Found this interesting article on cover art, mostly about sexism and that female characters aren't strong selling points in video games. http://www.gamespot.com/news/naughty-dog-games-dont-need-males-on-cover-to-sell-6401457 Now, it's not like we don't have games with female protagonists that are on the cover, front and center. There's the classic examples of Metroid and Tomb Raider. These are both powerful franchises, in one way or another. So is it accurate to say that women aren't powerful selling points for gamers?
Nope. Gamers buy a game, not a cover. Even the article spells it out loud : Besides, as far as I can tell treating the cover purely as a marketing tool is essentially an American approach. Look at the Final Fantasy games for instance : Japan and Europe are quite happy to just put a sober logo over a white background on their cover, but the US always pick a male "bad-ass" character instead. Don' t ask me why.
I do agree with this some what. I remember reading a gaming magazine looking at the 3 different cover arts shipped in Asia, Europe and NA, and most of the time the NA covers were more 'violent' or 'manly'. Like the ICO cover, for example, the Europe and Asia one has the lovely artwork cover that has two distant figures on them: Spoiler Whilst the NA one has the main, male protagonist at the front: Spoiler But it is all how you market it. Even the Japanese are marketed to in specific ways. Have a look here. Naughty Dog themselves do a bit of marketing in covers.
At the end of the day, video game covers are marketing. People interested in the game or who are fans of the series or developer will probably buy the game no matter how terrible the cover is. Covers are, as the article says, for the uninformed. They're meant to catch your eye and draw you in. Had Soul Calibur V made this their cover, I'm pretty sure that having a woman on the cover might help the game, simply because sex sells. However, I think the Western video game industry especially underestimates its customers. They assume most gamers are misogynistic guys looking to validate their masculinity through in-game conquest. I think there is definitely a problematic group like that in our society, but give gamers a little credit. I buy video games, most with males on the covers because that's what's available--but if I saw a lady on the cover I'd be more likely to pick that up. I'm not sure if that's simply due to my ~feminism~ or because I want something that is a departure from the norm, but I think that might be true for a lot of gamers. Give us something unique and interesting, regardless of what they're rocking between their legs.
Like PaW said a lot of the times it is Western marketing that beefs up a video game cover in order to appeal to an audience. Japanese covers, from what I've noticed after being around the industry, has a tendency to be more artistic with the covers and even use women a lot more for marketing (but that's obvious). I love seeing females on video game covers and it has nothing to do with me being a "feminist" because I don't classify myself as one. Of course I agree with female rights, etc. etc. but I'm not into what feminists call feminism. It's too politically driven for my taste. For example, seeing BioWare make Femshep more relevant in ME3 made me so happy and the fact that they made her an option as a video game cover was great. I understand the maketing that Sheploo was the go-to Shep because he was based off a real model and Femshep was a designed face from scratch (that turned out like **** in the game btw) but I think it is a good step in the right direction. I'm not all for saying "oh let's change the cover to a female just for the sake of it being female" if it has no relevance to the plot or the characters whatsoever. That's ridiculous and it's pandering. Of course, I think after this whole Bioshock: Infinite thing, I understood the point that a lot of dudes go for the cover and say okay cool let's play this he has a gun and he looking brooding and tough great. Not everyone researches their games like we do. Reverse covers with different options is a good way to include people in the market because not all game companies want to take marketing "risks" like that. They know that having a dude with a gun on the cover works well for them and swaying from that might influence then negatively for whatever reason.
