Do I feel like the target audience for Skyrim? Ehrm. Errr. Not really.
Yeah that's really what I want to express - it feels obvious to me that I'm not the target audience for Skyrim, and I hate that feeling. Why do someone else's tastes always have to get preference over mine? T_T I don't want to feel unappreciated and marginalized.
Sorry, I'm still not understanding. In what way is the main gameplay catered towards men over women? And what is it about the story?
I'm not trying to pick a fight. I just want to understand where you're coming from, because I don't see anything in the elements you're describing that are tailored towards men specifically.
It's complicated to explain, because whether something is tailored to men, truly neutral, or tailored to women is a holistic evaluation of a lot of factors. But let me list a few things that are in Skyrim, and pay attention to how many times the only two options are join or kill other humanoids:
- drug dealers you can choose to buy from or kill
- werewolves you can choose to join or kill (or in one case join AND kill)
- tribal terrorist druids you can choose to join or kill
- 2 organized crime families that you can choose to join or kill
- bandits and pirates everywhere, who exist purely for you to kill them with minimal guilt so you can take their amassed treasure.
- crazy egotistic gods who use mortals as playing pieces
- 2 dog fighting pits
- a suicide cult, who were in the business of creating zombie warriors before they decided suicide was the only honorable option left
- a demon who wants you to beat a priest to death with a rusty mace
- 3
different kinds of cannibals, whom the player can choose to join (!)
- orcs who apparently have a culture where only the dominant male of each settlement gets to reproduce and young females who are considered to bring shame upon their mothers if they want to leave this system or fight within it for equality
- an old orc who asks you to help him commit an honorable suicide by killing him in combat, for no reason other than that he's old and it's unacceptably uncool for a male to be too old to be a warrior
- female nature spirits who hate all intelligent animal beings
-
Morlocks Falmer who are an "inherently evil race" that it would be a good thing if the player committed genocide upon them.
Many of these elements come straight out of the heavily male-focused mythological tradition of monster-slayer heroes, (because "everything weird should be destroyed to clean the world and as a nice side-effect amass the hero will amass wealth, gain a reputation for having masculine prowess, be fawned upon by bards, women, and non-warrior men, and demonstrate that the hero is chosen/approved of by fate/the gods") or the modern flip-side of that tradition, also heavily male-focused, where an anti-hero is or becomes a powerful 'monster' and kills would-be heroes because "good is dumb", "goody-two-shoes" are boring, and, oddly enough, "as a nice side-effect the powerful monster will amass wealth, gain a reputation for having masculine prowess, be fawned upon by women and non-warrior men, and demonstrate that the monster is chosen/approved of by fate/the gods." That's male supernatural fantasy in a nutshell.
Also, here's a conversation I just had:
Male friend: "In this book I'm reading the action is about how all the characters need to fight and bravely hold their ground even though 3/4 of them will die because if they endure until the deadline against the sadistic psychopath villains the villains won't be able to end the world."
Me: "Wow, that's such a boy story, lol."
Friend: "Yes, yes it is, lol."