12-03-2015, 04:07 PM
I've certainly seen a lot more female enemies in modern games, especially sandbox games. Saints Row, Fallout, Oblivion all seem to have a really even distribution of enemy genders.
It seems particularly unfair to target any sprite-based games for an unequal front due to the difficulty/space limitations of doubling the sprite work just to include equal opportunity cannon fodder.
I think that guys are usually first to be thought of as such cannon fodder due to some fairly ingrained social concepts about not directing violence towards women. This is a pretty big part of society right now, and I myself really wouldn't feel comfortable hitting a woman in real life (not that I really feel all that comfortable hitting a man either). This can be seen as a misogynistic double standard, but it's prevalent enough that popular media risks more outrage if there is lots of woman killing than if there were a lot more men being killed than women.
Besides that, in classical character tropes there is a lot of precedent for burly men thugs/brigands/soldiers, meaning that establishing such characters will immediately have a bit of a subconscious effect that brings tidbits of recollection about these previous characters, giving context to simple and underdeveloped characters where there would be none at all. Many old tropes of women have them as assassins, giant monsters/deities in mythology, or particularly frightening foes when encountered in battle. As such, the carried over context of fighting a woman designed a certain way in a game may indicate feelings of knowledge of Medusa, Scylla, Athena, Lilith, etc. This can be seen as gender dividing if looked at from one angle, but from another angle you can see it as using every part of the beast (or in this case, character) to indicate everything that you want to portray about them. From the clothing, to the weapon that they use, to the way that they style their hair, to the color of their eyes, to the contents of their pants- every part of a character is there for a reason. Where there is little depth of character, that reason may be shallow. Where there is no reason, there is only randomness which is synonymous with insanity.
But it's certainly an interesting discussion that's going on in the gaming world that may lead to some greater variety in games if people stop trying to force certain games being made in the name of equality. If you want true equality the best thing you can do is let people make games and let it be known that there are certain games that you would especially like to pay for.
Now I'm going to go back to stomping on gender neutral goombas.
It seems particularly unfair to target any sprite-based games for an unequal front due to the difficulty/space limitations of doubling the sprite work just to include equal opportunity cannon fodder.
I think that guys are usually first to be thought of as such cannon fodder due to some fairly ingrained social concepts about not directing violence towards women. This is a pretty big part of society right now, and I myself really wouldn't feel comfortable hitting a woman in real life (not that I really feel all that comfortable hitting a man either). This can be seen as a misogynistic double standard, but it's prevalent enough that popular media risks more outrage if there is lots of woman killing than if there were a lot more men being killed than women.
Besides that, in classical character tropes there is a lot of precedent for burly men thugs/brigands/soldiers, meaning that establishing such characters will immediately have a bit of a subconscious effect that brings tidbits of recollection about these previous characters, giving context to simple and underdeveloped characters where there would be none at all. Many old tropes of women have them as assassins, giant monsters/deities in mythology, or particularly frightening foes when encountered in battle. As such, the carried over context of fighting a woman designed a certain way in a game may indicate feelings of knowledge of Medusa, Scylla, Athena, Lilith, etc. This can be seen as gender dividing if looked at from one angle, but from another angle you can see it as using every part of the beast (or in this case, character) to indicate everything that you want to portray about them. From the clothing, to the weapon that they use, to the way that they style their hair, to the color of their eyes, to the contents of their pants- every part of a character is there for a reason. Where there is little depth of character, that reason may be shallow. Where there is no reason, there is only randomness which is synonymous with insanity.
But it's certainly an interesting discussion that's going on in the gaming world that may lead to some greater variety in games if people stop trying to force certain games being made in the name of equality. If you want true equality the best thing you can do is let people make games and let it be known that there are certain games that you would especially like to pay for.
Now I'm going to go back to stomping on gender neutral goombas.