A small but significant controversy recently arose over G4’s review of Metroid: Other M (if you haven’t read it, go read it now). Their reviewer, Abbie Heppe, gave the game a low score and accused the game of portraying female protagonist Samus Aran in a light that she claimed “smacked of sexism.”
Pretty good read. I'll approve to support it. Keep it up my ninja.
lol, it seems that devs and publishers hire anyone these days, as long as they got a degree, or of a certain race or gender. I was on twitter one day and seen a dev put up a craigslist ad looking for female game testers simply for the fact that the dev felt the gaming industry needs more variety and also felt girls need to have a bigger impact in the gaming industry. I understand that girls need to have be more involved if they want the games that they like, cause only girls know what they like, but hiring someone simply because they are a girl and show just a little interest in making some money, not actually caring to be a game tester, goes to show the current state of the gaming industry. These publishers and devs dont even have a passion for games. I see games have decent graphics but dont even have as much depth as a game as old and relevant as Blaster Master. Im not even talking about innovation, Im just talking about the core of the game being as shallow as a drunk 80 year old man who goes to a strip club with a bottle of viagra. Im sick of seeing all these games that have so much potential but most fall off the deep end in just 10 mins of playing time.
Western literature and culture has tens of thousands of years of storytelling, both written and oral tradition, where heroes (main characters) are male. Campbell called it the 'Hero's Journey.' Epics from Homer, to Beowulf, to the Arthurian legends, and today's action movie heroes, feature the stories of men battling against adversaries. So it's hardly surprising that most games feature male leads - or that some gamers are more comfortable with male leads.
I'm a woman who has been gaming for decades, and I prefer male protagonists. Why? Because most games are written by men and I find most game writers don't write female characters I can relate to, or want to play.
It's not sexism; it's poor quality writing.
This article isn't the worst, but come on. GamePro's a for-profit site, they should have some info standards.
First of all, you can't answer "Does gender affect game reviews?" by just exploring Metroid: Other M and mentioning an aspect of Gears 2. Silly. The author would be more accurate in calling it "Editorial: I'm Sitting at my Desk Thinking of Random Things, and One of These Includes a G4 Review of Metroid: Other M."
If you have to write this article, take nine-tenths of the time you spent on musings and survey the review spectrum for at least this game. Look at the averages between male and female reviewers. Look for word patterns or concepts to be exclusive to one gender or another. Maybe you'll start getting an answer; maybe you won't. There will be analysis problems if there aren't enough professional female game reviewers.
Also, if you're going the anecdotal storytelling route, check out Zero Punctuation's take on this game. Yahtzee makes some snide remarks, of course, but he definitely points out the same exact thing that Heppe did. And yeah, he's not a girl.