David J Prokopetz said:
Depends. The Atelier series used to target the female market almost exclusively, but it never got localised. When the developer decided to go in a new direction and re-tool the series to appeal to male gamers (adopting a more traditional quest-based CRPG format, and reducing the role of female characters, including a move to exclusively male protagonists), it got picked up for localisation almost immediately.
Kinda sad, innit?
You know, I admit I really don't know much(when I thought I at least knew a bit) about ''what gamers want.''
For example, the majority of the gamers that I have spoken to(a lot in my time, but I can say a tiny, minute, speck of a fraction of the entire gaming population), really didn't care one way or another what gender the protagonist was. I mean, I loved Wild Arms 3 because it was a cool game and it had 4 awesome characters. I loved Wild Arms 1 for the same reason(it had 3 characters I very much liked, and Alter Code F upped this. I admit I loved all of the cast in both games.) One had a male protagonist, one a female, but I really found myself not caring, and many people I speak to tend to feel the same.
If a character is good, then why care?
But that brings me to this: If men never wanted to play women, then why do so many men play women in fighting games? They play Tomb Raider with no quibbles, same with Metroid. I never once heard a man say ''if Lara Croft were a man this game would be better.'' Now, perhaps in the world there are some.
Why would they change a protagonist to a male to try to appeal to males? On the same token, I hear some women discuss how they don't want to play X game because the protagonist is male and i have to wonder.(I would wonder if I heard a girl say they didn't ever want to play a girl, or if a man said they didn't ever want to play X or Y. Personal taste is personal taste in the end, but I just think the pixelated chromosomes don't define everything a character is.) I mean, when I hear people say ''why isn't the lead female,'' the first thing I end up saying is ''being a female does not automatically mean it's an awesome character.'' I've seen some pretty horrid characters of BOTH genders. Gender does not automatically make a character good or bad. Good or bad writing makes a character good or bad.
Now, I know I'm usually known around here for liking ''da boyz'' in games, but I simply pick 'em in MMOs for aesthetics or whatnot, but otherwise, I mean, cool characters are cool characters. If I had to list my top 10 FF characters, it would be fairly even between the guys and the girls. When I write up concepts, I see what pops into my mind and fits the situation. If I have a good idea for a man, I write it down, same with a woman.
(I mainly talk about wanting to make my goofy all-male fighting game or whatnot since people like to talk about all-female ones. I mean, what's good for one gender is good for the other, isn't it? Or shouldn't it be?)
Sorry for the long-windedness, but yeah, the idea that men never want to play women kind of baffles me since I see men playing women in games quite often.
