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Do you think the Sonic series is kind of sexist?


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On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2021 at 5:40 AM, batson said:

Perhaps the better question is "Is the Sonic series kind of sexy?".

I mean we have one of the largest r34 scenes of any fandom...or at least that's what people say. I honestly kinda doubt that and think people mostly get on it to talk about how weird and gross Sonic fans are when other franchises have just as much porn.

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43 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

I mean we have one of the largest r34 scenes of any fandom...or at least that's what people say. I honestly kinda doubt that and think people mostly get on it to talk about how weird and gross Sonic fans are when other franchises have just as much porn.

Yeah, that's what I've been saying for years. The history of why and how the Sonic fanbase aquired such a negative reputation is probably very complex and involves everything from Sega's own fumbling of the series to Chris-chan, but it is my continued belief that objectively speaking the Sonic fanbase is not worse or weirder than other fanbases. All fanbases have drama, nitpicking, porn and fancreations that make one question the makers sanity.

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2 hours ago, batson said:

Yeah, that's what I've been saying for years. The history of why and how the Sonic fanbase aquired such a negative reputation is probably very complex and involves everything from Sega's own fumbling of the series to Chris-chan, but it is my continued belief that objectively speaking the Sonic fanbase is not worse or weirder than other fanbases. All fanbases have drama, nitpicking, porn and fancreations that make one question the makers sanity.

I mean I'll certainly agree on the last 2 but IDK I kinda think this fandom gets up to Star Wars fandom levels of Drama and Nitpicking. The only thing that keeps it from surpassing is the sheer amount of sexism, racism and homophobia in Star Wars fandom.

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  • 5 months later...
On 7/27/2021 at 3:23 AM, Cosmos Rogue said:

I think the desire to correct the once (current?) common idea that women are frail by depicting female characters in popular media as being just as capable ass kickers as the guys can lead to tunnel vision where the only kind of strength that is respected is physical or martial prowess, when there are many kinds of personal strength.

The damsel in distress is a time worn trope, and in video games used to be all of the representation female characters got in some of the most popular games. In Sonic Adventure however, Amy being kidnapped and escaping her captor is a story worth telling in of itself, not just as an inciting plot point to get Sonic motivated to rescue her. Amy's optimism and kindness are virtues that serve her well on her adventure too; she isn't just the character who fights with a giant hammer.

Unfortunately, this basically all disappears in Sonic Adventure 2. It would be wrong to say Amy has no impact on SA2's story, but she does not have a meaningful plotline for herself. The ultimate reason for Amy's inclusion in SA2 is because the writers needed someone who would bother even trying to change Shadow's mind about destroying the world; in other words, Amy exists in SA2 to advance a male character's story. Maria has it even worse. Her entire role in the story is to die to motivate Shadow's actions. If that doesn't reveal how much the writers cared about their female characters in SA2, I don't know what does. Even Rouge, supposedly a skilled jewel thief, has to be rescued while on a mission to steal the Chaos Emeralds just so Shadow can have another flashback about Maria.

Things have never really gotten better in the games as far as it's presentation of female characters is concerned. Starting in Heroes they turned Amy's crush on Sonic up to 11(000), and moved Rouge into Shadow's orbit while pushing him as one of the main characters in the series. Blaze actually had a strong character arc when she was introduced, so of course they made her secondary to Silver, despite his unpopularity after debuting in the worst game of the series. By then Sonic Team had such a poor track record with storytelling that they managed to discredit the very ideas of just about everything they had done in the prior half decade. They decided to throw out as much as they could for Sonic Unleashed, and the series narrative and characters have largely remained in stasis ever since.

So. Yeah. I do think the games have a sexist history.

It's also noteworthy how many of the adaptions have taken the trouble to add female characters to the main cast in an effort to balance out the gender ratio: SatAM/Archie had Sally and Bunny, Underground had Sonia, Boom had Sticks, and now IDW has Tangle/Whisper/Belle. Dr. Mechano is right; boys don't have any problem with rooting for female characters.

One last thing because this turned out longer than I expected: I don't like how Maddie is portrayed in the movie. She's a veterinarian but her husband is the one who figures out how to wake up the unconscious Sonic? Come on, let her do the thing she is supposed to be good at and treat the animal herself.

Actually, if you count Zeena, (the only new female character introduced after Unleashed) things have gotten even worse. Cream, also more or less totally disappeared after spending a while in Amy’s orbit.

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Mario has  princess that likes baking cake and getting kidnapped. And 2 clones of her.
Mega Man has 1 girl that does cleaning.
Donkey Kong has Candy, who's name tells you everything about her role.
Kirby has basically no major females.
Castlevania had 1 female Belmont and she was declared non-canon.
Till recently Ratchet & Clank had only token female, mostly boring and/or unimportant.

And Sonic is the sexist one? Sonic has women with varied goals, personalities, powers. His 'crime' is that franchise aimed at boys has bigger focus on males.
By this logic MCU is sexist as well, since all big names are dudes. Or Loony Tunes. Yes, it would be nice if we had better balance, but I would not say that female portrayal in Sonic is sexist.

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On 1/2/2022 at 11:38 AM, MetalSkulkBane said:

Mario has  princess that likes baking cake and getting kidnapped. And 2 clones of her.
Mega Man has 1 girl that does cleaning.
Donkey Kong has Candy, who's name tells you everything about her role.
Kirby has basically no major females.
Castlevania had 1 female Belmont and she was declared non-canon.
Till recently Ratchet & Clank had only token female, mostly boring and/or unimportant.

And Sonic is the sexist one? Sonic has women with varied goals, personalities, powers. His 'crime' is that franchise aimed at boys has bigger focus on males.
By this logic MCU is sexist as well, since all big names are dudes. Or Loony Tunes. Yes, it would be nice if we had better balance, but I would not say that female portrayal in Sonic is sexist.

More on them:

* Megaman’s side series have more girls. X, for example has one best known for dying a truly horrible death (and Zero’s reaction to such), and another, who while rather important (usually), wasn’t playable until X8. But it has lots more on top of that, including a female main villain in one of the Gameboy games, two female party members in Command Mission, and more. Legends has a few prominent females, notably Tron. The other lesser-known series from the 2000s also have quite a few prominent female characters, notably Aile from ZX, the first ever female to be a main playable character (and implied to be the canon one, to boot!), most of which became playable in X-Dive. Even in Classic alone, Plum, Kalinka, and Splash Woman were in one game each… and the latter is still the only regular female boss, and there have been no female special bosses in the series yet. The other series do have more female regular bosses (though it’s often hard to tell given that they all look pretty monstrous and official material tends to flip-flop on some of the genders) and special bosses. 
* DK also has Dixie. And Tiny. And Wrinkly, who’s dead. Tiny was the only new-generation Kong to get re-used much. Plus Kalypso for the Kremlings, and Ellie for the animal friends. 

* Mario has 3 figurative clones of Peach (who are more competent than her), and a few literal ones who only appear in sports games. Plus some female non-humans like Wendy O. Koopa.

* Castlevania has a lot of NON-Belmont heroines (Maria, Shanoa, and Sypha to name just three) and a few recurring villainesses like Carmila and Laura.

* Yes, Kirby has plenty of prominent females (Adeline, for example) but they don’t recur like the male ones, not really returning prior to the advent of DLC.

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On 1/2/2022 at 8:38 PM, MetalSkulkBane said:

Mario has  princess that likes baking cake and getting kidnapped. And 2 clones of her.
Mega Man has 1 girl that does cleaning.
Donkey Kong has Candy, who's name tells you everything about her role.
Kirby has basically no major females.
Castlevania had 1 female Belmont and she was declared non-canon.
Till recently Ratchet & Clank had only token female, mostly boring and/or unimportant.

And Sonic is the sexist one? Sonic has women with varied goals, personalities, powers. His 'crime' is that franchise aimed at boys has bigger focus on males.
By this logic MCU is sexist as well, since all big names are dudes. Or Loony Tunes. Yes, it would be nice if we had better balance, but I would not say that female portrayal in Sonic is sexist.

Good point. When it comes to female representation, Sonic is merely a product of it's time, genre, main demographic, and place of origin. It's a series of platform games from Japan that begun in the early 90's and is till primarily aimed at young males. You get pretty much the exact amount of female representation that you would expect.

Now with that said, this doesn't mean that the female representation in Sonic isn't a problem; it just means that it isn't more of a problem than the female representation in other comparable franchises. It's reasonable to say that the marginalization of females in certain media, for instance media aimed at young males, or in media originating in certain places, such as Japan, IS a problem, but you can't single out Sonic as some sort of particulalry bad example of this. I live i Sweden, and my whole life I've heard people complain about how sexist and conservative everything produced by Disney is. But ever since I became old enough to draw my own conclusions about these things, I've seen that Disney's products of the 20th century honestly generally aren't more sexist or conservative than any other childrens media produced in America during the same era. It's like, yeah sure, Show White and Sleeping Beauty exist mostly to spurr actions among male characters rather than commit actions themselves, but the same was true for female characters in most American childrens media of the mid 20th century. Disney just somehow became the "symbol" of backwards American social conservatism, and even to this day left-leaning individuals in Sweden, especially those of the baby boomer generation, still use Disney products as the primary examples of what not to expose your children to if you don't want them to become "Americanized" sexist, racist, conservative capitalists (being a "capitalist" has been seen as a bad thing in Sweden since the 1920's... even though, you know, the country is capitalist and few people would honestly want to change that).

I realize that that was a tangent, but I see Disney's standing in my home country as an example of why it's important not to confuse something being an example of something with something being a particularly bad example of something.

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It's as sexist as most things are. Most of the playable and important characters in most games are male. For example: why didn't they put Amy as one of the playable characters in Sonic Mania? It's like they think only guys play Sonic.

However, this is changing. In the comics, we have Tangle & Whisper as strong female characters, a new villain who is female and strong too (Sourge? I don't remember her name). There are some issues of the IDW comics that are entirely focused on the female cast. The last couple of issues (from #45 to #47) are a good example: Tangle, Amy, Belle, Jewel, the new villain, etc.

Also, characters like Amy are being represented in a very good way nowadays. She is a leader, and she is strong, even though she is younger.

 

On 1/2/2022 at 5:14 PM, Snowikaris said:

More on them:

* Megaman’s side series have more girls. X, for example has one best known for dying a truly horrible death, and another, who while rather important (usually), wasn’t playable until X8. But it has lots more on top of that, including a female main villain in one of the Gameboy games, two female party members in Command Mission, and more. Legends has a few prominent females, notably Tron. The other lesser-known series from the 2000s also have quite a few prominent female characters, notably Aile from ZX. Even in Classic alone, Plum, Kalinka, and Splash Woman were in one game each… and the latter is still the only regular female boss, and there have been no female special bosses in the series yet. The other series do have more female regular bosses (though it’s often hard to tell given that they all look pretty monstrous and official material tends to flip flop on some of the genders) and special bosses. 
* DK also has Dixie. And Tiny. And Wrinkly, who’s dead. Tiny was the only new-generation Kong to get re-used much. Plus Kalypso for the Kremlings.

* Mario has 3 figurative clones of Peach (who are more competent than her), and a few literal ones who only appear in sports games. Plus some female non-humans like Wendy O. Koopa.

* Castlevania has a lot of NON-Belmont heroines and a few recurring villainesses like Carmila.

* Yes, Kirby has plenty of prominent females but they don’t recur like the male ones.

 

Mario is definitely worse than Sonic in this aspect. Sonic has all sorts of female characters with different personalities, ages and layers. I can tell a lot of personality traits of characters like Amy, Blaze, Cream, Tangle, Belle, Rouge, just to name a few. But when it comes to the Mario female characters. What is the personality of Dayse? Being a re-color of Peach, and that's it.

 

On 7/29/2021 at 6:29 PM, Scritch the Cat said:

I agree, but the fact that she has a crush on Sonic isn't the problem.  The problem is that the crush is objectifying and she has no regard for mutual consent.  While audiences are happy to see the object of a protagonist's crush say yes, if the object of that crush repeatedly says no and the protagonist just refuses to accept that no means no, then many audiences will lose their sympathy quickly--and those who still sympathize with such a pushy character might need a reality check.  Persistence in achieving what one desires is admirable, but when it directly contradicts what someone else desires, it's not.  Especially in light of more and more stories of real-world sexual harassment coming to light, it's getting harder and harder to sympathize with the stalker version of Amy.  Or even find her funny.  Some things in fictional games are so obviously fictional you can just laugh them off, but others hit way too close to home.  As widely mocked a game as Shadow the Hedgehog is, there's a good reason people usually chortle at scenes like Shadow saying "Where's that damn fourth chaos emerald" but almost nobody laughs at the scene where a soldier shoots a terrified little girl in the face.  I don't demand that nobody laughs at stalker comedy, but if someone seriously can't see why many people find it a bit too real to be funny, then I question that person's level of empathy.

Except that his goals change.  Again, whether people can admire am ambitious character depends on what those ambitions are and how much they come at the expense of their own.  A character who works hard to save you is relatable; a character who works hard to kill you is not.  Shadow has swung back and forth between the two a bit too often, and while he's mostly back in the zone of not wanting to asset himself at the expense of others, many fans feel it's best to keep him sidelined so as not to jeopardize that comfort zone.  Lots of people still like Shadow, but not many like his self-titled game.

 

Amy is like a 12-years-old girl fan of Justin Bieber. Sonic is like her Justin Bieber. I don't see a problem with that. She is young, and she has a personality that makes sense with her age. Yes, of course, she should respect Sonic's boundaries, but I think it's too much to accuse the Sonic franchise of supporting sexual harassment because of that.

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36 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

It's as sexist as most things are. Most of the playable and important characters in most games are male. For example: why didn't they put Amy as one of the playable characters in Sonic Mania? It's like they think only guys play Sonic.

That's not really sexism. Of course girls like Sonic, but I think it's pretty clear that they aren't the majority.

More male fans and male creators = more male characters.

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5 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

That's not really sexism. Of course girls like Sonic, but I think it's pretty clear that they aren't the majority.

More male fans and male creators = more male characters.

The majority of people who like Sonic are male because more guys feel represented by the franchise. If you have more female characters having bigger roles in the stories and being playable, girls will like the franchise just as much. Ian Flynn is doing a very good job with female representation in the IDW comic series, and he probably is going to do the same thing as the main writer of Sonic Frontiers. So, we can say Sonic is changing the same way the whole world is.

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Well, riddle me this: is discriminating females a sexist act if you truly believe it will make you more money? If you based your decisions on logic rather than prejudice? (I'm genuinely asking).

As for Mania, here's how I'm guesssing train of though went:
- Time to bring back classic Sonic. Let's use formula we know works. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles. They were playable in classic games, we know they worked.
- Wooo, it worked. Money and praise. Now we can expand a little.
- Wait, this is just a DLC. Let's keep Amy for Mania 2. That way people will give us more money.
- This DLC will be experiment if we can make new game style.
- Right, Mghty and Ray. If it doesn't work, at least we didn't ruined a important character.

If my theory is correct, is it this still sexist?

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7 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Well, riddle me this: is choosing male character over female a sexist act if you believe it will make more money that way?

Here's how I'm guesssing train of though went:
- Time to bring back classic Sonic. Let's use formula we know works. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles. They were playable in classic games, we know they worked.
- Wooo, it worked. Money and praise. Now we can expand a little.
- Wait, this is just a DLC. Let's keep Amy for Mania 2. That way people will give us more money.
- This DLC will be experiment if we can make new game style.
- Right, Mghty and Ray. If it doesn't work, at least we didn't ruined a important character.

If my theory is correct, it this still sexist?

They could put Amy with a similar play style to the other characters. It's not like Might and Ray were playable in traditional Sonic games back in the day. Ray was only playable in that old arcade game, and Might was playable in Knuckles Chaotix. Sonic is a family friendly franchise, that means a lot of kids play the games. Imagine a little girl wanting to play the new Sonic Mania but not having any female character that she could choose.

Also, Amy was playable in the Advanced Trilogy, so they could use a similar play style and move set for her in Mania.

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1 hour ago, light-gaia said:

The majority of people who like Sonic are male because more guys feel represented by the franchise. If you have more female characters having bigger roles in the stories and being playable, girls will like the franchise just as much.

That's a big assumption. Have you considered that it may also be due to psychological and cultural reasons rather than just representation? IDW has a female writer and a lot of female characters in the spotlight and I don't think it's had a very significant shift in demographics.

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1 hour ago, light-gaia said:

They could put Amy with a similar play style to the other characters. It's not like Might and Ray were playable in traditional Sonic games back in the day. Ray was only playable in that old arcade game, and Might was playable in Knuckles Chaotix. Sonic is a family friendly franchise, that means a lot of kids play the games. Imagine a little girl wanting to play the new Sonic Mania but not having any female character that she could choose.

Also, Amy was playable in the Advanced Trilogy, so they could use a similar play style and move set for her in Mania.

Yes… and what about the fact that franchises like Castlevania and Megaman aren’t as sexist as you make them out to be? Though I’d argue yes they do still have some issues, there are many female non-Belmont heroines in Castlevania for example, or the side series of Megaman having more girls. I’d say Sonic might be equal to them, really. 

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1 hour ago, CertifiedNobody said:

That's a big assumption. Have you considered that it may also be due to psychological and cultural reasons rather than just representation? IDW has a female writer and a lot of female characters in the spotlight and I don't think it's had a very significant shift in demographics.

Do you have any sources to support that? In the IDW official group on Facebook, there are a lot of girls, and I'm pretty sure I've seen girls in the letter section of the issues. Cultural and psychological reasons are related to representativeness, so it's not like the way they handle the series doesn't affect what kind of audience they attract.

56 minutes ago, Snowikaris said:

Yes… and what about the fact that franchises like Castlevania and Megaman aren’t as sexist as you make them out to be? Though I’d argue yes they do still have some issues, there are many female non-Belmont heroines in Castlevania for example, or the side series of Megaman having more girls. I’d say Sonic might be equal to them, really. 

Well, I think Sonic's franchise was as sexist as everything else: movies, other video game franchises, TV shows, whatever. Because the society as a whole was (and still is) very sexist. It's not like Sonic promotes misogyny, the issue was that girls weren't included enough. But as you said, it wasn't a Sonic problem exclusively.

I think the franchise is being more inclusive with girls now, because there's demand for that. I don't think it's worth to judge the past, we have to focus on what the series is now.

EDIT: reading your post again now, I think maybe you've quoted the wrong person because I didn't mention anything about Castlevania (I am not so knowledgeable about the series)

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7 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Do you have any sources to support that? In the IDW official group on Facebook, there are a lot of girls, and I'm pretty sure I've seen girls in the letter sections of the issues. Cultural and psychological reasons are related to representativeness, so it's not like the way they handle the series doesn't affect what kind of audience they attract.

It's hard to source something like that, as nobody is doing surveys about Sonic reader demographics over several years, but It's mostly male readers that I've come across in discussions of the comics on forums, youtube, twitter, and reddit.

That isn't what I mean when I say cultural and psychological reasons. I'll have to be careful about explaining so it doesn't come across as stereotyping but men and women generally have different cultures and our brains are different on a biological level, so even if every series had a totally equal ratio of men to women, they would each still have some sort of gender inequality.

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22 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

It's hard to source something like that, as nobody is doing surveys about Sonic reader demographics over several years, but It's mostly male readers that I've come across in discussions of the comics on forums, youtube, twitter, and reddit.

That isn't what I mean when I say cultural and psychological reasons. I'll have to be careful about explaining so it doesn't come across as stereotyping but men and women generally have different cultures and our brains are different on a biological level, so even if every series had a totally equal ratio of men to women, they would each still have some sort of gender inequality.

This is true, however, by including more female characters in the stories, they also include the "women culture", so the series is able to reach this audience, too. It's as you said before: the games were usually created and developed by most men, so they communicate better with boys. The IDW series has more women working in the team, so the result is a more inclusive comic book series. If you read one of the issues I mentioned (from #45 to #47) you'll notice the difference. They are almost entirely focused on female characters.


Sonic representing (and including) better the female characters in the stories is something new. Specially, if we are talking about the games. Because everything I mention was regarding the comic book series, and probably only from Frontiers onwards we are going to see this kind of things in the games, too. That means it's natural that the Sonic fan base is composed of mostly guys. We are only going to see changes in the next generations of fans.

I don't see why Sonic would be incompatible with "women culture", there are a lot of family friendly franchises that are also focused on action that have a lot of female fans because they have more representativeness. Avatar, for example.

 

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9 hours ago, light-gaia said:

Also, Amy was playable in the Advanced Trilogy, so they could use a similar play style and move set for her in Mania.

Advance series isn't neither classic or remotely as successful. It wasn't bad, but not a base for something truly great.

I already gave my theories why Amy wasn't in Mania 1 in last post, I'm not gonna type them again with slightly different phrasing.

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2 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Advance series isn't neither classic or remotely as successful. It wasn't bad, but not a base for something truly great.

I'm here just to point out that I disagree with that.

Sonic Advance 1 did not use the classic design for the characters, but it was intended to be a follow up to the classic games regardless. If I remember the game even started its development as a remake of Sonic 1 and then became its own thing with time, due to the staff having new ideas and such. While the trilogy went to a different route, it started with the same roots as the classics, and while it wasn't as successful as the actual classic trilogy (obviously a minor spin-off didn't have the same impact as the birth of a gaming icon), it was still successful enough at the time, enough to justify the making of 2 sequels. The Advance games were considered smaller spin-offs to work as handheld counterparts of the console games, in fact Advance 2 has a bigger focus on rail grinding like Sonic Adventure 2, and Advance 3 is basically 2D Heroes. Regardless, Amy's iconic gameplay comes from the first game, that's the one which is the most faithful to the classics' design (physics might not be 1:1 and it might feature some optional melee moves, but still); there are countess classic fangames and rom hacks which feature Amy with a reworked Advance 1 gameplay, so I'm pretty sure people, even a big part of classic fans, have accepted that as the most logical solution for her gameplay, rolling/spindashing aside (some version allow her to). I'm pretty sure that if the developers of Mania went this route and made Amy playable with a reworked Advance 1 moveset, nobody would have complained and it would have been great even. They probably didn't want to associate themselves with Dimps' works for the bad reputation the fanbase gave to them, or just there's a mandate that Classic Amy is not able to fight so she can't be playable for that reason (I've never seen Classic Amy fight in a canon media except Sonic the Fighters where her moveset was too absurd to be considered canon, so this is totally possible IMO), I don't know.

Saying that the Advance Series can't be a base for something truly great is outright wrong; the trilogy does feature a lot of creativity and interesting concepts, along with using the classics as a base for their game design, so it's totally possible to make make a great game out of that formula. The original games were minor side project meant to support bigger releases, and they were developed in a small time frame from each other, plus with some hardware limitations; today this is not the case anymore and with the indie scene growing, even a small side project can become great if given to the right passionate people. A "Mania Advance" can totally be a truly great game if done right.

 

To reply to the title of the thread, no, I don't think so. Some characters are not treated equally due to popularity and marketing, but their gender has nothing to do with this. If the series was sexist, characters like Blaze would have never been created in the first place. Even Rouge, despite her oversexualized appearance, is treated with respect most (all?) of the times.

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12 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Well, riddle me this: is discriminating females a sexist act if you truly believe it will make you more money?

Is discriminating black people a racist act if you believe if you believe it will make you more money? I’m sorry I’m not trying to be that person, but like, pursuit of money doesn’t suddenly absolve your prejudice. The bioshock infinite team didn’t put Elizabeth on the cover for example because they did focus groups full of frat boys. Ultimately, they did that for “monetary” reasons, but that shits still built on sexism whichever way you slice it

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14 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Well, riddle me this: is discriminating females a sexist act if you truly believe it will make you more money?

Yeah 

12 hours ago, Snowikaris said:

Yes… and what about the fact that franchises like Castlevania and Megaman aren’t as sexist as you make them out to be? Though I’d argue yes they do still have some issues, there are many female non-Belmont heroines in Castlevania for example, or the side series of Megaman having more girls. I’d say Sonic might be equal to them, really. 

The modern Castlevania series has put it pretty far ahead of the Sonic series in this regard. I can tell a lot of people in this thread aren't paying attention to how some of the franchises in question have changed, or what modern franchises aimed at Sonic's same demographic are doing. 

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7 minutes ago, Wraith said:

The modern Castlevania series has put it pretty far ahead of the Sonic series in this regard. I can tell a lot of people in this thread aren't paying attention to how some of the franchises in question have changed, or what modern franchises aimed at Sonic's same demographic are doing. 

Last Catlevania games was 2010-2014 Lord of Shadows sub-series, with barely any women from what I recall.

So I assume you're talking about TV show.

1) Good point. I have few counterarguments, but they close to 'making excuses' category

2) I think Castlevania TV show is aimed a little older demographic than Classic NES games were.

3) Sonic characters are a little more 'set in stone' than constantly replaced castlevania protagonists

3) Plus, it's spin-off, like IDW. Rules are slightly different there.

I mean, anyone remember Mega Man Fully Charge? It was trash, but I suppose Suna was a bit more progressive than Roll. Boring Gwen Tennyson wannabe, but still more progressive.

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On 1/5/2022 at 7:30 AM, MetalSkulkBane said:

Last Catlevania games was 2010-2014 Lord of Shadows sub-series, with barely any women from what I recall.

So I assume you're talking about TV show.

1) Good point. I have few counterarguments, but they close to 'making excuses' category

2) I think Castlevania TV show is aimed a little older demographic than Classic NES games were.

3) Sonic characters are a little more 'set in stone' than constantly replaced castlevania protagonists

3) Plus, it's spin-off, like IDW. Rules are slightly different there.

I mean, anyone remember Mega Man Fully Charge? It was trash, but I suppose Suna was a bit more progressive than Roll. Boring Gwen Tennyson wannabe, but still more progressive.

Well I think you guys are kind of cheating comparing Sonic to franchises that are basically on life support anyway. Sonic's meant to be active and the developers often preach about how they have to evolve it to suit the times to justify inane bullshit like OCs, assault rifles, and now an open world RPG. I might as well take them to task on this and compare them to the stuff they're competing with for people's attention.

In that light only the Ratchet comparison works, and while I have problems with Rivet the fact that they even made an attempt to include her in a main series title at all is better than what Sonic Team has been doing with Blaze in the past....decade and a half? since her debut.

In the most popular games aimed at kids right now like Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox etc etc you can play as whatever you want. This debate just doesn't exist with a lot of games now because ensemble casts and expansive character creators are so plentiful. I think some awareness of this is why Sonic Forces went the direction it did, but I'm going to assume that a character creator isn't sustainable for them long term for them which is fine.

Even if you were to arbitrarily limit your scope to mascot platformers, games like Crash, Shovel Knight, It Takes Two, etc. let you choose either gender and A Hat in Time locks you to female characters. There have even been a few Mario games where you can play as Peach or Toadette, which is something I didn't think would ever happen.

Even if you try to narrow it down even more and assume Sonic Team just wanted to focus on Sonic's gameplay and narrative perspective ala Psychonauts...that still wouldn't really hold water because Sonic Mania has five playable characters and Sonic Forces has four. Frontiers is the first real "Solo Sonica" game since Colors. Every other game has an alternate playable character of some kind, even if it's just another version of Sonic.

BTW, obviously the Mania developers didn't go out of their way to exclude Amy just because she's a girl. Her quirks require a little more imagination to put her in a fast paced action game than most characters. Fans figured it out, but lets give the team the benefit of the doubt and say they couldn't figure it out under their own circumstance.

The next question you should be asking is why we constantly find ourselves in the position of Amy being the only option.  This is what Khcast was trying to say when he said these decisions are still built on sexism. Silly decisions made in the 90s still limit the potential of the series now.

Why not simply make more characters that are more comparable to Sonic in terms of skill and promote them? Characters that aren't too young or too sexy or too far away. Sonic Team has introduced new characters into the games over the past couple of years, but they're largely too boring and shitty to leave an impression. Why not put that energy into a character modern audiences might like? Tangle seemed to work out alright. Why not do something like that?

A lot of people are arguing that Sonic Team doesn't HAVE to change anything about how it handles female characters and that's very true. They're doing fine so technically they don't need to change anything. They can just ignore me and rake in the profits like they always do, but if SOJ and SOA are serious about their claims to want to expand the audience of the series? To get with the times? To improve the state the brand is in? Might be worth considering these things.

 

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I think that one thing we always need to keep in mind when discussing gaming franchises as old as Sonic is that back when the series came out, the video game medium as a whole was very much a guy thing. There were of course females who played games, but they made up a very small percentage of the gaming audience and almost nothing from the medium was specifically aimed at them. I say "almost" because there were of course some individual expections, like some Barbie games here and there, but generally speaking almost nobody in the gaming industry aimed their products at anyone other than males between the ages of 5-25 or so. So when it comes to video game frachises produced before the turn of the millenium, almost all of them still have to live with their former "boys club" mentality because it's so deeply ingrained in their very DNA. Everything from Mario to Zelda to Street Fighter to Crash Bandicoot have a foundation made up of their oldest installments that fans continue to expect them to honor, and it's a foundation where females are usually rare and usually very stereotyped. Most females featured in there early establishing games in these franchises are either damsels in distress, sex symbols, or some other specific female stereotype like the "kind old grandma" or "the cute little girl". The line of thinking among the peopple who made these games (even if it was probably usually subconscious) was that unless a female character was in one way or another explicitly feminine, there was no reason for her to be female in the first place. That's why you got games with, say, five playable character and precisely one of them is a woman and what truly separates her from her male companions is that she shows a lo of skin and has big boobs. Or, if it's a more kiddie-oriented game, maybe she wears a pink princess dress. Or she doesn't exist at all, with all five playable characters being male.

This mentality has of course been almost completely eradicated among game developers in the west. Nowadays, western video game developers usually make sure that women are plentifull in their games, and neither have to look nor act in stereotypically feminine ways (though on a side note, I have to admit that, as I have previously mentioned on this forum, I personally think that the desire to not make female character sexualized is sometimes taken too to far, to the point where some video games seem to exist in bizzare universes where such a thing as a C-cup size or anything beyond that simply doesn't exist, in which case the game stops being an accurate representation of reality and instead becomes some sort of idealized reality among the progressive-minded developers that have the completely unintended consequence of erasing a certain type of women who do in fact exist in real life. But that's a topic for another day).

However, even today when developers of new installments of old franchises try to be more inclusive and diverse when it comes to females, they still have that legacy of the old games to relate to. What do you do when the games that the franchise is built on features few females, and when those females are stereotypes? The answer is either introduce new characters or change the old characters, both of which can be controversial things to do in a long running franchise. The former is usually better recieved than the latter, for sure, but even introdcuing new characters can be controversial if that new character is suddenly promoted to major character right out of nowhere or if she appears to take the spotlight from older characters.

And that's merely the problem if these newer games are being produced in the west. If they're being produced in Japan however, ooooh boy. Japanese developers to this day seem to be very comfortable in creating content that keep female characters tightly within stereotypical boxes. Mario is a shining example; the female characters that tend to be playable in modern installments that feature several playable characters include Peach, a princess; Daisy, a princess; and Rosalina, a princess. Oh and maybe baby versions of those princesses. Basically the problem here is that Japan refuses to see the problem, and western localizers can do very little about it other than try to, for instance, vainly describe one of those princesses as a "tomboy" even though nothing in the actual game suggests that.

So yeah, old gaming franchises, two problems; 1) keeping true to the legacy without being sexist, and 2) Japanese developers refusing to even realize any sexism.

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10 minutes ago, batson said:

though on a side note, I have to admit that, as I have previously mentioned on this forum, I personally think that the desire to not make female character sexualized is sometimes taken too to far, to the point where some video games seem to exist in bizzare universes where such a thing as a C-cup size or anything beyond that simply doesn't exist, in which case the game stops being an accurate representation of reality and instead becomes some sort of idealized reality among the progressive-minded developers that have the completely unintended consequence of erasing a certain type of women who do in fact exist in real life. But that's a topic for another day

What? Lmao

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