Eh, I don't think it's as big of a deal as you're suggesting. Alyx is pretty much the only choice if they wanted to use a pre-existing character as an action protagonist set between HL1 & 2. And from the trailer, it looks like the only "gendered" thing about the player's avatar is the voiceover. That's not a "body swap illusion" like the paper is talking about. In principal, I don't see it having any more deep psychological effect than, say, Perfect Dark.
> Alyx is pretty much the only choice if they wanted to use a pre-existing character as an action protagonist set between HL1 & 2.
Before I say this, note I'm looking forward to playing as Alyx, and don't expect gender to make much of a difference in a game/story like this.
But as far as not having options, I disagree. Barney was already a playable character in Blue Shift, he's shown to be relevant to the plot in HL2. Not only that but he's undercover at least some of the time, opening up gameplay avenues that Alyx wouldn't have available. Not that I'm suggesting that HL in VR needs a Papers Please style minigame or anything...
> I think a fascinating part of Alyx is Valve choosing a female protagonist.
There has been other games with a female protagonist, but the backlash was so bad against them that they were completely forgotten. I know it's obscure, but you can look it up, there's those two games called "Portal" and "Portal 2", and the two main characters are female. You've probably never heard of them because of all the misogyny.
To be honest I'm surprised that there wasn't any backlash. I find the weight and attractiveness jokes that GLaDOS throws at the player absolutely hilarious. But that can be a touchy subject, especially with Chell as the protagonist instead of, say, Gordon Freeman.
There was no backlash because nobody whatsoever has a problem with a female protagonist.
What some people have a problem is recasting an iconic character as a woman for the sake of "diversity," or any form of forced diversity for that matter.
I ask this earnestly: Did you read past the first sentence in my previous post?
I wasn't suggesting that there would be backlash with a female protagonist. I was suggesting there could have been backlash to the way that protagonist was treated, due to her gender.
Sorry, I didn't understand because what you meant seems so strange. I can't believe anyone without a major psychotic breakdown would take personally what an obvious recording says about a virtual character you're just happening to be controlling.
True, but Chell had no speaking lines (not hating on Valve, Gordon Freeman/basically all their 1st person protagonists are mute). We've seen Alyx as a developed character who's gone through some trauma (not spoiling here) so I'd argue this is a bit more exciting.
What do you mean by this? As far as I can see there is no actual VR port of Portal. You can play it through something like VorpX, which gets you 3D display through a headset, but that can hardly be called "VR'd to hell and back".
Yeah, maybe “to hell and back” was strong, but it was used as the setting for “The Lab”, one of Valve’s first VR demos, and there’s a mod called “Portal Stories VR” which is one of the most developed and popular VR mods currently.
It's an interesting choice by Valve. They're basically making a bunch of white men play as a black woman. In practice I agree with the other response that it's not a big deal. Most VR experiences either race or gender swap me (I'm a black male) or turn me into an abstract form or a robot. It can be disorienting at first but you get used to it.
Gordon was famously mute and his hands and forearms were hidden. This allowed anyone to easily immerse themselves. (Same for Portal.)
Unlike a third person game where you're controlling a character, I could see how having a different voice and hands in VR would be odd. I bet Valve realized that a mute protagonist no longer works in a story-driven environment.
I remember reading various making of stories regarding the half-life world back when it was still relatively new, and even then the designers spent a lot of time talking about how difficult it was having a mute, non-interactive protagonist. What they pulled off is excellent considering the state of gaming at the time, but I think you're right in that it just wouldn't fly today.
South Park did a really good job with a mute character in both of their recent games. It became almost a running joke in how the conversations would flow and the silence was taken as support for whatever the speaking person wanted it to mean, highlighting narcissism or teasing societal expectations.
From what I've seen in VR platforms that support custom avatars (even in modded Beat Saber), the userbase may be male but most of them want to be in female bodies...
How is this different than a gender swap in a non-vr game?
I'll have to join vr chat as a girl tonight and see how things go.
That said I normally play star citizen w/ a female avatar, and other than thinking "the person I'm talking to might think I'm a girl" my mindset doesn't change much...
I think the disappointing part is there is so little choice in the avatar you can play in these games. I would like something with how bioware approached SWTOR, the dialog changes, voice actor swap included, to match the gender of the character and from there it is just as easy to adapt skin colors and features. Even better, her name is about as neutral as you can ask for!
Maybe looking down and seeing big breasts (assuming that's the case with Alyx) triggers something uncomfortable in a male's brain. Maybe we can feel like what it is to be trans and feel that your body "isn't right" for you.
I've sort of experienced that in star citizen... sort of.
You can look down and see them, but they're not egregiously large.
Though one of the funniest bugs (feature?) will only happen if you play
with a female avatar: if you lay down in a bed, and then open up your mobiglass (in-game arm-tablet-thing) the UI lands about halfway through your breasts. It's like your character places their arm on their stomach, and the UI is projected forwards towards their face.
If I remember to I can take a screen cap of when it happened to me the other day on stream.
>stereotype threatening situations have been linked to the inability to recruit and retain women into these fields
Come on, we know the inability to recruit and retain women in these fields is down to a culture that simply does not value the contributions of women in STEM as highly as their contributions in other 'industries'.
I get what you’re saying, but wouldn’t you of all people agree that it’s a bad thing and something you want to minimize or eliminate in humanity?
On a side note, I always thought VR could be a great way to test drive a new gender/body. The surgery is serious business especially if you are young. It would be cool if there a walking simulator type thing that let you customize your gender and looks and walk around. Might help some people decide if it’s for them without having to do something that’s expensive and irreversible.
It was mainly a joke, but yeah I thought about the implications of what I was saying. I think, at least for me, the lack of permanence creates a more lighthearted situation that is easier to joke about. It's disorienting seeing yourself as an entirely different gender but it's more distressing not being able to control it or society's perception of it.
Honestly, I never thought about using VR for this purpose before. I'm slightly excited to give it a try and see how my brain enjoys/dislikes the effect.
I've played a few VR games that allow you to customize your avatar. I've tried male bodies, female bodies, robot bodies, ridiculous carton bodies... everything. At no point did I feel that anything was wrong or out of place. This is true for everyone who I've loaned my headset to.
I think trans people are overgeneralizing from their own psyches. They feel like they are in the wrong body, and they assume that everyone else would feel the same if they were body-swapped into the opposite sex. But as far as I can tell, only a tiny fraction of people experience this. Gender dysphoria seems to be about as common as aphantasia or synesthesia.
Personally, I don't think of my body as part of my identity. It's a machine that I ride around in. If I woke up in the body of a woman, I'd be really annoyed but I doubt I'd go through years of hormones and surgery to be perceived as a man again. It would be easier to learn how to use the new body than to try to make it closer to what I'm used to.
It seems like you're admitting to critiquing something you've no experience or understanding of in an effort to diminish the experiences of those of us who claim to experience the world differently. It's entirely possible and even probable that your VR experience simply comes nowhere close to mimicking gender dysphoria.
I'm not diminishing anything. I'm just pointing out that people tend to imagine all minds behave like their own, hence why you believed that cis people would experience gender dysphoria in VR avatars of the opposite sex. I've accumulated enough experience to indicate that isn't true.
Another piece of the puzzle: Pretty much every trans person I've talked to who has used VR has enjoyed choosing an avatar of the opposite sex. Afterwards when they're back in the real world, they tend to miss it.
This maps to my model of reality that says that the vast majority of people cannot experience gender dysphoria. They prefer their current sex mostly out of habit. Other people such as Scott Alexander[1] and Ozy[2] have said the same thing, though they arrived at that conclusion by posing thought experiments to their friends, not using VR.
85%+ of VR users are male, compared to say 70/30 male/female balance of say Fornite. (1/2)
Any way you carve it the audience for Alyx is going to weight heavily male.
And research suggests that gender-swapping in VR is a profound psychological experience:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8260949
(1) https://www.rakutenintelligence.com/blog/2016/virtual-realit...
(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/865625/fortnite-players-...
(3) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8260949