| Zekkyou said: I think you're putting too much weight in Horizon's success. There's never been much doubt that a female focused AAA title can be successful, just if they'd be as successful as if the same title had a male protagonist instead. Horizon obviously can't answer that question. Horizon might help strengthen confidence in the idea, but for the most part i'd credit the gradual shift as being down to publishers slowly realising that male gamers (who currently still make up the majority of the AAA market) really just don't care. In-fact if you give them a well written female character, such as Ellie in TLOU, they'll actively be calling for them to be the protagonist in the sequel (and we now know she will be). Personally, i think the biggest hurdle for female protagonists is the media. They're quick to reinforce the image of male gamers as monsters who hate woman, and they're intolerant of female characters that don't fit specific moulds (a mould even Aloy quite firmly fits into it). The former reinforces the idea that male protagonists are a necessity, and the latter ensures any character outside of the approved moulds will be defaulted to male. This is all just my opinion though. This is ultimately a purely speculation based topic right now :p |
Well here's an example of what I mean: A decade ago, 11% of American films that were released in a given year had female leads. Today it's 28%. What explains the difference? The Hunger Games. There are many ways of illustrating that fact, but here's one that's directly pertinent to the current year: consider the case of the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, which is expected to be a hit. There had been many petitions for such a movie, but it was not until 2013 that Warner Bros. greenlit the project, concluding that there was now a market for it. What was their proof? The commercial success of The Hunger Games the previous year. In other words, there would be no Wonder Woman movie coming out this year if not for The Hunger Games.
I view the laws of capitalism as similar across the board. A female-centric video game that's a hit in an analogous way can pave the way for more to be made because money talks louder than anything else in the world of business. Nothing else is equally impactful. I mean do you really think that the average person is more familiar with the name Anita Sarkeesian or the name Lara Croft? A hit carries more weight than any critic. (And we could argue that games like Horizon and TLOU II might very well not exist or be in development (as applicable), in their current forms anyway, if not for those much-maligned feminist critics, it's worth adding.) The real problem, in my view, is a shortage of hits that revolve around female narratives. This medium needs its Hunger Games, especially in view of losing the iconic Samus Aran recently. Horizon could be it. That's all I'm saying.
