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Study Reveals Male Characters Speak Twice as Much as Female Characters

Xeonidus

Xeonidus

“Fuck them kids.”
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Oct 28, 2017
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Probably not much of a surprise but good to have concrete numbers that demonstrate the disparity.

The research, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, analyzed more than 13,000 video game characters and found that men speak twice as much as women.
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It discovered that games include twice as much male dialogue as female dialogue on average. Of the games studied, 94% had more male dialogue than female dialogue, including games with multiple female protagonists like Final Fantasy X-2 or King's Quest VII.
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The study also found imbalances in who characters speak to. Male characters tend to talk to other male characters, but women talk to other women less than expected by chance, even factoring in the number of lines and female characters. This is similar to the pattern seen in many films that fail to pass the Bechdel test.
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Hopefully this prompts more change in the industry.
 
Platy

Platy

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Oct 25, 2017
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Brazil
the title misses an important verb

I mean for more than half of the generations we barelly had female characters that actually appeared in videogames besides the intro and ending cutscene =P
 
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Xeonidus

Xeonidus

“Fuck them kids.”
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Oct 28, 2017
4,392
Oops! Thread title should actually be "Study reveals male characters say twice as much as female characters". Can it get changed?
 
IDreamOfHime

IDreamOfHime

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Oct 27, 2017
14,803
More thread titles should have words missing, makes you read the OP to work out which word it was.


...and that's a ridiculous difference between the two. Awful.
 
Zeal543

Zeal543

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May 15, 2020
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This is pretty obvious but I'd like a study that focuses more on recent games. Saying "around half of gamers are women" then pulling up games from an era when a vast majority were male (king's quest vii is an example they use from 1994) is disingenuous
 
oxymoron

oxymoron

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Oct 27, 2017
821
Can it really be true that there's more male dialogue in FFX-2 than female dialogue? That sounds wrong.
 
Nepenthe

Nepenthe

When the music hits, you feel no pain.
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Oct 25, 2017
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The closest games have gotten to real life yet.
 
Panam

Panam

This guy are sick of Unshakable Resolve
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Male characters speak more or there are more male lines in total? Very different things. I sincerely doubt male characters on average spoke more than female in FFX-2.
 
Chaos2Frozen

Chaos2Frozen

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Nov 3, 2017
28,251
Anecdotal, but in a lot of streams that I've watched, I noticed that people have less tolerance when it comes to female characters doing quips and jabs than when male characters do it
 
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Het_Nkik

Het_Nkik

One Winged Slayer
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Oct 27, 2017
3,486
There's a scene in Xenoblade 3 that I absolutely love and it immediately stood out to me how surprising it was that none of the male characters are in it AND they're not the focus or point of the conversation, Noah only being briefly mentioned at the end.

And It's kind of crazy to me just how rare that is that I was like, "Damn, women having a conversation that's not about dudes, you don't see that often in games."
 
Dakkon

Dakkon

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Oct 27, 2017
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Zeal543 said:
This is an issue with first party sony games (and maybe AAA games as a whole, I don't play a lot of those outside of sony) in general, it's even worse in the new God of War.
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Yeah but the thing is most of the time you only see people say it makes the game unplayable when it's a female protagonist.

It's one of the most common complaints about Forspoken (unfortunately even on here), even though the main character does the same schtick that's really common with male protagonists in other games, which is Marvel-esque quipping.

Sure for some people it's just an honest complaint in general because like you said some people just hate it in all games, but for others it's definitely not-so-thinly veiled misogyny.
 
Celestial Descend

Celestial Descend

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Aug 15, 2022
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I do see a trend that female characters have to act like "the adult in the room" while male characters are allowed to act like manbabies.

How is it possible that male characters speak more in FFX-2 though?
 
Zeal543

Zeal543

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Dakkon said:
Yeah but the thing is most of the time you only see people say it makes the game unplayable when it's a female protagonist.

It's one of the most common complaints about Forspoken (unfortunately even on here), even though the main character does the same schtick that's really common with male protagonists in other games, which is Marvel-esque quipping.

Sure for some people it's just an honest complaint in general because like you said some people just hate it in all games, but for others it's definitely not-so-thinly veiled misogyny.
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I can't speak for the general consensus but personally I was more fine with it in horizon than GoW:R, GoW:R's was borderline unbearable to the point where I seriously considered muting the TV anytime I saw a puzzle room/area

Maybe Horizon FW is worse though, I haven't played that yet
 
KrAzY

KrAzY

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Sep 2, 2018
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I was going to say ffx-2 is a damn lie but when you think about it... pain doesn't talk much and you also got a big male support cast. Example all of the gullwings outside of yrp is male. Got brother, shinra, bigs and wedge, probably missing one or too. Then you have the leaders of the factions, nooj, baralai and gippal... yeh I can see that
 
Zeal543

Zeal543

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jwk94 said:
Because he's making jokes? Aloy rarely cracks a joke. Anyway, the comparison sucks. You can have characters who talk too much regardless of gender or sex while also having men as a whole talking much more than women.
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People are focusing on drake when Uncharted has multiple women who do similar quips, difference is they're paced/written better in ND games so you don't get complaints. Same with TLoU.
 
thepenguin55

thepenguin55

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Oct 28, 2017
12,105
Oliver James said:
But the internet told me Aloy talks too much, makes the game unplayable for them
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She does though. She's the exception. lol

This maybe also explains why I tend to like more female protagonists than male protagonists in games as I HATE overly chatty protagonists! I don't give a fuck who they are but protagonists who are constantly quipping and constantly thinking out loud is maybe my most hated trend in AAA gaming. No joke, I despise it. I get the dislike many have for silent protagonists but I much prefer silent protagonists over protagonists that don't shut the fuck up. LOL
 
Leeness

Leeness

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Oct 27, 2017
8,136
This doesn't surprise me.

FFX-2 surprised me though lol. Surely not???

Looking forward to FFXVI continuing the trend…
 
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