[Beskargam]

So what are good examples of females written in sci-fi/video games? I always thought halo did a good job about gender equality, but it more just ignored gender all together. Does that count as making them "men with boobs"?

In sci-Fi, I enjoyed reading Tanya Huff's Confederation of Valor which has a female protagonist. But I strongly suspect falls into "men with boobs". She also fits the determinator trope.

I've seen some dislike for Jim Butcher here, but one of his short stories in the Dresden Universe (The short story is Aftermath) takes place from a female perspective. The perspective was radically different from any that I have read to this day, and stands out in my mind as well written female character that avoids most troops in the genre. 

[Killer Whale]

Yeah no. That's never gonna happen and you know it.
They pander to them because that's what they get their money from. These's so called 'AAA' games aren't made to provide social commentary, they are giant cash cows that need to be milked over and over again.

But hey, on the plus side. At least in the new call of dooty, Dogs will be better represented than ever!

But isn't that the point of this discussion (from a feminist view)? By educating people on sexist habits the hope is to persuade the sympathetic population within gamers to see some devices, or tropes, as unacceptable or ill-used and not purchase games using them badly. It's similar with modern military shooters, the hope is that when those purchasing these titles realise that the titles are repetitive, boring and stagnant they stop buying them, and cause that far too specific genre to collapse and decrease to a more reasonable size in favour of more varied titles. The difference is that anti-MMS sentiments have spread to a large proportion of gamers and promises to continue, while feminism in games is very much in its infancy and may stay that way. The similarity is that they are both a long way from coming to fruition.

Edit: Quote for context

[Killer Whale]

I'm a little too socially awkward to make the realisation myself (whats a gurl?), but a friend of mine said she sees males and females as different versions of the same thing. We are all the same species and males and females are in many ways far more similar than society (whatever that word means) represents them. So what does "man with boobs" mean? People are people, most (not all obviously) of what we define as "masculine" or "feminine" is a social construct. So what if a woman is physically strong, shoots alien invaders for exercise and eats steak for breakfast. That's her personality, her character, not someone who obviously is just a man with breasts.

[An4ximandros]

 The God Emperor of Alpha Centauri disagrees. According to him (or what I get from his posts) Women = X, Men = Y. And they need to be written in a way that makes them fall into/conform to this reality. This is a view point I disagree with, to me people have far too man shades to them to use any sort of classification. Sex is simply one "trait" so to speak, as are ethnicity and nationality. The whole "Breastman" point of view is closed minded. There are men that enjoy doing things associated with females (taking care of children, for example.), as well as women that just want to enjoy a good beer and a good Soccer match after a day of hard work. Hell, I dislike alcohol and refuse to drink wine in any way because I find it disgusting (tastes bad to me), something judged to be "unmanly" by many people.

 I'd like to continue this post, but I have an exam in seven hours and I have not slept all day. I think we can actually have a good discussion about this.

[SpardaSon21]

Well, wine's awful, anyways.  Beer is the superior alcoholic beverage.

[General Battuta]

The God Emperor of Alpha Centauri disagrees. According to him (or what I get from his posts) Women = X, Men = Y. And they need to be written in a way that makes them fall into/conform to this reality. This is a view point I disagree with, to me people have far too man shades to them to use any sort of classification. Sex is simply one "trait" so to speak, as are ethnicity and nationality. The whole "Breastman" point of view is closed minded. There are men that enjoy doing things associated with females (taking care of children, for example.), as well as women that just want to enjoy a good beer and a good Soccer match after a day of hard work. Hell, I dislike alcohol and refuse to drink wine in any way because I find it disgusting (tastes bad to me), something judged to be "unmanly" by many people.

I am baffled. Where did you get this? It seems like you're mixing up my posts with someone else's (the Breastman thing) - maybe MP-Ryan? Or are you trying to ascribe a really stupid attitude to me because you believe it will accomplish...a...thing?

You literally wrote an entire post without once mentioning an opinion I have voiced in this thread and then labeled it 'Battuta'. I cannot fathom the process you went through. Unless you are from a parallel universe, in which case we are going to win a Nobel Prize.

[General Battuta]

Be on the lookout for a poster who looks exactly like me except he has a goatee. May have kidnapped Anaximandros; to be considered armed and extremely handsome

[Lorric]

The God Emperor of Alpha Centauri disagrees. According to him (or what I get from his posts) Women = X, Men = Y. And they need to be written in a way that makes them fall into/conform to this reality. This is a view point I disagree with, to me people have far too man shades to them to use any sort of classification. Sex is simply one "trait" so to speak, as are ethnicity and nationality. The whole "Breastman" point of view is closed minded. There are men that enjoy doing things associated with females (taking care of children, for example.), as well as women that just want to enjoy a good beer and a good Soccer match after a day of hard work. Hell, I dislike alcohol and refuse to drink wine in any way because I find it disgusting (tastes bad to me), something judged to be "unmanly" by many people.

 I'd like to continue this post, but I have an exam in seven hours and I have not slept all day. I think we can actually have a good discussion about this.

Yes, I agree. And I must also sleep now.

[Lorric]

Female characters are generally horribly portrayed in both science fiction and games, a phenomenon that is not unrelated (double negative ftw).

They typically suffer from one of either two problems:
1.  They are portrayed as a damsel in need of rescuing (there are variations on this theme; there are strong damsels too but the underlining characteristic is that they are always in need of rescuing from a male character, often the protagonist).
2.  They are Men With Boobs (e.g. the writer seeks to write a strong, non-damsel female and ends up writing what he - it is almost always a he - sees as a strong woman, which typically embodies all the characteristics of a man except the character is said to be female - and usually an attractive one at that).  The female version of Shepard in Mass Effect is a great example of this silliness.

There are a few male fantasy/sci-fi writers that have come close to accomplishing the creation of a believable strong female - Daenerys from A Song of Ice and Fire is a decent example, though still somewhat flawed - but in general the gaming industry and the science fiction realm is incredibly bad at writing women.  Until they get better, mainstream women audiences generally aren't going to take either medium very seriously, either.

Anyway, I think the original author of these talks is right on her money.  The gaming industry needs to develop some serious maturity around its characters, especially female characters, if it wants to develop the kind of widespread audience among women that it already has among men.  It would also help if some triple-A developers and publishers quit pandering to the barely-post-pubsecent-shallow-male population with their major titles.  Though that is getting better - games have really matured from what they used to be.

Here's the mystery post, it was MP-Ryan.

[ssmit132]

I think the point that MP-Ryan was getting at there is that in video games and science fiction, the characterisations of "Damsel in Distress" and "Breastman" are used far too much, rather than either of those being bad characterisations in themselves. Forgive me if I'm wrong, though.

What Killer Whale said is relevant here: it's not that those nitty-gritty FPSs are bad, per se, but that there's simply too many of them available right now.

[General Battuta]

Yes. They are often - almost always - lazy and thoughtless, and perhaps most interestingly, one often emerges from an attempt to fix the other. 'Oh', the naive writer says, attempting to avoid writing a damsel in distress. 'I'll make this female character interesting by inverting everything. She'll be tough and swear a lot and drink and have sex!' But she still won't have much agency, or much Bechdel-fu, or much subjectivity, and so the problems haven't actually been addressed.

People write women in narrow pigeonholed ways that often position them as narrative objects. Nearly any non-protagonist woman in a movie you've seen recently probably fell into one of those pigeonholes, including many of the ones the writers want to bill as 'strong'.

Writing successful characters requires writers to accept that the performance of gender is fluid and varies a lot between individuals, that diversity within genders is much larger than between genders. It also requires a profound and often uncomfortable examination of the gender baggage the writer carriers. Most people who set out to write a 'gender blind' story, one in which a character's gender is entirely incidental to their personality and role, will fail. They don't understand the full complexity of gender and thus they don't understand how to control its deployment in the story.

For recent examples with high visibility I guess I'd point to the movies Oblivion and Ratatouille. They say little to nothing about gender yet turn out to be spectacularly gendered in the way they treat their characters.

[Mikes]

Mh. I'm wondering how the new Tomb Raider with it's heavy inspiration from "the Descent" would fit into this discussion.

As I've seen the movie (Descent, not the Tomb Raider movies lol) been called both mysoginistic exploitation and woman empowerement by different people I am wondering

[Spoon]

Also, that link I posted and spoon's playing: It's not a mod; it's a fully fledged MMO.

For the record I stopped playing (and uninstalled) the game after reaching level 5. The game is all sorts of bad.
I could go indepth about why and how but that's kind of offtopic and for the most part the youtube link earlier already showed most of the flaws.
Interesting little fact, the game is released under the name Queen's blade online in korea&japan. For those familiar with that name it will explain a lot. 

[MP-Ryan]

A little more general commentary on the subject since the original point has apparently missed a few people around here.

The trouble with the Damsel and ManBoobs characterizations of women in games is that - while there are exceptions - they are the predominant ways female characters are presented.  I often wonder if the male writers have ever met a woman.  Both my wife and a close friend of mine from work are people I would classify as "strong women," but in completely different ways - and both of them have completely different personality types from pretty much every man I know.

Male characterization does the cookie-cutter thing as well, but to a lesser extent, and there are far more examples of unique male characterizations in games than there are female.  The trouble with character writing in general is that characters often have breadth - large, significant backstory, range of emotions - but no depth - underlying motivations, personality type, response patterns.  This is especially true of nearly every prominent female character in games - they are defined by the situation they are in and the other characters that surround them, versus any innate qualities.  And when there are some innate qualities thrown into the mix (Mass Effect), they are derived from stereotypically male qualities or story pieces (again, think in Mass Effect that choosing female does not affect the story in any meaningful way).

I cannot think of a single game I have played with female characters in which a female was believably portrayed.

[AdmiralRalwood]

(again, think in Mass Effect that choosing female does not affect the story in any meaningful way)

Alternatively, choosing male does not affect the story in any meaningful way (everybody I know IRL plays the series with a female Shepard).

[deathfun]

Question: What's a believably portrayed woman set in "X" where "X" is the genre of the game Ryan?

Examples of what you think would be nice

(again, think in Mass Effect that choosing female does not affect the story in any meaningful way)

Mass Effect is a terrible example as the character in game is given options that the player chooses to say. The character is essentially a projection of the player's personality, or what they choose the personality to be

Same goes for Fallout and Elder Scrolls games

they are defined by the situation they are in and the other characters that surround them

I've found that to be true of male characters as well...

[Polpolion]

(again, think in Mass Effect that choosing female does not affect the story in any meaningful way)

Mass Effect is a terrible example as the character in game is given options that the player chooses to say. The character is essentially a projection of the player's personality, or what they choose the personality to be

Same goes for Fallout and Elder Scrolls games

not really. the player has as much input to character development in those games as a reader does in any choose-your-own-adventure book.

[MP-Ryan]

Question: What's a believably portrayed woman set in "X" where "X" is the genre of the game Ryan?

Examples of what you think would be nice

I just said I cannot think of any games I've played with believable female characters of depth (*note I have not yet played BioShock Infinite).[/quote]

Mass Effect is a terrible example as the character in game is given options that the player chooses to say. The character is essentially a projection of the player's personality, or what they choose the personality to be

Same goes for Fallout and Elder Scrolls games

Which is fine, except Mass Effect and TES games start with a male archetype, even for female characters.  It's not jarring for men to play, because we're used to the male archetype.  Get a female friend of yours to play, though, and see if she is satisfied with those characters as believable females.  Your dialogue options are constrained, remember.

I've found that to be true of male characters as well...

Indeed - but all games base their female characters on a man's version of that female character.  Female characters are almost never written by women, and it shows.

[NGTM-1R]

not really. the player has as much input to character development in those games as a reader does in any choose-your-own-adventure book.

Not really, the story proceeds in a more linear fashion than a CYOA, much more, because it's always going to a singular ending or at least traversing the same territories while it reaches its small number of endings. CYOA's don't (they typically had about four actual endings and sometimes more from what I remember, that usually took wildly different paths), and have numerous bad end dead ends games don't.

[Dragon]

Which is fine, except Mass Effect and TES games start with a male archetype, even for female characters.  It's not jarring for men to play, because we're used to the male archetype.  Get a female friend of yours to play, though, and see if she is satisfied with those characters as believable females.  Your dialogue options are constrained, remember.

Actually, I found that TES: Morrowind has a nice selection of dialogue options. I think you could play a fairly believable female character if you chose to. Other TES games either don't give the player character any characterization at all (Arena and Dagerfall, you can hardly talk about archetypes when about the only thing you can do is ask for directions or quests) or almost completely railroad him/her (Oblivion) in each quest. I don't know about Skyrim, haven't gotten to it yet. Also, Morrowind is interesting in that if features at least one awkward moment regardless of your character's gender. If you're female, then an ancient hero comes off as a transsexual, if you're male, one character comes off as bisexual. Also, in neither case it's jarring, let's say that this kind of thing could be expected form both of them. Also, Shivering Isles (Oblivion's expansion) seems to assume you're female in some minor dialogue, though this might as well be a bug.
Agreed about ME, since it does give Shepard much more characterization, though I can't say I haven't met women who would act like that.