Lost in the "hot eastern protag vs ugly western protag" debate is the fact that seemingly every fucking game prominently features women. 90% of actual gamers are men. Why is every other character a woman?
I've played almost every RE including Veronica on Dreamcast. That's not the point.
Thought experiment:
Let's say a third of all new games are entries in long running franchises that have always featured female leads. Think Resident Evil.
Then another third of all new games are new IP featuring attractive and pleasant female leads. Basically eastern games. Think Stellar Blade.
Finally, a third of all new games are female-led sequels to male-led games, but the writing and character work is really good. Think Witcher 4.
Are you really okay with every video game being dominated by women? I mean all the reasons for it are "good", right? At some point, don't you stop caring about the "quality" or the "legacy" and just wonder why an audience that is 90% male is being forced to play as women?
It's a bit like immigration. At some point, I don't care if it's legal. I don't care if it's helpful or productive. I'm tired of being demographically replaced in the spaces I've occupied my entire life.
They're also all either pushing subversive shit, getting censored or are so damn simple you wouldn't play them if it wasn't for the attractive girls. I was trying out stellar blade recently and if it featured a regular John Doe as the protag i woulda dropped it within first 15 minutes.
It's still subversive in the sense that it's feminising men.
Almost every other new franchise (east or west) stars a female.
There's a deification of the female form in the zeitgeist, regardless of where the media is coming from.
This is having an averse effect on how men view themselves and the world around them. A lot of them being feminised through the constant conduit of culture being shoveled down their throat through the lens of feminism.
This isn't new, though. Since I've been going back and re-watching a lot of classic Hong Kong flicks also mixed in with newer media from South Korea and China, one thing that constantly stood out to me was their lauding of the single-mother.
I was re-watching some of Francis Ng's old films, because I thought he was such a badarse. And Bullets Over Summer is him falling in love with a single mother. I didn't think much of it at the time, but then I was re-watching some old Chow Yun Fat movies, and Wild Search was once again the hero pining over a woman who was basically in a similar situation as the other film.
This theme kept popping up, including newer films, like The Grandmaster, which was... you guessed it, the main hero chasing after a hard-to-get single mother who got knocked up by Chad, and then Chad fled.
There are about a dozen other films from "based" Asia that push the deification of the single-mother. It's a very prominent theme in more films than it should be, and something I began to recognise when re-watching older films.
It's odd because when you juxtapose that with say, Bollywood or Telugu films, they absolutely do not promote single-mothers -- just the opposite, the hero is always chasing after single, virginal women. There's strong promotion of masculine men getting with pure women.
Anyway, this is to reinforce your point that gaming culture -- even the so-called "based" kind -- seems to be adopting the propaganda of television and movies. The constant deification of women.
While I appreciate that Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese designers still prominently feature attractive women, what is not good is that this all comes at the expense of promoting cultural masculinity. It's now a dying form of psychological reinforcement for male behaviour. And with the way a lot of today's youth act -- emotional, unable to stand on principle, and led around by their feelings -- it's a scary trend that won't have a good outcome.
It's the bogus "equality" of feminism in action. No one is pushing to masculinize female spaces. My go to example is Young Adult fiction. YA readership is overwhelmingly female. Why is there no astroturfed campaign to convince us that men are half of YA readers? Or that there's a huge untapped male audience calling for representation? Why aren't they injecting middle aged male protagonists into YA books? Shouldn't teenage girls be forced to absorb more diverse experiences? If they don't want that stuff, shouldn't we call them bigots?
If we’re going by RE alone it’s still 70% male, this is going to be the first RE without a male lead since what the RE 3 remake? Or technically you played as the daughter in the RE8 DLC. Everyone bought RE9 for Leon.
I can agree it’s being pushed heavy, but that’s because western studios went full overboard while Asian studios stayed the same.
The Yakuza series and remakes are all male protags. Same with shin megami/ persona. If persona 6 came out with a female protagonist I would worry.
Capcom specifically had only 1 optional female MC and 1 split out of the last 3 games (MHS 3, RE9, Pragamta). Upcoming games has Male MC (Onimusha), Male MC (MegaMan) and Female MC (RE Veronica).
I think the western studios went full retard and it’s poisoning the well considering Asian studios have always been ~2/3rds male protags.
Lost in the "hot eastern protag vs ugly western protag" debate is the fact that seemingly every fucking game prominently features women. 90% of actual gamers are men. Why is every other character a woman?
This is RE, it’s had a blend of female and male protags since day 1. This particular one is a remake.
I've played almost every RE including Veronica on Dreamcast. That's not the point.
Thought experiment:
Let's say a third of all new games are entries in long running franchises that have always featured female leads. Think Resident Evil.
Then another third of all new games are new IP featuring attractive and pleasant female leads. Basically eastern games. Think Stellar Blade.
Finally, a third of all new games are female-led sequels to male-led games, but the writing and character work is really good. Think Witcher 4.
Are you really okay with every video game being dominated by women? I mean all the reasons for it are "good", right? At some point, don't you stop caring about the "quality" or the "legacy" and just wonder why an audience that is 90% male is being forced to play as women?
It's a bit like immigration. At some point, I don't care if it's legal. I don't care if it's helpful or productive. I'm tired of being demographically replaced in the spaces I've occupied my entire life.
They're also all either pushing subversive shit, getting censored or are so damn simple you wouldn't play them if it wasn't for the attractive girls. I was trying out stellar blade recently and if it featured a regular John Doe as the protag i woulda dropped it within first 15 minutes.
100% agree.
It's still subversive in the sense that it's feminising men.
Almost every other new franchise (east or west) stars a female.
There's a deification of the female form in the zeitgeist, regardless of where the media is coming from.
This is having an averse effect on how men view themselves and the world around them. A lot of them being feminised through the constant conduit of culture being shoveled down their throat through the lens of feminism.
This isn't new, though. Since I've been going back and re-watching a lot of classic Hong Kong flicks also mixed in with newer media from South Korea and China, one thing that constantly stood out to me was their lauding of the single-mother.
I was re-watching some of Francis Ng's old films, because I thought he was such a badarse. And Bullets Over Summer is him falling in love with a single mother. I didn't think much of it at the time, but then I was re-watching some old Chow Yun Fat movies, and Wild Search was once again the hero pining over a woman who was basically in a similar situation as the other film.
This theme kept popping up, including newer films, like The Grandmaster, which was... you guessed it, the main hero chasing after a hard-to-get single mother who got knocked up by Chad, and then Chad fled.
There are about a dozen other films from "based" Asia that push the deification of the single-mother. It's a very prominent theme in more films than it should be, and something I began to recognise when re-watching older films.
It's odd because when you juxtapose that with say, Bollywood or Telugu films, they absolutely do not promote single-mothers -- just the opposite, the hero is always chasing after single, virginal women. There's strong promotion of masculine men getting with pure women.
Anyway, this is to reinforce your point that gaming culture -- even the so-called "based" kind -- seems to be adopting the propaganda of television and movies. The constant deification of women.
While I appreciate that Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese designers still prominently feature attractive women, what is not good is that this all comes at the expense of promoting cultural masculinity. It's now a dying form of psychological reinforcement for male behaviour. And with the way a lot of today's youth act -- emotional, unable to stand on principle, and led around by their feelings -- it's a scary trend that won't have a good outcome.
It's the bogus "equality" of feminism in action. No one is pushing to masculinize female spaces. My go to example is Young Adult fiction. YA readership is overwhelmingly female. Why is there no astroturfed campaign to convince us that men are half of YA readers? Or that there's a huge untapped male audience calling for representation? Why aren't they injecting middle aged male protagonists into YA books? Shouldn't teenage girls be forced to absorb more diverse experiences? If they don't want that stuff, shouldn't we call them bigots?
If we’re going by RE alone it’s still 70% male, this is going to be the first RE without a male lead since what the RE 3 remake? Or technically you played as the daughter in the RE8 DLC. Everyone bought RE9 for Leon.
I can agree it’s being pushed heavy, but that’s because western studios went full overboard while Asian studios stayed the same.
The Yakuza series and remakes are all male protags. Same with shin megami/ persona. If persona 6 came out with a female protagonist I would worry.
Capcom specifically had only 1 optional female MC and 1 split out of the last 3 games (MHS 3, RE9, Pragamta). Upcoming games has Male MC (Onimusha), Male MC (MegaMan) and Female MC (RE Veronica).
I think the western studios went full retard and it’s poisoning the well considering Asian studios have always been ~2/3rds male protags.
Dude, the Yakuza series is going full black ghetto rapper lol