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An Irrational Fear (Bear With Me)
enygmasoul
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 0 Arc User
So I just got my monthly IGN Prime membership newsletter, and as happens regularly, IGN is offering beta access to a game for Prime members only. This time, it's an upcoming First Person Shooter that appears to use a class-structured team-based objective game play similar to the Battlefield series, at first glance.
Upon perusing further, I found that they had two factions, one with four confirmed classes, and one with five.
As a female gamer, I tend to gravitate towards female characters when possible, and I was dismayed to learn that of those nine classes, all were gender-locked and only two, "The Recon" and "The Assassin" were available as female models.
This, I saw as a continuation of a trend that disturbs me greatly.
Gender-locked characters, in of themselves, are not something that trouble me too much. For smaller projects, I can see the immense temptation of essentially cutting a lot of your required art resources in half. However, when dealing with games in which there is both the freedom to choose a class and a lack of freedom to determine that class's gender, a pattern has emerged in my observation. It's a form of gender bias I STRONGLY dislike.
To put it bluntly, female characters are never (seemingly) allowed to fill the roles of being either "strong" or "tough". While some may be capable of high damage, those that are almost universally fall into the "light skirmisher" or 'ranged nuker" niches. Alternatively, female also seems to near-universally be the default choice for support classes.
Gender bias indicates that women are nearly universally frail and in need of a male character's protection. We might be blindingly fast, supremely agile, or capable of conjuriing arcane forces, but we are NEVER allowed to be able to take a hit well or use heavy weapons (big two handers in fantasy settings, things like chainguns or rockets in modern ones).
So, tying this into Neverwinter -
Receiving this email (and investigating the game it offered access to) gave me a sudden jarring paranoid flash that, in a worst case scenario, such a situation could be encountered here. I nearly had a panic attack that it would become impossible to play a female Fighter (because guardians are tough and great weapons are power-based!) and that they might even divide Cleric roles between healing-focused females and combat-focused males. *shudders*
I really, really hope nothing like this happens to this game. I probably shouldn't worry, given Cryptic's emphasis on character customization in previous titles. But Cryptic isn't the only force in play here. Perfect World is as well, since they're the "sugar daddies" bankrolling things and could ultimately have veto authority over anything Cryptic turns out.
And man, PW's track record on class design certainly seems to agree with this trend.
*shudders* So somebody, quick, offer me some reassurances to dispel these nightmares of what could go wrong.
Upon perusing further, I found that they had two factions, one with four confirmed classes, and one with five.
As a female gamer, I tend to gravitate towards female characters when possible, and I was dismayed to learn that of those nine classes, all were gender-locked and only two, "The Recon" and "The Assassin" were available as female models.
This, I saw as a continuation of a trend that disturbs me greatly.
Gender-locked characters, in of themselves, are not something that trouble me too much. For smaller projects, I can see the immense temptation of essentially cutting a lot of your required art resources in half. However, when dealing with games in which there is both the freedom to choose a class and a lack of freedom to determine that class's gender, a pattern has emerged in my observation. It's a form of gender bias I STRONGLY dislike.
To put it bluntly, female characters are never (seemingly) allowed to fill the roles of being either "strong" or "tough". While some may be capable of high damage, those that are almost universally fall into the "light skirmisher" or 'ranged nuker" niches. Alternatively, female also seems to near-universally be the default choice for support classes.
Gender bias indicates that women are nearly universally frail and in need of a male character's protection. We might be blindingly fast, supremely agile, or capable of conjuriing arcane forces, but we are NEVER allowed to be able to take a hit well or use heavy weapons (big two handers in fantasy settings, things like chainguns or rockets in modern ones).
So, tying this into Neverwinter -
Receiving this email (and investigating the game it offered access to) gave me a sudden jarring paranoid flash that, in a worst case scenario, such a situation could be encountered here. I nearly had a panic attack that it would become impossible to play a female Fighter (because guardians are tough and great weapons are power-based!) and that they might even divide Cleric roles between healing-focused females and combat-focused males. *shudders*
I really, really hope nothing like this happens to this game. I probably shouldn't worry, given Cryptic's emphasis on character customization in previous titles. But Cryptic isn't the only force in play here. Perfect World is as well, since they're the "sugar daddies" bankrolling things and could ultimately have veto authority over anything Cryptic turns out.
And man, PW's track record on class design certainly seems to agree with this trend.
*shudders* So somebody, quick, offer me some reassurances to dispel these nightmares of what could go wrong.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use "
-- Galileo Galilei
-- Galileo Galilei
Post edited by enygmasoul on
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Comments
Gender is one of the easiest options for all races. Technically, it is the race and not the class that dictates the appearance so class is not the issue. I've seen videos showing tieflings, drow, and humans, and yes, they all can be females and so can the rest of the races, their customization is up to you no matter how simple or complex you make your female.
But rest assured, no classes in this game will ever force you to choose to pick a gender.
-- Galileo Galilei
Thanks! I'm also cheaper than Ativan!
I've always wanted to play a female fighter, that was a grizzled war vet, like a fantasy version of Balalaika from Black Lagoon. Probably one of my favorite female characters in any fiction ever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pOdBmNETvU
Anyways it would be tough to break the class conventions.
If warforged are implemented, I vote them to be gender locked!
...though I hope they are not.
That said, it is well established in the lore of D&D that, in the magical realms that the campains take place males and females of at least the playable races have the same physical apabilities and thus can more or less do everything regardless of gender. Limitations as to who can use what class are rare and mainly race-based (Wizards of Thay are humans, Dwarven Defenders are... well, dwarfs, etc). The only gender-locked class that comes to my mind is the Arachne from 3e, which is the highest-level priestess of Lolth and can be only female (not that Lolth has any problems with males, mind you, but the drow society is matriarchal and sends girls only to be priests and boys to be everything else)
granted shooting for realism, at the cost of players not having fun is unreasonable.
Yeah I knew I saw it somewhere, if you search -4 strength you can find it.
If we're going for strong female warriors, I'm a fan of Major General Oliver (pronounced o-lee-VYAY) Mira Armstrong from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood or Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell (and guess I have a fellow anime fan here too.)
Oh no! Please I beg you not to start that! If you do, soon the thread will overflow with links of muscular women and feminine men doing massive amount of perception damage!
It may already be too late... noooooooo
EDIT: GITS is my all time favourite. The first movie when I saw it way back in 90s blew me off my feet completely!
(I didn't think they would be able to continue GITS with SAC, but I was tremendously happy with the two year series they did and it ended up one of my favorites. But knowing what happened with the tanks, I just can't look at anything with them after that timeline the same without thinking of...no spoilers.)
Its kind of funny that Anime is actually pretty good about not restricting genders to set positions in the power struggle. Then again, they are also pretty good about only having attractive (or implied attractive) women in them.
There are some really good examples though, another is Revi from Black Lagoon. They have her shown in plenty of sexual poses and situations but in never really affects the view or the characters because shes just so damn broken as a person. The same with the Major from what Ive seen. The characters have just pretty much killed their feminine quality's to be soldiers ect.
That might be the basis of the gender roles. Maybe you can't have your cake and eat it too, being seen as a non feminine soldier figure is inherently going to remove a lot of the feminine nature of your character and really how you roleplay should reflect that.
That's just my opinion though and their always is exceptions eg, Kolin from Code Geass.
The spoiler was beautiful. I actually cried. Remembering that inspired me a bit. I have already planned a "cop" character Raeum. Maybe I can work him out to be a part of "special elite cop force" instead who focuses more on diplomacy and solving conspiracy with minimal use of force.
Time to take a pen and paper and start writing...
I actually have a villain in one of my campaigns I really like. Her name is Clair Jauntair and she is a half-nymph chaotic evil bard. I'll write up a short story and post it. I kind of wanted to do a trope breaker marry sue with her, undeniably innocent in appearance to the public and even the PC's for a while. Inside though she was driven insane by her beauty creating a falseness of reality. Pretty much its hard to remain sane when you seemingly have no boundaries because you can almost supernaturally weave the world around your finger.
Plus I broke a few rules with her and made her really powerful with illusion magic.
One of the like 40 present villains in my pathfinder campaign, this is a really short flash fiction.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=212931#post212931
I tend to try and stay out of my own head...it's full of scary stuff.
For the record, gender locking classes is something I hate as well. I don't mind racial limits, those can often make sense, but no gender bias. Bugs me.
Fortunately, not an issue here as many others have stated. I look forward to the level of customization we should have.
Like I said, the whole gender-lock thing, while it can be annoying, doesn't really bug me on smaller-scale development projects. If you're a small studio starting out, it's a good way to save some time and resources that can be redirected towards other elements. I just absolutely hate it when, in the process of gender-locking classes, games invariably fall into those gender-based role stereotypes. That's mostly what I was complaining about
And yeah, I try to avoid my own head as well. If I keep myself distracted, the self-loathing won't kick in! Heh. But sometimes something does frighten me, and when it does, it usually helps to have somebody remind me that I'm being irrational, even if I already know it on a purely intellectual level.
-- Galileo Galilei
Answer:
Female warforged are half iron, half wood
Male warforged are half wood, half iron
...if you get the irony...
**grrr somebody shoot me for the bad joke**
*ducks*
-- Galileo Galilei
That would be silly. What would all of the guys think that enjoy playing female toons?
This doesn't excuse gender-locking when the above is NOT happening. In that case, I get frustrated, too.
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I call BS. I know women in factory/foundry work that keep pace with the men around them. I've met women veterans that can out lift your average joe. Even I handle heavy stuff at work that just leaves the guys standing around going how the hell does she do that? (Apparently I'm not supposed to be able to move around 600lbs of stuff like it's nothing.) It comes down to practice and training. Higher androgen levels help, but much of it comes down to what you do. As for the dexterity part, that's just silly. There's uncoordinated people in both genders and people that can move so fast your eyes can barely keep up. Scientists are even finding changes in brain structure from years of martial arts training. Heck, there's enough sideshow contortionists in both genders to disprove the dexterity bit alone. Even if these people are "exceptions to the rules," gender-locking does nothing but pretend they don't exist. D&D is about playing exceptional characters, not roleplaying a day in the life of your average peasant dirt farmer.
And I did go back and watch the fighter video again. The playback quality wasn't the best and every shot was from the back, but I'm fairly certain that was a female fighter in the video.
If you put 2 people, a man and woman, both well trained, against each other in a strength contest, the man will beat the woman 99% of the time. That's just the way it is, and you can't deny that.
That of course doesn't mean that any woman will always be weaker than any man, as there are always exceptions in pretty much everything. Not every woman is weak and not every man is strong, not by a long shot. But assuming they're both equally fit, she will be inferior in sheer strength.
If you take a look at real life comparisons between equally trained men and women, look at athletics world records - you'll see that men always outperform women there.
As for dexterity, it's also a fact. There are several types of movements men simply cannot do, because even when they are completely untrained their muscle mass gets in the way, that women an easily do. Aditionally, the average female brain has been proven to be much better at coordinating multiple things at once than the male brain.
Again, that is the average - there are always exceptions.
What I'm trying to say is, apart from a few exceptions, men are born with higher strength, women with higher dexterity. That is a fact. If they improve on these things or not however is a different matter. But if we assume equal improvement, either through training or through everyday activities, it still boils down to those birth advantages.
Enough talk about real life though, we're talking about gender locking in videogames.
Anyway, I do not like gender locking either, but not always. In some cases, gender locking might be a good option.
Some games have specific stories surrounding each class. Gender locking there is more often than not fine, IF supported by the story.
Some games have specific characters instead of classes (say, Vindictus or Rusty Hearts). Again, that's fine - you're playing a specific character, twith a specific story, thus coming to the same onclusion as above.
Last but not least, some classes themselves simply cannot be picked up by both genders. Some games have classes along the lines of "Siren" or "Valkyrie" - these simply cannot be picked by males, for quite obvious reasons.
There are ofc times when devs are simply too lazy to make additional models, and lock all males as warriors and all females as mages/archers for no apparent reason. That is where there is a problem with gender-locked classes - not with the lock itself, but with the context.
And all of this means that men have a potential to be stronger while women can endure life's stress and live longer, POTENTIALLY.
All of this goes out the window when we realize men and women don't all have identical body types (some are stronger/weaker/more-less flexible/denser/frailer etc.) and training can level a lot of that "playing field." On both sides. Would one side need to "do more" to be "equal" sometimes if their physical potential allows it? Sometimes.
But this branch of equality debate is a freakin' moot discussion because THIS GAME IS NOT GENDER LOCKED.
'Nuff said.
And truth, you handled that pretty much with your first post.
Yet people are replying to my post as if the issue was ever seriously in doubt/contention.
-- Galileo Galilei
Okay, I better take that Ativan I mentioned, but,
HUGS FOR EVERYBODY!
IT'S GOING TO BE OK!