Video games are no longer safe from our lady-clutches! Why, they’re starting to have female characters in them that aren’t totally worthless or in need of saving! And this has a lot of MRAs worried:
I call bullshit on this subject. Video games are the last place for guys to hang out and now women are taking over. Why not just save us the trouble and instead of eliminating our fantasy world just throw us in work camp to provide for thier bastard children (literally speaking) while they shit all over us…wait they already do that.
Oh noes, a space where we have to allow ladies?! How totally unfair! What does this takeover include? Why, portraying women as competent and equal to men:
You’ll see the same thing in most stat-based role-playing games as well, where you have the option of a female player character – like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, D&D, etc. The women never have any strength or intelligence penalties compared to the males. … They want to give the impression that people of any race, gender, and sexual-orientation are interchangeable – that there are no differences in ability between them, and that only a bigot could think otherwise. I’m sick of it too.
What do MRAs consider an accurate portrayal of women in video games?
It would be hilarious to portray the female characters realistically. If you chose the female character in your FPS [First Person Shooter] she would have to move very slowly, dragging the gun around. You could build in some extra shake to the crosshairs to represent hopeless accuracy. Every time you needed to reload your gun, instead of just pressing a button, you’d have to find a male character and go through some flirting dialogue options to persuade him to do it for you. One out of every four missions the game would tell you that you were sitting out this one due to ‘women’s issues’.
I’m sure women in the military would have a thing or two to say to this guy. You should read the rest of the silliness (like how Lara Croft somehow oppresses men) over at Man Boobz.
While we’re on the topic of video games: My boyfriend and I only have one level left in the expansion pack of Pixel Junk Monsters, and we’re looking for a new game to play together. We’re patiently waiting for Skulls of the Shogun since we loved it at PAX, but who knows when it will finally be released. And we can’t play Civ 5 together (yet) because my desktop computer is on the fritz. Does anyone have recommendations for good multiplayer strategy/tower defense/tactical type games? Co-op prefered but not required. (EDIT: We have a Wii, PS3, XBOX360, and PCs, so platform is irrelevant).
Recommendations are appreciated. Because, you know, I have to love strategy video games in order to invade his one last man space and enslave him. Not because we enjoy playing them with each other or something.
Speaking as a game developer on a AAA FPS title, I can assure you that:
(a) We love putting women in games.
(b) I work with plenty of women developers with power over characters and content who love putting women into games and advocate for better gender balance within titles. (Sadly, we can’t always get our desires past marketing, but we do try.)
Try Sanctum (Steam link). It’s an FPS tower defense game. Basically, you build towers or upgrade your guns in the defense phase, and then keep alive during the extermination phase. It’s cooperative multiplayer (though you can compete to try and get better stats), and even features a female lead character. Well, only character. Aside from some dancing dudes when you complete a level. It’s quite fun, and has sucked about 24 hours of gameplay out of me.
“It would be hilarious to portray the female characters realistically.”
Some people are so easily amused.
Hate to respond to myself, but…
It’s not that there’s only one female character, it’s that there’s only one character period, and she is Skye.
For single-player, Orcs Must Die! is awesome-good-fun. Check out some of Nananea’s Nightmare difficulty playthroughs on youtube to see some pretty pro setups.
What system are you playing on, PC or console?
You might try one of the various LEGO games (e.g., LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Batman, LEGO Indiana Jones, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean). They’re reasonable for co-op play, although I don’t think playing co-op on a PC will work very effectively unless you have controllers, since I think you’d both be typing on different parts of the keyboard at the same time. Probably works better for co-op on a console.
Another game with some good co-op (as well as good, independent, single player) is Portal 2. If you’ve never played it, you’re missing out.
As a woman who games, I do my bit by writing emails to game company’s marketing departments, saying “loved the game, thanks for adding female characters!” I hope it helps.
Have you tried Portal 2? The co-op mode is hilarious and fun; you work together as robots to solve problems. The single-player section of the game is longer, but it is amenable to working together. My boyfriend and I did many levels of player one plays, player two yells suggestions.
The main character is female, for what it’s worth :)
We have every console (Wii, PS3, XBOX360) and PCs, so platform isn’t an issue.
Yes to Portal 2. Or Portal 1 for that matter.
I have found that Portal makes a good entry-level game as well. I can hand it over to my friends that don’t play video games. Since the controls are easy, and the levels are self-contained and untimed, they don’t feel threatened. Everyone has loved it so far, even my grandmother. She preferred to direct an active player, though, since she had problems with the controller.
Shit like this is why I can’t read manboobz: every time I see the sort of brain burning idiocy that MRAs come out with, I feel like going on a rage fuelled killing spree.
This is weaponized stupidity.
Can’t help with a game recommendation; I’m lonely and broke, so I mostly play single-player and all my games are hopelessly out of date.
Depends on how you define ‘strategy games’. I’m old school and if it’s not turn-based on a map (preferably hex), then it’s not real strategy.
You try out TripleA: http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki/Community
It’s totally free and has some development tools to allow you do base your own games around the basic engine. It’s a lot like Axis and Allies. You can play by e-mail.
Also I enjoy playing Massive Assault Network 2. I’m scared to buy the full version as it requires internet access and it hasn’t been updated in several years, but the demo is still pretty fun to play.
As far as other games, I don’t know too much. I play FPS and Kinect Joy Ride (with my boy) on the X-box.
Oh yeah, have to second the LEGO Star Wars… it’s annoying as hell, but as long as one of you isn’t completely anal about getting every single item in every single level (like I am), it can be fun for a couple.
Sanctum is good, although I prefer Dungeon Defenders as it provides more character/skill progression.
I thought a “lady clutch” was a little bag… do games even fit in them?
my friends have been raving about this RPG/tower defense game for the last month: http://dungeondefenders.com/news you might like it
Huh. You know, it would be kind of interesting if there were realistic female options in the games. So in your FPS game, you’d get assigned all of the crappy jobs, and when you tried to complain about it your supervisor you’d get told to suck it up and deal with it, and then in the middle of your mission the guy you were working with would try to grope you, and then he’d take all of the credit for the mission succeeding even though you led the whole charge.
Might open a few eyes here and there, really.
@Sylvia These things don’t always filter down to the shop floor where games are made, but when they do they are always appreciated.
I can’t talk too much about my current title because of NDAs, but I work with a couple of great women developing content and the writing. Both very progressive in their views and they are keen to make great, memorable characters and avoid the usual hypersexualised tropes.
This can be a difficult task. Ultimately marketing direct what we can present and they in turn are led by their data. Sales in my genre are still dominated by young men who largely express disinterest in playing women characters. However, I’m encouraged by a lot of product that is appearing these days and believe that this will only get better. For example, on Mass Effect 3 although the FemShep thing turned into a bit of a debacle, it’s still a move forwards from the marketing for 1 and 2. And its helped by the fact that the female character is so well voiced.
(The writing on the ME franchise is odd, in that it is large written for a male, so there is the danger of an Honor Blackman-style ‘man with tits’ reading of the content. But the line reading by Jennifer Hale is superb.)
Oh, and I seem to recall that when I was at Parris Island all those many years ago, the rifle range record was shared by a man and a woman, both of whom out-shot me by a wide margin.(I got better… still not that good!)
You forgot 20% less XP, and higher XP amounts for leveling. :(
I wonder if this bigot also has a problem with the fact that same-sex marriage is possible in Skyrim and not a single eyelash is batted. Women are also portrayed in the game as being more or less equal to men (there are still a few stereotypes, etc. thrown in here and there). I bet that drives him nuts. Too fucking bad.
As far as invading another person’s space and taking over goes, Sins of a Solar Empire is good. It’s an RTS for the PC, and plays very similar to Age of Empires II (can’t speak for any of the others, II is the only one I played and loved it) if AOE II was in space.
Portal 2 is always good, I had a lot of fun with that.
Killing Floor is just good, gory fun. No female characters, sadly.
LEGO Star Wars is a blast, but be warned, the depth perception is terrible.
Something is making me picture those guys throwing crying screaming fits when they beat Metroid for the first time.
If you are into old school games you might check out Dungeon Keeper 2 available for $5.99 from Good Old Games. It is a pretty hilarious all around strategy game, one of the games that really got me into gaming.
I don’t know about the quality of the port, I’ve been using a version I got from a torrent to play when I get the itch. Play with the sound on, the voice acting is hilarious.
Oh, and significantly less gold looted (if this is an RPG).
Has anyone played Borderlands? They had three male characters and one female character, and there were definitely strength bonuses for the big bruiser versus the lean scout. However, the classes were balanced by other abilities. I ended up playing as the scout because her phase-out ability was far preferable to the bruiser’s melee. My philosophy in FPS: if you’re involved in melee combat, you’ve already lost.
Hahaha.
As a woman who MAKES video games… and was the university champion at Smash Bros…
I don’t even have words for this rage I feel.
Disgusting.
(PS. I’m currently having rather notable “women’s issues” and yet here I am at work, plugging away at the code.)
Personally, I am a much better shot in RL than in FPSs. I only started playing FPSs in the last two years, so I have a lot of practicing to do.
Umm, gun training coaches will tell you that women tend to be as good or better shots. We’re entirely capable of re-loading a gun, thanks, and don’t react to recoil any more than men do.
But go on, MRAs, and keep insisting that women are somehow inherently inferior at something that is a matter of training and developed skill to which possession of a pair of tits or ovaries is entirely irrelevant.
This makes me wish that Samus Aran was real so she could blast them with a few missiles.
So failing to add in a difference in average upper body strength is unrealistic. But magic, monsters and adventures that reset themselves, and all the other fantastic nonsense is perfectly acceptable. The twists to make this seem like a reasonable position would make string theory simple by comparison.
Not even to mention the fact that slower heart rates would likely result in better sniping by women. Higher pain threshold doesn’t hurt either.
Don’t know what it says about me, but the initial thought of falling into “lady-clutches” gave me chills. The good kind.
My current addiction (as well as my Significant Other’s) is Dungeon Defenders (as karmakin mentioned). It’s class-based, co-op tower defense, and it’s fairly laptop-friendly. For co-op, you can play online, or split-screen on the same computer (though you’d need to use an X-box controller for the latter). It’s not too difficult on the normal difficulty setting, but it can get a bit grind-y if you want to complete everything on the hardest difficulties.
I’d also suggest the various LEGO games; they’re very low on the difficulty curve, but they’re a lot of fun, and designed mainly for co-op.
Aside from Portal, you can try Total War: Shogun 2 (or some other Total Wars, but no co-op campaigns there): http://store.steampowered.com/app/34330/
It’s ultimate in tactical games, and quite good in strategy department. :)
And as for women in games, just ignore those pathetic little cretins. More women in games is what we need, not less!
Lee, what developer are you currently working for? I’d like to keep an eye out for the title you’re working on, even if you can’t tell us what it is quite yet!
In RL, show these assholes a pink Hello Kitty AK-47:
( http://www.kittyhell.com/2007/10/09/hello-kitty-ak-47/ )
and you can practically hear their dicks retracting into their bodies.
Like a pink gun kills you less dead than a black one.
Dungeon Defenders has been getting good reviews for a multiplayer tower defence-y…thing.
Have you tried Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light? It’s not at all strategy but it’s perfect for a co-op dual stick shooter.
Adult Swim has been putting women in games for some time now on their website. Well, ok, the game is “Zombie Hooker Nightmare”, but that’s progress, right? ;) Anyway, great post.
I work for Massive, an Ubisoft studio.
OH also, if you like PVP type situations you might check out League of Legends. (It’s similar to Defense of The Ancients if you are familiar with that.)
My boyfriend and I play a couple matches of this a night typically.
Pros
1. Fun pvp combat defending your base and towers with your teammates.
2. Multiple classes to learn and play
3. Gearing strategies for all your strategic wants and needs.
4. Competitive gaming sports where you can win money and stuff.
Cons
1. Hard to learn. Each character you can play has different skills it takes a while to develop the reactions and understand the strategy that more experienced players use.
2. Some of the players are jerks, other players are awful, sometimes they are both awful and jerks.
3. Games last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. The new game mode dominion goes faster, but there is no pause button.
The upside is, if you hate it, it was free.
Since Dungeon Defenders has already been mentioned, you should also look into Rock of Ages. Think if Katamari had been done as a tower defense by the Monty Python guys. Also, it has vs. for 2player (I know, not co-op, but try it!) It’s also very accessible (i.e., you can have fun right away rather than invest hours to unlock the fun), which is nice in a game that’s tiding you over to a more anticipated release.
Speaking of gender issues in video games, I just finished Final Fantasy XIII, and came away with the impression that Square finally (although much to quietly) added LGBT characters to the center of a mainstream video game. Given how angry some fans were at the suggestion of it, I can see why they decided to soft-pedal it. But queer-friendly sites were excited, so I could at least be happy with some folks.
Odd…playing ME2 now, and due to going in mostly blind I actually find it hard to imagine Shepard as anything other than a woman.
Seconding Portal 2 co-op as an awesome game to play together.
Also, World of Goo if you have a Wii.
Little Big Planet is good silly fun if a bit juvenile.
portal 2
I loved Borderlands, great 2 player FPS… My husband and I went through it pretty quickly, but we do come back to it often enough. I like the psych-girl,t eh best, too :)
Oh, and if you’re willing to scale back your expectations on things like ‘graphics’ (pssh), the online version of Dominion is amazingly fun. You’ll be best playing head-to-head instead of cooperatively, but it’s worth it.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/
Did anyone else lose the site for a minute there?
You know, I fully support giving MRA assholes their own, separate no-icky-gurlz-allowed spaces. Keeps them from bothering civilised folk and scaring the horses, after all…
Sorry I have no video game recommendations; my coordination is so lousy the only video games I play are things like Bejeweled and Peggle (Peggle’s two-player Duel mode is kinda fun, though — it’s sort of like a cross between pachinko and competitive target shooting).
Also, Trine and it’s sequel are really good physics puzzle platformers which are co-op.
They should do that, as well as portray the male characters realistically.
How many men can carry a chain gun with thousands of rounds of ammo?
I remember that the copy of one of the What to Expect books my then-wife received had a section on gender roles (summary: “Some parents try to raise their children without forcing them into gender stereotypes. But it doesn’t work and you really, really shouldn’t.”) insisted that even as toddlers males were demonstrably stronger, had better endurance, and a higher pain threshold. I found the last one really, really odd. Is there any research on pain threshold by gender, and to what extent does it account for socialization (IE, girls getting smothered with kisses and cooing if they scrape their knee, boys being told to suck it up).
I don’t have any references on-hand, but I remember reading that women tend to have higher pain thresholds.
Which is weird because I actually really enjoy playing as or with non-stupid female characters. In fact, usually the only reason I play male given the option is because I want to romance a female NPC. (I’m aware that there are same-sex romance options for some female NPCs. I…personally don’t find them relatable *shrug*).
I’m sure there’s a very good study conducted by gender scientists punching toddlers, checking under their diapers to determine biological sex, and recording the results.
I find the existence of no-gurlz-allowed spaces distasteful, to the point where the reverse makes me deeply uncomfortable despite finding some merits in the arguments for it. :/
You play PixelJunk Monsters?! I play PixelJunk Monsters!!! (Except only on Facebook, because I don’t have any game systems.)
So what would these douchebags make of men like my boyfriend– heterosexual and a pretty serious gamer– who almost always plays as women in games where there are options? I mean overwhelmingly so. It’s to the point that when I saw him playing a male Hawke in Dragon Age 2 that I was actually shocked. I’m just used to looking at my hairy beardy man, then looking at the tv and seeing some curvy chick running around.
His reason? He’s a straight man, so he likes looking at the back side of a woman more than the back side of a man. You’d think more MRAs would love the idea of a pixel-based woman who they had absolute control over. But I guess even the implication of a strong woman is enough to make them shit themselves.
Also, as a lady gamer myself I tend to play female characters, though not exclusively. And I’ve had my share of discrimination and bullshit either way when playing MMOs– once I was playing WoW as a male human with the darkest skin tone. Someone kept challenging me to a duel, and after I repeatedly turned him down he whispered “come on duel me niggy.” I was blown away– I’m used to getting “I can see ur boobs!” comments when playing female characters, but I didn’t imagine I’d run into racism in a fantasy game.
tl;dr Portal 1 & 2! And Dungeon Defenders.
Thanks, Lee. I will admit that your thoughtful responses to this article were what sparked my interest in the game. I’ll keep my ears open for any game announcements from Massive.
One word… please don’t dignify this whining rant as a problem some man has with women. This is clearly the voice of a boy, not a man(whatever his age). Let’s hope he grows up before making such a fool of himself in a public forum again.
Metroid was a trialblazer when it comes to women in video games. Anyone who denies that Samus Aran is an incorrigible badass hasn’t played the games.
And Other M doesn’t count. That game was terrible.
I have to say I thought maybe you fell for some satire when I saw the quotes, but that’s for real?
Maybe the dumbass writing that site should stick to the Liesure Suit Larry franchise so he can keep his juvenile fantasies intact.
Well, speaking for myself (male here), I loved playing all the “Tomb Raider” games. Since I still have my PS-2, I STILL play them. As well as the “Tenchu Stealth Assassin” games – as Ayame, the female character: the male takes a few more hits, but Ayame is faster (and more deadly in my opinion due to it).
Those ‘guys’ on that site are jerks!
Oh, and if you’re looking for an awesome real-time RPG, I’d recommend “Castles & Crusades”.
I really don’t get the mis-classification of Male Rights Activists with these nutters. I’d love a realistic FPS that included a good female character balance. I’d love the gear loadout, the accuracy, etc., to all be realistic. Those who’ve actually geared up with body armor, a M4 or M16, plus the rest of the loadout, laughs inside when we see the superhuman carrying capacity seen in video games. If they want to say someone can carry four magazines each of rife and pistol ammo, a first aid kit, armor, and a couple grenades, sure. More than that? ROFL.
As current active duty military, I can reinforce the claim of a lack of accuracy in female shooters, but the story those nutters won’t elaborate on is the obvious body posture of someone unfamiliar with weapons. I’m sure they’d LOVE to try to explain away the accuracy of the women who can handle a firearm as something other than their acclimation to shooting, and if you ask them, they’ll rectally extract some excuse or other. Ideally more children of either sex would be trained in firearms discipline. That would prove the sexists wrong in a heartbeat.
Since it was presented as a general case discrepancy I would assume the studies would be done on adults….
Must we scapegoat young people for entitlement behaviors?
I’m a big fan of well-drawn women protagonists in games. To be truthful it’s hard to pull off good characterisation in the medium unless you invest in extensive cut scenes. In-game dialogue is often spare in a game. If you wish to develop a character beyond a cipher you have to try to do a lot with a little. Some games have pulled this off, though. In the FPS genre check out what was done in L4D and L4D2.
I wonder if he was part of the fit-in-a-phone-box fan club for Duke Nukem Forever?
I feel the need to point out that, regarding the original Metroid, the only reason anyone ever knew Samus was a woman is that you get to see her in an 8-bit bikini as a ‘reward’ for 100% completion.
Any claims that Shepard is a man are clearly a fib. The Shepard that saved my universe is all woman.
I’ve been having a lot of fun lately with Blight of the Immortals. It’s a co-op fantasy slow RTS, up to 8 players vs. zombie elves, orcs, dwarves, trolls, etc. Freebie games are open cast but you can pay to get invite-only games. Unfortunately, the vast majority of characters are portrayed as male (where gender is apparent) and white (when not green/blue). But the play is a lot of fun & it only requires a few minutes per day.
Man, do these fuckwits know that the Soviet army had entirely female sniper squads?
Fuckin’ bunch of morons.
As for tower defense game suggestions, if you haven’t tried Plants vs. Zombies, you should do so ASAP.
Three words: Julie Golob Goloski. She’s the only person to have won a national championship in all six divisions of the US Practical Shooting Association, and she’s captain of Smith & Wesson’s competitive shooting team.
I speak from personal experience, and a lot of shooters will back me up, when I say that, all other things being equal (such as the amount of instruction and range time they’ve had), women tend to be better shots than men, not least because, unlike the speaker quoted above, they don’t think having played several hundred hours of Call of Duty makes them an expert on firearms.
A strength penalty I could see, but where does he get off thinking women are less intelligent than men? And hell, if someone took him up on the idea and then assigned men penalties in DEX, WIS and CHA, he’d probably blow his stack. And ultimately, the only practical effect such penalties would have is that the player would have to distribute the build points in a slightly different way (one extra in STR, one fewer in DEX, etc.) to achieve the same character.
What a bunch of pricks.
Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii is awesome! :)
I didn’t think I’d enjoy it all that much, but so far have put more hours into this game in 6 months than I put into Oblivion in 4 years. It also has online cooperative play.
It’s been out for a while so the game is cheap…about $20 and there’s no additional cost for online play.
Actually, I think in Morrowind there were differences in the stats between male and female characters, but the differences depended on which race you were.
Female Argonians had higher intelligence and willpower but lower speed and agility than their male counterparts for example. But they always had the same total stats. That idea has been done away with in later Elder Scrolls games. They are arguably better for it since it allows you to create the character you want rather than forced to play as the ‘best’ gender for your chosen skill set.
That came up with Dragon Age and one of the writers wrote an awesome takedown: http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/
And my husband’s Hawke is flirting with Fenris in a vain attempt to make me jealous (I romance him EVERY time) … it’s called role-playing.
I’m not sure if it fits in your interest but I currently really into Eve Online. Its an MMO of sorts but not of the usual leveling and quest grinding variety. It is space based and the vast bulk of the interesting content comes in the form of player interaction and conflict to conquer and defend star systems from other players. Its subscription based but you can get a 14 day trial from their site or a 21 day from a member.
“Men’s Rights Activists” is the self-label of a group of men who see male privilege as their right and project the blame for everything that’s wrong in their lives either due to their personal failings, to the fact that Patriarchy Hurts Men Too, or to other manifestations of dysfunctional hierarchies, onto women.
We really shouldn’t use it; “Male Supremacists” is a more accurate description.
I don’t know what’s wrong with these… Boys. I literally will not date a girl unless she is my equal, and i find girly girls to be annoying, except in 6 cases. my current significant other bowhunts, rides bareback, and plays the frigging harp. she might be the only person i know who can kick my ass. and i fucking LOVE it. also, the female protagonist voices in saints row 2 and 3 are all brave, independent women, and i loved playing as them, not just because i laugh my ass off when russian lady voice fantasizes about pierce and then snaps a hacker’s neck before carsurfing away.
I’ll add another vote for Dungeon Defenders. I’m not much of a gamer (or I try not to be, because I addict to easily), but my husband have been playing a fair bit of this lately, and it’s a lot of fun.
As an aside, the base game has 3 male characters and one female character to choose from, but for a few extra dollars you can get a character expansion pack that rounds out the classes with an extra 1 male character and 3 female characters so you can play any class in any gender.
Seconded World of Goo, though you can get it on PC rather than Wii if you prefer.
If you want to go hardcore strategy, the series of games by Paradox Interactive have an insane level of depth to them, as well as user-mods, and can be played multiplayer. I’ve had more replay value from EU3 than any other game.
They’re historically based, so there’s Crusader Kings for 1066-1400 (with Crusader Kings 2 to release soon), Europa Universalis 3 for 1400 to 1820 (with I think four expansion packs), Victoria 2 for 1830-1900, and Hearts of Iron 3 for 1930-1960.
I’d recommend starting with EU3, because there’s a lot of scope for diplomacy, colonisation and trading as well as conquest, and it’s easier to learn than Victoria.
Has anyone mentioned the Left 4 Dead games yet (1 and 2)? Some great zombie-killing fun plus a couple of great female characters too!
Yah. Also, as an amateur archer (recurve), I am reliably informed that the best archers in the world are some Korean women; and one of the coaches at our club is a disabled woman who is a better archer than I’ll ever be.
Not quite the same as rifle shooting, but there are definite similarities.
This. Totally this. I started a Mass Effect 1 game a while back and I got stuck, can’t remember the mission, and so I checked it out on YouTube but the YouTuber was playing as FemShep.
I was so blown away by how much better Jennifer’s voice acting was that I scrapped my current game, I was about 20 hours into it too, and started over as FemShep. Couldn’t have been happier, the dialogue is just so much better now!
Still haven’t finished it, the game takes forever to play, but I’m enjoying it so much more now.
Halo Wars on the 360 has a great co-op you can play through the whole campaign with a partner. Left 4 dead (1 or 2) also features some of the best co-op gameplay around.
I completely recommend “L.A. Noire”… true, it is only a single player game… but switching off control of the action and both deliberating over whether people are being truthful is ridiculously fun to do together. That’s how I played with my guy, anyway. And because most of the game is choosing how to play the interview scenes while solving crimes it didn’t matter so much that it wasn’t multiplayer. =)
I agree that “Dungeon Defenders” is a fun one, too (although the female character, particularly her action when you select her pissed me off)
If you are open to a longer term game and don’t mind trying an MMO I am really enjoying Bioware’s “Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic”. I have tried and never gotten into many other MMOs but the completely voice-acted story driven nature of this one has me forgetting that it’s multiplayer at times and reaching for the save button =). Besides it’s more fun to play with another person you know… then you don’t have to constantly find random people to get through the tough bits. =)
Anyhow, those are my current recommendations…
I would recommend Rayman Origins. It slipped under most people’s radar last year, but it’s totally worth checking out. The co-op gameplay is solid, the level design is gorgeous and it’s legitimately hilarious.
To be honest, I think that we need more believable female characters in games. I’m definitely a fan of how Shepard has been handled in the Mass Effect series (Jennifer Hale’s best dialog since Planescape: Torment doesn’t hurt, either), and the Lara Croft design from the upcoming Tomb Raider looks to put less emphasis on her pixels than it does on her survival skill.
Then again, we do have quite a ways to go when fighting games judge a females strength-speed ratio by their bust size, or turn female characters into simpering realdolls (Ninja Gaiden, Metroid Other M, etc.) to generate sympathy.
For game recommendations, if you have Steam then you can get the Humble Indie Bundle with Solar 2 and Revenge of the Titans (Also has Cave Story + and Limbo, which are awesome), or you can look up the Jagged Alliance games or Fallout Tactics on http://www.GOG.com. If you want something funny, then look up ‘Cthulhu Saves the World’ for an RPG or ‘Iron Brigade’ for a tower defense/mech shooter hybrid.
Happy gaming!
Definitely try Kirby’s Epic Yarn. I’ve been so hooked on that game lately, and there is a two-player mode. (Which admittedly I haven’t tried.)
It’s easy, but it’s ridiculously fun. Also, it’s Kirby, which means CUTENESS! =D
…and somehow I missed the bit about it being “strategy/tower defense/tactical”. [facepalm]
Ah well, I still recommend it. The only decent strategy game I can think of is Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, but that’s pretty purely a single-player game. (Also, it’s pretty hard.)
This is so funny.
Dude, no one is stopping you from hanging out with other guys to play video games. You don’t have to allow any of those nasty girls with their cooties into your playhouse. Quit clutching those pearls or you’ll break the string.
We-e-ell, I bet this wanker won’t like the PC sex difference that Arcanum has (dudes get a rather measly bonus to strength and dudettes get a just-as-measly bonus to endurance).
As to my suggestions, have you tried global strategy games by Paradox? Games like Europa Universalis (probably the most accessible of them all. They have released the last addon for EU3 not long ago and a pretty cheap gold edition is available), Hearts of Iron, Victoria, Crusader Kings? They’re much more profound than any of the Civ releases and do have multiplayer (and quite a devout community).
Also, I have been spending a fair share of time on Panzer Corps lately: it’s an excellent remake of the old Panzer General series, and if you’re into softcore hex wargames (which you are, since you’ve mentioned Civ 5 — hexes probably being the best thing that happened to the series since Alpha Centauri) and don’t mind the WW2 theme, try it out. Fantasy Wars is also an excellent 3D remake of Panzer General in the fantasy setting.
A bit outside your parameters (it’s a side-scroller, and it’s PS2), but whenever I hear a couple wanting a co-op game suggestion, I have to suggest The Adventures of Cookie and Cream. Here’s the gameplay – split screen side scroller (you on one side, them on the other). It’s a fairly simple “hit the switch to open the gate” affair, except that everyone’s switches are on the opposite player’s side. (So it’s fairly easy to overshoot where you’re supposed to be, leaving your opponent behind.) Plus, some sections are dangerous, and some sections require the two of you to stay parallel relative to each other. And the whole thing is on a timer. (And dying removes time).
Actually, women took up a variety of professions in the Red Army during WW2, and not only female snipers saw action, but also AT-rifle crews and fighter and CAS-plane pilots.
Actually, wikipedia has a fairly decent article on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II
Isn’t she mostly woman and partly electronics?
Someone else suggested this, but I’ll second the recommendation. Get Sins of a Solar Empire! It’s Risk meets Civilization meets Starcraft and it’s pure awesome. It’s relatively cheap too:)
+1 on Europa Universalis 3, i was up to 2am this morning playing that one. I really want to get back to it so i can invade Poland :P
Also Alpha Centuari is amazing; the female characters are diverse and well written, and the gameplay is great. If you like Civ games you really should try it.
Talking to firearms instructors for the army many of the most experienced claim that women are generally better shots than men. Men tend to adopt behaviors they see on TV and in the movies and to behave entirely too casually around loaded guns. Women are less likely to have to learn to respect the weapon or unlearn techniques picked up from Hollywood. Women in general also are very good at the sorts of situational awareness and fine motor skills that make a good soldier.
Women in general also tend to adapt quickly and easily to a situation demanding cooperation and teamwork. While men often focus on individual prowess and get hung up on pecking orders and authority issues. Modern warfare is a cooperative and teamwork centered undertaking. You live or die by the ability of the team. Rambo types thrive in video games but are often a liability in real life.
I should qualify that slightly. They’re also prone to blaming women, plural and in general, for the genuinely unethical actions of an individual woman of their acquaintance, or several such.
Oh, I haven’t played that one in forever! I should dig that one out of the old harddrive.
If you are a fan of RTSs (Real time strategy games) it is definitely not one to miss. Epic games… takes forever to play out the larger ones, but worth it. =)
Point conceded.
On the matter of female character design, I do not recommend looking at Japanese dating games. There is a world of hurt there for the progressive. They are interesting in that they are rather like those magazine articles that multiple choice your way to your ideal boy/girlfriend. The object is to find the woman who is your ‘type’ through a flowcharted series of choices and tests, so you are presented with a list of feminine archetypes straight out of a schoolboy fantasy wank mag.
My friend Jonathan Clements, who translated the lesbian wrestling game ‘Ring Out’ and the erotic game ‘Timestripper’, did a wonderful job of laying out the archetypes in the ‘Five Girls Named Moe’ chapter of his book ‘Schoolgirl Milky Crisis’.
They go something like:
* Girl Next Door (bland, inoffensive)
* Child (in attitude, not physical age)
* Maid (demure, submissive doormat)
* Tomboy (sporty, aggressive)
* Older Woman
* Disposable Foreign Female (who might well be an alien)
It is possible for companies to derive market data from where the players end up and from that derive the current ‘fashionable’ girl for them to merchandise.
Interestingly, the same archetypes abound in manga and anime, and you and your friends can play the game of making a bingo card and checking them off.
I recommend Clement’s article. Hell, he’s my pal, so I’ll recommend the book.
I’ve directed a number of V/O sessions for games, and they tend to be exercises in economy. On the one hand you have a huge quantity of lines. On the other, the lines are all very short and so don’t give the voice talent much to work with. An actor who can bring something unique to a character is a rare find.
That said, the ME series, as an RPG, gives the actors a lot more space to breathe than in other genres. It was great to see Jennifer Hale grasp that opportunity and make something of it. The FemShep voice is far superior to the male voice by a great margin.
I highly recommend checking out the DC Universe Online game. They have hired a lot of the actors who do the voices from the superhero cartoon shows to reprise their roles as the heroes and villains. It makes for a superior experience.
+1 dexterity -1 strength for creating a woman in various RPGs is pretty reasonable. It’s still easy to roll a strong inflexible woman or a weak flexible man but the population means are different, just like real life. Of course it’s unfashionable to mention any facts about differences in population means between protected groups though.
Tactical games for co-op:
Starcraft 2
Nuclear Dawn
Portal 2
Team Fortress 2
World of Warcraft
Best tower defense game ever, sadly single-player:
Defense Grid: The Awakening
As the risk of sounding like a shill for my employer, yes, this.
Well,’I fail to see why women shouldn’t be in games as actual useful characters, or main characters even.
Although, the only reason to explain their idea as to why they should have those debilitating issues with female characters in FPS games is because th e rest of the characters are seteroided to the max male characters with 0 brain cells between them and who carry around MINIGUNS.
Yeah, putting a character who CaN’T carry around a 400 pound gun and shows it is a real bad idea. All it shows is the female isn’t as retarded as the male characters.
Maybe it would be acceptable to not have female filters in say, a historical series, such as the shogun games, where those seem to go to great lengths to be as historically and period accurate as they can be, in which case, a female leader of a clan in the warring states period wouldn’t really fit in. Apart from those one or two games like that, there is no reason not to include female characters who are there for more than token fan service.
Maybe the female character in ninja gaiden would have been more interesting if she didn’t look and act like she does.
Other games…well, nuclear dawn is a pretty good combination of shooter and strategy, team fortress 2 is a pretty good team based game (and is free)
I personally kinda liked shogun 2, a civilization type game set in and based heavily on the warring states period of Japan. Single player only,’I’m afraid, but still quite good.
But for games, try getting a steam account, I can guarantee they will have something perfect in their massive list of games.
Then again, how could I forget about portal 2, which is amazing, and has a co-op mode.
In your response to realism in carrying capacity, I was actually pondering on that during one of my Skyrim marathons (it makes me happy that I get to lol at all the “my girlfriend won’t let me play skyrim” rage comics, since I, in effect, bogarted the game away from my boyfriend). I came to the conclusion that, depending on the game, it just wouldn’t be as fun. Like, Contra was realistic- if you got shot at, you died. But that made it impossible to play without cheats (I think it’s Contra- FPS doesn’t really appeal to me unless I’m playing with people, I’m more of a platformer, RPG, metroidvania type of gal). During Skyrim, I was like “Well how the fuck can I carry 300 lbs I’m the waifiest little woodelf in the world” and then I realized, if this were realistic, you would have to clear a dungeon, and if you wanted to get stuff from it you would have to fill your pockets, walk home, store your goodies, walk back, repeat. Hours of gameplay lost with boring stuff. So in certain games I think it would take away a lot of the fun by including boring task managing type stuff, and in others, it would potentially make the game just too damn hard. IMO realism really works well with horror games- I mean, there might be elements of the unreal, but your character is facing it as they would in real life (favorite example- Amnesia: The Dark Descent). Just my opinion on the matter :)
Speaking of which, Amnesia and Skyrim are my game suggestions. Just don’t play Amnesia alone or with the lights off.
+1 to Dungeon Defenders. It’s a helluva lot of fun, I often play co-op with my girlfriend and occasionally with another couple for the full 4-player experience.
Seconded on LittleBigPlanet. I wouldn’t call it “juveille”, though; it has a craft aesthetic, but the gameplay is solid, and you can have both people on the same screen at the same time, no splitscreen nonsense. It’s particularly fun playing through all the cool, creative levels other people have made and shared.
Dunno if this has been mentioned, but a long long time ago I read a book that referenced a study regarding pain tolerance. Highest pain tolerance? Female gymnasts and dancers. Gymnasts and dancers in general had a significantly higher pain tolerance than others. So “ladeez can’t take de hurtinz” is some bullshit- at least according to that. The book was Complications by Atul Gawande. Not really related in any other way, but it was a pretty good read.
Really? I’ve seen a lot of antipathy towards specious, unsupported assertions about them, both as to what they supposedly are and to where they originate from (as well as how mutable they are), but…
Can I say, I was a huuuuuuuuuuuge fan of Command and Conquer back in the day? Such a good RTS, I played Tiberium Sun when I was like 10 (so much nostalgia, used to have lan parties with my sister and next door neighbor). Anyone remember those games? I heard they’re a lot more unwieldy nowadays (my dad got one for his PS3 and hasn’t been able to play it because the controls are just too difficult), but the originals were still good when I played them a year ago.
@Alex, Who are you playing as? Please tell me it’s something amusing like Bremen…that’s always more fun than just doing it as the obvious like Bohemia, Teutonic Order or Muscovy.
I’ve been trying the achievements, and recently finished both African Power [conquer Africa as a sub-Saharan state] and No Trail of Tears [Be a surviving, Westernised Cherokee nation in 1800].
I’m not going to suggest any games because I only have one suggestion, and I know that you either have already played Skyrim, thought of getting it, or simply would have your desire to do anything other than eat sleep work SKYRIM SKYRIM sucked out like the rest of us.
That being said, I decided to create a female character (and a High-elf no less) in Skyrim to test the amount of misogyny, and I found it unrealistic. That coupled with how my adventure has gone has inspired me to turn my game into a story, though the misogyny (and possibly the racism, since despite the background animosity between Elves and Nords the most racism my High-elf gets is a couple special lines from guards — though my character is against the Aldmeri) in the story will obviously be ramped up for realistic effect.
It will also deviate slightly from my actual game, which is likely to be restarted because a) I fucked up badly in the beginning and b) my housecarl vanished while I was raiding a fort inhabited by mages (this, I will alter slightly and use as a story arc, since it coincided with me getting abducted by the Dark Brotherhood).
@48 THIS!
I was an internationally-ranked air pistol shooter as a teen (college and work got in the way – nearest range is an hour away each way – but I’ll get back to it eventually). My absolute scores (out of 400 for all you non-target-shooters) usually beat the absolute scores (out of 600) from our boys’ team.
I also used to compete with the rifle folks at their targets with my pistol at my club. That was fun… I even won sometimes, but then I’ll admit I’m a bit of a freakish talent at target shooting: Got a bronze at our highest national competition after two and a half years of practice… most people who do that have been in it for ten, and I was the only 14-year-old in a field of 17- to 19-year-olds (age makes a big difference – younger kids don’t have as much endurance or fine motor control).
On the topic of gender balance in games… I love it when I can play a woman. Partly because I am a woman and so it’s nice to build a character that looks like me (I like to build “me” and play as a self-insert… I refuse to think I’m unusual in this) and partly because I’m sick and tired of having to play a man.
My boyfriend also likes to play as a woman sometimes. Why? Well, to paraphrase him, he gets to play as a self-insert all the time, and sometimes it’s interesting to play as someone else. My boyfriend will also gripe with me on the “metal bikinis” of many fantasy games that pass for armor for female characters.
^ Reminds me of when I was starting out in air pistol, and one of the boys had to be made to fire a full match holding his gun properly and then one holding it sideways to prove that holding the gun sideways is actually a dumbfuck idea and doesn’t work.
And then he said, “But holding the gun sideways looks cooler!”
To the coach’s credit, our coach didn’t laugh in his face right then… he said, “Would you rather look cool or win?”
To prove that common sense and talent don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, that boy later became the team’s best male shooter.
Tried to post several times last night and was eaten every time, so this will be short and sweet.
For the 360
Schizoid
Castle Crashers
Portal 1 and 2
Plants vs. Zombies
For the PC
League of Legends
LFD 1 and 2
I recently finished a game as Byzantium (1399), restoring the territory of the Roman Empire (trying not to go beyond what Romans conquered was an annoyance on its own, as it left undefeated and sometimes pesky blobs on my borders).
It’s a crime they haven’t remade AC yet. They remade Colonisation (pretty well) some years ago, at it’s nowhere near Alpha Centauri in charm and atmosphere.
Jen,
Try the following:
Dungeon Defenders – (PC) MP Tower def game Downloadable via Steam costs about $10
League of Legends – (PC) Free to play 3-5 person MOBA
(Multiplayer online battle arena)
Terraria – (PC) again downloadble via steam mutliplayer sandbox platform game a bit like minecraft but better
Starcraft 2 – (PC) Sure you already know all about this game
Shogun Total War 2 – (PC) Multiplayer Strat game very good
Limbo & Nightsky – (PC) single player puzzle adventure games, take turns :)
Street Fighter 4 – (PC) DO IT!! Never need another game
Puzzle fighter – Cross between tetris and street fighter
Puzzle Bobble
Twinkle Start Sprites – good luck finding it but if you can it’s one of the best two player games ever made, highly addictive.
~Dave
Orcs Must Die, definitely.
Seconded, Thirded, and Fourthed.
Anything I can possibly say about the first part of this post has already been said, so I’ll happily bow out (that, and it makes me twitchy).
My partner and I have several consoles, including some older ones. He’s not all that into RPGs, but I am (possibly b/c I am also a tabletop gamer), so I gravitate toward Elder Scrolls, Fable, Dragon Age, etc. He likes puzzles and linear gameplay, so our tastes don’t often converge. We both liked LA Noire, although that’s not co-op, so we had separate games going on, and since I finished faster, there were a few times when he left the room to avoid spoilers!
In terms of co-op, we’ve done Castle Crashers (lots of fun, requires actual cooperation), a few of the LEGO games (Star Wars, primarily, although we did a bit of Indy and some Batman), we tried Wii Sports but we just end up laughing at our combined ineptitude, but lately we’ve been playing more old-school games and playing PVP fighting games like Soulcalibur. I’d really like to get one of the Star Wars: Force Unleashed games, seems like some fun co-op.
Isn’t she mostly electronics and enhanced weaves at this point?
Uh, lattices, I mean. In addition to any genetic military base-package.
Just quickly wanted to point out that if you’re after 360 games, the deal of the week for Xbox live gold members includes discounts for 4 tower defence games, including some mentioned previously.
Lul, I know a raeg-quitter when I read one. :p These people get their asses handed to them and don’t know what to do with it.
Tactical/strategery? Hmm, and co-op. Not sure I can help with that. Frankly, identifying things by genre has become pretty hard for me.
Eh, here, have a free Roguelike with eight years of development: http://zincland.com/powder
Another enthusiastic salute here for Mass Effect, which I consider not merely one of the greatest games of all time, but one of the smartest, most engaging and well-told science fiction stories ever. Jennifer Hale is a phenomenal actor, and I also loved the fact that I was able to have my wife sit down with me for about an hour while i carefully customized Shepard to look like her :-)
Dragon Age gets a nod, as well, and it’s also worth chuckling at the sexist complaints directed at female characters by clueless fuckwits there; I’ve heard more than one MRA-ish douchebomb get bent out of shape at seeing a female character in the awesome slow-motion deathblow animation when battling an ogre, saying “It’s so unrealistic to have a woman be able to do that!” and have nowhere to go when countered with “Come on; a MAN couldn’t do that either!”
Doesn’t surprise me, having seen the outfits and in particular the shoes.
A personal anecdote of mine: the majority of women I’ve taken out for recreational shooting for their first time have shown a higher base accuracy when starting out than the men I have taking out shooting for the first time.
I mean, I hand her my .22 and she’ll punch out the middle of that X-ring like crazy. Then, if she wants, I get her started on some centerfire pistol and she *still* punches out the middle of the target.
Dungeon Defenders has official art that oversexualizes the Huntress, who is supposed to be something like the equivalent of a 10-year-old human girl in her race. For the record here’s the official wallpaper: http://i.imgur.com/Icm4c.jpg
And so for that reason alone I find Dungeon Defenders to be problematic to recommend to anyone who even has the slightest interest in feminism. Maybe that makes me an unfun joyless greyheart, but I can’t not see what’s going on there. 8-|
Seconding this. It’s easily one of the best platformers I have played in years, right up there with the Mario Galaxy titles. The co op is excellent and it just looks gorgeous.
I too am a straight male who prefers to play female characters.
I rationalise it to myself by saying that I’m “roleplaying after all and since I’m a man all the time, this is my chance to be a woman”. But who am I kidding, it’s probably for the exact same reason as your husband.
eh, it may not seem like as much of a strategy style game, but my friend and I tend to consume hours playing co-op on Dead Rising 2. I’m nuts about the gameplay but she just likes it because of the killing zombies aspect.
My friend Jonathan Clements, who translated the lesbian wrestling game ‘Ring Out’ and the erotic game ‘Timestripper’, did a wonderful job of laying out the archetypes in the ‘Five Girls Named Moe’ chapter of his book ‘Schoolgirl Milky Crisis’.
That is, without a doubt, the most surreal sentence I’ve read in many many years.
That’s parallel to my point, though. What’s being labelled “MRA” here isn’t Men’s Rights. It’s supremacist frat boys hiding behind a label. Before I had started lurking here, I had identified it not as antagonistic to women’s rights, but complimentary. A means to iron out the kinks of the old way of doing business, so moving forward is smooth and even-handed for everyone. Since I’ve obviously mis-identified what I saw before, how does one label a philosophy that is pro-womens rights and pro-equality but anti-alimony, anti-implied paternity, and pro-equality in child custody?
I see what you mean — a child-woman with a touch of Peter Pan. And what’s she doing with that weapon thingie between her legs? Ewww…
How about the French word “phallocrat?” It means “male chauvanist,” which is what the “MRAs” are; and it conveys their obvious real agenda clearly and without too many syllables.
On RPG’s, that would be insanely difficult. Having watched my girlfriend play the Assassins’ Creed series, I agree it’d take the fun out of it. The entire plot would have to be modified to have you used to being able to do certain things with less. My theory is that you’d see it more becoming a puzzle, and a bit more tedious with more options. I’m not as much of a gamer anymore, too much of it is online-centric for me to enjoy. My experiences in F1 2010 and F1 2011 drove me crazy, kids treating the races as bumper-cars when I’m just trying to have a realistic race, lol.
Did the phallocrats scream this loud when “Lara Croft” first hit the shelves?
Absolutely. More men are raised to be comfortable with guns, so by the time someone is of enlistment age, there’s a greater likelihood a male has become familiar, sadly. Given equal familiar, eyesight and hand-eye coordination, women are equal, if not a percent or two better. I myself am a horrible shot with a rifle, especially in a military qualification setting. Left-eye dominance and right-handedness just don’t jive well when not allowed to make my own judgement in sighting my weapon.
I heard rumor ME3 is going to either open up same sex romance options to both genders or open all romance options to either gender. Anyone confirm?
Nah, all I have are rumours as well. Same-sex romance won’t really impact my gameplay (though being able to have FemShep romance Ashley would be nice since I thought she was a more engaging character than Kaiden) but it would be nice if other players could explore the options that best suit them.
I was pretty impressed by the wide range of possibilities opened up to the players in Dragon Age 2 (and yes, I know it is widely panned as a game but I thought it was a magnificent piece of character-driven storytelling with good gameplay wrapped around it), though I certainly understand the criticism that they way the romances were presented makes the characters more malleable than people actually are.
Granting that, it was clear the BioWare team made a genuine and sincere effort to present a wide range of romance options and let those options have all the complications and rough spots that such things have in life, at least as much as they could fit into an otherwise fairly linear game. I’m looking forward to Dragon Age 3, and absolutely white-knuckled over Mass Effect 3.
Crap, why did that not appear in thread as a reply to We Are Ing…?
Cheezus.
I just followed the link to the original forum being talked about and read a couple of pages of entries.
How are these guys able to interact with women at all when they clearly hate them so very fucking much?
I really don’t understand this attitude amongst guys. Isn’t it good that we finally have women becoming open in the gaming culture, and more visible? Shoot, I remember when it was difficult to find a girl that shared my interests, and wouldn’t consider me a freak for playing D&D. Now I can’t wait to get in college this fall because of how many opportunities I’ll have to meet smart, cool women in the gaming clubs. And the argument that female characters in games should be designed differently gameplay-wise in such a manner is just idiocy. Ignorance.
Skyrim would be my recommendation too, if it weren’t for the fact that it has sucked my life away. Do I dare expose anyone else to that risk?
Isn’t that the one with Stephen Fry doing the narration? That would be reason enough to buy it in my book.
That has been my experience as well, except with my niece, but she’s terrifyingly accurate with a rifle.
Sorry, glitch with the responses. My post #83 was a response to #33 re: Little Big Planet, and my post #84 was a response to the response to my post #48.
Thanks Jen!! Only halfway through the comments and I am giddy with the possibilities. MRA ridiculousness aside, I think my gaming dance card is going to be pretty full for awhile.
I want to second the recommendation for Monster Hunter Tri. Fantastic cooperative play, mostly online but there’s also some two player offline action as well. Play some of the single player game to find your footing. I bought it on launch and still play every Friday.
Lately I’ve been hooked by Starcraft 2, which has a great multiplayer system and community.
Definitely recommended!
@64, Art – agreed! I went the a gun range for the first time with my future in laws and fiancé, and had a similar discussion with his Dad about women and their prowess at fine motor skills… Long story short my future mom in law and I were kicking some butt at target practice that day.
We both knit so I suspect that has helped us hone our fine motor skills quite a bit :)
I freaking love 2nd Lieutenant Mira in Warhammer: 40k Space Marine. http://spacemarine.wikia.com/wiki/2nd_Lieutenant_Mira
More like her, please :D
I get somewhat bummed by League of Legends. They do have several female characters, which is good to see, yet SO many of them are verrry sexualised, half naked, same-face(like a doll)/same-body type, boobs bigger than heads etc. There are a few different ones with practical armour and whatnot, but I’d love more variation, or maybe some more female monsters (there are a LOT of male monster type characters on LoL, and a lot of variation among the male characters in general, but *sigh*, can’t have “ugly”, unconventional looking wimmin characters now, can we?).
You’re free to go whine to the boys over there that their behavior is unmanly.
I don’t anticipate seeing you do that anytime soon, though, so piss off.
Women don’t care if it’s an 8 year old or an 80 year old that’s projecting misogynistic bile. We just want it to stop. You can help by educating your own kind.
Ergh, my comment @ #91 was meant for a reply to carpenterman @ #41.
Who are you talking to?
…ah, the “reply to” function seems to be glitching.
@ Ing: It was planned all along, but never followed through. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPMOlEfhWGE
And oh, yes! Star Craft II. RTS with optional co-op.
Fallout New Vegas might be buggy but It’s eaten away hours of my life. I only recently found out that youcan create a homosexual male charcter (some great dialogue options with closeted gays in the New Californian Republic army who lament that the NCR’s vicious enemies are actually more tolerant of homosexuality than his own nation)
Your post refutes itself. You demonstrate how even the vague mention of the possibility of differences in population means gets people riled up, without even making a specific claim which might be refutable.
This reminds me of a conversation we had in my Human Sexuality course last morning… we were discussing Japan and it’s video game depicted violence against women.
I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say they have what basically amounts to a genre when it comes to games that the ONLY objective is to rape women. Example:
I’m on the Skyrim bandwagon, too.
Also Amnesia. Scared me shitless.
Stupid women! Their arms are so weak, they can’t even carry the 12 different guns you can choose from by pressing a button (unlike real live men, of course, which is why all soldiers carry 12 guns at all times then press A+B+enter to pick one. Ta-da!).
It is hilarious how much some male fans will suspend disbelief… until it comes to women.
‘So she’s 6-feet-tall, 120 lbs, the daughter of aliens, has the ability to fly and read minds…’ ‘Uh–huh, okay.’
‘Oh, and she’s the strongest character in the game.’
‘What? That’s so unrealistic!’
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