darkSpyro

Does this bother anyone else? Because it really bothers me. All they had to do to solve the non-issue of swapping the upper and lower halves of different genders was make any female Swaplanders un-swapable with male ones and vice versa. But, nope. Better to just alienate a massive chunk of the audience and exclude girls from having any representation in the new class of Skylanders. Nice.

And this series was doing...well, it was sort of decent with equality, at any rate. :/ We at least have almost one female character for every element. Or we did...

You dropped the ball, Vicarious Visions. I hope TfB makes it up to all the little girls, their mothers, and their brothers/dads/guy friends who like the cool ladies with the next game.

Well, they could've gotten in some deep chompy teeth if they had made female swappers, and if they had made them unable to swap with males there would've been a storm of complaints as well. At least several of the swappers seem practically genderless.

Also, at least we get a good line-up of female corelanders, Roller Brawl and Starstrike both look like some of the best humanoid female 'landers yet, so i'm not gonna complain. And Blizzard Chill looks pretty good as well.
Plus, they may finally add a female fire core!

This was discussed in like at least 2 other topics. While they should have female swaplanders, they chose not to as it would offend people. All those people who dissaprove of the magic and undead elements would and even others would freak out and protest because of "transgender Skylanders".

Huur durr trasgender skylanders...

Yeah I did post a similer topic wondering if they would make a female swapforce or not. When it comes to the gender swap, some actually use that in comiedy espicially kids shows. SInce this is a kids game.

Anyways, As for the girls only swap with girls, would take away a good portion of the point of the swap force... plus apprently there's like 8 movement types, thus it'd only give like 1 movement type per gender.

The devs confirmed that they had to take a neutral gender approach to the figures so the swapping would make sense.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/an...swap-force-wii/

Cross dressing (Thank you, Sierra, to name at least one company who used it relatively consistantly in games) and Transgender are from the era of games where people weren't exactly worried about being PC, or offending people.

These days game developers (except a lot of Independant ones) aren't willing to touch subjects which might be remotely close to taboo, and considering that, at heart, Skylanders is marketed for children, it avoids a lot of uncomfortable subjects for the intended age group.

That, and you'll also notice most Skylanders are male anyway, there are female characters, but the ratio favours the male gender.

So far, I'm just seeing a lot of excuses from all sides here. If the Swaplanders were actually neutral, they wouldn't be male either. So far, no one's really addressing the exclusion of half the human population with this decision. And I did present a very easy fix for the problem in my first post. Just because there are a few female characters in the game (and far too few of those as is, but that's a different subject) doesn't negate that VV made a choice to be lazy and exclude all the little girls who might have wanted a Swaplander they can relate to.

As for the transgender issue... I've held back on commenting on some of the nasty things I see being spread around on these forums about that. They're toys and cartoons. It's only an issue if someone is going to be gross about it.

Most Skylanders are male because the toy industry is about fifty years behind the culture (see: no toys of female characters from Avatar, way more male characters in Skylanders than female, almost all protagonists in popular fiction being male...). Skylanders, while it does have some good female characters, is doing the bare minimum of inclusivity on this issue. It bugs me and I'm pretty sure it bugs a lot of other people who just haven't said anything yet.

Now I'm extra disappointed that everyone would rather make excuses for a pretty problematic decision than think more about what's going on here.

Also, don't care if it's been brought up in other topics; who's got time to sift through everything and find that? This is a big enough issue that it deserves its own topic.

I don't mind the Swap Force all being male.

At least there are female Core Skylanders.

I'm a bit miffed by everything being so male-centric. If they were all so gender neutral, why couldn't the Swaplanders be all female? It's irritating in the extreme and has pretty much ensured I won't be buying the game proper. I'll get the female character figures (those are kind of what I collect) but I'm thinking that's it on this one. The only way they could save this game for me is if a full half of all the core Skylanders were female, which is obviously not going to happen. Fingers and toes crossed that the fourth game will be more inclusive.

It's a male-centric industry, with male-centric designers catering to a very heavy male-centric audience. There's also the problems with the VERY sensitive gender issue. There's still a lot of debate about transgender and all that, do you really want things to snowball from a very innocent question of "Mommy, what happens when I put a boy Swap on a girl Swap?" to controversy in a news media that is VERY eager to find some reason to detract video games?

And besides there's Stealth Elf essentially being the poster girl for the franchise.

She dethroned Spyro even in game one, that's something. *shrug*

Quote: TerraFizz

It's a male-centric industry, with male-centric designers catering to a very heavy male-centric audience.

The funny thing is...it's not. Video gaming does not have a heavily male-centric audience anymore.

From the Entertainment Software Association:

Quote:

Forty-five percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (31 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (19 percent).

That is nearly half, and while the younger audience is likely to be more male, it is no longer a significant amount.

And in Canada:
Quote:

54% of males and 46% of females play video games

The remaining cores should be all girls except Magic and Undead.

So 8 male cores.
8 female cores.

What if the make all swaplanders Female?

I honestly don't care. I think that every Skylander is cool, wherever it is a male or a female. If a concept goes better with a girl, then let that character be female. For example, I really love Star Strike! I don't think a male would have done that good, with that concept.

I actually feel bad that they never create female Swappers at all. I mean, that chauvinistic.

I don't really understand how this could make someone not so happy, I mean like all they did was not want males and females to swap halves so they made them one gender. And since the swap force was like a little military group, do you really think that all of them would girls? Also, I don't think a whole lot of girls would want to go save the world and taking injuries along the way. :/ I would be happy with the fact that none of the female characters really suck

You sound like one of those people who complains that Smash Bros has only like 6 female characters counting Jiggly. (Zelda, Samus, Peach, Jiggly, Nana, and Wii Fit Trainer)

Indeed. I don't care, as long there's fun gameplay.

Quote: Ninpire

I don't really understand how this could make someone not so happy, I mean like all they did was not want males and females to swap halves so they made them one gender. And since the swap force was like a little military group, do you really think that all of them would girls? Also, I don't think a whole lot of girls would want to go save the world and taking injuries along the way. :/ I would be happy with the fact that none of the female characters really suck

Whoa, way to spit on every woman in the military who's seen active combat, dude. And every female firefighter and police officer who chose their dangerous, violent careers.

Wild has done a great job getting at one of the things I'm aiming at. Go up there and read that post.

If I played Smash Bros., I might care at the lack of female characters in it, yes. I do, in fact, take issue with Nintendo's refusal to acknowledge the strong role of women in society in general, but that's another topic.

I'm female. I like to play characters I can relate to, which are extremely few even today. Marketing so heavily to male players when females make up about half of the playing audience isn't okay anymore. Women and girls play games and they deserve representation just as much as men do, but they aren't getting it. That's not acceptable in the 21st century.

As for the transgender issue... Kids are going to ask that anyway. They're going to want to know why there are no girls and when Dad or Mom tells them, then they're going to ask more questions. Trans* people exist, these are questions society needs to be asking (and will ask) anyway, and the media will manufacture whatever controversy about games they want regardless. All I'm still seeing is justification and excuses being made for the exclusion of female players in the new type of Skylander.

But, on the bright side, I'll be spending a lot less on Swap Force than I have on any other Skylanders game, and I'm not going to be the only one.

You should be on a debate team

Haha, oddly, I never handled debate well. :D These are just long standing observations I've made over years which influence how I see the world. When your only role model in gaming is Lara Croft (and she didn't show up until you were a teenager) the near total lack of representation of your entire gender in a hobby you love sticks out a bit.

But wouldn't it be really funny to see the male Swappers with females' bottom halves or the vice-versa? I mean, it's kinda like that weird sitcom shown in Sam & Cat, "That's a Drag".

Quote: Razz

Quote: Ninpire

I don't really understand how this could make someone not so happy, I mean like all they did was not want males and females to swap halves so they made them one gender. And since the swap force was like a little military group, do you really think that all of them would girls? Also, I don't think a whole lot of girls would want to go save the world and taking injuries along the way. :/ I would be happy with the fact that none of the female characters really suck

Whoa, way to spit on every woman in the military who's seen active combat, dude. And every female firefighter and police officer who chose their dangerous, violent careers.

Wild has done a great job getting at one of the things I'm aiming at. Go up there and read that post.

If I played Smash Bros., I might care at the lack of female characters in it, yes. I do, in fact, take issue with Nintendo's refusal to acknowledge the strong role of women in society in general, but that's another topic.

I'm female. I like to play characters I can relate to, which are extremely few even today. Marketing so heavily to male players when females make up about half of the playing audience isn't okay anymore. Women and girls play games and they deserve representation just as much as men do, but they aren't getting it. That's not acceptable in the 21st century.

As for the transgender issue... Kids are going to ask that anyway. They're going to want to know why there are no girls and when Dad or Mom tells them, then they're going to ask more questions. Trans* people exist, these are questions society needs to be asking (and will ask) anyway, and the media will manufacture whatever controversy about games they want regardless. All I'm still seeing is justification and excuses being made for the exclusion of female players in the new type of Skylander.

But, on the bright side, I'll be spending a lot less on Swap Force than I have on any other Skylanders game, and I'm not going to be the only one.

So, by your logic, now politics have to get a vote in what appears in a game? How about creating a lobbyist group and go to Washington and make it happen like everyone else does. I'm sure there's a liberal somewhere that could find video game manufacturers in contempt in the law and force them to comply. And yes, I really need my video games to force the social issues of the day. I'm a bit distraught that you're comparing the sex of a digital character to people that do great things in the real world--and for some reason if they aren't represented properly to your WISHES that somehow we're dishonoring them.

Personally, I don't factor in sex of the character when I'm playing. It's called ENTERTAINMENT. I want to ESCAPE MY WORLD when I play. Skylanders is hardly a game where connection to the character with a strong storyline was the desired effect. I'm pretty much neutral on this topic, appreciate your passion about this--but this is a video game with fictional characters that aren't even human targeted for 6-10 year olds. I play RE 6 and I don't feel more connected when I'm Leon versus Helena or Ada.

Yep, I plan on spending less on Skylanders, but for reasons that are more concrete: less is less. So I will give them less. For you, the sex issue is just as strong as my desire for more content, and for that I can understand and appreciate.

It was funny enough when they did it to Kaos in the E3 trailer, and no parents complained about that so far as I've heard. Admittedly, laughing at cross dressers or the transgendred is problematic by itself and a kind of humor that is becoming less acceptable as more real people come out who live that way.

Not sure how you made that jump in logic with what I said, GhostRoaster. Your other paragraphs outside the wall of text are closer to what I'm talking about here. I play games to escape, too. However, it's not much of an escape when you are going from a male-centric world into yet another male-centric form of entertainment.

The gist of my problem is that, when it gets right down to it, the exclusion of female characters in the new Skylanders type is outright unfair to female players and anyone else who enjoys non-male characters and the development of the Swaplanders has been executed poorly and lazily in this regard. I came up with a potential solution to the problem in less than five minutes and it's a bit baffling that the guys at Vicarious Visions didn't put any effort at all into trying to make the playing experience fair for all of their players.

Quote: Razz

It was funny enough when they did it to Kaos in the E3 trailer, and no parents complained about that so far as I've heard. Admittedly, laughing at cross dressers or the transgendred is problematic by itself and a kind of humor that is becoming less acceptable as more real people come out who live that way.

Not sure how you made that jump in logic with what I said, GhostRoaster. Your other paragraphs outside the wall of text are closer to what I'm talking about here. I play games to escape, too. However, it's not much of an escape when you are going from a male-centric world into yet another male-centric form of entertainment.

I'm sure that somehow, someway I'm offending someone somewhere on some level.

Probably, but it's not me. :) We all have different experiences that shape our worldviews. I added a third paragraph to my previous post that will perhaps clarify some things.

Still don't know how you got politics out of what I initially said, though. XD If there's one thing that would be pretty stupid to have around, it would be a government group dictating choices in entertainment creation. I'm pretty sure they have more important jobs to do.

Quote: Razz

Probably, but it's not me. We all have different experiences that shape our worldviews. I added a third paragraph to my previous post that will perhaps clarify some things.

Still don't know how you got politics out of what I initially said, though. If there's one thing that would be pretty stupid to have around, it would be a government group dictating choices in entertainment creation. I'm pretty sure they have more important jobs to do.

Yes, it was a bit sarcastic tongue in cheek comment (not at you) reflecting how things get done today. In my worldview there's a lot of things happening that's being deemed "important" that's not really important at all.

I think since they are making 16 swappers they should have made 8 male and 8 female.The 8 males swap with each other and the same for the females.

That's very true. I'd say gender equality is near the top of the list of importance, though. Half the world's population is female; we can't progress as a species if we are continuing to exclude or limit an entire half of our human resources. And gender equality starts with teaching kids that boys are not better than girls or vice versa. We've got a very long way to go with that (as the existence of this post indicates).

After thinking about how parents would react negatively to the swapping; they would probably have a problem since swapping is part of the gameplay( unlike how Kaos swapped in the trailer for humor).

In my opinion, since the swap forcers are gender neutral half of them could of been female. Vicarious Vision could have posted an explanation about the Swapforce characters and their gender on the website for concerned parents.

Bringing crazy feminism to a video game marketed towards children...

Somewhat off-topic, but Razz, something tells me we should RP together.....

Most characters in any fan-fic/rp/anything I write, the males are weaker while the women outnumber them greatly and are usually stronger and tougher.

I do wish we could've had female swappers, I really do. I would've bought the heck out of them. However, I do understand why they didn't. Transgender and homosexuality in intself is somewhat of a touchy subject. I've already heard of instances on this site of parents who are against the magic and/or undead elements because they are "satanic" or somethign along those lines. They most likely forsaw even more parents getting upset by it and rather than trying to find some form of common ground to achieve gender equality and avoid the wrath of over-sensitive parents ready to jump at anything, they took the easy way out and went with an all-male cast for the swappers.

The females only swappign with females thing you mentioned wouldn't quite work, unless there was one female in each element and one with each movement type and one male of each of the two as well. This could be even trickier to balance and would likely result with each movement being secluded to one specific element and cut down on the main gimmick of the game 'Your power is choice" 256 combinations would drop greatly.

Oh goodness, gender issues. It's not a surprise to me, given that Activision Blizzard is an American company and we are a country with very conservative views about these sorts of things. As a country, the issue of swapping figures of 2 different genders probably is too squeamish. So Actiblizz did what any "decent" American corporation would do and sidestepped the issue completely, so the conservative parents buying the game are happy. <.<;

Seiki: It'd be way fun to RP with you if I have a chance. :) Feel free to PM me about that.

To you and HIR both: I do understand on the surface why Vicarious Visions made their choice, but I don't agree with it at all and I think there could have been a better solution to this whole thing if anyone on the team had considered it all more carefully. As for the conservativeness of the US...I'm hoping that continues to change, because it holds us back in a lot of ways. But that's just me.

Skitskat: I'm surprised you, as a female, aren't more concerned about women's issues. Just because it hasn't affected you personally that you are aware of (and it has affected you) doesn't mean it's not a concern for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Yes, this is a video game for kids, but games teach kids a lot about what they will be doing and be like as adults in society.

My point still stands, though: It's ridiculous that female gamers are excluded here, as in so much else. At the very least, all the Swappers could have been women warriors. That would have been aaaaaawesome. :D

Quote: azz01

I think since they are making 16 swappers they should have made 8 male and 8 female.The 8 males swap with each other and the same for the females.

It wouldn't be infinite swapabilities then.

also I think there aware of the lack of female characters, and they have made more female skylanders, how ever on that 45% of girls play video games thing I think they mean older girls, because the main target for these toys to sell to is younger boys. sure girls play video games but how many actually play skylanders compared to the younger boy audience?

TLR I think there just playing it safe and keeping there main target audience in mind.

So far, I've only seen two new female Skylanders this round, which isn't any more than usual. I think the first game had a much better number of female characters by this point in its announcement.

From what I recall, Skylanders is marketed towards kids, not boys in particular. And since it appeals hugely to adults (parents and collectors), that 45% female demographic of gamers is still very important to ActiVision. I see just as many little girls gathered around the Skylanders displays at stores as I do boys.

Yeah, they're playing it safe, but since when has that ever done anyone much good in the entertainment industry? My faith in Vicarious Visions as a producer of Skylanders games has gone way down. I'm now just going to wait and see what Toys for Bob does with the fourth game.

Quote: Razz

At the very least, all the Swappers could have been women warriors. That would have been aaaaaawesome.

Then you have the flip side of the coin, make them all female and exclude the males, isn't that same as making them all male and no females? Same coin different side. Also, no little boy is going to want to play with 16 girl characters, that be yucky! Hehe. Anyways, I work in entertainment marketing, from my experience, it looks like Activision knows exactly what they are doing. Quite possibly they have had meetings to discuss the tender issue of how to present the swaplanders without touching tough issues like cross gender characters. They know they can't fully satisfy every age group or demographic but they will try to hit majority without stepping on the sore toes of tender issues. Most likely they have had focus groups with children and parents of both genders with some of the current characters and possibly this issue and others were brought up, discussed, and handled accordingly. I understand what your saying but children really don't care about these kind of issues, yeah they may be curious as to why is this and why is that but at the end of the day, they just want to swap cool looking characters, even if they are just "neutral" or male.

It would be if we didn't live in a world where 90% of all media is dominated by male characters. Even if all eight (or is it sixteen?) Swappers were female, they would still be outnumber by more than half of the game's other characters, and that's just in Swap Force (not counting the previous two Skylanders games).

I daresay all the little boys I've met whose favorite character is Stealth Elf wouldn't think it's "yucky" to play with girl characters. The truth is, kids don't really care about that kind of thing until their parents make a fuss over it.

As for focus groups... How is it nobody has realized that focus groups fail at their task monstrously? From the interview I saw, the decision to make all the Swaplanders male was made entirely by Vicarious Visions, or at least that was the implication.

Lastly, there are no neutral Swaplanders. That appears to just be something that's being said in an attempt to appease. They all look distinctly male and have male voice actors so far.

Quote: Razz

It would be if we didn't live in a world where 90% of all media is dominated by male characters.

Don't know about you, but every time I turn on TV, there's women anchors on the news, TV shows with women in the lead, and heck even the Portal video game is all exclusive female. My RE6 game has equal representation by both (3 and 3 I believe). I'm thinking the ship has sailed on the equality thing. It's moved on to other disparate impacted groups.

I'm now doing my Columbo look...need some clarification.



Don't get me wrong...I think there should be a few more female skylanders...but in all honesty...I'm not paying close attention.

mybe we get few more core female lets add everyone up

hex cynder sonic boom stealth elf whirlwind flashwing roller brawl star strike hmmmm 8 female

did i miss someone

all i hope that the lightcore slot for swapforce is a female cause its the only last slot for a new lightcorelander is reveal at least make a fire feamle its all i want so there a female in the fire element

So, at most we could end up with 18 girl Corelanders.

Look. Someone close this topic now. It's getting way out of hand.

To everyone who thinks we're all equal now, I urge you to give this video (warning: strong language) a look. That's just in video games. It would be nice to say things were equal in terms of the genders, but they're not. We have a long way to go.

I think the lightcore character is going to be Star Strike. At least that's the only one I've heard of.

Eleven female characters out of thirty-two does not equality make. (I'm pretty sure there are more Skylanders in the games these days, but thirty-two is the last number I remember hearing).

I'm not closing this topic unless a mod asks me to. :) So far, I don't see anything getting out of hand. We're all having a pretty good discussion, nobody has resorted to name calling, which makes this a more well-behaved post than the official news thread. :D Disagreeing with someone is not cause enough to silence them.

Quote: Razz

To everyone who thinks we're all equal now, I urge you to give this video (warning: strong language) a look. That's just in video games. It would be nice to say things were equal in terms of the genders, but they're not. We have a long way to go.

I think the lightcore character is going to be Star Strike. At least that's the only one I've heard of.

Eleven female characters out of thirty-two does not equality make. (I'm pretty sure there are more Skylanders in the games these days, but thirty-two is the last number I remember hearing).

I'm not closing this topic unless a mod asks me to. So far, I don't see anything getting out of hand. We're all having a pretty good discussion, nobody has resorted to name calling, which makes this a more well-behaved post than the official news thread. Disagreeing with someone is not cause enough to silence them.

The total number of total skylabders after swap force would be 70

Just going to repost this...
Quote: SkylandFollower

Half the Skylanders are females to me, and I'm not pushing it against anyone, so I don't care about canon in that regard at all.

If you want a full list: Whirlwind, Warnado, Sonic Boom, Camo, Stealth Elf, Hex, Cynder, Ghost Roaster, Dino-Rang, Prism Break, Eruptor, Zap, Wrecking Ball, Voodood, Trigger Happy, Swarm, Tree Rex, Fright(not Rider), Flashwing, Hot Dog, Chill, Ninjini and Sprocket are all counted as females where I live. Both Brawl and Eye are genderless.

My cousin and I share this list. Neither of us usually use headcanon but Skylanders has hardly any interesting females so we let it slide it in this case. We even make our own backstories and personalities for Skylanders we like less such as Stealth Elf and Hot Head so that we enjoy them more. We have nothing against males but if there were more strong females in canon we would find it easier to relate with Skylanders- so we just go our own way.

I think that what Razz says is correct. Kids could grow up- mentally- much faster if we taught them how to think, and let them decide their own ideals, rather than what to think, and wether we think things are "correct". Thankfully I managed to figure that out while I was in my tweens.

Unfortunately, while this series is meant to appeal to "family" and not just "young boys", due to the overfluctuation of male leads over the years, it just makes it easier to make male characters, if you get what I mean? There are so many boy heroes these days that everyone is used to them. I think it's sad how sometimes the fact that a character is a female is lampshaded instead of being natural, like Dragon from Shrek. (good comedy that was shaded nicely, just that the premise on its own makes me feel bad) It's also a bit sad that just being female can also make something stand out so much more, because it's something we don't expect and borderline-innovation. And now this is being passed off as "gender-neutral"- it's not gender neutral to have every Swapper be male. I can understand WHY VV did this, BUT IT ISN'T GENDER NEUTRAL AND THEY SHOULDN'T SAY THAT IT IS.

Males are simply physically superior- not to offend anyone- they're just stronger, by default, in the majority of cases. It's a fact of life. Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if girls had gotten the better muscles and wether or not things would be the same. The problem isn't that there's a dominance of males in today's society, but that this is making people judge females as if they can't be equals, and that leads us to "majority male" and the cycle repeats. I refer to the paragraph above this, specifically "borderline-innovation".

I should be sleeping right now so I worded this poorly, so sorry, the best bits of this post are on the quote... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hooray, I'm not the only one who imagines certain canonically male characters as female! :D Hot Dog, at least, is always a girl to me. Eye Brawl, too. :)

I think the "males are physically stronger" thing is less of a big deal than it's made out to be these days. There are female marines and armed services members who have now passed all the requirements for male members. Same with many female firefighters.

As far as everyone making male protagonists because it's easier/expected, there is very strong evidence to suggest that this has happened not because of consumer interest but because it's what marketers and publishers think will sell better. Even if this is the easy or expected route, it's something that is being challenged and needs to keep being challenged in gaming and other forms of media. When half of your consumer base is female, you do yourself a disservice by only marketing to the much smaller percentage which is teenage males.

I'm a boy I say the roster should be half male and half female.

^This