Are women over-represented in video games?

[KLAMarine]

SpokenTruth said: 

KLAMarine said: 

They're certainly over-represented in my game library but that's how I like it.

1. It's not like this occurrence is without consequence. In World at War, you get shot 10 times, you'll likely be dead in the game at that point; sooner than that most likely. Two or three shots and you need to take cover to heal.

2. I recall less weaponry being carried by your character in WaW.

3. I recall the 'sprint' ability being limited in WaW.

4. I recall WaW having fall damage.

5. It's a video game and in a constantly-shifting battlefield, timing is critical. The alternative, minutes of set-up, would be terribly impractical.

6. Only in a WW1, WW2, or other historical setting. Got no problem with boobs running around in Overwatch or Paladins. As a matter of fact, the girls tend to be my favorite characters; I always play as a girl in Splatoon and just about any other game.

1. Three shots, not dead and you can take cover and heal?  Heal?  How realistic.  Our marines should try that.

2. Sure, fewer weapons but don't you just love a medic running around with a flame thrower or an RPG because they've obviously trained for it, right?

3. Good thing it allows you sprint again almost immediately. Nothing says realism like back to back to back dashes of Usain Bolt speed with just 5 second breathers in between. Or the Airborne division with no spring fatigue at all.

4. And you can immediately sprint away.

5. So you accept a lack of realism for expediency? 

6. So women on the military battlefields are unreal to you but health regeneration, privates with colonel command powers, sprint regeneration, unqualified weapon usage, fly/drive any vehicle, and on and on are realistic?

 

And don't even get me started on perks.  You guys talk about maintaining realism and then play for hours to remove as much realism as possible with perks.

I think a distinction between mechanical realism and aesthetic realism needs to be made here.

Mechanical realism gets breathing room since real life tanks are complex. I'm certain that operating a tank involves more than moving a joystick around.

We can't expect players to have read something like this to operate or repair a tank now can we?

 

Also, regenerating health and such is a matter of expedience; the human body can heal of course but it's much faster in a video game. We can't expect a player to have to spend time in a virtual hospital bed after taking a bullet.

Real life is nothing like Call of Duty World at War but it's understandable why the video game would forego these realistic aspects of war: because they're a pain in the ass to put up with.

Aesthetic realism is different: something like putting African soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army would make no sense nor would it have the excuse of making gameplay expedient. It would simply be historically inaccurate and pull one out of a setting. Just the same, as far as I know, soldiers with prosthetic limbs wouldn't be allowed to fight and very few women actually fought in World War 2.

The setting's aesthetic would be compromised incorporating such things and we all know how reliant people are on their sense of sight.

As a WW2phile, I know for a fact that Soviet women fought for the Red Army and flew missions as well. Would be neat to incorporate these historical facts into a WW2 title but it's undeniable that the front lines of battle in WW2 were largely manned by men in overwhelming numbers.