This is a disgusting attitude and opinion to have.
Game Developers aren't "too scared". Game Developers, specifically story writers, know that characters need to match the world that they're building and the goals of the plot. As it stands, there are certain archetypes of characters that better fit with certain types of stories which make good for gaming; for example, historically females have been excluded from a lot of warfare and combat, which is why the first Assassin's Creed had a brotherhood comprised of only male assassins.
A thing I really hate regarding Overwatch is that people give ridiculous amounts of credit to Blizzard over Mei and Zarya, and yet in reality all that Blizzard did was have a story writer make a bit of flavour text and get their art designers to do the same thing they did for every other character; make weird characters as per the theme. Blizzard wasn't being smart, progression or anything when they produced the characters; they just were looking for varied archetypes to fit inside their colourful, abstract world. It's the same reason there's a big bloody Gorilla; they weren't looking to advocate better characterisation for animals. Every character is something different.
If you want a truly progressive female character, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has the elderly and experienced Kreia; possibly one of the most powerful characters in the entire Star Wars (non-)cannon, who has an extremely detailed and complex personality and hours of dialogue that never gives away her true intentions or motivations. That's a character that could have easily been made into a man, but Chris Avellone chose to make her female and made it work.
I'm sorry that you are stuck in the old, antiquated way of thinking that character stereotypes are more important than the plot or gameplay. You may wish to grow up and consider your life choices if you're buying games for the Wikipedia "Background Story" sections.
Trying to compare KOTOR 2 and Overwatch is like comparing apples and oranges.
Of course the lore takes a back seat in Overwatch. It's a cartoony team shooter with no single player campaign or other way of delivering plot through the gameplay.. most of the lore comes from media outside the game, which makes it much harder to communicate a character that deep and interesting. Shorts and comics are time consuming and obviously not the main concern of the development team.
I feel like Blizzard has actually done an amazing job with characterization given their limited tools - characters often talk back and forth in game in ways that reveal their personality. (e.g Zarya's lines sort of indicate that she has a distrust of Zenyatta, Bastion, and omnics in general due to her past) Overwatch is compared to TF2 in a lot of ways, and something both games have excelled at is delivering a story and interesting characters through shorts, comics, and in-game content. Also, Kreia was mentioned in the video as an example of a progressive characrter.
All that Blizzard was trying to do (and succeeded in doing, as noted by Sarkeesian) was to introduce more body type diversity into Overwatch, and they definitely have taken some good steps in that direction with the latest characters. The women characters are about as developed as the male characters, and the characters in general are developed to the level that I'd expect of a game of this genre.
Your point about fitting characters to setting/plot doesn't really make sense to me.. Of course we shouldn't expect people with body types/ages that are noncongruent with certain gameworlds to be represented. But in general it definitely seems to be like male characters have more leeway to having varied body types in game worlds that suit it. In general if men in something like Street Fighter or DOTA 2 or Overwatch have varied body types, we should expect the same of women.
You seem to be mistaking Sarkeesian's (and subsequently Poliwhirl's) point for "these are progressive characters" as opposed to "these characters are good examples of different body types that female characters can have in video games". And games
would be more interesting with actually different female body types - body type would be another tool for character designers to use to express personality and character.
Exactly. Something Anita completely missed in the video that a lot of the characters she mentioned were very strong female leads. They weren't bottom of the bucket companions to the protagonist, they WERE the protagonists or the main characters who impact the story of the game a lot. I like how Anita literally includes a clip in the video where it shows a lot of female characters who are literally the centrepieces of the game - they are the focus characters.
Well, apart from the women in DoA.
She never said that the characters were weak female leads, or even alluded to them being weak.. All she was saying was that they tend to have the same body type, in order to provide love appeal for the straight male demographic that dominates the gaming industry.
The issue of women not being lead characters or being "pushed to the side" so to speak is a different one entirely, and it's not one she was trying to touch on in the video, evidently.
