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I would say they borrow this from other forms of media. To be honest, even in video games, you have to suspend belief to think women have the same abilities as men. Most games are of the action packed, run and gun, and monsters variety. Resident Evil is good at putting a woman lead in their stories without suspending belief. Also most gamers are guys and enjoy emulating that characters they play. The designers should consult James Cameron for his ability to cast/write female leads. My biggest complaint, women noises. When they squeel, grunt, and cry, that all unnerves me.

Only have to suspend disbelief if you're dumb. Real world, we have women flying F-22 Raptors, chasing criminals over fences as cops and fighting our wars. I have to suspend disbelief when I see guys with linebacker builds in combat-oriented games more. Marcus Fenix would never make it through US Army Basic Training as much as he weighs. You try hauling that fat ass over a mantle wall or hoist him into a fireman's carry if he gets shot. Majority of people we would consider reality's action movie archetypes, soldiers, pilots, cops, etc, are not built like Arnold, as agility and mobility count more than brute strength, typically.

The title conjured all the wrong ideas for me, none of which had to do with the topic

I usually do remember the female touch, but I am not sure we have met before...

I remember the touch.... Father why?!? Jk

Now there's gonna be a massive wave of games about "female empowerment".

One is justifiedly reminded of various similar controversies. Not the topic but the scope and the nature. The pattern follows closely enough that one may wonder if the whole thing is not manufacted to take advantage of the wave of fad gender articles in online gaming press.

Possible, but at the same time, is there really such a "fad" going on right now in the gaming press, or is it sort of a misguided sort of armchair analysis we see from the press regarding females in games? I remember hearing that the team behind The Last of Us had to fight to get Ellie on the front cover for promotions. So I think such cases like this are not all about manufactured controversy, to be honest.

Again the content of the controversy is less interesting to me than the general nature and scope. To the content of it I would only say: look at the voluminous unqualified support Adria Richards enjoyed for eavesdropping on a private conversation and doing everything she could to make the contents of the aforesaid conversation public in an effort to shame the participators. The banter, nothing more than Beavis-and-Butthead style finding innuendo in the most innocent language (so it's fundamentally linguistic, not sexual, humor) for the sake of laughs, was in no way directed at her or in any way intended to be about her or in reference to her. She was still heralded as a champion of women's rights while acting out the textbook definition of narcissism. She even compared herself to Joan of Arc. That there is any controversy at all in denouncing this person as a pathological case and the man whose job she destroyed as her victim is a sure indicator of the extent to which one side actually owns the damn conversation.

I believe it's a lack of maturity in the industry and we still see dev's/pub's not knowing exactly where that line is concerning political correctness. (example: God of War bro's/hoe's trophy hotfix) But, overall, I think this leads into the bigger issue concerning the industry and it's how it's not achieving diversity in its various brands. This not only concerns rehashed mechanics, theme's and plots but also sex, race and religion. Out of all of last years games the only one I can look at proudly saying that it achieved something pretty close to unique was TT's The Walking Dead.

I think this medium, like many others of entertainment, is at least partially dictated by analysts. Companies want their products to sell well and nothing soothes the investment anxieties of a wealthy executive better than a professional seer. I don't believe analysts are payed to calculate ethics into their predictive equations, although I don't deny that the gaming is myopic in focus and progress demands more open-mindedness. The point I'm trying to make here is that these tropes and cliches (white, heroic, male, etc) might originated from the zeitgeist of times past, but those times have passed a ****ing long time ago. The industry and their analysts act upon existing statistics. It's not going to be them facilitating any changes, as they don't fix that which isn't broken. The industries maturity reflects our own and I know for a fact that my maturity isn't directly proportional to my age. That's the way the cookie crumbles because nobody can be bothered to eat it before it does.

One cannot use normative values to make positive statements. Conflating the two categories has never not led to error. "It's not going to be them facilitating any changes[...]" They will or no one will. The other golden rule; he who has the gold makes the rules. Publishers have the gold. They make the rules. You want some rules to change? Convince them to change them. The most effective way to do that is to show that they can get more gold by changing the rules or that by keeping them as they are they will get less gold or even start to lose it. A statistic (which we may stipulate accurate) often brought up in this sort of conversation is that 45% of gamers are women. All well and good. But that's not a detailed enough analysis. If the relevant statistics are accurate then the problem is not that games do not appeal to women but that 'core' games are not made to appeal to women. The actual cause of the bland generic characters fitting an obvious description is, according to someone who actually works in the industry, due to an attitude of compromise and a desire for safe bets over serious artistic leaps. There are often massive amounts of money at stake here and conservative attitudes are often the best ones to have for protecting investments.

"I don't believe analysts are payed to calculate ethics into their predictive equations, although I don't deny that the gaming is myopic in focus and progress demands more open-mindedness" Taken as a whole this sentence is meaningless. It reads like something a pomo essay generator would spit out.

Also, we need to stop with the delusions of eloquence in these comment sections. Intentional Socratic hypocrisy was intended.

Who's we? For whom, other than yourself, can you claim to speak? That has the sheen and odor of a 'we need to talk' opening line on whatever topic should happen to arouse the interest of certain profoundly lazy writers who cannot be bothered to find out if extensive conversation has taken place on a topic and, in a remarkable leap into the illogical, proceeds to essay forth on the topic as though no such discussion had ever occured.

Your rhetoric bombardment has me cracking up throughout this entire article. Thanks for bringing me back to my social theory class, you wordy, confusing man.

The "we" was indeed a majestic plural, I joke and kid, but mean no offence. Your arguments alluding to a role of responsibility played by the customer echo my own thoughts. I just think that the statistics, used in projections, are incomplete and archaic. And that this most likely won't change without economical incentive, just as you stated. If you feel bad about rashly insulting me earlier, don't. I am, indeed, quite lazy.

I wasn't offended. Just using inquiry to tease out assumptions. There are devices and gestures one has recourse to in personal conversation that can help with that. You'd hear my tone and see my body language and know my intentions were not vicious. The thing is if the statistics are accurate as a description of the present then there's no denying women like games and want to play them. There's also no denying that, by and large, core games are currently a market for men with an average age of 34. If Kuchera isn't blowing smoke (big if, Kuchera is also known as that guy who jumped on E.D. Kain's toes for absolutely no good reason) then the problem here is the self-fulfilling prophecy. Games with female protagonists don't sell so they don't get greenlit so they don't get made so there's no good metrics on how to guide development on them and no good historical data on marketing campaigns. I think you're being too kind in calling them myopic. I fear it may be willful blindness. The Metroid and Tomb Raider series should have blown those assumptions to bits ages ago. Consider what most of the backlash against Other M entailed - 'you took our Ellen Ripley stand-in away and gave us a codependent whiner!' (as Charlie Cade noted that objection is only meaningful in the context of the larger series, but still). People, including men want good female characters and active, independent, *strong* characters at that. Market's out there. It borders on arbitrage. The money's there and no one has the guts to pick it up.

Wow, that's pretty sad if they didn't want to develop Remember Me because of the idea of playing as a female. I want to play that game 'cuz it looks fun. Tomb Raider was a great game too and I really liked the new incarnation of Lara Croft. I know it's a little... beside the point, but the Mass Effect series allows Shepard to be either male or female and there's no real "canon" Shepard. That's true, but at the very least in Mass Effect 3, official "femShep" art was released and used in advertisements, both on the cover of Mass Effect 3 and promotional trailers. It really is a shame that there aren't that many strong female leads in games nowadays. Hopefully though with the releases of Tomb Raider as well as Remember Me, it might encourage developers and story tellers to try for more female leads in the future.

I'm curious (this is just asking questions, not stating an opinion on anything, so no attacks please) how the number of female leads by ratio relates to the gender dynamics of video gamers. I'm also wondering why the games with a gender choice option was removed from the equation. I suppose it's because some would view it as complicating the gender dichotomy, but I would be interested in knowing how many games offer a gender / character choice. It's important to point out that this isn't really a "gaming industry" problem as much as it is a societal one, and this is merely a microcosm of societal values regarding women in (this case) leadership / heroic roles. Solution to this problem? In every game the protagonist needs to be a robot!! Because what game doesn't need more robots!!? (It would also explain health regeneration!)

Yes.

We've been playing games with male leads and "damsels in distress" since the days of Donkey Kong; it's been embedded deep within the gaming culture and accepted as a standard of game design. Odd to think that for all the good games like Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda did for the industry that they contributed heavily to the standardization of male leads.