The difference between indie houses and the big corporate machine: indie houses innovate, corporate machines generate.

You already knew this, right? One area where this smacks hardest is the role of the women in games. Recently, I saw a retweet Brooke did from cuppy of Metaplace fame.

You can find the direct link here. But the main gist of it…

  • *whine* Women are HARD.
  • *whine* Women  are EXPENSIVE.
  • *whine* We cant break stuff if we put women in games.
  • *whine* Games would be so much more profound if we didnt have to think about gender. (They actually used Ms. Pac-Man as an example. LOLWUT?)

We here at Double Cluepon have something to say about that…

  • What a load of crap. Seriously. What a complete load of utter crap. (It’s 2010, and you’re using the same excuses people use to keep women from advancing in other areas. Thanks for injecting it in game design, an area these attitudes have no place in.)
  • What an excuse to not innovate.
  • Women should not be excluded because of the outcome of a biological circumstance.
  • Women are awesome characters, and should be used more, not less often.

This is where indie houses come in. When you want to generate money, you use the tried and true formula. When you want to innovate, you get all experimenty. =) This is where love of game design comes into play. There is room for both camps, to be sure. That being said, I will repeat here, my response to Brooke:

We know about this problem, and we plan to do something about it.

Emerald Kingdom has the average male representation. However, it has an above average female representation. The background, the story, the content…we wanted something different. Not for the sake of being different, but because doing it made sense. Sprites (our Major NPC Class) in Emerald Kingdom? There are 26 main Sprites handling skill Marks. Out of those 26: 16 are female, 10 are male. Is the story and content totally centered around the feminine aspect of things? Certainly not. I can tell you straight up: there is definitely something for everybody. But do males need to dominate? Do they need to be there to “drive the game” or “push the story?”

Nope. They sure do not. Women can be just as evil as the men. They can be just as conniving. They can also be just as kind, and spirited. Beatrice, Avatea, Para and Confusia…Pearly…Thrynity. Notice a theme here? We are not making a female centric game, but we are paying attention, not only to our market…

We are paying attention to a far more important opportunity: the opportunity to innovate.

As the Sprites are the major NPC’s of the game, and interaction with them will be a Big Thing, it’s important to get story and character design right. I am sure there are those out there that believe doing something more male centric is a slam dunk. I am sure you could find elevendy billion focus groups to agree with that. But, honestly? Where is the fun in that? What’s more, if you are NOT having fun in this business, and wont eat your own dog food…

You have no business designing games in the first place. At the very least, you need to do some serious soul searching.

So, wrapping up: we know about this issue. We think we can represent women, and men…in a strong manner, and in such a way that does not relegate women to the role of decorated fluff.