Yesterday I got caught up in a twitter thread and I thought this morning it might be worth exploring it further. First however I need to take a step back and talk a bit about an issue that has been happening. Escape from Tarkov is apparently the new hotness with the streamers and has gone from a game that I knew existed to being something that is properly cemented into the zeitgeist. Recently it has reached the number one spot on twitch as far as games go for viewership. From what I can tell it seems to be a good game if you like that sort of game, but it has one frustrating omission for a lot of people. It completely lacks any form of female playable characters and at least in some part seems to be focused on building a character with gear and such.
This has been a thing recently in the gaming press because when questioned about this Battle State Games gave a rather hamfisted response. If you want to know more about this you can check out one of the many articles on the subject like this one over on the Verge. Essentially they are presented with another scenario like Ubisoft was with Assassin’s Creed and they made up some lore reason why women shouldn’t exist in the setting. The thing is… this morning I am not even really going to talk about this decision because while it was the prompt for this discussion it isn’t the purpose. I just felt it was a bit of a primer needed to explain why this topic this morning.
So one of my friends posed a question. Would you rather have female character models if it meant cutting some other feature from the game. My answer was essentially “Yes” because representation is super important in a video game where you are given the choice of playing an avatar. On some level I can understand that if I am playing Horizon Zero Dawn I am playing Aloy and not myself or if I am playing Uncharted I am going to be playing the character of Nathan Drake. However if it is a game that features any sort of customization it is super important that you are able to create a character you are happy to be playing. Gender is one of those super important elements that make up the puzzle of what represents you as a character in a game.
The above image is something that I had Ammo draw for me on the seventh anniversary of this blog. It is an amalgam of a bunch of my characters from different games. Left to right you have World of Warcraft, Secret World, Destiny, Rift, Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV. You should notice that there is a pretty strong theme between them minus the Exo but I will get into that character in a few. There is a character that I keep creating over and over which is effectively “Belghast” and if I am going to spend much time in a game I wind up creating a version of that character. If a game has the tools to let me assemble a reasonable facsimile of that appearance then I am super happy and chances are I am excited to be playing it. However if a game for some reason lacks the specific features I apparently want I am going to bounce super hard off of it.
There have been games that I absolutely did not play because they had shitty beard options. There are other games that I refused to play because every character was too much of a “bishounen” pretty boy. Hell there have been times that I could not get into a game because I didn’t like the armor or the weapons. In Destiny I wound up rolling a robot because of the complete and total lack of beards and even then I chose an exo that had a little chin stripe that I could at least pretend was a robobeard. If I am willing to stop playing games for stupid cosmetic reasons like this… or the fact that I couldn’t get my over the eye scar that I end up choosing each time… then damned well I get not playing a game because you can’t play a gender that you feel represents you.
I will always be on the side of all games needing gender choices. We recently reviewed Jedi Fallen Order on a few different podcasts and each time we wound up with the most frustrating part of the experience is that you are locked into playing a male character. There is nothing about the character of Cal Kestis, including the name I might add… that actually matters that it is a character of a specific gender. The game would have been infinitely better and more inclusive had they just let players choose who they wanted to play as. If I had my druthers pretty much every game experience would feature some sort of an option that allows you to tailor to at least the right gender if not being able to do full cosmetic customization. For me and many other players that I know… cosmetic options are pretty much the most important system in a game.
So we get back to the thing that spawned this discussion. Yet another game developer claims that it is too costly to add Female character models, and at least on some level I get that statement. Coming up with lore reasons to justify your position however is bullshit. The problem I have is that it shouldn’t even be a thing we are having to discuss and justify. Games should default to having multiple character options and not instead default to just having “Men”. If they support customization at all they should be designed from day one with the thought of having multiple character models to fit gear to. Sure I can see a period of time when you have one or the other but by the time you reach late stages of the game both should be expected.
So we get back to the original question however. Would I want female character models in video games if it meant I would be giving up some other features? Unequivocally yes. The thing is… I am not going to likely play a female character because I am going to be trying to create “Belghast” in every single game. However I know how important having an avatar that feels like it represents you in a game is, and because of that I will always come down on the side of inclusion for character options. Feeling a since of connection and ownership to the character you are playing is extremely important and I want everyone out there to be able to play characters that feel like a little piece of them walking around in the gamespace. I’m not mad and have no bluster to rage against one developer or another… but I am disappointed that we are still treading this path over and over. Games are better when they support all of their players, not just a handful.
