Adding female characters would “make our game appeal less to women”, says Chivalry developer
By Tim Colwill on November 1, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Why aren’t there any women in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare? Most historical games go for the ol’ “Because women weren’t in combat during that time period” when questioned about this, but not Torn Banner Studios.
Lead Chivalry developer Tibberius has answered a forumite’s question on the issue by saying that this would make the game appeal less to women — apparently because it would open them up to abuse.
“This is a tough one, I actually think that adding female characters to a game like this would make it appeal less to females. Which at first sounds strange, but from my experience of the general maturity level of the internet and the unfortunately male dominated FPS market… I don’t think that it would add to the experience for women or men given the actions that would likely occur,” he says.
“Hopefully that helps you understand why we decided not to go that route… I am totally fine with women fighting, but its the fact that it would probably overall harm the way the community would play the game that has me concerned.”
Tibberius’ logic is more than a little bit confusing: by the same token women should never be shown in online FPS games, in order to spare their feelings? Let us know what you think below, or sound off in tranquil’s Chivalry thread.
Source: VG247
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Kinda backwards. If your community can’t handle lady-fighters because they will purposely abuse/hurl insults at them that is a problem with the community. Adding playable women in a game helps makes it more appealing to women.
This is the same mentality as that BF3 LAN a while ago that, because women were always abused at their LAN, banned women.
If that behavior does bother them so much, then allowing more women to get into a game will ultimately help the community come to terms with losing their boys-club, standing idly by and making it apparent you’re not concerned enough to donate any kind of time or effort to make your game an enjoyable place for *all* gamers really shows that you don’t care all that much about the problem, and by the same token, neither will your players.
Also, sorry for lack of edit, final sentence is stupid long.
I’m really struggling to think of a single online fps that does have female characters.
The lack thereof cant be hurting sales that much at all, or every game would have female chars.
All games should just have sexless gray bipeds for characters. Problem solved :D
Sadly, I get where he’s coming from. Online FPS games are hardly the most mature places around, and I’m betting that if there were female characters it’d open the game up to a lot of sexist comments by idiots on their keyboard.
I think what he’s trying to say is that if they took the effort to add female characters to the game for females to play, they’d be more likely to be singled out and abused, making the game less fun overall.
It’s not a completely invalid position to take, particularly considering the bad press they’d likely get as a result. It’s not like it prevents girls playing the game anyway.
The thing is, it is a position. It’s not the normal “blah blah resources” it’s a “our solution is to not add women characters because then they will get abused”, the position their taking is ignoring women gamers desire to maybe get the same enjoyment male gamers get by having a character model that they can relate too, with the justification that the guys being sexist are bad, but not so bad that they can be bothered doing anything to stop them.
For press, yes vitriolic communities do garner bad press, but the developer only get’s that bad reputation when they refuse to acknowledge or act upon the sexism in their communities. On the flip side, like LoL with their new honour system, developers get good press and are more likely to get and maintain ladies if it’s shown the developer has an interest in giving them a fair space to play.
Finally, a girl can still play any game that has a male character, but you might be surprised at how frustrating and belittling it is to have your gender and half of gamers ignored by the majority of games simply because people out there are still convinced games are a man’s…game.
Again what this comes down to is just acting like the solution to the sexist, homophobic and racist community some games create is to just get rid of all the Women, LBGTQ and People of Colour who want to play games.
The more I hear from the Chivalry guys, the more convinced I am that they’ve never played Mount and Blade Warband. They really should- half their game design conundrums would be solved overnight. In particular they’d see that having females in a medieval fighting game doesn’t impact the online community negatively at all.
I would always choose females. Smaller hit boxes… Or is that just me?:P
It’s a hard position, you don’t put the female avatars in an get called sexist for assuming women need protecting. You put the female avatars in and something bad goes down like a virtual rape (Yes it’s happened, I remember reading about one that happened in Everquest) or a torrent of vastly inappropriate actions taken by a minority within the game and be called a monster for ever having thought of allowing female avatars that could be beheaded and mutilated (As something like this would get immediate and global media coverage). It’s almost a no win situation.
Until someone has the balls to standup and go “Hey, we’re adding female avatars because we respect our female playerbase” then we’re never going to get anywhere here.
You know, he could have just gone with the whole historical accuracy thing. (Even though there are accounts of women fighting around the time of the first crusade, until the church or something forbade them to) Instead, the Chivalry team (ironic name) seem to be making an effort to insult ladies. That’s how it looks to me, anyway.
What the hell. Have these guys like not played any MMO ever? A good percentage of those female avatars are guys anyway, and regardless it makes absolutely no difference to the ‘abuse’ anyone gets.
coatsy22,
Quake 2, Quake 3, UT, UT 2003 + 2004, UT3, HL DM, HL2 DM, Tribes, Tribes 2 come to mind though not that recent.
lol, argument = won.