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women and MMO's
Thogrim
Member Posts: 27
Anyway, I was strolling through the game listings while waiting for SOR to get done patching when I ran accross linage II's screen shot index. At first the picks of dragons and anime style characters seemed pretty interesting, but then I stumbled accross a picture of two avatars, one dark elf male, the other a dark elf female, I think you guys know what picture I'm talking about.
So of course being male, the image of a female in what looked like a metal teddy was of course aesthiecially pleasing. Then it hit me. Like a lot of you out there, I've had trouble with girlfreinds who dont exactly like the idea of there boyfreinds spending 25+ hours a week playing an online game. But taken into consideration the male vs. female ratio in mmo's and generally womens view on them, I cant help but to wonder if the way females are portrayed in mmo's has something to do with there lack of interest in them.
Honestly here, you create a female character and what is immediately in front of you is some dev's wet dream. Now of course its hard to say that they look unrealstic considering that where talking about elves and whatnot, but what you have is an avatar with tits eather the size of, or bigger than the avatars head, a waist that would require several ribs to be removed in order to achive a waist line like that in real life, and quite possibly the largest child bearing hips in existance.
If that isnt enough, just look at the way the female characters move in mmo's, there hips girate when they run as if there lower back is made out of rubber, there combat poses are like something out of hustlers medievil fetish edition, and when it comes to the sounds they make, whether it be an mmo or any other game, the devs might as well get a porn star as a voice actor, and through in a "oh baby, give it to me" rather than just beating around the bush.
Some other games have done a little better at this, WoW for instance has female armor and what not that doesnt look like something out of a fetish magazine. But still, I remember way back when I was playing SWG and attempted to get my girlfriend into it, rather than listen to her bitch at me for wasting my time and not paying attention to her (keep in mind she she was a gamer, just not into mmo's). Once she got into the character customazation and found the slider that can edit your weight, which in fact, would ajust your bust/hip size she looked at me and said "you have got to be fucking kidding me."
Needless to say, she didnt much like the game. Do you guys think that maybe companies would seriously up there server pops with a whole new demographic by representing females in a way that wasnt geared towards men?
Comments
I am a female gamer and the way females are protrayed in most games does not really bother me.
I think its kind of silly. The typical female armor in some games would not protect you from a crazed mob with a butter knife.
Anyway as long as the target audience is 14 year old males with a hormone problem then that is way we are going to be shown.
Support Bacteria, its the only culture some people have.
I think it's time for women to start looking up to these avatars as rolemodels!
Nah, seriously now, I know u're right about the appearances of the avatars, they're all hot. It's very unrealistic but we should also keep in mind that it is a game and not to be thought of as well, like the point I made, rolemodels or anything.
I know a few female mmorpgers, and from personal experience, the more they can customize their avatar, the better looking they modify it to be! heh, they want to be as idealized as possible. The lips, the makeup, the breasts, etc, everything is modified according to their concept of "perfection". This is usually followed by an amazing array of perfectly matched outfits, etc
I'm not putting all female gamers in that train of though or much less attempting to create a stereotype, but from my personal examples, that is what I see.
I think above all, the in-game activities are really not targeted towards the average female interests. Again, not attempting to generalize anyone into one boat, but you must admit, that females in general tend to have interests that men do not pursuit and vice-versa.
My girlfriend plays mmos with me, sometimes even more than me. (we have our workstations side-by-side, it's awesome) I didn't get her into this; she found her own interest. How???
SWG entertainers! Yes! Believe it! Both of my 2 female best friends that play mmos started like that.
My girlfriend saw me playing SWG and when she saw the dancing, the tailoring and the image design, she went nuts and bought her own copy! lol I didn't have to ask or convince anyone.
Eventually she also developed a taste for the rest and as a result we can both play games that have none of those original activities as SWG did. We play wow together all the time. She is also into RTS, so we go head-to-head or co-op. RTS I did have to convince her to try, at first she was reluctant and didn't think that it was her thing. Her favorite game is now AOE3! lol
Well, there u have it, from my personal experience I believe it is, above all, what there is to do in a game that originally might spark the interest of any given female out there. The rest just develops with time. Off course there will be exceptions since everyone is an individual and there are females that do not need such.... "transitory" activities and dive right into any game along with the men.
Peace.
-virtual tourist
want your game back?
However I do have this to say on the matter: women don't play MMO's.
Most of us ladies like to look at attractive people (male and female) just as much as the guys do. I can't imagine that a large number of women would want an ugly avatar, but just in case they do, the game developers could just give players the ability to make their female avatars fat, hairy and dressed like an eskimo if they so desire.
Want to attract more females to MMOs? Tout a friendly, heavy roleplaying community and add some hot looking MALES. ;-)
This is how nuclear energy is harnessed in MMO's. By making one set of armor from two female sets of armor and then turning the result into a female version of that suit of armor, you can cram more and more mass into a smaller and smaller space until it goes critical. The all time record compacted matter from female armor sets went to the point of turning the game world into a neutron star (prompting a server reset and rollback sadly).
Yeah it bothers me that girl armors are something like 85% less massive but provide the same protection modifiers. It just doesn't seem physically possible...
*Looks up screenie.*
Aahahahaha! "So... very nice... to meet... both of you..." I guess they're counting on people not wanting to stab someone with a chest like that, or something. I mean, you can see the Goblins talking after a battle:
"Yeah, I haven't had much luck using spears until now! I mean, really, look how easy they are to spit!"
"I use a battle axe and even I was able to stab them... Crazy night elves."
"Rofl lets find some more."
You can say that it's bad in video games but it's the same for everything else, like supermodels and so on. I know as a woman I can say I feel a lot worse about the real life airbrushed models because they're supposed to be real people. At least in video games you can say 'they aren't real and I don't have to live up to it'.
Look at a game like WoW and you wont see any body variation, every character from the same race has the exact same proportions and I agree that the female models can be a bit generous in their proportions but that ties to classical high fantasy art where the women are mostly naked and very busty.
==========
SWG - 1st Gen MBH (Closed)
EVE (Closed)
WoW (61 Orc Hunter - Blackwing Lair)
GuildWars (Boring...)
I think we r starting to see more women getting into MMORPG's , one reason is that they have relationships
with several men at once and not get into any trouble with their boyfriends, but jokes aside .
when Women would stay away from from organised button bashing games like Tekken or fifa
the interaction with other people that an mmo offers , is just as exciting as it is for a guy, Women have never really been marketed towards video games , but this new genre is so radical and rewarding that i believe now is the time to start intresting the fairer sex into online games , where they can never put on weight , or worry about their hair , or if their bum looks big in this
i think women would love mmo's given half the chance
GeneGray
Well I can only talk about Lara Croft having never played the other games, but my L2 Dark Elf makes our TR gal look positively demure.
There were a LOT of gamers male and female alike who positively drooled at the shots of these female characters from Vanguard -
High Elf Female
Thestrian Female
Qualian Dark Elf Female
Another Thestrian Human (with a damn fine looking Mordebi male beside her)
Ofcourse there were a lot of guys who screamed "WHERE ARE THE BOOBIEZ" *shrugs* All I know is that my Vanguard character is going to be a lot more attractive in my eyes than my "bikini line baring, is that a nipple showing" L2 mistress.
EDIT: I see the first and third pics came out small..here is a link to the screenshot page if you want to see them close up. They are in the May 2005 group.
oringally posted by oats
"I'm a male gamer and I do find it wierd that Thogrim stares at his toons package."
Ok, I admit it. I'm gay, and i'm coming out of the closet. Thats why I posted this topic, and yes, I stare at my toons package. But what angers me more is the fact that I cant edit my toons package. C'mon now, imagine a game where you could give your toon a package to shame all others, because papa likes a big old easter basket on his bunny. Why not go further? What about package physics? When I see my toon racing accross the virtual landscape smashing foes into the ground, I want to see his mighty manhammer swaying back and forth like a pendulium of hardned steel!
Ok, gay jokes aside, my point is that having "package physics" is absurd, and wouldnt be the deal breaker for any video game. But breasts that bounce up and down (because apparently the girls of dead or alive never heard of sports bra's) or anything else to that effect is perfectly acceptable, and infact a selling point.
Of coruse we want attractive toons, I for one wouldnt want to make an over wieght, balding, toon named earl, and I dont think I could really get into a game watching earl waddle accross the playing field like a half stunned penguine to swing an axe into an apponent while taking quick smoke breaks in between. Of course this is fantasy, but my point is that to me, there is a difference between having the ability to make an attractive avatar, and making a porn star with a sword. But from what I can tell in the post so far, most of the women that have replied seem to eather tolarate it, or even like the idea.
Feel free to edit your original post and then copy and past the above into it.
No, I don't think it would increase their server populations. But then, I am not a woman so I don't know how they prefer to play their games. For me, avatar apperance in the game is a very small part of the game. Far more important is how well the game plays.
I try to make my avatars as further away as possible from "perfect pretty".
My SWG was a short, obese, deep blue twilek.
My wow main is a human warlock. I started the character on a whim an without giving it much though, I ended up liking the warlock so much I just kept it, but I am not happy with his "normal" facial appearance, and especially his tremedously muscular and chiseled body. If there was a way to change this, I'd gladly do it.
My other alts are all varied species (orcs, ogre, dwarfs), but I never got nearly as much into their classes, so in that game, I just ended up being the stereotypical human player.
But yeah, I am pretty fed up of the pretty boy/girl avatar syndrome.
It's fantasy! Variety, variety! Please!
Anyways, back to topic, I wish games would try and make their games more interesting to the average female. Gaming is such a huge part of the average male world, and to see it so segregated after all these years is just frustrating. I'd love to see a lot more females involved in this fun activity.
To those females who already play: THANK YOU!
-virtual tourist
want your game back?
LOL, interesting topic.. but it won't change anytime soon. In fact, the game devs will probably start trying to get away with more and more skin and revealing outfits as time goes on...
Lets face it. We are talking about "fantasy" games here. And when we enter these fantasy worlds, we don't want to be looking at something similar to what we witness at any American shopping mall these days. Who wants to look at huge asses, 200 pound beer guts, and flab galore in our models?? Duh that's why they are games. That's why we don't play Tomb Raider and play the role of a 390 pound 5'4 woman. It's why we also don't run around the mmos in jammies and Def Lepard tank tops, but instead we sport mirrored, sparkling, shiny cool looking armor instead. We log in and go fight some bandits or golems instead of real world duties like taking out the garbage or washing some clothes.
It think it's all overly obvious why the devs put everything they do into these games. Sex sells. Fun cells better then real chores. And mmos are supposed to look more appealing then what we might see if we look at our very own reflections here in the real world.
When it comes down to it, it really boils down to one thing for the game makers. Money. It always seems to come down to money. And the more appealing these games are, the better they sell, and the more money that is made.
- Zaxx
Playing: EVE Online
Favorite MMOs: WoW, SWG Pre-cu, Lineage 2, UO, EQ, EVE online
Looking forward to: Archeage, Kingdom Under Fire 2
KUF2's Official Website - http://www.kufii.com/ENG/ -
This is a non-issue. Everyone knows that THERE ARE NO GIRLS ON THE INTERNET!
originall posted by tvalentine
"ok if devs did this, then we might as well go back to the thread "Sex and MMOs". They show slutty girls for 14-16 yr olds ..... imagine what they would do with 21-26 yr olds, they would show more sex. The higher the target age, the more sexual content they will add."
Good point. Infact now that I think about it your right. Seeing as someone over the age of 18 can view pornography, then why not put it in a video game. Maybe I just assume that if I wanted to play an mmo, I'd do what I'm doing now and sign of for saga of ryzom, and if I wanted to see a women half naked, I'd just go to the strip club thats literally behind my house.
Sex sells and too many people buy it to warrant a change in this trend. Still, why not just go for the full monty and have hot toon on toon mmo fucking? I guess I'd better run through the sex and mmo thread and see how that ones going.
Have you ever heard of such a thing as a 14 year old male WITHOUT a hormone problem?
I usually have female characters when playing MMOs because,
1: They're more visually pleasing than looking at some guy who's "ruff as a bear's arse".
2: You tend to get more help, until they find out you're a bloke.
3: Randy teenage boys trying out their fabulous pickup lines cracks me and my GF up with laughter everytime!
4: Evil women are so damn sexy don't you think? (I have hormones, but I have no problem :P)
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
A little off topic...My first avatar was in EQ1, and it was a girl. I tried to play male alts, but got called out within 2 hours of gameplay with every damn one. Since i left eq, i haven't made a male toon. However, now I am running into the opposite with guys thinking i'm a guy, lol. Of course, this might be due to the fact that I don't talk a lot in pickup groups.