227: That's not an uncommon sentiment in the industry. Publishers tried to change the gender of the protagonist in both of DONTNOD's games (Remember Me and Life Is Strange), and I got an email awhile back from the people who made the Tales of Illyria games that made it sound like the gender of the main character played a huge role in their second game selling poorly.
Personally, I don't buy that excuse at all. LiS and Freedom Planet show up as 10/10 on Steam, and the 2013 Tomb Raider has apparently sold 8.5 million copies. Sounds to me like a bunch of people confusing correlation and causation and getting all antsy over nothing. If anything, gamers don't like poorly written female characters. Or poorly written male characters. Or poor writing (including token characters included solely to appeal to a demographic, which that quote oozes) in general.
Not only poor written characters, I don't think it is wise to change the gender or character of a established franchise.
If the devs want to create different character / genders, they best make them in new IP.
This is because people grew fond of characters in an existing IP and becomes emotionally attached to it. It is like when people adopt a baby and grew found of it, suddenly the baby sport horns and tails, people will freak out. It is possible that the baby sports wings and halo, but more often than not, we see backlash. We had seen games like prototype and Devil May Cry, even though the gameplay and such is better then the previous game,
Rusty_Gunn: This reminds me so much of Sargon's "Why Gamers Had To Die" videos namely #1
Gamers Don't Need Diversity How it was assumed that gamers needed that their character match the player.
Which is not the case for me anyways I've enjoyed playing men, women, children, beasts, mutants, aliens, machines & I'm sure other things I can't think of at the moment.
For me it is different. I can play games with protagonist of men, beast, mutants, aliens, machines, but Don't really dig into games with women and children as the protagonist.
To get the easy one out, I don't like playing Emo children that are angry at everything and even ungrateful enough to snap at their parents, someone who are kind to them or their allies. I feel very weird and out of character.and it grates on my nerves from time to time. Like the new Dante in Devil May Cry
That said if the children is children in name and form only, but does not act like a child at all, I can easily get into it, provided that the game is fun.
The same can be said for games with women protagonist. If it is a reverse dating sim and all the guys in the game try to hit on me...... I feel very disturbed. It may be interesting to dress, makeup, fashion the protagonist, but after a while when the novelty to trying new things wears off, what I am left with is weirdness. If the game is women in name and form only then I don't have problems.
When you claim you enjoy playing games as a women, are you referring to games with women protagonist in name and form only or in spirit too?
On the other hand, I don't agree with Sargon Gamers "Don't Need Diversity"
It is fine, not liking to play as a women, even with name and form only. But it is not right to say because I don;t like this you should not like this too. That is the logic of the extremist that cause much angst to many people.
If I don;t like something I just don't buy and play it.
It is fine telling developers a large number of people like this or don't like this (Provided you have proof) so it is in their commercial interest to develop a game based on such interest,
But it is not right to use certain group tactics that paint everything in a broad stroke that no one will buy it. If the devs think it is still commercially viable to create games that cater to a niche group, they should be allowed to do so.
