Current Events > Kotaku under fire on Twitter for their Star Wars Outlaws article

(+) Yeah! (+)

So they wrote an article about backlash against women protaganists (Something you can find just five seconds of searching in any Steam forum), and then a bunch of gamergater incels immediately proved the article right.

This topic is going to bring all the The Quarterpounder fans out of the woodwork too I bet. Can you imagine looking at that very obese incel who works himself up into a right wing fury over the stupidest fucking fake controversies and thinking, "What an aspirational figure, this is a very intelligent man who I must consume all the youtube videos of".

Whoever wrote that probably doesnt believe it. They just know what generates engagement.

So they wrote an article about backlash against women protaganists (Something you can find just five seconds of searching in any Steam forum), and then a bunch of gamergater incels immediately proved the article right.

I mean seems like most protagonists these days are women.

So they wrote an article about backlash against women protaganists (Something you can find just five seconds of searching in any Steam forum), and then a bunch of gamergater incels immediately proved the article right.

Respect women, but I do have to wonder how many women protagonists we need before people stop saying "we need more women protaginists." Women protagonists are not rare at all anymore. The good fight has been fought, you can lay down your weapons.

R-word?

The fight is over when people stop being snowflakes about 'women and minorities in my videogames'.

It's not about the number of female protagonists, it's about the reaction to them.

Nobody pitched a fit over Shantae.

When people stop having an aneurysm over women or minorities in videogames, then we will know they have reached sufficient numbers.

They pitched something alright tho ayyyy

Why do these chuds make me want to defend fucking Kotaku.

Woman of color protagonist- fine.
Another plucky Disney ride protagonist - fuck that.
Like seriously, Boba Fett's Scooter Gang vibes from this main character.

*Funkydog needs to sort out their priorities
https://youtu.be/_oVnrq-6GnY

Are we really back to like 2013 gamergate and pretending that men and women have equal protagonist representation in aaa gaming?

But something something kotaku bad

1. There was backlash to the game? I thought it was pretty well received.
2. Even if there was, it proves that how?
3. Lol at the guy mansplaining "no, actually there are plenty of female characters! Here's 3!"

Remember when Kotaku told everyone to pirate Metroid Dread and got blacklisted by Nintendo?

1. There was backlash to the game? I thought it was pretty well received.
2. Even if there was, it proves that how?
3. Lol at the guy mansplaining "no, actually there are plenty of female characters! Here's 3!"

They are objectively bad.

Are we really back to like 2013 gamergate and pretending that men and women have equal protagonist representation in aaa gaming?

• In 2022, games where the only option was female made up 45% of games without player choice.
• In terms of all playable characters, 39% were female for multi-choice games
• In terms of "more or less", only 28% of multi-choice games had more female choices than male, with an additional 26% having an equal amount

We studied every game released in 2022, according to Game Informers game release schedule, between January 1st and May 18th (the date we published our research). This does not include every tiny indie game released into the world, but includes the vast majority of major titles and a large number of indie games too, across PC and consoles, and includes games developed all over the world.
There were 152 games released within the timeframe of our study.
We started by eliminating every game that was a re-release, remaster, or had previously been released on a different console. We didnt think it was fair to include these as examples of a 2022 release if they actually werent first released in 2022 at all. Sound good? We think so. 83 of the games were defined as re-releases, leaving us with 68 games to analyze.
We then determined which games had only preset playable characters, which games allowed users to customize their playable character (e.g. they had character creation functionality that allows players to change their gender, appearance and more), and which games had no known playable character (e.g. theyre never mentioned, or youre an inanimate object such as a car). 46 games had only preset playable characters, 12 games had fully customizable characters, 7 had no known character, and we eliminated 3 games due to being based on non-fictional sporting rosters (Rugby 22, MLB The Show 22 and WWE 2K22).*
Our study focused on the 46 games that only allow you to play with preset characters, meaning their gender and appearance were predefined by game developers, rather than chosen by individual gamers via freewill.
*Both Rugby 22 and MLB The Show 22 include no female teams or players, though these games were excluded from our findings.

We started by eliminating every game that was a re-release, remaster, or had previously been released on a different console.

You forgot the part where they were so mad about not getting an advanced copy from Nintendo that they decided to spoil ToTK by writing an article on all the leaks that were spilling out and proceeded to post a pic on Twitter of a WWII bomber that went for Japanese cities and basically went "mfw I don't get a video game early".

Summary:
In 2022, games where the only option was female made up 45% of games without player choice.
In terms of all playable characters, 39% were female for multi-choice games
In terms of "more or less", only 28% of multi-choice games had more female choices than male, with an additional 26% having an equal amount

Excluding remakes and remasters, which are a huge portion of the current market, is bad methodology. They had to exclude over 50% of new releases to get this result. You're not going to pretend Resident Evil 4 isn't a top three most talked about game of the year so far?

It's unsound logic that ignores the fact that the industry and market are so reliant on remakes right now and thus that decade(s) old, male-dominated IPs are still very much the face of the industry.