Men Are From Mars
July 7th, 2008, 7:00am by GeoffMultiplayer Blog asks an interesting question: should female characters and male characters be treated differently, if those differences are reflected in real life? For example, should men be stronger than women? The responses are interesting but, largely because the readers fail to state the question they’re answering, inconclusive.
To me, this is really three different and related questions:
1.) Are there innate differences between men and women?
2.) Are those differences relevant to the particular game in question? And
3.) Would implementing those differences make the game more entertaining to play?
Note that each of these questions is game-specific: there’s no general answer or rule of thumb that can be plugged into place.
First off, you need to figure out whether or not differences exist. It seems pretty incontrovertible that some differences are real: it’s correct to note that men have a higher potential strength than women, for example, due to a whole host of innate biological necessities. At the same time, however, not all of those differences are particularly crucial to any given game.
That brings us to question 2: what differences actually matter? If you’re making an RPG, figuring out that men are better at abstract geometric visualization is probably not remotely relevant to your gameplay and thus should be excluded. Similarly, even real differences that are relevant may not matter in a given game; men may be stronger as a group, but there are specific women who are much stronger than whole hosts of men. So simply making an across the board rule in favor of one or the other is both incorrect and unhelpful. This is why no game should rely on rote tropes like the ”men are stronger, and so better fighters, while women are more intelligent, and thus better magic users,” such as are endemic to JRPGs. We’re discussing a continuum, not a biological fixation.
Finally, is it fun? If you want to give players flexibility to play any character they want, crippling one of them in a crucial respect is counterproductive and silly. Games don’t aspire to be reality and fun should always take pride of place. Only if it’s real, relevant, and entertaining should these differences be incorporated.
Posted in Geoff, Commentary |
July 8th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Thank you for having a logical, non-inflammatory approach to this question! After reading your article, I spent some time trying to come up with a game concept in which the differences between men and women would actually fit the criteria of relevance. So far, I haven’t. However, I do want to comment that a lot of classic arcade fighting games (and console fighting games) actually do take male vs female differences into account. In general, the men are taller and stronger(greater reach, more powerful attacks), while the women are smaller, faster and more flexible (shorter reach, faster attacks, ridiculous acrobatics). Ah, fond memories of playing Street Fighter in college. The most recent fighting games I saw (albeit a few years back) seemed to focus on making the characters more equal physically while at the same time increasing the beefcake/fan service factor through the roof. Personally, I think this is an area where the differences between the sexes should be kept, but hey, I’m not the one trying to peddle my wares and I can’t blame the designers for making a buck where it’s to be had.
I’ve added your page to my favorites and I’ll be checking in from now own. Bravo!
P.S. I’ll have to see if you go into the whole games for boys/games for girls schtick.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Hi Carol,
I don’t want to speak for the site owners, but as a regular reader and commenter on the site, I’d like to welcome you to our cozy little group.
Let me say, Geoffs article is by no means unique on this site. He and Jeff regularly offer thought provoking (dare I say cerebral?) content that rarely strays from the “logical non-inflammatory” style you’ve mentioned.
It’s one of the main reasons I’ve also got this site in my favorites. There is little pretense to be found here and I really appreciate it. We don’t all tend to agree in the comments, but I’ve found our disagreements to be just as enlightening. Hope you stick around, it’s nice to have a new viewpoint in the mix.