I think the idea is that when kids are growing up, they make subconscious connections and observations about the world around them. If a young child plays video games and consistently sees that boys are always the hero, they might extrapolate that to simply: "Boys and always the hero".
I don't have a strong opinion on the subject, I just thought I'd try and explain the position as I understand it.
> I think the idea is that when kids are growing up, they make subconscious connections and observations about the world around them.
Let me say that, in my experience, this is absolutely true. I grew up in Western PA, in a place where we had to drive 50 miles to visit other asians, who weren't even also Korean. I certainly made subconscious connections and observations about the world, many of which were hugely skewed by my environment. For example, it took me until I was in my 20's to figure out that my parents were as sarcastic as any other people. Absent any Korean community in which to observe interactions in that cultural context, I absorbed this notion that Koreans just didn't do sarcasm, which is absolutely incorrect.
In my case I assumed until I started primary school that all boys had blue eyes and all girls had brown eyes, because this observation just happened to hold for everyone in my immediate family as well as all of the neighbours' children that I played with.
This is very interesting! I'm a Bengali raised in a mostly white surroundings, though not as much as say Western PA. I too perecive my parents as not using sarcasm, and it being cultural. Though occasionally my mom will crack a joke, which I find quite startling. I don't really speak the language very well, so I can't really follow very when they talk naturally with other Bengalis. I wonder how much is in there that I'm missing.
I'm sorry but I'm firm to believe that the problem lies to the mind that makes the distinction first. If someone sees Link and the first thing that pops in his head is "what a shame he's not a girl" and retcon the intended storytelling to keep the content on par with their expectations then I certainly can't blame the game's creator. Not to mention that the boy isn't always the hero. I'll just bring another Nintendo saga as an example, Metroid which the main character is Samus Aran.
I know that the problem is that there aren't enough games that a young girl can play who offer character customization and that's not just alarming but also shows that there's potentially a market for that kind of games. What bothers me is that parents do not understand that they can't keep their children grow up in a bubble. This is clearly over-protectiveness over something that might or might not be interpreted erroneously over time by his daughter.
What is he planning to do? "Patch" every possible subconscious connections that his daughter might make for the next 5-10 years?
In some ways I hope it doesn't. Take the recent Deus Ex game, they steadfastly refused to offer a female view of the game.
Their reasoning was this was Adam Jensens story, and he is male, certain in game interactions would only make sense in that context.
That said, why we don't have more female videogame leads is beyond me. I'd like to see something like Deus Ex's opinionated take on games than say more of Mass Effect N's dual gender choice. The latter had some rather weird situations if you switched genders. Certain interactions became downright weird or even creepy.
But by no means is it "both halves." Game players are overwhelmingly male. And this has nothing to do with exposure or expectations, it's entirely possible that the female brain just isn't as interested in video games.
My fiancée enjoys Mario on occasion (and does complain that the princess always needs rescuing), but she flat out does not get into games nearly as much as I do. She could if she wanted to, absolutely nothing holds her back. She is also not unusual in this regard, women as a whole are less interested in video games.
So I disagree that game developers should feel obligated to cater to both sexes. Indeed, game developers should simply be allowed to make whatever games they please.
Nearing half the market of games that have protagonists? I think it's great that more women are gaming. And I'd love to be wrong about this, but it does seem like they mostly make up the casual end of the market.
I'd argue that the lack of strong, unsexualized and realistic female protagonists is the barrier here to begin with. The biggest argument I've heard from other women on why they don't play more "hardcore" games is specifically that they feel like they aren't represented in the scenarios these games present and when there are females, they don't look (or act) like they should if they were really in those situations. You don't tend to get a history of how she got there and what she went through. She's just there, in a tight little number, ready to jump around and look pretty.
The second complaint is not wanting to deal with the gender targeting that comes with gaming, both online and off. Girls feel like they can't be themselves (or even speak) in-game without being seen as or treated like a lesser competitor and they feel like they can't talk about them in real life situations without being labeled as a try-hard or someone that only got into it because of a boyfriend/brother, not because they actually enjoy it. You'll hear a lot of girls recount situations in which they're asked what their favorite games are, and when they answer with titles that aren't obscure enough, are told they're not real gamers. This is not to say that don't exist, but when you're treated like that's the norm, it's unsettling and makes you hesitant to bring the topic up in the future.
In having organized LANs for several years, I have dealt first-hand with the stares and questions dealing with my legitimacy in being there. Online, I've had entire teams target my player specifically and repeatedly with verbal assaults, kills and subsequent teabags despite having a gender-neutral name but a female avatar. It is not surprising at all to me why women would steer clear from this environment.
Third, a lot of women just don't talk about it because they don't see it differently from any other hobby they might have.
I think marketers just don't look hard enough to find who is really playing because they don't care. These tried-and-true formulaic games will keep bringing in the revenue they need to keep churning them out, why bother throwing a wrench in with inclusion?
It does suck that mainstream games nowadays are very macho-male oriented. But if you can look at the whole of gaming, there really are plenty of female protagonists, respectful and strong ones too. It's an annoyance of mine that games like Gears of War and Halo drive what most people think videogames are.
Online gaming is very male dominated. And yes places like Xbox Live are not exactly the best place for girls, unfortunately. But if you instead jump on Steam and play a game of Team Fortress 2 for example, it's a completely different story. Sexist, racist mouthy gamers are not always the norm. Different communities attract different types of players.
My fiancee loves the Tomb Raider movies. When I showed her that they are based on a video game series, she had no desire to play the games at all. I was careful to show her Tomb Raiders were Lara's boobs aren't ridiculous too. She has the opportunity to interactively play through the movies she loves, but that just doesn't interest her. Anecdotal, yes, but in my experience a lot of girls feel this way.
Samus is hardly an exception; put into a suit that erases secondary sexual characteristics, the question of gender was (in the first game) left until the last possible minute, as nothing more than a "gotcha." In future games, Samus's gender is still hidden behind the suit.
And the one game where they tried to actually make a character of her, Other M, portrayed her as embarrassingly weak-willed (making sure to make it about her gender as obviously as they could, no less) and verging on obsessive toward her (male) superior officer.
Metroid is a great series, but they do not win points for this.
The saddest part of Other M might be that its development was lead by the surviving co-creator of the original Metroid games, who does not appear to understand why people liked Metroid in the first place.
With all due respect, if Nintendo were to introduce Samus with the blue suit that she's wearing in the latest game, then we would have other kinds of problems, mostly to do with how female characters are designed to appeal the male audience. My personal preference is that I like her wearing the classic yellow suit. After all, if a male can wear protective gear when he fights against pirates in space, I don't see why a female shouldn't.
To be fair, the only games where the zero suit is featured except for the end game are:
* "Metroid: Zero Mission" She crashes, and thus doesn't have the power suit (for a while). Also, it was for the GameBoy, so the sex-appeal isn't as strong.
* "Super Smash Brothers" is probably the worst offender. (not a Metroid game)
* "Metroid: Other M": It apparently has minor occurrences throughout.
Everyone who plays the series today know she's a girl, though. The "reveal" gimmick of the first game is long forgotten and probably says more about this issue in the 80s than it says about it today.
In the first person games you can see her reflection pretty clearly in the helmet. I think other game characters often refer to her as 'she' as well (though I'm not certain of this).
I have a friend whose children were literally furious with her when they worked out that she'd been lying about Santa (which they immediately extrapolated to the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and so on).
Having young children myself I've thought a bunch about it. I'm not wild about the lying but when you see the enjoyment they get out of it, look back at how you felt about it when you were young (where deception doesn't rank highly amongst my recollections) and think about some of the other consequences (them being the only child in the playground who doesn't believe) generally you come down on the side of the lie.
My compromise (if you can call it that) is that I won't be one of those parents who strings it out when they seriously start questioning it. Aside form anything else at that point it seems like a great opportunity to ask them to exercise their reasoning skills to talk through why they're questioning it.
I don't have a strong opinion on the subject, I just thought I'd try and explain the position as I understand it.