| Jaicee said:
Likewise, female-centered games rarely get many awards because the vast majority of the game consumers are male. Scrolling down the list of overall Game of the Year winners across the media landscape from 2003 to the present, you'll notice that most of the titles that won specifically used male lead characters... |
I am not sure if i can agree with you here. Having a female lead in games is not the reason for the lack of awards. Also awards aren't always everything as i will explain. There have been plenty of female lead games that won awards and even set the example almost 20 years ago, its just we don't get many female lead games, and when we do, its either forced or done because of a trend, which none of those reasons should justify weather a game should win awards, just because they use a female lead.
Tomb Raider in 1996 set the industry straight with an award winning series being up their as one of the best franchises going around, and still is highly regarded today. Following a few years later in 2000 was Perfect Dark on the N64, becoming one of the best FPS games to ever exist and is considered legendary in the gaming industry. 2002 we received Metriod Prime on the Gamecube which won a number of GOTY awards, than 2014 we received Bayonetta 2 which won plenty of awards as well as Half Life Alyx in 2020 which also achieved a fair amount of praise, though it was restricted to just the VR categories in most awards, its still one of the best games to date and is truly a masterpiece in its own right and one of my favorite games of all time. Lara Croft, Samus Aran and Jonanna Dark were icons way before GOTY awards were even popular. It also depends which site you follow, its not always about winning awards either. If the game is good and uses a female lead than the results will surely follow as we have seen. Unfortunately its not the case with all games.
Now i just named 5 acclaimed games off the top of my head and i am sure their are plenty more. Lets use a movie for an example, look at the new Ghostbuster movie, it was a flop, it didn't flop because of the female leads, it flopped because it simply was not a great movie. The old movies were way better because they were simply superior films in all aspects outside the tech levels. The new Ghostbuster movie was filled with the traditional movie tropes of big shiny graphics and female leads just because they want to drive the point across. The actors aren't the problem, the problem is pushing an aspect for no reason which ruins chemistry.
In my opinion, they should only use female leads when its necessary not because they want to drive a point across, than success will come. Keep in mind plenty of past games never had GOTY awards given out like candy like it does today. In saying that, some of those past games i mentioned will put majority of games to shame today as they are timeless games, much like a timeless movie. They might not have medals hanging around their necks but they will surely kick plenty of ass.
Last edited by Azzanation - on 17 January 2021
