Famale Charchters in Videogames: The Opposite of "attractive" would it work?

[the dark side]

i warn you now that this is going to come across as completely and totally and utterly crazy, and possibly MORE than a little bit sexist! so bear with me please ok.

with my pet project still suffering from a dire lack of cashflow, ive had time to play some more action games, as well as watch videos of whatever rubbish has currently been launched or is due to be launched soon. something i have noticed.

I find the female charachters portrayed to be disturbing. not being sexist here, i just, dont, like, them....

i have noticed a trend in action videogames for the NPC "love interest" to be a charachter type i cannot stand to see as NPC, often very bad tempered with an awfull bad attitude, a complete lack of discipline, immense Bitchyness, very thin, with highly Fantasized "physical attributes", and often in extremely skimpy and sexualised clothing, highly indipendant and warrior like, etc,.

Now, although this is fine if the charachter is the playable one, such as Cate Archer, Lara Croft, or Joanna (not jo..zero is NON CANNON ok?) Dark, seeing as well, you want the player charachter to be able to look after themselves to the level the player will demand.

But as for the NPC love interest, i find it offputting, completly, to the point i actually have no desire what so ever to protect that charachter, as far as i am concerned they are more than proficient at looking after themself, wich frequently leads to mission failure. (botheration!) in fact i just cannot STAND them.

There massive "you cant tell me what to do!" attitude problem seriously winds me up. just shut up ok! sheer Bitchyness and terrrible "touch this and you die" bad attitude, god, it makes me want to scream! i hate it, completely, its enough to make me stop playing the game, i dont see why i should be helping a charachter i would much rather remove from the game entirely so they stop ruining the story for me by making me constantly angry!.

as for the sexualiseation, please, its OFFENSIVE! it puts me off completely, it makes me feel sick, they way in game women seem to keep dressing as ladies of the night, its disgusting. look, im a methodist christian right? (i know, im commiting suicide admitting to being religious on these forums) that means i have very "it is wrong" views on pre marital sex and sexualised dressing. so i get offended if i see it being promoted.

its also worrying, as it gives girls very negative characther stereotypes, wich leads them to beleive they have to be bitchy and be super thin and dress like a tart to get a boy, wrong, all that gets you is a hoodied thug who is going to smack the crap out of you, abuse you, then leave you carrying baby when someone prettier comes along for him to abuse. its not good for society! or the mental and physical health of our teenage girls.

for my own title, i want to avoid this completely, so its NPC story love interest is the total opposite, in fact, she is based on someone i knew, and adored, in my own life, sadly, we were seperated when her parents moved down south with jobs, shes married with kids now. anyway, the charachter is based on her as i remember her. wich means shes also the total opposite of the way pretty much 90% of female charachters are in videogames today, in the same way her real life inspiration was the total opposite of the "popular" megabitch girls of our yeargroup. (yes, it was so long ago it was back when i was in highschool!,they just dont make girls like her anymore!)

what worries me is, is the charachter going to work? the good news is, she isnt in the game that much, cutscene only and back at "headquaters" owing to her position of the secretary of the main player charachter, but, i am still worried that, as much as i love the charachter, as shes based on someone i loved in real life, is she going to put other players of the game?, owing to them perhaps being, i dont know, embarrassed by her charachter traits, or finding her "disgustingly old fashioned and clearly the product of some proto neanderthal male chauvanist pig who has no understanding of the strength and independance of womyn!"

i cannot give too much information on her however, as basically, i dont want the charachter stolen, as basically, you cannot trust these american megapublishers, who doubtless spy on the internet to look for ideas to steal and pervert for the tastes of their main fratboy audiences, hence the characthers name, past, main personality, etc will not be described.

however, before i do, wich will be in another post,. im now worried ive made this post sexist, but, i dont know how else to describe my feelings and image of many female NPC's in gaming now, i am literally lost for words. so, err, if someone could explain to me how to get it across without seeming like an "opressive woman hater who would have us all back at the sink in hobbleskirts while preaching god at us" as that is NOT who i am, then i would be gratefull, and, once i have modified this post, i will tell you about the attributes of the charachter, that will make her the total opposite of the current videogame female npc sterotype, and why i am worried it could lead to a sales damaging backlash.

thanks.

TDS

[Nice]

take a chill pill, dawg

[the dark side]

this is a serious topic, please keep it that way, thankyou.

[Nice]

ok sorry, my view on this:

you are correct, the female characters are always portrayed the same way and its kind of annoying. But it's always been like this so i don't really understand the sudden outburst xD thats why i told you to "chill" in my first post.

edit: And its not going to stop, most of the gamers like to watch exposed female pixels. Take a look at skyrim for example... Most downloaded mods are skimpy armors and nude female mods.

[CorinthianMerchant]

I dislike sexualization of female characters because I'm a feminist, not because I'm a christian.


The rest seems to be your regular rants.

[Bridge]

I'm sorry but what is the point of all this?

EDIT: Shame on me for not reading the entire post I guess. Still, I think it is a total non-issue. In fact even thinking about it makes me sick. It all owes to our indomitable urge to reproduce and as much as possible as that. We may pretend like we are above it and renounce our natural desires but on a primal level that's the only reason we even exist. It's usually a subconscious thing but some people use it to their advantage. Anyway, long story short optimal physical features are appealing to us so that's what we look for. Anybody who "doesn't care about appearance" is lying to themselves (or asexual). There's nothing sexist about it, it's just a fact of life. The sexism sometimes comes in when the characterization is ignored, but some video game developers just don't know how to write believable characters. Usually if there are shallow, insipid female characters you can be sure the male characters are going to be just as shallow.

[Froge]

dark side

Have you ever been aware that writing a really long rant deters posters from a thread most of the time?

A topic post such as "Discuss if games with unattractive female characters would sell" would probably work much better.

[Macgyverthehero]

There was this one question I read somewhere on the internet. It asked:

"Why do most women in video games show more breasts than brains?"

[Tommyboypsp]

It depends on what you mean by 'the exact opposite'.
If you're going to make a character that is extremely fat and will die if you don't look after her for 10 seconds, then no.
But I too would like to see less of the video game females you're talking about. All those adverts for crappy video games that just have a hot 'mage' of 'elf' filling up the adverts..

Good luck with your project, but if you can't really tell us what the character is going to be like, we can't really say if we think it'll work or not.

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

It's not just female characters, it's just more apparent there. Actually I find male characters in games are often sickeningly stereotypical as well. I mean have a look at this:



No matter the gender, protagonists and "good" NPCs will often be stereotypical "good looking". To the point where the villains sometimes look way more interesting than the good guys because the artists didn't have to conform to that unwritten rule.
But games aren't the only medium doing that, you can also find it in a lot of movies... I find it boring.

I believe, however, that a more natural looking character can work just as well, if you have the right audience. Remember the uproar when the first pictures of Geralt from the Witcher 2 were released? Fans were telling the devs that he was way too good looking - they wanted the scarred, imperfect guy from the first game, not some chiseled underwear model. And they listened to their fans and changed the design.

Of course even the changed Geralt is still way above-average in terms of how handsome he is. But it's a little step in the right direction.