Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

aresant

I think a fascinating part of Alyx is Valve choosing a female protagonist.

85%+ of VR users are male, compared to say 70/30 male/female balance of say Fornite. (1/2)

Any way you carve it the audience for Alyx is going to weight heavily male.

And research suggests that gender-swapping in VR is a profound psychological experience:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8260949

(1) https://www.rakutenintelligence.com/blog/2016/virtual-realit...

(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/865625/fortnite-players-...

(3) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8260949

View on HN

Eh, I don't think it's as big of a deal as you're suggesting. Alyx is pretty much the only choice if they wanted to use a pre-existing character as an action protagonist set between HL1 & 2. And from the trailer, it looks like the only "gendered" thing about the player's avatar is the voiceover. That's not a "body swap illusion" like the paper is talking about. In principal, I don't see it having any more deep psychological effect than, say, Perfect Dark.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark

Adrian Shephard's still lying around tho :^)

I guess gearbox owns the character??

> Alyx is pretty much the only choice if they wanted to use a pre-existing character as an action protagonist set between HL1 & 2.

Before I say this, note I'm looking forward to playing as Alyx, and don't expect gender to make much of a difference in a game/story like this.

But as far as not having options, I disagree. Barney was already a playable character in Blue Shift, he's shown to be relevant to the plot in HL2. Not only that but he's undercover at least some of the time, opening up gameplay avenues that Alyx wouldn't have available. Not that I'm suggesting that HL in VR needs a Papers Please style minigame or anything...

> I think a fascinating part of Alyx is Valve choosing a female protagonist.

There has been other games with a female protagonist, but the backlash was so bad against them that they were completely forgotten. I know it's obscure, but you can look it up, there's those two games called "Portal" and "Portal 2", and the two main characters are female. You've probably never heard of them because of all the misogyny.

... or something.

To be honest I'm surprised that there wasn't any backlash. I find the weight and attractiveness jokes that GLaDOS throws at the player absolutely hilarious. But that can be a touchy subject, especially with Chell as the protagonist instead of, say, Gordon Freeman.

There was no backlash because nobody whatsoever has a problem with a female protagonist.

What some people have a problem is recasting an iconic character as a woman for the sake of "diversity," or any form of forced diversity for that matter.

I ask this earnestly: Did you read past the first sentence in my previous post?

I wasn't suggesting that there would be backlash with a female protagonist. I was suggesting there could have been backlash to the way that protagonist was treated, due to her gender.

Sorry, I didn't understand because what you meant seems so strange. I can't believe anyone without a major psychotic breakdown would take personally what an obvious recording says about a virtual character you're just happening to be controlling.

It's a pattern with Valve. Remember Chell?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chell_(Portal)

True, but Chell had no speaking lines (not hating on Valve, Gordon Freeman/basically all their 1st person protagonists are mute). We've seen Alyx as a developed character who's gone through some trauma (not spoiling here) so I'd argue this is a bit more exciting.

It’s not new tho, Chelle in portal was a female protagonist, and that game has been VR’d to hell and back.

I think Alyx makes sense as a protagonist given how prominent of a character she was in HL2, regardless of gender.

> that game has been VR’d to hell and back.

What do you mean by this? As far as I can see there is no actual VR port of Portal. You can play it through something like VorpX, which gets you 3D display through a headset, but that can hardly be called "VR'd to hell and back".

Yeah, maybe “to hell and back” was strong, but it was used as the setting for “The Lab”, one of Valve’s first VR demos, and there’s a mod called “Portal Stories VR” which is one of the most developed and popular VR mods currently.

From a business perspective it makes total sense. I saw a GDC talk where they laid out the statistics:

- Most men don't mind playing a female character (think Lara Croft).

- Most women prefer to play a female character.

So the real question is why there aren't more game studios using female protagonists.

There are plenty of games with female protagonists though, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Mirror's Edge, Portal, Last of Us 2 (just to name a few).

> I think a fascinating part of Alyx is Valve choosing a female protagonist.

It's in a lot of good company in that respect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_featuring...

I doubt that VR is more than incremental in terms of creating an illusion of gender.

Another interesting thing is that this is going to be the first valve game where the protagonist actually talks.

It's an interesting choice by Valve. They're basically making a bunch of white men play as a black woman. In practice I agree with the other response that it's not a big deal. Most VR experiences either race or gender swap me (I'm a black male) or turn me into an abstract form or a robot. It can be disorienting at first but you get used to it.

Gordon was famously mute and his hands and forearms were hidden. This allowed anyone to easily immerse themselves. (Same for Portal.)

Unlike a third person game where you're controlling a character, I could see how having a different voice and hands in VR would be odd. I bet Valve realized that a mute protagonist no longer works in a story-driven environment.

I remember reading various making of stories regarding the half-life world back when it was still relatively new, and even then the designers spent a lot of time talking about how difficult it was having a mute, non-interactive protagonist. What they pulled off is excellent considering the state of gaming at the time, but I think you're right in that it just wouldn't fly today.

South Park did a really good job with a mute character in both of their recent games. It became almost a running joke in how the conversations would flow and the silence was taken as support for whatever the speaking person wanted it to mean, highlighting narcissism or teasing societal expectations.

From what I've seen in VR platforms that support custom avatars (even in modded Beat Saber), the userbase may be male but most of them want to be in female bodies...

How is this different than a gender swap in a non-vr game?

I'll have to join vr chat as a girl tonight and see how things go.

That said I normally play star citizen w/ a female avatar, and other than thinking "the person I'm talking to might think I'm a girl" my mindset doesn't change much...

Maybe looking down and seeing big breasts (assuming that's the case with Alyx) triggers something uncomfortable in a male's brain. Maybe we can feel like what it is to be trans and feel that your body "isn't right" for you.

> (assuming that's the case with Alyx)

Uhh. Nope:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/half-life/images/9/9f/D1...

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65727186/...

The character isn't 90s Lara Croft.

Thanks. The art looks awesome, btw

They're from Half-Life 2 btw.

I've sort of experienced that in star citizen... sort of.

You can look down and see them, but they're not egregiously large.

Though one of the funniest bugs (feature?) will only happen if you play with a female avatar: if you lay down in a bed, and then open up your mobiglass (in-game arm-tablet-thing) the UI lands about halfway through your breasts. It's like your character places their arm on their stomach, and the UI is projected forwards towards their face.

If I remember to I can take a screen cap of when it happened to me the other day on stream.

I think the disappointing part is there is so little choice in the avatar you can play in these games. I would like something with how bioware approached SWTOR, the dialog changes, voice actor swap included, to match the gender of the character and from there it is just as easy to adapt skin colors and features. Even better, her name is about as neutral as you can ask for!

Female protagonists in game is the new fad. It has nothing to do with the gender ratio of the players playing the game.

As sibling posts are pointing out, that's not new for Valve at all. They have been doing this for decades at this point.

I doubt Valve decided on the protagonist recently. This has to have been years in the making

I can see that happening but consider this; the closest "character" they have to "player character" with a voice is Alyx.

Lara Croft would like a word.

Or Samus, if you want to go back even further.

Not sure i understand the TLDR of the IEE study.. what does stereotype lift and induced stereotype threat even mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Stereotype_l...

>stereotype threatening situations have been linked to the inability to recruit and retain women into these fields

Come on, we know the inability to recruit and retain women in these fields is down to a culture that simply does not value the contributions of women in STEM as highly as their contributions in other 'industries'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com