Female Leads (Gaming)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Wednesday, January 06, 2016, 17:53 (3042 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by Korny, Wednesday, January 06, 2016, 17:58

I'm wondering if we are going to be coming up on a time when female leads are going to become prevalent, acceptable, and commercially successful in games. Life is Strange left a ripple in the industry, and coming up we have ReCore, Detroit, Mirror's Edge 2, Adrift, and probably more. The new Star Wars gave us a female lead character. The often used line is that games with male leads sell better and are more easily marketed. Is this even true still?

It would actually be very interesting if the games industry got to a decent parity more quickly than Hollywood… and I'm starting to think that might actually happen.

I'm currently replaying Beyond Two Souls on PS4, which also has a female lead. As an aside, anybody want to get the co-op trophy wth me? :-p

I'm probably going to be getting that with Sammy first, but afterwards, sure. :P

As cAddi pointed out, Tomb Raider has more than proven itself (A million units sold in under two months while competing directly against Fallout 4, and indirectly against Call of Duty and Halo 5) as a successful, female-driven franchise.

I don't think that gender of protagonist is really that important... For example, Gone Home has players playing as a female, but it doesn't really have any effect on the game, though the true "protagonist" of the game is her sister, whose gender does somewhat affect the plot of the game (and is actually contrasted... without really going too much into spoiler territory).

Black Ops 3 is also the first Call of Duty game to have a female lead (though Finest Hour did have a female player-controlled character), if one chooses her. The player's borderline-love interest deuteragonist is also female, which causes some implications (though the game doesn't draw attention to this fact). Three of the nine multiplayer characters are also female (against five males and one genderless robot).

Warframe generally introduces new characters on a "one male, one female" sequence, and there is some public outcry when they break from the pattern (heck, they even introduced a dual-gendered character, Equinox).

I think more and more games will simply let players choose their gender, and more folks are opening up to the idea of choosing to play as a female when given the option (Mass Effect, Destiny, etc.).
Heck, I have more of a personal connection to my female Hunter on Xbox than my male Hunter on PS4. Who knows...