What is it with the rarity of female antropomorphic characters?

Gian-Reto Alig · 2017-06-20T08:17:15

I was not sure where to put this topic, it has to do with story and characters, so I guessed the writing subforum would be the best place. The Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer from E3 got me thinking about a topic I was puzzled about before: why the hell are almost all the antropomorphic characters we get in non-cartoon games male? Why are their supporting femal main characters most of the time completly human? As its a trailer, I guess there is not much to spoil... in any case, watch it if you haven't, the trailer looks amazing... actually missed the first game, but Ubisoft certainly got me interested in the series now. Fingers crossed Ubisoft does not F*** up like so often in the last few years and delivers a good, cohesive, FINISHED game. Now, in the Trailer we see about 5 or so characters in any detail.... 3 of them female, 2 male(-ish). All the females look completly human. All the males are antropomorphic. One is a Monkey-man, one is a Pig-man (yes, antropomorphic means "Furry" in common net-speak, lets get that out of the way and never mention it again, thank you... nothing against you furries, if you are reading this, I just want to prevent this thread derailing into discussion of the Furry lifestyle). Now I give the trailer extra points for featuring a black woman as one of the main protagonists. Cool to see more racial diversity in games. But I am a little bit puzzled as to why all the women are human? Now I did check on the first game, its the same thing there. I have not played the games so know nothing about the story, maybe there IS a story reason as to why only male Antropomorphic creatures seem to feature in them. If there is, please let me know. But I guess this has little to do with it making sense in the story, and more being a trend I have noticed for a long time in different media. Which is the topic I'd like to discuss... maybe people have different ideas, or some insight into why things are the way they are in many storys, be they games, movies or books. Lets get the disclaimers out of way: I will discuss anime and japanese games. If you are so disgusted by even reading about this, this is your chance to bail from the topic. And no, I am no Furry. I just happen to like interesting fantasy creatures. Antropomorphic creatures, well done, can be FANTASTIC fantasy creatures. Well. I did mention it again. Oh well.... I will NOT go into the topic of diversity in games to deeply, and try to avoid it outside of the topic, which is antropomorphic creatures. While I would like to see a fat woman which is properly clad kick ass, or thin weak looking man not going totally dudebro on hordes of enemies from time to time, that is not what I want to discuss. And to avoid an often divisive topic in the discussions of games as a whole, lets not go there here. Oh, and I will try to avoid spoilers. I will keep them for older games I'd like to discuss, but I will give a warning beforehand. Now, lets roll in some evidence to build a case. Lets start with a positive example, that does fall short in some aspects, but at least delivers the female antropomorphs: Breath of Fire. If you read through my posting history, I must sound like a broken record by now. I love the Breath of fire series! Not because the games are anything special mechanics wise (they are good JRPG, just nothing special compared to other JRPGs of the time), or the story is particularly good (well, it IS for BoF IV which has one of the best JRPG storys I have had the opportunity to expierience... generally, the story is rather run of the mill). What sets these games apart from others for me is the setting, the characters, the general visual presentation. For one, the graphics always have been quite beatiful. In a very colorful, bold way. More importantly, its a fantasy world that is distinctly non-tolkien... instead of elves or goblins you get antropomorphic creature as non-human intelligent species. The series managed to create and keep its very own, very distinct tone, up to the illfated last installment (which I am sure has its own cult following given it tried a lot of radical new ideas at the time). Now, let me give you an introduction to the characters in the game (light spoiler alert): The part 1 to 4 in the series play, more or less, in the same world, at different timelines. All of them recycle the player character, Ryu, and one of the other party characters, Nina. Which are pretty uninteresting characters save for Nina being what I see as a bad antropomorphic character, but I get to that later. Ryu on the other hand is your usual main player "Avatar"-character... the character that looks almost identical in all the JRPGs featuring such a player Avatar, which never talks and has most of the time a rather cliche backstory. Only in Part 4 he gets a more intersting story, but that would be quite a big spoiler and not relevant to the discussion. The other characters are specific to the game, even though characters from older games might make an appereance in later titles. 2 female antropomorphic characters stand out for me that show what I think are great antropomorphic character designs. Katt from BoF 2 and Ursula from BoF 4. Katt is a woren (catmen) Fighter you pick up as a party member when you beat her in a colloseum match. I think she is a great character both from a visual design aspect as well as from her character backstory. She is an antropomorphic cat woman head to tail, including fur with proper tiger markings and all. Backstory wise she has gotten a cohesive, well thought out character which happens to match her cat influenced appeareance without being to cliche... she is a quite short tempered, a little bit simple minded fighter with brutish strength, but little magical abilities. this a little bit cliche characterization is softened by showing mutliple times that she has a big heart and is very loyal once someone has won her trust. A well round character IMO both visually and backstory wise. Ursula is some kind of Fox woman who works as a military officer in the evil(-ish) empire which is the main antagonist at the beginning in BoF 4. Her antropomorphic traits cannot easely be attributed to any living animal creature, because she has a distinct old chinese aesthetic to her that go beyond her clothing and spread to her antropomorphic attributes. Still, she looks quite antropomorphic on the outside. And she is jsut such a cool character, cold and militaristic. Momo from BoF 3 I don't care so much about, but at least visually she is also a positive example. A similar antropomorphic creature like Ursula, she looks more like a Dog woman. Now all these female antropomorphic characters are great characters in their own right and are great antropomorphic hybrids... its just a little bit telling that compared to their male counterparts (with the exception of the male woren characters, which all have a rather human face), their faces are distinctively more human looking. Why not give them more dog like faces for example? Then there are the bad examples in BoF too... Nina being the most prominent. Besides mostly being a boring character, her only antropomorphic traits are her wings. Now creating good looking Bird men that make sense from their physical appearance while still looking human enough to touch the reader/viewer certainly is not easy. But this is the lame way out. The result is not an interesting Bird/Human hybrid... its a human with wings. To be fair though, all the male members of her clan also are humans with wings. Nothing of interest added. So lets just dismiss that as a case of shoddy character design. There is alos Bleu, a half human, half snake being. Now, I get that she is literal hal-half-deal, like with centaurs. Still, I would have wished for the antropomorphic design to be extended to her upper half. at least skin colors and scales, if nothing else. On the other hand, the male antropomorphic characters, besides the catmen, are much more animalistic in looks... For people wanting to read up on the BoF lore and see character pics: http://bof.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Lets move on. Lets get into anime, because the japanese seem to be generally more interested in antropomorphic designs outside of cartoonish settings. I just lately started to watch this new anime series, Grimoire of Zero. Generally I find it a rather entertaining series, even if some things don't add up and not all characters are that interesting. The important part is: out of the leading 4 characters 2 are antropomorphic. Both also are male. The female characters are not antropomorphic. Now, don't get me wrong, there are good story reasons for that, beastmen in this backstory are humans that have been turned into such hybrids by a curse. And with the female characters being witches which obviously seem to be imune to said curse... yeah, it makes sense. But it just shows an unwillingness from the director and storywriters to make their female cast antropomorphic even in storys where it would make sense to do so. Another Anime I have recently watched is Outbreak company. Well, its mostly interesting because it works with the same basic premise as that "JSDF ad" Gate, but then does something completly different (and somewhat better, thank god) with it. Besides the usual genre cliches (much too young protagonist, attractive women magically attracted to him, yaddayaddayadda), its an entertaining series. What stood out to me is that while we have a male AND a female antropomorphic character in the protagonists "party", the female one looks again way more human than the male one. (Actually its a shame the male one, a fully blown lizardman, does not get more screen time. Given how he is portrayed as an intelligent man really going against the cliche of the stupid lizardman, he would have been a very cool character to see more of). Way back more than a decade ago I read a quite good Manga series... cannot remember the name for the life of me. Besides some slip ups it was a really good, epic story about a world engulfed in war, filled by antropomorphic species. What stood out negatively to me was that the main cast had 2 female characters (actually with quite cool stories), but their only antropomorphic trait was some horns... while their male fellows (and lover, in one case) where fully blown antropomorphic creatures with fur, tails, and partially animal faces. What is it about female antropomorphic characters that seems to make them such a risk to a wide range of artists, directors and writers? Why do they always seem to go light on antropomorphic traits added to females or shying away from making femal characters antropomorphic in the first place, when they show little such restraint with the male characters (sometimes with goofy results, but often enough with very good results when done well)? Is it because there is a fine line from when an antropomorphistic character design no longer looks like an exotic beauty when more and more antropomorphic traits are added? Is it that directors, writers and artist think their female cast HAVE to look pleasing to the eye? Is it the intended audience which in the devs mind does react negatively to that (which, given I am not the only male fan of such fantasy world wishing for more antropomorphic females and less restraint when designing them, is obviously misrepresented in their focus tests and market data)? Or do you see an actual reason for this trend that has nothing to do with devs trying to cater to an audience? Am I interpreting too much into this?

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by Gian-Reto June 15, 2017 03:12 PM

11 comments, last by Gian-Reto 6 years, 10 months ago

FRex

1,798

June 19, 2017 05:43 PM

The thing is, in the first Beyond it was really sad or peaceful most of the time. I mean really, can you imagine song like this fitting into the new game:

And that deal with outright stealing from the pig, the swearing, the innuendo. I mean, it's not like Jade wasn't a cute petite Asian tomboy and Mei a catgirl but it was all tasteful and realistic-ish with outfits and behavior. Beyond 2 trailer is balls to the wall with edge and trying to be too cool for school. Like if you landed on Hyllis tomorrow you'd fit right in after getting used to sapiens other than homo, if you landed in Beyond 2 you'd wonder WTF is this planet full of assholes.

And that's in addition to other problems, like why do they have jetpacks (Pey'j in the game had jet bootz, but they were his life's magnum opus), why are there hovercrafts/hoverbikes everywhere (there weren't any on Hyllis and Alpha Section can be assumed to have been galaxy's top level of tech), why do main characters fight the police, why is police evil/stupid (big part of first game was Hyllian army and people being good guys, you never endangered civilians), etc.

Hyllis was a calm mining planet full of nature, animals and hard working honest people, and this is.. I don't even understand. This looks like Prey 2017 or Resident Evil 7 level of reboot almost. It's like Scrapland and Fifth Element and some edginess under Beyond label, I'm not too hopeful for it. I guess it might be worth it for the publisher, these reboots were highly acclaimed, but fans of first Beyond who aren't into edginess will be left disappointed.

And there rarely were action scenes like these. Ending and some optional pearls had such scenes but most of first Beyond was stealth, snapping pics, racing, flying around in the hovercraft, etc. Apparently writers didn't know how to continue after first Beyond but the ending had Pey'j grow a DomZ tumor on his hand and it could deal with that, or with DomZ on another planet (they were interplanetary) or with fighting Alpha Section on another planet (ditto) or with Jade's new powers, but instead we got this.

Back on topic of female furries: in Jade Empire there are fox spirits (these games are too kind to us ) at one point in one of the celestial levels, it's not anime but it is kinda an Asian themed game.

Gian-Reto

7,096

Author

June 20, 2017 08:17 AM

Well, I know next to nothing from first game (so go light on the spoilers please ), but I guess they HAD to move the lore forward somehow. Or at least the writers might have felt that way. I have seen that go both ways, especially when done out of desparation over falling player numbers *cough*Warhammer Fantasy (R.I.P.)*cough*...

The long hiatus between the 2008 trailer and the 2017 one might be also down to a complete overhaul and rewrite of the whole story for the second game? Probably some high up bean counter felt the initial concept, and the first game didn't really fit their focus group well enough?

But as you said it back to the topic.

See, I am sure there are positive examples. I am just not sure why they are so rare. Especially the sexy full furry type of female antropomorph, which can fit perfectly well into the waifu stereotype female characters in many games have to fit in (as long as they are not the main character).

Is it just the game dev bean counters making the shots lacking imagination and their focus testing not really asking the right question, or is there really a study somewhere that shows antropomorphs to be less effective as waifu type characters than fully human girls? Is the average (focus tested) gamer antropomorphophobic? Or just antropomorphogynophobic? If you get my drift here?

What is it with the rarity of female antropomorphic characters?

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What is it with the rarity of female antropomorphic characters?

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