There’s been a lot of grumbling about the lack of standard female avatars. In other words, eyes are on the fact that most protagonists are still white males. I have so few legit beefs with the gaming industry. This really isn’t one of them.

I’m a black man and I really don’t care about my gaming avatar that much. If I create one, sometimes I’ll get deep into it. In offline RPGs I’ll make a female avatar because I can only think of a handful of games where you play as a woman. Usually the avatar you throw at me is the avatar I’m playing as and I don’t really care. I mean I have gripes with the games industry but I don’t think I have the same view on it.

In the wide spectrum of life, I think of gaming as an activity not unlike any other. At their highest aspiration a gamer is now a “professional” or if you will, an athlete. Not a lot of professional activities at the highest levels are co-ed. Gaming is the one area where most of the people doing it aren’t confined to gaming with their gender because of the online community.  Now, I don’t really run into a lot of women online when I play. When I do, they are nice and sometimes harassment happens. It does to me once the color of my skin is revealed or I tell them to stop dropping the N-word. But whatever, that’s a different rant.

Point being, boys and girls found an activity to play together… finally… at long last!  We, as men, should stop making it such a shitty experience for them. I don’t care about my avatar, but apparently, they do.  I don’t know a lot of men that give a shit about their avatar either by the way.  You just play the game. You can make the avatars look however you want and we’ll only complain during cutscenes. The rest of the time, we’re staring at the back of their flippen head.  You want to save the groans from gamers? Nail the voice acting down.  Farcry 2…. great game, poor voice acting.  Farcry 3 was so good mostly because that voice acting… mostly from Vaas.  Yeah, you get to prance around the wilderness like Rambo but why do you keep doing it? You’re pulled in and you want to put a bullet in Vaas’ head.  Follow up question. What happens after you deal with Vaas? I rolled credits mentally in my mind after that point.

I’ve never had a gaming experience ruined by having a shitty avatar. Never has the gender, race or religion of the protagonist ever ruined my playthrough. I’ve never played a game and wished the gender was swapped. I’ll never get why some of these games are still branded as a “male fantasy” But whatever…

If any part of Game Nation feels left out, I feel as though it is the duty of the game makers to fill that void and for that group to eat it up. If they don’t like the end result, that’s one thing but you need to buy it. Developers produce the ideas they think they can sell. You got to remember that we’re talking about gigantic rooms full of creative people throwing every type of idea out there. They try to pick one really good one and cram as many of the other good ideas into it as they can. Then it goes through the machine, chewed up, spit out and now you have a baby.  I think developers have the obligation to fill this demand.  Make the game these women want.

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND:

Gamers can be complete and utter assholes. In 2014 … gamers now create petitions to change the end of games, to NOT make games unless it is made their way.

PAUSE – Side digression.

Gamers need to absolutely take chill pills because 90% of the time the games you love are in good hands.  Maybe they misfire but most of the time the misfire is attributed to them not making the exact same game as they did before.  But consider this: Not too long ago the people who run a fanpage on facebook created this petition. The lowdown on it is basically “Make it this way and get some good people on it because the last ones stunk.”  Like I said earlier… 90% of the time the games you love are in good hands. 10% the franchise loses it’s flame that probably should have been extinguished long ago. But you wont figure that out until you play it. So at the very least you should only be duped twice and only play the next one if you hear good things. In other words.  Shut your fuckin mouth. Now a few weeks later… BAM. Kojima – Del Toro – Norman Reedus all confirm they are working on or appearing in the new Silent Hill.  (Coming Soon- I connect THOSE dots for you as well) Instead of the Facebook group admin realizing they spent a lot of useless time raging over nothing.  They declared victory for a petition Kojima probably laughed and wiped his ass with. Matter fact, he didn’t read it.  And now the whole tone on the page is back to being on Silent Hill developer’s nutsack. My point… you have way too much free time on your hands if you’re mad enough to demand anything out of somebody who wants to bring you joy.

PLAY

Gamers complain about absolutely everything. There is absolutely nothing that you can do. I bet you developers keep developing what sells because they get the least amount of complaints and still make money.  Developers can’t even sell a game successfully to a target demographic without getting heat. That Kim Kardashian game has been called everything in the book and it ain’t stopped people from wasting money on it. It found the audience who wanted to play it.  (Again nobody points out that it is the 3rd in a series and the last two weren’t as popular because a shitty Kardashian avatar wasn’t in it. . . You know which would kinda suggest that the people playing aren’t really interested in the genre or how lame is it…. just that Kim’s name is on it. . . but good for her right?) <—– See. Gamers. Dicks.

So yeah, maybe every game is the same. But that’s what sells and seems to get the least amount of complaints from the population. No pools and toddlers in Sim City 4… OUTRAGE….. Tomb Raider timed exclusive….. Square-Enix is spitting our faces….. You can’t negotiate or impress a community that is waiting and wanting you to screw up.  So developers… do your thing. Like I said off the top. I don’t care.

Stay jaded my friends.

Jaded Gamer AKA @IamFN2K