GP: "Just last week an opinion piece went up about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto V and why it might benefit from having a female protagonist. Soon after the content was live on N4G (an aggregate game blog site) there was instantly a fair amount of backlash. N4G isn't typically the best barometer of commenters on the web, but they brought up many points that would probably be right at home on Destructoid or other large gaming sites. After spending some time viewing them I realized I had a lot I wanted to say about these points. Unfortunately, commenting to each and every person would be a long and ultimately fruitless project so instead I'm writing my own opinion piece.
It's not so much a response to the initial article as it is to the kind of responses it received. But then, almost all the comments I have seen are always brought up when someone mentions female protagonists in games. So really, this piece could be transplanted as a response to a great deal of editorials that have come out over the years as the responses never seem to change. With all that said, let's go over some of the most popular points one by one as I offer my opinion and analysis on each."
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
I would NEVER play a GTA game with a female protagonist. In fact I would give up on the entire franchise if they made a GTA game with a female lead.
As men, the male characters we play are an extension of ourselves. That's the whole point.
Due to the horny nerdiness of most gamers, female characters are often overly sexualized to the point where they can't be taken seriously and therefore do a poor job of comprising a strong narrative.
Male,female,animal,creature? I don't care as long as the game is good.
I'm all for being able to play as a woman, it'd be nice if other studios would go the Mass Effect 2 route and let you play as either and have decent voice acting for both but I'd imagine not all games would work as well.
As far as GTA games go I say do it
I don't care what gender, race or sexuality the character is in a game as long as there's not a mismatch between the story/gameplay and the character.
Even when I feel the most immersed in a game, I never feel like I'm that game character, I feel like i'm just in their environment with them.
Maybe because I'm just a regular black guy and every character is either white or if black, gangster-ish. But nah, even in ME when I created my guy, I still never felt like I was him so I doubt appearance has anything to do with it.
I could be a panda bear and still feel no more, or less immersion.