The comment above reads:
"I wouldnāt buy it, if the game had a female lead; nothing against women. As a man, I just feel more comfortable playing as a male, just being blunt."
This was made in light of the Assassinās Creed Unity controversy and it got me angry. And because I am angry, I got to thinking. I generally stay quiet about this kind of thing on Tumblr, but nah. Not this time. Itās going to be short because Iām too riled up to really form coherent thoughts, so I will end this quickly. I promise.
In 2013, a study was conducted by EEDAR, a video game research firm, in which they looked at 669 that had protagonists with discernible genders. Of the 669 games, they found that only 24 of them had female protagonists. Thatās just barely 3.5%.
Which leads me to my point.
Women make up about 50% of video game players. Imagine if every single woman that was a fan of gaming refused to play games featuring male protagonists. Statistically speaking, the sales of those games would be cut in half.
Most of us just want to play our games, so we put up with it (and I know I am not speaking only for myself when I say that a lot of those male protagonists really do mean a lot to us), but why is it so difficult for people to grasp that we want to play as women, too? And why is that a bad thing? Lara Croft is one of the most iconic video game characters of all-time and she is a woman.
Let me go ahead and repeat that comment from above:
"I wouldnāt buy it, if the game had a female lead; nothing against women. As a man, I just feel more comfortable playing as a male, just being blunt."
Yeah. Okay. Imagine how women feel having to play as a man 95% of the time.
Even if women might not be 50% of all gaming (it depends on the genre), women still likely make up more than 3,5% of the gamers so the point still stands. Why are some men such cry babies?
