Wednesday 11 June 2014

meaningless and terrible statistics

/v/ took issue with the complaints about lack of female protagonists and decided to assemble a list.

Their conclusions:

I have to be honest. There ARE more guy protags. That’s just a fact. But honestly, so many of them are unmemorable at best, or fucking awful at worst. No one’s saying they’re not. We’re saying there are also a healthy sample of female ones.

I don’t think anyone is arguing there’s the same number. But the line is usually “there are only a few games” or some shit

Which we've clearly just proven wrong.

Well I’m really proud of everyone that contributed, great job, everyone! Sure, there are gonna be more male protags, it happens, but it’s dumb to say that this is some work of discrimination, it’s simply what a lot of people decided to make games about, and you can’t shame people for making whatever they want to make. There are a lot of great examples of female protagonists out there as this list contains, and that’s good enough.

Now, while I'm not going to make any comments myself about the actual preponderances or what they say about gaming, or the fact that /v/ missed entire genres of games because /v/ either doesn't know they exist or doesn't think they count as games (casual games, otome games), the list they DID come up with is interesting because

1. It covers at least 25 years worth of gaming, based on the titles listed.
2. It covers PC, main console, and handheld titles.
3. It wasn't dupe-checked, some entries are on there more than once.
4. Some of the characters listed are shared protags (you get a choice of multiple characters in the game, or are required to play multiple characters throughout the game, or the girl PC is only an unlockable bonus after finishing as male)
5. Some of the characters listed are not even playable characters. Period. (Akane? Really?)
6. With all that, they came up with a list of less than 500 entries.

(Again, hardly a scientific survey, not something you can draw much conclusion from other than eyeing the anons in the particular thread.)

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