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I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

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Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#71

Post by NoPiece »

userbinator wrote: post #42
NoPiece wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that's true, that's a lousy way to make a game (they should be fun first, right?). I know first hand this sucks. I have a daughter who just a couple days ago had me to download the Oz Temple Run game. She was very disappointed that the main character was a boy, that only 1 of 4 available characters was a girl, and that the girl was the hardest to unlock. We aren't spending running on virtual currency, so odds…

I think that would be a great time to introduce her to gamehacking... attempt to turn that annoyance into a learning experience instead of a learned helplessness. Teaching her that she can make her device do what she wants is the first step (and that corporations seem to be slowly trying to take that freedom away might be a good lead-on to the perils of locked-down devices... if she understands enough, that is.)

That's a great point, and you've made me resent the closed nature of the iPhone for the first time. I'm not sure where I'd even start. The good news is I have her up on RPG Maker on the PC.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#72

Post by cbd1984 »

indians_pro wrote: post #59
userbinator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "hackability" (and decrease thereof) isn't something exclusive to games - just look at what happened to the UIs of popular programs like browers, for example. Everything is becoming hidden away and more difficult to configure. In contrast to the many menus and dialogs we had before that encouraged users to explore and customise, it seems that apps now are far more opaque to the point that many users don't even re…

The latest versions of firefox are a painful reminder.

Then get the UI you want. That's possible in Firefox, as opposed to Chrome, for example.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#74

Post by wongarsu »

sjm wrote: post #53
lkbm wrote: post #10

> Not all apps have taken this route. “The Hunger Games” lets you choose between being a girl or boy for free. The Hunger Games app? As in, an app based on a book with a female protagonist? That's kind of like saying "Oh, hey, the Pride and Prejudice game lets you play as a girl!" It's a telling detail that could slip past if you're unfamiliar with the story.

I agree, and actually find it a bit telling that a game based on a story with such a strong female protagonist feels the need to have a male playable character at all.

Probably because 12 year old boys like to play as somebody who looks like them just as much as 12 year old girls do. Games offering both options is exactly what the article was advocating.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#75

Post by _bfhp »

falcolas wrote: post #66

Perhaps because it's more profitable to not give away what girls will buy, or they are simply not the target for the games where there are no female protagonists. There's a popular view on hacker news of corporations which are nothing but money grubbing entities bent on doing anything for profit. This doesn't jive well with the view of these game corporations as mysoginistic entities out to repress girls intentionall…

"These kind of people on this website think one thing, and some other people on the website tend to think another thing, and I think they kind of don't work together despite being related to analyses that each vary wildly, and I think those two groups overlap" What? Your combining of two heuristic, subjective analyses of "popular views" to make some kind of point is unimpressive and non-productive.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#76

Post by _bfhp »

wongarsu wrote: post #74
sjm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and actually find it a bit telling that a game based on a story with such a strong female protagonist feels the need to have a male playable character at all.

Probably because 12 year old boys like to play as somebody who looks like them just as much as 12 year old girls do. Games offering both options is exactly what the article was advocating.

Edit: see wongarsu's comment below, as what I say below is uninformed.

The author was advocating for games in general offering characters of both sexes more often; I doubt she'd assert that every single game must have female options. Hunger Games an existing plot, and just as girls have been dealing with male-character-only games for decades, boys can deal with games that stick to the plot -- and I think 12-year-old boys can understand the motivation to stick to it.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#77

Post by NoPiece »

_bfhp wrote: post #70
morgante wrote: post #63

Unfortunately, this is likely a side-effect of the majority of game developers being male. A male making a female character is an altogether dicey proposition. Not only do they have to go through extra effort to imagine said character, but they also run the significant risk of being castigated if said female character doesn't perfectly align to various norms.

>they also run the significant risk of being castigated if said female character doesn't perfectly align to various norms I'm interested in this apparent phenomenon, can you an example?

One example would be Dragon's Crown, which caught a lot of heat over the "Sorceress" character.

http://kotaku.com/game-developers-really-need-to-stop-lettin...

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#78

Post by mod »

JDiculous wrote: post #62

A huge reason why there aren't as many "girl" characters is because most games are made by men. Thus the games naturally caters to themselves. I'm male. Back when I experimented with game development, all the games I wanted to make involved the main character being male. It's not something I ever consciously thought about, it's just how it happened to be. Does that make me sexist? Of course not. I can make whatever t…

Being allowed to make "whatever the hell game you want" doesn't mean you're not sexist. You're allowed to be sexist, too.

I don't think your story makes you sexist, though.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#79

Post by mod »

wongarsu wrote: post #69
JDiculous wrote: post #62

A huge reason why there aren't as many "girl" characters is because most games are made by men. Thus the games naturally caters to themselves. I'm male. Back when I experimented with game development, all the games I wanted to make involved the main character being male. It's not something I ever consciously thought about, it's just how it happened to be. Does that make me sexist? Of course not. I can make whatever t…

I don't think we make male characters because we are male, it's just because that's what we are used to. If the default character in nearly every game would be an emo girl, we would all make games with emo girls without thinking about it. Right now the default is the muscular white male, so that's what we all make if we don't think about it.

Maybe--but why is every character in a game male, regardless of it being self-reinforcing at this point?

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#80

Post by _bfhp »

hasenj wrote: post #48

I am a male. When I would play RPG games (not that I play them that much ..) I'd always choose a female character if there was any. Specially when I was younger. I always thought it was the boys who wanted to play as a "kickass chick". e.g. Tomb Raider

I also often choose female characters. There is some demand from boys for female characters, but as with a lot of demand in the market I'm sure, game companies have little way to detect it, afaik
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