Rockstar's Houser explains lack of female protagonist in GTA V
Rockstar Games' co-founder explains why there's three male protagonists in the next GTA.
In an interview with the Guardian, Rockstar Games co-founder and vice president of creavity Dan Houser explained why the studio chose to have three protagonists for Grand Theft Auto V.
"Having three protagonists allows us to create nuanced stories, not a set of archetypes," said Houser. "Rather than seeming like you've got this super-criminal who can do everything effortlessly, they're all good and bad at different things. We liked the idea of a protagonist retiring with a family, and how awful that would be. We've never done anything like that and you don't really see it in games - to feed into these concepts of parenting and pseudo-parenting."
Houser also briefly tackled the reason why one of the protagonists wasn't a woman, something that has yet to happen in the entire GTA franchise.
"The concept of being masculine was so key to this story" Houser said simply.
Finally, Houser revealed that Rockstar Games has been "offered, many times" for the film rights to GTA, but the studio has never pulled the trigger. He explained that Rockstar prefers the relative freedom it has in the game industry to the confines of Hollywood.
"The money's never been close to be worth risking one's crown jewels," said Houser. "Our small dabblings with Hollywood have always left us running back to games. The freedom we have to do what we want creatively is of enormous value. The second you go near Hollywood, people seem willing, or have been forced, to lose a lot of that control. That sort of amorphous 'that won't test well' attitude is exactly how we don't work. We've always tried to think of stuff that's innovative and new, and to go into a world where that's not encouraged would be horrible."
Grand Theft Auto V launches worldwide on September 17 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
And NO, hell NO - we don't EVER need a GTA movie, period. Thankfully, Houser knows this as well...
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Greg Wilcox on 10th September 2013 6:38pm
That and... I don't play GTA for multiplayer (and a good deal of others won't as well if they can't get online in areas with crap connections). Max Payne 3 had a similar character creation feature (and some male and female gamers from around the world ended up in the game thanks to a contest Rockstar had), so I figured the company would wisely keep that going and expand on it)...
Well at least the trivialities of 14 y.o. rich kids should be more fun than hanging out with Roman
I mean, to make it more clear: Every step towards being equal is welcome, but forcing a woman presence in a tittle just to have one there feels more like "making a favor" than a proper display of gender equality.
However (and hoo boy!), I can see one "negative" (not for me, mind you) there as in had they made a character say, a crazy uber-butch female (in place of the crazy guy in the game), there would be an outcry from some who think its a bunch of bad stereotypes and so forth and so on.
I think that there is something wrong with the industry when an excuse has to made (and demanded) for a design decision. Not an 'explanation' but a an actual 'excuse' as if the developer is somehow inherently in the wrong and needs to explain themselves. I'm not sure if that was the case here or not but I have noticed that alarming trend recently.
I totally agree with you there. Something is wrong when developers have to 'defend' their reasoning for not having female main characters.
There have been a lot of situations relating to games that have come out in the past two years where the developer has been forced to defend their decision behind making a protagonist male, or having a 'damsel in distress' plot line, or -insert gender inequality generic argument here-
Until a developer comes out and says "We made the protagonist a male because we think females are weak" (which no sane developer would ever do), It's just going to be more arguing about design decisions until it gets to a point where we have a basic checklist of politically correct characters that fulfill every single possible role in a non-offensive way. So then from that point on, games will pretty much be required to mark off each check box during their game development until every game will have an almost identical set of characters, personalities, relationship dynamics, and whatever else ends up on the checklist.
Most of these demands for defending arguments over PC (playable character) gender or sexuality are attempts to create mountains out of molehills. It's the developers game. It's the developers decision. It's the developers brain child. It's the developers world they've created (keyword being creativity). If somebody doesn't like the game because of the lack of a female protagonist, or any other reason for that matter, nobody is forcing them to buy the game. But their opinions should not force others into a narrow scoped checklist game.
It just makes me sad and frustrated when having no women is just a default assumptive - like my she-money has too many cooties to be worthy of a game. But when they have actually thought about it and are saying "I am writing a story about guys doing guy stuff", as Rockstar have, that's an entirely different thing.
But I think I'll be playing through Remember Me again when it comes out. Unless they have something new to say about "guys doing guy stuff", it'll always be easier for me to engage with something I can relate to.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Bonnie Patterson on 11th September 2013 11:38pm
If you take it on a single game basis, sure, mountain out of a molehill, right - someone wants to tell a story about guys, nothing wrong with it. But when you look at an entire branch of art and find your half of the species barely exist in it except as a function for men, yes, I want to ask questions!
It's not about requiring developers to tick off boxes - I really don't want to see what a designer might inflict on me as a portrayal of women, if they haven't managed to work out by themselves that women have personalities and needs unrelated to what a heterosexual man wants them to have. It's about questioning why they haven't managed to do that yet. Why so many apparently don't even want to do that, and are angrily opposed to it.
And definitely no one is going to stand up and say "we think females are weak." What would they do with all the dominatrix outfits? What many of them would actually be saying were they to stand up and be honest is "We don't really think of women as people." Not because they're evil and malicious, but because they simply don't think about it.
And if it's an inaccurate impression, maybe developers need to think about correcting the vibe they're giving off - which is what people are asking them to do in the first place.
And you're correct - no-one is forcing them to buy the game. And what these pesky, pesky complainers are doing, is telling you they won't, and why. Which is actually pretty nice of them. They are shouting at the top of their lungs "BORED NOW!" And that's half your marketplace. How unreasonable of them.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bonnie Patterson on 12th September 2013 12:10am
I think the industry doesn't develop games for women largely because it lacks enough female developers to give good perspectives on female characters.
On the other hand, a prerogative of art, if we accept our industry to be art, is that it must be allowed to exist within its own internally established goals, without seeking to meet any sort of standard for the sake of the standard itself.
So while it's totally a valid criticism that yes, more games need strong female leads, it's very silly to walk up to every game that has male leads (even multiple male leads) and point and say "Hah! You're the problem!" especially before they have a chance to actually release the game and have it judged on its own merits.
Is it a fair situation for a studio to be in the position where their staff are talented at writing male orientated story lines as a vast majority but little skill for female characters? I'm not sure that I could necessarily criticise them for doing what they're good at but the pattern of a lack female character orientated material across the industry should be addressed. "How?" is a completely different matter but the best way I can see it manifesting would be in companies realising that they could quickly carve themselves a nice niche and become the experts in the industry.
Wouldn't it be weird if we had studios that centred only on female centred stories? You know... like an antithesis of Epic. Not cutesy and girly per say but adult and feminine.
I wouldn't write a story about a lawyer doing lawyerish things because I have not got a clue about that world. I do however know about other subjects that do interest me or that I've got personal experience with.
Any story I write is bound to include some form of fighting, loss, running around with weapons and social awkwardness :)
I would feel totally out of my depth trying to write from a female point of view so I would only embark on that if I had the time to ask lots of females lots of questions to get their perspective.
I think I agree with a few others here when I say it's probably more to do with the sheer number of men in the industry - it's bound to produce waves of guns & ammo games. In time, when more and more women are part of the industry I have no doubt that we'll start getting a wider variety of themes. I hope so anyway, because that'd be very cool.
Plus if devs started sticking women in stories just to tick boxes it would be a different kind of sexism, a token gesture that says "be content with this".
I wonder what an all-female dev team would produce. That would be interesting!
Bayonetta, Ma-Ma from the recent Dredd, Sharon Stones' character from Basic Instinct, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, pretty much anyone in Sin City...
Pretty damn likeable to me.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Smith on 12th September 2013 1:57pm
What would help, imo, is to drop unhelpful and untrue sayings like 'females just aren't interested in this kind of thing, so it's not my problem' (Please call us women, we are in fact members of the same species as you) - or 'aggressive women don't make good characters' - why on earth, Paul, would you say something as ignorant as that?
Saying that it's near complete exclusion is simply untrue. In the past 10 years alone, there have been many, MANY, games that have come out that have had women as playable characters. If they were not playable, they were NPC's with a large impact on the game as a whole be it storyline, mechanics, what have you.
I don't have the time nor the patience to name off every single one, an I'm not going to either because google is everybody's friend.
I don't know where you're getting the opinion that many developers don't even want to women personalities and are angrily opposed to it. Unless you're in the design meetings of every single game development company in the industry and you can 100% say you heard the devs angrily shouting "We don't wanna put women in our game!!! RAWR IM MAD", I don't think you have the justification for such a statement.
In the past decade, there have been countless games with women characters (playable and non-playable), games where you have a male/female selector in the character creation. Hell, I can remember all the way back to the days of games like XCOM and Baldur's Gate where half your team was made up of various women from all over the world (some of which had higher strength stats than men on the team!). Or In Baldur's Gate where your main character could be female, then there were countless female characters that joined your party throughout the game.
There's always something for somebody to complain about. If it's not a lack of female characters, it's that the female characters aren't strongly written. If it's not that, it's that the female characters aren't playable. If it's not that, it's that the character isn't feminine (or masculine) enough. There will always be something for somebody to complain about.
I still can't wrap my head around your persistent ability to personify the opinions and though process of the entire game industry in some of your comments. For example:
All I can say about this statement is how dare you... Just... How dare you. Again we go back to your perceived ability to voice the opinion of every single man in the game industry and the world as a whole.
If you go to google, and can't find a long list of women characters in games over the past ten years, then you're either not using the correct search criteria, or you have a seemingly unwillingness to observe the counter argument.
That said, GTA IV seemed to be less beholden to Hollywood cliche so there was less of an argument there, and while V looks it's back to being more OTT blockbuster, it's still got plenty that looks unique rather than "like that bit in gangster film X" (I can't think of a direct equivalent of the psychotic trailer-park guy in a movie for instance, although I'm no expert), so maybe they've evolved beyond their early influences and Rockstar have just missed an opportunity to make the first iconic woman gangster...
<edited to swap 'female' for 'woman' - sorry Jessica, no offense meant!>
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Ian Lambert on 12th September 2013 4:34pm
I should point out after seeing your edit that 'female' is IMO perfectly acceptable as an adjective, but when used as a noun to describe a woman or girl it has disquietingly dehumanising overtones that make a lot of women uncomfortable.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 12th September 2013 5:06pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Smith on 12th September 2013 5:52pm
And I disagree with your previous assertion about violent, aggressive female characters. I think a well-written crazy lady can be as enjoyable and likeable as a well-written crazy guy. You may be right that such characters "don't sell," but I think that has more to do with the current predominant attitudes than any flaw inherent in the nature of such characters.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Paul Smith on 12th September 2013 8:48pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 12th September 2013 9:11pm
If you think that documentary proves anything except that the documentary-maker doesn't know anything about statistics and evidently has never encountered the concept of socialised gender roles, do feel free to lay it out for me.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 12th September 2013 9:27pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Smith on 12th September 2013 9:50pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Smith on 12th September 2013 10:30pm
Insisting that biological sex ultimately determines the interests and aptitudes of human beings is frankly ridiculous.
The paucity of women in science subjects has been pretty firmly shown to be rooted in how much they are pushed away and discouraged from them, and it's been show best by how much those numbers have risen now that's no longer so prevalent.
Function is a word with more than one meaning; it means "Something to be used". Female characters in games far more often than not are just there as something to look at, something to rescue, something to provide praise and motivation.
The key word there is "some thing".
Dr. Zaius would be proud...
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Greg Wilcox on 13th September 2013 12:01am
It's just marketing and business, making a product that caters to it's fan base. Jeez, why discuss science, and the human brain etc?
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Marty Howe on 13th September 2013 5:49am
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 13th September 2013 5:38pm
How do you think science works? Do you think a bunch of scientists just get together in a room, argue their opinions on how the world works, and take a majority vote? That's not how science works.
If you're going to claim that the audience of GTA is 90% male, then you need to back that up with studies showing that's the case, if you want your claim to be taken seriously. Otherwise it's "just common sense innit"
A peer reviewed study (ideally several) on black holes is science.
A documentary in which Stephen Hawking discusses his opinions on black holes is not science.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Bryan Robertson on 13th September 2013 6:17pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 13th September 2013 9:11pm
We've gotten rather off topic here, so I'm just going to leave it at that.
it was suggested that introducing a female mc in GTA would alienate the majority of the playerbase. Hard to believe really.. And very rude to our male friends (of the same species ;)) - they are not the sexists you make them out to be. As one other person commented: there are plenty of very successful games out there with strong playable female characters
to the point of women not being interested in "maths and stuff": my bsc in Computer Science had more than a third of women. And despite that we had to put up with silly comments questioning us being there.
btw: i loved gta. The first ones. What stopped me buying it? The lack of a character i could identify with.
now regarding the "fact" that its men who earn the bucks and therefore decide what its spent on: women actually make up the highest share of money spent on games. Happy to back that up with statistics when i am not typing on my phone (the mystery lies in the buyer is not the user in many cases).
fun fact before this angry female goes to sleep: in Japan role models are very traditional: men go to work, women look after the family. After some pocket money taken off, mummy manages the family budget. And that's Japan. If you really think women are baking & knitting at home and have no say in family budget or contribute, then you re still stuck in the 50s.
our buying, power is real. So is our desire not to play mind numbing games like farmville.
Read what I said, I said it 'might' I don't know. I'm speculating. I'm not a superhuman like you, who knows everything.