What can be done to make women feel more included in the FGC?

Off-Topic
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True, there’s all different walks of life. Saying something will appeal to “all” women is as silly as saying it will appeal to “all” men. I guess I’m thinking less about how to better “market” fighting games to women, so much as how to make them feel like a welcome part.

That EVO tournament I was talking about, it wasn’t just the costume choices. I think part is that, of all the matches we watched, the only one we caught with a woman competing was gllty, and that was the most exciting part for them by far. It was almost depressing when she got eliminated, like so did their feeling of representation. (I know there were other women competing at EVO, I just mean from that spectator perspective is all)

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I see what you’re saying, so no SJW yelling coming from me. SFV, for example, seems understandably hard for someone who’s not turned on by women to take seriously. That game is full of crotch shots and cleavage dives. Only in the context of being mildly horny is that stuff not awkward.

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I’d certainly be interested in hearing from more women on this topic, as it’s tough to make assumptions when you’re not, ya know, that which you’re talking about and analyzing; like how it always looks weird to see a bunch of old white guys in congress debating women’s issues.

Regardless though, I don’t personally think it’s as much a matter of removing exploitation. Sure, that couldn’t hurt, but I tend to doubt that most women want to waltz in and change everything, as they see how threatening that tends to be.

Plus, women see exploitation everywhere in our culture and they still, by and large, purchase things with objectifying, forced gender normative, or exploitative marketing. That doesn’t make it okay, obviously, so why stay away from the gaming scene and not other stuff? Perhaps they put up with other stuff out of necessity? I dunno.

For this conversation though, it’s an interesting issue that certainly goes beyond the FGC and in to gaming at large. I think that gaming, for whatever reason, has come in to it’s own with the perception that it’s a “boys” hobby. Much like girls would never watch He-Man or Thunder Cats growing up, because those are “boys” shows, right? Made by men, consumed by men, right? Well…

I know that this is anecdotal, but a lot of women I know watched those shows and played video games when they were younger or still do now. Sure, my lady loves Mario Kart, but she also grew up on Mortal Kombat and loves the Soul Calibur and DOA series. I’m sure we all know women that like things that are stereotypically “guy things,” whether it’s certain music, sports, games, etc. Fun isn’t gender normative, just as it’s not age normative or race normative. The recoil some people have, to me, seems more like cultural bias / ignorance.

So if you start off from a place of cultural bias and gender normative behavior, you’re going to have a lot of women avoiding gaming right off the bat and certainly avoiding doing so publically, lest they be considered a tomboy, butch, trying to impress the guys, or any other way of saying “different.”

But then you take it one step further and you go in to why a lot of women don’t feel compelled to assimilate themselves in to gaming communities, which tend to be male dominated.

Well, I think that’s part of the issue right there. I’d have to think that it’d be rather intimidating or even off-putting to try and insert yourself in to a large group that’s not like you. My lady has a book club and the only people that go to it are women (not by rule, that’s just how it shook out). I went once and it felt strange. I felt very out of place, and that was by no fault of the women there.

So you have that aspect.

Plus, in gaming, you have both the anticipation of harassment as well as actual harassment. Both, I would assume, can be rather deterring factors. Women get harassed online constantly, so going to a place where you hear about Gamer Gate and what not and trying to entrench yourself there would probably seem like a battle to some, and one not worth fighting go many others. Again, just assuming here.

So right there, you have cultural gender expectations, potential alienation as well as perceived and actual, real harassment. Not to mention the added distaste some might get from the more exploitative aspects mentioned before in terms of character designs, game goals, etc. That’s a LOT of stuff to stack against someone that’s just looking to play some games with people.

How do we turn ALL of that around? How do we do away with the tree house mentality, the hobby’s perception, the for us / by us character designs etc?

Honestly? I don’t see a silver bullet, as I think the only real solution is time. Time marches on as progress marches on. More women are getting involved in the industry all the time. The more women get involved and the more our cultural sensibilities change about who plays games, who makes games and what characters should look like and how they should function in the gaming world, etc, the more this genre and this medium mature and evolve; becoming a welcoming place for everyone.

In the meantime, all we can do is treat people respectfully and do our own part to be welcoming and treat people the way we’d want to be treated; not as delicate or different, but as friends.

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Oddly enough that is how most professional level gaming is though, not just fighting games. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a lady at a Halo World Cup or Evolve competition.

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I think she got a community spotlight interview a couple months back. Go in the ultra combo news archive and look it up.

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MKX also has female fighters proportioned like normal people.

Honestly IDK what capcom had in mind when designing their female fighters… On one side, they are sl-utty to attract men, on other hand, they look like plastic dolls and simply unattractive. Sl-uttiness combined with HD Team Fortress 2 graphics (thats how sf5 looks for me) simply does not work.

Laura`s underboob looks awful, that is not breasts are attached to chest. Mika breasts also look too artificial to me.

Sorry, I can go on and on with SF5 flaws. I wanted to buy this game at one point, but there is so many things wrong with it.

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There is a lot to this. I’ve hosted numerous KI events to try and drive engagement (I made a big post about the one I did for the KI cup this year, and thank Christ I didn’t do one for EVO or I would have looked like a fool), and each time the women tune in and out, or try it and mash some buttons, laugh along with Max and enjoy good commentary but ultimately feel the game isn’t something they want to really devote to.

I say this as someone who is married to a gamer girl, who plays between six and twelve hours a day on various platforms. It’s not the violence – she has played every Assassin’s Creed game, Witcher and the like. It’s not the misogyny – she’s on teamspeak all the time and we lose a raid group every couple of months because of the crushes of her twentysomething teammates going wrong. It’s not even the lack of role models, even given that the few female players out there (with the exception, I believe, of Chereez) are T guys (and that does make a difference). All those things hurt, but beyond that, the very nature of fighting games themselves seems anathema to a lot of women. There’s not a lot of aesthetic value or the artistic (with the exception of anime games, but Japanese games objectify women far worse than American ones); the stories are often incomprehensible or laughable, there’s no real teamwork and you’re just left with two people in a battle of reflexes and preprogrammed actions trying to beat each other’s sprites to hell and back, often with incredibly classless displays (teabagging, taunts and multiple ultras in KI spring instantly to mind).

The social component was at a premium when I was growing up in offline competitions as well, even in arenas where reactions weren’t at a premium (like chess/checkers versus board or card games, or golf versus things like swing dancing), even in enterprises where they went out of their way to try and recruit young women. Ultimately, it’s my experience that the different genders just enjoy different things, and one-on-one confrontation in any form just isn’t something women seek out or enjoy without being artificially driven in that direction. Contrasted with MMOs, team-based FPS games, and party games (which have minority or significant female populations) and the single-player mobile or console F2P experience (which is majority women), the FGC creates a hostile environment that promotes direct conflict, stresses instantaneous reaction time and motor control and takes incredible amounts of time to rise beyond casual at.

I don’t see how you square that circle.

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To start off, let me say, i’m ALL FOR gender equality, KI is probably the most character equal fighting game you’re ever gonna get. Just because the female gender isn’t one to usually play fighting games does not mean KI isn’t being inclusive. Sure, sex sells, and people can design characters HOWEVER THEY WANT, that does not mean they’re shunning against the female audience, they’re (female community) just NOT INTERESTED. It’s like going to the mall for clothing shopping. Sure, some guys dig it, but most don’t! You can’t change that. Heck, Fighting games also have a pretty high learning curve for “casuals” that very much keeps people playing it, let alone the female gender.

As for the twitch argument (from other comments), SO MANY FEMALES capitalize on their gender. Like, it’s freakin’ insane. Gender on the internet doesn’t matter because you don’t know until it’s stated, you’re not more special than anybody else, you don’t know if the person you’re talking to on a forum has a mental disease or is male or female, you’re all equal. So when somebody states their gender (usually female), nobody cares. NOBODY. It’s where the t!ts or GTFO thing came from, because nobody cares WHO they are, they just wanna go on about their internet lives. So when a big deal is made about gender, all people do is want them to GTFO.

Equality isn’t about splitting up tournaments into male/female tournaments, or making one group feel more special than the other, it’s literally just that, about being equal. No, you shouldn’t put tons more female fighters or female only tournaments, you’re just fracturing the community. So many people think to make one group equal to another, they need to make the “less represented group” feel more special.

(sorry to rant)

So to answer your question, no. There is nothing we can do to boost the “female audience” into fighting games, let alone most games in general.

Edit: made some points more clear

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Since I was asked… how do we go about creating our female characters? Much like we do our male ones too.

When we create characters, we try to think of them as real things first, instead of a fantasy first. From there, we define costume by theme and fighting style, to what would be appropriate for the role that character has, and the environments they typically inhabit, layering in their history as we go. We also take the trope into account, naturally, as that aligns easily with what people will expect from the look when just hearing about it.

We try to apply some common sense, when applicable. We assume that the character has to eat / feed, walk around, sleep, and do everything else they do based on who and what they are. Because of their line of work / existence, this also pushes on their outfit a bit. I covered this a bit with Cinder’s redesign - if he was just a “guy on fire”, how does he sit down on something? Or walk into a building? Have a conversation with someone not on fire? We want our characters to be able to do those things.

In a nutshell, we don’t draw a piece of sexy art and then fit a play style to it, we start with the design and mental approach and then dress the character for it.

Other games certainly take a different approach, and that’s OK, because some games aren’t in it for the reality of the world, they’re in it for the fantasy of the characters. Something tells me that even they know some of the costuming is a bit far at times. Notice that a certain nigh-artificially voluptuous female character never appeared in her default costume on the recently televised ESPN2 event, even once, even on character select? Coincidence?

It’s a truth that “sex sells” based on gender hard-wiring, but it’s an (IMO) cheap, somewhat disposable win to mainly the male side of the audience and it’s not one that we feel is empowering for women in the long term.

To answer the core question in the topic: Remove twitch chat or the anonymity of chat, make people accountable for their comments. Ban people for the toxicity that arises whenever a woman gets on an event, or… just make a game that’s more focused on what female gamers like to play.

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You did so well with ARIA. Truly masterpiece. :cry: :slight_smile:

On the subject on girl gamers. I say, hit the lab, show em’ what you got. It’s that easy. It’s even better when when they get really good and boys start getting salty. Ah, those are some good times.

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Thank you for Maya. So much. That is all.

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this approach towards the character designs is fantastic. I always felt that characters that were designed more or less as eye candy always felt too shallow and they never really clicked with me at all. However from this standpoint everything from fighting style to attire to speech helps give depth and personality to the cast, which funnily enough makes them far more attractive to me than just some scantily clad female character. In a nutshell, I find characters like Laura from SFV more forgettable than say Orchid.

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Cold hard truth? Women tend to gravitate more towards team-oriented endeavors/goals and not competition so much. I don’t think the FGC should go out of it’s way to change itself. It’s 1 v 1 in the end, and that simply doesn’t appeal to alot of women. You can call me whatever name you want, but facts are facts.

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Stop commenting if you’re not going to explain yourself or be kind. You’re being an improper, ignorant jerk.

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Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm… I’ll have to think on that.

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