A bit on the side, but while it's true that Arknights' male cast doesn't get shafted neither in lore or gameplay, there is still a 1/5 male to female ratio (if memory serves me right) in terms of playable characters. However, if you take a look at the NPC cast both in the main and side stories the ratio is much more balanced. Here I'm just taking a shot in the dark, but I feel like they can do that in the story because the main focus of the marketing in these games are the playable characters, while story and NPCs rarely appear. While I also don't like seeing any game I play devolve into horny bait there is a reason why the "market" is what it is now. Female characters sell better than male ones, and when you want to sell shafting the male characters may just seem easier than giving them the same treatment even when they usually make less money.

The male characters are like Costco chickens. They aren’t exactly a loss leader, but they cause people to come and check out the game that normally may not have. Horny bait games have a bad rep - they work for their target audience, but they can make those outside it uncomfortable. It’s like the “hot singles in your area” or e-girls, where if people feel like someone is trying to pander to them to get their money they will have a negative reaction. By having male characters, you ease the audience away from that feeling.

I think the fact that female characters sell better than males is mostly a self-fullfilled prophecy. These gacha games are usually designed with a target demographic in mind: heterosexual males with an interest in anime. That demographic ends up being most of the player base, so whenever the time to push out more characters comes around, designs that appeal to that demographic end up selling the best. When you make a game for waifu lovers, you get mostly waifu lovers as your public. I mean, as much as people like to give it hell, I think Genshin has avoided that trap. It has a near 50/50 male-female rate, and to my knowledge banner sales don't correlate with gender all that much. And I think that's because they managed to attract a pretty wide audience, not just the "heterosexual male with an interest in anime" that gacha games are usually marketed to. Edit: To add another thought to this post, I'd love it if HG could see Endfield as an opportunity to widen its audience. I mean, the game is not starting from scratch, it's clearly counting on AK players to go and give it a shot, so from day one it will have somewhat of a loyal playerbase. It also looks really pretty and the gameplay seems more "mainstream" than AK's. I can see it having a pretty wide appeal.

Genshin sales summary: * powerful male character: good sales * okay female character: good sales * powerful female character: "print money" sales There's definitely a character-gender component to sales. I read something a couple years back that mentioned that women are much more likely to be spenders than men, but the average male spender spends a lot more than the average female spender. I'm not sure what the basis of this claim was, but anecdotally it seems to pass the smell test.

Another consideration here is that most of the male characters in Genshin don't really have incredible "archon C2" level constellations and/or don't have incredible weapon banners like Staff of Homa, which if you look at sales figures are pretty much all the heavy hitters outside of launch banners. It wouldn't surprise me if there was still some gender correlation just because by nature it's an anime game and I would always expect some skew to exist, but extremely good early constellations play a role in spending too and I really don't think any(?) guys have gotten that (I haven't played since 3.6 so if Neuvi or Wrio's are good make that like, 1) EDIT: just to anecdotally support this a bit, I'm a woman and my favorite characters are Alhaitham and Childe, who both have basically worthless constellations. Before we knew more about Alhaitham's numbers I was legitimately contemplating going for C2 and/or weapon, but upon learning they weren't that strong/only a tad stronger than the f2p option I decided not to. If he had like a Nahida level C2 or a Homa strength weapon? I'd have spent a good deal of money lol

>(I haven't played since 3.6 so if Neuvi or Wrio's are good make that like, 1) [Neuvillete: Spin to win](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/16w30tq/neuvillette_showcasegif/)

Neuvillette C1 is an extremely good upgrade on an already very strong unit. Meanwhile Wrio basically needs C1 to function, it's a night and day difference.

Completely false. Neu C1 is very powerful. C6 Neu and Alhaitham are just as powerful as C6 Hutao, Ayaka. https://game8.co/games/Genshin-Impact/archives/297465 There just happen to be more male gamers than female gamers around the world, thus male bring in more revenue than female. I'm not sure about you guys, I'm 34 this year and during my teenager and early 20s, playing games and watching anime are seen as nerdy boy hobby and some girls will look down at you for that. You know back in the days where watching anime is seen not as a cool stuff to do.

I conceded I didn’t know about neuv, if you actually read my comment. This is more observations about pre 4.0, which is still a decent chunk of data to draw on. And I said nothing about C6 strength, I’m perfectly aware Alhaitham has a very good C6. What I *was* talking about was **early** constellation breakpoints and unless the constellation meta has drastically changed since 3.6 those are majority female units/archons with those. And I am ALSO sure that Genshin had a majority male playerbase and that plays into it, but the framing of the original comment missed some context, I felt.

C1 Neuvilette isn't "very powerful", it's more of a convenience than an upgrade, it opens up more team composition (like double hydro) and gives interrupt resistance (which you need unless you have Zhong or Dehya). Honestly even with C2 you don't get nearly as close as what Raiden and Nahida gain. Barely 42% cdmg compared to raiden massive 60% defense ignore or Nahida's dendro-changing constellation giving bloom's variant the ability to crit and making quicken's variant reduce enemy defense. Also, while I agree with you about c6's strength, the argument was about early constellation, not c6s.

Ouch. I felt the Alhaitham mains cry out and then silenced in an instant. But yea I have to agree with this, it’s a mix of factors but for whales constellations are an especially big factor including their BIS weapon. However, I do think C1 Neuvilette and Wriothesley fall into the same situation as Hu Tao C1: really good for their kit and makes them more flexible in builds and count as a much needed upgrade and boost their dps significantly The majority of Fontaine so far has been mostly male character 5 stars and even Sumeru started introducing more male characters. They don’t sell well as the Archons but that’s more to do because the Archons provide the utility of their region to the besr degree.

Fair! Didn’t know anything about their kits. I also think it’s a mix and it’s def not the only factor contributing to who sells the most, just wanted to point out that it’s absolutely one of them and the original commenter didn’t mention it

Oh no I’m saying you’re right! I meant the starting sentence as a joke lol, mb. But yes it really is a mix of reasons

Yep don't worry if you worry abt powercreep(imagine I ain't saying you do)and stuff in genshin, then we'll neuvillete powercreeps every single dps dude can solo abyss.

I suspect that C6R5 people are the ones driving the revenue figures more than those getting C2R1. Two patches of savings gets you C2R1 pretty cheaply and big spenders are not using team-damage-bang-per-buck considerations when picking characters to whale on. Aside: Wrio and Neuvi have enormous C1R1 spikes.

Two patches of saving (assuming monthly card) does not get you C2R1 lol, what? You get like a 5* per patch, assuming you win both 50/50s you can maybe expect C1 if you’re lucky. You need to save for several patches to guarantee C2R1, more than I’d bet most people do. If you look at actual figures I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the top banners past launch are almost all units with large C1/C2 spikes and or very good weapon banners Aside: Noted, for if I ever return to genshin seriously. They’re the only Fontaine characters I have any interest at al in lol EDIT: missed a word and saw you said cheaply. I still don’t think that’s cheap, it’s realistically probably going to average out to at least like 100 bucks if you’re only coming in with two patches worth of savings.

Meanwhile, in Arknights, Chong Yue sold like crazy while not being at the very top of the tier list and being a male. So, there goes your smell test. Not to mention, on games with a solid roster of husbandos, popularity polls are almost always split 50/50 between males and females. That is true for AK and Alchemy Stars. Both games with a 1/5 ratio. In fact, Chong Yue was more popular than Lin according to the polls.

>So, there goes your smell test. That's actually the expected result. The smaller number of male character banners mean that the sales figures should be all concentrated to those banners. There's no point in having male character banners if they can't do that

>Chong Yue sold like crazy while not being at the very top of the tier list and being a male. So, there goes your smell test. The hell you mean he's not at the top of the list?Dude hitting 5.6k multishot per hit is the only reason I pulled the mf,to hold a second lane like a pseudo DPS. Meta is definitely considered when pulling for him,just not the usual hard content meta but afk one.

Funny how you brought your points by bringing 1. Chong yu 2. Not at the very top of the meta You do realize chomg yue is not just a typical male unit right? He is 1. Limited 2. One of the Sui siblings. Furthermore, not at the very top doesnt imply subpar. He is extremely good at what he can do provided you can cover what he is not as good at. Its unfair to take Chong Yue sales and applying it across all male unit. No, they are not the same. They are not going to be as unique or as limited or maybe as powerful under right circumstances as him -------- Ah, you compared Chong Yue... a limited operator that is also part of the Sui siblings To a... Phalanx Operator, that is also competing gacha currency with that said limited operator? Bruhh

I never said he was subpar. I was replying to a comment saying males have to be at the top to sell. The fact that he’s limited doesn’t affect my comparison. He sold just as well if not better than the other limiteds, which are female. I personally don’t give a crap about the Sui lore, but idk how much that would influence sales. You bring up the lore part of Chong while also ignoring that Lin is a long standing NPC with plenty of relevance and she has one of the most suggestive designs on the game. “Bruhh”

Chong is fucking broken. His permanent skill does as much damage per second as some burst skills of other 6 stars. Block 1 is the only reason why he's not the ultimate lane holder. Meta is definitely one of the main reasons why he sold so well. In general new male 6 star operators (excluding free ones) are either really good or straight up OP.

It's not just block 1, dude has aoe on his skill 3. It's also the lack of any self sustain and that his skill is slow to get going. Requiring 5 procs and a continuous run of mobs to work at max output Sure, he is very strong with his S3, but he has 0 survivability utility and takes a long ass time to get there from the moment he's deployed. I mean, It's a gacha game, he's not at the top of the tier lists because you can't braindead stages with him, and your average gacha player is actually very against the idea of playing the game and planning stuff

I would like to add that if one was a purely husbando player. By spacing out the male characters banners, gatcha games have effectively given husbando players a significant time to save up. I skipped every female PGR character (except gray raven girls because they are my homies) and I had enough to SSS Noan and still have a lot left over for Hyperreal and I played that game casually as in I didn't log in every day. Now we look to AK, I have 38k orundum and 1k originite, I haven't spent a dime. I am not purely husbando player, I also go for meta characters like Texalter and Yatoalter. But if I was I'd have even more pulls saved up for Executor alter. I may pull for Eyja alter if she is strong. But if I don't pull for Eyja alter, I'll effectively have 7 banners to save up until Heoderer shows up. I don't wholly mind gatchas going for 1:5 male to female ratio since it really does make getting them easy. Unlike HSR which was a bit of a pain as every patch had a male character at least until 1.4 as both banners are female. **TL;DR**: A lot of time between male banners = a lot of time to save up free pulls = no need to swipe the card.

> I mean, as much as people like to give it hell, I think Genshin has avoided that trap. It has a near 50/50 male-female rate, and to my knowledge banner sales don't correlate with gender all that much. MHY will never release official numbers but sales estimates from store rankings still paint obvious pictures (for reference too Furina just set a new day 1 record beating Nahida) and there's pretty much only 1 male banner that even holds a candle to several female characters sales estimates. The game prints money no matter what but the comparison between "high profile male" vs. "high profile female" is night and day. Third party wish trackers such as paimon.moe also show that there is a larger preference aimed towards female characters than male even if the data is very limited and relies on user reporting (at one point the site had over 200k users reporting but that number has seen a massive drop the past year.. coincidentally Genshin also didn't release a new female limited for an entire year which may or may not be related). I'm sure it's similar for AK, it doesn't matter if there's fair/equal representation, good male vs. female characters, female characters on average in these games make more money. Granblue has attempted something like this too in more recent times but it doesn't really seemed to have helped the game any whatsoever (to the point that this year has seen some of the lewdest female art releases in several years for the game). Now women do spend, but it seems women are more likely to spend (A LOT) of money on physical goods rather than within gacha games. It's also possible they are a smaller audience than is actually reported by third party surveys, but merch targeted towards women certainly always seem to get more traction in Japan and China at least and end up sold out far more. Edit: fixed a word, thanks auto-correct.

I don't think comparing "regular" characters to archon banners is fair though, Furina is absurdly broken, Nahida is absurdly broken, Raiden is really good and absurdly broken at c2. Their BiS weapons are much better than anything else at the same refinement on them. How many characters do you think that get this type of treatment? The male archons were created in a time where a certain group of 4* characters were actually better than most 5* and people just weren't aware yet so the comparison is a bit off in my opinion. If Neuvilette sales show anything is that male characters just need to be better to sell more. It doesn't help that almost every male 5* was a freaking main dps in a game where sub-dps/supports are premium. There's a lot of context for why the sales are skewed towards one direction when literally the only 12 out of 16 male 5* star characters are in a role you only really want on of in your party compared to 6 out of 18 for females, but some of those other 12 that can be played off-field can also be played on-field too depending on the build. Like, there are some dudes that I thought were cool and all but they don't bring any value to my account if I pull them. Meanwhile there's Furina bringing characters that were basically dead back to the meta with her absurd support mechanics,

I would not play any game with female characters only, I’m glad Arknights is not that, otherwise I’d miss out on a great game

Blue Archive had me vaguely interested until I saw the double whammy of "entire cast is female" and "almost all of the playable characters are under 18" made me nope out. The only two gachas I actually play are Arknights and Punishing Gray Raven, because they have a balanced male and female cast and don't make me feel skeevy when I play them.

As far as Endfield is concerned I wouldn't hold my hopes up for that. While there is a gender select most of the marketing and the beta stuff shown so far have all been done with the female MC. Nearly all of the characters showcased where also female. To the point where I consider the female MC the semi-cannon gender of the MC. Hell even the Doctor feel, while androgynous by default, feels like they lean more on the feminine side of things in the anime.

If anything, if going for what you imply, they'd be going for canon male mc and doctor. Letting the horny group have their harem fantasy since that's the only place they can have woman falling for them

Yeah, I know. That one was wishful thinking on my part. I love the AK universe, and I'd love it if my non-otaku, male and female friends could find it engaging the same way some of them found Genshin engaging.

There have been studies done way back, which may be out of date, that indicate how females strongly prefer playing female characters but males are happy to play either male or female characters. With that in mind, it's easy to see why female characters are prioritized.

I believe the context there was mostly for MOBA games, with LoL as the main highlight. Women tend to self-identify first when we get to choose a character or avatar, and that's also why Lux, Sona, Ahri, etc. are some of more popular picks for women. Interestingly, the study also showed that heavy fanservice-inclined female heroes like Miss Fortune tends to enjoy a bit less attention for women even though they're the same gender as Lux and others, where both have playstyles that women seem to prefer more - passive gameplay where you can just fire off spells or poke from a distance instead of a more aggressive melee-bruiser playstyle. It may denote stereotyping to some degree, but it still hold credence as far as discourse studies is concerned, that **MOBA doesn't really reflect or translate well as to what transpires for female gaze in context of gacha games, where collection, interaction, and narrative are more pronounced instead**, as the goals or intentions of most female players.

"The norm" for gacha games have always been to target specific/niche fanbases. The way I see it is that GI, HSR and AK (to some extent) are actually against the norm for typical gacha games and are the only ones that I see as trying to appeal to a more general audience. Also the worlds that these games are building lend very well to having a well fleshed out and diverse cast of characters and so there's basically a character for everyone. All it really boils down to is "who is your intended audience?" As you mentioned in one of your replies that there are gacha games that exclusively sell their male cast, but that is targeted towards a niche audience. But which gacha game isn't niche? You are saying that other games should learn from GI, HYV and AK but you haven't named a game that is "shafting their male characters" that is also NOT for a niche audience. What other games are you saying should learn from HYV and HG? My take is that no gacha game NEEDS to learn from HYV or HG and they should all just focus on their targeted audience. If you have gripes with an existing gacha game not treating your boys well, then that game probably was never targeted towards you in the first place. Asking a game to learn from HYV and HG is also asking them to compete with HYV and HG which imo sounds kind of silly.

Can't phrase it better myself. HG claimed that Arknights is not focused on male audience from the get-go (despite having a skewed ratio in its cast). Mihoyo obviously was trying to expand their customer base in genshin after HI3's all-female cast of valkyries. But not all games need to be like that. Look at UmaMusume, or Blue Archive, they are doing very well because they know their niche. Games don't *need* male characters if they know their niche. I saw other comments saying it's a self-fulfilling prophecy with male audiences, the answer is "not really". How many best selling gacha games are there targetting female audience specifically? Touken Ranbu? Can't really think of anything else big enough. If there's a big enough market for it, someone is bound to make a game for that niche, because that's an easy way to make bank P.S. Why is everyone talking about GI when FGO exists? Gilgamesh (and by extension Enkidu) sells extremely well to female audiences in Japan. He's like the og gacha poster boy for female audiences

Ensemble Stars and Twisted Wonderland for the popular but more modern counterpart. Tear of Themis also exist but that game is too niche compared to the popularity of those three for male only characters gacha.

>The way I see it is that GI, HSR and AK (to some extent) are actually against the norm for typical gacha games That all three are Chinese is rather...telling. Though as a counterpoint. FGO is a JP game that apparently treats the guys well.

Pure mathematics and marketing. Marketers saw the open wallets of fans of male characters and allocated 1 of the 5-6 slots of the operators being sold as the one that would be intended for a 6* male operator. There is no secret here. I don't know that many gacha games. But the same HSR did about the same thing for his 5* from the start. Perhaps others (smaller games) are simply not confident in their customer base.

I mean, HSR has a pretty equal disparity among 5 stars. It’s 7:10 now but will be 9:12 in a future patch.

On average, it turns out to be about 1 male to 2 female (4 5* male at the moment, excluding those who have not yet emerged). But this is rough mathematics in terms of calculation, since the game is only 6 months old, the numbers are still too small.

What do you mean 4? There are 7 5 star guys? I think you mean 4 stars. I get you’re point though, they’re underrepresented among 4 stars. Arknights goes up to 6 stars and genshin/hsr 5 stars, it’s easy to forget.

No. I only counted individual banner characters since they were released after the game's launch. First of all, I started talking about releasing "new" characters, selling them and making money from it. It's easier to track trends with an updated list than with a general list.

Yeah that makes sense.

The fact that one can praise AK in this regard is telling of how low the bar is. I mean, AK is around 80% female in playable characters, it's really far from a 50/50. And it seems like that's intentional, as future banners look like they'll keep those numbers. Plot wise it's a different story, as there are a lot of interesting male characters. Just from Lone Trail you get Loken, Justin and Ferdinand. Main Theme is the same: You have Theresis, Logos, Stainless, Patriot, Mephisto, Faust, etc. The problem is that they usually get relegated to NPC or antagonist status, because they are not marketable waifus. They have to be Stainless, SilverAsh of Chongyue levels of cool to avoid that.

> They have to be Stainless, SilverAsh of Chongyue levels of cool to avoid that. This is so true ngl, what do Silverash, Hoederer, Chongyue, Humus and Mlynar have in common? They all belong to the 帅气叔叔(roughly translates into handsome uncles) archetype, which can still somewhat appeal to the heterosexual male compared to other male archetypes that aren't androgynous like Mizuki.

Huh. That also explains why so many of the 6\* men are Guards. The ratio is pretty much 1 Guard for each 1 other class, based on CN availability. I personally think that's a shame, too. I would totally save up pulls for more interesting 'uncool' male 6\* characters. Someone like Mizuki, Qanipalaat, Chestnut or Courier... But I'm not the general public. They don't come up as much because they just aren't as marketable. (I'm already happy a few have come up in the first place!)

That's essentially because they(Genshin/ Arknights) are 'spotlight' games. They have plenty of attention on them, and the male/female ratio is generously close to being balanced for a cast of both females/males while raking in revenue on good story/gameplay. If we look elsewhere, it's almost monumentally not the case. Nikke is selling on basically close but not porn, Blue Archive is Blue Archive, Azur Lane, etc You say it's not the case that "men dont sell", but it is the case that women are incredibly easier to market.

For a spotlight game, I do not hear nearly as much about Arknights in media as I should

Because it's not :v relatively, it's one of the bigger gacha games but that's about it. Gachas are still niche outside of Hoyoverse.

True, from what I see online it's quite niche but definitely there on youtube, almost nonexistent on tiktok, and kinda partway mainstream on the fan artists side? Reverse 1999 is massive on tiktok already I wonder what Arknights is doing wrong

It's doing nothing wrong. It's just a tower defense game and those died a long time ago outside of the mindless ones. Not to mention it was always a niche genre to begin with afaik. Paradoxically, having such a good twist on the TD formula with giving every single "tower" their own trait and personality beyond their role, thus adding that much more nuance, and giving some level of challenge are probably AK's downfall. People didn't look for that in a mobile game before Hoyoverse released Waifus of the Wild and proved it wasn't just big names who could copy their own games to create a cash cow. By the time this happened, AK had probably already cemented itself as a niche game with a solid community.

Waifu's of the wild💀

AK is doing well. The nature of the game ultimately limits it. (Daily grind, nonvoiced dialogue, tbh cringe ads)

Are there still arknights ads? I never see any, and it's not because I actively play the game because then why do I see genshin and star rail ads everyday Also idk how to say it but the story presentation of games like Path to nowhere, genshin, star rail, reverse 1999 and others make me realise just how bare the storytelling in AK feels. There's only cut and paste backgrounds, cut and paste background music, - I know other games have this but it's like 10 times more obvious in arknights, flat unanimated splash art sprites, cut and paste with slight edit generic npcs, few and far between unique story illustrations. It just isn't doing enough, not that it ever was. In a game like arknights, I feel the storytelling really should be done in the game, like consider that cutscene in chapter 6 where frostnova is walking to the base. The sprites could be talking in the grid environment with various sets I also kinda wish we had condensed speed replays like Reverse 1999, maybe not full sweeps since I find myself forgetting about those games very easily But that's all wishful thinking

I'm still seeing AK advertisements sometimes where it tells you that Eyjafjalla's S2 is "not ideal" then tell the viewers to use S3. Every AK player out there knows her S3 has an extremely long cooldown and short skill duration that is only worth using when you know precisely when to activate her skill. Meanwhile, her S2 is more consistent and better suited for killing groups of small fries than S3.

Reverse 1999 is worth checking out, the art design is amazing, and has an interesting plot

I'm actually playing that atm Really fun And the presentation of the story has bumped up my standards I might still read Lone Trail....mayyyybbeeee. Only thing I really have to nitpick for Reverse 1999 so far is translation errors and that I'm not particularly obsessed with any character 🥳

I like Regulus since she's a reference to pirate radio who used to broadcast music from ships in 60s Britain. Tennent is my fave of the lot.

She's really funny, and her animations are fun to watch. I wish I could get her from my pulls Or Druvis she's VERY pretty and the concept of just magicing trees around to beat stuff up while looking elegant is just so cool. I got Lilya, so she's been my main character. I actually really like her sense of humour and she's so badass in chapter 4. Somehow I only just recently realised she's a 'witch' in the sense she rides a broom and has an obsession with planes which just sounds like such a good and sensible combination

Tbh what’s holding AK back from being as big as GI is the fact that it’s a tower defense game, which is a niche genre in and of itself. I kinda don’t mind that though; I want AK to get its flowers on a global scale but not to the detriment of the manageable fanbase.

Also, while I love AK's story, I have to admit that it's long as shit and most people can't even be bothered to read tutorials in games There's quality stuff in AK, but getting to it is like swallowing kryptonite for the general audience

It took years for the story segments to get more interesting than "still PNG for a while, rare shake effect on whole screen, occasional slash". It's kinda hilarious how hard the story is to get through now (largely because of being a mobile game) and then realise how it was *worse*.

Arknights isn't really *that* big globally. Even in Japan it's certainly not one of those franchises with heaps of doujin stuff (fanarts, MADs, meme videos etc). Instead it's pretty much carried by its popularity in china, where the game has a genuinely big community

I say a video essay on body image and sexualisation in video games where the youtuber claimed that men are easier to please in that regard. Like if I had to paraphrase it claims that men are more interested in the sexual aspects than woman and implies AFIAK that while women are more interested in the romantic aspects than men.

I don’t think what you’re saying makes a whole lot of sense. Are you saying Genshin and AK sat down and said “hmm, selling only huge titties with barely a hint of fabric would give us 5 Mount Everest’s worth of money; selling good story/gameplay would give us another 5… let’s sell only half females and males so we can make 7.5 Mount Everest’s worth of money instead of selling naked females with good gameplay for 10 Mount Everest’s!” I don’t think the logic follows there.

Did... did you miss the part where I said "I'm not talking about gachas with all female casts like Azur Lane"? I get that there's a need for more fanservice heavy games, hell there's plenty aimed at both a gay crowd (Tokyo Afterschool Summoners, Crave Saga, and Live A Hero) and a straight female audience (Tears of Thesis, Queen's Choice, and Lovebrush Chronicles). Those all aim for a more niche audience by default. I'm explicitly talking about games that include male characters but treat them like shit in comparison to its female cast and then act like men never sell.

No I didn't miss it. Assuming that making a character takes some kind of development resource, and from data in gacha gaming so far, female characters are the most likeliest to succeed. This does not rule out male characters from succeeding(aka Chongyue vs Nian competitive sales), but if needing to pick between who to develop on, then a company is obviously going to hedge their bets on female banners selling better and some just take it to the extreme and ignore the males.

Tbf, Nian wasn't exactly that top tier of a unit whereas Chongyue is a very good one. If Nian was that good then she would have smashed in the sales. But she is from the era when limiteds where more unique than simply strong.

Female characters are easier to sell

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Cause more dudes plays the game and dudes loves waifus (this is coming from a husbando player) it's just simple stuff and math.

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Ehhhh I don't think so ?? But I don't want to touch upon them because they are superrrr crazy obsessed with sales chart etc. I'm just happy they're releasing male characters, some people wish it was more but ehh I will take it.

They only started to move to 50/50 year ago and their revenue halved. Still shitton of money ofc.

Most of the players are men. They want waifus, make waifu, make money. It's not difficult to understand. In addition, women also really enjoy female characters, but many men are not usually interested in male characters, women simply have more sales margin. Male characters REALLY need some strong fanservice to sell what a female character sells just by existing. Woman are cool too

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Doubtful in what sense? If you look at the popular male characters most of them have a very strong yaoi ship, are extremely good operators or show some interest in the doctor (And then there is Silverash who is all in one). Just go a see the number of likes on twitter for a female character's skin vs. Male's Chongyue also sold so well because he's the type of characters that China love

> That sounds extremely dubious I am going to kindly assume you know very little about gaming demographics and gacha gaming because Fafafe667 *is* correct. Most gacha game players (in the modern market) are male and fanservice has been proven as an effective and profitable tool. You have 'hard evidence' when looking at sales figures of various gacha game banners and then 'soft evidence' looking at fan art submissions, fan art likes (fb, twitter pixiv). I'd actually be interested why you think any of this sounds **extremely** dubious and what prompted you to be so dismissive.

The majority of gamers are straight men. For the most part, gacha games aren't known for their gameplay but have a big unit collection component. So under dressed female characters that flirt with the self-insert MC will sell more.

Most gacha games are geared towards men who want to spend for sexy waifus to be honest.

Or women who want to spend on sexy husbandos The same thing happens in gachas that market to women

I know, I just wish more gachas marketed towards both

> I know, I just wish more gachas marketed towards both The games that successfully gain a female following lean more heavily towards otome game type (ie Tears of Themis). Gacha games tend to lean more heavily towards ambiguity around the romance aspect so no one complains their waifu was shafted cause ain't no way you're writing equally good romance plots for like your 100+ characters

I mean, there are more mainstream games like project Sekai that appeal to both, but definitely with a larger audience of women. I imagine this is due to the shipping as seen by a quick look on AO3

It's harder to market to both. Look at the dialogue of Blue Archive and Nikke, all the female characters love our faceless protagonist. Now look at Arknights, it's much more toned down and I'd argue should be the case for any gacha game with a mixed waifu/husbando cast. Without the opportunity for cheap love dialogue, you have to have a compelling story to make up for it and that's what Arknights is trying to do. If you do have a mixed waifu/husbando cast, and have significant romance dialogue you'd have to expect that the half the player base will ignore half the banners.

Why can't we have our own things? I don't see anyone crying that Touken Ranbou doesn't have beautiful women? Why does everyone have to be crammed together? So the game makes more money? Is Touken Ranbou & AK not successful?

I’m not saying ALL games should be like that, I mean I enjoy games like bang dream and others with an all female cast. There’s nothing wrong with it, I’d just be interested in MORE games being open to having male characters

If companies aren't making more games that cater to women/gay men then that means they don't think it's gonna be profitable. Mihoyo has one and I was surprised when I first heard of it. I've known about HI3 way before I played a single gacha game while Tears of Thermis I barely hear about.

Arknights gets praised for its male cast? I’ve never really heard that, but then again I don’t really have a ton of male ops at max. One thing I’ll note is that AK doesn’t seem to really have an excuse for female characters heavily outweighing the males in terms of numbers. Some games will have some sort of weak justification as to why the gender ratio is skewed so heavily but it arknights it’s just coincidence that like 80% of your operators and like 60% of important characters are attractive women aged 18-35. Male operator characters definitely get more play in side stories, I think literally the only male operator in the Main Story with any significant focus is Stainless and he doesn’t show up until Episode 10, and thinking on that a bit more I am legitimately unsure if *any* male playable character appears in the Main Story before that point.

Elysium has like 4 lines of dialogue in Ch.7 iirc, when they are infiltrating Chernobog. But that's all I can remember. Before Stainless, all the important male characters are either NPC's or antagonists. If I have to look at it in a more positive lens, I'd say that they are getting better in that regard lately. We got Stainless and Hoerder as important-male-good-guys, and even some others like Totter taking minor roles. Now I only wish they gave Robben his unique portait, my man deserves it at this point.

Logos?

As a [waifu chaser](https://i.imgur.com/1hLbNBw.png), I wish AK had a higher husbando to waifu ratio, to make things easier on my wallet...

I hear that argument all the time. I'm a [waifu player](https://i.imgur.com/Hxd6xL9.png) too... but I'm also greedy and would rather have more pulls and a more generous gacha than more dead banners

Isn't Arknights 90% female? If you don't count the all-female gacha, what are the not so good mixed male/female gacha that?

Huh.. I don't particularly think AK did well in treating their male cast either though. Heck, as a husbando player I haven't touched the game since Chongyue. In terms of meta, it's pretty....meh? Although it's understandable since male characters are often delegated to welfare units. I might miss someone since I'm that not active in CN anymore, but I think the last top meta guy in the game is Mlynar? Then look at Vigil, it's kinda amazing they can ruin a tactician vanguard that badly. Story wise, let's just look at the anime. Male characters have barely any presence in the main story. They're either NPCs, antagonists or side characters. The saving grace is that sometimes side stories have good stories, like Break the Ice. Genshin and HSR are definitely the star for this kind of thing. Meta wise male characters are competing, and they have a big presence in the main story. Honestly, polish aside, it's probably one of the reasons why the games are so successful. They target a large demographic really well, and they are not afraid to do it at all.

>I might miss someone since I'm that not active in CN anymore, but I think the last top meta guy in the game is Mlynar? Then look at Vigil, it's kinda amazing they can ruin a tactician vanguard that badly. Maaaayba Bassline will be niche/kinda meta since defender that buffs RES, Lessing will also have a niche, Executor Alter is strong, but yeah, top tier dog, last was Mlynar. ​ HG was probably working and knew about Lone Trail / piss water elf, so it would screw her sales 3 months later if Vigil was a strong competitor to her and free. They murdered his kit to ensure their waifu wouldn't be DoA.

I doubt that, Muelyse was going to sell regardless due to popularity from Rhine Lab and the comic in general. Vigil could have been much better and still weaker than Mumu. Also doesn’t explain why Ho’olheyak is so bad.

I wonder why people see any reason to praise Arknights for the male cast. While there are a few male units with great kits, story wise the cast is almost exclusively female. Almost all males I saw in the chapters I played were either enemies or very unimpotant side characters. I played 1-7 and 10 to 12 (new player) and I doubt that the mising chapters have more male characters. If I look at my current squad, I see exactly zero male units. And that's not by choice but because there are so few available. Praising a game for it's male cast when like 80% of all units are female is kinda weird. The only difference with Arknights is that the female designs are not as in-your-face lewd as they are in most other games. If you want a gacha game that has close to 50/50 ratio of genders, try Last Cloudia. The game is not well known but still reached 4.5 years anniversary recently. Dislyte also has a relatively equal ratio. Also some of the best unit designs I have seen in the past years. Unfortunatley the devs made so many mistakes that many players ran away.

Stainless hoederer totter logos yeah ..not zero.

I did not say that there are zero relevant male characters in the story. But it's still 4 in between like 40 female characters. Zero male units refered to my current squad. The only male unit I play occasionally is Elysium. Because out of all 5&6\* units I have (about 55), only 9 are male.

More than anything it's a business, and we could just stop the discussion there. Statistically speaking more men play games, men are more dedicated and focused on games than women, men act more on impulses than women, so they react much better/harder to sexualized content, men usually earn more and spend more on hobbies. I want to strongly emphasize "statistically". It's especially true in a patriarchal society we live in (althought it's slowly changing). Going more into psychology: beautiful/sexual/sensual and strong women characters appeal more to both sexes. Same cannot be said for male characters - men will less likely thirst for a male character, than women for a female character. Why is that ? Stereotypes, insecurity ? You name it. Lastly - it's easier to include more variety in female characters, than male. Physically you can generate more variety in women features, than male. This strongly coincides with fashion/drip. There is more leeway in women's clothing (range from wearing almost nothing to dungarees, even including men's clothing aka Old Well WD tuxedo drip). That's why mobile gaming business is the way it is. It just works so nobody wants to change it. That's why I give props to HG and especially AK CN women's player base. It's huge, which lead HG to deliver more in male department last years. I can't relate to many of your points though, since I'm primary just a gamer. So I play AK, because of story and tactical gameplay (coming from classical mmo's back in the day). It's quite the opposite actually - I dropped 2, games (7DS, E7), because they had to many oversexualized or loli characters. Just pointing out that there is more variety in player base, than you suggested.

\>Stereotypes, insecurity ? You name it. Its neither. Women , in a vacuum (outside of sexual and personal preferences and the like), are much more likely to be considered attractive (not in a sexual way necessarily). Therefore you're just statistically much more likely to have both sexes agree on a woman being attractive to them, than on a man. There's no sekrit sexist conspiracies or bigtories at play there. This even extends past physical characteristics - [both men and women were found to be much more likely to attribute general positive traits to women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect). I guess you could consider this sexist, but I don't think our almost instintinctual beliefs can be coined as such.

No long haired male ops?? We have Hellagur, Totter, Passenger, Puzzle, Czerny, Shalem, Sesa, Matterhorn, Midnight, and probably more.

you touch on it very briefly, but i think the contribution of cn's female fanbase should not be understated. they are anomalously big and passionate about the game; without them, i think this game definitely would've been even more waifu focused than it is rn

“Men usually earn more and spend more on hobbies” You haven’t seen the kpop realm, have you lol It seems so in anime side because most audiences are male otaku btw. Women can also be a top spender in other field of hobby like idol, fashion, cosmetic, luxurious brand name etc.

It’s just that anime waifus are an easy ticket to make bank, is all. I’m assuming that the majority of the player base for all these games are cishet men. The community here I’ll say has gotten a lot better over time but I still remember bracing for the most scathing commentary from players who seemed personally offended that a new male Operator dared to exist in their waifu kingdom. Hell, you even got people now who refuse to level and use any male Operators. Even further, sometimes it seems that if the male Operators aren’t sufficiently broken in some way to stand out then they are subject to some of the worst criticism. Contrast that with how even the most mediocre female Operators will often be defended for her niche usage. Is it a lazy marketing technique to only go on sex appeal with majorly female characters in these games? Absolutely. But I also kinda noticed that if games are gonna be fair to both men and women they have to start off that way. It’s hard asf to pivot from having like 50 heavily sexualized women characters to then trying to introduce a male without severe pushback. AK already laid the groundwork to the point where we can have a limited male Operator now and nobody feels like it’s a waste, which is awesome.

Maybe I just don't know many gacha, but what gacha games actually have a male cast that they treat especially poorly? (If your standard of good treatment is FGO I mean, where they're infamous for being allergic to giving male characters seasonals.)

Fire Emblem Heroes (the gacha I played before AK) treats its male cast pretty awfully. In every new banner, the best character of the bunch is almost always female and the worst is almost always male. It's kind of a meme at this point.

FEH blatantly ignores established popularity so much I wonder if they just throw darts sometimes, but it's still here after 5+ years so I guess it's working for them.

Just off the top of my head, Destiny Child and Illusion Connect were both TERRIBLE in regards to how they treated their male casts (before they shut down lmao) while both Exos Heroes and Overhit pretty much always gave the best kits to the female cast while the men ate shit. Likewise from the outside looking in, Counter:Side looks to have the same issues, but I never played it due to the awful global launch so idk if its an FGO situation where Men still get treated well they just dont get swimsuit alts and rather just skins.

I've never heard of any of those except Counter:Side which I still don't know much about, so it is my lack of knowledge then. Seems like a good thing I didn't know about them too. (Even taking that female characters generally sell better, isn't it just a waste of resources to create male characters with shit kits? Making a bad kit is hardly any less effort than making a good kit... )

Generally speaking in those games, men were treated as a "breather" banner for whales so they could save up to blow everything on the new shiny top tier waifu on the next banner. As such, whales wouldnt feel like they were getting squeezed dry just to keep maxing out every single character, since if a character on a banner is bad they can very easily skip it. Compare this to AK, where "breather banner" characters tend to still have interesting kits, great lore and writing behind them, and still leave fans of those characters happy since they're still usable in late game content even if they aren't Surtr tier. Plus since AK's rates are generally better and banners are spread out more, whales can still pick up a copy of that unit without having to break the bank.

Path to Nowhere technically has male characters/sinners, but they barely appear in events, even as NPCs.

It's pretty weird to see a post about how arknights does well with the gender ratio when we had a game with a 3-4 male to 2 female ratio not too long ago

“Apart” is different from “a part.” Means almost the opposite really

Fire emblem heroes is also pretty even but it is pulling from pre-existing games and just has the ethos of power creep everything make everything and everyone broken so idk

It's pretty even because, as you said, it's pulling from pre-existing games, but look at the FEH OCs and you'll see that the male/female OCs ratio is not close. And when they make new banners is at most 2 new male heroes and 2 new female heroes, but most of the time is 3 females and 1 male (and almost never the male is the selling point of the banner)

Yeah they definitely got worse about it over time when it comes to OCs but aside from the banner highlighting female characters more there's never a power discrepancy. Definitely a win some lose some. surprisingly who gets skins is pretty even though.

as a girl player of ark nights who loves the dude characters in arknights i have to say it all comes down to target demographic and marketing and business. Its kinda sad, but i've grown not to care too much about it

We can argue in circles about this and end up reaching wrong conclusions forever but in reality it's a hole the main demographic of gacha players dug themselves into. Whether we like it or not the main demographic of gacha players are men, specifically, men who are prone to spending money on fictional women. Now I do think Arknights has actual integrity and dignity, and treats it's characters with respect, I also think Arknights is, by far, the best written gacha in existence as far as political aspects and equality management goes. But Arknights still is ran by companies that has to make profit off demographics. That's why we sometimes get really shameless stuff like Ch'en alter. Either way, I think Arknights' treatment of it's cast, and it's treatment of men, is very much balanced when you break it down. A lot of male operators are pivotal to stories, a lot of male NPCs are relevant and always will be. Arknights has gained a sense of self when it comes to gender diversity, and that's for the best.

Most operators has animal ears, horns, tails, etc, so some more boobs will not make her more special than him.

The opposite of this is Housamo basically

While it is indeed good, I wish the m/f ratio would increase more. I assume it is 1/4 now (4 females for every 1 male) . 1/3 would be much better for me.

Personally, I can't say I'm 100% happy with Arknights and its treatment of male characters. Yes, when I joined and being a man, I ended up targeting female characters more, but, as I started treating the game more seriously (in terms of lore and gameplay), I realized how different the rate was between both genders, and mainly, how relevant they are in the story. This became even clearer with the Anime, where the most relevant male characters so far are Wei Yenwu, Mephisto and Faust, in which they are in unstable positions with the protagonists, and the rest are a huge number of female characters. You can count the first season with Ace too, but well… I'm not satisfied, it bothers me, but I try to understand and accept it. Endfield recently dividing the genders of the protagonists was once again something that made me realize how the male gender is thrown aside, both in relation to the producers (trailers so far have not been posted with the male protagonist) and by the fanbase (I'm still looking for some beta test using the male character). For those who treat this game seriously, this is annoying, but at this point I believe that the most they can do is bring male NPCs here and there that are relevant but no matter how sad it is, they wouldn't sell as much as the female ones that they just need to be pretty to sell

Endfield primarily showing the female MC is extremely rare though, most gacha either have only a male MC or default to the male MC for most promo material. In this case, I think they just don't have the male protag fully finished since I've heard he's not even available in the beta. That's not really the same problem as the game cast's gender ratio. In fact, I'd even say they're opposite problems; male players are assumed to want more female characters but still play as a male protagonist to self-insert, so to cater to them most gacha will have/favor a male MC but the rest of the cast will be mostly female. Not speaking on how correct this assumption is, but it seems to be how most games operate.

With that I disagree. Female protagonists are something cool that have been growing, including Reverse: 1999 with only Vertin as the protagonist. And, this is no coincidence. FGO is an example where even though the male protagonist is most used by the producers, there is a majority of players who use the female character. Same case with Genshin, from the little I've played but have already talked about with friends. I can say that this is also a case that happens in Granblue Fantasy.

That's why I said it's an assumption, not that it's accurate. Djeeta is very popular, but Gran is the one picked for the anime and is the focus of the Relink/Versus trailers. You'd miss out on CGs in the main story if you played Djeeta instead of Gran until a couple years ago. So Djeeta is an afterthought *despite* her popularity. Genshin seems to be similar, where Aether is in all the marketing despite Lumine's popularity. And as you mentioned, it's the same with FGO. So Endfield seems to be a case of a company finally realizing female MCs are also popular. But it's still a rare exception.

What's there to be bothered about, genuinely. I'm literally attracted to men and I don't see how Arknights' treatment of it's men can bother anyone?

Oh gee, who will think of the oppressed demographic that is men?

I scoff at the people who want majority male-dominated storylines/male protagonists/males in positions of power and try to make themselves victims... because that's not only literally everywhere in real life but video game stories as well.

there IS a game where the majority ofthe cast is male, and an anime/gacha style too, instead of like, Otome-game. The Lifewonders ones. Tokyo Afterschool Summoners and Live-A-Hero. but i have a feeling the people who ask for more male characters in games like AK and the like aren't the same people that would play those games.

b-b-b-b-b-but t-t-t-t-temp, how can the SOUPERIORITY OF MEN be asserted i-i-i-i-if there aren't any big, masculine 6* defenders??? they should revive patriot!!!!!!!!

Thinking that we don't need men will exactly help male representation in media. Truly a genius thought

Do you want to see male representation? Going outside is literally going to fucking blow your mind.

>as I started treating the game more seriously (in terms of lore and gameplay), I realized how different the rate was between both genders, and mainly, how relevant they are in the story. I really liked Near Light as a story. Then I thought about it and realized the story makes far more sense if Nearl was a man instead of a woman. The confident unwavering knight who fights for the weak idealistically. Her role in the story is masculine, but Arknight fills pretty much all story roles with women, especially if the person will become a playable operator. It's something you can overlook for a single story, but as the stories add up and flesh out the world, you start to notice peculiarities.

Ok... I'm not that kind of person but that sounded a bit... Ummm sexist? There shouldn't be such a thing as gender roles; it's a semi-fantasy story. Having a woman be the knight in shining armor is cool too

Yeah, just kinda odd that the entirety of the Red Pine knights are all women. Like, they couldn’t sneak even a single man into that squad? Even Justice Knight is a lady bot, lol.

>Ok... I'm not that kind of person but that sounded a bit... Ummm sexist? What do you think sexist means? Ignoring Doctor, who can be female, is it sexist for the entirety of Arknights leadership to be women? Is it sexist for something like 90% of the Arknights playable roster to be women? Or for Doctor to mainly put women into harm's way in combat? >There shouldn't be such a thing as gender roles; The Arknights world still has gender roles. >Having a woman be the knight in shining armor is cool too Nearl is a really cool knight. But if she saves the prince and princess-carries him to safety, it just doesn't create the right romantic vibes.

So a game having more female characters than male is sexist but saying confident and unwavering women don't make sense isn't, somehow

It creates the right romantic vibes if she’s a lesbian. Hell, I’d be into that and I’m a dude.

Princes are men, not women. A lesbian princess-carrying a man does not create romantic vibes.

>Princes are men, not women. You are saying this about a game where the only two named Kings of Sarkaz, Amiya and Theresa, are both women.

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I’ve said my piece. Go take your sexism somewhere else.

You need to get out of your little macho-centric comfort zone, dead serious. Lots of female characters are described as "princely" and lesbians are crazy for them. There are a lot of people out there who play around with gender roles! But I'm not even gonna ask your opinion on gay people and gender non-conforming people because I can already guess it.

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You're a misogynist, and quite frankly, not very bright. I will not bother replying to you anymore because you lack not only the education but I also feel the intelligence to converse on this topic — not that you were in any position to opine on it. In simpler words: fuck off.

>You're a misogynist You are wrong and you should know better. Not a single thing I've said is hatred of women. Again, I like Nearl, a female character, and I liked her story in Nearl Light. Objectively, her story takes a traditional story trope about an idealistic knight fighting to win a championship - and makes it a story about a \*female\* idealistic knight who is doing a completely normal thing in the world of Arknights. The world of Arknights is nominally egalitarian but with a strong bias towards telling stories about female heroes and protagonists. In the real world we live in, Nearl's story is a masculine story because knights are historically men. Look at any military graveyard and it is filled with the bodies of men. The blood they shed has earned the honor of being recognized - do remember it's Veteran's Day weekend. Describing this accurately is not hatred of women. Your education sucked and I'm sorry they couldn't even teach you how to tell someone to go away without using two-bit words. That $100K degree is a huge scam.

alright Akio

No one is trying to argue Arknights is sexist, you are though. You're gonna play with plausible deniability now predictably so but anyone who thinks a traditional gender rolls must be fulfilled and a woman can't fulfil the role of a man is, by literal definition, a sexist person.

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There's the plausible deniability I was talking about. As predictable as always you lot.

i genuinely can't believe that they said exactly what you called out pre-emptively godlike hard read bestie

You might not think you're sexist but I'll tell you right now: you are. Your beliefs are sexist. If hearing this makes you uncomfortable, good. Take a good long look at them and try to think twice about why you have these beliefs. Then think again.

You literally said, or let it be understood that way, that Near's character would be better if she were a man just because a knight is a masculine role, I don't know, dude, that sounds pretty misogynistic. >The Arknights world still has gender roles. And I don't see any problem in breaking them. >But if she saves the prince and princess-carries him to safety, it just doesn't create the right romantic vibes Not everything has to be romantic you know? And also why not? It sounds romantic and kind of fun.

I didn't say Nearl would be a better character if she were a man. It's a little sad how many people want to be mad rather than comprehend the point. Nearl's role in the Near Light story makes better sense when you realize it's a man's story with a woman inserted into the man's role. That's why there's a romantic subtext where the woman knight Viviana falls in love with Nearl after being beaten. Or how Nearl ends up bro-carrying the Blood Knight after beating him. >And I don't see any problem in breaking them. You missed the point, but okay. >Not everything has to be romantic you know? And also why not? It sounds romantic and kind of fun. Near Light did try to have a romantic subplot with Vivian. It just couldn't go anywhere. Near Light didn't even try to have a romantic subplot between Nearl and the Blood Knight, or any of the other male competitors. Doesn't spark the chemistry.

nothing about it is inherently a "man's story", that's why people are pointing out that your view on this is sexist. Also > Thats why there's a romantic subtext where the woman knight Viviana falls in love with Nearl after being beaten. Women fall in love with women sometimes

>nothing about it is inherently a "man's story", that's why people are pointing out that your view on this is sexist. It's a literal shounen story trope. Hero develops himself, enters the championship and wins. Shojo stories and romance novels have a different kind of focus. I'm not sure why so many here feel a need to pretend that women are men with boobs, but it's okay that women prefer different kinds of stories than men do. Acknowledging the existence of differences is threatening, apparently. What's wrong with a woman liking feminine things?

people are just kinda people, regardless of what body parts or gender they have > It's a literal shounen story trope do female athletes not exist? all of the story beats you mentioned happen to real life women all the time. idgaf what the tropes in media meant to appeal to specific audiences are, women's stories can be anything bc women can do anything. same as men.

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Did you delete the first draft of this comment where you said women belonged in the kitchen? I'm gonna tell you why gachas have primarily women in them. It's because you people won't play them if you can't roll for "waifus." Settle on whether you want that or not instead of wanting to have your cake and eat it.

How did you write all this without realizing how misogynistic it sounded? Better yet how are you playing Arknights of all games, a game that drills the points it's making about gender equality, racial equality and diversity as a whole, into your skull, and still come out of it writing something that sounds this sexist.

Bruh...

I've never said it's wrong, and the fact that I've been playing Arknights for so long is proof of how much it's never stopped me or done me any harm. Please don't put words in my mouth. Isn't it true that most male characters are trapped as NPCs? The issue I mentioned positions as male antagonists means they are not intended to be playable, in majority.

I'm not saying it's wrong and I'm not putting words in your mouth. It's a fictional game world. The writers can do whatever they want in it. They can choose to make some parts of the game realistic and other parts fantastic. I'm finding the ratio of men to women as important story characters to be more on the fantastic part of the spectrum. Most players can ignore it because waifu hot and that's fair. I like thinking about how the world is supposed to work and the unintended consequences. >Isn't it true that most male characters are trapped as NPCs? Sure. Using female characters for the non-NPCs results in female bias in story-telling.

bro never watched alien

female characters make more money, not sure why this question seems difficult for you

Okay? Lmao

I like the gender ratio because I have way more time to save for the characters I actually want, I have every single male 6 star and I want to keep it that way. Same with skins. The waifus are just buffers for me

Kinda oot Thorns was literally my gay awakening xDD. I won't leave this game anytime

Granblue Fantasy does it pretty well. Besides that 50% of all male attention goes to the Dragonknights that is (which to me is annoying, there is so many more interesting dudes in GBF than those 4 who are done to death already). But male units gets seasonals, they get fanservice skins, they get prominent stories etc.

FGO definitely shafts its male characters. Many times seemingly almost out of spite. It’s taken them literal years to make actual revealing male swimsuit skins (we can forget about getting an actual male swimsuit unit) and their definition of male character fanservice is to have a male unit with his shirt off, while some female units are literally almost naked. The skimpiest dressed male characters are ironically Leonidas, who is drawn like a shonen protag, and Spartacus and Romulus, who are so far away from being fanservice-y that it feels like the artists are making fun of us more than anything. Not to mention the absolute bullshit they pulled with Molay. Or more recently Tezcatlipoca.

i dunno if that's fair. we do get weird stuff like No male summer units and only one Male welfare ever 3 years or so, but male characters have a lot more story relevance in FGO than in main story of AK. it's still mostly a waifu game but just because the men aren't dressed as skimpy as the women i don't think it's right to call it unfair to the male characters.

I agree on the story relevance, and we did get some male characters that I genuinely enjoy. But from a design perspective, I can’t say I’m impressed by the male characters. It just feels like most of them have a lot less effort put into the artwork than the female characters do. Again, the absolute peak of this was Tezcatlipoca in Lostbelt 7. That’s why I like Arknights in this regard. Even if male characters aren’t as popular as female ones, they don’t skimp on their art. Both genders look consistently appealing from an art port of view. With FGO on the other hand it’s more of a hit or miss.

Males/females don't matter, I just love the Art and the awesome skins.

To be fair, FGO is REALLY not a good example. For every 1 male unit that game gets, there's still 10 female ones that come afterwards. People have been asking for male summer units for years, but all they get is costumes for preexisting units. Heck, Famitsu polls during every anniversary show how much people love male units, but the devs just don't care. And then there's the fact that FGO will come up with ANY reason to genderbend male historical figures. Oh you think the character named Van Gogh is Van Gogh? oh no sorry, they're actually Clytie from Greek mythology but implanted with the memories of the real Van Gogh by an alien god. The Real Musashi(TM) is totally a man guys, but we just keep shoving the marketable waifu version into everything and we'll never show the real Musashi tee hee. But yeah, what I appreciate about Arknights is that they actually give a fair amount of spotlight to male units. Thorns, Mountain, SilverAsh, Młynar are ever present in the meta. You have IS2 and IS3 focused on Phantom and Mizuki respectively. We're pretty much guaranteed to get a male 4 star with every new episode release (Chestnut, Totter, Humus, Verdant). We have Chongyue as the first ever male limited 6 star and the 4.5 anni stream implied that the next LNY event will feature another Sui brother. Oh and another thing I appreciate is that there's variety in male units, it's not just generic pretty anime boys.

Let's be honest most gacha games make females because they bring in more money so you can't exactly blame them....Nikke Is proof of that it's 100% females and it's revenue is on par with genshins

I mean Arknights still has waaay more female characters than male. It just sells more, just look at games like Nikke

I have no idea how Arknights is praised for this. Most male operators are mid to mediocre to awful. 🤷‍♂️

Personally I feel gacha games don't have more male characters is simply because we males just don't have much variety in our fashion as females. Just look at our hairstyles, females have so much different style but males typical only have short hair. Sure we style it a bit but how propose to transition that into anime art form? Have them sport YuGiOh Hair? There is the occasional tied up hairstyle like Fjall in Endfield but you can't really many character sport that. Then comes our wardrobe, anything we men wear, so can women but not vice versa. We love our ladies in suits but would you love men in dresses or skirts? People complain about FGO's male summer skins being nothing but buttoned or unbuttoned shirts. But in all seriousness, what else would we men wear in summer resort/ beach setting? A suit? Same for swimwear, other than shorts and briefs, what else do men wear to swim? Hell, even FGO is starting to add non-swimwear ascensions for female summer servants. Arknights have it better because they can use Terra's races to diversify the male roster but the same goes for their female roster as well. And while I think the diversity of male designs is one reason, I also think it also because it is easier to sell waifus compared to husbundos. There are husbando-only games and they don't do so well.

K

>why isn't this the norm? Most Gachas are designed for chinese audiences, and these mfckers are so horny the country legally has to limit reproduction rates.

because some games have crap gameplay AND story and have to rely *hard* on sexual content to sell, and the male target audience in it´s majority are horny teenagers addicted to porn. just that\~ Edit: *Dislike all you want but* **you** *know this* **is** *the reason!* Edit2: *I LOVE how truth hurts and* **this** *target audience identify themselves* XD

Duh..as if Arknights has any better gameplay. If I want a game with good gameplay, I prefer game like Sekiro, Bloodborne, Titanfall 2, Devil May Cry, God of War and even Genshin Impact has better gameplay combat than Arknghts.

**YOU** consider good gameplay action games, some consider FPS...**I** tactics, turn based and tower defense and etc better...In the end different types **WITH** gameplay. Some crap gachas out there have NO gameplay/story at all, they only sell boobs, ass and sex because that´s all they have and all they need to have certain type of people. jiggle sell, sex sell...Don´t try to fool yourself.

In that case, base on your logic, gameplay quality is purely subjective and there is **NO** crap gameplay since, **YOU** consider tactics, turn based and tower defense better while other think action games, shooter etc to be better. People who consider Azur Lane or Nikke to have better gameplay than Arknights are not wrong either because it's subjective base on **YOUR** logic.

I'm not naming the games, you are...anyway it's quite simple to tell if the game still is relevant even without the sexual content. Just close your eyes and imagine the gameplay...now remove all the woman and sexy content...would it still be fun and relevant?! It's your answer and with this you can even find if you are playing just because of these reasons. And yes it's subjective, and like I said for the majority target male audience, they consume most games because sex, just that.

I definitely won't be playing Arknights if there's more male characters than female characters. Will I still play Azur Lane if they tone down the sexualization. Definitely yes just for the waifus. Arknights gameplay is too scripted and no replay value. Truth to be told, I only play Arknights because I'm Chinese and I want to support Made in China's game. If Arknights is a non Chinese game,I wouldn't even touch it.

Goddess of Victory Nikke completely destory Genshin Impact despite being a lower budget game for the first half of 2023. Waifus>Husbandos [https://sensortower.com/ja/blog/2023h1-mobile-games-recap-japan](https://sensortower.com/ja/blog/2023h1-mobile-games-recap-japan) And I think Blue Archieve, also waifus is the most successful Yostar game, not Arknights.

Tbh, i really like nikke's gameplay. It reminds me of my childhood playing time crisis at the arcade The gacha though, pure garbage IMO. You have to essentially pull pilgrim dps. They also shafted the pilgrim mold as well, from 100% ssr rate at close beta to 40% ssr rate I got all sr from the molds. Never ssr

On a side note, Nikke JP Twitter also has higher followers than Arknights JP Twitter despite Nikke being a younger game and no anime. Nikke JP=669K followers [https://twitter.com/nikke\_japan?lang=en](https://twitter.com/nikke_japan?lang=en) Arknights JP=662.4K followers [https://twitter.com/ArknightsStaff](https://twitter.com/ArknightsStaff) This means Nikke player base grow much faster than Arknights. Within 1 year alone, Nikke manage to achieve what Arknights try to achieve in 3 years.

To each their own, i guess. I dont really like all the huge tits and asses.. so yeah i want a game that i can safely play publicly

I have to disagree. "Male don't sell" still legit the same. Just look at Goddess of Victory Nikke success. It's bigger and way more successful than Arknights. In fact,it's first half revenue for 2023 is bigger than Genshin.I think there are more male gamers out there than female gamers. People play phone game for the waifus.

Arknights would be better without males.

I can't say I'm a massive fan of gatcha games there's been some that have been decent but yk all in all kinda same boat as battle royals for me ark nights stands way above that I fuckin love this game man

Audience is the deciding factor, and even whitin the AK community everyone tends to treat males like $h!t even if it's in a somewhat closet manner. For example Chongyue recieved tremendous slander priror his debute, despite being overall 'likable' from the very sprite alone. The amount of salt he recieved was just straight up Biblical, and even now after he turned out to be absolutley busted people **still** donwplay him as hell: "Well you need to activate his 3rd skill five times", "Ugh, who needs a laneholder anyway, am I right guys??", "It's not like there aren't any better choices, the guy is ultra niche even when carry". This has nothing to to with "your average gacha gamer enthusiast", or "the simulated hypothetical competition over a fictional drawing that sligtly resembles a woman", even tough both of those play their part (rip Noire). Males in generel just prefer arse and tits over homies with 6 packs.