NOTE: For now, I just wanted to put out a couple ideas on my stance. I also only covered women in actual games. Another time I'll go more in-depth with more examples and talk about the women who surround gaming.

I've rewritten this argument so many times I've lost count. Every time I attempted to write it, I always came off as hypocritical or plain mad, seemingly ignoring the problems. And I know that even in this version, that will still happen. I want to put it out there that people WILL disagree with me, and people will be unhappy with my response. But, this is natural. I expect it every time I write one of those segments.

"Women in Gaming" is a large topic. There are so many things to explore, and I could only ever hope to cover some of them. I'll try to focus on the main ones that I'm aware of, and eventually I might come back to this subject and expand. I think the main problem with this subject, however, is that it relates so much to the treatment of women in all other media, which I don't want to touch upon.

I want to start off by saying that I don't think it's as big a problem as people make it out to be. I've already lost half my audience now. But, seriously, there seems to be this big debate on the treatment of women in gaming, but what I don't see if how it's an actual problem. I think it’s mostly due to people being attention-seeking, attempting to derive an audience by pointing out flaws in our industry which don’t exist. Sure, you do get people who, in real life, ogle girl players with a very stereotypical view believing that girls shouldn't play games, but I might cover that another time. Women are getting jobs in the industry with the same attention as men, and there are a large proportion of women players now in comparison to when the industry was just starting out.

The flipside of this is the debate on women as objects inside the game. I'll refrain from making the "everything is an object inside a game" comment, but I will raise you an argument that games are FICTIONAL. They're not real. Everything is, more or less, created from scratch. I don't want to get in the whole debate about video games affecting a person's perception of real life just yet, but I believe this idea that showing a woman in a skimpy costume in a game to a person will somehow affect their perception of real women is just complete nonsense.

If you want to see women treated as objects in the game world, visit modding places like LoversLab or Skyrim's Nexus. Those places contain the most twisted individuals, who assume they are in some kind of competition to bend the laws or reality as best they can to pervert the laws of nature. It is truly sick and foul, the kind of things they do there¹. Despite these modders, however, who are unrestrained and non-professional individuals acting on their own Id, game developers, for the most part, are different. They don't aim for the intention of creating some weird fetish asset for the most insane people to get off on.

I think a big problem with female characters is the idea of them being "one-sided". For the most part, they are completely correct. Go and study Kreia from KotORII and compare her to Princess Peach from Mario. There are female characters that have these extremely detailed personalities, like Kreia. But, I must say, this is not just a problem for the females. The vast majority of all characters, regardless of sex, seem to be as one dimensional as a square on a piece of paper. It's a common problem, and the only thing that qualifies this as being a slightly bigger problem for the females is that they usually get stuck with the stereotypical female personalities. I'm not going to list them since you should all know what they are, but the point is that it seems like these personalities are usually more towards the "damsel", whereas the guys get the more "hero" personalities. I was hoping not to have to go into the Damsel in Distress argument, so I'm not. We all know that there is a LOT of female characters out there who kick ass, so the argument barely has any relevance in this modern day.

I want to quickly go over costuming. That's another big issue. Women used entirely because "sex sells". Look, from a marketing perspective, I totally hate the practice of over-sexualisation for coin. I find it morally wrong to sell a game based on "those" kinds of assets. This practice DOES degrade our industry, and it does reflect poorly on ALL developers in the industry. Unfortunately, though, we're not the only field that partakes in this practice (ever seen any female magazines?). The big issue here is that, because our medium is interactive, it adds a whole new level to the problem. That said, however, if a developer decides they want to include a costume which might be a bit revealing, and it's more of an artistic product over a marketing ploy, I don't see an issue. What's the big problem? Yeah, a character might have some extenuated features, but that's the art direction the developers wanted to head into. Art should never be restrained or controlled.

And that is Wot I Fink.

¹: In case you wanted to see them, images that were supposedly supplied with the readme (currently cannot provide evidence of that as of yet) are below:

http://fireden.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UE4a.jpg.jpeg

http://fireden.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UE4b.jpg.jpeg

http://fireden.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UE4c.jpg.jpeg

-4 is missing-

http://fireden.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UE4e.jpg.jpeg

-6 is missing-