PDA

View Full Version : Japan's Feminist Gaming Culture



IMPress Polly
04-03-2017, 06:09 AM
Japan's gender politics often get a bad reputation here in the Western world. After all, Japanese women are still heavily pressured to quit their jobs as soon as they get married or become pregnant, for example, and women enjoy even less representation in Japan's government than in ours. Overall, the World Economic Forum reports that Japan's gender gap is 66% closed at present, as compared to 71% closed here in the United States, which also indicates that Japan is a more backward society when it comes to gender relations overall. Video gaming, however, is one area where that definitely isn't true.

Japan is one of only two countries in the world where female video game players form the overall majority of gamers. It's not a small majority either: it's like two-thirds of the total (https://www.techinasia.com/what-country-has-the-most-gamer-girls), which is a far larger majority than female gamers compose in the nearest rival, France (52%). Thus, when it comes to our current debate about gender representation in video games, maybe we ought to look at what Japan is doing right by girls and women that we're not. What is Japan doing differently from everyone else that's brought in so many female players? Well...a look at what some of the big hits out Japan this year have included so far might give us a clue:

17764

17765

17766

17767

Those aren't obscure, unknown indie games either. All of those are major, AAA retail releases. Neither are they a bunch of "girly girl" games. All of those are violent action titles with kick-ass heroines. And again, that's just from one quarter of one year. Over the same period, by contrast, I can think of one female-led AAA title developed in Europe (Horizon: Zero Dawn) and none that were developed in here in North America. You see the difference? These may be very sexualized heroines, but the bigger point is that they exist and their existence by itself pulls many girls and women into Japan's gaming scene. I think it shows that maybe Western feminists should worry just a LITTLE bit less about over-sexualization of female game characters and concern ourselves a lot more with the bigger problem that our countries have when it comes to female representation in games: its absence. Sexism by omission.

To be even more frank, here's another interesting concentration of the problem: even most of the AAA Western video games with female leads that have been released over the last several years have been published by Japanese companies. For example, both of the most recent Tomb Raider games may have been developed by the American company Crystal Dynamics, but they were published by the Japanese company Square Enix. Same sort of thing with Dontnod's games Remember Me and Life is Strange: developed by a French company, but published by Japanese companies Capcom and Square Enix respectively. And Horizon: Zero Dawn, which was developed in the Netherlands? Published by Sony. To highlight the problem more specifically, consider Life is Strange. You know why developer Dontnod signed on with Square Enix as a publisher? Because they found that no other publisher would allow them to use a female lead! Everyone else insisted that they have a boy as the lead character as a condition for publishing the game. In other words, had they gone with a Western publisher, all the game's rescue scenarios would have had a very gendered feel that they mercifully don't in the final game that we actually got. Why are pretty much only Japanese publishers willing to underwrite these games?

Sometimes I hear the argument that the demand for these games comes from Western feminists. That doesn't make much sense. How do we explain the fact that, for example, Blue Reflection is only being released in Japan then? How do explain the fact that even the Western-developed female-focused AAA releases sell about as well in Japan as they do in the U.S. when taken on a per capita rate of sale basis? And how do we explain the fact that Japan's gaming market it two-thirds female while ours is only three-fifths male? Could the absence of a comparable feminist movement in Japan's gaming scene in reality just reflect the fact that one simply isn't so needed there as here?

No. We could stand to learn something from what Japan is doing and start being willing to release more games with female hero characters front and center.

Standing Wolf
04-03-2017, 08:26 AM
A couple of things, Polly. And please don't think I'm doing this just to try to rain on your parade or dump on your premise - I'm simply coming at the subject from a far different perspective and I have questions.

How does the gender of the "hero characters" in games relate to how real women in real life situations are treated...what opportunities are available to them as a result, or what difference does it make in what society expects them to do and not to do? Here in the U.S., two of the biggest would-be-blockbuster action films in current release are the latest Resident Evil and Ghost in the Shell. Scarlett Johansen, in fact, seems to have a new kick-ass action movie coming out two or three times a year, and they're mostly hugely popular. Wonder Woman is experiencing a resurgence of popularity; the last time I was at the comic store there must have been at least eight new action figures or statues of her on the shelves. Does any of that really translate into anything substantial for women in the real world?

Then there is the problem - largely ignored, or so it seems to me, by American fans of Japanese pop culture - of pretty much all Japanese "female hero characters" looking like sexy junior high school girls. I won't go into the kind of sexualization of barely pubescent teen girls that I saw in popular culture when I was stationed in Japan, but it's not pretty, it's not innocent, and the last thing in the world that it is is empowering to women.

IMPress Polly
04-04-2017, 05:55 AM
You're fundamentally misunderstanding what I'm trying to say! I'm not, repeat NOT, attempting to suggest that Western-developed games need to do more in the way of infantilizing their female characters or anything like that, but rather to point out that that and other forms of gratuitous sexualization are no longer a major problem in female-focused Western video games that we need to continue to focus our efforts one-sidedly around addressing. We have different problems here. Let me illustrate that real quick if I can. Here's a list of all the AAA games (i.e. releases that feature a more or less current-gen technological level) about women that were designed primarily for Western consumption that I've seen in the last few years:

2015:

Life is Strange
Rise of the Tomb Raider

2016:

Adr1ft
Mirror's Edge Catalyst
Bound
ReCore

2017:

Horizon: Zero Dawn
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice <-- Not out yet, but slated for this year.

Looking at this list, you'll notice certain things. For example, none of the female leads are particularly sexualized, most of them adults, they tend to pass the Bechdel test, and there's about an even divide between action-adventures and graphic adventures. They tend to check all the feminist boxes. But with this heavy focus on the quality of representation that women get in Western-oriented video games, you may also notice something else: that the quantity has been neglected. The above just isn't a very long list. The entire Western world combined is currently averaging just three AAA video games specifically for girls and/or women a year. Japan alone is averaging in a quarter what the entire Western world combined is averaging a year in terms of quantity of female-centric AAA game releases and the sheer quantity difference is attracting many more girls and women (measured on a per capita basis, that is) to gaming there than here. Why? Because the quantity difference means that the shift in focus is actually visible on the store shelves in Japan, where female-focused Western games remain so rare that consumers may scarcely notice their presence. What difference does our comparative quality of representation make if nobody sees it?

The sexualization and whatnot that remains so commonplace in Japanese media has clearly become reflective of a cultural divide in recent years. For example, consider ReCore. ReCore is a major game that was released last year. That was a Japanese-developed game that was clearly created specifically for Western consumption, as indicated by the fact that Microsoft was the publisher (their Xbox One game system being an epic flop in Japan that there enjoys a market share of maybe 1% at most). That one checks a lot of our feminist boxes too. The hero is an adult female, she's not sexualized, etc. Clearly the Japanese have some idea of what the expectations of Western feminist are. But there's a cultural divide between there and here that causes them to focus on certain (I would agree with you, unhealthy) aesthetics when their principal market is expected to be native. That's something for the Japanese to address. My point is us. That's not really the giant issue for us that it once was these days. The issue we need to address more here is the low quantity of female-focused video games being developed here in the Western world, especially in the visible, blockbuster gaming scene, and why American and other Western publishers are almost never willing to underwrite them where Japanese publishers are.

What are the major social and political benefits of having a more gender-balanced gaming community? Well they're not massive. It's mostly aesthetic, obviously. A cure for feeling constantly surrounded by testosterone on all sides and sexually harassed all the time, and something that would probably prevent more Gamergate-like "events" from happening that most certainly ARE serious in nature.

(And your list of top-grossing 2017 movies is WAY off (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2017), by the way. :wink: As you can see, overall it's a very male-centric and not very progressive list.)

Standing Wolf
04-04-2017, 08:16 AM
Um...I didn't post any "list of top-grossing 2017 movies". I made reference to a couple of recent movies about strong, capable, butt-kicking fictional women and asked whether their popularity really made any difference to the lives of real life women. That was, in fact, pretty much the gist of my response - certainly not that "Western-developed games need to do more in the way of infantilizing their female characters"; if anything, that's about 180 degrees from what I was trying to say.

Educate me about something, if you would. You noted that two-thirds of "gamers" in Japan are women now. (Young women, I'm assuming.) What would you estimate the percentage of female gamers to be in the U.S.? I'm going to guess that it's a much smaller percentage than two-thirds. Doesn't it logically follow that the game companies would develop and market games that the majority of players would want to play? If male gamers prefer male heroes in their games...

IMPress Polly
04-04-2017, 01:01 PM
Standing Wolf wrote:
Um...I didn't post any "list of top-grossing 2017 movies".

You said this in your last post: "Here in the U.S., two of the biggest would-be-blockbuster action films in current release are the latest Resident Evil and Ghost in the Shell." I just wanted to clarify the record on where those films actually stood since you posited them as top-selling movies. :wink:


I made reference to a couple of recent movies about strong, capable, butt-kicking fictional women and asked whether their popularity really made any difference to the lives of real life women.

It makes a difference to me that feminist action films (and games, etc.) exist in the sense that these power fantasies serve to build a sense of self-confidence, which is something that the studies say women tend to be a lot shorter on than men. Boys and men have lots of role models in every profession. Girls and women not so much. They're harder to find because of factors like the glass ceiling and so forth. So we have to find fictional ones to look up to. That's why the contents of popular culture, and in particular the gender roles conveyed therein, are, if anything, probably more important for girls and women than they are for boys and men.


Educate me about something, if you would. You noted that two-thirds of "gamers" in Japan are women now. (Young women, I'm assuming.) What would you estimate the percentage of female gamers to be in the U.S.? I'm going to guess that it's a much smaller percentage than two-thirds. Doesn't it logically follow that the game companies would develop and market games that the majority of players would want to play? If male gamers prefer male heroes in their games...

Oh dear God, not this ancient, self-reinforcing argument again! :rollseyes:

I'm sorry, it's just that that has been a typical argument against changing the prevailing gender roles in video games for the entire time that I've been alive. I can point you to ancient Nintendo Power issues dating back decades where the arguments in the letters page go back and forth along these very same lines. The argument you're making is just intended to rationalize and perpetuate the irrational and unreasonable by using a market-oriented excuse where equality is obviously more in essence a moral issue than a matter of business.

OF COURSE it makes sense that video game companies market to men more often than women if their consumer base is principally male. But does that consumer base HAVE to be principally male? Is that actually a good thing either for society or even necessarily for the industry itself? This is a "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" situation. You can argue that game developers and publishers are just responding to their existing consumer base. You can conversely argue that, by so doing, they are choosing to KEEP the existing gender balance the same rather than to try and broaden or change it in any way.

Yes, you're right: According to the American game industry's trade association, 59% of American video game players are male. My whole point in the OP was to show WHY that sort of situation doesn't also exist in Japan. It doesn't exist in Japan because they market video games to girls and women a lot more often there. Hence maybe if American developers and publishers were willing to do so as well, that wouldn't be the gender ratio here. You see what I'm saying? That was my whole and simple point. Sorry if there was any confusion about any of that!

Standing Wolf
04-04-2017, 01:20 PM
Your mention of a "chicken or the egg" situation reflected something that had occurred to me earlier, actually. Your statistic of 41% of U.S. gamers being female is actually about twice what I would have guessed - but then again, I know pretty much exactly nothing about that whole scene and my take on it is probably largely "informed" by the gamers I see on t.v. and in the movies. Seriously, though - and honestly - would you expect U.S. game makers to possibly forgo short-term profits by making a larger percentage of their games female-centric (not meant to be a disparaging term - I'm just not sure how else to say it) in order to attract a larger female fan base? (Perhaps I should have prefaced that question with another question: Do you think that those companies' profits would suffer in the short term if they did that?)

IMPress Polly
04-04-2017, 08:28 PM
Standing Wolf wrote:
Do you think that those companies' profits would suffer in the short term if they did that?)

I only have a minute tonight, but to briefly answer this key question, no. I just think that Silicon Valley's gaming industry is 88% male and that, accordingly, they simply don't want to try unless and until someone pressures them into it.