Why are there so many HGs genderlocked to male?

The Slayer of Evil, by Ivailo Daskalov, is here for anyone who wants to read the reviews so far, though I believe that neither this game nor Missing Wings has been officially released yet.

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Yep, I didn’t realise either was on the stores until just now, so not officially released I’d say. Glad to see yours finally made it through Google!

Edit: @Carlos.R You tricked me! I thought that was the store link and I’d missed it when I found slayer of evil :upside_down_face: It’ll get there. (Did you manage to upset someone’s government by any chance?)

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A key factor in this is that it’s not the audience as a whole who are review-bombing games. It’s a small, loud, and tech-savvy minority who are engaged in a consistent campaign of hatred for women in gaming across all platforms, using the anonymity of the Internet to protect themselves from accountability.

While yes, female-locked (or even some female-optional) games will attract the trolls, they should be treated as a hazard and unfortunate consequence of the netspace rather than as customers, and our writers should keep this in mind and not try to deal with them in good faith. They are not representative of the people who will actually buy the game (unless they’re actually buying and enjoying the game, but still want to stir the pot for the lulz - this does happen).

Toonami pretty much says it all. Always, always ignore the haters, and don’t be afraid that their poop bombs will damage your game’s sales. Whether or not they make a dent, if it’s a good game, that’ll shine through.

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At the time of this posting, mine isn’t on Google Play yet though, as far as I know…?

But back on topic, Missing Wings will have the option to pick male, female, non-binary, or angel. I put in “angel” because the premise of the story is that you’re playing as an angel trying to help an archangel. I figured it would just make sense to include that as an option.

Edit:

This made my morning. Thank you for that! :grin: No, heh. Apparently, we’re just waiting on Apple.

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Partially why people prefer to gender-lock. They want some difference to be felt between the genders, but if they can’t do that simply out from a lack of time/effort, they just center it around one.

But yeah, I agree, it’s pretty shallow to allow gender-choice and give no differences. However, there is a point - the game might never mention it again, but, as text-adventure focusing on your imagination, it’ll disrupt your gameplay. You’ll envision yourself as someone you aren’t.

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I just want to take the time to quickly say thanks for this discussion. It’s showing that people aren’t as against set characters/genders as I thought, and it’s helping to restore my faith in things, as I sat down earlier and decided to give it another go writing an interactive story while sticking to my guns regarding a set character, written from the first person perspective. (Where people have said something shouldn’t be rated one star simply because of the character’s gender has helped a lot, as I feared that was the view of many and so I asked myself why bother.)

So again, thanks. I’ll butt out now.

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i just want to say that i personally dont play the ones genderlocked as female because when im reading i like to picture myself as the mc and its kinda bhard to that when the npcs are saying her and she towards me if you get what i mean its not that i dont like stories with females as the mc its just harder for me to get into that being said i dont mind playing video games with a female mc but when it comes to reading like i said i like to imagine im the mc i dont do that in video games also in saying all this i inow for fact there are great stories out there with the female as mc and i hope that writers wheather they be females or males countine writing stories with female mcs

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I have the exact same opinion, but switch female for male MC.

I really have nothing against genderlocked games, I just don’t play them if they are a cog game and male locked. And I know I will be missing great stories, but it really breaks my immersion to play as a guy and then I am all game feeling uncomfortable and incapable of focusing on the story.

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This line did want me to restate something I’ve linked to before. If a person is more interested in selling numbers of copies, then having it non-genderlocked is the way to go, even if they go the CoG route of just changing pronouns (yes, I know that brings up other issues which is not the purpose of this reply).

Earlier this year, Jason had released a list of the 10 best selling Hosted Games, and a gender-locked male one didn’t break into it at the time. It is possible that changed, but unlikely.

I’m not saying some of them weren’t successful; I’m sure some made it into the top 20; after all, some were put on Steam and Hosted Games only tend to get put on Steam if they sell well enough.

However, if you’re looking for just trying to get as wide an audience as possible, then not genderlocking makes more sense.

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I said I was going to butt out, but I do want to ask you a question, Meira. First of all, I respect your position and in no shape or form do I have a problem with it.

Anyway:

I said above I was going to write from the first person perspective. Yes, the character I have in mind is male. The reason I’d choose the first person perspective is to create distance between the reader and the character.

So, would you still not be comfortable wihen the author tries to create detachment? And likewise, this can obviously apply for female only characters (for others).

If it’s male locked, I highly doubt I would enjoy playing your game. I am guessing you will give physical descriptions, and that people will address the MC as a man. And to me, on a game about making decisions and shaping the story this is a big no, it makes me feel weird to play a game that is more personal as if I was a man.

And writing it in first person is just going to increase that sensation more for me. Specially if the MC is at points thinking about something that happened to them and gives this vibe of “this is writing for a male MC”, which is the case in your story.

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Fair enough. Thanks for answering. :slight_smile: It’d be more akin to something like The Walking Dead games and such. Character’s set, but you have some leeway in shaping their decisions and the direction the story goes.

For instance, in The Walking Dead, your character is a person of color and you’re forced to look after a girl. By having a set character, I can just more easily craft a specific story without worrying about readers who may not, as in The Walking Dead’s case, want to look after the girl if I make sense. I just have more control over things, basically, and can zero in on specific themes.

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Isn’t that pretty much what roleplaying is about?

@DavidGil While I wasn’t the one asked here, but I don’t think the 1st person perspective actually causes detachment. At least for me the first person perspective causes for me to feel even closer to the MC even if the MC doesn’t feel/think the same way I do if that makes sense.
Anyway since it’s a male genderlocked game I highly doubt I would play it, sorry. But I still wish you good luck if you decide to write it.

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Without the context, that’s given a different meaning. But it has one, so, well, somewhat irrelevant for the topic of discussion.

For me, one of the main things that initially drew me to COG–really, the only thing–was the representation the games offered, because that’s something most other media doesn’t: I get to play a character of my own gender and orientation. In books, movies, games and comics, the protagonist is almost always a man, almost always cis, almost always straight and almost always white. If the protagonist is female, she’s usually sexualized for the male gaze. If she’s gay? See the previous sentence. I spent the majority of my life trying to empathize with male protagonists because the female characters included in their stories were usually two-dimensional props I couldn’t relate to, and I’m frankly pretty tired of needing to put myself in that position. While male gender-locked Hosted Games may treat their female characters better than most media, I’m still back in the position where I either have to see myself as a man or as a support character. It’s not ideal. I want a game that lets me, me, be the lead.

Coming here and finding games that said, “Hi, we see you. You’re welcome here. You get to be the protagonist and we’re going to treat you with respect.” was something I’d really been missing in my life. That’s the product I’m buying when I come to COG. That’s why I’m here. So, while I don’t mind that some Hosted Games are made with gender-locked male protagonists (I’m certainly not interested in silencing creative voices simply because their stories are different from mine), those games aren’t selling me the product I’m here to buy. I’m here to play the games that invite me in and make space for me, not the ones that ask me to leave my identity at the door.

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I personally believe , this is a complicated issue…and the answer isn’t : Well look here , the statistic don’t lie !

I remember this lol woo…

link: https://www.polygon.com/2013/3/18/4120694/remember-me-publishers-balked-at-female-lead-character

I could rant about this topic for a couples of years lol but I aint gonna . Suffice to say , that it’s a complicated issue that doesn’t have an easy ‘Justification’ of Stats . Its much more then that .

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There aren’t actually reliable demographics on game audiences; purchase statistics are balkanized and incomplete (regularly leaving out digital sales entirely even in the age of Steam) and even when they exist they don’t automatically know the user’s gender. Maybe they infer it using ad tracking, but I accidentally convinced ad tracking I’m a bilingual Japanese schoolgirl so I’m not inclined to put much stock in that.

Can’t remember where, but I have seen an analysis of IMDB review scores indicating that the main cause is that men are a lot more likely to give a negative review of things they aren’t interested in while women just don’t review those things. That’s before getting into organized review bombing campaigns. The net effect is that reviews of works targeted at women or with female protagonists tend to be far less reflective of the target audience.

Personally I don’t mind gender locking and when there’s an option I often pick female because habit.

Digression

It started with Mass Effect because I liked Jennifer Hale’s voicework better (Mark Meer does good speeches, she does good everything). Then came Skyrim, and my other habit of trying to implement characters I like from other works came up and I saw that Skyrim let you duel wield and I made Vin from Mistborn. Pretty much ever since I’ve picked female first.

However, I don’t think it’s necessarily always best to simply make the protagonist’s gender variable. I do not care about historical realism in a fictional setting, but if the setting has strong gender roles I want them to affect the MC as much as everyone else. That doesn’t mean the MC has to follow them, but they can absolutely have an impact without stopping people.

Most spectacular example from actual history I’m aware of is Irene of Athens, only Byzantine Empress to rule in her own right. She did not get to be Empress, end the first Iconoclastic Controversy and be named a Saint, and consider a marriage alliance with Charlemange to unite their empires by doing what she was expected to. But the fact that women were not supposed to rule the Byzantine Empire did matter; it meant men were more easily able to rally backing to overthrow her and it meant her son lawfully inherited when he came of age until various things happened and she had his eyes burned out (the blind also were not supposed to rule the Byzantine Empire so this happened a lot) and I think it was a big factor in her foreign policy because she was concerned about a general on campaign going rogue to a greater extent than normal.

So I most definitely do not believe that a female ruler in even a 100% faithful recreation of historical Europe is unrealistic, but I also object to the idea that you should necessarily simply avoid gender-locking. Also I want a female-locked Irene of Athens story because there’s a reason she’s one of the few Byzantine rulers I can readily remember. Or an Empress Theodora game, for that matter; she wasn’t in charge but she did have influence because Emperor Justinian listened to her. Her story is not the same as his story but it’s still a hell of a story. And in the climax she literally says a woman shouldn’t be speaking at a war council but this is important and her husband can flee the city if he wants to live as a fugitive but she’d rather die an Empress.

The Choice Of Broadsides method is always an option, of course. And if a story is gender-locked people aren’t obligated to play it if they don’t want to. But I’d object to just making Theodora’s gender selectable and moving on because wait go back how did the son of a bear tamer marry Emperor Justinian why does no one question this?

That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing.

No problem at all. I don’t mind anyone answering. Interesting response though. You have me scratching my head as to how I can create distance between the reader and character. Give a sort of . . . conscience feel, like they’re acting as the moral compass, but the character is still the character. I do know that the first person perspective can make people feel even closer in traditional fiction though.

Anyhow, I wish you would give it a try, but hey, if you don’t want to, I respect that. I’m just going to do what I feel is best and hope at least some like it. If I fail, I fail. It’s also very early days, so I might not even get the project off the ground anyway.

PS: I also realise the conversation might be best in the first person thread, so i will drop the conversation here now. Again though, thanks for the thoughts.

I’ve ran into people who basically assumed women were never into video games at all. They tend to get surprised when I point out how back in the early 80’s, one reason Pac-Man was considered a major success was from the large number of women playing it. At this time, the only way to really play it was in the arcades.

And it isn’t like the women weren’t involved in creating games either. Donna Bailey co-designed Centipede which was a hit in its own time.

The book, How to Win Video Games (published in 1982) estimated that roughly 50% of players of Centipede were female, and 60% of Pac-Man players were female.

I will definitely agree. One example is focus groups. Even now there are companies which rely on focus groups which may not be useful for determining the market. I mean, if a company is trying to expand into a different demographic, then it doesn’t make sense to rely on the exact same focus group as before.

This ties into marketing; even if a game allows one to choose the protagonist’s gender, the marketing will usually focus on the male MC. With two protagonists, show both of them then…

Some of it is caused by decisions in years pass. In the US there was a general video game crash, so when Nintendo brought their NES into the American marketplace, they deliberately marketed it as a toy at the time, and it was advertised to boys. So this sort of fed into the ‘video games are just a boys thing’ as well.

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