
I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me? - kanamekun
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/04/im-a-12-year-old-girl-why-dont-the-characters-in-my-apps-look-like-me/
======
opso
This is a bit tangential to the article, but the first paragraph stuck out to
me.

    
    
        For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side.
    

Back in my day, I was playing video games all the time, hacking them with
debug cheats and GameShark. This was universally called a waste of my time by
every adult I met, I had to go to great lengths to convince people I should be
allowed to do it, and it's what on-ramped me to a super lucrative (and I hope
useful to society) career in tech.

Yet here we've arrived at a state of affairs where most western children
regularly spend inordinate amounts of time on walled-up instant-gratification
video game platforms designed to vacuum money out of their parent's wallets,
entirely detached from inspiring them to hack at things and go into
technology. Somehow _this_ state of affairs is perfectly normal and okay.

Yeah, I'm a bit bitter about it.

~~~
lkbm
It's still seen as a waste of time, I think. Just has finally been accepted as
normal. And while you may have been firing up hex editors, that probably
wasn't the norm.

YOu are right, though, that the computer games of the nineties offered a lot
more hackability than iPhone apps. ZZT was an introduction to OOP for many
kids, Red Alert had rules.ini that defined the stats for each unit, and Duke3D
had configuration files in C. Mods and "Total Conversions" were a things. That
ecosystem isn't just unavailable in mobile games, but would probably be hated
by many companies who want full control over their product.

So two things we should do: write more moddable games, include defaults that
don't assume we're all male (or white, for that matter.

~~~
zanny
I got into programming a decade ago with Quake 2 engine forks and Neverwinter
Nights private servers. You would never have avenues into that kind of thing
from the ios platform at all. It is very much like how anyone from the Windows
GUI generation never touched a terminal so they do not even know what a
program / file / etc really is to begin with.

~~~
marssaxman
I don't know about that. I grew up on classic Mac OS with nary a command line
in sight, and I found my way under the skin just fine. I was building
compilers and writing device drivers before I ever learned how shell scripting
worked. I think people who want to get inside will generally figure out how;
the information is all out there for the asking. My pet theory is that there
are just as many people interested in the inner workings as ever, but that
we're a much smaller proportion of the total computer-using population now,
and so we have a much smaller influence on the culture around computers and
networks than we used to.

~~~
zanny
Except getting into Windows isn't a thing, even today, and even for all but
the most professional engineers behind huge companies with Microsofts ear.
Literally the limit of Windows is registry editing and trying to reverse
engineer the horrible contents of some file in system32. There are no guts to
see, no knobs to tweak, because its one massive black box. Earlier OSes, even
Mac OS, has to be much more open because resources were much more limited and
you could not obscure the implementation behind the black box without
degrading the experience too much. More performance let MS get away with that,
and if not for modable game engines there would have been nothing in my
childhood to tinker with.

------
ekanes
The comments critiquing her research make me so sad. I don't think anyone
wouldn't agree with her basic, essential point; Many, many more games have
only a default male character.

It is interesting that often we don't see others' points of view until they're
put in front of us. My entire life, I've played games with male defaults and
never noticed the lack of females. Only when my 8 year-old girl said, "Why
can't I play a girl?" did I realize it was an issue. Yikes!

~~~
detcader
It is indeed sad; I think history has shown that most people who benefit from
a system of advantage just reflexively don't like when others talk about how
it works, but that's just how I see it.

I'm playing OlliOlli (edited the name in since a user asked), a really awesome
and successful game right now from a small (ish?) company (they're even making
a sequel) where you only get one character to play as, and he is definitely
male -- you couldn't even spin him as possibly being female. I'm male too and
I'm afraid to point this out to the company, because of the backlash that
usually happens, and I think the company is pretty much all male staff. It's
not a huge deal but if the sequel is just as limited I'll express my
disappointment, as it's a great game otherwise.

~~~
hackuser
Definitely point it out, here and to the game developer. To a great degree it
just comes down to awareness, and the best fix for that is to talk about it.
The beneficiaries don't want to be sexist (of course there always are
exceptions); people just don't notice it unless it happens to them -- just as
people ignore most risks in other areas of life, such as lack of backups or
weak passwords, health risks, etc. until they get burnt. As one commenter here
said, he didn't notice until it affected his daughter.

Just don't assume maliciousness and others won't either. There are plenty of
things in the world I don't know about and I learn from everyone else; I just
try pull my weight by sharing the things I've learned.

~~~
NoPiece
I think that is great advice - if it bugs you, You should reach out to the
developer. Email or tweet them, and say, Hey I have a daughter/girlfriend/wife
and she wishes she could play OlliOlli as a female.

What is unfortunate is that there is a growing group of activists who will
start the discussion with a public accusation or attack.

~~~
detcader
I feel for that woman in your life, who would be called an "attacking
activist" if she ever strayed outside of your proscribed guidelines of
civility. It's unfortunate that women have to deal with violence and
discrimination from men so much that they get tired of it and express deep
anger on the internet. I as a male sympathize with the anger, not the targets
of the anger.

~~~
NoPiece
_I as a male sympathize with the anger, not the targets of the anger_

Good luck being happy in life. Victims deserve your empathy, not the angry.
Anger rarely leads good things, whether it be at a personal level, or at a
macro level.

------
MichaelGG
My daughters are 6 and 8. One of the biggest questions they have before
starting any new game is "can I be a girl?" Even in Minecraft, their favorite,
they try to dress up the character as much as possible. They're terribly
disappointed when where are no girl characters and offhand, they only
bought/play one game without a girl character (GTA V, though we skip the
missions which contain the questionable for kids content).

Even in Myst, they asked/pretend the main character is a girl (though the
intro makes it rather clear that's not the case).

It's really surprising to me, since as a boy I often chose female characters
and didn't really think about it. But game devs could easily be losing money
by alienating so much of the market. (Though girl characters for purchase, so
long clearly identified in demos or marketing materials, is probably a cynical
way to fix the situation. Spending $5 to make my daughters enjoy a game is an
automatic buy.)

And it extends further, too. When buying a ThinkPad for my 6-yr-old, she
_really_ wanted a colored one. Even when explaining it's a superior platform,
how it'll hook into her audio hardware, etc., she was only OK with the
platform after I said we could get one of those vinyl skins printed up for her
ThinkPad, so it wouldn't be all black.

Maybe this is all well-known, but it's just amazing to see how strong the
"feminine drive" is, essentially naturally, at such s young age. (We severely
restrict the amount of shitty girls kid's TV shows, no Barbie, no Disney
products, biggest toys are LEGO, etc.)

~~~
zanny
> (We severely restrict the amount of shitty girls kid's TV shows, no Barbie,
> no Disney products, biggest toys are LEGO, etc.)

If they go to public school peer relations and student body culture _will_
override prior teaching. When presented with the girls sitting next to them
talking about the shows and toys you never exposed them to, they are met with
the decision to have faith in their parents or seek to fit in with the status
quo.

It is why it is so hard to break childhood stereotypes, because unless you can
get a majority of parents to pressure the disjunction, the culture of their
classroom will limit what you can do.

~~~
ianbicking
> If they go to public school peer relations and student body culture will
> override prior teaching. When presented with the girls sitting next to them
> talking about the shows and toys you never exposed them to, they are met
> with the decision to have faith in their parents or seek to fit in with the
> status quo.

I don't think it's quite that hard. If you expect to counteract the influence
simply by removing offending messages, then yes, it will not be successful in
the face of peers. But if you explain and teach your family's value system
that explains WHY you avoid Barbie and the like, that can be much more sticky.

~~~
zanny
Except from the childs perspective you are preaching ethics and equality and
esoteric concepts about human rights and freedoms while they are in the now
and immediately disassociated from their peer group due to dissimilar
attachment to culturally normative and popular topics. It makes them resent
you because they end up with few friends in a sea of those who will antagonize
them for being different, even if those are the "good" friends you want them
to have.

------
lkbm
> 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.

~~~
sjm
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.

~~~
wongarsu
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.

~~~
detcader
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.

~~~
wongarsu
I wouldn't complain if the game wouldn't have male characters. What the game
offers (after thirty seconds of google search [1]) is that you can play as
different characters (there seem to be multiple males and multiples females),
and all of them are prominent characters in the story (at least in the movie).
As this isn't shoehorning something in, I can't see anything to complain
about. There's legitimate reasons for including male characters and as there's
already multiple females to choose from it's only logical to allow male
options too.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-hunger-games-panem-
risin...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-hunger-games-panem-
rising/id885877695?mt=8)

~~~
detcader
That's logical, I agree; I wasn't aware of that.

------
mbesto
> _If I were an app maker, the ethical issue of charging for girl characters
> and not boy characters would be enough reason to change._

I chuckled. App makers (especially the ones in the "top 50 essential apps")
are well oiled capitalist money-making machines. Ethics rarely come into play
when the A/B tests they run suggest that the product direction go one way
(towards money) and not the other ("but what about the children!").

I personally don't _feel_ this way, but you can imagine how businesses at that
level would.

------
raldi
The idiotic Washington Post website actually makes the thumbnail image
_smaller_ when you click it. Fortunately, the URL of the image is hackable to
get a full-size version:

[http://img.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp-
content/uplo...](http://img.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/DATA-FROM-MADDIE.jpg)

------
cplease
Wow, nice find. The dismissive contempt half of the commenters have for the
12-year-old girl who meticulously researched and wrote this article is
appalling but not surprising.

~~~
KnightHawk3
Because she is a girl or because she is 12 years old?

~~~
amagumori
it's because she's a girl.

------
morgante
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.

~~~
detcader
>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?

~~~
A_COMPUTER
I can't find the article now, but I remember a quote by Brianna Wu expressing
frustration at having the characters of her game said to be "promoting
anorexia" because of their wispy tall character designs (just recently she
ended up changing them in the PC port of her game, in fact, after endless
criticism.) The characters are exaggerated, but honestly to the point that
they (intentionally) aren't realistic.

Anita Sarkeesian's graduate thesis and the subject of more than one of her
videos is an extensive criticism of how "strong female characters" in fiction
reinforce binary gender stereotypes by requiring that their definition of
strength conform to masculine ideals of it rather than feminine alternative
models (strong female characters have to be "badass".) I don't think she's
wrong, but the argument has been leveraged often enough that it's made even me
wonder what would be good enough to satisfy some people. Please note that you
can trip this criticism simply by adding additional female characters, which
is exactly what some people here are complaining about. You add a female
sprite, the female "acts like a male". It's not as simple as just adding
female characters.

Women's portrayal in video games is an ideological battleground, to an extent
that men's portrayal is not. This is why it's potentially a risk. You can't
even win by not playing, because lack of women is a problem too. But you can
lose the least by not playing or not caring. I think that is why the two
default states for female representation in games are "nonexistent" and
"terrible".

~~~
detcader
I'm not sure how "not having a body that implies anorexia" is a "norm" in
itself, any more than having two feet is. If female characters are created
that adhere to destructive norms, the creators should expect criticism; I'm
not sure why this is a bad thing, when almost everyone would criticize people
for making racist caricture characters or doing blackface.

I think we can agree that the "strong female character" trope is complicated
in terms of why it exists and how it works, and every single person isn't
going to "leverage" criticism of it perfectly. I accept this as a fact of life
and don't think it's relevant to OP's statements.

Choosing to "lose the least" strikes me as silly at best, when contacting a
few women in your life (hopefully you have as many in your company) and
consulting them about the character you're creating is not hard. If you are
still criticized after consulting them, you listen to the criticism, maybe
write about how you listened to it, and try again in your next game, which is
still not hard -- it doubtlessly happens all the time with criticism of all
other sorts.

~~~
webehere
"I've created a cool game with heaps of female characters"

"YOU MISOGYNIST! The female characters are all X".

"We've taken feedback and made some Y & Z characters as well".

"YOU MISOGYNIST! There is more to women than X, Y & Z."

"So we've made a game with male characters..."

That's the argument as I can see it. Is it fair or real? Who knows, but that's
what it is!

------
bramgg
> In one game, “Survival Run with Bear Grylls,” you can put the character in a
> Santa Claus suit for $1.98, but there is no girl to be had at any price.
> Does this mean that girls aren’t capable of escaping a bear, but Santa is?

Another classic example of girls that are capable of escaping bears being
unrepresented in tech. I kid, by seriously the cause of this isn't game devs
being sexest against girls, it's (IMO) society being sexist in general. Boys
(not men) will not play games that look like they may be made for girls
because of what society might think of them. The fear of being bullied for
enjoying anything pink or featuring women is very real for most boys growing
up, especially (but not only) if the boy is already feeling confused and
ashamed of what his sexuality might be. Since the mobile game market is
dominated by children, having the main character be female can potentially
scare away a large percentage of the market. Unless the game is already
clearly "girly", then the risk just isn't worth it.

TL;DR: Boys playing girls = gay, girls playing boys = normal.

~~~
ekanes
Girls playing boys isn't so much normal as it's the only option they've had.

Also, the solution is simply to offer the _option_ of playing a girl
character. Then anyone can play whomever they want. :)

~~~
wutbrodo
> Girls playing boys isn't so much normal as it's the only option they've had.

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive; in fact they're quite tightly
related. Though that does raise the interesting point that the feedback loop
has to be broken somewhere, and starting by adding female characters is as
good as any.

------
A_COMPUTER
This 12 year old girl is a better blogger than some of the people Washington
Post has on staff. I am not exaggerating, I wish all their bloggers were this
analytical.

~~~
GhotiFish
Well yes. She is. By a substantial margin. It's incredible really, and I mean
that in the strict sense of the word. in-credible.

------
EGreg
Aside from the point being made in the article, the language and expressions
used in it suggest to me that it's gone through a fair bit of editing /
authorship by an adult writer before being published. Either that or I am
seriously underestimating the writing style of a 12 year old girl.

I understand that every article goes through a revision process. But it
started by saying "I am a 12 year old girl" and I wonder how many filters the
text and the thesis went through before being published. I just find something
strange about adults using the identity of a child to inject their own words,
if this is indeed the case.

~~~
detcader
Anyone would take it as an assumption that all WaPo articles are edited by
WaPo editors. They are her "own words" as much as any article is the "own
words" of any staffed journalist. If one is assuming malicious manipulation on
the part of The Feminists and are looking for the guarentee of unfiltered
words from children on the internet on topics like this, they will be
disappointed.

------
raldi
I'd like to make a romhack of the Legend of Zelda where you can play as Zelda.
It should be a piece of cake, once someone draws the sprites.

Anyone good at drawing sprites who wants to lend a hand?

Edit: Looks like someone beat me to it!

[http://kennastuff.blogspot.com/2013/03/zelda-starring-
zelda-...](http://kennastuff.blogspot.com/2013/03/zelda-starring-zelda-
story.html)

------
bhayden
Am I wrong for thinking it sounds really antisocial for girls to have
sleepover and then play on their phones? When I have a kid I really don't want
them to be exposed to mindless consumption but it sadly seems like it's not
going to be possible unless they're home schooled. At the very least, they're
getting a very locked down smart phone.

~~~
Mithaldu
I did that (as a boy) back in the day too. Pack up the PC and bring it over to
a friend. Even when playing single player games we still had the experience of
being immediately together, able to talk directly and freely, and able to
show/help each other stuff. I suppose that's just the modern version of that.

~~~
undersuit
I'm not an expert on what kids are doing on their phones, but my phone does
not encourage interactions. When I packed my computer and took it to a friends
house I didn't read Slashdot and play Simfarm alone, we'd hook up Starcraft or
Diablo.

I think of the Pewdiepie episode of South Park where Ike and his friends each
have their own device and each consumes their own media separately when I
think of kids having sleepovers now.

------
hasenj
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

~~~
detcader
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

~~~
hasenj
A successful game company would be in constant engagement with their user
base, asking them about their favorite characters, etc.

------
imron
Poor girl. I really hope she has the strength and support necessary to survive
the inevitable barrage of criticism, anger, threats and hate that gets
directed at females speaking out on topics like this.

------
JDiculous
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 the hell game I want. You
can't tell an artist how his art has to look.

~~~
wongarsu
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.

~~~
JDiculous
I think we just tend to make games that we relate to.

Look outside of games. If I told you to write a novel, would you write it from
the perspective of the opposite gender? Personally my gut instinct is to write
from the perspective of a male, because that's what I relate to most.

------
token78
So, has it completely escaped the attention of the makers of mobile games that
almost 60% of gamers on mobile platforms are women? _Seriously_ \- It's kinda
odd that one of the defining characteristics of the mobile gaming market
doesn't actually seem to be reflected in what the industry is releasing.

It's one hell of an omission, and actually, there's got to have been a lot of
opportunity missed.

And the icing on that cake? On mobile, female gamers are actually way more
loyal players (42% higher 7-day retention on average versus males), they also
spend about 35% more time in gaming appss, oh _and they 're also spending
around 31% more on In-App-Purchases_ than their male counterparts too.

[http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-
mmos-...](http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-fpses-
women-rule-mobile-rpg/)

[http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-
mmos-...](http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-fpses-
women-rule-mobile-rpg/)

------
anaximander
I like everything about this article (especially the careful research and
evidence-gathering), except for this bit at the end:

    
    
      The lack of girl characters implies that girls are not equal to boys and they don’t deserve characters that look like them.
    

I would ask the author (and readers) to consider more possible explanations.

------
egypturnash
Let's see how long it takes for HN to insist that this is particularly normal
and acceptable because most games are only played by boys, as folks did when
this sort of thing came up with regards to the lack of female characters in
games for grownups.

------
chx
I clicked on comments and were absolutely shocked that noone mentioned Anita
Sarkeesian. In case you didn't hear, she Kickstarted a Tropes vs. Women in
Video Games series of videos about gender representation in video games. Got a
lot of harassment in return for those videos and when GamerGate came about
that intensified enough to make her leave her home and cancel a speaking
arrangement. In turn, she was interviewed on The Colbert Report.

Now a 12 year old have reached the same conclusion and if that's her real name
on the article... alas I must say that was a dangerous thing to do.

------
jhwhite
Is it bad this makes sense to me though?

If the makers of the game added a female character that would be extra cost
from a platform, front end, and art perspective. Thereby pushing the cost of
the game up for everyone when it's probably still mostly males who play the
game.

So the cost of adding a female player is recouped by the people that want to
play a female character.

If the makers added in a female character to begin with the game might cost a
little more, but in app economics there seems to be a big difference in $1.

I wonder how many males that buy games only buy games that offer both genders
as playable characters.

------
falcolas
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 intentionally or unintentionally.

~~~
detcader
"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.

------
detcader
This is definitely a good to remind everyone about what girlhood entails in
the Western/English-speaking world. First some articles on games and then some
general articles:

Games for Girls? - [http://thehussingtonpost.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/games-for-
gi...](http://thehussingtonpost.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/games-for-girls.html)

Little girls deserve better than to be told to make themselves sexy -
[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-
blog/2014/jan...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-
blog/2014/jan/10/little-girls-deserve-better-toys-sexism)

Girls, Boys, Feminism, Toys: Deborah Siegel and Rebecca Hains Discuss -
[http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2014/01/14/girls-boys-
fe...](http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2014/01/14/girls-boys-feminism-
toys-deborah-siegel-and-rebecca-hains-discuss/)

Hers; The Smurfette Principle -
[http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-
smurfett...](http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-smurfette-
principle.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

What it’s like being a teen girl -
[http://web.archive.org/web/20140820073431/http://sodisarming...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140820073431/http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what-
its-like-being-a-teen-girl)

teenage girls: "...they haven’t been living, they’ve been performing." \-
[http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-
havent-b...](http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-been-
living-theyve-been-performing)

‘I’m not a pilot, I’m a pilot’s wife,’ says 3 yr old girl -
[http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-
wife-...](http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-
says-3-yr-old-girl/)

Sexism 'is daily reality' for girls -
[http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25138455](http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25138455)

Womanhood, girlhood and shared exclusion -
[http://glosswatch.com/2013/12/16/womanhood-girlhood-and-
shar...](http://glosswatch.com/2013/12/16/womanhood-girlhood-and-shared-
exclusion/)

“Is my son smart?” “Is my daughter skinny?” Google Searches Reveal Parents’
Gender Biases [http://rebeccahains.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/is-my-son-
smart...](http://rebeccahains.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/is-my-son-smart-is-my-
daughter-skinny/)

What Do Little Girls Really Learn from “Career” Barbies? -
[http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/what-do-little-girls-
really-l...](http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/what-do-little-girls-really-learn-
from-career-barbies)

Report: Many girls view sexual assault as normal behavior -
[http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexua...](http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexual_assault_as_normal_behavior/)

Cosmetic surgery and teenagers – a disaster waiting to happen -
[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-
blog/2014/apr...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-
blog/2014/apr/28/cosmetic-surgery-and-teenagers-disaster-waiting-to-happen)

------
hobarrera
What I fail to see is: why is the gender of the characters so important? It
doesn't seem to make any difference on the mentioned games (unlike, eg: Diablo
II, where the female characters had different skillsets from the male ones).

I've never understood why so many people feel compelled to play with a
character with the same gender/race/etc as themselves.

What amazes me even more, is that people are willing to _pay_ for this.

~~~
Nexxxeh
I'm don't look like any of the video game characters from the games I play,
regardless of gender.

An extreme diet and a lot of gym time and a set of stilts might get me
somewhere near Agent 47, or binge eating and a wig might move me towards
something E Honda-esque. IDGAF.

One of the MMORPGs I play as a female character coz I preferred the character
model. She has green hair. In real life, I don't have enough hair left to
warrant the pack of bleach and color.

It's not real. It's a video game. I'd be as happy playing as Katniss as I
would Peeta, if those are the Hunger Game options.

Video games aren't the story of us. They're the story of someone else. That's
the point.

I'm not a humanoid fox with a star fighter, I'm not an elf tasked with saving
the world. I'm not a hired assassin or a warrior with long red hair fighting a
tyrant.

------
michaelbuddy
I've seen plenty of female characters lately. I guess my definition of plenty
is what others think of as absent?

~~~
imron
That's a great anecdote.

I look forward to seeing the results of your research at a level at least as
detailed as that performed by the 12 year old author of the article, to see
how well the subjective recollection of your recent experience matches with
objective data.

------
ars
Maybe they sell Girl characters because girls are willing to pay for them, and
boys aren't?

Or because girls are willing to play as boys, and then pay to play as a girl?

But boys are unwilling to even play as a girl?

I prefer to look for rational (for example economic) reasons for things, and
not assume everything is because of bias.

~~~
jessaustin
Perhaps at the _initial_ stage of analysis this situation is not "because of
bias", but don't stop thinking after just one thought. Why are boys like that?
(Ignoring the exception that would seem to have been made for Lara Croft.) Why
are girls like that? Do you really think it's biology, or is there perhaps
some cultural reason why one group of children would be somewhat comfortable
undermining their identity while a different group cannot imagine doing so?

~~~
cbd1984
And then think a few thoughts further, to "How can I fix it?" and realize
there's nothing I can reasonably do which isn't already being done, and, at my
most engaged, I could cheer-lead established efforts being lead by people with
more social capital than me.

So... consciousness raised and subsequently tamped back down, I suppose.

~~~
hackuser
> there's nothing I can reasonably do which isn't already being done

You can't change the world by yourself but we all play a necessary role:
Politely and respectfully speak up where people are not aware. IMHO no
individual, no matter what their social capital, can substitute for people
seeing and hearing these things from their peers. Also, we tend to be follow
the herd; even in an angry stampede, one voice can make several others in the
herd slow down and think.

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imaginenore
How can you even tell a boy character from a girl character? It's not like
they show the genitalia.

------
nitwit005
It's clearly not true that female lead characters don't exist. What seems to
be the issue for this girl is that they don't exist in games she actually
wants to play.

I'd note that she complains about games where the protagonist has no
identifiable gender, or is an animal. That's often done quite intentionally to
dodge try to dodge this problem.

~~~
wongarsu
She analysed the top 50 Endless Running Games, that sounds like a fair sample
of popular games, not just games she wants to play. She also agrees with you
in the article that female protagonists exist, in exactly 46% of these Endless
Running Games (but only in 15% free of charge). She doesn't complain about
non-identifiable gender at all, she only quickly notes that those exist and
then talks about the rest of the apps.

------
Dewie
I remember playing PlayStation games with a friend when I was a kid, and he
always seemed to pick a woman character to play if he could. So apparently
there were enough woman characters in those games for that to stand out.

~~~
imron
Sure, video games have had female characters for ages, take for example one of
my favourite arcade games - Street Fighter II - Champion Edition.

You had Chun Li to choose from if you wanted to play as a girl, or Ryu, E.
Honda, Blanka, Guile, Ken, Zangief, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat or M.Bison if
you wanted to play as a guy.

~~~
Dewie
I know what you mean. I once wanted to play as a pansexual elf/dwarf voyeurist
who lives in a tree trunk together with minotaurs. Unfortunately my action-rpg
only had two preset characters that were close to that, so I had to settle for
a pansexual narcoleptic elf with a fondness for bull-riding.

------
UUMMUU
It's articles like this that make me wonder if I should just always be sorry
for being born a male. There are two kinds of responses to this article.
Either you agree that all men are chauvinist pigs and only out to further the
male-dominated agenda or you are a sexist bigot. In all honesty if the game
developers only make a male characters, that's their prerogative, calling them
sexist for not making a female character is extremely pretentious.

~~~
howlingfantods
Did you read the article? It's written by a 12 year old girl pointing out that
many popular games lack an option to select a female character.

Nowhere does it imply men are chauvinist pigs out to further a male-dominated
agenda. The fact that you have extrapolated as such is probably more
indicative of your own personality and prejudices than anything else.

No one is saying men should be sorry for being men. My takeaway is that the
world would run a bit better if we all had a bit more empathy and more
awareness of how our actions might perpetuate institutionalized biases.

