I don't really venture into shooters, but how often do these games let you adjust body proportions? One of the things I got tired with on Soul Calibur 4's CAC was seeing every female CAC with impossibly huge bustlines (yeah this is the game with Ivy in it but still). I can see how that can be distracting, though in a game like Call of Duty they should be wearing the same full-body clothing as the men anyway.

Not much attemtion is paid to body proportion, though to some extent that kind of thing could be chalked up to the need to keep hitboxes the same for all characters in order to balance the gameplay properly.

though the soul calibur 4 problem is clearly the game makers being perves and being unable to keep perv life and game maker life apart.

One of the things I found interesting in Tom Bissel's gaming-memoir Extra Lives was his explanation for why--whenever given the choice--he played as a female characters. His reasoning was that if games were about escapism, he wanted to escape as far from possible from his everyday life. Just thought I'd add that to the discussion.

@Ben Thanks for the comment. I think that this is another perfectly good reason for being serious about allowing this option. Ultimately I look at it this way. Their's only two genders of humans, the gender that you happen into upon conception and birth is something that everyone has had meaningful and important interactions with in their day to day lives since the day they first drew breath and everyone has some sort of opinion on how they interact with this fact that IS going to affect their choices when creating an avatar for themselves. To make the choice of what gender a person's character is going to be FOR them rather then having both options is the direct antithesis of the purpose of a create a character system.

The greatest thing is even after winning this battle theirs countless other battles to fight with character creation systems. For example, as a person who largely believes that modern day gender roles are far more flexible in modern society and deserve much less enforcement then they currently get, I would like a standard clothing and accessory selection between the two genders in games as well. You should be able to make the girliest man or the manliest girl you want or once again you can't really boast that much about allowing 'ultimate' player choice.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read, and I agree that anyone leveling these tired arguments deserves the skewering of your rebuttals!

I like that you placed the bullshit budget/animations argument at number one: I can think of a several FPSes that offer male and female characters who are animated identically, and, quite frankly, I don't give a shit that they are animated so. I don't think anyone I know really cares. But we are happy that we have the option of playing either male or female characters.

To go along with your number 5 and 2, have you read Penny Arcade's latest comic partly inspired by a forum post arguing that Dragon Age 2 ignores the "Straight Male Gamer" demographic? It's worth a read just to further prove your points, I'm afraid: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/4/1/

@ben. Yeah i've read all of that. That is definately something I really appreciate them putting out there and definately appreciate Bioware and penny arcade both being so up in arms defending.

@Rob glad you enjoyed it. I wish I had been able to put together an article that was a bit more concise so that Bitmob itself would be more likely to do something with it but I simply have way too much investment in this topic to trunicate what I have to say in it.

Anything that you guys in the comments or anyone else could do to help get this article out there to people would be appreciated as more people need to address this issue in an unapoligetic and uncompromising fashion instead of giving it lip service and being far too charitable to the other sides bad arguments.

This kind of choice in games does not need to be just some guys opinion of what should happen it needs to be an expected standard and I want to do my best to make sure people know that, but I can't do it without support from the community at large.

A nice summation of all of the stupid excuses people give. Good post, Jeffrey!

A thoroughly entertaining article. Though to nitpick one point, if a military FPS seeks to portray Special Forces and/or Rangers (ala Medal of Honor), it wouldn't make sense to include females. There are no women in either community, at least among the shooters.

That being said, women *can* be utilized in tradional male roles in gaming. Final Fantasy Tactics' Agrias is a perfect example. Agrias is a powerful character, a Holy Knight with devestating special abilities...and she *happens* to be female.

@jason My argument to your nitpick would be the counter argument of 'why the hell would it even matter what they want to potray if it's a multiplayer shooter?' In the single player of a realistic military shooter their is hardly ever a character creation option (and when their is it's usually rainbow six and in rainbow six they let you make women these days) so it's irrelvant to the current argument as far as I know, and in multiplayer the last thing the average military shooter is worried about is pitch perfect realism. Shouldn't a multiplayer game's first purpose be to facilitate the fun of it's players and not to shove a heavy handed super realistic setting down their throats anyway?

Just let me put it this way. Do you really notice what team you are put on in any real meaningful fashion in call of duty multiplayer? Does it change the gameplay, the way the maps play out, or even much of the overall look of your enemy? Does the fact that they realistically had a really boring guy do a really boring voice over before and after each match that sort of matches what team you are batting for and change the language of the gibberish you spew when you throw a grenade actually make you feel like you are 'in the shit'? Are you saying 'i'm the terrorists and they are the special forces? or are you saying 'i'm a guy with a gun and that's that guy i'm going to shoot'

When you play call of duty you don't feel like you are in a war, you feel like you are in a match of call of duty. It may have similarities to war, but those similarities are often pretty easy to potray in any setting. I tell you when i'm playing team fortress 2 I don't care that i'm fighting cartoons because that guy is about to steamroll me with a flood of bullets and i've got to duck and cover. They made it a cartoonish setting to lampshade the impossibility of making the setting in a multiplayer shooter credible. They GAVE UP on trying to make a believable multiplayer setting and the game became better because of it. Minor proof to my point that the last thing any multiplayer shooter should do is put setting before player enjoyment.

So when the setting of a multiplayer FPS is interchangeable and often dictated by the gameplay style that you want to go for, the argument that realism is to blame for women not being in a multiplayer shooter is bunk. The mutliplayer side of the shooter isn't going for perfect realism as it is and if it fudged it's setting to allow female characters alongside the remote controlled RC cars with bombs strapped to them few people would stop playing the game because it's 'too out there.'  

No matter how you chalk it up it's perfectly possible to design a multiplayer shooter that believeably has female characters in it. You just put them in and people will effing believe it and move on because unlikely and impossible nonsense is all over even the most 'realistic' shooter the second they allow respawns. Since if they did it few would have the gall to complain without being seen as sexist and many would be happy about it then why not just suck it up and do it? If making a design choice doesn't seriously hurt the game experience for many players and allows others to have more fun (and silence a fairly common request from a portion of gaming fans) then the designer should seriously consider it instead of seriously considering their best excuse for not doing it to avoid putting forth the effort.

As for single player modes of shooters not having enough women in them. I can sort of accept the realism argument there if they are potraying a force in a time period where it doesn't/didn't have women in it, but honestly women are regulated to crap characterization or non existance in even sci fi shooters or things that are as realistic as etch a sketch, so I doubt that these developers would be falling over themselves to give the option to players even if they weren't 'held back by setting'.

You can bring up the places where these people have excuses to excude women all you want but that doesn't make excluding women right in any argument, it just is an attempt to garner a free pass or get out on a technicality to avoid discussing the real issue of gender bias. What frustrates me about this entire argument is that the other side of the argument is just blocking progress with excuses, not actually making a good argument for why neglecting to add in female character choice in create a character is right. It's because it ISN'T RIGHT. It's not something that can be argued on a moral basis by rational people. It's already proven that women deserve the right to have as much choice in their fun and entertainment as men and that nothing in gaming is really gender exclusive anymore, so right now we are just waiting for developers to pull their heads out of their asses and, for lack of a better phrase, 'man the hell up'

whew....sorry I went off on a tangent there. As for your second point. Their are some pretty awesome female characters in games (a suprising amount of them come from Japan), but this particular topic is focused only on having a gender choice in character creation systems. I have written other articles about gender in gaming characterization and had a different focus for this one.

Anywho keep the comments coming and keep new people chiming in if you are able. I want to increase awareness of this topic and I would love to continue discussing it. Keep in mind even if I go on rants it's just because i'm an overly opinionated nerd and WAY too invested in this issue. It's not because I don't respect people's right to disagree with me. I just am going to argue my side as seriously and passionately as I feel it deserves to be argued.

Wow, that was a novel lol

Jeffrey, you've zeroed in on my biggest problem with most FPS's--not your point about multiplayer, but about the modern military FPS's inability to recreate realistic scenarios. Just to be clear: no FPS, no matter how realistic, will *ever* recreate the experience of combat. Some just come closer than others.

I can enjoy a FPS like Modern Warfare 2 on a mindless level, but the bombastic Michael Bay plot draws me out of the game. By contrast, a title like Medal of Honor is at least loosely based on fact (Operation Anaconda, circa '02). I'm a history buff, so I usually have the same issues with war movies. With so many dramatic true-life stories, why fabricate a ludicrously unbelievable one?

@jason That, my friend, is a whole nother kettle of fish. It might be a decent idea for you to write an article about it since you are so interested in the issue. For my brief 2 cents on it it's because realism and accuraccy take more effort from the creative team then bombastic lunacy, and require more knowledge to appreciate. So the average person doesn't look at it for it's own merits they look at it as increased effort for the right to alienate part of their audience. (not really thinking about how inaccuracy and stupidity alienate audiences because modern game makers think gamers are stupid and easily impressed)

If a game accurately represented combat then a rather large percentage of the players of that game would take a bullet without being able to fight back, and either play a 'crippled for life' mini game or be locked out of playing the game ever again because they are dead. Even the most dedicated 'realistic' war game is just that, a game. In order to make games fun you have to detach them from reality. It's just arguable how much detachment is fun and how much detachment removes the nuances/merits of the experience.

Agreed, Jeffrey. I don't think a game can be more "realistic" than Medal of Honor without alienating a significant portion of its audience (though why more games choose bombast over some semblance of accuracy is troubling).

But in the end, I think a FPS needs to retain certain "game" elements--regenerating health (or something akin to it), health packs, ample ammo just lying around, an endless parade of enemies, etc. In a "realistic" FPS, you'd kill a tiny fraction of the enemies you do in your average Modern Warfare.

The "Guys playing as girls is creepy" argument has always driven me nuts because, well, it's completely blind and full of privilege.  (Yes, I said it.  It's a real thing.)

Why?  Because we female players -- and yes, there are loads of us -- have been playing as male characters for 30 years.  There are some guys who -do- get creepy about playing female characters (particularly in MMORPGs) but those particular players would be able to get creepy about a potted plant, and so I'd posit that they shouldn't be the players that designers plan for.

I don't think anyone feels that a woman gamer playing a male character is being "creepy."  Half the time, we're playing only what's offered.  So I'm big on telling guys to get over that one.  The first person player character of Portal is female; no-one seemed to feel that game was "creepy."

Never mind the socio-political arguments. I'd expect that a large number of guys would want to play as girls because it means they get to stare at a female the whole game (see: Bayonetta, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Tomb Raider, etc.)

The only reason I can see for not having a gender choiuce option is because the character is clearly defined and part of the storyline (see Duke Nukem, Bayonetta, Tomb Raider, full list too long to print...) but if the character can be ambiguous in their appearance, then there is no excuse. In fact here's my take on the points:

5 - The only games I have seen where the appearance matters beyond basic character identification is ORPGs and that is a case of "if you don't like it, find another genre, because that option isn't going anywhere."

4 - You run around a bloody city with 60+ pounds of equipment on at full throttle and don't even get winded, and you want to say that women in a miltary game isn't realistic? You have bigger issues there bub. (heck if they really wanted to go for realism with modern military deployments, the vast majority of the game would be humaitarian efforts with short bursts of comabt.

3 - I can easily park this in the same reason as to why I dislike FPS games, aka they need to be "manly." At this stage, "manly" and "hyper-realistic" graphics should not be the focus point, lest we wind up with another 60+ overpriced, repetitive gun-toting testoerone fests with shallow storylines. Make the characters have character for chrissakes, and let me give a damn about them! I prefer Duke over any <insert generic American named GI> simply because he has defined character.

2 - Yeah, this one makes me see red. "We took a sample of 20 white male 17-21 year old gamers and found only one wanted the feature so only 5% of gamers want this feature." Please fire your marketing and PR department. Prefereably out of a cannon.

1 - You spend 5 times the cost to implement a customization option on making sure an M-16 looks and sounds right when fired, and 10+ times that just getting a license to play a forgettable rap song during the closing credits, and you're going to try and make me think that you don't have the money to implement it? Try again. Meanwhile, I'll be laughing at the absurdity as I pick up a JRPG for half the price with more realistic characters than you'll ever be able to make. And Two Worlds, what's your goddamn excuse?

There's also the issue of why is there so much effort on making the character act and look a particular way when for all playable segment you NEVER GET TO SEE IT ANYWAYS!? Oh right, box/case art and cinematics. Clearly those are more important than fixing that buggy section of land that you always fall through.

"I totally agree, but excuse me for a second while I spec out my scout's gear in Call of Duty. I want to equip the lightweight perk to give a boost to my speed stat. That way I can kill more efficiently to level up and gain some more money to buy better guns at the shop...."

This is full of win. Watching RPG elements bleed into other sorts of games (Red Dead Redemption and Borderlands among others) is fascinating to me.

Jeffrey, you said this in one of your comments above:

"Just let me put it this way. Do you really notice what team you are put on in any real meaningful fashion in call of duty multiplayer? Does it change the gameplay, the way the maps play out, or even much of the overall look of your enemy? Does the fact that they realistically had a really boring guy do a really boring voice over before and after each match that sort of matches what team you are batting for and change the language of the gibberish you spew when you throw a grenade actually make you feel like you are 'in the shit'? Are you saying 'i'm the terrorists and they are the special forces? or are you saying 'i'm a guy with a gun and that's that guy i'm going to shoot'"

I feel that logic actually undercuts your argument per why we should have female avatars in multiplayer FPS games. If we don't even notice what team we're on, are we really going to notice the gender of our avatar?

I know you don't like this argument, but in the end time = money. I'm extremely progressive on women's rights and issues of gender equality, but asking developers to make design decisions based on moral imperatives is a little unrealistic, don't you think? Sometimes female avatars are really needed by modern genre conventions - an RPG that didn't allow the creation of a female lead is something I'd officially deem "problematic," but first person shooters?

We're all running around drilling each other with bullets in an orgiastic feast of meaningless violence. I'm not sure it's fair to take developers to task for not giving us female virtual pincushions in addition to male ones. I feel you conflated issues here just a little bit by bringing FPS into the conversation. We don't really have "characters" in FPS games. We have "avatars." There's a world of difference between the two, IMHO.

I like the passion with which you defend your position, btw.

Wow. A front page means that Rob had to actually EDIT that mess. I'm so sorry man LOL. Thanks for the effort and I really like the result. Now on to comments.

@bobby Loved your comments. Got some genuine laughs there. Nothing to add at the moment.

@Dennis It's a compilicated issue and my stance on it is rather nebulous and nuanced at times, I'll grant you. So let me put it this way. The team you are on's identity is an experience meant for the player on that team to identify with the world they are in, and the way call of duty impliments it is so bland and stupid that you don't really care what team you are on and you just ignore it to get back into the fray.  This is a design flaw of the series that i've always disliked and was supposedly implimented for the sake of 'realism'. So I used it as an example to talk about how realism is largely ineffectual in the actual experience of online shooters and their atmosphere. Realism can change and influence gameplay rather meaningfully but the gameplay will take center stage over visuals/ audio cues where realism is concerned when you are actually 'in the shit' so to speak.

The way your character looks though has actual gameplay signifigance as this is how the opposing team identifies you as unique from your team mates and how your team mates identify you. A person is more likely to develop a bond with a fellow player or respect for their skills when they can pick that player out of the crowd in their team and it effects how they interact with that player in gameplay. This is because individual character customization is an expression of the player's personality and something that developers give the player explicit control over to allow them to choose how other players see them. This is a MUCH bigger deal then what team you are on in a game when done right. I actually have argued in the past that shooters that provide no visual customization at all are hindered by this fact. Using an earlier call of duty game as a whipping boy.

http://bitmob.com/articles/modern-warfare-2-the-nobody-progression-system

Not only are you more likely to choose opponents differently or help teammates in a different fashion if you can tell them apart, many players such as myself also have boosted confidence knowing that they have control over how they are seen and can present an interesting/intimidating persona to the other players as an advantage on the battlefield. The clothes don't make the man but the clothes communicate the man/womans intent in important ways.

This gets to the heart of the problem. In games where their is no customization everyone is bland and denied choice. It makes the game less fun for some players who are used to having that option. In games like brink where customization is only provided in male characters many females (and some males) lose intrest in character customization entirely because they can't make something that communicates their personal idea of an interesting/intimidating adversary/teammate for the other players. This means that for those players the game has removed the benefits of character customization entirely.

I say with no embarassment or shame that my gender identity issues effect me enough that when I can't make a female character (or when the female character is gimped/pointless like in modern wrestling games) I lose all intrest in the character customization because I don't have any real intrest in the male eye when it comes to 'cool' or 'badass' characters. These days this option is included in so many games that the games that it isnt' included in (I.E. mostly shooters) are now less fun for me, and by result they are less likely to get my money.

At the end of the day i'm not saying that developers are morally obligated to provide this option (though I think that not providing it says a lot about a their priorities) I'm simply saying that I expect the option, will stop buying games that don't provide the option, and would like other people to follow suit if they want to see the option become a true standard (which I will argue to the death that it not only has to become a standard, it WILL)

Take that argument however you see fit. You just should know by now that using any of the above five arguments is not going to sway me in the slightest.
 

So yeah, call of duty needed a character creation system 3 games ago and every game with a character creation system needs a female option. 

You say I'm expecting developers to design games based on moral imperatives and that this doesn't make sense. Did it not make sense when we decided character creation systems needed race options? That probably took a bit of coding/money to figure out.

The fact of the matter is that people deserve choice in multiplayer games no matter what the genre in my opinion (even TF2 added in player customization in some fashion, even though it's goofy and contrived on purpose just like all of their design) and women and people who wish to present as women have not been included in that distinction of deserving choice nearly as much as they could be included. If getting that choice means making developers who have coded themselves into a corner because they didn't care about the issue upset I'm going to do that regardless. No matter how many excuses  people use to attempt to grind my argument to a halt in false compromise and rationale for the statis quo.

The fact of the matter is every game starts out as a set of decisions of 'are we going to do this, or are we going to do that?' and every game company that says 'we are going to do a character creation system' that then places 'we are going to include female options' lower on the priority list then 'we are going to include male options' is towing the line of gender inequality in games knowingly and willfully because they conciously made a decision that one gender was more important then the other, regardless of if that reason was for marketing or 'realism' or game resources it was still a middle finger to people who wanted the option and a middle finger to women entirely. Until we see games where female is the only gender for the creation system specifically because developers 'just didn't have time to put in guys' this is something that no compromise or apology makes a good argument for. It's being done because people tolerate it as part of the statis quo and apologise for it. Not because it HAS to be done or because it's right. So change is inevitable.

Developers should just make what they want to make and if it doesn't sell then it doesn't sell - they shouldn't be under any obligation to cater to minority opinions.

IF it's the majority opinion that every game needs to have both sexes as playable characters (does this make a gameplay difference?) then people will vote with their wallet and buy more games that offer this. 

But that isn't the case. It's mostly male gamers who play (especially shooting and action games) so it's no surprise that most characters you choose are male. Also in the military it's mostly men, especially in combat. 

Frankly I don't know why men want women in the military so much anyway. For instance, here is a paragraph from Salon.com: 

"I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection."

So do they want women raped? They want to increase the likelihood they are raped? Do they want to increase the likelihood that they are killed? 

This is equality? It's better for women? 

How about a scene in the next Call of Duty where you get to play as a woman soldier but when you go to a secluded area one of your male friends tries to rape you. 

You're not going to have all-female character rosters unless there's a law for it. Women are simply not as violent or combat-prone as men are and men like playing as guy characters. Most men do not buy Barbie dolls as kids, they buy action figures that are male. 

Also in a fight a man almost always wins. This is why women have high pitched screams - so they can alert men to come to their aid. You could have that as a special move in a game, where screaming temporarily makes you invincible but can't attack, and guys come to save you, but people would get incredibly offended (or act like they are) and there'd be a big hubbaloo about it and it'd probably strike people as more wrong than even my comments here. 

Of course, most of the people who would be "offended" would be men. They'd be the ones who write the articles, who post the comments saying how sexist it is. 

@Matt I have nothing but disappointment and frustration in the deepest parts of my being to respond to those opinions you have put forth so I am not going to bother trying to have a rational discussion with you because their is no way in hell it would end well. All I can say is I severely disagree with you and severely question your motivations for posting those 'arguments'.

(shrug) 

You need to consider size differences in the character models. In Halo if they are all wearing power suits, it hardly matters. But in other games, you either make the females exactly the same size as the males, or else they gain a tactical advantage by being just a tiny bit smaller and harder to see, thus harder to hit. So you are affecting game balance. That argument goes beyond male vs. female models: why aren't there short soldiers, fat soldiers, soldiers who are fast runners or slower but stronger? Having character models with different physical traits has to be designed into the game from the start or it's not going to be balanced or look very good.

First, thank you Jeffrey for writing this.  I do find it, well, annoying when they leave out this option, especially in games that are not story-centric.  Even then it can usually easily be adjusted, as been proven by games that indeed offers both story and gender choice.  What really baffles me is when companies creates a series (or at least two) of games and decide to remove the female option after having it in there originally (such as Start Trek: Voyager, but then I never did buy the second one).  Odd choice by the game company there, I say.

@kanomi:  So you are saying the option to play female is less important than to play a fat or a short male?  Me, being female, have no issue with games where my female is the same size as the male -- at least I get the option to play female.  And that, I believe, is the point with this atrticle here.  Those game that do make female shorter and thus harder to hit are then designed around that, taking these things into account through game mechanics.

In the end, why leave this choice out?  It makes no sense and while I may be the minority I have and will turn down games I would have bought if they had offered me the choice to play a female (and preferbly not an oversexed "magic user" (or similar) as well).  If I am to have fun with a game, I will stick to those that offers me a fair shot at it with my own gender -- it is all about having fun after all, and should not the women in games be allowed their share of such?  (c;

@Kanomi I agree that game balance is a serious concern when it comes to female player models, but plenty of games have balanced it properly and it has worked just fine with only minor concessions (usually just makeing women functionally the same size) and so it's not really an excuse as much as it is a concern for developers to hammer out that is ripe for innovation later on down the line once developers take the option seriously. I would love to see them balance that in interesting ways but leaving male and female as functional equals is a good option too.

@Jennifer I am always an odd man out on the debate over the male gaze when it comes to how women are potrayed in games because of my gender identity issues. I like looking at attractive women but it's both for the same reason and different reasons from the average guy. Both attraction and envy I suppose (trying not to seem creepy here but want to be honest LOL) \So I would like to know where your personal barometer is on the whole 'this woman is potrayed as oversexed' thing.

I personally get frustrated by potrayal of a female much more when they are cartoonishly over 'stacked' in the breast department, are basically wearing lingerie, or any instance where the female character is obviously stereoytyped to be noticably stupider or less capable then the male. I have a fair amount of tolerance for strait up attractiveness pandering just because being attractive (while leading to objectification in some males minds) seems to me to be a pretty big plus for the female gender and can be done 'right' in games. I just sort of judge it based off of if the attractiveness fits the character and doesn't cross too far into stupidity/absurdity.

My general rule of thumb has always been 'women being potrayed as stupid or useless or women being treated unfairly is a worse sin then women being dressed silly.' Still I would like the opinion of actual women on that concept because I would like as much of an understanding of their stake in the issue as possible since it isn't just about what I want or what I think.

I wasn't saying it's not important to have a playable female character! I agree with the article, that is for sure. I just meant, that if they do add a female character - and it's exactly the same size as the males for play balance reasons - and there is only one shape/size male and one shape/size female, you can almost guarantee that the male will look like a roided up pro wrestler and the female a busty amazon. So I was extending the argument, saying Yes developers should include both genders, and they should really work on providing more variety and realism in body types all around, rather than the usual comic book figures, preferably with user sliders on shape and size, not just the cosmetic hair color, etc. I guess I am just a fan of complex and elaborate character building tools. :)

@Kanomi If they can find ways to do such things i'm all for it. That sort of thing just works better for rpgs then it does action genres due to hit detection. I say if they do have to use one body type and one body type only i'd prefer 'normal average human being' to 'roided freakshow and busty amazon.' any day of the week .

Wouldn't it be awesome if when you started a Zelda game you could choose to be Zelda and save Link? I am all for more female characters! I think Rockstar should make the next main character in GTA5 a girl - or at least give us the option.

And I still think that Spartan female is HOT! 

@Kanomi:  Well, we will get there at some point, hopefully, but for now the option to play a female would be a nice inclusion.  Some games do leave this out, for no sensible reason.  (c:

@Jeffrey:  I do not mind an attractive female avatar, but when they get humongous bosom and too little to wear (i.e., highly inappropriate attire) then it might just make me as miffed as if they had ommitted the female choice altogether.  It is like in films, how many normal looking females do we see there?  But, mostly, that is OK too, since it is indeed about a flight of fancy.  But it can be taken too far, made for the straight male rather than anything else, narmean?

Also, of course, is the chance to play a female on the same basis as the male role.  Another flight of fancy, but then, that is the nature of almost all games.  For instance, if games offer two choices to play and the female role is a "magic user" (or similar in other settings beyond fantasy) it annoys me a little, but I can live with it (sometimes), but I do prefer the option to be the tough warrior if I want to.  Screw our historical gender roles, this is all about having fun in a game, right?  Imagine how dull most game would be if everything (including gender roles) was realistic.  I believe what it takes is a change of mentality, and that is a slow process.  Meanwhile I will keep buying the games that caters for my own rather narrow and perhaps rather strict demands, ha.

Excellent games in all this is, I think, Mass Effect.  That is what we need, even if they did not boast a nice character customisation.  It evidently can be done!  (c:

Geez, after the girlgamer boom that took place in the late 90's which resulted in major game franchices with female characters built in (eg Quake II [multiplayer], Unreal and Unreal Tournament, etc. to name FPS games - in fact with the first Unreal game, even the single player campaign not only allowed you select a female character to be used, it actually DEFAULTED with a female character), and events like all female leagues (eg the All Female Quake Tourmanent, and the Ms. Quake Tournament held at Quakecon), we're going back to square one all of a sudden? What the hell is going on?

And if this is really the mindset of those game companies, I wonder what stink they will raise about recently released games like this (H.A.V.E. Online/ToyWars/MicroVolts by Korean game developer SK iMedia):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxHVX54b2QE

I do often play as a woman in a video game if I can, and for a couple of reasons.  One, I've I'm going to be looking at the back of a character for  hours on end, I should at least have something I'd like to look at.  The other thing is to annoy others.  There are WAY too many players that are high strung enough to be annoyed by this to not to.  I have a pink lady Spartan in Halo Reach and I'm surprised at the reactions I get.  Its funny.  That and they got rid of the option to play as an Elite in every match, so this was the next best thing.  

But yeah, this should be a no brainer now.

Oh, also remember the excuse for New Super Mario Bros. Wii?  Peach's skirt was too hard to animate.  That's just sad.

@David LOL. Well as long as you realize that the option needs to be there and respect the right of people who use it to do so unharassed then I suppose it's up to you how you use it yourself.

I do remember the lame excuse for new super mario brothers wii. I actually wrote an article almost directly in response to that that got front paged a while back.

http://bitmob.com/articles/the-next-step-for-gender-equality

It's sort of got the same premise but deals in different parts of the overall discussion.

The hits on this article...I have realized they are OVER 9000!!!!!

I may have just lost all nerd and humorist cred but it had to be done to celebrate my most successful bitmob article of all time. I may not make many more of these things as attempting to break into webcomics is currently dominating my attention but if a bunch of people could find it in their heart to remember my contribution to bitmob as being this rather then all of my crazy embarassing rants and failures i'd appreciate it. LOL

Sometimes I get a little uneasy when I need to combat women characters in particularly violent games. This feeling happens to me most often in fighters since the characters' bodies and the damage done to them are so apparent on screen. I feel a little guilty beating up a digital chick! But I guess the equality comes in that same chick character being able to kick ass with her own powerful moveset.