Oh, this is just rich. Cliff "Cliffy B" Bleszinski, the creator of the Gears of War series, was recently asked where all the female characters in his games are. His answer?
They're all off making babies.
That's right. In this dystopian future, all women have been forcibly turned into incubators baby carriers. How fucked up is that?
It's not even part of the lore or anything. This was just an offhand remark from Cliffy B as a way to explain away the lack of females in his steroid-fueled, hulking he-man Badiverse. I suppose it's not any worse than the litany of other excuses that developers give (ranging from, "we can't have a lady who could possibly get pregnant running around and doing things!" to "well, we just didn't have the development budget to include a single female character, even though we have destructible environments and realistic physics engines"), but, well… maybe it IS worse. I mean, Cliffy B thought it was more appropriate to say that the fictional females in his series are just casually being horrifically abused than to say "our games are for men." Neither is a great option, in all honesty, but nothing could be worse than this.
There is a female character in Gears of War 3 apparently – but she's infertile. So, only women who can't have babies are allowed to fight? There's no option for those who, you know, choose to fight? Nope!
Sometimes I wish Samus Aran was a real person so she could kick shmucks like this' ass.
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Matthew Blackwell, Christian Hardy. Christian Hardy said: Cliffy B and where all the women went – http://www.vigigames.com/?p=487 http://bit.ly/9qJL1r […]
As long as they are getting adequate maternity leave, the kind of which the real world Australia has
only just implemented onlystill not implemented then what are you plaining about?The reason I'm 'plaining is because, well, Cliffy B is implying that the women are being forced to carry the babies, which is pretty akin to rape. It implies a world in which women aren't given the choice to do anything other than bear children. If he had somehow worked this into the narrative in a way that treated it with the gravitas that it might deserve, then I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with it. But because this is his casual way of explaining the lack of females in his game, that he's basically digitally raping them… yeah.
Valve knows where the ladies are at. Amirite!
There are all of six or seven characters that get more than the amount of time it takes Ensign Ricky to run into a scripted death in Gears 1 & 2 and one of those is a woman. This still beats the ratio for most games.
I know that, essentially this isn't just an issue with numbers and well we all know Cliffy'I'm not CliffyB'B is a douche so I don't see why your getting so worked up about this game in particular?
[…] appeals to, say, my girlfriend or most thinking, gaming females, just doesn't get made for a variety of stupid reasons. Games need fewer token gestures and more awesome protagonist. I'll update this list as I come […]