Racism\Sexism in video games

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Yeah that's a valid point, Game developers have a huge untapped market in younger females

Reminds me of a few topics I have seen before. One being that Lego used to be marketed to both boys and girls, but for whatever reason Lego decided to rebrand itself as more of a boys' toy, something you can see in the type of ads they have had. At some point Lego realised that they had created an untapped market because girls felt excluded how they marketed itself, which had kind of been pretty unsuccessful with many girls because their 'girly' Lego could be a bit condescending. Logically Lego is pretty gender neutral, so it should not need to do silly things like shopping mall Lego sets (I mean Lego sets based on malls).

Video games also used to be pretty gender neutral also, and I believe that a big shift came after the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo categorised their console as a toy rather than something like a computer, and which came the idea that it would be marketed more to a specific gender, as toys often are, and boys were chosen as the more logical choice. The video game industry had been a bit circular in its gender audience. They marketed them to boys, so boys played them, so they marketed to boys, and boys played them so they joined the industry and made them for boys/men. It created the market people thought only boys liked games, when there has been a problem in being welcoming.

It took until Pokemon Crystal to be able to play as a girl.

Well I will say this...I do not say i am female on games though the only multiplayer game I play is league of legends. I would like to play competitively on Necromunda underhive, its a video game based on a table top game. But its crashy and glitchy as hell me and my boyfriend have been waiting and waiting for the patch to fix some of that but its been delayed for Xbox which is what we are playing on.

But yeah I guess I do have some concerns about sexism, or I'd probably be less concerned about being immediately open about my gender. I have never done any like headphone set up stuff to talk to people in game, sometimes I just participate in the typing chat box but yeah does kind of seem like just outright mentioning being female could ruin the experience.

It's stupid for sure, but yeah if I am playing video games I want to play a f*****g game...not have comments about my gender or people trying to hit on me or something because "OMG wow I'm a girl who plays video games' For one I already have a boyfriend and also anyone regardless of sex or gender if interested in video games can learn to use a controller or now-days they even have a lot of adaptable tech to help physically disabled people access video game playing. The only reason it was ever a boys vs girl thing is because back in the 90's companies decided to market s**t that way, it didn't have to be that way.

That was related to the point...In the original video, all he did was mention in passing that the "ugandan" sounding female mini-gunner didn't feel "immersive"\"believable" (along with gameplay of her voice in gameplay in the background), and gave a suggestion of the sort of character that would have been a more "immersive" fit in that role from his point of view. He didn't harp on race, he didn't say there shouldn't be female characters (he did question the 50% split, given that according to the survey only 7% of players for this genre of game were female), yet (as here) the responces to the video were that he only wanted white, male characters, or that he had something against characters of certain races/sexes...The focus of the comments wasn't on the characters and how the choices made by the developers helped\hurt immersion for the player, but rather that questioning how the developers chose to "assign" the sex to each character was "sexist", or that mentioning the accent of the character when describing her was "racist".

From his point of view (given that his reviews focus on the gameplay and immersion of the game):
* There are 4 roles.
* The developers elected to have 2 male and 2 female characters.

Instead of looking at the roles to see if any would be more "believeable" with a specific sex, assigning these, then randomly (or stategically, such as allocating the most popularly played "class" of the randomly available ones to the "sex" least allocated using prior step) assigning the others while keeping the desired ratio, the designers just picked at random for all of them, which leads to a decrease, rather than increase, in immersion for a player (or at least for him).

Given in the final scoring this wasn't mentioned as a positive or a negative and that he gave the game a "thumb up" (which, from memory, occurrs in much less than half of the reviews he does), it wasn't a "problem" with the game, just a minor thing which irritated him slightly (It's obvious when something really irritates him).



Never played that one (not even sure when\where I got it, as Steam shows I last played it in 2014, but that appears to have just been idling for the trading cards) - Is it worth downloading to play?

I tend to stick to single player games, but the multiplayer ones I play generally have non-human characters (World of Tanks), or have a randomly generated character which is unable to be changed or customized (Rust - Though I play on a PvE server, not PvP). Given I have trouble "imagining" a character in a game as someone other than myself, I typically end with a character resembling (in as far as possible) myself, as the game is played for relaxation, not to "challenge" myself by trying to think as some imaginary "other" person who I am playing as would act...First person, unvoiced character games are best for this, as you cannot see your character, nor hear a strange voice for "me" in the game, and so there is a much higher level of immersion\escapism\relaxation\"realism" present: If the characters in that game hadn't been voiced (being multiplayer, is there really any need\reason to voice player characters?), the race\sex of the character wouldn't have even been noted in the video (or noticed outside of the selection screen).

The mention of World of Tanks reminds me of one of my favourite anime, Girls und Panzer, which is set in a world where it is seen as normal for women to operate the heavy machinery of tanks.

But still, the question of believability a silly one, since her build seem to clearly be larger than the other characters, and does seem to have an exoskeleton that would help her carry more. Her bio even mentions she had years of heavy lifting and tinkering with machines, for why she would be a perfectly believable character to suit herself up with a heavy minigun. People complaining over a female character like this are the same kind that complained about in The Last of Us 2 for being too muscular, despite written right in the story how she practically lives in a gym.

Women can be strong, it does not make them any less of a woman for being strong, and their character would not just instantly be improved if you made them a man. And I think that it is reasonable to believe that if someone thinks those things, they are probably grasping with some sexist beliefs.

I think Goldeneye007 had sexism in it as well.
Natalya being made into being a dumb character and she carries a small gun in the jungle to shoot enemies.

She was even rated as the most annoying game character.

I dont know if Rareware was implying women are incompetent. I never thought thought if this until this thread.

In the James Bond franchise, I expect neither political correctness nor realism. For my taste, it should be a macho fantasy to the point of self-caricature. That's the flavor. I'm all for variety of flavors in art.

I wouldn't recommend it unless one is looking for an entirely silly/unbelievable experience. Its broken/sketchy as hell. It's got Halo 'physics', jetpacks (there are other classes but no one uses them), an arsenal of of vehicles including airborne assault vehicles and mechs, and of course generic Dinos/archosaurs. The voice chat commands are hilarious. Got it for $1 USD. I've only played it for 18 hours according to Steam and I will not be playing it again.

My daughter was and still is to "boys" type of lego so it probably depends on different factors but gender nuetral is not going to work as girls reach a certain age and switch to other forms of gender specific entertainment. Lego need to create a fad that goes viral among girls to tap into that market.

Not sure if you are old enough to remember Leisure suite Larry?