A big problem with the Community Contest
There is a change with the contest that will both improve and hurt the contest - the community will get to vote among several finalists for each category. While I think that that's awesome and lets us take a part in the event, it will pretty much ensure that we never get a male survivor winner.
We all know that female survivors are way more popular than male ones. Between BHVR and us players, I believe that BHVR has much more power to popularize male survivors. Sadly, things have been heavily against the favor of male survivors:
- 2 rifts in a row with deep rift variants only including female survivors
- the Halloween event had 6 free sweaters for girls and only 1 for a man
- our first gay survivor, David King, still does not have a deep rift outfit, and this rift was a perfect opportunity for him getting his 1st one
Back to the community contests, the 1st 5 contests all had female survivors as winners, and that was when BHVR was the one in charge of selecting winners. 0 male survivors. And now imagine what will happen when the community gets in charge — almost certainly there will never ever be a male survivor winner. You know that Sable, Mikaela or Kate will be winning every contest from now on.
The best solution I see for this is that these contests have 2 survivor winners - 1 male and 1 female. (or 1 male, and 1 of any other gender, since I am expecting survivors of different genders being introducted to or revealed in the fog). 🙏
The contest will yield male winners only if a male survivor is required to be selected. The community has proven to be very creative with designing outfits, and they can bring in a breath of fresh air, something that strikes as new and different.
The DBD devs have the power to not just bring more care and spotlight to POC characters (and I'm thankful for the recent efforts and results <3 ), but also male survivors, another neglected group. And I feel this the most, because I enjoy male survivors the most, and spend my money mostly on them.
So, what do you guys think? Are you satisfied with the community contest, and if not, what would you change? Do you have any other solutions for the absence of male survivor winners in these contests? I would love to hear them <3
Comments
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'Are you satisfied with the community contest, and if not, what would you change?'
I'm not satisfied about every BVHR's position concerning the genders. I was just worried by the goals of this kind of publication (https://deadbydaylight.com/news/dead-by-daylight-is-thrilled-to-confirm-first-lgbtqia2-character/) and I'm just happy when everything is going wrong about his community because it is mainly unfair & pointless in the Fog.
Skins are pure cosmetics & BVHR earns almost everything with tem. So I'm not surprised if the most part has preferred the female models instead the male ones.
What I would change about community & contest around DbD ?
Decisions the decision-makes are taken & still take today since years now.1 -
The cosmetic contest is a disappointment every year on the survivor side. It's always the same style of outfit that wins. I am TIRED of brightly coloured athletic wear.
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Why would someone want to play male characters?! They are so gigantic and give you a disadvantage by playing them. Everytime I try to hide with my former main yoichi, my head sticks out of the bush while sable is perfectly hidden. As long as they keep making males gigantic and females small I don‘t think males will be any success for behavior. It just doesn‘t feel good to play them. As long as this is like it is I don‘t think anything will change for males.
My hope for the skin contest is a sable with a ghost face like costume.
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they should do a community contest for male and female characters.
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This is in BHVR'S best interest because why waste resources on a male survivor skin that will sell half as much as a female skin? I hate it too, but that's how it is.
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I've always thought they should make the males a little quieter to even out the playing field. That way it's not just a clear cut disadvantage to play a dude.
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Well now that they've opened the door to neon ghost Fox tails I'm sure we'll get more gaudy stuff that clashes with the rest of the game now
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You don't have to apologize for this corporatist garbage. BHVR has enough resources to sell male skins even if they're less popular. Not everything I'm the world has to come down to nickles and dimes. It's boring and it's gross.
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Because we find them attractive. And because a lot of us a lot of times don't want to hide, but engage in chases. I would rather wear bright clothes and enjoy what I see on screen than go wear full stealth clothes just to be less seen. I see a lot of Aces wear the classic "comp", stealthy fit, but I love styling my Ace with what I find fashionable, and that's almost always bright, colorful clothes.
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Community contest skins will never be sold for auric cells (real money), just iridescent shards, so there is no sales motivation there. Sure, you could argue that each skin will once appear in a rift and might encourage someone to buy the rift just for that skin, but it's just 1 (or 2, survivor and killer) skin in a rift with many skins. In my opinion, it has so little impact on the sales of the rift pass.
If anything, it's the community contests that have the power to bring more variety to the game. I do love that all of the female winners have been from various cultures: 2 black girls (Claudette, Élodie), and 3 Asian girls (Min, Yui and Yun-Jin). Huge kudos to the devs for helping promote these girls through community contests, since popularity in games mostly goes to white girls, I believe. Of course, I do want Kate, Sable, etc. to get community skins too. But those who could best benefit from the contest are Gabriel, Haddie, Jeff, Adam, Jonah, Vittorio, Jane. The survivors that are less popular in general.
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I like to engage in chase, but still playing a female can make the difference between the killer seeing you leave the area in a chase or not. I‘m not playing comp like, but being gigantic exposed me all the time as yoichi and made it almost impossible to hide. I also don‘t play stealth clothes, I play what I like. (Maybe I would when there where actual camouflage outfits). The other things are understandable.
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I believe that with proper care and planning, BHVR could incentivize more people to play as male survivors. We've seen some positive shifts with the cosmetics in general, so I hope that this will soon encompass male survivors too. 2 deep rifts in a row with no male survivors just sucks…
Plus, where are our shirtless Gabriel, and Vittorio in shorts? Ya know, just sayin'…
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I had a similar thought. While BHVR picks weird and typically mediocre submissions, one open to the broader community will only pander to sex appeal and popular killers. I think that's a mistake.
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This is exactly why I stopped submitting. It did not matter what ideas I had for Jeff or anyone else had for other male survivors (there were many really fitting and great skins out there), it was always sexy sportswear for femal survivors. The ONLY one I really like is the Elodie skin, which was really nice.
Now the community will just vote for Sable, Mikaela, Feng, Nea or Kate. (There is still the tiny hope that all vote for Gabriel, Adam, Haddie etc just to make a point though)
Maybe I will submit a Banner or Badge, but no more skins. I'm done with the bias.
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They could fix gameplay issues male survivors face in the trials. I almost exclusively play male survivors (Jeff, Chris) and let me tell you, the amount of hiding places are few. Most trees are too slim, most half height clutter is too low (especially concrete blocks), most corners are too slim for your butt and most bushes are too tiny.
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I think they took the "the mobile skins are great" the wrong way.
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Yeah, that would be really nice. I'm still waiting for that audio volume normalization, so that Jeff and Ash aren't super loud, and have a decent chance to cover their grunts of pain without the need of Iron Will. DBD has so much potential to be a really inclusive game that promotes and celebrates everyone. Stepping away from the "investing mostly in female survivors because it's easy" that most live service games have would make DBD stand out and set a new, positive standard for games.
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I honestly can’t stand the sportswear submissions… Congrats to the winners obv, but tracksuits and chav wear needs to be stopped and unable to be in any future contests
I agree that men are left out when it comes to these contests, it’s definitely all about popularity. From a business perspective I see why the developers seem to choose the most popular survivors - they’re looking to maximise sales.
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