10 ms·

I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

145 points by kanamekun 12y ago

EGreg 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
deleted 12y ago
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- cplease 12y ago
  You know that most newspapers are written to a 12-year-old reading level, and staff journalists are copyedited too?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- LeonRobrotsky 12y ago
  This is a fairly standard 6th grade essay.
- Lerc 12y ago
  Kids can impress you when you least expect it. My daughter wrote this http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/MelissaStory.txt http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/MelissaStory.txt While she was on a trip. When she got back she promptly forgot all about it which drives me mad, I really wanted to find out where it was going. She was 10 at the time. On the other hand I once gave her a mechanical typewriter and later found http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/TypingByMelissa.jpg http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/TypingByMelissa.jpg
cplease 12y ago
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 12y ago
  Because she is a girl or because she is 12 years old?
  - amagumori 12y ago
    it's because she's a girl.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  Are you referring to the WaPo comments, or HN's?
  - cplease 12y ago
    I was refering to WaPo, as there weren't any comments here yet. Predictably they are not a whole lot better here though.
    - undersuit 12y ago
      Yeah this entire thread is a caustic cauldron of hate towards a 12 year old girl.
opso 12y ago
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.
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  I hear ya. But there's probably still something different that these kids will get out of their particular version of the experience. Maybe it'll be battling Minecraft plugins and building one on their own (after all, this is still the #1 game among children from what I understand). It might be developing an instinct for great UX and media execution (games like Candy Crush for instance). Only hindsight will tell, but I don't think it'll be entirely for naught.
- lkbm 12y ago
  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.
lkbm 12y ago
> 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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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-rising/id885877695?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-hunger-games-panem-risin...
raldi 12y ago
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/uploads/2015/03/DATA-FROM-MADDIE.jpg http://img.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp-content/uplo...
raldi 12y ago
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-story.html http://kennastuff.blogspot.com/2013/03/zelda-starring-zelda-...
ars 12y ago
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.
- detcader 12y ago
  The existence of bias isn't an "irrational" thing to believe in; in fact it's provable through science, and has been in an innumerable amount of cases (websearch "bias study"; if you want, I have access to university resources where I can give you full studies PDFs.)
- NoPiece 12y ago
  Even if that's true, that's a lousy way to make a game (they should be fun first, right?). I know first hand this sucks. I have a daughter who just a couple days ago had me to download the Oz Temple Run game. She was very disappointed that the main character was a boy, that only 1 of 4 available characters was a girl, and that the girl was the hardest to unlock. We aren't spending running on virtual currency, so odds she'll never get to play the game as a girl.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    I think that would be a great time to introduce her to gamehacking... attempt to turn that annoyance into a learning experience instead of a learned helplessness. Teaching her that she can make her device do what she wants is the first step (and that corporations seem to be slowly trying to take that freedom away might be a good lead-on to the perils of locked-down devices... if she understands enough, that is.)
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      That's a great point, and you've made me resent the closed nature of the iPhone for the first time. I'm not sure where I'd even start. The good news is I have her up on RPG Maker on the PC.
ekanes 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
  - ekanes 12y ago
    I don't see a downside to pointing it out. The worst they could do is nothing, BUT at least they'd be aware that some part of the market is paying attention (implied: have a female character option and you might make more money). Happy to point it out on your behalf if you'd like to mention the game!
  - hackuser 12y ago
    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.
detcader 12y ago
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-girls.html http://thehussingtonpost.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/games-for-gi... Little girls deserve better than to be told to make themselves sexy - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan/10/little-girls-deserve-better-toys-sexism http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan... Girls, Boys, Feminism, Toys: Deborah Siegel and Rebecca Hains Discuss - http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2014/01/14/girls-boys-feminism-toys-deborah-siegel-and-rebecca-hains-discuss/ http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2014/01/14/girls-boys-fe... Hers; The Smurfette Principle - http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-smurfette-principle.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-smurfett... What it’s like being a teen girl - http://web.archive.org/web/20140820073431/http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what-its-like-being-a-teen-girl http://web.archive.org/web/20140820073431/http://sodisarming... teenage girls: "...they haven’t been living, they’ve been performing." - http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-been-living-theyve-been-performing http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-b... ‘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-says-3-yr-old-girl/ http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-... 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-shared-exclusion/ http://glosswatch.com/2013/12/16/womanhood-girlhood-and-shar... “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-is-my-daughter-skinny/ http://rebeccahains.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/is-my-son-smart... What Do Little Girls Really Learn from “Career” Barbies? - http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/what-do-little-girls-really-learn-from-career-barbies http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/what-do-little-girls-really-l... Report: Many girls view sexual assault as normal behavior - http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexual_assault_as_normal_behavior/ http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexua... Cosmetic surgery and teenagers – a disaster waiting to happen - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/apr/28/cosmetic-surgery-and-teenagers-disaster-waiting-to-happen http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/apr...
DownvoteMeToWin 12y ago
For the same reason characters in your apps don't look like Icelandic sea birds: you aren't the one making the purchase. It's your parents. Your app's fictional characters that don't actually exist will look like whoever your parents are willing to associate with. And your parents don't associate with you. They do, however, associate with people they've never met, exotic archetypes, and victims-of-the-day. Whatever pixel helps them forget their own loss of childhood they'll buy. And you don't help them remember that. In fact, you are the living breathing symbol of their loss of childhood. Sorry, kid, life's tough. Don't let the existential loneliness bother you too much, it's actually healthy for you in controlled doses. Besides, fuck the previous generations. The sooner you throw away their bullshit moral systems, the sooner you can start doing things that actual matter.
bramgg 12y ago
> 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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    > 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.
chx 12y ago
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.
MichaelGG 12y ago
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 12y ago
  > (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.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Fortunately, at the moment, we have a governess so there's not that particular issue. But I do see the pressure applied from friends that... lack taste. What can you do but try? In the future I hope to be able to afford private schools with a focus on getting students interested in things. That'll hopefully bring out like minded families. Basically, I just want to increase their saving throws vs crap.
egypturnash 12y ago
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.
Dewie 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
mbesto 12y ago
> 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.
michaelbuddy 12y ago
I've seen plenty of female characters lately. I guess my definition of plenty is what others think of as absent?
- detcader 12y ago
  https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal ...while she analyzes a large sample of top games.
- imron 12y ago
  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.
nitwit005 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
- imron 12y ago
  >I'd note that she complains about games where the protagonist has no identifiable gender, or is an animal I'd note that she doesn't complain about this. She simply mentions the data because it is relevant to the overall research she is doing.
hasenj 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    A successful game company would be in constant engagement with their user base, asking them about their favorite characters, etc.
JDiculous 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
  - mod 12y ago
    Maybe--but why is every character in a game male, regardless of it being self-reinforcing at this point?
  - JDiculous 12y ago
    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.
- mod 12y ago
  Being allowed to make "whatever the hell game you want" doesn't mean you're not sexist. You're allowed to be sexist, too. I don't think your story makes you sexist, though.
- howlingfantods 12y ago
  >It's not something I ever consciously thought about I think that's the point. Perhaps it's something that you might want to think about. Institutional bias is insidious because it's so pervasive as to be normal, banal. No one gives it a second thought.
morgante 12y ago
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 12y ago
  >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?
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    One example would be Dragon's Crown, which caught a lot of heat over the "Sorceress" character. http://kotaku.com/game-developers-really-need-to-stop-letting-teenage-boy-472724616 http://kotaku.com/game-developers-really-need-to-stop-lettin...
    - detcader 12y ago
      OP said "perfectly align to various norms" -- where was this or any commentator demanding alignment with norms at all, much less demanding perfection? From what I can tell, the character already aligns perfectly with the norm of "woman as object", and if people get "castigated" (actually harmed or affected in some way, rather than criticized online by a few commentators) for creating characters like that, I've yet to hear about it.
  - A_COMPUTER 12y ago
    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".
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
falcolas 12y ago
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 12y ago
  "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.
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
Anfield 12y ago
Ohhhh, I'm a bit bitter about it.
c0ntactbuzz 12y ago
You won.
bhayden 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
- Dewie 12y ago
  Not antisocial. Maybe asocial.
imron 12y ago
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.
UUMMUU 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
- clay_to_n 12y ago
  Your comment has no basis in this article. You're projecting a lot of hate, presumably based on your stereotypes of feminists. This article is just a 12 year old girl wishing she could play as a girl more often.
token78 12y ago
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-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/ http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-...
anaximander 12y ago
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.
imaginenore 12y ago
How can you even tell a boy character from a girl character? It's not like they show the genitalia.
hobarrera 12y ago
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.
- evanwalsh 12y ago
  I think people want to identify with the media they consume and games are different from more passive forms because of player agency. However, if the avatar in the game is supposed to be "you", but it doesn't even begin to look like you, then you don't identify as much. I, for one, relish a game that doesn't make me play as Johnny Brownhair-Whiteguy, but I have the benefit of being a white male with brown hair. I have the benefit of being catered to by most video games. If I could less often play as someone that looked like me, I think I'd start to feel excluded.
- Nexxxeh 12y ago
  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.
jhwhite 12y ago
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.

145 points by kanamekun 12y ago

EGreg 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.

deleted 12y ago

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cplease 12y ago
You know that most newspapers are written to a 12-year-old reading level, and staff journalists are copyedited too?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
LeonRobrotsky 12y ago
This is a fairly standard 6th grade essay.
Lerc 12y ago
Kids can impress you when you least expect it. My daughter wrote this http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/MelissaStory.txt http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/MelissaStory.txt While she was on a trip. When she got back she promptly forgot all about it which drives me mad, I really wanted to find out where it was going. She was 10 at the time. On the other hand I once gave her a mechanical typewriter and later found http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/TypingByMelissa.jpg http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/TypingByMelissa.jpg

cplease 12y ago

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 12y ago
Because she is a girl or because she is 12 years old?
- amagumori 12y ago
  it's because she's a girl.
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
Are you referring to the WaPo comments, or HN's?
- cplease 12y ago
  I was refering to WaPo, as there weren't any comments here yet. Predictably they are not a whole lot better here though.
  - undersuit 12y ago
    Yeah this entire thread is a caustic cauldron of hate towards a 12 year old girl.

opso 12y ago

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.

hkmurakami 12y ago
I hear ya. But there's probably still something different that these kids will get out of their particular version of the experience. Maybe it'll be battling Minecraft plugins and building one on their own (after all, this is still the #1 game among children from what I understand). It might be developing an instinct for great UX and media execution (games like Candy Crush for instance). Only hindsight will tell, but I don't think it'll be entirely for naught.
lkbm 12y ago
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.

lkbm 12y ago

> 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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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-rising/id885877695?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-hunger-games-panem-risin...

raldi 12y ago

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

raldi 12y ago

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-story.html http://kennastuff.blogspot.com/2013/03/zelda-starring-zelda-...

ars 12y ago

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.

detcader 12y ago
The existence of bias isn't an "irrational" thing to believe in; in fact it's provable through science, and has been in an innumerable amount of cases (websearch "bias study"; if you want, I have access to university resources where I can give you full studies PDFs.)
NoPiece 12y ago
Even if that's true, that's a lousy way to make a game (they should be fun first, right?). I know first hand this sucks. I have a daughter who just a couple days ago had me to download the Oz Temple Run game. She was very disappointed that the main character was a boy, that only 1 of 4 available characters was a girl, and that the girl was the hardest to unlock. We aren't spending running on virtual currency, so odds she'll never get to play the game as a girl.
- userbinator 12y ago
  I think that would be a great time to introduce her to gamehacking... attempt to turn that annoyance into a learning experience instead of a learned helplessness. Teaching her that she can make her device do what she wants is the first step (and that corporations seem to be slowly trying to take that freedom away might be a good lead-on to the perils of locked-down devices... if she understands enough, that is.)
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    That's a great point, and you've made me resent the closed nature of the iPhone for the first time. I'm not sure where I'd even start. The good news is I have her up on RPG Maker on the PC.

ekanes 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.
- ekanes 12y ago
  I don't see a downside to pointing it out. The worst they could do is nothing, BUT at least they'd be aware that some part of the market is paying attention (implied: have a female character option and you might make more money). Happy to point it out on your behalf if you'd like to mention the game!
- hackuser 12y ago
  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.

detcader 12y ago

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-girls.html http://thehussingtonpost.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/games-for-gi... Little girls deserve better than to be told to make themselves sexy - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan/10/little-girls-deserve-better-toys-sexism http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan... Girls, Boys, Feminism, Toys: Deborah Siegel and Rebecca Hains Discuss - http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2014/01/14/girls-boys-feminism-toys-deborah-siegel-and-rebecca-hains-discuss/ http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2014/01/14/girls-boys-fe... Hers; The Smurfette Principle - http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-smurfette-principle.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-smurfett... What it’s like being a teen girl - http://web.archive.org/web/20140820073431/http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what-its-like-being-a-teen-girl http://web.archive.org/web/20140820073431/http://sodisarming... teenage girls: "...they haven’t been living, they’ve been performing." - http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-been-living-theyve-been-performing http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-b... ‘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-says-3-yr-old-girl/ http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-... 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-shared-exclusion/ http://glosswatch.com/2013/12/16/womanhood-girlhood-and-shar... “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-is-my-daughter-skinny/ http://rebeccahains.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/is-my-son-smart... What Do Little Girls Really Learn from “Career” Barbies? - http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/what-do-little-girls-really-learn-from-career-barbies http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/what-do-little-girls-really-l... Report: Many girls view sexual assault as normal behavior - http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexual_assault_as_normal_behavior/ http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexua... Cosmetic surgery and teenagers – a disaster waiting to happen - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/apr/28/cosmetic-surgery-and-teenagers-disaster-waiting-to-happen http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/apr...

DownvoteMeToWin 12y ago

For the same reason characters in your apps don't look like Icelandic sea birds: you aren't the one making the purchase. It's your parents. Your app's fictional characters that don't actually exist will look like whoever your parents are willing to associate with. And your parents don't associate with you. They do, however, associate with people they've never met, exotic archetypes, and victims-of-the-day. Whatever pixel helps them forget their own loss of childhood they'll buy. And you don't help them remember that. In fact, you are the living breathing symbol of their loss of childhood. Sorry, kid, life's tough. Don't let the existential loneliness bother you too much, it's actually healthy for you in controlled doses. Besides, fuck the previous generations. The sooner you throw away their bullshit moral systems, the sooner you can start doing things that actual matter.

bramgg 12y ago

> 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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  > 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.

chx 12y ago

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.

MichaelGG 12y ago

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 12y ago
> (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.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Fortunately, at the moment, we have a governess so there's not that particular issue. But I do see the pressure applied from friends that... lack taste. What can you do but try? In the future I hope to be able to afford private schools with a focus on getting students interested in things. That'll hopefully bring out like minded families. Basically, I just want to increase their saving throws vs crap.

egypturnash 12y ago

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.

Dewie 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.

mbesto 12y ago

> 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.

michaelbuddy 12y ago

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

detcader 12y ago
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal ...while she analyzes a large sample of top games.
imron 12y ago
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.

nitwit005 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.
imron 12y ago
>I'd note that she complains about games where the protagonist has no identifiable gender, or is an animal I'd note that she doesn't complain about this. She simply mentions the data because it is relevant to the overall research she is doing.

hasenj 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  A successful game company would be in constant engagement with their user base, asking them about their favorite characters, etc.

JDiculous 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.
- mod 12y ago
  Maybe--but why is every character in a game male, regardless of it being self-reinforcing at this point?
- JDiculous 12y ago
  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.
mod 12y ago
Being allowed to make "whatever the hell game you want" doesn't mean you're not sexist. You're allowed to be sexist, too. I don't think your story makes you sexist, though.
howlingfantods 12y ago
>It's not something I ever consciously thought about I think that's the point. Perhaps it's something that you might want to think about. Institutional bias is insidious because it's so pervasive as to be normal, banal. No one gives it a second thought.

morgante 12y ago

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 12y ago
>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?
- NoPiece 12y ago
  One example would be Dragon's Crown, which caught a lot of heat over the "Sorceress" character. http://kotaku.com/game-developers-really-need-to-stop-letting-teenage-boy-472724616 http://kotaku.com/game-developers-really-need-to-stop-lettin...
  - detcader 12y ago
    OP said "perfectly align to various norms" -- where was this or any commentator demanding alignment with norms at all, much less demanding perfection? From what I can tell, the character already aligns perfectly with the norm of "woman as object", and if people get "castigated" (actually harmed or affected in some way, rather than criticized online by a few commentators) for creating characters like that, I've yet to hear about it.
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  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".

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

falcolas 12y ago

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 12y ago
"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.

A_COMPUTER 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.

Anfield 12y ago

Ohhhh, I'm a bit bitter about it.

c0ntactbuzz 12y ago

You won.

bhayden 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
Dewie 12y ago
Not antisocial. Maybe asocial.

imron 12y ago

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.

UUMMUU 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.
clay_to_n 12y ago
Your comment has no basis in this article. You're projecting a lot of hate, presumably based on your stereotypes of feminists. This article is just a 12 year old girl wishing she could play as a girl more often.

token78 12y ago

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-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/ http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-...

anaximander 12y ago

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.

imaginenore 12y ago

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

hobarrera 12y ago

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.

evanwalsh 12y ago
I think people want to identify with the media they consume and games are different from more passive forms because of player agency. However, if the avatar in the game is supposed to be "you", but it doesn't even begin to look like you, then you don't identify as much. I, for one, relish a game that doesn't make me play as Johnny Brownhair-Whiteguy, but I have the benefit of being a white male with brown hair. I have the benefit of being catered to by most video games. If I could less often play as someone that looked like me, I think I'd start to feel excluded.
Nexxxeh 12y ago
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.

jhwhite 12y ago

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.