"It's a-me, Maria!" - female characters need more of a voice in video games

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-05-24 09:01

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Video games have far less dialogue from female characters than from male, and even when female characters do speak they are limited in who they talk to and what they say. Researchers analysed dialogue from 13,000 characters in 50 role playing games including Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, and Kingdom Hearts, and found that there is almost twice as much dialogue from male characters as from female characters. The vast majority of video game characters are male - only 29% are female, and less than 1% belong to gender categories other than male or female. The gender bias was more extreme for minor characters. The authors give suggestions for making more inclusive games, such as "gender flipping" characters and balancing procedurally generated characters, but say the simplest approach is to just increase the proportion of female characters in games.