During the development of Uncharted: Golden Abyss, the developers at Sony Bend realized they'd gone down the wrong track with its leading lady -- "Almost universally, focus testers hated Chase, the game's new female protagonist," writes Bend's John Garvin, in a new Gamasutra postmortem of the Vita launch title.
"The problem, we discovered, was the writing. In the script, Chase's character was a bit of a smart ass and a little sarcastic," writes Garvin. Thinking "players were going to love" the Chase he'd crafted, Garvin was surprised when he found out "it didn't work out that way."
While the developers had initially resisted focus testing, they quickly moved beyond that and realized they had problems to solve.
On one hand, the Bend developers had perpetuated some unfortunate stereotypes. Players called her a wimp, which Garvin admits is a "fair assessment."
"For gameplay reasons, we constantly put Chase into situations where Drake needed to take action. Call it lazy if you want, but we ended up with a few 'Princess Peach' scenarios... It seemed that poor Chase was constantly being choked, shot at, knocked out, dragged around and kidnapped. We fixed that, as well as we could, by changing the scenarios to make Chase less of a victim."
In one key scene, Chase was passively strangled by a thug while Drake came to her rescue -- but in the rewrite, she kicked him and escaped, with Drake covering her. They also made her less of a whiner -- in the original portrayal, she'd been "crying out every time Drake fell victim to a rickety structure (which he was prone to do), or every time something bad or unexpected happened."
Though the developers had strived to improve their portrayal of Chase, they were running up against another problem -- players also labeled her a "bitch," which Garvin believes was "unfair".
"What's that old adage? If a man acts forceful he's 'take-charge and aggressive, a real leader' but if a woman acts that way, she's being 'pushy and a bitch' -- an unfair gender stereotype, but one we had to deal with," he writes. "How? By making her less aggressive and critical."
"By the time we got to our third focus test, the replacement lines were in and focus testers stopped complaining about Chase," Garvin writes.
You can read more about the focus testing process for Golden Abyss -- as well as much more about the game's overall development, co-written with his Sony Bend colleagues -- in the full postmortem, which is live now on Gamasutra.
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Try writing the script for a male lead with a female love interest then flip the gender(s) and fix the details.
Then, right before blessing a draft of the script as "ready", flip them back and see how well it plays.
It might not be the job of game developers to change culture, but if the reaction really was based on popular sexist predispositions, I would have been far more impressed if they didn't make special effort to make her less intimidating to male players.
There are so many examples of unlikeable characters becoming fan favorites through character development and clever framing. But I can understand that when you are in the midst of game development, the less you need to rewrite to get a positive result, the better.
Well, so which one was it, was she a forceful leader or aggressively critical?
Because forceful female leaders seldom illicit negative responses in video games, and certainly not the "bitch" stereotype (FemShep).
Being aggressively critical however does, and plays to the "bitch" stereotype (nagging housewife stereotype).
I guess it comes down to knowing your audience because you are always going to have people who hold an opposing viewpoint.
Not so much. If someone's being forceful and aggressive as to appear a egotistical, chauvinist pig, it's probably because he's being forceful and aggressive at the expense of a woman or women.
Sounds like the characteristics, that let Lara Croft become the most successful female video game character.
Femininity and masculinity aren't valued by their sexual stereotypes, they are valued by holding true to morality (majority here not everyone ~of course). As example, you can be a totally anti social butt head, if people understand your meaning and reasoning to be "good", or at least are willing to hold the suspension of disbelief in the contrary communication you display.
Case scenarios ~ Mass effect Ashley Williams strongly demonstrated female identity ~ angry cynical, defiant and yet good. Do we know if she will be good or evil in the end? No, we know however she feels contempt for injustice / evil. Is she a bitch? I would be willing to lay a bet most (young) people would say ~ yes. The larger and more profound question, is she acceptable, as a personal character representation. Most definitely, with flying colours. She demonstrates her beliefs through her actions.
Tali is ?, No one really understands her motivations, they are disguised not only in appeared but a shroud of foreign motivational mystery.
Another example of strong female character
Faridah Malik in DE:Human Revolution.