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So, I caved and bought* a £4 copy of Edge this month almost, but not entirely, on the basis that the front cover was comprised of cutesy drawings of the LucasArts adventure staples of my childhood.
But in addition to the LucasArtsy goodness there’s an article on female characters in games. No special revelations in it really (few women in games, blah, Lara Croft, blah, publishers like Hawt Secks, etc.) but one thing caught my eye. A quote from Ragnar Tornquist. (Hey, if he can leave out the non-English character online then so can I.)
“Gender should never be simply an aesthetic choice, although for the most part, regrettably, it is,” argues Tornquist. “Men and women are different, and there’s nothing wrong or sexist about making that an integral part of gameplay and the storyline. But most developers are afraid to offend, or maybe some people are too easily offended, and so men and women have become mostly interchangable in games, a consideration like hair or costume. That needs to change.”
First up, which games is he playing that actually allow you to interchangeably pick man or woman without affecting gameplay? Not MMORPGs since they’re avatars, not characters. Everything else is pretty fixed. Perhaps he’s referring to the male and few female FPS non-characters, though I don’t think some reactions in a few cut-scenes really constitute an integral part of gameplay either.
Secondly, what I really meant to ask was this. To those guys out there who actually played Dreamfall (or part thereof): Was there ever a time where you would have done something drastically different to Zoe, if that situation had happened to you?
Seriously, you fall asleep, you wake up in some other world, you wander around and ask questions, right? I don’t see how Zoe is particularly a “woman” rather than a “man” but hey, I’m a “woman” and I spend my life wandering around asking questions, so maybe I’m just blinded to it all.
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*(sweet-talked TheFluffyFist into buying)
Interesting, I guess my claim to fame (you know, in a year or two) is that I’m designing paly centered on characters instead of empty vessels, and as such roles of gender should be essential (plus Greg Costikyan isn’t exactly going to tell me I can’t). There will be three female characters in Fianna, one a more traditional nurturing female, another a reserved druidess and the third being an outright tomboy warrior. Also, the sexual orientation of some of the characters will be ambigous, though I’m not sure how far sexual verbs will go as of yet.
You might like Dr. Isbister’s book on Character Design, theres a whole chapter on gender.
Is this “Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach” or a different book? I’ll keep an eye out.
I find the “outright tomboy warrior” description interesting – why “tomboy”? I guess you’re trying to avoid the clichéd overly sexy whore-warrior but it does seem that female warriors always fall into those two camps.
I suppose my real issue is why not a tomboy druid, healer or mother?
Yes to your first question.
To your second, the sexuality of this character (Liath) is ambigous in the game. There will also be a druid who isn’t quite tomboy but is also sexually ambigous, or at least not sexualized. I plan, in the IP, of them becoming life partners. I gleaned this from the Finn Macool myth, Liath and Bodhmal (who is supposedly Finn’s aunt on his father’s side) raise the boy after his father is killed and his mother (Muirne, which roughly means festive) needs to dissapear for reasons not entirely clear. They’re reffered to as “sisters” but this is obviously a euphemism. Anyway, its a lot easier to get away with female homosexuality than male homosexuality in a videogame. Muirne will be more feminine, but still fairly assertive in her own way.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. I was considering having a “ghandi” peacemaker character that is devoutly religous, probably a pagan-to-christian convert, since I think that would be interesting. It turns out there was an Irish saint named Fianna, so I says, “holy shit, thats either contrived or really nuanced” and I’m also considering making this character prepubescant, like 10 or 11, maybe 12 (since twelve is a holy number in Christian mythos, and 13 is generally pagan, and by that age your pretty much garunteed to have hit puberty). I welcome your thoughts on that.
“Sisters” like Xena and Gabrielle were “friends” who loved each other, huh? Yeah, you could probably get away with that.
I like the pagan-to-Christian idea. I know that a character named Fianna in a game about the Fianna where the character isn’t or doesn’t become the main focus of the group would confuse the heck outta me initially but there are plenty of ways that it could work. It’s targetted at quite a young demographic, right? No such thing as contrived.
Actually I was thinking of targeting a young demo for a DS title, a potential sequel, which would involve mages at school in a more settled time, kind of a harry potter thing. For this, since its paving a genre in the wild ravages of the net, I figured I’d go for more nuance. In that sense, maybe its a bit more contrived, I’m leaving my options open at this point. I do think its an interesting twist, a group called Fianna (which I understand linguistically translates to “bright folk” or “radiant people”) forms in response to being abused by Christian miliary forces, and an individual named Fianna becomes a Christian after being saved by abuse by Christian military forces. Oh yeah, I was thinking this girl’s backstory is that she is born and raised in a brothel, and rescued by paladins who take her in and show her the “light”.
I sure have a thing for tightropes don’t I?
Heheh… yeah. As long you don’t start hammering people over the head with “LOOK. This is DEEP and MEANINGFUL” like so many films do then it will be good.
Right, I mean that as a footnote to the gameplay.
It would make a pretty good investor pitch, especially to someone that can’t appreciate the potential of a drama engine centered on heterogenous character routines and stack layering manipulation, oh shit, and viral code, thats gonna be crazy to mess with.
I’m a little bummed that the comments here have gotten so tangential to the actual post itself — I’ve been wrestling with the question ever since I first read this post, and I’m not sure what to conclude. Especially since I’m a big fan of Tornquist, so I admittedly want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think “did Zoe act differently from most men would have — is Zoe not capable of doing something a man would’ve” is the right question to be asking, precisely. To give some examples: when I was playing Morrowind or Oblivion, I felt like my character generation didn’t matter a single damn. Sometimes someone would drop an off-hand comment to my race, but your characteristics otherwise didn’t really matter. It didn’t change the gameplay or story experience enough to be significant. It was like choosing your gender in, say, Pokemon: “an aesthetic choice”.
While in DA:O, on the other hand — I was completely shocked and surprised by how much it mattered being a female elf. I got extremely emotionally involved by the racism and sexism that I kept CONTINUALLY experiencing throughout the story. It gives you different origin quests, unlike Elder Scrolls just plopping you in the same cell regardless; the female elf starting story could ONLY have happened to a female elf. It was built in to be significant and unique.
While to take another Bioware example, gender arguably doesn’t matter at all in Mass Effect. Male Shepard and femShep usually have the exact same dialogue, so it’s an “aesthetic” choice (aside from the romance storylines). But I don’t mind as much in ME, since it compensates in other realms.