This is the first time for me to watch House of Horrors. I'd have to say it's nice to have Zorine and Jess doing game walkthroughs. I don't think I have seen girl gamers doing walkthroughs on Youtube or other places, so this is a nice change. Their commentary is really funny too.
First of all, saying that just because the lead character is female, that alone will make the game fail to sell is an undeniably sexist statement.
The core problem is the stereotypical image of the main character of a game being a male. Not only publishers, game developers are to blame as well. I am not saying all the game developers do this, but even today, in a lot of games, females are given relatively unimportant roles. Not only that, most of them are not even playable. They are largely overshadowed by the male characters. Some examples:
Nicole from Dead Space - "I am waiting for you to rescue me, Issac darling!"
Assassin's Creed - No female character appeared until close to the end of the game!
Victoria from Hitman Absolution - "Just save me from this terrible fate!"
It is not to say the above games are bad games, in fact I really enjoyed them. The majority female gamers do not mind the lead character being a male.
Some games have given better supporting roles to female characters, such as:
Elena from Uncharted:Drake's Fortune - She still needs to be rescued, but at least she is helpful throughout the game and you don't have to look after her. Yes the ending is cliche but it is tolerable.
Sorry to burst any bubbles, but let's face it: Do females like to be protected by male? Yes, most of them do. Do females just want to be protected by male? No, most of them do not.
Sadly, there are only a handful of female characters that I have played and felt empowered playing as:
Ada Wong, Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield from Resident Evil Series
Aqua from Kingdom Hearts
Heather from Silent Hill
You know what? Sometimes it feels female characters in JRPG gets a slightly fairer go in games. I can go on forever on this topic, but I'll stop here for today.
Ending statement: Game developers should stop using female characters as mere wallflowers and give them more important roles to balance out the power between the two sexes.
PS to Remember Me Dev: Please find a publisher that is not sexist and only think about profitability rather than changing Nilin to a man.
I, too, find it difficult to believe Square-Enix will cancel Versus. Firstly, S-E recently released Versus's theme song Somnus as a download content of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy. This means the company is sure that Versus will make it out as a FF title. Secondly, director of Versus is Tetsuya Nomura, who I believe the most successful director in the company at the moment. None of the games he directed so far yielded negative return. It will be illogical for the company to cancel his game. Thirdly, in an interview is year, Nomura said that there will be announcement on the game soon (likely to be Tokyo Game Show), he is not a director who will disclose information that he is not sure of. So people, we just need to be patient for the news. Kotaku is a source filled with rumours. Don't make a fuss over unconfirmed information.
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