David Gaider on Sexism and Sexuality

Long-time BioWare writer David Gaider has sat down with Rock Paper Shotgun recently to discuss a controversial issue in the games industry: sexism and sexuality. The interview covers a wide variety of subjects, including the viability of female protagonists, to how BioWare were able to improve themselves as a studio by tackling those issues head-on.

RPS: Did you see the recent thing about Remember Me, and the fact that the developer had to shop it around a bunch simply because their main character was female?

Gaider: Yeah, I find it interesting. I call it (accepted industry wisdom.) The thing about accepted industry wisdom is that you can’t question it. Everyone just agrees. It’s weird. The things that the industry decides are treated as incontrovertibly true until someone else comes along and proves them definitively wrong in a way that we cannot ignore. Then, of course, everyone jumps on it.

It’s like back when EverQuest was at its height. I think it had about 800,000 subscribers. At the time, accepted industry wisdom said, (Okay, some other MMOs have tried to come out and jump on EverQuest’s bandwagon and couldn’t do it. Obviously 800,000 subscribers is the MMO market. That’s capped out.) It was accepted. You couldn’t get more than that. Those were the only people who were interested in playing MMOs. Then World of Warcraft came out and it was a game-changer. Everyone said, (Oh, I guess we were wrong.)

To say that about female protagonists that they just don’t sell [is myopic]. Over the last 10 years, how many titles have had female protagonists? And we’re supposed to accept, from those particular titles, that a) that constitutes a pattern, and b) the only reason those games were unsuccessful is because they had female protagonists? That is a real leap of logic. What it is, it’s just that accepted industry wisdom is often deciding that the reasons these things happen are because we’ve already come to an assumption and we’re trying to justify that assumption. So yes, there is lots of that in the industry.

RPS: You noted that it doesn’t make sense to restrict audiences down to this tiny, largely young male demographic, and BioWare’s trying to avoid that where its characters and themes are concerned. What about subject matter, though? Sci-fi and fantasy carry fairly narrow connotations regardless of gender associations or whatever and even subversions only get so much attention. How much will expanding game stories to more diverse audiences require moving outside that range of subject matter? How badly do you want to see games venture to new places?

Gaider: Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting the young male demographic is tiny. All I’m suggesting is that games shouldn’t be limiting their audience right out of the gate. As you point out, things like choice of genre and mature content are already going to limit your audience to a degree. the answer isn’t to only make family-rated games or to only make games of the most popular genres though I’m sure that would work for some but rather to keep our games accessible to as large an audience as we can. Let’s experiment with difficult subjects and venture to new places, absolutely. Let’s just take as many people with us to those new places as we can.