"Mada, mada dane"

Recently I was participating in a survey on FPS. That's first person shooter games. The group I was participating with had 5 girls, including myself and one guy. The focus was on Playable Characters (PC) but I will largely be talking about background characters, non playable characters (NPCs) that you may fight or give background information on tasks you need to accomplish.


The experience range within the games was, the guy was a regular FPS, myself I had played some but only a little, and the other girls apparently had not played fps at all.



Less than half an hour after it was all over I realised that I totally missed the boat on voicing my opinion on female roles in FPS in a totally appropriate medium! I could have ranted and have a researcher listen intently to what I had to say! How could I have missed this opportunity! Oh noes! So instead I'll take comfort in that it was at least lightly touched upon, and choose to expand on it in private.


FPS are often at the forefront of the gaming industry - it's often the revolutionary system that can get a gaming company out into the hardcore scene. Their usually highly graphic intense things, and require - or try to install a high level of immersion for the player.

FPS have an almost exclusively male user base although there are some exceptions who are heavily into gaming, it is largely not a casual gamer scene.

Consequently there are some recent interesting debates about FPS. FPS are usually seen as the niche that determines the market share - but with Nintendo recently throwing that all up in the air.

Are FPS all that important when usually it's only Hard Core Gamers that play them? Nintendo has shown recently that by going for something different it can capture the mainstream audience. People that don't normally play a lot of games are going crazy over their wii and ds's.

Hard Core Gamers can get a market started, are good for initials costs and can influence the carry on effect... But it is the mainstream that decides the giant profit lines.


As you may be aware, the gaming industry is not largely not very female friendly and part of this may be the lack of women in the "hard core" scene and percieved difficulties in appealing to them.

There is also the fact that the industry is largely male dominated and more interested in writing things that appeal to them than other markets... I lack the time to quote articles etc, but it does feel very true at the moment.

Many female gamers have irate comments about how the industry as a whole, seems to think the way to appeal and reach out to female gamers is release pink products. Never mind that colloquial experience says that they're purchased more often by guys as a theft deterrent.






So I was interested by the fact that the survey was largely made of women!






The study's aims are difficult to say, but considering the questions, I believe it was about identification with characters and immersion and what people look in a FPS game for.

One of the topics that was brought up by some of the other girls, is that they would have identified more with the character and they thought that there would of been improvement in the game if they could have chosen a female character to which the guy had thoughts "but everyone knows female characters can't" that I informed him, he should be very cautious about if he wanted to finish them off. ... *g*


I personally largely do not care if I can pick a female character or not - although it sometimes nice when you can do so! I remember being able to pick a female player was part of my consideration for purchasing the Crystal version of Pokemon. ^.~ So I didn't have a lot to say at the time.


However, not many of the questions on the day were focused with the world setting for the story - it was character centric, and there is something that made it very uncomfortable for myself to become involved with the game as the day rolled on.

And it wasn't Playable character specific, but NPC character specific. And I wish I had brought it up as a tangent to the female playable character point.



Going back to the day, I played four FPS. However none of the games as they were, felt suitable for having a female character, although this is partly tied into my own bias. Personally I find that it is more fun/appropriate that the character is appropriate to the setting than I identify with them.

So I do agree with the conventional wisdom that just pasting a female playable character in would detract from the game.

For example I didn't identify with Tommy much from Prey but that was an entertaining game, partly because I didn't feel it was trying to drag me in and identify... I just found it really kind of funny. *g* Though different personalities might have different reactions...

However, the thing is... Why didn't they seem appropriate for a female character?

Why are the settings so alien and dare I say, actively hostile to female characters? What does this say about a gaming industry that frequently focuses on these sorts of games as a star product? Can female characters be appropriate in these worlds?

There are also the points on why bother if girls don't play these games? But why don't girls play these games? What do women look for in a game any way?

The answer to the last I think is it depends, and I couldn't possibly answer all of these questions, however I would like to illustrate my thoughts and generate some points for discussion based upon my experience to at least partially cover them.

On the day I played four games, deemed to be appropriate examples.
Bioshock -demo (which I finished), you escaped from a plane to make your way to a mysterious fortress, and go down to an underwater world in which secret bioweapons have caused the society to go crazy.
Prey - a Cherokee Native American Tommy is kidnapped along with his grandfather and girlfriend onto a bioalien ship,
Undying - set just after the "great war" the main character is helping his friend figure out what is going wrong in his house and fixing a curse.
Doom3 -military base on Mars where things are going horribly wrong.

I only had limited time so I didn't get very far - only the initial setting and a bit into the game play really. Combined with previous experience and knowledge, however I think this seems a fair enough basis to say that "female" roles and characters are deliberately excluded as much as possible in this genre.


In Prey and Undying you are given a fair bit of information about the character and their background. The character has a distinct personality and changing the character - who are distinctly male and fit into their worlds, would require changing the entire storyline, IMO. Ironically enough I find it easier to change Tommie's storyline around than to change the Undying one (due to the time setting, but I enjoyed Prey more because I didn't identify and the character was so unique and strongly written...

However in the other two of the games your not given a lot of information about the character at all. You're asked to try and take them on as you, more or less. So why can't they have a female character?


The one I am bitter about is doom3 and the one I wish I brought up in the survey. For a genre that's supposed to immerse you into the setting, getting right into the battle head first... I felt frustrated, found it irritating and boring and really alienating. (And it was the one that I've heard the most rave reviews about...)

It felt like a very boys only setting, and playing a female character in the game, as it was would feel very strange.

But I really don't think it would of been that hard to change it!

If the setting of the world itself had been more female friendly that is- and I believe it would be relatively easy to change that, then a female character should feel right at home.

In the part of the game I played, there were no female characters. At all. INVISIBLE VAGINA and what not.

As I said - I don't mind so much playing a male character as the main, but when my gender doesn't exist it does stick out for myself.

However, although this is a military, scientific exploration setting on Mars... Which is a very blokey sort of setting.... This isn't how the army works these days.

It may be male dominated but women can handle a machine gun just as easily as men, and it would of been so easy to add a hot civilian female scientist here and there - and it would of worked just as well when everything goes to hell and everyone turns into zombies. Mmm, hot female scientist after your brains....

I really did think it was weird how "boy's only" the game felt, and this did add to making the game more alienating towards myself.

I feel that you really wouldn't need to change the story line at all to make it gender neutral... At least in the part I played. Although perhaps some might feel different.

Although I suppose one can argue that even if there were female background characters, that largely wouldn't be considered enough for myself. And I can see this is true with Undying.

Undying had a fairly strongly defined main character.

You're given information such as his background, that he fought in WWI "the great war", and this is set a little after. His friend that he is visiting is someone he fought with in the war and feels gratitude towards...

There are female characters in the game that we can see - the house keeper that welcomes you, the maids, the cook. There is also the sister who is dead and we can see in the part of the game I played.

However I couldn't help but cynically notice that all of the "characters" that are killed in the game were female. Exception being characters that died before hand and the war set up.

Lovely little maids all heart brokenly splaid on the ground with blood dripping away... Even the butler got away with only a maimed arm. ;>.> And the ghost that goes around providing information is male as well.

What makes me feel that this is a deliberate choice is the comment by the male gamer... He wished that the Undying main character would just shut up and make out with the maids already, when they were providing information about the house in the heavy dialogue.

But that is not the point or aim in the game at all. So... Better to kill 'em off quickly. That's what it felt like at the end...



The best example of gender neutrality I felt on the day was with Bioshock - you're not given the gender of the person - your not given any information at all - all you see is a hand... Although they are sometimes referred to as bastard so it seems safe to assume they are male, and I did so on the day - it was only after when I was thinking of female roles, that I realised hey, this may not actually be the case.

I suppose this ties into why female characters are largely not seen as appropriate for the genre... Why can't a female character go in and around with a wrench?

It is my own set of assumptions that this doesn't seem an appropriate sort of weapon for a girl to go around with - better the machine gun from doom 3, or the magic from undying - that make it difficult to identify wrench carrying character as female... And this is an issue most FPS games will face.

Ultimately I did feel that this game did set itself up as relatively gender neutral with the set up - in the game itself there are female characters that go around kicking and maiming and shooting people... Although there is also female NPC's used as shock value, the little girl with a giant syringe and her... Little friend. Which wasn't the case in others.

There is also the point that in this game, giving deliberate specific information about the gender of the individual character would be inappropriate, since the initial premise in the game is that we are given absolutely no information about the character at all. If you put your mind to it, I would argue it is possible to pretend that they are female... At least for the part I played.


It's not that I don't see the benefits of having a male character, Prey's character's personality made the game more enjoyable for me - the game was just so inherently ridiculous and over the top, that it didn't matter that I didn't "personally" like or identify with the main character, it was just enjoyable to play.

But even that was weirdly Men Only too - only the love interest was female, the rest - and there were lots of hijacked humans wondering around, insane and helpless, were male....

Or would it have been considered too upsetting to hit a girl with a wrench if she was in the way of the door. Or is partial female nudity considered more of a problem with ratings than violence?

I guess society as a whole is more conditioned to treat violence inflicted upon men as acceptable and above board.

It's not that I'm saying that people should go out of their way to hit girls, and perhaps someone would say that this would interfere with domestic violence (which is ridiculous IMO, exposure to violence may desensitise people to it, but it is family background and cultural values that allow people to rationalise it.)

But it does seem really idiotic when the girls are MAGICALLY removed. Don't exist. And I can't help but think it aids to the INVISIBLE VAGINA that goes across the gaming industry as a whole.


Going back to my point about male orientated games as a whole- I see benefits in male orientated games, just as I see benefits in female oriented games. However at the moment I see more male and less female, and I don't see any interest from western markets in non-g rated female orientated games.

As part of a larger pattern, I find it disheartening. Why is an entire genre portrayed as penis only? Why aren't there attempts to lure female gamers into that section?


I can only think of some of the same clichéd arguements

But girls don't like video games!
But 64% of online gamers are women. We are not objective to the medium or the concept of playing games - at least no more than men are as a whole.

http://gigaom.com/2006/10/06/where-the-women-arent/

Now this news article says that it's mostly assigned to things like bejeweled which I think is misleading - WoW is not the only MMO kthxdie. I also recall hearing fairly different statistics for WoW with female players. But is anyone actually interested in us? I know Ragnarok appears to have a significant female base - or at least did when I played a while back.

I think that there is also to be considered the fact that in online games, women will lie about their gender. This is becoming less common, as more women start playing and communicating and working in groups. But who wants to be a target? If you are the only one then you'll usually keep quiet about it.

So although women may not be a noticeable presence that doesn't mean that they are not there.

Although there is some evidence that women prefer playing female characters when given the choice and it's meant to represent them.

But women don't like spending money! That article you just linked says that their stuck in the free versions.
Bullshit. Neither do boys. People don't like spending money on something that they aren't going to enjoy. I've seen girls quite happily purchase the games, the manga and plushies for kingdom hearts... And go way over the budget that their male equivalent set for themselves.

But girls don't like violence!
OH noes the women folk are coming after us.
Rising statistics suggest otherwise. ;)

Also please come a little closer and say that.

But the girls aren't there now and there are no guarantees they ever will be!
And with an attitude like that from the gaming industry they probably never will be.


But you don't play FPS
I have little motivation to do so. I also have a medical history that means that reflex intensive games like fps are awkward and clumsy for me to play initially so I'm further turned away by that, as well as the fact I'll largely find story lines alienating and unappealing.

However there are other games that involve heavy use of reflexes that I've found enjoyable - because they gave me something to preserve with and work my way around.

Also; Although I didn't enjoy doom3 at all, the other games I did, and would consider playing more, possibly even purchasing - once I can build up a bit of strength in my arm once again and have free time and money...

There are always more games that I want to play, than I can, but having the option is nice.

You only played four games, how can you be qualified to talk about the entire genre?
Firstly I played four that were meant to cover how people relate to the entire genre of FPS across a wide range of people with differing levels of experience. Identification is part of the immersing process.

Secondly the researcher mentioned in response - and he does play a lot, that there were very very few specifically female or female choice FPS - a starwars one, one other that I can't remember and that was about it.

If you suggest Lara Croft - that's 3rd person. Slightly different genre. ;)

Thirdly = I don't just play games. I watch. I listen. I might not always remember the name, or be able to give an accurate world description, but that doesn't mean I can't remember the overwhelming tone.

But this is just wah, what about me!
Well 'duh. But it's not so much all about me, as it is about my entire /gender/ being alienated by an industry that many of us *want* to be involved in, but have difficulty with finding access points.

Okay it is ridiculous to expect a misogynistic industry to go out of it's way to appeal to a female market... Without having people go in and break it open.

And that is happening as more women take on WoW, more girls purchase their own system, more females as a whole choose to get involved and step up with things such as conventions, discussion communities and try to break it open.

Only not. We have money too, after all.

I've seen male gamers often pride themselves on being more educated than average, and better of than average - they can afford an expensive hobby - setting up a good computer system for games is not cheap and is different from a knock off from the discount computer shop most of the time.

So um, problems here reflect society as a whole in how it chooses to spend leisure - and who is allowed to participate in that leisure...

Quite frankly the whole game market arguments remind me of the comic arguments.

Girls don't read comics!
But... Girlwonder, et all say otherwise!

They're just a minority! It could never be mainstream!

But what of manga? Console RPGs have a firm female base, especially with titles suchs a kingdom hearts and final fantasy.

Why do girls need to have their stories imported... From a country that has sexism more firmly entrenched in their culture? Where's the non barbiegirl western games for girls to play? Or at least more gender neutral.

In a capitalist society, if your money isn't good enough to attract their attention, well I think that is one of the significant signs that the problem is very well embedded indeed.