Fem Shep Syndrome?

I just bought AC:Odyssey and something struck me:
Going back decades of gaming, I can't think of any legendary badass male protagonist or character that wouldn't be better as a female. And I haven't explored the flip situation much where a female protagonist would be better as male. But I can't think of one. I am of aware of my bias towards them. But honestly, please enlighten me or contribute to the list of something I must be overlooking.

Back in my early AD&D gold box games I usually had a mixed party and my party "leader" was male. But back then the graphics were so primitive/pixelated that you went with the least fugly portraits. I do think some of that carries over to today in some part but the pull is so strong towards the female aesthetic today that it has to be something else. Its not sexual nor do I feel it is mysoginistic. The hyper sexualized females better be able to bring it and better have style or they are no go. Also contrast to now where I create multiple RPG parties of a variety of races, but 80-100% female.

It is funny that AC:Odyssey spurred me to write this because its WoW predominantly that sticks in my brain as bulk evidence. Not only do females wear all the major appearance sets of all armor types better, but they can also make an ugly or moderate set at least more appealing if not awesome. I highly recommend using Wowhead's dressing room to see for yourself.

But it definitely isn't just WoW. One of the things that popped in my head was Dante from Devil May Cry. Now don't get me wrong, none of these males are chumps but I can easily think of females that rock that look and vibe better. Some similar examples I can think of to make my point are Bayonetta, the Diablo 3 Wizard or the Nier:Automata characters. And in the latter case, the fembots rock the look the best in their own title too.

Another case that should be untouchable is God of War. Yet to me, a female styled contemporary of Kratos would totally kick ass more. And imagine the latest title with its fatherhood feels as either motherhood feels or general walk-through-fire-for-your-child parenthood feels.

But I have meandered on long enough. I know I am not alone but I'd love input on how marginal (if it is not marginal then we need to push for even more female protagonists...) my opinion is and if there are counterpoints or perhaps stronger examples than I have given. So I will instead just list males heroes I have considered that I strongly feel would be better as females:

The Witcher's Geralt
Fem Shep - always
Dragon Age 2's Fem Hawke
The Prototype series
Wolfenstein series
Diablo series
Guild Wars 2
Black Desert Online
Fallout series
Bioshock
Resident Evil
Uncharted - a little weird since we have Tomb Raider but I feel still valid
Final Fantasy
Shinobi
Kingdom Hearts
Halflife
Borderlands
Splinter Cell
Legend of Zelda
Hitman
Red Dead series
Halo
Gears of War
Metal Gear Solid
Pacman - hahaha

Given a choice in a game I prefer playing as women and enjoy that POV more, partially because I’m pretty tired of the growly male protagonist. Fem Shep and Kassandra were easy choices for me comparing them to their male counterparts who I felt were kinda flat and boring in their delivery.

That said, the reason Kassandra is great to me is her performance is nuanced, it has range and the actress brought a lot to the table. Geralt in The Witcher 3 did too despite on the surface being the epitome of growly male protag. Doing Fem Geralt would be interesting, but in that case I’d rather just a game focusing on Ciri and her story.

I don’t think a female protagonist is a magic bullet, especially given the industry track record. I’ll admit Fang, it’s hard not to read “every game would be better with a female protagonist” and feel it’s a bit reductive to the point of being kinda objectifying. Especially given your main reasons seem to center around how much better they look.

There’s a lot more to telling a good story and genuinely exploring different perspectives than gender swapping. You kinda hint toward that when using God of War as an example. The story in the latest game is all about that distant dad who has anger issues and is not a good parent. It’s interesting to think what that would be like from the point of view of a mother and son/daughter instead. I don’t think that it would resonate the same way if it was just a palette swap. You can’t really do that without whitewashing or ignoring the different cultural and societal pressures on mothers. I’d love to see a talented team tackle that in a deep way.

I don't really care what gender a protagonist is, and will frequently pick a female if I'm able to. I realize that's not very typical of the larger gaming market, however: having a female main lead is seen as a substantial impediment to sales. Historically, this has been pretty justifiable. My best example there is Beyond Good And Evil, which was wonderful, and should have been a smash hit. Instead, I believe it sold very poorly and resulted in a big loss for the studio. This was chalked up directly to gamers not being interested in playing a woman, though how accurate those claims were, I have no way to determine.

Thus, I think about the best you can really hope for is having choices, like in Odyssey. If gamers can't have a male lead, at least the young crowd tends not to be very interested in buying it. That may be less true now that so many of us are so heavily grey, but losing any sales in this hyper-crowded market is very painful.

I think female-only games are likely to be restricted to indies and small titles. They're the only ones that can really risk it. Once a few of those have gotten smash-hit breakouts, then you might see AAA dipping a toe into the water, but probably not before.

Aiming more directly at your question, though: I can't really think of any male protagonists that would have been better female, necessarily. I would welcome female equivalents in most cases, but I wouldn't think of them as being better because they're female.

They might be better because of the voice acting, though, like with FemShep.

I always felt Saints Row 3 and 4 did a good job handling gender differences in that there was very little differences between the choices in term of romances / dialogue.

I thought everyone (including me) likes FemShep better because Jennifer Hale did such an amazing job on the voice acting front.

The rest of the examples in your post seem to center on females looking better in-game, which I can get behind based on my sexual preference and all.

If your argument was more along the line of Bayonetta > Dante then absolutely. Her moves are cooler and her gothic punk attitude is awesome.

The aesthetic focus of this argument is revealing, I think. This culture has a massive leaning towards regarding women as "decorative" when compared to men. The proliferation of female-focused makeup and other cosmetics, the vastly more diverse clothing designs made available to / marketed at women, the importance of the "cute" selfy, and the tendency to praise girls as "pretty" far more often than boys all point toward a culture that is comfortable treating women as "things of beauty". I would absolutely expect such a deep bias to show up in how our culture creates and enjoys one of its most popular forms of entertainment.

Mostly I think you're seeing the games industry's chronic inability to create compelling characters. One of the weird side effects of diversifying characters is that it gives otherwise bland characters nuance that we fill in given their assumed position in society. Mass Effect is supposed to be a gender-neutralish universe, but since its a reflection of our own, FemShep has a kind of implied history where she's had to face down a lot more problems and a lot more nuanced social problems. BroShep probably didn't have to deal with an overly friendly drill instructor, or a lieutenant who constantly dismissed him out of hand. Incidentally, I think this is true for not just gender, but race and sexuality.

I also suspect that the different physiques subtly influence a lot of mundane social interactions. BroShep is something like 6-1 210 pounds. FemShep is, what, 5-8 and maybe 140 at very most? There are points in Mass Effect 2 in particular where BroShep is an intimidating, bullying presence, where FemShep simply isn't. And as a smaller figure, she appears even more under threat in dangerous situations. I think this also tends to imply a more cunning character, one who would have to rely on wits and anticipation where a larger, more powerful figure could just shoulder through.

That's not to say that straight white guy = boring, it's just that when you don't create much of an identity for a character, it's easier to project backgrounds on them. And for the most part, AAA game development doesn't want to create characters--they want to create a self-insert for you, target market white man aged 20-35. They want to create something that tmwma2035 can relate to. So maybe a parent has died tragically, which is very relatable and saves on voice acting, but the relationship with the other parent is still fairly solid. Or maybe there's a spunky sibling, and some vague sense that your parent didn't spend enough time with the two of you as children. But it's pretty rare that a dev studio goes full BJ Blazkowicz and shows you the kind of childhood that might really make a person into an unstoppable badass. (Spoiler alert: it ain't a heartwarming story of love and acceptance.)

Wow. I didn't realize the message was so muddled. I should try and isolate and be more concise with the different aspects that go through my head when I think about gender in games.

Here is a list since when I do these types of posts it is something I just to get out of my head and "on paper" as it were:

1. The obvious one Certis mentioned: I am tired of the grizzled growly male tough guy. It is why I really enjoyed the change of being in a wheel chair in Wolfenstein 2. It would be refreshing even just to have a growly female. And it would be even more refreshing to have gameplay experiences related to world wise women. (especially ones like fem shep who is ultimately respected for that wisdom and leadership)

2. Females looking better isn't attraction in the sexual sense but includes style, personality of movement and atmosphere. Personality of movement isn't jiggle when you walk. It is the mix of grace, athleticism and character infused posture. It is not that they can't be sexy. But that sexiness is either part of the character or it isn't the main appeal even if overt. It certainly isn't always the case or even common but it is what I look for if these popular male archetypes were gender swapped. Diablo 3 is a great example of this.

3. Where the dialogue has in depth options, those options are more interesting even if just from a female perspective. The best examples add complexity and uniqueness. The Dragon Age Origins background intros are a good example of this.

4. Female power is more appealing because it can be or can appear more genuine. Because that power isn't rooted in men's flashy pride or ambition or need for approval. How many games center around a man who's lost everything and is out for revenge? At the very least, a game surrounding a woman who has lost everything is unique.

I must be an outlier in that I nearly always pick the male protagonist. I thought male shep was fine. I'll probably play the male in Odyssey when I get around to it (name? - I've no idea because no-one ever mentions him). I adored Geralt and can't imagine how anyone, male or female could have delivered it better. If only they could dub the Netflix Witcher series with Doug Cockles voice.

I don't know why this is, I literally don't know a single other person who always picks the male protagonist. Or maybe they just don't talk about it.

I generally pick women characters, if there is a choice. Long before knowing if one voice actor is doing better than the other. Cant deny that some of it probably is aesthetics.
For FemShep, she is just doing a much better acting job than the male lead imo. Didnt know that the first playthrough, but it has certainly made it my default choice for later playthroughs.

I dont think all games would be better with a women lead. Geralt is a grumpy man, but manages to be an interesting one anyway. I dont think those games would have worked as well with a choice of lead character. Impatiently waiting for a Ciri-lead Witcher game some day though.

I have never really understood the 'self-insert' thing in games. That character on the screen isn't supposed to be me, I am trying to play as that character - no matter if it is a blank-slate (like WoW) one or story-heavy one (like Witcher). But, if I did try to play characters I could relate to, truth is, I am nearly as far away as you can get from a a strong, muscular, angry guy.
Got to agree with the point about growly tough-guys being uninteresting. There are just too many of them around.

Eh.. I'd be more interested in finding out if folks (us guys) actually play their female protagonists to be more feminine as opposed to as if they were a guy with a palette swap. In this regard, most games probably don't provide much of a difference beyond said palette swap?

Or to jump on the excellent Certis insight, sure I'd play femKratos, but to really kick it up another notch you'd want to polish up\change the nuances of the angry distant father aspects of the theme.

I feel like I'm in the same boat as a lot of other posters here. Whenever I have the option of gender, I almost always play female just because with how many games involve a standard male character, the option alone makes it seem more unique and interesting to me, even if it is literally just a swap and the dialogue comes off sounding the same.

Part of it may also be that I find it easier to separate myself and roleplay as the person in the game when they look nothing like me as opposed to just a meatier version of myself.

That said, if I'm being honest I can't eliminate the male gaze aspect either, especially earlier in my life where I almost always had a template for a character I would play in the older Black Isle/BioWare titles that upon reflection seems to fit my "type" to at least some degree. It's only within the last 5+ years that I don't focus on that and mostly just use the randomizer and pick the first one that doesn't look too fake.

Bioware's insistence on making BroShep the stand in for the commercials always annoyed me. That wasn't my Shep.

I can't say whether or not I prefer to play as a female or male. Dragon's Dogma had a huge and robust character creation, for both the Arisen and his stalwart Pawn companion. Sometimes I was a hulking, massive 60 year old Viking man. Sometimes I was a tiny manic pixie dream girl. All the other times I've been everything in between. The best part, I could make the Viking a Mage and dress him in the Queen's outfit and the girl I could give the Guts armor and huge swords over twice her height. None of it affected the plot or dialogue. People just accepted you as the Arisen because the scar where your heart was glowed. I think I just like going through as many options as I can.

You want to really figure out your preferences? Play Dragon's Dogma or the Saint's Row games.

Not sure exactly why, aesthetics maybe, but I pretty much always play as a female in games given a choice.

Though male by birth, I've never really bonded with males in real life much. I'm not much of one for sports, hunting, shooting, fishing (I know, stereotypes abound, apologies) and often sigh when overhearing male peer attitudes to everyday life. Before you drop a "must be one of those SJW millennials" on me, I'm a 50 something father of four, with two marriages behind me

I rarely tend to think of myself as being the character I'm playing; more often than not I think of myself as their companion on the game's journey, and to that end, preferring the company of women to men, may be a driving factor.

The one exception I can remember is Dragon Age : Origins, which is still one of the high points of many years of gaming, as it really sold me on the concept that 'I was the character'. Although I played through as a female later, the most memorable and enjoyable run through was as a shield toting male...

Spoiler:

...who had absolutely no time for Alistair, burned Wynne down when I met her because she disagreed with Morrigan, romanced both Leliana (who I later had to fight and deal with as I went down the blood magic path and peed in the sacred ashes) and Morrigan (oh lord the heartbreak of that ending), and put Anora and Loghain in power. Wasn't a deliberate 'bad guy' run, think mayhaps I'm broken on oh so many levels.

I've tried run throughs of many other Bioware titles as both males and females, but the male runs all were terminated part way through as they felt bland. In their specific case, I wonder if generally their writing for the female protagonists is that much better.

kergguz wrote:

I must be an outlier in that I nearly always pick the male protagonist. I thought male shep was fine.

Right there with you. I was actually really attached to male Shep and his performance / mannerisms.

I probably pick the female option 2/3 to 3/4 of the time when there is a choice.

In the interest of honesty, I will admit that often the male gaze aspect is a not insignificant factor in this decision. At the same time, if the game can create a strong narrative that actually builds around the player character being female, then I absolutely appreciate that.

...and if everyone goes on about how one is much better than the other (Femshep, Kassandra), then I'm almost certainly not going to use my (probably) lone playthrough of the game on the "lesser" experience.

EDIT:
Upon a bit of reflection, I played quite a few female-centered games this year.
Night in the Woods, Hellblade, What Remains of Edith Finch, florence, Metroid: Samus Returns, Eternal Darkness, Still Life, Tacoma, Bayonetta and Remember Me

I also played Jade Empire (with the female Scholar Ling), but chose a male troll in Shadowrun: Dragonfall.

That's roughly half of my games this year, where the female lead is mandatory or, in the case of Jade Empire, the story and dialogue adapts to the female PC.

Literally every time someone types the word 'female', this is all i hear in my head:

IMAGE(http://www.quickmeme.com/img/b5/b5c427033abd4d4e55072c70963e032fc84cddb6fad357ceab7be61014d6ec02.jpg)

Just sayin'

Would be good to hear more from those of us who identify as women as to OUR opinions on women characters in videogames, if I'm honest.

ANYWAY. For me, personally, Women characters back in the day weren't just fun, or an aesthetic choice, they were a survival tool at a time when I had no other means of expressing any sort of femininity and my mental health was suffering because of it. So I clung on to each rare gem like that like it was a f*cking life preserver. Still do, really.

Also, re: Beyond Good and Evil.

wikipedia wrote:

Retailers quickly decreased the price by up to 80 percent. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine staff attributed the poor sales of the game—among many other 2003 releases—to an over-saturated market, and labeled Beyond Good & Evil as a commercial "disappointment"
Ancel noted that consumers at the time were interested in established franchises and technologically impressive games. Coupled with the number of "big titles" available, he stated that the market was a poor environment for Beyond Good & Evil and that it would take time to be appreciated.
At the time, Ubisoft's marketing efforts were more focused on the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.[60] Ubisoft's former North American vice-president of publishing, Jay Cohen, and its European managing director, Alaine Corre, attributed the commercial failure of the game to a lack of marketing.

It's quite a jump of logic to go from this to "people didn't want to play as a girl".

Looks to me like a classic case of a new franchise in an industry that HATES new franchises not getting enough marketing and promotion time to me.

"The game play was there, the technical excellence was there but perhaps the target audience was not there,"

oh, no it was there, you just didn't think it was worth marketing to them at the time. A lesson most video game companies stuff struggle with.

Sure, we want more women in games. But we want more women writing those characters. Because history shows us most men don’t have a freaking clue what they’re talking about.
And we end up with male characters in a female skin.
Or we just end up with chain mail bikinis and boob armor. Or fridged.
Just sayin’.

Eleima wrote:

Sure, we want more women in games. But we want more women writing those characters. Because history shows us most men don’t have a freaking clue what they’re talking about.
And we end up with male characters in a female skin.
Or we just end up with chain mail bikinis and boob armor. Or fridged.
Just sayin’.

There definitely needs to be more women on writing teams, but as an aspiring fiction writer I don’t think it’s fair to say that men can’t write well-rounded women characters. The problem is good writing has always been devalued in video games. It’s something that is often done at the last minute by the developers themselves. In my fiction classes, I was taught that one of the most important things to do in my writing is to be empathetic with all my characters. Give them realistic goals, desires, and weaknesses. But for video game writing, the whole goal is to just get your character from explosion A to B.

Regarding gameplay, I’m really enjoying Spider-Man because I get to play levels as both male and female characters. The stealth puzzle missions as reporter Mary Jane are a nice break from the combat missions as Peter Parker.

jdzappa wrote:

There definitely needs to be more women on writing teams, but as an aspiring fiction writer I don’t think it’s fair to say that men can’t write well-rounded women characters.

I beg to differ.

Can't help but notice a lot of implicit assumption about how female protagonists could be more interesting to a male playerbase and not a lot of recognition of the fact that it wouldn't hurt for a big ol' slice of games to be not remotely written for us at all.

It's one thing to say you'd prefer a broader voice because it tickles your woke-ass sensibilities, it's another to concede space to not be for you at all.

Eleima wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

There definitely needs to be more women on writing teams, but as an aspiring fiction writer I don’t think it’s fair to say that men can’t write well-rounded women characters.

I beg to differ.

Eleima,I’m happy to take this to D&D but Samantha Ellis at the Guardian has written an excellent piece about the many times in literary history where male writers got it right.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...

This is not to say it’s easy. It’s not. But if you’re saying that men can’t write female leads, you’re implying that women can’t write fully realized male characters.

And FWIW games don’t do a particularly good job of even capturing the actual male experience. I want to see the games Maq mentioned, along with more games that aren’t just power fantasies. Let’s take a look at just historical shooters. Where is the gaming equivalent of Band of Brothers, much less Catch 22, Full Metal Jacket, or All’s Quiet on the Western Front?

jdzappa wrote:

This is not to say it’s easy. It’s not. But if you’re saying that men can’t write female leads, you’re implying that women can’t write fully realized male characters.

To echo something from the article, it sounds like that at first, but then you realize: there's no way for a woman to make it through daily life in the world without having a mental model of what it's like to be a man, because of how often women have to deal with men. Men are not under nearly as much pressure to have an accurate mental model of what it's like to be a woman, because (generally) a man can ignore or run afoul of women and still get somewhere in life.

edit: sorry, forgot to make the actual point! So in general, when a woman goes to write a male character, chances are she's done a lot more work over the course of her life trying to understand the minds of men than vice versa.

Maq wrote:

Can't help but notice a lot of implicit assumption about how female protagonists could be more interesting to a male playerbase and not a lot of recognition of the fact that it wouldn't hurt for a big ol' slice of games to be not remotely written for us at all.

Yeah, weird how people responded to the thread discussion in earnest like that.

jdzappa wrote:

Eleima,I’m happy to take this to D&D but Samantha Ellis at the Guardian has written an excellent piece about the many times in literary history where male writers got it right.

Note that I didn't say all (you're seriously making me #NotAll, really?). Fiction is overwhelmingly written by male writers, that's just a fact, because there's been major gatekeeping in the industry for centuries. And instead of having women writing about women (and let's face it, who know a TRUCKLOAD more about what it's actually like), we have a lot of men writing about stuff they don't know a lot about. And make projections about.
And I daresay women writers are probably better at writing male characters than the other way around, simply because we're literally inundated with content for and by male writers.

kuddles wrote:
Maq wrote:

Can't help but notice a lot of implicit assumption about how female protagonists could be more interesting to a male playerbase and not a lot of recognition of the fact that it wouldn't hurt for a big ol' slice of games to be not remotely written for us at all.

Yeah, weird how people responded to the thread discussion in earnest like that.

It's weird how men are always giving their opinions on women.

Uh, yeah, so back to the OP's line of inquiry.

I tend to create female avatars or select them wherever possible. I'm not sure when it started? Probably around the time the first Dragon Age came around; I was curious to see how they'd written the story from a female perspective. I recall in KOTOR1 I played male lead on purpose to romance Bastille, but played a female lead in KOTOR2 to see how it played out.

The odd one out was probably ME franchise. ME2 was BroShep (I fell in love with Tali, alas), but became FemShep in ME3 (hello Garrus).

This is an interesting line of inquiry, because I've got a brother who always plays male characters; I've never seen him create a female avatar.

Eleima wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

Eleima,I’m happy to take this to D&D but Samantha Ellis at the Guardian has written an excellent piece about the many times in literary history where male writers got it right.

Note that I didn't say all (you're seriously making me #NotAll, really?). Fiction is overwhelmingly written by male writers, that's just a fact, because there's been major gatekeeping in the industry for centuries. And instead of having women writing about women (and let's face it, who know a TRUCKLOAD more about what it's actually like), we have a lot of men writing about stuff they don't know a lot about. And make projections about.
And I daresay women writers are probably better at writing male characters than the other way around, simply because we're literally inundated with content for and by male writers.

kuddles wrote:
Maq wrote:

Can't help but notice a lot of implicit assumption about how female protagonists could be more interesting to a male playerbase and not a lot of recognition of the fact that it wouldn't hurt for a big ol' slice of games to be not remotely written for us at all.

Yeah, weird how people responded to the thread discussion in earnest like that.

It's weird how men are always giving their opinions on women.

If I came across as mansplaining, my sincere apologies. My point is that yes we need more women storytellers and that men need to get better (and that with some work and introspection that’s totally doable).

pyxistyx wrote:

Also, re: Beyond Good and Evil.
...

At the time, Ubisoft's marketing efforts were more focused on the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.[60] Ubisoft's former North American vice-president of publishing, Jay Cohen, and its European managing director, Alaine Corre, attributed the commercial failure of the game to a lack of marketing.

Looks to me like a classic case of a new franchise in an industry that HATES new franchises not getting enough marketing and promotion time to me.

"The game play was there, the technical excellence was there but perhaps the target audience was not there,"

oh, no it was there, you just didn't think it was worth marketing to them at the time. A lesson most video game companies stuff struggle with.

In my subjective experience at the time, that was definitely true. The only thing I remember seeing about BGnE was a small blurb in Game Informer (like 1/6th the page or so) about upcoming games. Somehow this unique looking screenshot with a single paragraph above it caught my eye.

I'm not sure I even realized its release date prior to seeing it on shelves at Gamestop one day, and I believe it had already been discounted severely.

I bought at least 5 copies (Gamecube and PC for myself) that first year and gave the others away to try to spread the word.

Maq wrote:

It's one thing to say you'd prefer a broader voice because it tickles your woke-ass sensibilities, it's another to concede space to not be for you at all.

I don't think we have a problem with that here on this site. There are many reasons that any games are not for us. I feel like the nature with which we discuss games here fosters open discussion about that. And on the flip side I know there are games that we try based on our passion for the medium and community exuberance that we know going in we will struggle to relate to. And of course the failures and successes of those are discussed freely as well.

I would also add the thought that perhaps those grizzled veteran protagonists that solve everything at the point of a gun weren't written for a questionably-larger-than-we-anticipate subset of males either. Developers think that because we admire resilience and unwavering focus that we want the bravado, stick to your guns intuition, and rigid morals of Kratos and Duke Nukem in perpetuity.

I also much appreciate and am very intrigued with how deep the relief, reprieve, and rewards were from the availability of female gender protagonists, or options in games. There were a few prior posts that highlighted this in a personal way that was easy to relate to. Thank you.

*mod*

There's a few parallel discussions happening here and I think a lot of these issues have been discussed in great depth in other threads. If there's aspects in here folks want to discuss in more depth I'd like to see new threads with more specific scopes and structure or return to existing threads where the emotional labor has already been applied in great depth.