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:
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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.
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.