Are there more women modders for Dragon Age than men?

[tevarel]

While recovering from this horrible bout of pneumonia it just dawned on me that it seems like more women mod for this game then.

I know the Dark Times crew are a mix of men and women and a few stand alone modules have been made by men, but some of the best game enhancements  have been done by women. I have female friends who have opened up the toolset and boosted their games by making pendants and other type of weapons.


It sure would be interesting to know the percentage of women who play this game.

Comments

[sleepyowlet]

Hm... I suppose it's because women have more reason to mod the game. Just one example: armours. They look fine on men, but are a real eyesore when equipped by female characters. I love the heavy dragonscale for its stats, but it looks awful with those lumpy boob-containers. The mage-robes are the same - they are so very ugly.
And then there's the romances. Women tend to be more interested in those than men (there are exceptions, but just look at the fanfic) - and then there's those sick little puppies amongst us (me included) who want to romance unromancable characters. And then mods happen, because somehow nobody makes games for women in their late twenties or older who don't want to romance a twenty-years-old or an elf with an annoying accent. Or a bard who manages to be both girly and religious at the same time. Can't quite decide which is more disturbing.
Computer games in general tend to target a male audience aged 16-25. Dragon Age is a huge exception from the rule in many ways (remember Morrowind? It started without any female-shaped armours at all) - but have we yet glimpsed a fem!Hawke? As far as I know, we haven't.
As far as I can tell, guys mod game mechanics and utilities (like lock-bashing) and gals tend to mod cosmetic things (new robes, hairstyles etc.) and character-related story things (added and improved romances and the like).

TLDR: Women are not the main target-audience of the gaming industry, so we have to take matters in our own hands and mod the games to fit our needs.

[scarylady]

There's a shot of Fem!Hawke here:

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/114/1143565p1.html

[sleepyowlet]

Ah, thank you. Oh dear, she has the red thing on her nose too.

I should have expressed myself more clearly: Most (every?) official BioWare releases in the past months sported m!Hawke. The advertising too. That makes it quite clear who the main target-audience is; which was the point I was trying to make.
I didn't follow the news that closely, since they lost me with "fully voiced PC".

[tevarel]

You will be able to customize the female Hawke so you don't have to have the red thing. :)

[sleepyowlet]

Since every Hawke has it, I thought it had to do something with the story.

[sakuratea]

a lot demos (including to Game Informer) used a female rogue.

[tevarel]

You have some great points....

I did read recently that female gamers are the biggest growing demographic which means marketing is changing although very slowly.

[sleepyowlet]

One can always hope. I mean, BioWare are better at including others than "young male" than the rest of the publishers - at least the NPCs react to the fact that you're a woman. When I was traipsing through Morrowind and Oblivion it made no difference at all; and I found that really boring.
I'm glad they finally realize that women weren't gaming because they don't like gaming, but because they didn't like the games.

[zevguy]

I do have to say I like the thigh highs of certain robes.... those are not such eyesores!

[sleepyowlet]

Maybe the thigh-highs aren't bad, but those robes also come with a plaid (!) collar and furry shoulder-patches. And those are awfully ugly. And the robes in general don't look half as snazzy on women as on men. For example, the male version of the standard mage-robe has a lot more details and interesting fabrics, like the shiny paisley-patterned stuff around the shoulders. I want shiny paisley too *pouts*.

[sakuratea]

I don't think we can do much analysis without more data, but that said it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Women make up the majority of media fans. They are also far more likely to alter and reinterpret the original texts, "textual poaching" (again, Henry Jenkins is the prime guy for this, but you could look at Fiske, Hills or any number of fan researchers who would agree).

I would be interested in any of the raw data about players. Does Bioware publish any data on who plays DA:O? I imagine that the mandatory data connection to Bioware servers would give at least some rough data. Since they archive characters they could probably give information on who played it a lot vs. who played it once. I would also be interested in the data on the DLC. I know many more women who bought it than men, but that's just anecdotal evidence.

[sleepyowlet]

You are absolutely right, but I highly doubt they'd share that data. They collect it for marketing purposes - other companies might take advantage of that, and BioWare sure doesn't want that.
As I said before, BioWare is rather exeptional; I have the feeling that female gamers are still pretty much ignored by the game-industry at large. How many other RPGs are there with a female protagonist who actually *feels* female? I ran through Morrowind with a stunning Breton woman - and the only time she was flirted with was when she met a highwayman... it was even worse in Oblivion - a game that I've started about five times - and I never could make myself finish it. And then there are titles like "Assassin's Creed" and "The Witcher" where you don't have the option of a female character at all. Sad.
I developed an aversion against male PCs over the years. I'm sick of spending hours staring at the butt of a guy.

[zevguy]

Baldur's Gate. The Fem!PC's were flirted with properly. However, the armors were merely 'meh'. There were also many male gamers who created mods for females, to boost the quality of the game for the other demographic end.

[sleepyowlet]

*laughs* yeah, and guess who was a writer for that game? Ah the romances in BG. Three for the male char (Jaheira, Arie and Viconia) and only one RO for the female char - Anomen. The most arrogant, whiny "sun is shining from my ass"-paladin in Ferun. Who the hell wants to romance something like that???
Again, some of the same writers were involved in creating "Neverwinter Nights" - and this game has the only RO I've ever liked. Valen Shadowbreath had snark. You had to win him over, because in the beginning he didn't like you one bit. Those were the days...
As for the BG modding, that is probably true. Though concerning more recent games (like DA, Morrowind or Oblivion) cosmetic mods are usually done by gals. Not all of them, mind you.

[jannifer]

I have to say that I play games for the story, so I never batted an eye at Morrowind or Oblivion. And, I finished both of them multiple times. I was still working on playthroughs of Oblivion when it decided not to play nicely with the latest video driver update. *muttermuttercurseBethSoftmutter* One of these days, I'll roll back the driver and see if I can finish those playthroughs. I didn't get Morrowind until the GOTY edition, though, and by then there were already plenty of mods available. In fact, it was Morrowind which introduced me to the wonderful world of modding. Oblivion I did get when it came out, thanks to a Christmas present from my baby sister who preordered it for me. Still snapped up the mods as they became available. There were RO's in Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights? *blink* I totally missed that. Played through both of them, also. Anyway, my DA:O game is pretty heavily modded, though not as heavily as Morrowind or Oblivion. However, almost all my mods (for any of my games) are eye-candy things -- better bodies, more clothes, nicer armors, nicer looking placeables, houses, etc. Very few of my mods actually alter gameplay.

I still think of myself as a gamer, even though I don't own a console (and really have no interest in so doing). And I know I'm in something of a minority, being on the shady side of 50. (Close your mouth, you'll catch flies.) So, I guess the sexless gameplay of certain of the aforementioned games never really crossed my mind. If I thought about it at all, it was to appreciate the fact that being female made not a whit's worth of difference to the gameplay because men and women were equal. That being said, I won't play a game without a female PC. Even if the PCs are premade so that some are female and some are male a la Sacred, I still want a choice to play as female. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the subtle differences one encounters in DA:O when playing as a male. I actually created a male character in pursuit of the romance achievements and had no idea that the game would be in any way different.

I think I'm rambling a bit. While I understand and appreciate the points made by earlier posters, it's just that those are things I'd never really thought about. As long as the basic premise of the game was engaging, I've played it. I have, however, insisted on a female PC because my characters, in many ways, are me. Hmmm, maybe that's why I haven't been able to do a darkside playthrough, yet. *exits talking to self*