It's not just RPGs and anime, it's throughout a lot of Asian pop-culture and media. Most Chinese/Japanese/Korean tend to see fairer skin as a lot more attractive than darker skin.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToriJ
It's not just RPGs and anime, it's throughout a lot of Asian pop-culture and media. Most Chinese/Japanese/Korean tend to see fairer skin as a lot more attractive than darker skin.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToriJ
They even went as far as turning Aladdin white & giving him a Dutch name like Vaan.Quote:
Originally Posted by RostumIt's not just RPGs and anime, it's throughout a lot of Asian pop-culture and media. Most Chinese/Japanese/Korean tend to see fairer skin as a lot more attractive than darker skin.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToriJ
The "scandal" of Gamergate arose when it came out that a Kotaku journalist had a sexual relationship with a developer he provided coverage for. Some youtube personalities used this as an opportunity to discuss journalism ethics and the close relationship between the media and developers/publishers. Unfortunately, a few bad eggs harassed the crap out of the female dev involved. Kotakuand Polygon lumped this in with the contemporaneous harassment of Anita Sarkeesian (which drove her from her home) as representative of the "#Gamergate" crowd as a whole. Leigh Alexander went one step further and said gamers as a whole are socially-inept misogynists and it's been a giant internet civil war ever since.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hannibal_Khan
I wasn't sure how far it went so I just named the things I knew for sure.Quote:
Originally Posted by RostumIt's not just RPGs and anime, it's throughout a lot of Asian pop-culture and media. Most Chinese/Japanese/Korean tend to see fairer skin as a lot more attractive than darker skin.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToriJ
When I was in Tokyo, I saw a significant number of females walking around with parasols in the streets to avoid getting anything that could resemble a tan. So yeah.
In many ways this is kind of a dumb time to be doing an all-male game. Frankly, women in games are woefully under-represented and in the last couple of years studios have finally started getting called out on it quite significantly. And I'm definitely one of the people doing the calling, you look around especially at 'AAA' games and there are just too many straight white dudes hogging the limelight.
...However.
Final Fantasy XV gets away with it here - at least in principle. Usually, one of the defences against putting more women in is "creators shouldn't have to stifle their creativity by putting more women in," which is an argument that falls down because they're not excluding women because of their 'creativity,' they're excluding them because they just don't consider them. Many of us are guilty of this, even me - I'm a straight white dude, so that's what my characters default to in a work of fiction. It does take some conscious effort to change your own prejudices. But in this case the defence I mentioned kinda stands up. Tabata has specifically said this is a story focussing on a theme of brotherhood which is a perfectly valid theme to tackle. That's a genuinely OK story related reason that might mean you leave out female characters.
We want more women in games not only because we want to better represent a large and growing player base, but because we want more variety and diversity in our games. Focussing on a theme like brotherhood which is very rarely explored is a different way of giving us variety and diversity. The other thing to remember is FF usually has loads of women in it - the last three console games have all had a female lead. Say what you like about the quality of those leads, the fact is they were there and flying the proverbial flag. So this is a series that generally does have its priorities right - that is inclusive and progressive. If the next three games are all just full of dudes, then we have a problem. But just for a one off? I don't think there's really much reason to criticise them.
Maybe not as much in japan, but in south korea and china it is "a lot".Quote:
Originally Posted by MirageIt certainly happens, but I don't think it's a big enough percentage to be called "a lot".Quote:
Originally Posted by Hannibal_KhanYea especially with female characters. Stella looks damn near swedish. We shouldn't be surprised by that either, Alot of women thoughout Asia are increasingly getting plastic surgery to get more caucasion features. The XV male characters still look japanese to me tho. Who wants to bet XV development team is 90%+ male lolQuote:
Originally Posted by ToriJMore like they white wash the majority of Asians in their RPGs and anime.Quote:
Originally Posted by Depression MoonThey don't have many white people over there either, but JRPGs always seem to have them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hannibal_KhanWho's the three? I dont mind FFXV not having black dudes tho, w/ sazh they proved they don't write well for black characters. Although we should not be surprised by this, Japan has almost zero black ppl and they don't want that to change(their immigration policies would imply as much).Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirage
Always wondered about that.
It is perhaps worth noting that from FFX onwards, the ratio of male to female playable characters has been in favour of females when you consider all direct sequels.
FFX: 4-3 (male lead)
FFX-2: 0-3 (female lead)
FFXII: 4-3 (technically male lead, but really depends on whether you feel Vaan, Balthier or Ashe are the protagonist)
FFXIII: 3-3 (female lead)
FFXIII-2: 1-1 (female lead)
LR:FFXIII: 0-1 (female lead)
Result: 12-14 in favour of females, with mostly female leads and two games where only females were playable (notably in LR, the only character who enters your party from the previous games at any point is Fang, another female).
If this were on the back of male-dominated games such as VI, VII or IX then I could probably understand a revolt for the 5 males 0 females playable in this game, but we're not in that situation.
^ haha that's a lot of ladies in FF!!!
I was just watching a video analysis of ff15 and the dude narrating it was commenting about how he doesn't like that it's an all male cast and there needs to be a playable female because "the game needs a hott character"
I cant understand wanting a playable female, to just have the option, and some diversity, but to flat out want a female playable character just to have eye candy and watch her boobs bounce when she attacks isn't really a good reason... She wouldn't be there to add to the plot or the game, just to simply make someone want to wank. And personally I think that's pretty shallow D:
And if you don't consider direct sequels? There is just no way a main FF game (not a sequel) would ever feature an all-female cast and that's part of what people's gripe is about. You can throw out any number of combinations to show that SE has a pretty even distribution of male to female cast (and they do a good job there) but that doesn't change the fact that having an all male cast for a main numbered entry is significant. Sequels have much less hype and give Square much more freedom to experiment and it is not a coincidence that all of the female-heavy games have been sequels.
FFXI and XIV aren't direct sequels and have female leads if you choose to do so ;)
But seriously, I'm for this for FFXV. "Brotherhood". That's something that's not been done before with FF, I'm looking forward to the banter! It will be good to have a party of TRUE friends, rather than people just randomly put together to fulfil their destiny!
And it's not like women aren't being represented in FFXV. We have Stella and Luna who will have major roles within the game. Then there's the black haired girl and possibly other unannounced females. I'm sure they will just as prominant, just not playable.
That's just cheating as there is no"lead" characters in those ones :p
I disagree that they would never have an all female cast, I can see them doing such a thing. Whether they do or not depends on whether they feel it's right.Quote:
Originally Posted by Del Murder
I don't think it's an issue that there is an all male cast because I genuinely don't think there is any sexism involved in the decision. If anything, they are being brave to not have females, considering how massive the appeal is for FF fans to have a female playable character.
To my knowledge, this is the first time it's happened for FF and I don't think it should be turned into a Big Deal. It's one thing to say that females should be fairly represented in gaming, it's another thing to say that you can't have an all-male cast in gaming.
Ironically, giving them too much grief over the all male cast could actually prevent an all female class in the future.
"OK, so for XVI we have these 5 party members. We wanted to explore a theme of sisterhood, so they're all women, and they-"
"Woah. Woah. Woah."
"...yes?"
"Remember the **** we got last time for doing that with dudes? No more creative license for you buddy, 50/50 split."
":'("
Fine by me. :p
And yeah, this isn't really a big deal, just something to talk about on the internet. Would you rather we not talk about FFXV? :p