@ cptacek:

Well, this is rampant in Hollywood too. I think red letter media dubbed this tendency as “establishing that the character has a raging case of the NOT-gays”. It usually means that most male characters who don’t have an established love interest have to do something to establish themselves as straight men – so maybe hit on a girl in the bar, crane their neck at a passing skirt, make some loud remarks about titties, etc.. You know, just so that the audience can be 100% sure they are not gay or anything. :P

@ Luke Maciak:
Fair enough :) I am not a gamer, so I didn’t know that.

@ cptacek:

Well, most of the time there is either a female love interest or the character will be established to have had or have lost a wife/girlfriend at some point to make this point abundantly clear.

30 something, straight, white male with brown hair, a deep gravely voice, chiseled athletic body with a military background and a standard issue 5 o’clock shadow. Oh, wait sorry – sometimes you might get lucky and play a straight, white female with a supermodel figure and enormous breasts who wears a chain-mail bikini or a miniskirt.

How do you know they are straight? Do they ever say they are, or are you just assuming?

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@ Luke Maciak:
One more tidbit about Dead Space, it wouldn’t really matter if the protagonist wasn’t an engineer. Scariness comes from feeling of helplessness and you are helpless because you are not armed to the teeth and in Dead Space it is so because most conventional weapons are highly ineffective against necromorphs.

And something else on topic about Mirrors Edge:
http://kotaku.com/5062933/faith-from-mirrors-edge-fan+designed-for-asi an-tastes

The only title/franchise I can remember right now without a non-white-straight-brownhair protagonist would be Mount & Blade.
You essentially start with a rather “medieval” character (the likes of Monthy Pythons peasants) and not a William Thatcher but alas, it’s basically a make-your-own-adventure game so it doesn’t really count.

@ Matt`:

Granted, Samus started as a trope inversion – so that gamers could go “Oh, shit! No way! Samus is a chick!” upon finishing the game. Coincidentally that was what most people liked about her – that she was a classic, quintessential video game hero who just happened to have tits underneath the power armor. What defined her was not her sex, but what she did.

Then some “genius” developers decided that since Samus is a girl then the “modern” version of Metroid has to be about periods, motherhood issues and has to have a romantic subplot. I guess they were trying to add depth to a character that didn’t really have any but from what I heard “The Other M” was a downgrade for her. She went from being a fearless though a bit underdeveloped badass hero into being a neurotic, insecure barbie-doll. :/

There’s Chell in Portal… and I’m out of ideas. Well, except for the older franchises that are still running (Samus and the like).

Liudvikas wrote:

As for making protagonist a black blonde (what’s the opposite of military dude?) isn’t exactly risky, but it doesn’t serve any real purpose either. It’s just giving marketing department more work with no real benefit to the publisher.

Right. It is just sad that marketing anything other than “white guy protagonist” is considered “more work” and “no benefit”. I’m nod disagreeing with what you are saying – I’m just pointing out that this is an area were gaming industry is still quite behind Hollywood which in itself doesn’t have a stellar track record with these sorts of things.

And again – Mirror’s Edge was a massive success even though it had an Asian female protagonist whom it didn’t Lara Croft in front of the camera. Or Portal whose mute, every-man, self insertion character Chell just happens to be Hispanic (I think). That’s the sort of thing I’m getting at. :)

Liudvikas wrote:

As for creating a protagonist for any game, there are limitations. If you are making a shooter, you can choose a military dude or regular dude. Military dude can easily fit in any story, but regular dude must be thrust into fighting by some circumstances.

Right. If you are making a “modern warfare” type game, then military dude is probably the best bet. If you are making a survival horror, you should probably always go for regular dude because it is scarier that way.

But you are absolutely right – I think the “ex-special forces” thing is just the easiest way to explain why a character in a video game can expertly handle 20 different guns and what not. I guess I wish we had more variety – I guess not just in the types of protagonists but also types of gameplay/combat available.

For example, I wouldn’t mind playing an FPS where you are, say a mail man who finds himself in the middle of an alien invasion and has to battle aliens using the environment and makeshift weapons made out of household items he can scavenge from people’s kitchens and back yards.