majority of people made their character look like themselves.

People spent upwards of an hour, (or more!) making every detail of their character just right in the beginning of the game.

I did, anyway.  And so did a few people I asked.

BUT...

If you tell me Alice has a dead family that burned in a fire, that she doesn't remember it but has a descent into madness - or is it real - where her mental state controls the fate of Wonderland, so she must retreat through the rabbit hole inside her own mind to fight her demons and set herself, as well as Wonderland, free....YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT I AM IN! 

VORPAL ME UP, YO!  LET'S STIR FRY SOME TWEEDLE'S IN MY JABBER-WOK!

Her being a "her" doesn't in any way affect my interest in the game.  That is a great story!

If you tell me I am an archaeologist who is called in to investigate a medieval device only to learn her benefactor is evil then pursuing him to his lab where I have to break in and read an ancient monk's journal which leads me to Greece and the lost city of Atlantis where I talk to gods and stow away on a ship back to freedom...DON'T WAIT UP, MA!  I'LL BE GONE FOR A WHILE!

I AM GOING TO USE THESE PISTOLS TO DO SOME ARTS AND CROFTS ON YO' ASS!

Her being a "her" doesn't in any way affect my interest in the game.  That is a great story!

But if you are going to throw a  bunch of characters with no real story - no real substance...then I will resort to picking the one I am most familiar with - or creating it if you allow that.

In a game where you play as just a simple circle, I will select the one that is my favorite color.  I feel like we do that so we feel some sort of reason to care about the game itself.

That is my conclusion.  

Here is my analysis:

We play games to escape and to enjoy ourselves.  If, given the choice, we will try to connect with the main character in whatever way we can if the game doesn't provide us a story.  Sometimes it is by color or gender or whatever else draws you to something.

So what does all this mean?

If your game involves a story - male or female lead doesn't seem to really matter.  So that means if you write the story and it has to be a male or female lead - go for it!  Your sales don't seem to be affected by the main character's gender.  Lara Croft sold missions of games and no one made much of a fuss.  It was a good story.  I play as a young lady trying to battle personal demons with a knife and a sadistic pierced pussy cat...and I love it - like many others did.

But if your game has no story - if it is a bash 'em up game - then give the people the option to connect to their character!  There is NO reason why games shouldn't have choices.  It isn't about money or cost of putting these things in, especially for the big developers, the AAA game makers.

If I put in God of War, I expect to see Kratos. That game tells HIS story.

If I put in Madness Returns, I expect to see Alice.  That game tells HER story.

But if I pop in a first person shooter - why the hell not add some female characters to play as?  What can possibly be hurt by giving what is approaching HALF OF YOUR AUDIENCE something to help them connect to your games?

I mean, I am perfectly aware not all games have a story - or even really need one.  

Call of Duty doesn't need a back story.  You are a badass and the story goes along as you do, and even then it is as gripping as an episode of the A-Team.  Enjoyable, but very, very forgetful.

So....why not give the player the choice of playing as male or female?  

IT IS A FIRST PERSON SHOOTER YOU DON'T EVEN SEE THE CHARACTER FOR 98% OF THE GAME.  

THIS ISN'T ROCKET SURGERY, GAME DEVELOPERS.

If you are throwing together a game where I play as a square - at least let me pick my favorite color square to dominate with.  

They get that in Diablo 3.  They offer people a choice in their character that allows the player to fill the gaps and build that sort of connection.  

That's why they let you choose.

So if, like in Diablo 3, you are putting out a game where there is no real inherent player-character connection, why not let the player have the same freedom with their choice?  Why alienate female gamers by forcing them to be a male?

They certainly shy away from forcing a male to play as a female.

All you have to do is animate a few extra cut scenes, maybe adjust a few polygons and pay one more voice actress or voice actor.  With the money you already make, let alone the extra people who will become a part - a possible loyal part - of your customer base you can afford it and profit more.

Games are now at the point where it is easy enough to start including more choices and more characters.

Black, white, male, female, gay, straight, and on and on.

It is really time as this is pretty embarrassing from my point of view.

To sum up my point in a short, condensed TL;DR (Too Long;Didn't Read) sentence, I would say this:

If you are not going to provide a story to connect me to the character, then at least provide me the freedom to choose a character I can better connect with myself.

So, that is what I have to say about females and stuff in the video game industry.

End.

I also have an opinion on what I think would work better on the big and small screen in terms of the whole male-female thing.  This is a perspective that was thrust upon me by the new all-female Ghostbusters movie.

The fact that it disgusts me is less about them remaking and ruining what is one of my favorite movies of all time - but how they are going about it.

Anyway, that will be in part 2 of this blog, which I will try to get out on time next week!

Thank you all SO much for reading!  If you want to check out the Alice game I was talking about you can click on the link HERE or just click on the video.  

Please hit the like button, or better yet Subscribe if you do enjoy the video.

Thank you all again, and see you in part 2!