(See told you I’d come back to this)
Edit: Here’s part 1 if anyone is interested thank you to Tumbleweed in the comments for reminding me.
I believe that characterisation is one of those pesky things modern gaming is still having trouble integrating into current generation games effectively. In the golden age it wasn’t so much of a problem — the only real story you had was usually laid out on the back of the box, or conveyed through on-screen text crawls, like in the early RPGs such as the Final Fantasy series. The reason for this was (I assume anyway) that most video games back in the days of the NES and Sega were so bloody weird that adding detailed plot synopsis and character motivations to explain just what the hell was going on would have taken a few leaps in logic.
For instance, if developers had to go into a lengthy in-game explanation of why a fat middle age plumber from Brooklyn is the obvious choice to save a princess from a fire breathing dragon and his fearsome army of turtles (not that a fat middle aged plumber couldn’t do that of course), I dare say it would make the game so convoluted that it would detract somewhat from the overall experience. So gamers were just sort of expected to accept it, and that’s what we did.
For a while this worked. However as gaming has evolved and pushed hard for realism — most notably the FPS genre which, whether we like it or not, has become the dominant video game format in the 21 century — developers have had to come around quickly to the idea that sooner or later they would have to give characters believable motivations and personalities. This is a tricky thing to do (for instance, the makers of the new Uncharted game admit, in one of their featurettes on the extras disk that comes with the game, that they came up with the set pieces first then worked the plot around them) so most developers usually fall back on using a set of archetypes that have worked well in the past. Like gruff soldier, cocky mercenary or stoic badass. So what’s happening is games are going for maturity in terms of themes and environments but are filling them with flat 2-dimensional stereotypical male leads.
This leads to a lot of male characters in games often coming off as the kinds of guys who you wouldn’t want to spend more than 5 minutes with in real life, let alone control for an entire game. Two names that spring instantly to mind, from two of the most profitable franchises in modern gaming, are Nathan Drake from Uncharted and Marcus Phoenix Fenix from Gears of War. The publishers insist on making these guys the heroes of their respective titles, even though they don’t do anything that could be described as particularly heroic, often treat the people around them like shit, and aren’t particularly relatable or likeable. It also gives me pause to wonder if this what the people that make these games think I want in a male lead. Even worse than that is, is this what people who don’t play games and are critical of the impact they are having think I want in a male lead?
Maybe I’m wrong to call this attitude misandrist in the strictest sense (I only said maybe) but it does seem limiting in terms of the kinds of roles men can take on in video games and seeing as an overwhelming majority of video game protagonists are men the fact that there isn’t more diversity can be kind of disheartening.
For some more reading on this subject here are some links of interest
Extra Punctuation: Manly vs Macho in Gears of War
Extra Punctuation: Uncharted 2
Charlie Brooker’s article on Modern Warfare 3 for the Guardian
I wish I had found this blog earlier. There is a japanese series of shooter games made by, essentially, one guy. The game series is named Touhou Project and is famous for, well, having only female characters. This isn’t in itself very… Radical or unique. I mean there are other games with only female characters. The main thing about Touhou, however, is the design of the characters. While they’re all young and basically as pretty as ZUN, the developer, can draw them, they’re also clearly not being sexualized. Atleast not in any conventional way I know of. Swimsuits or bikinis?… Read more »
Not to defend Left 4 Dead too much as I have …. negative things to say about it, but Zoe is a bit of a genre savvy nerd. If you pay attention to her lines, she tends to comment on the weaknesses and the behavior of the dead, from time to time.
Zoe is a bit of a genre savvy nerd.
Hmmm. Fair point. I may have been a bit quick to write off her characterization.
I want to give a little love to Valve, here, by pointing out that Team Fortress 2 averts the hell out of this problem. There are nine (possibly eight; jury’s still out on Pyro) men on the team, and each has a distinct personality and style. Best of all, they all get to be FUNNY. They also found an inventive solution to the problem of the token black character being a cheap stereotype with a stupid accent; they made him a ridiculously unexpected stereotype with an outrageous accent. On the other hand, I’ve just started playing Left 4 Dead, and… Read more »
I meant Fayt in Star Ocean: Til The End of Time.
A character who has existential issues, because he believes in rules as rules (ie he’s very much UNchaotic – he’s preaching the very definition of lawful, with his constant UPPP (aka UP3) thing).
The UP3 is a sort of agreement that Earth’s “empire” have that anyone who enters into contact with a ‘lower’ civilization (not able to do space traveling enough to meet other civilizations on their own) will not divulge in one way or another, their own civilization’s technology or knowledge of such.
Ugh. Edit: “it was refreshing to see a man portrayed in a light that showed him as someone motivated by something other than money, power or (sexual) love.”
I feel like, if we’re talking about games that portray men negatively (maybe not as a class, but as an individual) then we should talk about a few games that did it right. Two games come immediately to mind – Heavy Rain and the upcoming game I Am Alive. In Heavy Rain, one of the playable characters, Ethan Mars, is a loving father to his two sons and loving husband to his wife. I don’t want to ruin the story, but I will say that Ethan’s dedication to his family is the main driving force behind the trials he endures… Read more »
@The_L: There’s no Final Fantasy game [the recent ones anyway] that requires you to be a certain level to beat. Low level runs are pretty common. In fact two games in the series discourage grinding in general, 8 has bosses [and enemies as well] that scale in power as you level, which doesn’t have much of an effect on your stats as much as junctioning does and 13 has limit to how many abilities you can get in the Crystalsomething each chapter until a certain point, although there’s no downside in grinding. And in 13’s case, setting up the right… Read more »
That Guardian article linked was sadly very homophobic.
However, I do agree that it’s actually bloody senseless to have to play as a character who is basically a shallow stereotype of a guy. I avoid many FPS games because of those elements.
@Nezumi: This was my experience with the Pokemon series and one of those Final Fantasy games for PS3 (my brother’s PS3, not mine–I think it was FF13). That’s fairly recent. It’s one thing to be able to run off and kill monsters on the side to become a powerhouse, it’s quite another for the game to say that you aren’t at a high enough level to progress so you need to go kill some monsters for a while until you are. The only reason I put up with it in Pokemon was because each route had new monsters for you… Read more »
As for Squall, his issue was never about self-esteem and more about kinda being a jerk and opening up to people. And barring anything outside the game itself, Cloud seemed pretty confident about himself until he found out his memories weren’t exactly his, and even then it’s not like he spent the rest of the game angsting about it. Well, he did kinda spend sometime incapacitated though considering what he ended up like that it makes sense. At least, that’s my own impression of it anyway–he was hardly the character most detractors made him out to be. Though I’ll be… Read more »
I have to disagree with your analysis of Mini-Tidus, AKA Hope. He’s not angsting over perceiving himself as weak, though in the beginning Lightning (and some of this is because of her own guilt/whatever complex she’s got because of what happened to her little sister) may certainly regard him this way. Hope doesn’t spend all that much time being unsure in his abilities, he’s pretty eager to prove himself and gains confidence in what he can do as the story progresses, and remembering that it’s all taking place in a very small period of time (The part where he and… Read more »
I actually quite like Nathan Drake. Sure, I wouldn’t call him a moral paragon or role model. When left to his own devices his concerns are entirely about himself, regardless of other what other people might want. What I do like is that when stakes are high, he steps up. Of course, what would be nice to see is that he learned lessons from this and became a better person across the series, rather then being reset at the start of each new game. I haven’t played 3 yet, but will in the comming weeks. I’m hoping for an improvement… Read more »
@Schala
What about Mini-Tidus(I always forget his name) from FF13? His entire relationship with Lightning is based on his perceived weakness. The same pretty much applies to Squall from FF8.
Every time someone refers to my character as “cat” I get little chills. The good kind.
Schala, seems like your theory is that Korea/Japan are doin it right, and the West is doin it rong.
This is why virtually every MMO since World of Warcraft became the 800-pound gorilla has been a copy of WoW–it’s a proven money-making formula, so copy it and we’ll make money too, right? Right? Korean MMOs disagree with you. They invented the free-to-play but pay-to-win scheme with shops. And much of them don’t have the same type of gameplay than WoW (or even care about it). Korean (and other Asian) MMOs touch on deeper markets than US-based ones. Korean MMOs have their US “branch” as the one which gets stuff after everyone else has had it. Ragnarok Online is Korean.… Read more »
Although, the fact that the US version tends to get updates from Asian MMOs later on has a lot to do with language. Generally, Korean MMOs (as well as the rare Chinese ones and increasingly more common Japanese ones) tend to provide updates to their home country first… then to Japan and China (or Korea and China, or Korea and Japan) next, as there’s a fair bit of linguistic cross-pollination that makes translating between the three comparatively early. European/US/Global tends to come later, as English and the other European languages are a lot harder to translate to.
The Final Fantasy Series is another prime example, especially with their preference for adolescent/androgyne guys and in the latter titles. How often have you a male character fight through hordes of monsters/dungeons/bosses only to hear him suffer from crippling self-esteem afterwards, because singlehandedly fighting off entire armies is clearly not a sign of capability. How about never? Male Final Fantasy characters rarely have self-esteem issues, regardless of how androgyne or burly they are. They might have ego issues, delusions and a great deal more imagination (or ambition?) than the average kid, but they rarely think “I’m so worthless!”. Tidus was… Read more »
Also playing Skyrim; it definitely is a return to the “atmospheric racism/sexism” style from Morrowind. For a while, with Oblivion and Fallout 3, Bethesda switched to a more “everything is already equal” style. There are kind of benefits to both, but I actually like the way Skyrim and Morrowind do it more; making female(/elf) characters react to the pressures of their environment makes them much more believable characters. I met a Dark Elf farmer outside of WIndhelm who only said (paraphrasing) “Why does everyone get worked up about how the Nords mistreat us? It’s not going to change anything” and… Read more »
The Longest Journey is for PC/Mac.
@The_L: it sounds like it’s been a while since you’ve played an RPG. Extensive level-grinding was already going out of style in the 16-bit era.
@Orphan: FPS games legitimately are very popular, even in the PC market. Also, I’m not sure if Console Gaming is going into a death spiral — actually, gaming seems to be moving more toward consoles lately — the standardized hardware makes developing for them a lot easier, for starters.
@Sorka: I don’t currently own or have $$ for a 360, and I don’t know what platform A Longest Journey is for, but I’ll look into it! RPGs always bugged me, because in other games, you can choose to do sidequests or not. You can always just race through the main plot if you feel like it. Every RPG I’ve attempted (other than MMOs, which I avoid due to an incident involving Maple Story) requires you to stop after every boss and go level up for a dozen or so hours before you can get back to the main storyline.… Read more »
As something of a student of the games industry, this is something I’ve thought about before. In my opinion, a lot of the game industry’s failings–running the gamut from the gender issues pointed out here to storytelling and pricing and distribution–are a result of the industry not changing fast enough to keep up with technological and demographic changes. From the Entertainment Software Association: “Seventy-two percent of American households play computer or video games. The average game player is 37 years old and has been playing games for 12 years. The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 41… Read more »
“the FPS genre… has become the dominant video game format in the 21 century” is patently false. Web simulation games do far better. FPS games dominate the console market, but that’s solely because the console market is locked in a death spiral, and looks unlikely to recover. (Partly because it’s already dominated by FPS games, and hence FPS gamers, partly because of some possibly irrecoverably bad decisions by Sony and Microsoft, who dominate the console market; the former owing to poor industrial practices, the latter owing to poor digital marketing practices) Don’t expect FPS games to continue even as strong… Read more »
I actually think Gears would have worked better if Dom had been the main protagonist instead of Marcus I mean Dom has a personal stake in the conflict he’s searching for his wife who may or may not be alive these a sense of urgency to it.
“BTW, it’s Marcus Fenix, not Marcus Phoenix.”
@k8207d Damn it sorry about the mistake I’ll change it now
Continued: My point being is that the result is characters being flat and stereotypical in the /other/ direction, that is, marty-stus and ‘everymen.’