Time to Give Rise to the Rugged Woman

How is it that it's perfectly okay and completely acceptable for a man to age and remain cool and for a woman it's seen as a lot more unattractive and uncool? Older men are continuously embraced for their rugged, rough-around-the-edges gruff looks and tough-as-nails demeanor and always seem to be leading man material for video games. There’s a notable absence of older female protagonists in video games and the invisibility of an entire generation. It's been deeply indoctrinated into our culture and society that as a woman, when you get older and mature you run out of fuel and you have less importance and less relevance.

[Razzer]

Then go make that game and stop expecting someone else to make the game you want with the characters you want.

[Rimfro]

Everyone is releasing an article bashing men in some form today. Reeks of coordinated “news”.

[Omnisonne]

"How is it that it's perfectly okay and completely acceptable for a man to age and remain cool and for a woman it's seen as a lot more unattractive and uncool?"

Because men age in completely different ways than women. How many times did you get useful life advice from a 60 year old (married) lady? It doesn't happen often, if at all. Whereas men spend most of their lives trying to carve out a path in life, and so have more relevant advice to share to younger men (the majority of the gaming audience).

[Edit] The ''Rugged woman'' is a fantasy more than anything else, the ''rugged man'' is a reality of life.

[rainslacker]

This is a social and cultural perception issue, and has nothing to do with the media that shows such things. Even in media that tends to have older women, they tend to be very attractive older women. Like attractive enough to seem more like they're much younger. There has been more older women portrayed in recent years, but still, very few of them are "rugged", and if they are, they're more often shown as kind of against the conformist norm.

Older "rugged" women tend to not even be that common in real life. As women age, their personality tends to change to be more mellow, not hard ass, take no shit from anyone personalities.

When it comes to putting them in games, it probably has more to do with the average age of gamers being around 30 years old. 25-35 year old men are the highest audience for the kinds of games being talked about here. A larger percentage of the rest of the market is going to be males under 16-25, with some variances. Women make up some of that as well, and of course, a bunch of anecdotal instances. But, when you look at the 16-35 age group, they're going to be more interested in younger, more attractive women, due to biology, culture, and just general human nature. Even most women aren't keen on seeing older women in the same kinds of roles. Generally speaking, the audience itself just isn't interested in seeing these characters, and the "rugged" male isn't even as common as the young, verile male.

[coolastheycome]

Is this Kotaku? Sounds like kotaku

[The_Sage]

It's because men are visual creatures by nature. The thing we pay attention to is looks. Woman are more complex when looking at the other sex. They create a narrative when seeing a person... It's not just about the looks.

It's nature.

[Rachel_Alucard]

http://imgur.com/a/9SxNA12

There's a reason the term "Christmas cake" is a thing.

[AK91]

Make an interesting character, the fact that “journalists” like you can’t get that simple fact and focus on unimportant things like gender, age etc. is why so many SJW games fail.

[bumbleforce]

Rugged women are ugly

[Vanfernal]

Can we just flat out ban Eurogamer from this site? This "gaming" website is just SJW crap with very little to add to the actual GAMING conversation. They are also massive hypocrites. The same "journalist" bitched about Dead or Alive's sexy women (even throwing in Trump in the article) while promoting Mr. X in a thong on another. All they do is post click baity articles to stir some sort of "controversy"

[Hungryalpaca]

But how else are us boys (and girls) supposed to be told were evil for liking a woman’s body?

[PaleMoonDeath]

Because that is completely natural, and not forced. Games and story dictate such things, not you.

[Donnie81]

Make a sjw game with a rugged female lead by all means. Ask ea and dice how pushing that agenda translates in the sales department. On the other hand if someone made a good game with an older female lead I’m sure most gamers would just enjoy the game and not care about the sex of the character. The problem with bf5 was they just tried to shoehorn a female into a game where it didn’t make any sense.

[Jls1]

Guessing this article was written by a female. Off topic but I remember the lines from that scene in the pic lol.
Marlowe. I merely want whats mine takes the ring from Drake. Drake stands up and says gimmie that back. Cutter shoots Drake. Marlowe says Cutter! Cutter says what?

[salmonade]

Women reach their peak at like18. Men reach their desirable peak at like 50 or something like that. It's science. Now shut up and make your own game. I dare you to make a game with the woman being over 40... it won't sell. That ugly withered mole on the front cover won't drag in mass sales. Articles like this one just harden the stance of people opposed to these SJW views. F U