I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/04/im-a-12-year-old-girl-why-dont-the-characters-in-my-apps-look-like-me/

by kanamekun • 11 years ago

145 135 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

cplease2• 11 years ago

Wow, nice find. The dismissive contempt half of the commenters have for the 12-year-old girl who meticulously researched and wrote this article is appalling but not surprising.

KnightHawk3• 11 years ago

Because she is a girl or because she is 12 years old?

amagumori• 11 years ago

it's because she's a girl.

TazeTSchnitzel• 11 years ago

Are you referring to the WaPo comments, or HN's?

cplease2• 11 years ago

I was refering to WaPo, as there weren't any comments here yet. Predictably they are not a whole lot better here though.

opso• 11 years ago

This is a bit tangential to the article, but the first paragraph stuck out to me.

    For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side.

Back in my day, I was playing video games all the time, hacking them with debug cheats and GameShark. This was universally called a waste of my time by every adult I met, I had to go to great lengths to convince people I should be allowed to do it, and it's what on-ramped me to a super lucrative (and I hope useful to society) career in tech.

Yet here we've arrived at a state of affairs where most western children regularly spend inordinate amounts of time on walled-up instant-gratification video game platforms designed to vacuum money out of their parent's wallets, entirely detached from inspiring them to hack at things and go into technology. Somehow this state of affairs is perfectly normal and okay.

Yeah, I'm a bit bitter about it.

lkbm2• 11 years ago

It's still seen as a waste of time, I think. Just has finally been accepted as normal. And while you may have been firing up hex editors, that probably wasn't the norm.

YOu are right, though, that the computer games of the nineties offered a lot more hackability than iPhone apps. ZZT was an introduction to OOP for many kids, Red Alert had rules.ini that defined the stats for each unit, and Duke3D had configuration files in C. Mods and "Total Conversions" were a things. That ecosystem isn't just unavailable in mobile games, but would probably be hated by many companies who want full control over their product.

So two things we should do: write more moddable games, include defaults that don't assume we're all male (or white, for that matter.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

The "hackability" (and decrease thereof) isn't something exclusive to games - just look at what happened to the UIs of popular programs like browers, for example. Everything is becoming hidden away and more difficult to configure.

In contrast to the many menus and dialogs we had before that encouraged users to explore and customise, it seems that apps now are far more opaque to the point that many users don't even realise some things are options that can be changed.

That ecosystem isn't just unavailable in mobile games, but would probably be hated by many companies who want full control over their product

Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch, but I think the whole "war on general-purpose computing" has played some part in this too.

zanny5• 11 years ago

I got into programming a decade ago with Quake 2 engine forks and Neverwinter Nights private servers. You would never have avenues into that kind of thing from the ios platform at all. It is very much like how anyone from the Windows GUI generation never touched a terminal so they do not even know what a program / file / etc really is to begin with.

tracker1• 11 years ago

I don't think the assumption is that all the users are male... it seems to me a lot of the assumption is that "girls are more likely to pay for a character change than boys" which may or may not be correct, without actual data.

That said, I feel that most (not all) apps with in-game purchases are pretty sleazy.

zobzu• 11 years ago

Interestingly in many games of the 90s...

- there were both genders more often (in, fact, i can name very few of the games I played that were male only... yeah DukeNukem for ex. I know a couple female only games, tho)

- when different genders were proposed it was OF COURSE for free. Now u gotta pay because u like a red hat better or what not.

enneff• 11 years ago

It's interesting. When I first started using computers it was to play games, and in those days the only way to play those games was to either type up the BASIC code by hand, or learn the incantations to load the programs from disk or tape. In either case, you needed to (rote) learn some technical skills to have a bit of fun.

In retrospect, I see I was lucky enough to come into computing at exactly the right time. When I was young I was capable of understanding (practically) my entire computer system, because those systems were so simple. As the complexity increased, so did the depth of my understanding. Today, I understand most of what my computer does (the most important parts, at least).

What a tough road it must be for a newcomer to cope with all this complexity, the very complexity I have literally spent my whole life learning.

A_COMPUTER3• 11 years ago

When I was a kid, hacking was a means to an end. If I wanted to play a game on my Commodore 64 or an Apple ][, I had to learn some basic skills on the computer, not tap an icon. Before I had a disk drive, I typed BASIC programs into the C64 from Compute Gazette, and learned programming via osmosis. If I got stuck in a game, the world wide web and gamefaqs didn't exist yet, so I figured out how to hack the savegame file.

I'm not a natural hacker. If I was a kid now, I'd just play games on an iPad and effectively learn nothing because there's no friction. This isn't a slam on the ipad or misplaced nostalgia, just a recognition that sometimes you are forced to learn things out of necessity, and if you're born into plenty, you never are forced to grow. On the other hand, for anybody who's a born tinkerer, the fact that iPads are locked down and super easy to use is irrelevant because you have a thousand other cheap hackable devices like Raspberry Pis or Arduino. For someone who's not a born tinkerer though, they may never pick up a hackable device, and will miss some opportunities for growth.

ChazDazzle• 11 years ago

This is a prevalent meme on Hacker News but it's nothing more than the tech version of Old Man Yells At Cloud.

venomsnake• 11 years ago

This old man seems to be unable to find the built in file explorer in iDevices with which to be able to find the savegame location and edit the number of coins he has.

Enlighten me, youngster how is that accomplished without breaking the warranty of the device?

clay_to_n2• 11 years ago

I totally agree. People are arguing that video games going mainstream is making LESS people interested in tech? Bizarroland.

Kids today are going to be more likely to get into tech, and it's going to be far far easier for them to do it. We don't need to get nostalgic for how much more "authentic" it was back in the day when the tools sucked a lot more.

(the GameShark comparison may be valid - but in my experience, a GameShark was just a thing you bought to cheat in a game. None of my friends who got them got into learning about programming because of it)

zorked• 11 years ago

Oh, that kind of thing still exists. Took me all of two seconds to find it:

http://www.androidgamehacks.net/forums/

And just like hacking with Game Genie was unusual back then, jailbreaking devices, hacking .apk files and hand-editing save games isn't for everybody either. But all of that definitely still exists, and is far more accessible than ever.

smtddr• 11 years ago

Not the same.

The GameGenie/GameShark/ActionReplay scene was much more accessible than hacking .apk files and jailbreaking mobile devices. I was messing with those devices even before I decided on a CS major. And it was as simple as just having one stray thought "What happens if I change this number?" In contrast, you don't just decide "What happens if I open this apk file up and change such and such?" How many people even know that the apk files are just zip files to start with? Then you get into decompile the files or hex-editor or whatever... but none of that is accessible as just randomly entering a different number in the GameGenie interface that's presented to you immediately.

m_mueller• 11 years ago

There's hope though - Minecraft seems to be immensely popular with children, and for a good part because it's so hackable and moddable.

code_duck• 11 years ago

Definitely. Minecraft and modding it are so popular that I've had a hard time finding an up to date guide for adults who want to make Minecraft mods - Google searches on the topic are filled with pages of sites oriented towards helping teens learn Java.

tessierashpool3• 11 years ago

plenty of games have tremendous educational value, and I'm sure every pro-gaming argument you ever thought of which didn't involve hacking still remains as valid as ever.

tetris teaches geometry, word games teach vocabulary, strategy games teach strategy - I don't even understand how you got upvoted. you kind of just sound like the guy who hates his favorite band because they got popular.

kids can get so much more attention from figuring out a hack today than ever before. when I figured out a hack as a kid, the best-case scenario would be that my nerdy friends were the only ones who noticed. but a decade ago, having the best CSS hack on MySpace was something everybody in school would know about. today, being able to hack your phone is one of the coolest things a kid could ever brag about.

software is eating the world, so competence with computers is becoming indistinguishable from competence, period. the fact that iOS does not provide you with a shell account can't change that fundamental fact.

this popular iOS game was co-developed by a five-year-old girl and her father:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sissy%27s_Magical_Ponycorn_Adve...

I think you need to let the kids walk on your lawn a little, dude.

michaelbuddy2• 11 years ago

Tetris teaches geometry? Bit of a stretch there. It may use geometry but it's not teaching anything I ever learned in geometry. Wife loves Tetris and she can't geometry for nothin'

wutbrodo3• 11 years ago

Those two things are pretty tightly related (though of course, that doesn't make it correct at all). It's a lot easier for people to vilify something that's relatively uncommon (gaming back then) vs something that's ubiquitous. People en masse are stupid and lazy, and being uncommon is an easy (albeit idiotic) heuristic for "not an excusable use of time".

PhasmaFelis• 11 years ago

The people like you grew up and had kids, and every parent wants their kid to have what they couldn't have.

michaelchisari• 11 years ago

Yeah, I'm a bit bitter about it.

Why? You won.

imron6• 11 years ago

Perhaps because he would like future generations to be able to win also, rather than having the game taken away.

hkmurakami• 11 years ago

I hear ya. But there's probably still something different that these kids will get out of their particular version of the experience.

Maybe it'll be battling Minecraft plugins and building one on their own (after all, this is still the #1 game among children from what I understand). It might be developing an instinct for great UX and media execution (games like Candy Crush for instance).

Only hindsight will tell, but I don't think it'll be entirely for naught.

imron6• 11 years ago

I don't think it's quite as bad as you make out.

Like you, playing video games from a young age was the entry point for me into computing, but (partly also due to every adult saying they were a waste of time) I didn't realise until much later (17-18) that I could take that interest and make it in to a fulfilling career.

Despite the walled gardens, tools are still out there for people who want to make new or hack existing games, and people who want to do that will find a way.

They will have a curiosity about how things work that won't be quelled until they figure it out, and the process of figuring it out will be half the fun plus a large chunk of the learning.

mcphage• 11 years ago

Check out the LittleBigPlanet series... it's got a modding system that would have blown your mind as a child. I'm an adult and a programer and it still blows my mind. It's not just an incredibly powerful modding system, but that's an intended part of the game—there are levels, and tutorials with real voice acting, teaching you how to use it; and an easy to use online system for sharing your levels, or viewing the levels other people have made.

albemuth• 11 years ago

I didn't get into programming until college, but I remember spending hours creating my own winamp skin as a teen.

nosuchthing• 11 years ago

There's a good number of youtube videos where young kids give tutorials on modding Minecraft. Not quiet as raw, but certainly a similar gateway.

lkbm2• 11 years ago

Not all apps have taken this route. “The Hunger Games” lets you choose between being a girl or boy for free.

The Hunger Games app? As in, an app based on a book with a female protagonist? That's kind of like saying "Oh, hey, the Pride and Prejudice game lets you play as a girl!" It's a telling detail that could slip past if you're unfamiliar with the story.

sjm• 11 years ago

I agree, and actually find it a bit telling that a game based on a story with such a strong female protagonist feels the need to have a male playable character at all.

wongarsu4• 11 years ago

Probably because 12 year old boys like to play as somebody who looks like them just as much as 12 year old girls do. Games offering both options is exactly what the article was advocating.

raldi2• 11 years ago

The idiotic Washington Post website actually makes the thumbnail image smaller when you click it. Fortunately, the URL of the image is hackable to get a full-size version:

http://img.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp-content/uplo...

raldi2• 11 years ago

I'd like to make a romhack of the Legend of Zelda where you can play as Zelda. It should be a piece of cake, once someone draws the sprites.

Anyone good at drawing sprites who wants to lend a hand?

Edit: Looks like someone beat me to it!

http://kennastuff.blogspot.com/2013/03/zelda-starring-zelda-...

ars2• 11 years ago

Maybe they sell Girl characters because girls are willing to pay for them, and boys aren't?

Or because girls are willing to play as boys, and then pay to play as a girl?

But boys are unwilling to even play as a girl?

I prefer to look for rational (for example economic) reasons for things, and not assume everything is because of bias.

_bfhp13• 11 years ago

The existence of bias isn't an "irrational" thing to believe in; in fact it's provable through science, and has been in an innumerable amount of cases (websearch "bias study"; if you want, I have access to university resources where I can give you full studies PDFs.)

NoPiece5• 11 years ago

Even if that's true, that's a lousy way to make a game (they should be fun first, right?).

I know first hand this sucks. I have a daughter who just a couple days ago had me to download the Oz Temple Run game. She was very disappointed that the main character was a boy, that only 1 of 4 available characters was a girl, and that the girl was the hardest to unlock. We aren't spending running on virtual currency, so odds she'll never get to play the game as a girl.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

I think that would be a great time to introduce her to gamehacking... attempt to turn that annoyance into a learning experience instead of a learned helplessness. Teaching her that she can make her device do what she wants is the first step (and that corporations seem to be slowly trying to take that freedom away might be a good lead-on to the perils of locked-down devices... if she understands enough, that is.)

jessaustin2• 11 years ago

Perhaps at the initial stage of analysis this situation is not "because of bias", but don't stop thinking after just one thought. Why are boys like that? (Ignoring the exception that would seem to have been made for Lara Croft.) Why are girls like that? Do you really think it's biology, or is there perhaps some cultural reason why one group of children would be somewhat comfortable undermining their identity while a different group cannot imagine doing so?

cbd19842• 11 years ago

And then think a few thoughts further, to "How can I fix it?" and realize there's nothing I can reasonably do which isn't already being done, and, at my most engaged, I could cheer-lead established efforts being lead by people with more social capital than me.

So... consciousness raised and subsequently tamped back down, I suppose.

ars2• 11 years ago

Do you really think it's biology

Yes.

When something is virtually identical the whole world over, I think I can comfortably say biology and not culture.

howlingfantods3• 11 years ago

Bias is perfectly rational, just like murdering your neighbor for his land. That's why we have a social contract, to prevent things that are individually rational yet socially ruinous.

ekanes3• 11 years ago

The comments critiquing her research make me so sad. I don't think anyone wouldn't agree with her basic, essential point; Many, many more games have only a default male character.

It is interesting that often we don't see others' points of view until they're put in front of us. My entire life, I've played games with male defaults and never noticed the lack of females. Only when my 8 year-old girl said, "Why can't I play a girl?" did I realize it was an issue. Yikes!

_bfhp13• 11 years ago

It is indeed sad; I think history has shown that most people who benefit from a system of advantage just reflexively don't like when others talk about how it works, but that's just how I see it.

I'm playing OlliOlli (edited the name in since a user asked), a really awesome and successful game right now from a small (ish?) company (they're even making a sequel) where you only get one character to play as, and he is definitely male -- you couldn't even spin him as possibly being female. I'm male too and I'm afraid to point this out to the company, because of the backlash that usually happens, and I think the company is pretty much all male staff. It's not a huge deal but if the sequel is just as limited I'll express my disappointment, as it's a great game otherwise.

ekanes3• 11 years ago

I don't see a downside to pointing it out. The worst they could do is nothing, BUT at least they'd be aware that some part of the market is paying attention (implied: have a female character option and you might make more money).

Happy to point it out on your behalf if you'd like to mention the game!

hackuser2• 11 years ago

Definitely point it out, here and to the game developer. To a great degree it just comes down to awareness, and the best fix for that is to talk about it. The beneficiaries don't want to be sexist (of course there always are exceptions); people just don't notice it unless it happens to them -- just as people ignore most risks in other areas of life, such as lack of backups or weak passwords, health risks, etc. until they get burnt. As one commenter here said, he didn't notice until it affected his daughter.

Just don't assume maliciousness and others won't either. There are plenty of things in the world I don't know about and I learn from everyone else; I just try pull my weight by sharing the things I've learned.

_bfhp13• 11 years ago

This is definitely a good to remind everyone about what girlhood entails in the Western/English-speaking world. First some articles on games and then some general articles:

Games for Girls? - http://thehussingtonpost.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/games-for-gi...

Little girls deserve better than to be told to make themselves sexy - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan...

Girls, Boys, Feminism, Toys: Deborah Siegel and Rebecca Hains Discuss - http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2014/01/14/girls-boys-fe...

Hers; The Smurfette Principle - http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-smurfett...

What it’s like being a teen girl - http://web.archive.org/web/20140820073431/http://sodisarming...

teenage girls: "...they haven’t been living, they’ve been performing." - http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-b...

‘I’m not a pilot, I’m a pilot’s wife,’ says 3 yr old girl - http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-...

Sexism 'is daily reality' for girls - http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25138455

Womanhood, girlhood and shared exclusion - http://glosswatch.com/2013/12/16/womanhood-girlhood-and-shar...

“Is my son smart?” “Is my daughter skinny?” Google Searches Reveal Parents’ Gender Biases http://rebeccahains.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/is-my-son-smart...

What Do Little Girls Really Learn from “Career” Barbies? - http://peggyorenstein.com/blog/what-do-little-girls-really-l...

Report: Many girls view sexual assault as normal behavior - http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexua...

Cosmetic surgery and teenagers – a disaster waiting to happen - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/apr...

bramgg• 11 years ago

In one game, “Survival Run with Bear Grylls,” you can put the character in a Santa Claus suit for $1.98, but there is no girl to be had at any price. Does this mean that girls aren’t capable of escaping a bear, but Santa is?

Another classic example of girls that are capable of escaping bears being unrepresented in tech. I kid, by seriously the cause of this isn't game devs being sexest against girls, it's (IMO) society being sexist in general. Boys (not men) will not play games that look like they may be made for girls because of what society might think of them. The fear of being bullied for enjoying anything pink or featuring women is very real for most boys growing up, especially (but not only) if the boy is already feeling confused and ashamed of what his sexuality might be. Since the mobile game market is dominated by children, having the main character be female can potentially scare away a large percentage of the market. Unless the game is already clearly "girly", then the risk just isn't worth it.

TL;DR: Boys playing girls = gay, girls playing boys = normal.

ekanes3• 11 years ago

Girls playing boys isn't so much normal as it's the only option they've had.

Also, the solution is simply to offer the option of playing a girl character. Then anyone can play whomever they want. :)

wutbrodo3• 11 years ago

Girls playing boys isn't so much normal as it's the only option they've had.

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive; in fact they're quite tightly related. Though that does raise the interesting point that the feedback loop has to be broken somewhere, and starting by adding female characters is as good as any.

chx• 11 years ago

I clicked on comments and were absolutely shocked that noone mentioned Anita Sarkeesian. In case you didn't hear, she Kickstarted a Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series of videos about gender representation in video games. Got a lot of harassment in return for those videos and when GamerGate came about that intensified enough to make her leave her home and cancel a speaking arrangement. In turn, she was interviewed on The Colbert Report.

Now a 12 year old have reached the same conclusion and if that's her real name on the article... alas I must say that was a dangerous thing to do.

MichaelGG2• 11 years ago

My daughters are 6 and 8. One of the biggest questions they have before starting any new game is "can I be a girl?" Even in Minecraft, their favorite, they try to dress up the character as much as possible. They're terribly disappointed when where are no girl characters and offhand, they only bought/play one game without a girl character (GTA V, though we skip the missions which contain the questionable for kids content).

Even in Myst, they asked/pretend the main character is a girl (though the intro makes it rather clear that's not the case).

It's really surprising to me, since as a boy I often chose female characters and didn't really think about it. But game devs could easily be losing money by alienating so much of the market. (Though girl characters for purchase, so long clearly identified in demos or marketing materials, is probably a cynical way to fix the situation. Spending $5 to make my daughters enjoy a game is an automatic buy.)

And it extends further, too. When buying a ThinkPad for my 6-yr-old, she really wanted a colored one. Even when explaining it's a superior platform, how it'll hook into her audio hardware, etc., she was only OK with the platform after I said we could get one of those vinyl skins printed up for her ThinkPad, so it wouldn't be all black.

Maybe this is all well-known, but it's just amazing to see how strong the "feminine drive" is, essentially naturally, at such s young age. (We severely restrict the amount of shitty girls kid's TV shows, no Barbie, no Disney products, biggest toys are LEGO, etc.)

zanny5• 11 years ago

(We severely restrict the amount of shitty girls kid's TV shows, no Barbie, no Disney products, biggest toys are LEGO, etc.)

If they go to public school peer relations and student body culture will override prior teaching. When presented with the girls sitting next to them talking about the shows and toys you never exposed them to, they are met with the decision to have faith in their parents or seek to fit in with the status quo.

It is why it is so hard to break childhood stereotypes, because unless you can get a majority of parents to pressure the disjunction, the culture of their classroom will limit what you can do.

MichaelGG2• 11 years ago

Fortunately, at the moment, we have a governess so there's not that particular issue. But I do see the pressure applied from friends that... lack taste. What can you do but try?

In the future I hope to be able to afford private schools with a focus on getting students interested in things. That'll hopefully bring out like minded families. Basically, I just want to increase their saving throws vs crap.

ianbicking• 11 years ago

If they go to public school peer relations and student body culture will override prior teaching. When presented with the girls sitting next to them talking about the shows and toys you never exposed them to, they are met with the decision to have faith in their parents or seek to fit in with the status quo.

I don't think it's quite that hard. If you expect to counteract the influence simply by removing offending messages, then yes, it will not be successful in the face of peers. But if you explain and teach your family's value system that explains WHY you avoid Barbie and the like, that can be much more sticky.

nacs• 11 years ago

Even in Minecraft

Not sure if you're saying Minecraft does or does not have female characters but Minecraft has actually supported skins pretty much since the beginning (over 4+ years now) so you can be male, female or whatever you want to be really.

Also recently they added a default female character skin so players without a custom skin are randomly given a male or female skin.

pdkl95• 11 years ago

If you're using modded Minecraft, there are a few mods that add alternate player models. Currently, I think the preferred mod is "More Player Models"[1], which supports a variety of model parts including various fantasy creatures in addition to female version of the usual "Steve" model. It can use the regular player skins on some models, and includes an in-game editor.

Also, Notch has written[2] about the gender situation in Minecraft. He was attempting to make everything "genderless" (or "both"), which he now suggests might not have been the best decision.

[1] http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/min...

[2] http://notch.tumblr.com/post/28188312756/gender-in-minecraft

a3voices• 11 years ago

You can be a heavily customizable girl in GTA 5 online.

egypturnash• 11 years ago

Let's see how long it takes for HN to insist that this is particularly normal and acceptable because most games are only played by boys, as folks did when this sort of thing came up with regards to the lack of female characters in games for grownups.

Dewie3• 11 years ago

I remember playing PlayStation games with a friend when I was a kid, and he always seemed to pick a woman character to play if he could. So apparently there were enough woman characters in those games for that to stand out.

imron6• 11 years ago

Sure, video games have had female characters for ages, take for example one of my favourite arcade games - Street Fighter II - Champion Edition.

You had Chun Li to choose from if you wanted to play as a girl, or Ryu, E. Honda, Blanka, Guile, Ken, Zangief, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat or M.Bison if you wanted to play as a guy.

Dewie3• 11 years ago

I know what you mean. I once wanted to play as a pansexual elf/dwarf voyeurist who lives in a tree trunk together with minotaurs. Unfortunately my action-rpg only had two preset characters that were close to that, so I had to settle for a pansexual narcoleptic elf with a fondness for bull-riding.

mbesto• 11 years ago

If I were an app maker, the ethical issue of charging for girl characters and not boy characters would be enough reason to change.

I chuckled. App makers (especially the ones in the "top 50 essential apps") are well oiled capitalist money-making machines. Ethics rarely come into play when the A/B tests they run suggest that the product direction go one way (towards money) and not the other ("but what about the children!").

I personally don't feel this way, but you can imagine how businesses at that level would.

EGreg• 11 years ago

Aside from the point being made in the article, the language and expressions used in it suggest to me that it's gone through a fair bit of editing / authorship by an adult writer before being published. Either that or I am seriously underestimating the writing style of a 12 year old girl.

I understand that every article goes through a revision process. But it started by saying "I am a 12 year old girl" and I wonder how many filters the text and the thesis went through before being published. I just find something strange about adults using the identity of a child to inject their own words, if this is indeed the case.

_bfhp13• 11 years ago

Anyone would take it as an assumption that all WaPo articles are edited by WaPo editors. They are her "own words" as much as any article is the "own words" of any staffed journalist. If one is assuming malicious manipulation on the part of The Feminists and are looking for the guarentee of unfiltered words from children on the internet on topics like this, they will be disappointed.

michaelbuddy2• 11 years ago

I've seen plenty of female characters lately. I guess my definition of plenty is what others think of as absent?

imron6• 11 years ago

That's a great anecdote.

I look forward to seeing the results of your research at a level at least as detailed as that performed by the 12 year old author of the article, to see how well the subjective recollection of your recent experience matches with objective data.

nitwit005• 11 years ago

It's clearly not true that female lead characters don't exist. What seems to be the issue for this girl is that they don't exist in games she actually wants to play.

I'd note that she complains about games where the protagonist has no identifiable gender, or is an animal. That's often done quite intentionally to dodge try to dodge this problem.

wongarsu4• 11 years ago

She analysed the top 50 Endless Running Games, that sounds like a fair sample of popular games, not just games she wants to play. She also agrees with you in the article that female protagonists exist, in exactly 46% of these Endless Running Games (but only in 15% free of charge). She doesn't complain about non-identifiable gender at all, she only quickly notes that those exist and then talks about the rest of the apps.

imron6• 11 years ago

I'd note that she complains about games where the protagonist has no identifiable gender, or is an animal

I'd note that she doesn't complain about this.

She simply mentions the data because it is relevant to the overall research she is doing.

hasenj2• 11 years ago

I am a male. When I would play RPG games (not that I play them that much ..) I'd always choose a female character if there was any. Specially when I was younger.

I always thought it was the boys who wanted to play as a "kickass chick". e.g. Tomb Raider

_bfhp13• 11 years ago

I also often choose female characters. There is some demand from boys for female characters, but as with a lot of demand in the market I'm sure, game companies have little way to detect it, afaik

hasenj2• 11 years ago

A successful game company would be in constant engagement with their user base, asking them about their favorite characters, etc.

JDiculous2• 11 years ago

A huge reason why there aren't as many "girl" characters is because most games are made by men. Thus the games naturally caters to themselves.

I'm male. Back when I experimented with game development, all the games I wanted to make involved the main character being male. It's not something I ever consciously thought about, it's just how it happened to be. Does that make me sexist? Of course not. I can make whatever the hell game I want. You can't tell an artist how his art has to look.

wongarsu4• 11 years ago

I don't think we make male characters because we are male, it's just because that's what we are used to. If the default character in nearly every game would be an emo girl, we would all make games with emo girls without thinking about it. Right now the default is the muscular white male, so that's what we all make if we don't think about it.

mod2• 11 years ago

Maybe--but why is every character in a game male, regardless of it being self-reinforcing at this point?

JDiculous2• 11 years ago

I think we just tend to make games that we relate to.

Look outside of games. If I told you to write a novel, would you write it from the perspective of the opposite gender? Personally my gut instinct is to write from the perspective of a male, because that's what I relate to most.

mod2• 11 years ago

Being allowed to make "whatever the hell game you want" doesn't mean you're not sexist. You're allowed to be sexist, too.

I don't think your story makes you sexist, though.

howlingfantods3• 11 years ago

It's not something I ever consciously thought about

I think that's the point. Perhaps it's something that you might want to think about. Institutional bias is insidious because it's so pervasive as to be normal, banal. No one gives it a second thought.

morgante2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, this is likely a side-effect of the majority of game developers being male.

A male making a female character is an altogether dicey proposition. Not only do they have to go through extra effort to imagine said character, but they also run the significant risk of being castigated if said female character doesn't perfectly align to various norms.

_bfhp13• 11 years ago

they also run the significant risk of being castigated if said female character doesn't perfectly align to various norms

I'm interested in this apparent phenomenon, can you an example?

NoPiece5• 11 years ago

One example would be Dragon's Crown, which caught a lot of heat over the "Sorceress" character.

http://kotaku.com/game-developers-really-need-to-stop-lettin...

A_COMPUTER3• 11 years ago

I can't find the article now, but I remember a quote by Brianna Wu expressing frustration at having the characters of her game said to be "promoting anorexia" because of their wispy tall character designs (just recently she ended up changing them in the PC port of her game, in fact, after endless criticism.) The characters are exaggerated, but honestly to the point that they (intentionally) aren't realistic.

Anita Sarkeesian's graduate thesis and the subject of more than one of her videos is an extensive criticism of how "strong female characters" in fiction reinforce binary gender stereotypes by requiring that their definition of strength conform to masculine ideals of it rather than feminine alternative models (strong female characters have to be "badass".) I don't think she's wrong, but the argument has been leveraged often enough that it's made even me wonder what would be good enough to satisfy some people. Please note that you can trip this criticism simply by adding additional female characters, which is exactly what some people here are complaining about. You add a female sprite, the female "acts like a male". It's not as simple as just adding female characters.

Women's portrayal in video games is an ideological battleground, to an extent that men's portrayal is not. This is why it's potentially a risk. You can't even win by not playing, because lack of women is a problem too. But you can lose the least by not playing or not caring. I think that is why the two default states for female representation in games are "nonexistent" and "terrible".

acjohnson55• 11 years ago

What's more harmful, catching some blowback or perpetuating the status quo that tells women from an early age "it's not for you"?

morgante2• 11 years ago

The answer to that question entirely depends on whether you're operating from a personal or a societal perspective.

falcolas• 11 years ago

Perhaps because it's more profitable to not give away what girls will buy, or they are simply not the target for the games where there are no female protagonists.

There's a popular view on hacker news of corporations which are nothing but money grubbing entities bent on doing anything for profit. This doesn't jive well with the view of these game corporations as mysoginistic entities out to repress girls intentionally or unintentionally.

_bfhp13• 11 years ago

"These kind of people on this website think one thing, and some other people on the website tend to think another thing, and I think they kind of don't work together despite being related to analyses that each vary wildly, and I think those two groups overlap" What? Your combining of two heuristic, subjective analyses of "popular views" to make some kind of point is unimpressive and non-productive.

A_COMPUTER3• 11 years ago

This 12 year old girl is a better blogger than some of the people Washington Post has on staff. I am not exaggerating, I wish all their bloggers were this analytical.

GhotiFish• 11 years ago

Well yes. She is. By a substantial margin. It's incredible really, and I mean that in the strict sense of the word. in-credible.

bhayden• 11 years ago

Am I wrong for thinking it sounds really antisocial for girls to have sleepover and then play on their phones? When I have a kid I really don't want them to be exposed to mindless consumption but it sadly seems like it's not going to be possible unless they're home schooled. At the very least, they're getting a very locked down smart phone.

Mithaldu• 11 years ago

I did that (as a boy) back in the day too. Pack up the PC and bring it over to a friend. Even when playing single player games we still had the experience of being immediately together, able to talk directly and freely, and able to show/help each other stuff. I suppose that's just the modern version of that.

undersuit2• 11 years ago

I'm not an expert on what kids are doing on their phones, but my phone does not encourage interactions. When I packed my computer and took it to a friends house I didn't read Slashdot and play Simfarm alone, we'd hook up Starcraft or Diablo.

I think of the Pewdiepie episode of South Park where Ike and his friends each have their own device and each consumes their own media separately when I think of kids having sleepovers now.

Dewie3• 11 years ago

Not antisocial. Maybe asocial.

imron6• 11 years ago

Poor girl. I really hope she has the strength and support necessary to survive the inevitable barrage of criticism, anger, threats and hate that gets directed at females speaking out on topics like this.

UUMMUU• 11 years ago

It's articles like this that make me wonder if I should just always be sorry for being born a male. There are two kinds of responses to this article. Either you agree that all men are chauvinist pigs and only out to further the male-dominated agenda or you are a sexist bigot. In all honesty if the game developers only make a male characters, that's their prerogative, calling them sexist for not making a female character is extremely pretentious.

howlingfantods3• 11 years ago

Did you read the article? It's written by a 12 year old girl pointing out that many popular games lack an option to select a female character.

Nowhere does it imply men are chauvinist pigs out to further a male-dominated agenda. The fact that you have extrapolated as such is probably more indicative of your own personality and prejudices than anything else.

No one is saying men should be sorry for being men. My takeaway is that the world would run a bit better if we all had a bit more empathy and more awareness of how our actions might perpetuate institutionalized biases.

clay_to_n2• 11 years ago

Your comment has no basis in this article. You're projecting a lot of hate, presumably based on your stereotypes of feminists.

This article is just a 12 year old girl wishing she could play as a girl more often.

token78• 11 years ago

So, has it completely escaped the attention of the makers of mobile games that almost 60% of gamers on mobile platforms are women? Seriously - It's kinda odd that one of the defining characteristics of the mobile gaming market doesn't actually seem to be reflected in what the industry is releasing.

It's one hell of an omission, and actually, there's got to have been a lot of opportunity missed.

And the icing on that cake? On mobile, female gamers are actually way more loyal players (42% higher 7-day retention on average versus males), they also spend about 35% more time in gaming appss, oh and they're also spending around 31% more on In-App-Purchases than their male counterparts too.

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-...

anaximander• 11 years ago

I like everything about this article (especially the careful research and evidence-gathering), except for this bit at the end:

  The lack of girl characters implies that girls are not equal to boys and they don’t deserve characters that look like them.

I would ask the author (and readers) to consider more possible explanations.

imaginenore• 11 years ago

How can you even tell a boy character from a girl character? It's not like they show the genitalia.

hobarrera• 11 years ago

What I fail to see is: why is the gender of the characters so important? It doesn't seem to make any difference on the mentioned games (unlike, eg: Diablo II, where the female characters had different skillsets from the male ones).

I've never understood why so many people feel compelled to play with a character with the same gender/race/etc as themselves.

What amazes me even more, is that people are willing to pay for this.

evanwalsh• 11 years ago

I think people want to identify with the media they consume and games are different from more passive forms because of player agency. However, if the avatar in the game is supposed to be "you", but it doesn't even begin to look like you, then you don't identify as much.

I, for one, relish a game that doesn't make me play as Johnny Brownhair-Whiteguy, but I have the benefit of being a white male with brown hair. I have the benefit of being catered to by most video games. If I could less often play as someone that looked like me, I think I'd start to feel excluded.

Nexxxeh• 11 years ago

I'm don't look like any of the video game characters from the games I play, regardless of gender.

An extreme diet and a lot of gym time and a set of stilts might get me somewhere near Agent 47, or binge eating and a wig might move me towards something E Honda-esque. IDGAF.

One of the MMORPGs I play as a female character coz I preferred the character model. She has green hair. In real life, I don't have enough hair left to warrant the pack of bleach and color.

It's not real. It's a video game. I'd be as happy playing as Katniss as I would Peeta, if those are the Hunger Game options.

Video games aren't the story of us. They're the story of someone else. That's the point.

I'm not a humanoid fox with a star fighter, I'm not an elf tasked with saving the world. I'm not a hired assassin or a warrior with long red hair fighting a tyrant.

jhwhite• 11 years ago

Is it bad this makes sense to me though?

If the makers of the game added a female character that would be extra cost from a platform, front end, and art perspective. Thereby pushing the cost of the game up for everyone when it's probably still mostly males who play the game.

So the cost of adding a female player is recouped by the people that want to play a female character.

If the makers added in a female character to begin with the game might cost a little more, but in app economics there seems to be a big difference in $1.

I wonder how many males that buy games only buy games that offer both genders as playable characters.

I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

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