In which the creators of the Orange Box are all sexist.

[Woland]

I begin by admitting that I am not the first person to figure this out, but like Jer and the Monorail (a children's book title if I've ever heard one), I came to this realization on my own.

Portal contains only women (I will not call the companion cube a man, despite any use of the masculine pronoun; we are discussing sentients, not affectionates) and TF2 contains only men (let's just agree that the pyro, though masked, does not have breasts).

Do you think the teams putting this game together thought about that when they were doing it? The entirely single-player game has only women, the entirely multi-player game has only men. Were they trying to state that women are less likely to multi-play than men? Were they trying to echo an already accepted (though dubious) belief among game creators? Did they miss an opportunity to turn this whole thing on its head by not playing with the gender issue more than they did?

Do you care?

[owl+ bungee cord= my arse]

Do you care?

No.

[Vaughn]

Halflife1 was all male too.
And no, its not sexist.

[Red Charlie]

Nah

[scorpkahnpoop]

Do you care?

No.

Ditto.

[Tim]

Tolkien was sexist, too. So what?

[Unclever title]

There's also Half-Life 2

Episodes 1 and 2.

All single player, guy.

I'm not sure what your point is here...

Making all the playable characters the same gender probably does more to avoid sexism than otherwise to be honest.

[wilson_x1999]

...Making all the playable characters the same gender probably does more to avoid sexism than otherwise to be honest.

True.

If they nerfed the female character in a patch because for any reason it was overpowered, then they'd get thousands of complains about how they're sexist because they nerfed the girls and so on.

[blackdragontaz]

Portal contains only women (I will not call the companion cube a man, despite any use of the masculine pronoun; we are discussing sentients, not affectionates)

Portal was at one time going to star a guy, not a girl. And if you never look in a portal at yourself (as hard as it is) you never know what gender you are.

And not to say that women don't belong in the army or anything, but girls just wouldn't fit well in in TF2.

Soldier- You need the big burly guy to "take the hit" of a rocket jump. No one would want to play the character if it was "Big Berhta" instead.
Engineer- Big stong armed guy to buy the equipment. Again, Big Birtha would be bad.
Scout- This could potentially work as a female character, but it's easier to make it a lanky, nerd guy than it would be a nerdy girl.
Sniper- Another possability, but long-range female assassins are not common.
Demo-man- Another class that doesn't work as a female, how many women do you know that like to play with explosives and drink heavly while doing it?
Medic- Of any of the classes this would be the best for a female class, but at the same time this could be another case of sexism, with the medic being a nurse.
Heavy-weapons- See Soldier/Engineer for similar reasoning.
Spy- Possible, this would be the opposite logic of the sniper; a female assassin/sapper.
Pyro- This one I won't count, since you don't hear or see the face or proper body/face structure of this class.

[emma]

All of that reasoning is bullshit, dude. None of those things are specific to dudes. There is no reason to assume that any of those jobs could not be filled by females.

That being said, I have never played the game and don't really care.

[Scone]

...
And not to say that women don't belong in the army or anything, but girls just wouldn't fit well in in TF2.

Soldier- You need the big burly guy to "take the hit" of a rocket jump. No one would want to play the character if it was "Big Berhta" instead.
Engineer- Big stong armed guy to buy the equipment. Again, Big Birtha would be bad.
Scout- This could potentially work as a female character, but it's easier to make it a lanky, nerd guy than it would be a nerdy girl.
Sniper- Another possability, but long-range female assassins are not common.
Demo-man- Another class that doesn't work as a female, how many women do you know that like to play with explosives and drink heavly while doing it?
Medic- Of any of the classes this would be the best for a female class, but at the same time this could be another case of sexism, with the medic being a nurse.
Heavy-weapons- See Soldier/Engineer for similar reasoning.
Spy- Possible, this would be the opposite logic of the sniper; a female assassin/sapper.
Pyro- This one I won't count, since you don't hear or see the face or proper body/face structure of this class.

I can think of people I either know personally or read in other stories that would be perfect for each and every one of those positions. Also, I would hate to think that the vortex of amassing creativity that is Valve could rule out females from each of those positions simply because they weren't able to think of a compelling idea that would make game play interesting. Maybe we will see a content patch that adds female duplicates for each position in the future.

[TheRocket]

Do you care?

No.

Ditto.

Negative.

[Alja-Markir]

Emma and Scone, the overall style is the point. The characters have a really major stylistic personality that doesn't translate well to females, and in fact might be insulting to many if applied to women.

The TF2 characters are all exagerated personalities, they're walking stereotypes, they're all brimming with a sort of barely-contained mania and insanity, and they're incredibly violent and psychotic.

Here, watch these short promo videos Valve put together, and lemme know if these characters could come across as well in female form.

Meet The Heavy
Meet The Engineer
Meet The Scout
Meet The Soldier
Meet The Demoman

~Alja~

[emma]

Okay, after watching the videos that Alja posted, I think I get it.

While it would be possible to make any of those character female, I understand entirely why they didn't. That being said, it would have been interesting for them to have a female stereotype!

Those videos were quite enjoyable. Is the game that entertaining? Or that gruesome?

why is the demo-man a ridiculous scottish black guy

[Vaughn]

because inflicting stereotypes on women is offensive and sexist.
but its not offensive to do it to guys.

[Allen!]

There's also Half-Life 2

Episodes 1 and 2.

All single player, guy.

I'm not sure what your point is here...

Making all the playable characters the same gender probably does more to avoid sexism than otherwise to be honest.

Hey DUMBASS, Alix was there the ENTIRE TIME. Pretty sure she qualifies as a "main character". No, you didn't play as her, but she was integral to the story. So shut it.

Sexism is awesome.
It's Chauvinistic Thursday, so sit the fuck down, bitches.
/asshole

[Vaughn]

. No, you didn't play as her, but she was integral to the story. So shut it.

When i played through 2.1 Alyx WAS the main character in the sense of doing the most, because i was going for the One Free Bullet achievement, and couldnt use any guns, and they dont give you a goddamn crowbar until 80% though it. =D

[Scone]

Emma and Scone, the overall style is the point. The characters have a really major stylistic personality that doesn't translate well to females, and in fact might be insulting to many if applied to women.

The TF2 characters are all exagerated personalities, they're walking stereotypes, they're all brimming with a sort of barely-contained mania and insanity, and they're incredibly violent and psychotic.

Here, watch these short promo videos Valve put together, and lemme know if these characters could come across as well in female form.

Meet The Heavy
Meet The Engineer
Meet The Scout
Meet The Soldier
Meet The Demoman

~Alja~

I understand that. I love what they've done. I don't think they could improve on any of those characters at all. But, that's not to say they couldn't also make more wonderful characters of each archetype that are female. Specifically, I'm thinking of the Spy right now; take Natasha from Rockey and Bulwinkle and make her even more of a bloody thirsty killing machine. I think that kind of character would fit perfectly into the TF2 universe.

Also: Holy Mierda there's a new meet the team video!

[Scone]

Do you care?

No.

Ditto.

Negative.

Nay

[Vaughn]

Also: Holy Mierda there's a new meet the team video!

if its the "Meet the cast" with Engi, Soldier, and Heavy, and then gameplay of all the classes, it doesnt contain anything new. though it may be a few VIDEO, sure. =D

[Scone]

Also: Holy Mierda there's a new meet the team video!

if its the "Meet the cast" with Engi, Soldier, and Heavy, and then gameplay of all the classes, it doesnt contain anything new. though it may be a few VIDEO, sure. =D

I hadn't seen the Scout Video yet. Now I have. I wasn't really sure how his character was over the top before, but now I see.

[Vaughn]

Oh, That, yeah, i'd never seen the Demos either. Didn't know how New they were though.

I thought you mentioned somrthing that wasnt listed by Alja =D

[Unclever title]

There's also Half-Life 2

Episodes 1 and 2.

All single player, guy.

I'm not sure what your point is here...

Making all the playable characters the same gender probably does more to avoid sexism than otherwise to be honest.

Hey DUMBASS, Alix was there the ENTIRE TIME. Pretty sure she qualifies as a "main character". No, you didn't play as her, but she was integral to the story. So shut it.

Okay... calm down. Yeah I KNOW that, I played the games, several times even.
I considered mentioning Alyx, but I though it was obvious, so I didn't. The point was I was that there were more than just a completely female single player game involved for the Orange box.

Woland only mentioned two games while the Orange box came out with five, I was just bringing the others into consideration.

Eesh man, you can be pretty loud sometimes.

[Woland]

I guess what I was trying to get at was the deeper playing mechanics. One of the chief goals for the game designers with TF2 is to make sure the game is balanced, so I don't really see them intentionally "nerfing" anyone, regardless of that character's gender (though its a moot point since they're all the same). As for the character classes in the game, I would say from the general writing talent employed in the games and advertising I would say that, if the design team had wanted to make any (or all) of the characters female they would have done a good job and we would all have believed it.

I guess this is my point: somewhere in the design process for the whole Orange Box SOMEONE must have thought, "Hey, we have two different games with diametrically opposed game-play mechanics [those being exclusively single-player and exclusively multi-player], each featuring only one gender." This interests me because there was nothing done to change it. Now, I'm not saying that its a bad thing, but I wonder what was behind the decision not to do anything. A lack of action is just as potent a measure of intent as any action.

Mostly, I'm curious about whether this was done to help market the game. I'm worried that the cast of TF2 was made all male because they thought that the players would all be male and they only wanted to feature those archetypes which would most excite the players. There's nothing wrong with this; most/all games are made this way. It just seems kind of lame if such a major factor behind the design of the characters was marketability. I like to think Valve is more interesting than that.

Now the reason I feel this way is because of Portal, which came out of exactly nowhere (I know about Narbacular Drop, shut up) to be the most awesome inversion of the first-person genre ever. Instead of brute violence (which I don't really have anything against) and a gun that shoots bullets [read: penises], you have a puzzle game with a gun that shoots portals [vaginas]. It's such a whole-scale inversion of what a first-person game has been for so long; a wonderful crossbreeding of Myst and, well, Half-Life. The all-girl angle makes sense in Portal, mostly because of the penis/vagina inversion I mentioned above. You should read the following article, if you haven't:
http://www.heroine-sheik.com/2007/10/17/portal-is-for-lesbians/

It just seems like they had the chance to change the way that multi-player games are understood. Instead they made a great game and the only real innovation is to do the whole thing with cel-shading. It's nice, don't get me wrong, but seems like a missed opportunity.

Before anyone slams me for it, I know that they were put together by completely different teams, writers, etc. I'm assuming that there was someone who was looking at the project as a whole through the game-creation process. I know that any assumption is bad, but given the way the industry works I know someone saw it before it went to print.

Wow, I rambled again. 10 more points if you read it.

[Allen!]

...Sometimes?


Also, the Companion Cube is male.