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Fanservice, ratio of females to males, etc.


Lewyn
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So this topic comes up almost every banner and is discussed.  Throughout threads one of the big topics of debate is this.  Fanservice, particularly the sexual kind, as well as treatment of females compared to males in Heroes.  I thought it would be great to have a single thread where we can explore this in depth, a thread dedicated solely to this discussion.  A few points I would like to make to start off.

1. The majority (likely vast majority) of the playerbase is male, and probably an even larger percentage of whales are male compared to female.  For profit sake it seems logical that they would focus more therefore on satisfying the tastes of men.

2. I hear often that oh there is plenty of male fanservice this or that guy has muscles or whatever.  No that isn't for women either, that is for men.  The men we wish to be, muscled studs.  People with this narrow mistaken mindset, actually talk to women and you'd be surprised.  Here is a simple example, I think most guys we'd assume women would find Chris Hemsworth (Thor) attractive.  What's not to like?  Good strong facial features, powerful muscles, etc.  Well what may surprise people is many women are more attracted to Tom Hiddleston (Loki).  Yes confusing right?  I don't think he's a bad looking guy or anything but he doesn't fit that male ideal of who we wish to be.  There are many guys like this that women are attracted to.  If this game was set to satisfying women mostly, the guys in this game would so so different. 

3. The majority of 5 star locked units are female.  Despite a substantial majority of men to women in the FE series as a whole, in Heroes it is about even or more women than men (someone has the exact numbers for this).  Another trend though this is not consistent, men in their damaged poses often look determined like they ain't going down easy or they are taking their enemy with them, while women look like they are having an orgasm or are terribly frightened.  We also have the butt/boob pose which is discussed often.  Women has a great caboose and nice breasts, well how can we show both?  Let's grotesquely twist their spine, now we can see both!  Add a sighing/moaning face and there you go!  $$$

 

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Really point 1 is all that's needed, to get the most profits you focus on the majority of the playerbase.  Most guys are into women, not other guys, so that's where the fan-service goes.  If the few people who want male fan-service want it to be equal then they will have to spend many times more money to equal the higher demand, so IS sees a reason to go for it.

Edited by Nowi's Husband
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51 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

1. The majority (likely vast majority) of the playerbase is male, and probably an even larger percentage of whales are male compared to female.  For profit sake it seems logical that they would focus more therefore on satisfying the tastes of men.

13 minutes ago, Nowi's Husband said:

Really point 1 is all that's needed, to get the most profits you focus on the majority of the playerbase.  Most guys are into women, not other guys, so that's where the fan-service goes.  If the few people who want male fan-service want it to be equal then they will have to spend many times more money to equal the higher demand, so IS sees a reason to go for it.

These hit the nail on the head, I feel.  I assumed the current "three females to one male" standard for banners was determined based on the exact ratio of male to female players.  I can't remember where I found it, but I saw a graph showing this ratio of male to female players.

Edited by Von Ithipathachai
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The problem with that argument is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's a really obnoxious trend throughout media of neglecting to cater as well to women or other underrepresented demographics, defending it by saying they aren't the main audience but ignoring the part where by doing that, they're ensuring that it'll be less likely to draw in people of those demographics.

If you're making a game and you think three times as many men as women are playing it, your response should be "huh, why is this failing to appeal to women and what can I do about that". It's even good business sense: if a game has 300k men and 100k women playing it, that's a total of 400k players, but if you can get those numbers up to 300k men and 300k women for a total of 600k players, you'll be making a lot more money.

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Well yeah, of course Insys is looking for the most profitable chance there, but that does not mean that they don't want to change it. At least its obvious that males still get more fanservice though.
But this cannot be changed within Heroes alone.

I have some hopes for three houses to be a good possibility to change it, I think Insys didn't hire Chinatsu for nothing. They have some hopes there to satisfy both genders with Fire Emblem, maybe even gather more female fans in the next one. I must say I am a bit interested how this will work out. At least I'd like to see Three houses banner accordingly and balance out between the genders, maybe they give even more males on those. I hope I am not totally wrong here.

Of course we cannot expect this to happen. But I think that even if we do not see this Insys is thinking about this in one or other step. Which is normal, which company does not want to gather more customers. 

1 hour ago, Lewyn said:

3. The majority of 5 star locked units are female.  Despite a substantial majority of men to women in the FE series as a whole, in Heroes it is about even or more women than men (someone has the exact numbers for this).  Another trend though this is not consistent, men in their damaged poses often look determined like they ain't going down easy or they are taking their enemy with them, while women look like they are having an orgasm or are terribly frightened.  We also have the butt/boob pose which is discussed often.  Women has a great caboose and nice breasts, well how can we show both?  Let's grotesquely twist their spine, now we can see both!  Add a sighing/moaning face and there you go!  $$$

I dare them to do this with Rinkah, I want her to look determined in her damaged pose. Overall I would like Fire Emblem to have more woman which are shown stronger and determined. But I guess this will still remain rare. Sadly this also decreases the chance for such Heroes has Echidna, Reina, Flavia...

Overall I think its a solid step for them to be careful with Three Houses banners. If they hope to gather more female fans with three houses they should plan these banners accordingly.

Edited by Stroud
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1 hour ago, Lewyn said:

1. The majority (likely vast majority) of the playerbase is male, and probably an even larger percentage of whales are male compared to female.  For profit sake it seems logical that they would focus more therefore on satisfying the tastes of men.

 

45 minutes ago, Nowi's Husband said:

Really point 1 is all that's needed, to get the most profits you focus on the majority of the playerbase.  Most guys are into women, not other guys, so that's where the fan-service goes.  If the few people who want male fan-service want it to be equal then they will have to spend many times more money to equal the higher demand, so IS sees a reason to go for it.

While I certainly believe these statements to be true, why only appeal to one side of the playerbase? Why not both? It’s more logical that if you please more of the playerbase you’d get an even bigger profit rather than just focusing on one and actively ignoring the other.

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3 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

While I certainly believe these statements to be true, why only appeal to one side of the player base? Why not both? It’s more logical that if you please more of the playerbase you’d get an even bigger profit rather than just focusing on one and actively ignoring the other.

To do that, you'd have to figure out what kind of character designs women find appealing.  We all know what fanservice is used to draw in male players, but what are the ladies into?  That I'm less sure of.

Attempting to appeal to more female players is risky if you don't know this.  IS's higher-ups come off to me as strong traditionalists who would rather not take such risks.

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1 minute ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

To do that, you'd have to figure out what kind of character designs women find appealing.  We all know what fanservice is used to draw in male players, but what are the ladies into?  That I'm less sure of.

Attempting to appeal to more female players is risky if you don't know this.  IS's higher-ups come off to me as strong traditionalists who would rather not take such risks.

Why not ask women directly? IS has already done a few surveys so they could do one aimed at women asking what it is that they like

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There's a good discussion to be had on fanservice in respect to Heroes, but this aint a good start. It's a regurgitation of surface-level popular sentiments with no numbers, just hearsay. And apparently surprise that Thor is hotter than Loki in the Marvel movies? Since everybody seems to agree on the female to male ratio being out of wack, consider that even in older Fire Emblem titles the female characters were overwhelmingly the most popular among casual players. And what official tool do the developers use to gauge interest in the back catalog of units in the series? Choose Your Legends, a popularity poll.

While I agree it can seem obnoxious that women outnumber men in banners, I can't say the numbers don't back up those decisions. The only thing about it that bugs me is that the odds of getting New Heroes banners at all from those games may ultimately be tied directly to the number of women that haven't gotten in yet. I want as many familiar faces as possible, but remaining women are a finite resource. I can't see Echoes getting more than one banner in the future, for instance, with only Silque, Titania, and Nuibaba remaining. By trying to please Echoes fans they unfortunately have to please the fans in the sense of using their data. Bummer. With players finally having found the Send Feedback button, it's hard to justify doing anything else these days.

Edited by Glennstavos
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1 minute ago, NegativeExponents- said:

Why not ask women directly? IS has already done a few surveys so they could do one aimed at women asking what it is that they like

If I recall correctly, they did some kind of Japan-exclusive player poll.  For all we know they might already be trying to get on this.  I don't know if that's aimed towards a particular gender, though.

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5 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

To do that, you'd have to figure out what kind of character designs women find appealing.  We all know what fanservice is used to draw in male players, but what are the ladies into?  That I'm less sure of.

Attempting to appeal to more female players is risky if you don't know this.  IS's higher-ups come off to me as strong traditionalists who would rather not take such risks.

Figuring out how to have a game include content that will appeal to women is easy if you have a decent number of women involved in making it.

I don't know the gender ratio at IS, but I assume it's a hell of a lot worse than 50/50.

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1 minute ago, Othin said:

I don't know the gender ratio at IS, but I assume it's a hell of a lot worse than 50/50.

Especially among those aforementioned higher-ups, who I'm guessing have been around for a while.

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2 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

If I recall correctly, they did some kind of Japan-exclusive player poll.  For all we know they might already be trying to get on this.  I don't know if that's aimed towards a particular gender, though.

Eh, it wasn’t aimed at any particular gender but I do remember some of the questions revolving around art and the voice acting which might have been their way at gauging if fanservice is popular or not but it wasn’t anything specific. So no, I doubt they’re trying to get on this anytime soon 

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24 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

 

While I certainly believe these statements to be true, why only appeal to one side of the playerbase? Why not both? It’s more logical that if you please more of the playerbase you’d get an even bigger profit rather than just focusing on one and actively ignoring the other.

Because they have a limited amount of devoloping time and resources. Ultimately, trying to sell something to the whole 7 bilions population of the world seems clever, but often you would get an unfocussed product that most people won't care about. Having a Kancolle and a Touken Ranbu seems more profitable than a game whit both ship girs and sword boys, because both men and women would roll less if there is the chance to roll husbandos instead of waifus and vice versa. It's usually more profittable to focus on an audience that is either large, willing to spend a lot of money, or both. 

As much as i hate them and find relying on them to be exploitative and dirty(if you are willing to spend 2000 dollars on summer Camilla you are either rich or have a ludopathy problem), whales are an excellent demographic to focus on because they are relatively easy to please and dump a disproportionate amount of money. You need to please 300 people like me, who spend very rarely, to make up for a single whale.

17 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

To do that, you'd have to figure out what kind of character designs women find appealing.  We all know what fanservice is used to draw in male players, but what are the ladies into?  That I'm less sure of.

Attempting to appeal to more female players is risky if you don't know this.  IS's higher-ups come off to me as strong traditionalists who would rather not take such risks.

Personally, i'd go for either characters like Edwars Cullen, or the kind of bishonen you find in Shojo or Yaoi. Basically, i'd look at products aimed at women and what sell in those.

Edited by Flere210
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4 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Especially among those aforementioned higher-ups, who I'm guessing have been around for a while.

Indeed. It's quite an issue, and one they'd better get started on fixing if they don't want to keep throwing away like a third or however much of FE's possible players and revenue.

Edited by Othin
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One thing I’d like to add to this discussion about the male to female ratio in the player base is that there are some poll results from dengeki online in the fire emblem awakening artbook that give some interesting results. according to the poll about 68% of the people who answered the poll were female where only 31% were male. I know this is from awakening and not heroes but it puts some things in perspective. Someone oughta conduct a survey like this for heroes on a massive scale. It’d be interesting to look at.

Edited by Ottservia
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29 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Because they have a limited amount of devoloping time and resources. Ultimately, trying to sell something to the whole 7 bilions population of the world seems clever, but often you would get an unfocussed product that most people won't care about. Having a Kancolle and a Touken Ranbu seems more profitable than a game whit both ship girs and sword boys, because both men and women would roll less if there is the chance to roll husbandos instead of waifus and vice versa. It's usually more profittable to focus on an audience that is either large, willing to spend a lot of money, or both. 

But I highly doubt it’ll cost them any more money to make males fanservice-y than it is to not. They wouldn’t be splitting their time and resources for it. (Not any more than they likely do already anyway)

Heroes already has plenty of both male and females so if ending up with a husbando instead of a waifu upsets some players so much than I assume most of those players left long ago to games that only cater to them.

Edited by NegativeExponents-
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25 minutes ago, Othin said:

I don't know the gender ratio at IS, but I assume it's a hell of a lot worse than 50/50.

They have 111 males and 40 females stand december 2018. I just looked at their hompage and they even showed this information.
so the ratio its 26/74.

http://intsys.co.jp/company/outline/

I was a bit surprised that I could even find the number xD

Edited by Stroud
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1 minute ago, Stroud said:

They have 111 males and 40 woman stand december 2018. I just looked at their hompage and they even 
so the ratio its 26/74.

http://intsys.co.jp/company/outline/

I was a bit surprised that I could even find the number xD

Interesting.

As @Von Ithipathachai noted, the actual influence of women within IS is probably even less than that 26% would imply.

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2 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

But I highly doubt it’ll cost them any more money to make males fanservice-y than it is to not. They wouldn’t be splitting their time and resources for it. (Not any more than they likely do already anyway)

Heroes already has plenty of both male and females so if ending up with a husbando instead of a waifu upsets you so much than I assume most of those players left long ago to games that only cater to them.

First i stopped playing FEH long ago, so i can't be upset by any roll, nothing that i said was based on personal experience. Hell, the time i played fgo i rolled mostly for guys LOL. 

That said, i don't think it will cost them more money, but i also think that the same strategies that work on guys won't work as effectively on girls. There are many mangas and animes aimed at girl with a cast of pretty boys, but most of them don't do the silly ecchi stuff, wich suggest me that silly ecchi stuff won't work on a female audience, or at least not as well as it work on males. I think intsys is trying to be more appealing to women(for example, Three House main artist is famous for otome games iirc) but this does not mean they are successful at it. 

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6 minutes ago, Stroud said:

They have 111 males and 40 females stand december 2018. I just looked at their hompage and they even showed this information.
so the ratio its 26/74.

http://intsys.co.jp/company/outline/

I was a bit surprised that I could even find the number xD

3 minutes ago, Othin said:

Interesting.

As @Von Ithipathachai noted, the actual influence of women within IS is probably even less than that 26% would imply.

Interesting that the ratio of men to women at IS is also roughly 3 to 1.  Maybe this is the real reason why several recent banners have had 3 women to 1 man.

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6 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

First i stopped playing FEH long ago, so i can't be upset by any roll, nothing that i said was based on personal experience. Hell, the time i played fgo i rolled mostly for guys LOL. 

That said, i don't think it will cost them more money, but i also think that the same strategies that work on guys won't work as effectively on girls. There are many mangas and animes aimed at girl with a cast of pretty boys, but most of them don't do the silly ecchi stuff, wich suggest me that silly ecchi stuff won't work on a female audience, or at least not as well as it work on males. I think intsys is trying to be more appealing to women(for example, Three House main artist is famous for otome games iirc) but this does not mean they are successful at it. 

Sorry, I didn’t mean to target you directly just meant it like in general. Edited my post just now to reflect that.

Well just use different strategies then, never said it had to be the same ecchi stuff with all the scantily clad characters. Obviously it’s only fanservice if the target demographic actually finds it appealing.

And yeah, Chinatsu Kurahana is famous for her otome work and definitely seems like IS’s attempt at attracting a larger female fanbase.

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1 minute ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Interesting that the ratio of men to women at IS is also roughly 3 to 1.  Maybe this is the real reason why several recent banners have had 3 women to 1 man.

Now we solved the mystery, case closed.

Yeah but true as Othin and you just said. Higher ups are most certainly males. This will take some time to change. But I don't like to guess too much here about how companies in japan change regarding genders or intend to. There is always a chance that one company is more openminded there compared to others and we just don't know it. 

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3 hours ago, Lewyn said:

Yes confusing right?  I don't think he's a bad looking guy or anything but he doesn't fit that male ideal of who we wish to be.

No, a guy with charisma to stop a train is what I want to be.

I don't want devil may cry Dante's physical prowess (though it would be neat) I want his ability to put his tone in the most every situation and laugh at the absurdity of the world while having enough empathy and understanding of people to take things seriously when needed.

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