I'm a gamer, I'm female and I have a love of FPS based games. I play Halo 3 online and recently Modern Warfare 2. These games and many other I enjoy are very much aimed at the male demograhpic, with males overwhelmingly dominating the player base it's pretty obvious that this is the right group to market to. But there are girls that play these, I'm one of them and very occasionally (maybe once a week) I come across another girl.

There are some games that cater to the rare female, L4D has Zoey to play, Borderlands has lillith, Fallout 3 and a many others allow you to create you own character male or female.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that some games seem to forget about girls altogether. Halo has some inclusion, you have the ability the change you death screams to female. I guess what annoys me about that is it seems a little like a half baked after thought. If you play as an elite you still have the Spartan female voice, the elite death screams are the funniest in the game and I don't think I should have to change to male just to have them.

But then we come to Modern Warfare 2. The only real customisation of your dude is the weapon you choose can dictate the camo you wear (snipers wear ghillie suits for example). Of course there are the call signs, I currently have Compainion Crate (pink hearts) and the pink soap emblem - but that's a bit of an overgirly for me because I don't have any other 'girl' options, but then I've seen guys use those too. The thing that actually got me think about all this was one of the accolades - ALPHA MALE: Killed most of lower rank, I in jest said to my husband "that's a bit sexist". As I thought more about it I wondered why there was no option to have a female charater in multiplayer, obviously the story is based on specific people so I don't expect it in campaign (come to think of it the only females I remember in the single player were the victims from the airport. Odd, women join the military now right?)

Funny, I just remembered something from COD4 too, the only female I remember managed to crash her heli only to have you risk your life to save her...

So, Escapist community, what are you thoughts on this? Do you think the could be a little more for those of us females that enjoy these games? And, what are your thoughts on the portyal of females in games?

'So, Escapist community, what are you thoughts on this? Do you think the could be a little more for those of us females that enjoy these games? And, what are your thoughts on the portyal of females in games?'

My first and foremost thought is: females are not the targeted audiences of first person shooters. You can probably figure out why, I'm rather tired right now and should be tucked in bed, all alone (I see your husband and raise you a LONELY HEART STORY), to explain this. In essence, we're adrenaline junkies, you're... not. Not saying that there will not be women who enjoy FPSs, you're clearly one who does, but you are not the majority. Whilst you should be catered for, you're not going to be catered for as well. I think Perfect Dark was the last FPS I played as the main female character.

In RPGs you're going to get a few more women characters to choose from, more women play them after all. This will be the trend.

The thoughts on the portrayal of females in games are summed up thusly: without meaning to be sexist, the gaming world is generally a man's world. Women are the minority. Thus men will be catered to more. Sad fact. So there's going to be a lot of playing to the bloke's ego: damsel in distress minor characters or an option to be a female, interchangable with a male but it's really just a gimmick.

Well, you get my point. Now I'm off to read Terry Pratchett alone and sob gently into my pillow, like every other night.

Do you enjoy shotguns? The question you're asking certainly has a wide cone of fire on it. ;)

PurpleLemur:

the gaming world is generally a man's world. Women are the minority. Thus men will be catered to more. Sad fact. So there's going to be a lot of playing to the bloke's ego: damsel in distress minor characters or... damn, I can't think of another exception than Perfect Dark right now.

Well, you get my point. Now I'm off to read Terry Pratchett alone and sob gently into my pillow, like every other night.

Basically this.

Aside from the sobbing, that's just not cool bro'

My pet hate is how women are depicted in fantasy RPGs: Dainty little things who can lift a sword and fight despite having the figure of a fashion model.

Well females do join the military, but I know as far as the US military females can't be in combat and are never intentionally put in that position.

I would propose designer handbags as collectible (and tradable!) items in most entries of the FPS genera.

BECAUSE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IS MANLY
...because most of us are incapable of anything else...HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I think that, like with every other form of entertainment media, the portrayal of gender roles is never going to be universally satisfactory. For every game that handles female roles in a mature and realistic fashion (Portal), there will be ten that objectify woman, or portray them as violently emotional bitchmonsters (Rumble Roses and Super Princess Peach, respectively).

Obviously, there's more that could be done to help remedy the situation, but I think that for most developers and gamers, it simply isn't considered a big enough issue to address. The big issue is gameplay and presentation. Issues like gender roles kind of take a back seat.

For my part, I'm all for the inclusion of more female-friendly customization options, but I can't say I'm overly concerned with gender issues when I'm gaming. I'm generally more interested in having fun.

Also, Samus Aran. Just sayin'.

I suppose, but you gotta be sure that they don't turn into a girly game. Sure, I see what your saying, and I agree, they really need to make more of a effort, but it's hard to serve both audiences

The games themselves are fine,if you enjoy playing FPS then nothing should be changed.I'll be sexist and i don't care really,so,what do you want in a FPS,a dress?Offcourse not!Camo,face paint,a gun and lots of ammo,that's what you need.Gear up and shoot.

Other than that,i'm one of the few that don't care about "sexist","not sexist","blahblahblahblah" cr@p in games like that.I want shooting,i want blood and i want lots of fun,so yeah.
I dont' know if you own a pc but if you do,make a mod the way you want it.
If we'll end up calling even FPS's sexist then what's next?It'll be illegal to have a d*ck?

I know that i seem rude here but you have to see it from my POV for a moment.

So....who's gonna flame me first...? lol

Edited to fix something.

I really don't see the avatar as the primary concern. There's a big female audience for TF2, and that has an all-male cast. There are plenty of action-shooters in which the protagonist is a female, though the target audience is male. What usually seems to matter is how much the game appeals to females overall. I must admit I'm a little surprised that the styling of the avatar is as important an issue.

It is all about effort = profit. Until enough women start playing these games there won't be enough profit to justify the effort needed to get what you want done.

OT:I have a sister who I introduced to shooters and her games of choice are Warhawk and CoD. Warhawk doesn't have female characters but logos(that range from guns, cars, flowers, cute panda bears and more) for your character that you can make whatever color you want, also a wide selection of paint schemes for you plane that are just as varied as the logos. Another PS3 exclusive that does right by the ladys' is Resistance 2 were you can have your multiplayer character be Rachel Parker or a female soilder, but its DLC for $.99 each but its something.

interesting post. i feel i should add my two cents, as another gaming female (though admittedly a fairly recent one)
for the most part i think that having female main characters is kind of unnecessary, but might be nice. it's like... having a token black or asian person as a main host in a tv show. it's unnecessary, but i guess it makes blacks and asians feel more included? i don't know... i don't see the connection and find it silly; i've never felt alienated when watching japanese tv, which lacks white people as i think it damn well should. moving along from my long-winded analogy, i know that a lot of us chicks are into the halo 3 and cod series, and if i had the money and/or currently lived with my younger brother i would be too, but personally i don't find the general lack of female characters at all off-putting, and think that having all the main characters as male depicts the world more realistically, stereotypical though it may seem.
one thing i do find really annoying is the general tendency for women central characters to either be hopeless damsels in distress or completely unlikeable and unrealistically hot bad-asses ala lara croft. another weird example, but i really liked how in super paper mario peach is not only quite clever and heroic in a way that she certainly isn't in other mario games, but she's actually useful. the day that nintendo release a zelda game with zelda as the main character kicking serious arse in the way that i think most of us believe she can, is the day that i can officially declare myself able to die happy. but i suppose having the sword-weilding and shotgun-savvy female characters being drawn with racks i could hang the entirely of my kitchen utensils on and scientifically impossible waist-to-hip ratios is similar to how all the blokes in FPSs have enormous biceps and require state-of-the-art double-stitched trousers to handle all of their extra manliness.
...i'd like to see more realistic characters, both male and female. that's all i'm saying

I actually considered the idea of female avatars in MW2's multiplayer and then kind of... dismissed it. I don't necessarily think game designers outright dismiss the idea of female game characters when making their multiplayer, or at least they don't dismiss them for any particular reason. I mean, there's a lot of good reasons in this thread as to why they weren't included in MW2 but video games are fantasy, and while I don't encourage six-foot tall gunweilding penises, or gleaming unicorns in certain multiplayer games as this would be far too much of an immersion breach, I don't see why in a video game we can't have some girls running around in camouflague. I mean once you factor in army uniforms they don't need to look significantly different from the male avatars.

I think mstickle's main objection here is that MW2 in particular is very masculine in it's execution of damn near everything, like IW went to special effort to make MW2 a guy game, wheras something like Halo 3 at least allows for the possibility that girls will play.

DannyBoy451:

PurpleLemur:

the gaming world is generally a man's world. Women are the minority. Thus men will be catered to more. Sad fact. So there's going to be a lot of playing to the bloke's ego: damsel in distress minor characters or... damn, I can't think of another exception than Perfect Dark right now.

Well, you get my point. Now I'm off to read Terry Pratchett alone and sob gently into my pillow, like every other night.

Basically this.

Aside from the sobbing, that's just not cool bro'

My pet hate is how women are depicted in fantasy RPGs: Dainty little things who can lift a sword and fight despite having the figure of a fashion model.

quite right - i would much rather have a large burly woman with biceps the size of a rocket launcher.

joshthor:

DannyBoy451:

PurpleLemur:

the gaming world is generally a man's world. Women are the minority. Thus men will be catered to more. Sad fact. So there's going to be a lot of playing to the bloke's ego: damsel in distress minor characters or... damn, I can't think of another exception than Perfect Dark right now.

Well, you get my point. Now I'm off to read Terry Pratchett alone and sob gently into my pillow, like every other night.

Basically this.

Aside from the sobbing, that's just not cool bro'

My pet hate is how women are depicted in fantasy RPGs: Dainty little things who can lift a sword and fight despite having the figure of a fashion model.

quite right - i would much rather have a large burly woman with biceps the size of a rocket launcher.

I just think it's blatantly pandering to the wank fantasies of teenage boys, I really can't take female warriors in RPGs seriously at all when they look like figure skaters.

DannyBoy451:

joshthor:

DannyBoy451:

PurpleLemur:

the gaming world is generally a man's world. Women are the minority. Thus men will be catered to more. Sad fact. So there's going to be a lot of playing to the bloke's ego: damsel in distress minor characters or... damn, I can't think of another exception than Perfect Dark right now.

Well, you get my point. Now I'm off to read Terry Pratchett alone and sob gently into my pillow, like every other night.

Basically this.

Aside from the sobbing, that's just not cool bro'

My pet hate is how women are depicted in fantasy RPGs: Dainty little things who can lift a sword and fight despite having the figure of a fashion model.

quite right - i would much rather have a large burly woman with biceps the size of a rocket launcher.

I just think it's blatantly pandering to the wank fantasies of teenage boys, I really can't take female warriors in RPGs seriously at all when they look like figure skaters.

very true, but in this beauty centric world no one wants to play as an ugly person. their appearence doesnt irk me too much, but what does take away some of the realism is the "armor" that covers hardly nothing. not that im complaining.

slabomeat:
Well females do join the military, but I know as far as the US military females can't be in combat and are never intentionally put in that position.

O_o did not know that, had to google it to believe it.

Anyways, catering to the main demographic, blah blah blah, all that. It's been said many times before.
MW2 doesn't incorporate girls just like it also doesn't have dedicated PC servers. They aren't the demographic. They'll make more money off of male console gamers, so they won't waste time and resources adding other features that won't make them ludicrous amounts of money

I kinda do agree, and actually did a small write-up on this in my 'page' (I refuse to call it a blog) at http://vikinggamer.wordpress.com/ (shameless self-advertisement, I know).

I guess what the main deal is that, as people has said above, the main demographic after all is men, as sad as it is. You could also twist it and bring race into it and see that sooo many characters in games are white, or white-ish. It kinda does make sense as you as a female gamer say that you want to play a female. The developers look at the fact that people want to play and be able to insert themselves into the role of the game character, and therefore make most 'heroes' based on popular stereotypes and how the probably biggest part of the core demographic looks like: caucasian male.

It's always nice to see games shake it up, if nothing else than the fact that it brings some diversity. Some games doesn't lend themselves to story-telling wise to have this kind of customisation I guess.

For games that involve character customization, a little more options for females would be nice. For example, the avatars of Halo and such. Most RPGs already has then fairly balanced out.

As for the single player content, I'm fine with whatever the developers show, as long as it's not blatantly sexist. I'm sure not all women are like Peach, but there is at least one girl who is like her. Just like how there's at least one guy who's as stupid (and has the same amount of free time) as Mario. So what if Nintendo keeps making their girls the Damsel-in-distress types? They would have to actually think up new narrative otherwise.

For the insanely-proportioned girls in gaming, I can understand why they do it. It's a fictional character, so they might as well make her impossibly good looking and bad-ass. This actually applies to both sexes. I think that some games (Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Heavy Rain, etc...) do need realistically proportioned characters because they are extremely narrative heavy and the carry a lot of emotional impact by having the player identify with the characters. While others (Gears of War, JRPGs, etc...) don't need to, since they don't use that kind of empathy inducing style of story telling.

slabomeat:
Well females do join the military, but I know as far as the US military females can't be in combat and are never intentionally put in that position.

Female's can do 90% of military jobs Excluding: Frontline combat, NBC (nuclear, biological and Chemical) work or anythink that has a chance to mess up there internal organs. not sure if the us has the same but since im australian and the US basically trained us i think it might be.

OP: learn to adapt to your surrounding's.

stinkychops:
Why are you patronising females by suggesting they are the only ones who would play as females and that they need to play as females to connect with the characters.

There are no females in the SAS, where I live there are none on frontline service, it would be disheartening to many players to have to kill female terrorists-and this is the only area you could expect to see them.

It just seems incredibly silly to me, to suggest that the way to cater a genre which consists of mercilessly slaughtering foes, to the female demographic, is to add more woman. With the inclusion of woman their womanly features will have to be massively played down in order to prevent more woman from complaing that it is sexist for them to have breasts/hips/other comment that will get me in trouble.

Why is it any better to kill a male than a female?

I think overall my point is being missed, I don't see any difference between playing as a male or female other than I would like the option to play as a female and the consideration that there are gils who like these games pretty much the way they are. That's what missing - the idea a female might pop it into the console and enjoy it, the games seem to go out of their way to make sure this never happens.

CerealKiller:
The games themselves are fine,if you enjoy playing FPS then nothing should be changed.I'll be sexist and i don't care really,so,what do you want in a FPS,a dress?Offcourse not!Camo,face paint,a gun and lots of ammo,that's what you need.Gear up and shoot.

Other than that,i'm one of the few that don't care about "sexist","not sexist","blahblahblahblah" cr@p in games like that.I want shooting,i want blood and i want lots of fun,so yeah.
I dont' know if you own a pc but if you do,make a mod the way you want it.
If we'll end up calling even FPS's sexist then what's next?It'll be illegal to have a d*ck?

I know that i seem rude here but you have to see it from my POV for a moment.

So....who's gonna flame me first...? lol

Edited to fix something.

Exactly. Camo, facepaint, guns lots of ammo is what you need. There is no reason why it has to be on a male.

I want blood, the more the better as I love gore, I just don't understand why this is considered a male only thing. I don't really even want much to change, just a female shaped character who sounds female when she death screams is all I really ask.

bagodix:

mstickle:
The thing that actually got me think about all this was one of the accolades - ALPHA MALE: Killed most of lower rank, I in jest said to my husband "that's a bit sexist".

This is a shining example of modern feminism. When there are no real problems, just start whining about some profoundly trivial and arbitrary bullshit.

As I thought more about it I wondered why there was no option to have a female charater in multiplayer

Because basically females have no place in MW2's setting.

You don't see me complain when the game's protagonist is female. In fact, given the choice I will always play a female character in a game.

I wasn't complaining about the protagonist. When it's fitting to the story it doesn't matter to me what sex they are, just as when it doesn't matter to the story the option is usually available. When you are playing multiplayer you are nobody, so why can't you be a female nobody? And it doesn't matter, it is arbitrary, just some thoughts I have on the multiplayer.

I think it's messed up that people think that females have no place in MW2. Lets face it reprisents modern warfare just like WW2 games reprisent WW2, females have a place in modern wars and it's fucked up that people still think that women can't fight in wars today.

I hate to say it, but I couldn't care less about gender issues when it comes to videogames. If I were a girl, I wouldn't care about the actual ability to play as a girl in the game, I'd just care about how fun it is. What's the big deal about this?

If you aim at stereotypes you get games either made for mindless frat boys,geeks or generalized girly cooking thingy.

Instead of stereotypes and generations make the game based on whatever the game is based on then for online play maybe add a bit more customization option, from atypical warfare war to more anime'ish in style battle skirts more colors, accessories ect then of course be able to change gender and body types to suit what the player wants to be, basically outside the set fictional world of the single player champagne let the online stuff be alot more customizable if just only in looks...then of course they can ruin it via micro transactions....

I agree that females should have a place in games but how they are shown should change. Some people may like it but I myself am not drawn to the girl who wears too little clothing and knows how to take down 10 enemy soldiers in seconds. Neither do I care for the one that is portrayed as too weak and needs help. Its the same for guy characters in my opinion but lately I complain more about girls so I'll stay there. They both should be equal not in direct strengths and weaknesses but in how they are shown.

Also why is it that in most video games the girls can do all sorts of flips and twirls in the air along with martial arts while the guys best is punching something really hard. I agree with showing females more because of this.

If those are exactly what you need then where's the point of this?

Other than that,let's face it,it's in mens nature to do all those things.Shoot,kill etc.I know,i know,"damn stereotypes","damn nature" but hey,that's how things are.It makes sense having male figures in those games.I don't care if there's not a single person to agree with me in this,that's how things are.

I agree that women should be catered to more often in games.

I am actually struggling to think of FPSs which have female leads, Perfect Dark which someone has already mentioned being the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

I'm curious though, what are the demographics for female players? I remember looking stats up once but I think they were for quite a few years ago and I can no longer remember them (plus I'm too lazy to google them)

DannyBoy451:
My pet hate is how women are depicted in fantasy RPGs: Dainty little things who can lift a sword and fight despite having the figure of a fashion model.

Hehe, you should see my sister. Ten years old and 4'6" and she knocked her dad out with a big fucking plank, just for shits and giggles.

ZippyDSMlee:
If you aim at stereotypes you get games either made for mindless frat boys,geeks or generalized girly cooking thingy.

Instead of stereotypes and generations make the game based on whatever the game is based on then for online play maybe add a bit more customization option, from atypical warfare war to more anime'ish in style battle skirts more colors, accessories ect then of course be able to change gender and body types to suit what the player wants to be, basically outside the set fictional world of the single player champagne let the online stuff be alot more customizable if just only in looks...then of course they can ruin it via micro transactions....

This is what I mean. I don't like the fact that there have to be girl games and boy games. I'm sure there's some guy out there that plays Barbie horse adventures or whatever that just wishes that it could be a tiny bit less pink XD

I just wish there was a customisation for MW2 online that allows for a female soldier. I can't see why not.

NIHILHATE:

DannyBoy451:
My pet hate is how women are depicted in fantasy RPGs: Dainty little things who can lift a sword and fight despite having the figure of a fashion model.

Hehe, you should see my sister. Ten years old and 4'6" and she knocked her dad out with a big fucking plank, just for shits and giggles.

Your dad must have rolled real low on the saving throw...

I don't know, I don't pick character models based upon their death screams?