What if Doom 4 Guy is Doom 4 Girl?

[The 1st Gamer]

So I was just reading a Doom 3 forum post which mentioned something random about a female cacodemon, and it made me think for a second. First, are there genders for the demons? Secondly and more importantly, what if the main character in Doom 4 is actually a female? I doubt this will happen, but what if it was true? As far as I know the character was never referred to as Doom Guy at the press conference or at E3, instead the character was simply called a marine. Perhaps the gender of the character could be left to the imaginations of the player? I for one like seeing more strong female characters in games so it would be cool if they actually introduced a doom girl of some sort. Thanks for reading!

[Deleted_Account]

In Doom it's implied that YOU are the marine. So anyone can be the mean, green marine.

[Gez]

The 1st Gamer said:

First, are there genders for the demons?

"It"

[illYay1337]

I hope this doesn't get into imps territory :D.

In Quake 2, and Unreal, you could always switch to being a female which was kinda cool. And I think, officially, you are a female character in Unreal by default if you don't switch, which you could also always see in the beta videos. In Quake 2 it was a bit odd because you are clearly a male marine named Bitterman in the cutscenes, but whatever, they aren't that important to the story lol.

I'm a guy myself but it's cool to have that option. When you first think about it, the main badass space marine is usually a white muscular male by default. Having the option to change up not only sex, but also race is cool in my opinion. I'm not sure how likely DooM 4 would be to implement that kind of thing at this stage in development if they haven't already but didn't show it.

It's from the first person perspective from the most part, and you're wearing a helmet for sure in this one, so I guess at least they can change your skin tone and whether you are a thickish male body type with no breasts, or a more slender female body type with wider hips and breasts. Armor covers the chest anyway so maybe they don't even have to deal with that. Halo 3 had it easy. They just change your voice.

[FireFish]

I am really growing tired of weird sexists crying about woman in video games and movies... They want games with woman ;

Tomb raider ; 1998
Tekken ; 199?
morrowind ; 2002
joan of arc ; 2004
oblivion ; 2006
mirrors edge ; 2008
skyrim ; 2011
the demons forge ; 2012
Hundreds of mmorpg ; 2004 to now
hundred of japanese games ; 1990'to Now

If one would list all games ever made for girls or with strong man-woman acting like men because sexist woman seem to want to be men that list would be extremely tl;dr.

Buffy, Xena, captain janeway, the nanny, mclouds daughters, charmed, all the media are fine and not just games.

[Kaskaum]

If doomguy still is a nameless marine, I don't see why the player can't customize his own marine by choosing the genre and even the skin color.

[wheresthebeef]

It may or may not ever be addressed and you'll probably just always be called "marine"
However I'm sure any pain sounds the marine shouts will be male grunts

[Deleted_Account]

From the demo we never saw the marines gender, race, or even heard the voice. We've only seen the marine in the suit, from first person perspective. I wonder if they will intentionally leave the marines identity ambiguous to further the idea of you, the player, being the marine?

[Clonehunter]

An interesting observation, and no one take this wrong, but, within the first two or three conferences, I noticed a lot of female protagonists. I'm not saying this is a problem or not, I'm just saying, there was a lot. I'd say 70% of the games featured Femtagonists, including FO4's customizable character.

An observation.

[geo]

Imps are women. Doomguy is a guy. Samus isn't a woman she's a suit of armor like masterchief who is also a woman.

Doom4 guy is a cybernetic rogue imp raised by human parents.

[Deleted_Account]

What if...the Doom Space Marine is in fact Nicolas Cage? I think the game would be on a whole new level of awesome.

[The 1st Gamer]

geo said:

Imps are women. Doomguy is a guy. Samus isn't a woman she's a suit of armor like masterchief who is also a woman.

Doom4 guy is a cybernetic rogue imp raised by human parents.

This made me spill my water while laughing.

[Arctangent]

FireFish said:

stuff

I feel like your version of feminism stems from trolls and misandrists, considering very little of anything you said actually has anything to do with feminism. Especially since a lot of feminists feel "men in all but cleavage" are really cheap and ineffective ways to make strong female characters, since they really only cover a small niche of female personalities and roles.

To pick apart your list ...

FireFish said:

Tomb raider ; 1998
joan of arc ; 2004
mirrors edge ; 2008

Pretty fair examples, to be honest. They all have female protagonists, and from what I recall they don't actually fall into the personality-less badass archetype. So that's three.

FireFish said:

the demons forge ; 2012

I don't know much from this game, but it indeed looks like you can choose a female protagonist. Except ... she really seems like she's mostly eye-candy. Um.

FireFish said:

Tekken ; 199?

Isn't the protagonist of the series Jin Kazama?

FireFish said:

morrowind ; 2002
oblivion ; 2006
skyrim ; 2011
Hundreds of mmorpg ; 2004 to now

These don't really count, to be honest. The developers do not design a strict character in these games; that's up to the player. Though to be fair if games like these were actually the vast majority then the gender imbalance would be fixed; it's just that alone these games don't really do anything to fix it.

FireFish said:

hundred of japanese games ; 1990'to Now

... Metroid?

Japan is actually a lot less progressive than western countries, and it kind of shows in how much women get relegated to strictly romance roles - even in games they star in! ( the other thing I first thought of were visual novels with female protagonists, which are almost all romance visual novels ) I mean, sure, there are games from Japan that do actually have women in protagonists roles, but they really aren't as common as you see to think they are.

The funny thing about that is that one of the strongest female protagonists from a Japanese game is ... Princess Peach. The probably most cliche princess in distress has actually proven over and over to be able to keep up with Mario and even inverts the cliche by rescuing Mario in several games. I'm not sure what kind of sign that is for the state of Japanese gender politics, but that's still pretty humorous.

Overall, though, the point isn't that strong female characters and especially protagonists don't exist; it's the fact that they're only a small fraction compared to the other gender, and over that small fraction a disproportionate amount are either extremely stereotypical or are entirely removed from their femininity to appear badass - at least until it's time for the love interest to romance them. It's a matter of scale, really; both the stereotypical girl and the unfeminine ( whether never feminine or feminine when romance is evolved ) do have room to exist, but they shouldn't be the majority; similarly, female protagonists do exist, but in a far smaller minority than there's really any justifiable reason for.

More on topic - I'm pretty glad that they seem to be genericizing the protagonists even in details I hadn't noticed. It really seems like they're forgoing much of a story, so there's really no reason to personalize the player character - which is a great and cost-effective way to allow people of any race, gender, etc. to identify with them.

[durian]

In games like this which (I'm guessing) aren't narrative heavy, I can't think of any good reason to not allow the player character to be either male or female - a version of this is all it would need. It seems silly to restrict players to one or the other.

[gamul312]

Arctangent said:

... Metroid?

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/inventories/80sheroines.htm

[Arctangent]

gamul312 said:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/inventories/80sheroines.htm

Huh. Still pretty sparse, but it's kind of funny to think that video games in general are apparently some of the progressive media in Japan.

Or maybe before they had to actually give characters personalities the game industry as a whole could just slap a female graphic on the protagonist and not feel like they messed something up. I wonder if one could prove at least correlation of the percentage of female protagonists with the average amount of dialogue and plot per game.

( though pffft the concept of using games that are literally strictly porn as proof that women protagonists exist is kind of hilarious )

[DooM_RO]

It would be Metroid all over again.

[Shaviro]

Piper Maru said:

What if...the Doom Space Marine is in fact Nicolas Cage? I think the game would be on a whole new level of awesome.

OUCH FACE!

[nxGangrel]

If Doom will have Doomgirl, her name is Crash. Period.

[kelliegator]

It'd be a hilarious troll move but gaming's still got a long way to go.

I'd totally go for ambiguity or customization though, I know the Doomguy's face in the original game is pretty recognizable but it's 2015 now, things have changed and video games are bigger than ever.

[geo]

The 1st Gamer said:

This made me spill my water while laughing.

This is the effect I always go for really. Sometimes it makes me think I have no soul, because I'm always trying to make people laugh rather than being serious.

I know the following statement will come back to haunt me but... the only third hole Doomguy should have is the barrel of his gun. I hope someone takes that joke seriously.

[larrypotter]

Arctangent said:

I feel like your version of feminism stems from trolls and misandrists, considering very little of anything you said actually has anything to do with feminism. Especially since a lot of feminists feel "men in all but cleavage" are really cheap and ineffective ways to make strong female characters, since they really only cover a small niche of female personalities and roles.

The radical misandric feminism (the 3rd wave feminism) is what most people think when talking about feminism. And in Tekken 2 the main protagonist was Jun Kazama.
But anyway it doesn't matter for me whether there is an option to choose race and gender or not. But I don't see any point in this if you never see the person under the armor. It would seem kind of forced so that the feminists couldn't complain or something.

[Cybersexdemon]

If marine is a female so what? She won't talk anyway so she hardly will be a memorable character. Besides videogame designers like to show off how ,,progressive'' they are like Bioware when they talked about gay marriage in some Dragon Age game like it's a crucial gameplay element so I doubt ID will hold it secret.

[DooM_RO]

Cybersexdemon said:

If marine is a female so what? She won't talk anyway so she hardly will be a memorable character. Besides videogame designers like to show off how ,,progressive'' they are like Bioware when they talked about gay marriage in some Dragon Age game like it's a crucial gameplay element so I doubt ID will hold it secret.

Ummm, they didn't talk about it like it was a crucial gameplay element but that's offtopic.

[FireFish]

Arctangent said:

...

Well to name 2 japanese games of the many there are ;
ghost in the shell stand alone complex - playstation 2
Way of the samurai 2 - playstation 2

Also, Many (and i mean a lot) of Anime have strong female characters as main heroes. Japan is not simple, and many western views on Japan are very close minded or really warped. But enough on that...

My view on sexist behavior became the following after experiencing the internet weirdos ; If you make a big deal out of the sex of characters in movies and games... you are a sexist.

And a lot of those internet warriors need to cool down and come to reason... You cant just selectively ignore anything showing woman in any media just because it would burst a bubble or two. and i can note other media again ; Buffy, xena, fifth element, star trek, mclouds duaghters, salt, underworld, aeon flux,... and so on.

Spoiler

Now i'm off to drink beer while looking like a model bodybuilder and blowing pigs up AND getting all the woman... Cool !

Lets play with a woman looking like a model, having a great body, blowing pigs up AND
getting all the men... sexist ?!?

I am going to leave it at this before i compile a list of multiple pages with every video game (including a lot of Japanese games), movie, and series with woman as the main protagonist or as an equally important character in the main story with men ever since the 80's.

I would not mind having the ability to play doom with a female like i don't mind watching mila yovovich movies. And as a fact I'm just not sexist enough to care about and to continue on the sub-topic in this thread. All it does is making me hate this age of fake even more.

[HorrorMovieRei]

The player never spoke or vocalized in any way, shape or form and his body is covered in armor, although he did seem to have broad sholders in the multiplayer trailer. But ultimately, I don't think it really matters whether it is a man, woman or a monkey in that suit, since it's an FPS and you'll only be seeing your hands 90% of the time.

Cybersexdemon said:

If marine is a female so what?

The problem is not the character being a woman, the problem is that it would just come off as pandering. Every incarnation of Doom "guy" has been male, and changing it now, in the midst of these times of extreme political correctness, would just seem like they're desperately trying to win points with the press. I'd rather have them just keep it ambiguous than to outright say "yep, it's a girl"

[kelliegator]

Ambiguity is most certainly the way to go, since I doubt Doom is the kind of game with character customization. Heck, it'll be helpful for people outside of the dreaded gender binary, too.

It's win-win regardless of what kind of player you are.

[Scuba Steve]

"Hay, I named some games with women! That means women aren't poorly represented in games, right?"

[larrypotter]

Scuba Steve said:

"Hay, I named some games with women! That means women aren't poorly represented in games, right?"

You can always make games with female protagonists yourself so they are more represented. And you can boycott manly games. Vote with your wallet.

[Captain Red]

You can also ask developers for better representation just like you can ask for any other feature like fans have been doing since video games had developers to talk to. Holy Moly.