'Women are the new core,' says Microsoft narrative designer

[Marucha]

Machiavellian said:

Marucha said:

pokoko said:

rutea7 said:
Also I don't own the system cause I chose not to and as a female gamer should have a say in this. I want to play good games and like jay said its not about playing a female, I love my oldschool ff games where the protagonists are male. Cloud, squall, zidane. As long as its a good story I'm in.

That's what I think.  A lot of what I'm reading from people in the industry sounds artificial, like these developers and publishers are looking at the demographics and then rushing out to force in more female characters for the sake of appealing to female gamers.  It comes across as really contrived.  If your writers bring you a good story with a good main character, then go with it; don't try to change it into a female OR male for the sake of marketing.  As a consumer, that feels insulting.

When I read a novel, I'm not worrying about what gender the main character is.  When I watch a new series, I'm not throwing it aside if it's not a male hero.  Why do they think games should be any different?  It should be what fits the concept.  The quality is the important part.

I think there have been more than enough successful female characters for people to finally stop worrying about a female lead being bad for sales.  

That's part of why I did not bother to make any real comment because the original commentary in the article seemed too artificial to take seriously. It's like feel good commentary, but virtually no substance.

Hey, I would not mind more female leads in games, sure... but it's not like we are in shortage of games to play or diversity in gaming. I would care more if the experiences end up being more cookie cutter, which I feel like it has really become that way in the industry.. they are right that they do need to adjust more to change and fast. Having female leads and bringing about more unexpected things would help all fronts... but honestly, it's not 'necessary' to engineer stuff so that we cater to only specific demographics or broaden out to expand to another base... we already have a demographic, it's called gamers.

How many games can you tell me that released in the last 5 years featured a character that was not white.  Hell, I cannot remember the last game that featured a charater that was black or latino.  You can even get rarer if you go for Black Women or Latino women.  You can find tons of books, movies, TV shows, shorts that have a very diverse cast of leading women and ethic groups but it sure is hard to find that with games.  What the article seems to suggest is that its pretty obvious that any gender besides male and white is a rarity in games and thus so are the stories created for those games.

I wonder how well would Uncharted would have sold if the character was a Latino woman.  It definitely would be a lot more interesting story wise if the character was written by a latino women who could bring the character out.  Of course that character would never get a green light.

Sorry, I do not always reply immediately. I do not think there is a HUGE amount of diversity, but I think there has been milestones in gaming like in many media. That's why I said there is no real shortage. I agree with you about needing more ethnic perspectives in gaming. There is a huge growing Hispanic population in this country for example and yet we don't see strides to cater to that demographic for example just like women are a huge chunk of it. I'm going to assume it's taboo because of the whole immigration controversy... I mean, we don't want to cater to them, they should act more "American" (read: white) and blend in with the culture amiright?

But I'm like rutea7, I'm a female gamer... this doesn't stop me completely from enjoying games. I can still enjoy them. My biggest beef is that we get to the point where characters and mantras in gaming become almost too much the same-y or "cookie cutter". Much more diversity would help that, but again, a different story, different context and other things could be done to that as well... that's why when I said 'diversity', it was much broader than just ethnicity and the womenz, because a lot of influences and ideas are considered when making or designing a video game. A good example would be Guild Wars... the concept artists used different ethnics/cultures to design characters there and the game does not read "white people" to me as a result.

My problem with the OP is mainly those commentaries come off as not being really genuine and more like a CYA comment... someone mentioned they are covering up the fact they want to go more casual and just saying it's about women, when in fact it's about casual gaming... I almost wanna agree with that because that's just how it seemed to me.