Female Avatar Option Plz
FirstEd
New Mexico Join Date: 2017-06-25 Member: 231340Members
New Mexico Join Date: 2017-06-25 Member: 231340Members
Dear Unknown Worlds Subnautica Team,
Please include the option to play as a female protagonist.
By looking at this chart we can see that females make up approximately 50% of the population.
That tells us that including the female avatar will help market the game to an audience of twice the current size. Again, that's doubling your sales group in a single art asset - a pretty good value.
Secondly, when creating the female avatar, remember, that this is NOT a good representation of a female.
That's bad. Too skinny. No curves. Nothing feminine. Don't do that.
The following images demonstrates a much better female body type:
See how she has hips and curves? Now that's a silhouette that reads 'female'. And in case you're wondering, that's Christina Hendricks in the picture.
In summary, your efforts to include a female protagonist in Subnautica would be greatly appreciated by everyone.
Thank you for reading,
~FirstEd
Please include the option to play as a female protagonist.
By looking at this chart we can see that females make up approximately 50% of the population.
That tells us that including the female avatar will help market the game to an audience of twice the current size. Again, that's doubling your sales group in a single art asset - a pretty good value.
Secondly, when creating the female avatar, remember, that this is NOT a good representation of a female.
That's bad. Too skinny. No curves. Nothing feminine. Don't do that.
The following images demonstrates a much better female body type:
See how she has hips and curves? Now that's a silhouette that reads 'female'. And in case you're wondering, that's Christina Hendricks in the picture.
In summary, your efforts to include a female protagonist in Subnautica would be greatly appreciated by everyone.
Thank you for reading,
~FirstEd
Comments
P.s. I'm pretty sure there are female developers on The team. They don't need a lesson in what looks and is realistically feminine.
First, not having a female avatar does have a non-trivial impact on women playing games (https://www.cnet.com/news/the-risk-of-the-female-protagonist/). Having one should be a relatively non-trivial addition to this game. The character has no voice dialogue or anything else to alter to make it 'special' beyond perhaps a few costume assets (dive suit, etc).
Secondly, the fact there are female developers (If there are and I express some reasonable doubt you know for a fact, one way or another) on the team in no way invalidates anyone's opinion on how to improve the game. No more than the fact that YOUR gender invalidates your ability to tell FirstEd that the developers don't need a lesson about women.
Thirdly, I hardly doubt I would consider the current avatar as realistically anything. As an educated woman developer who happens to also love games, I can assure you that simply having women on your staff in no way means that your feedback is even solicited much less utilized/valued.
FirstEd's opinion (and mine) is entirely valid. I'm glad that you agree that a female avatar should be added and I'm even happier to hear they have it in the works.
Personally, I would really appreciate the opportunity to play as a heroine that doesn't follow the Hollywood trend of incredibly skinny. Just my (our) 2 cents.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
They've said that it will likely be added sometime soon after v1.0.
Thank you for the link.
At least she has hips. Keep up the good work devs.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
You miss the point and FirstEd, with good intentions, didn't present it perfectly.
He's simply stating (as I am), that a female avatar would be welcome. And even more welcome would be if it didn't conform to this strange seemingly systemic requirement that they be waif-like a la Hollywood.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
Edit:
As a sidenote, again, our opinions as mentioned, are still as valid as any you may come up with.
no one gives a shit about the protagonist's gender, especially when he never speaks (aside from the occasional grunt from pain)
you can't even see his face or body because there's no mirrors or third person mode.
this honestly just sounds like a waste of the developer's time. why spend time finding, recording, editing, and implementing the female voice sound effects when that time could be spent balancing the game, fixing bugs, or improving the awful performance?
Clearly, there's a desire for it from many parties so it's strange that you say it has no value. Even relatively speaking, it has value. We're just adding our voices to the others asking for things. And obviously, the devs did agree it was worthwhile (they've implemented it).
You're certainly welcome to your opinion, even if it seems somewhat uninformed.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
Besides there are already concepts for the female character for Subnautica, they are stylized in the same way
http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Player?file=Femaleplayermodel.png
https://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/files/2016/10/suits-blog-618x510.jpg
You're welcome to your opinion but to me, the male form looks like a strong muscled swimmers body. He even resembles my ex somewhat (with more hair). You might take issues with his face perhaps.
And even then, that's actually fairly irrelevant. The suggestion, again, is that if there's a female avatar (and we would like one), some of us would appreciate a departure from the stereotypical hollywood form.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
While the game lose nothing from this idea, it doesn't bring any "ethic-point". It is in fact only a developers choices, not a moral obligation.
Gordon Freeman wasn't given a female form for parity, Mirror Edge don't give you a male-choice either, same for Chell from Portal (despite the gender having little importance there) and I can go on.
Some games simply don't gain from having genders choice. At best-best it does social justice and bring immersion for female players, at worse it kill the immersion of being "that guy" since he is now interchangeable.
They do gain when there an person to person social rules relevance. A game like Mount&Blade did it (and give the choice to account for middle age misogyny) and several game could have profited from that.
tl;dr
nothing rule we need to force a female personae, it's only developers choices also both picture suck at representing "real women"
So, I thought about exactly that point. Like, what if someone wanted a female Mario, or a male Samus Aran, right?
But, thing is, can't hurt to ask, right? This is a game that's being marketed in VR. Having a female body to go with VR seems like a decent option to want to have.
No one is saying anything *must* be forced. Nor is anyone saying something *must* occur to achieve parity. This isn't about equal rights or the inherent bias in any social system towards males.
This is simply a few people saying, ...
1) We would like a female avatar
2) It would be nice if the female avatar didn't cleave to the Hollywood stereotype
Obviously, sufficient numbers have put forth the same idea that the dev team saw fit to implement it.
And at 'best', it expands the potential playerbase by attracting more players. At worst, it's a feature-add that wastes some resources and doesn't bring in a great deal of business value.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
This pretty effectively proves the point of people complaining about the bizarre player model. Why are our hands so big? Has our head been squashed in a vise? What is up with our torso? Are we wearing a corset?
Both have been answered, they said they'd implement some time after 1.0 IIRC and you've seen the model...
I had a response to this? But I'm honestly not sure where you're going with it. Thank you for the response regardless.
I personally don't think the male form is too far idealized and the exaggerations don't hurt my impression of it. Except perhaps the face ... Why is that skull so long?! O.o
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
Yes they have. And you've cherry-picked from my post.
I'm only responding to strangely continual arguments that people feel for some reason compelled to post *against* the inclusion of a female avatar or the opinion of how it should look. As if we shouldn't be asking for it or don't have the right to ask for it.
It's ... very strange.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
Due to the lack of gravity in space, the player probably should be taller as his spine would stretch. Then again, Alterra might have artificial gravity down by now...
That's an interesting argument. But then that brings up the whole loss of bone density and strength from being in space/weightless even a moderate amount of time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_osteopenia).
Though, one could argue, being in the water would relieve some of that gravity stress? Or perhaps the planet has moderate gravity only?
But this is getting away from the original topic.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
How am I cherry picking? I'm merely saying your questions have been answered. In fact they have been answered many times before
Besides you're the one coming in here, guns blazing with rather strange market assertions and conclusions about UWE and Subnautica
There is indeed something like a 50/50 split in the male/female audience (more like 48/52). But you did fail to mention the preferred genres and why this would suddenly double the market share if there was a female character. There are some people making very valid points of there being plenty of successful examples out there where the protagonist is either male or female in games where gender doesn't matter. And you go on to make the assertion, UWE would consider implementing a "Hollywood" looking female, which wouldn't fit Subnautica's style at all and they've already released their preferred female model.
No one in here is suggesting we should scrap the idea of a female model or saying we have no right to ask this question, we're just responding to your rather loaded post...
So... As I "cherry picked"... Your questions/concerns were already answered about the female model and if we will get one. We're merely relaying that bit of info.
There clearly was some misunderstanding on my part. For that I apologize. I thought you were coming in saying my questions were answered, so why was I continuing to post.
I was just commenting on how strange it was that for a game still in development, people would come in and question the legitimacy of asking for something to be done, added, or changed. Or responding to people seeming to question our right to provide our opinion on how the game should proceed.
Actually, that wasn't me. That was the original poster. I simply provided more detail and added my voice. And if you read *MY* response, you'll see I linked to an article explaining the benefits of doing so.
Not only that, but you're mis-characterizing the original post. FirstEd was only asking that they NOT produce a hollywood style clone.
Again, actually, there are quite a few people coming in here acting as if it's either silly for us to even be making the request or that we're wasting time in doing so. If you re-read MY posts, you'll see I repeatedly try to make the point that we have the right to express the opinion of having...
1) A female avatar
2) What form it should take
And again, not my original post.
You say, 'we', as if the collective was doing only that. Yet a quick re-read of the posts will reveal that most of the posters were not doing that. And the person who DID first provide the link, I thanked them and even applauded the devs.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
And that should be the end of it. Sure, having a female avatar may not change much... But putting a choice in doesn't change much either. Nothing is really taken away from one by putting in the other. If the creators hadn't wanted to put in a female avatar, they were within their rights to say 'Nah, our game'. But they ARE putting one in, it probably won't take a lot of work (there's no cutscenes to work around the two avatars, there aren't extended dialogue sequences that would require a lot of new line recordings)
Like... People asking "Why do we NEED a female Avatar", the answer? Well frankly we don't NEED one. But it's nice that they're putting one in, and they're not going to STOP working on the female option they have and will put in.
This isn't complicated
It was indeed mostly addressed at how the OP was rather loaded. So with me derailing all of this (but making those points regardless
Though, in short. There is no indication that a female character would increase sales and we will get a normal looking female (with future human style) most likely as suggested by "them devs".
Also that 52/48 gender split says nothing about what games they prefer, for all we know Facebook/phone apps are included. Anyone has some proper stats specifically about "FPS survival" games?
100% agreed. Thank you. Excellent post. Again, I was just honestly shocked that people came out so vehemently against it.
And Kouji_San, it happens. I clearly misread the intent and meaning of *your* post, so again, I apologize.
Respectfully,
SoundAwake
How dare anyone question the marketing validity of my incredibly scientific pie chart!!!!1
That chart, once again, is this:
The gender ratio is actually 50.4% male and 49.6% female.
For this game it should be a large Oval.