Dear Wizards: Why Failing Less at Gender in 5E Would Be Good For Your Bottom Line
by wundergeek • March 18, 2012 • Design & Art • 19 Comments
Dear Wizards,
It may have come to your attention that you haven’t really done all that well with regards to positive portrayals of women in your D&D 4th Edition products. Sure, I’ll admit that you’ve certainly made improvements over previous editions; when compared to previous editions, there are more women in 4th Edition portrayed in active poses, more women portrayed as fighters, and more women who look like active and engaging protagonists.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that overall, your portrayals of women are still blatantly sexist across all of your products. The women you portray in your core books and in other products like Dragon Magazine are overall depicted as less active, and as far more suggestive as their male counterparts – with the vast majority of all suggestive figures being female. Furthermore, women are still underrepresented in official D&D art, despite game texts saying that men and women can excel equally at adventuring in the D&D universe.
I know this must seem like an old complaint to you, and one that you’re frankly tired of hearing – I’m quite sure. But please, hear me out. Because, thing is, what I – and other women, and other men for that matter – are asking really isn’t a huge step away from what you’re already doing. The new edition already has a lot of really great art of women who look like they could kick your ass and who aren’t sexualized. There’s a lot of 4th Edition art that blew me away with the quality, and with how exciting they are as representations of female avatars.
Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of art that falls into the same old traps of rendering women as nothing more than sexual objects to provide titillation to your presumed (straight) male viewer.
One of these things is not like the other…
This is something you should absolutely care about. This is a big deal, and it’s holding D&D back. And here’s why.
A lesson from recent history: DC’s New 52
DC Comics, as you’re probably aware, recently re-launched their series – starting their canon over as part of their “New 52″. As part of this relaunch, they fired most of their female artists and writers and redesigned most of their popular female characters (those who weren’t axed from the DC lineup completely) to appeal exclusively to a male audience.
DC resurrection! Where stories fail us, porn will save us!
Not surprisingly, post re-launch, while DC enjoyed an impressive bump in sales – the numbers aren’t as encouraging as they could be. DC’s own market survey post-relaunch revealed that only 5% of readers surveyed are new to comics, and a staggering 93% are male.
Did they succeed in re-capturing lost readers? Yes, though incremental but steady decreases in sales since the relaunch suggest that perhaps the sales bump is temporary. Did they succeed in capturing new markets? THEY ABSOLUTELY DID NOT. They failed utterly at capturing new audiences, as is not surprising. Female and other minority readers were incredibly vocal in voicing their discontent with plans for the New 52 relaunch. DC responded by ignoring their anger, and as a result actively drove away a large portion of their loyal fanbase. Additionally, they alienated potential younger readers who had grown up watching series like the Teen Titans but who were turned off by what they saw as a betrayal of characters that they had come to love through other media than comics.
How is this relevant to D&D 5th Edition and why should you care?
So why bring this up? How is this relevant to the new edition of D&D? Why should any of this matter, when tabletop is an entirely different medium than comics?
Well, apparently one of the goals for the new edition is to greatly expand D&D’s audience - a goal that I whole-heartedly support. As an ardent gamer, I would love to see games like D&D become more accessible and more commonly played! But many of the decisions that Wizards has made with regard to the direction of the new edition don’t exactly fill me with confidence that they have any intention of doing anything other than the same old same old. Mike Mearls and Monte Cook as lead designers don’t exactly signal that Wizards intends to look at any significantly new approaches with regards to their system, which doesn’t give me a lot of hope for the fate of women in 5E art.
In re-launching the New 52, DC decided to exclusively target their primary existing market – young 18-34 straight males – at the expense of female and minority fans who weren’t part of the primary market but who considered themselves fans anyhow. And from the few details that I’ve heard of progress regarding the new edition, it makes me worry that 5E D&D might find itself venturing down the same path. Sexualized cheesecake women in fantasy art is such an established part of the landscape that a team of primarily male designers who have been part of the industry for several decades probably wouldn’t think to question it. BUT THEY SHOULD.
The problem is that “business as usual” is flat out incompatible with drastically expanding D&D’s audience. If D&D is going to succeed in capturing markets outside of the ‘young white nerd male’ market, it needs to stop insulting its potential customers. There is still a very widely held common perception that games like D&D are for socially maladjusted, mouth-breathing, sexually repressed men and that people who play these games are deviants. And frankly, art like the above mostly-naked tiefling warlock doesn’t really do a whole lot to dispel that notion. If D&D wants to shed that negative stereotyping, it needs to change its image – LITERALLY.
Start by getting rid of the stupid cheesecake women and having the women that are portrayed get to be strong, competent, and not pointlessly sexualized. Yes it will require work on your part, as well as some very strong art direction. Artists are people who get used to working within a set of industry standards, and doubtless you’ll have to spend a lot of time getting your artists to re-draw things. It will be tedious and aggravating, and I’m sure you will find yourself wondering why you’re bothering to be so incredibly picky. There’s only so many times you can say “guys, this isn’t what I asked for” before it starts to feel like so much pointless nitpicking. But here’s the thing.
It will be TOTALLY WORTH IT.
It might seem silly, and maybe even a little counter-intuitive, but I guarantee that making an effort to be inclusive will have positive effects on your bottom line. As a counter-example to the DC relaunch, I offer the case of Archie Comics – which have been subject to a boycott because of their recent issue that features a regular character who is a gay man getting married to his partner. As Archie Comics’ CEO admits, several years ago Archie was nothing more than a retro-nostalgia brand that was resting on its laurels and not trying all that hard to pursue new readers. When Bryan Young became CEO, he made a concerted effort to change the direction of Archie Comics by reaching out to new audiences through inclusivity – with one of the major parts of this being the introduction of said gay male character. The issue in question has completely sold out – a testament to the positive effects that inclusivity can have on a stagnating brand.
So please. Take some time to really think about this. You don’t need to improve your depictions of women for feminism, or for social justice, or to change how people view the participation of women in the hobby – though I’m invested in all of those things. You should improve your depictions of women because ultimately, it’s good business and will be good for your bottom line.
One major point of quibble with this article:
I doubt Mike or Monte have anything to do with the ultimate decisions on art direction of the product. Art direction lays in the direction marketing wishes to take the product to market to their slice of audience for maximum sales. If the marketing department decides art direction needs to go in the direction of boobies, boobies it will go regardless of the rules for rolling dice and taking a 5′ step.
With much smaller gaming companies, when the company is 1-5 people, I see this as a valid complaint because the creators have a high level of control over the direction the art takes. If the art is misogynist then one can follow the dotted line to the creators, point a finger, and say that there. However, WotC, and by extension their owners, Hasbro, is a large bureaucratic company where the game designers are not the art direction or marketing staff. The guys tasked with designing the game are not the guys tasked with final editorial composition. They will be overridden.
It’s a valid complaint that if WotC wishes to broaden their sell-to audience they should keep the boobies to a minimum and the comparison with the (occasionally odious) DC 52 remake is valid. I’d raise a flag with tarring the designers of these games, who want to bring a fun experience to the table, with the pointy haired guys in the boardroom making what is no doubt a year-long decision on how many boobs and when.
However, to be on point with your article: as a lover of comics, I won’t touch the new DC 52 remake with a 10′ pole. The world is full of brilliant creators making great girl-friendly comics, many available free on the web or via digital distribution, that one doesn’t need to give those guys a penny. I have a 7 year old girl who has discovered comics in a big way and I think pretty long and hard about what comics she has access to and have found plenty of girl-friendly stuff.
I’m pretty sure her point wasn’t that Mike and Monte are responsible for the art direction, but that because Wizards continues to recycle the same old design team, it leads us to believe they’ll be recycling other things too…like the crappy cheesecake art of past editions. We need them to be bold and visionary to overcome the sexism problem in D&D, yet nothing they’ve done so far really suggests boldness or vision.
I’m sure it’s somewhat worse than that. The parent company’s marketing and PR team are positioning the game for 16-24 males. The art direction will go there to maximize sales and profits.
This sort of cool, commercial logic is very common.
It’s important to point out that it’s complete bollocks.
First of all, yes – Renee hit what I was trying to say. That choices to go for “same old same old” with the system design team would tend to indicate “same old same old” with the art team, with “same old same old” being the same bullshit sexist art.
Also, I realize that the existing doctrine is that bullshit sexist art “sells books”. But I’d like to think that I’ve made some cogent arguments as to why that thinking is wrong and actively detrimental to expanding sales. If they’re serious about maximizing sales, they’ll stop insulting women and minorities with their art directions – since women and minorities are a much larger potential market than straight white cisdudes.
Zenith, I suspect the WotC marketing and design team are paying a bit more attention to the fans on the internet after the disaster that was the 4e launch. If we do not tell them what we want to see, how will they know to change it?
I know, at least with some companies, writers (and therefore designers) do have SOME say. We make art notes, and many times those notes are at taken into account and possibly even respected. So if you remember to add notes like ‘Mira should be really angry here, make her staff prominent and threatening’ you can at least help to set tone. So yeah, I expect Monte and Mike to be active in helping with this issue.
That said, Monte probably already is. He has in the past. Here’s him talking about Race and Gender in an earlier edition of DnD and its pretty funny, and saddening. http://montecook.livejournal.com/150303.html It also tells you a good bit about how tied the developers hands are tied because of their corporate marketing masters.
I still thing there’s hope. In no small part thanks to the efforts of Jon Schindehette. (Yeah, another dude, I know.) But, he’s the current art director for DnD Next, and he has been actively engaged on the internets about these issues. A while ago, someone posted a very carefully thought out discussion of sexiness in DnD (http://giantsbridge.blogspot.com/2012/01/open-letter-to-wotc-art-department.html ) , and while I don’t agree with all points, man it got attention. And good attention. What’s really REALLY important is that Jon read the letter. Jon considered the letter. Jon even talks about the letter on his official blog over on the DnD site. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dreye/20120222 (also I think the bit of art picked for that article is delightfully tongue and cheek, all things considered.)
He has been very active talking to myself, Sarah Darkmagic, and others. His info is all in that article because he does at least appear to care. Which is a pretty big step compared to some art directors I’ve dealt with.
But, yeah. Marketing. Marketing people. Demographics. It feels like even if we can get everyone on board at the creative levels, there’s always going to be this cloud of corporate shitheads floating in the clouds ready to ruin our work.
Which is why I’m trying to frame this post in terms of business decisions. I feel like DC’s New 52 is a cautionary tale for ALL geek entertainment companies with a stated goal of increasing sales AND capturing new markets. You CAN’T continue to exclude women and minorities AND hope to capture new markets. Not surprisingly, people don’t like giving money to companies that marginalize them and make them feel trivialized or not valued.
From a social justice angle, I wish it was sufficient to say ‘you shouldn’t treat people like shit because it’s a shit thing to do’, but obviously it’s not. However, there are SOLID BUSINESS REASONS why companies should start to not treat potential customers like shit, which makes it doubly frustrating when they decide to keep with the strategies they have always used rather than trying the revolutionary strategy of NOT MARGINALIZING POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS.
So, the art is a clear and obvious problem. But one of my biggest problems with D&D 4E was its more subtle marginalization of women – and, in particular, _girls._ Yes, the core demographic of D&D may be 16-24 year olds, but since the 80s it has also been a key gateway game for young gamers. And the 11-year-old girl I once was when I started playing D&D (the brand new 2nd Ed!) would have been turned off by a variety of factors in 4E.
For instance, look at the classes (something which may still be true for 5E, though I am hoping for the best). There were three new core classes in 4E: Warlock, Warlord, and Wizard. Beyond the stupidity of these names being far too similar to each other, they are also strongly gendered. How exactly does one play a female warlock without self-consciousness of genderbending?
Reason #2: A particularly “girlish” issue: No Animals.
When I was a young lass, I noticed a difference between the towns that I and other young lasses designed when playing D&D and those of our male friends. In every girl-designed town, usually near the center, there was a pet shop. This pet shop was an important place, where you could buy your warhorses, your animal companions, your familiars, and so forth – all of which had personalities and amusing quirks. Now, yes, pre-teen girls are socialized to be All About the Ponies, but I’m not ashamed of that. Ponies and owls and what-not are fun. There’s a reason people cared about Hedwig – and she didn’t even talk!
4th Ed has _no_ animals. No familiars (they’ve been replaced by orbs and staves), no paladin’s warhorse, no druids at all, no animal companions, indeed, no interaction with animals at all, since there are no spells which enable you to talk to them.
The various types of bonded animals gave girl players – and many guy players too, I should say – immense opportunity for light-hearted, “pointless” roleplaying. For every Vaarsuvius (of OOTS), who doesn’t name its other class features (and note how tokenist a character V. is), there are the familiars that help make the game, who call their master “Boss” and plot to kill other people’s familiars (okay, maybe that was just me) and provide flavor that’s not about killing the immediate bad thing, but enriching the development of that PC. I’ve cried at the deaths of certain familiars in people’s Story Hours, and I’m not 12 anymore.
I can’t comment currently about the presence or lack of animals in 5E, but this remains a concern for me. Yes, this may seem like buying into traditional gender stereotypes – but the kinds of girls that might start gaming are also those who have grown up on super-special-bonded-animal books of various kinds. Is it so much to ask to allow them a darn unipeg?
There were some more subtle issues, like the representation of female characters in the model encounters in the PH and DMG. They disproportionately wound up unconscious or paralyzed in the 1st round of combat and, unlike, their male counterparts, never got critical hits. (The average attack rolls (before any modifiers are added) for the male characters are 17 and 15; for the female character of Lidda, it’s 9.) http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/gender/gametext.html
So these are issues I hope 5E is planning on fixing. All these points may seem carping and petty to you, and perhaps they are. But when I was 12, I wanted to roleplay in a complex world full of interesting characters, where I did not feel like an interloper because of my gender, and, yes, I wanted a Pony. And a faerie dragon. And a handsome rogue to fall madly in love with. And I want an edition of D&D that will give that to the 12-year-old girls out there today, reading Harry Potter and watching Teen Titans.
I had animal companions, special mounts, familiars, even a summoned celestial animal to call my very own. (In service to Elistree, of course, the good drow goddess of the hunt. Woo!) I’ve actually played so little 4ed that I hadn’t even noticed they ripped out these aspects.
I can’t imagine why. That makes me sad. Here’s hoping that ‘going back to older editions’ will include the bonded animal aspect.
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As Jessica Hammer pointed out on this site in her A Gamers Library: Introduction article:
,,What about sexist (or otherwise problematic) texts?
I’ll do the same thing with them publicly that I do privately: grapple with them as they are. I’ll try to pull out what’s useful and, when necessary, explicitly point out what’s awful. When it comes to the most egregious offenders, I’ll suggest you vote with your wallet. I’ll also make sure I recommend some less poisonous sources for the bits worth learning from.”
The same and more can be said for D&D’s problems.
The same thing that applies here is that the authors of D&D should take a look at other tabletop games and how they approached the problem of breaking into new markets (both other mainstream publishers and Indy games) and what of their tactics worked and what failed and what can be used for D&D to help them have a wider(better) market and as a bonus be more inclusive.
Now what more can be said about D&D’s problems with sexism?
Let me start with the warlock picture wundergeek provided: It is the wrong example for the point you are trying to make, please note this is my personal opinion and as such is subjective in nature, the female warlocks clothes during this rite is not the problem. The problem is that the male warlock would be a lot more clothed in the same position which is a storytelling fail.
You see the D&D warlock is a magic wielder who sold their soul for the ,,gain” of having mystical powers that are beyond the reach of ordinary mortal spell casters, in all cases a warlock is someone who sells them selves into eternal slavery in the afterlife for a gain in power in their mortal lives, but let us focus on the fiendish warlock that is in the picture wundergeek used as an example of sexism.
Wundergeek you are correct. That picture is sexist. The mistake is assuming that that picture itself is something that should be removed from the D&D world. It is not. That picture is vile, disturbing, demeaning to women (and probably most of the rest of humanity) and whole lot more of nasty things. But out of storytelling context it is not.
What I see in the picture is a female Thiefling warlock in the middle of a rite for reaching into the lower planes and summoning one of her fiendish ,,benefactors”. The image is supposed to scream wrong on so many levels to most(rule 34) people. Now the real problem is that is that a while a female warlock that is submissive while doing a summoning from the lower planes can be found in the official artwork of D&D, a picture of a male warlock doing the same I could not find.
For example: a male fiendish warlock summoning a distinctively female entity from the lower planes while trembling at her very presence and looking pale and sick and/or like an addict taking another hit of the strong stuff, while the said female entity radiates authority, power, her own fiendish nature and a view of her summoner being no more that an interesting pawn at best and a momentary plaything at worst is an image that:
a) can be found in D&D’s official artwork with the same frequency as the female warlock one.
b) can be found in D&D’s official artwork but with less frequency then the female warlock one.
c) can be found in D&D’s official artwork but only for the previous editions of the D&D world not the current one.
d)can not be found in D&D’s official artwork.
I honestly do not know the answer to the above question, but it is one that should be asked.
But I digress, the point is that if the people at Wizards should treat us to artwork that is equal to both genders and at the same time is integrated into the story of the D&D world. Which means if you have a male character that is depicted fully clothed in a situation, a female character who is different from the male in gender only (same stats, class, race, etc.) should be depicted also fully clothed and in the same clothes that are being worn by their male counterparts.
“Let me start with the warlock picture wundergeek provided: It is the wrong example for the point you are trying to make”
Uh, no, actually. It’s not. She’s not the worst I’ve seen, but she’s got a definite case of chest TARDIS (her ribcage is too small to contain all of her organs). Not the most severe I’ve ever seen, but still there. Also, the perspective on her legs is borked, and I’m suspicious of the ability of ANYONE to hold that pose for longer than 5 seconds without falling over. Then there’s the “costume” – a halter top and a backless loin-cloth thing? (People, tails are not pants. They’re just not.)
So you have distorted anatomy, completely impractical pose, and an outfit unsuitable for anything other than standing there and looking pretty, all in the name of TEH SEXAY. …yup. That looks like a pretty good example of what I was talking about.
“The mistake is assuming that that picture itself is something that should be removed from the D&D world.”
I’m not against all sex ever in RPGs. I’m not against all sex ever in art. I’m not against all people ever who like sexy art, or who like sex, or who like sex and RPGs. There is nothing wrong with sexy art in fantasy and gaming. There IS something wrong with art that reduces women to nothing more than body parts designed to appeal to straight male gamers. Sexy art that depicts women as PEOPLE who are sexy? Awesome! Sexy art that depicts women as a collection of ladybits designed to provide maximum titillation to a straight male viewer? NOT AWESOME.
wundergeek please understand the issue is not that you have posted a picture that you show is wrong and sexist. The issue is that the one picture you did post as an example is supposed to be wrong and sexist.
This picture for me is neither fan service (in fact it is fan disservice, I have an itch to go for the brain bleach every time I look at it) nor is the barely clad depiction of the woman pointless.
Put simply you are saying that this picture is an example of what is wrong with the art that is found in the D&D franchise. Except that as an example the picture is not wrong. Yes it can be used as fan service but the moment most (again rule 34) people that use it for the sexy realize the fridge horror that is inherent in that picture they will be going for either a bottle of brain bleach or a shower (probably both).
I think what you are trying to say, Dmol, is that context matters.
At one level, you’re right – there’s a narrative context to the picture that could be interpreted the way you argue.
The problem is that you’re missing the bigger-picture, real-world context for the picture. The pose and costume can’t be analyzed purely narratively, because the picture itself exists in the context of millions of pictures of sexualized, objectified, passive women used to sell things.
I’d love to live in a world where we could look at pictures like this and just see the story of the picture itself. But you can’t ignore the story of the person seeing the picture, and how it relates to the thousands of other pictures with the same message that they see.
This happens to me all the time – there’s a really cool story or scene or image I want to play with, and then I realize, “Fuck! Sexism got there first!” Even if I reinvent, I’m always working against sexist tropes and imagery. I hate that moment so very much. I wish I knew an easy way to fix it, but I don’t. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it’s precisely the context that makes this piece, and others like it, so problematic.
(It’s also pretty badly drawn. The only reason it looks even remotely normal to us is because we’re used to seeing women’s bodies photoshopped and distorted all the time.)
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