Tropes vs Women discussion of the arguments

[gremcint]

to me portal is a case of if the gender of the character doesn't affect the story then why not have them be female? Why can't a female character be mute, I mean how many mute male protagonists do we have? Link, ash, Mario (most games), numerous JRPGs and if you wouldn't call them bad characters why would chell be a bad character.

The issue honestly though is we're not talking about whether portal 1/2 are good games. Portal is a game that is loved by many and honestly that is largely due to the characters within it including glados. The game is a good example because you have a game where the story doesn't need the character to have a gender at all and in most cases a lot of companies would have made that character male by default. Here they chose to make the character female and the villain female, leave sex out of it entirely and the game is still widely loved and honestly glados is fucking popular. So you enjoyed the game despite the characterization so therefore you why not have more females as protagonists like this.

[Gravekeeper]

You have a terrible and misguided view on games is all I can really say at this point if you think Glados is background noise or that gameplay can not be storytelling. Especially with Valve games, sheesh. People don't own Companion Cube plushies because it was the one slightly different crate they saw.

Never mind Portal 2 which had a cast of characters.

[TheHuckster]

Game play is not story. I like the concept of Portal, looking at the script gives me the impression its only 19 levels in the first game, think I'd have way more fun with 500 user generated maps TYVM with or without GLaDOS chattering in the background.

The original Portal was short compared to other games, although there were more than 19 levels if you account for the fact that after the "final level" you had to fight for your life and eventually kill the boss after navigating the back corridors of the facility. It's there that GlaDOS is literally using the very walls within the facility to attempt to kill you. GlaDOS is very much a part of the game at that point.

If it were just the test chambers, and then you actually had cake in the end, then yes, it wouldn't be nearly as talked about. The game takes a twist in the middle, where GlaDOS truly reveals her true nature where it was previously only hinted at. The first 19 levels is plot/character development, a phase in any good storyline.

And I said from possibly my first post on portal "Puzzle game with a story tacked on", perhaps as an afterthought beyond lets give them a voice over explaining these new concepts.

Maybe the reason you feel that say is because, as you just said, "game play is not story." The game play is using your portal gun to overcome obstacles in the game. The story is simply narrating why you are doing that.

[Ginger Tea]

No one has yet to say if my hypothetical Sokoban protagonist is a good character, you've said that its not the same game, but I was trying to get a more fleshed out answer as to why a mute non autonomous character from the first game is considered a good character by those points.

Say they made this Sokoban game instead of portal but the story was more or less the same and you had to use the sokoban skills to eventually escape higher into the building and defeat the disembodied voice.

Or even better, if Chell is by Anita's definition "a good character" even though she is an empty shell (geddit) had they used a WoC&S wouldn't she be a far better character as she scores more in those points where Chell either had N/A or fail.

Her examples pertained to those 8 points. Trying to turn this into a discussion about what is or is not a character is totally missing the topic. If you can't even get the context of her argument right please stop trying to debate it.

I then posted Chell's 'score' in said list using Portal 1

Now here is Latisha, the alternate test subject in Portal.

1. Avoid the Smurfette principle ( Don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")

Portal has only one human.
Status Pass.

2. "Lingerie is not armour" ( Dress female characters as something other than sex objects. )

When you align portals to actually see yourself, Latisha is wearing an orange jump suit.
Status Pass.

3. Have female characters of various body types.

As there is only one human it's hard to have variety unless there is a customisation screen.
Where Chell failed by her body type, Latisha does not as she weighs more than Chell or your average video game character.
Status Pass.

4. Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.

Game is in first person*1, use of Portals required to see any part other than arms.
Status Pass.

5. Include more female characters of colour.

As there is only one human it's hard to have variety unless there is a customisation screen.
But Latisha is a WoC, Chell without being expressly informed could either be tanned white or Hispanic*2.
Status Pass.

6. Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.

Game is in first person*1, use of Portals required to see any part other than arms.
Status Ambiguous.

7. Record female character voice over so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic

Grunts and oofs would probably be the only thing to ever escape Chell's mouth.
Status Pass.

8. Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies

AI with Robotic form.
Status Pass.

*1Some command line hack exists to be able to play in first or third person. Perhaps she was Mocapped for a realistic walk and used ragdoll for the rest as you cant really mocap someone 'falling' at speed into the ceiling.

*2 reading the script to the first game, I failed to see anything that could say either way, so her ethnicity is ambiguous without a 3rd party source Anita lists her as Hispanic, perhaps Valve has said so themselves, or it is in the second game. But if I look into the mirror and granted these are 2007 character rigs and skins, I would be hard to vote either way.

You could argue that a clone would not have a tan and I would agree on that, but I've seen way too many people who's characters never see sunlight yet their actors have a healthy skin complexion or a tan, so perhaps her look was signed off before they decided on the whole "if she dies she's just a clone." aspect.

And clones have come out with memories and tattoos in the past, so why not a tan.

---

So is Latisha now a better character than Chell?

Nothing in the game has changed save calling her Latisha, she could still be called Chell, but I am keeping different names to distinguish between two different character skins and modle body types.

---



What if they had 5 Chell's to choose from?

All called Chell in game and it was only how you wished to look that changed, that or a fully customisable character selection screen.

Chell is now one of 5 preset or umpteen possible combinations of sliders, Chell still acts the same and is treated no differently by GLaDOS.

to me portal is a case of if the gender of the character doesn't affect the story then why not have them be female? Why can't a female character be mute, I mean how many mute male protagonists do we have? Link, ash, Mario (most games), numerous JRPGs and if you wouldn't call them bad characters why would chell be a bad character.

As the game is in first person, I can easily forget I am playing as X, Y or Z if I have no way of seeing myself, how many of the named male characters you talked about exists only in the first person, or even had one outing as such?

Had portal been in the 3rd person I would see her as Chell and not forget she even exists First person games can fall into the quantum leap area, how easy is it to forget you are in the body of an 60 year old when you take off at a sprint after some one, Sam Beckett is not 60, his body is fit and healthy, so in his mind, even with the knowledge he isn't in his own body, he still can think he's able to run a marathon. The 60 year old however probably never did more than the odd jog.

The issue honestly though is we're not talking about whether portal 1/2 are good games. Portal is a game that is loved by many and honestly that is largely due to the characters within it including glados. The game is a good example because you have a game where the story doesn't need the character to have a gender at all and in most cases a lot of companies would have made that character male by default. Here they chose to make the character female and the villain female, leave sex out of it entirely and the game is still widely loved and honestly glados is fucking popular. So you enjoyed the game despite the characterization so therefore you why not have more females as protagonists like this.

I wouldn't say including GLaDOS, I would say BECAUSE of GLaDOS, she is quotable for those that have played it, all I can really say is "The cake is a lie"

Yes they could have made the game with a white guy but bucked the trend.
They could have given you a player select and had the game play out no differently, or had the player masked so that even in 3rd person command line toggle or portal viewing, you wouldn't know if you were male, female, black or white. Hell the mask could come off and reveal the test subject to be some kind of alien from the HL universe but not your typical Combine.

[Ginger Tea]

You have a terrible and misguided view on games is all I can really say at this point if you think Glados is background noise or that gameplay can not be storytelling. Especially with Valve games, sheesh. People don't own Companion Cube plushies because it was the one slightly different crate they saw.

And the only reason I watched was to find out for myself (not having a gaming PC at the time) why the cube was so important.

[17]
"The Vital Apparatus Vent will deliver a Weighted Companion Cube in three, two,
one."

"This Weighted Companion Cube will accompany you through the test chamber.
Please take care of it."

"The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are
superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations. The
Enrichment Center reminds you that the weighted companion cube will never
threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak."

"The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube cannot
speak. In the event that the Weighted Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment
Center urges you to disregard its advice."

"You did it! The weighted companion cube certainly brought you good luck.
However, it cannot accompany you for the rest of the test and must,
unfortunately, be euthanized. Please escort your companion cube to the Aperture
Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator."

[If you wait to dispose of your cube, the following phrases play]
"Rest assured that an independent panel of ethicists has absolved the
Enrichment Center, Aperture Science employees, and all test subjects for all
moral responsibility for the companion cube euthanizing process."

"While it has been a faithful companion, your companion cube cannot accompany
you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Center
takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go
on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to
you."

"Testing cannot continue until your companion cube has been incinerated."

"Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture
Science engineers believe that the companion cube is most likely incapable of
feeling much pain."

"The companion cube cannot continue through the testing. State and local
statutory regulations prohibit it from simply remaining here, alone and
companionless. You must euthanize it."

"Destroy your companion cube or the testing cannot continue."

"Place your companion cube in the incinerator."

"Incinerate your companion cube."

[When you dispose of your cube]
"You euthanised your faithful companion cube more quickly than any test subject
on record. Congratulations."

This seems to be the only part of the script where the cube is mentioned, [the text was poorly formatted into a wall of text after you escape] so it wasn't even a Wilson kind of bond where you take the cube with you finding a way past the destruction screen, hell that could have been your motive to escape, keep the cube alive at all costs.

Wheatley: Come on, you've already solved it.
Wheatley: Come on, you've already solved it once. Less than a minute ago you
solved this puzzle. Do it again, please.
Wheatley: One minute ago. Less than one minute ago you solved this puzzle. Now
you're having problems.
Wheatley: You just beat this test. Literally twenty seconds ago.
Wheatley: *cough* Button.
Wheatley: *cough* Button. Button.
Wheatley: *cough cough* Pressthebutton.
Wheatley: *cough* PRESS THE BUTTON.
Wheatley: *cough* Press the button, would you?

Same nagging less words, hell for shits and giggles I might when I get to the cube level, leave it running for 16 hours then leave the room, 16 hours seems to be the fastest anyone has ever done the test in after all.

"I have the companion cube, it's the happiest day of my life!" Five seconds later "Right Bin."

That's more or less how the speed run went, maybe first time round he tried everything he could to escape with it heard those bits of dialogue loop more than twice, then finding there was no other way out, so armed with the knowledge that there is no alternate way out of the room, this cube everyone loves is just a cube with a heart on it.

[Hyena Dandy]

I can't even figure out what your argument is anymore... That if you made a character slightly differen,t they would be slightly different, but otherwise the same? What?

[Ginger Tea]

Short version
Chell passes 6 points in the list
Latisha passes 8, does that mean by having two more points she is now a better character?

---

Say the image on the right is how Latisha looks, but in game she is called Chell as nothing in the game has changed other than the character model and texture.

She is now larger than the average game character and is African American instead of seen as White with a Tan or Hispanic without conformation from Valve.

She now passes more than Chell in that list of what makes a good character, so scoring one or two points more than Chell, does that now mean she is a better character?



If Portal came out with Chell looking like that, I would not care more or less than I do about the Chell we have.

I see Chell as interchangeable with any character that can be found in GMod or run in one of the game modes, including inanimate objects without affecting my game play or enjoyment of the story.

[Kheldarson]

Okay. Since I seem to be the one following the unfortunate argument.

The initial argument is that Sarkeesian has a checklist for measuring whether or not your female cast is diverse enough to not be trope-y/continuing to be discriminatory. However, Chell, according to Sarkeesian, passes fairly well.

This led to a counter point that she can't/shouldn't even count as a character because she's a player avatar rather than a full character herself. This argument has been supported by the fact that, according to Ginger Tea, Chell could be replaced by any model and the game would remain the same. Same with the puzzles or even GLaDoS and Wheatley.

However, as a rebuttal to this point, we have the fact that Portal is not merely a puzzle game or, alternatively, the puzzle game is extended to the story itself. This is a game that functions like Journey, another game with a mute protagonist and has no dialogue whatsoever. The big part of both of these games is the discovery. In Journey, it's rather straightforward in just encouraging exploration; in Portal, you're supposed to find the illicit messages off of GLaDoS's track and view it as "breaking the game" and "finding the Easter Eggs". However, they are part of the overall experience and subtext to the game, just like GLaDoS's rants against you.

So why is Chell a character then? Why couldn't we have had a game like Myst where you never see the protag at all and, thus, is a true player avatar? Well, one, game mechanics force it. There are times while using the portal that you would expect to see a character model. So then we have to look to the story, and its subtext, to see the reasons for the decisions.

And the big one is why is she even female? If one looks at GLaDoS's model, she bears a striking resemblance to "Venus in Chains". Given Rinnaul's point about how she's a woman who was controlled and chained by men to the point of lashing out, this is a fitting design which symbolizes her position. Chell, in this case, serves as a mirror: we are unsure of how many times Chell has been forced to make this run (the opening test number fail could be a failure or GLaDoS hiding the number), but we know that she's being forced to do things that she'd rather not do as a means of survival until she can lash out and make her escape. But unlike GLaDoS/Caroline, Chell actually has a chance because she hasn't been fully chained.

So in this sense, one can say Chell may be a spiritual daughter of GLaDoS, that GLaDoS may be saving her and/or resurrecting her to assuage her own guilt before lashing out and enforcing her protocols again. This also means that we have removed another possibility of subtext: that playing as a man, we would simply be continuing in the role of her persecutors rather than the victim.

We do know that, beyond that line of logic, there is something special about Chell. Ratman fixated on her and saved her for a reason. One potential reason is that she may be Caroline's biological daughter. GLaDoS fixates on the "Bring Your Child to Work" day ad and one taunting Chell with being unloved and unwanted by her parents. Ratman may have figured seeing her daughter forced into the scenario would be enough to override the science drive.

Another reason is that she may be Cave Johnson's daughter. She may be the only one smart enough to outwit GLaDoS but still get GLaDoS to fixate on her since she's the child of her hated boss. Which would allow Ratman the time to save himself and others.

For both of these scenarios to work, Chell has to look vaguely white since both Caroline and Cave were very white, since they're the 1950's/1960's archetypes.

And you seriously expect somebody who's been in cryogenics or lab-created and scientifically fed in either case to be sizable?

So there are good story and environment reasons for Chell to be female and model type that she is. She is still a character in her own right, but she is not the main character of her story: GLaDoS is. Solve GLaDoS, you solve Chell. And that's what's missing from the Let's Play view (which is going to focus on game play) or just reading scripts (because that misses the artwork and environment).

So, by my view and argument, Chell is a character, the fact that she passes six of Sarkeesian's 8 points is a good thing, and there are good story reasons why she can't fit the last two. And that's the big thing when talking about characters and the decisions made, even with females: is there a good story reason for this choice? Does she have to be female? If she's a village shopkeep who's there to give you a bit of information and sell you shit, it may not matter. If she's a secondary character, it will. Does she have to be a certain color? Depending on your setting, it may. If you're looking at a small village in, say, Skyrim, it may not make sense to have a shopkeep who's non-white, whereas a larger city it would.

[Ginger Tea]

As respawaning takes 'cloning' but still retains body mass tattoos etc into account its easy to forget if something is trying to be grounded in reality, so yes I concur that a realistic cloning facility would not have an over fed clone even if the original was clinically obese, not that the actor pictured for an example of Latisha is.

Chell could have been clothed like the Stig to side step the ability to see yourself as not yourself. This could lend to twist endings of "Chimpanzee, Alien or Robot." it all depends on how the story was conceived in regards to what was already established, had they made the 19 test levels with a HL rig skinned as Chell they might go "OK we keep the girl, so there's no Gordon Freeman shock ending, now how do we progress the story."

Or someone could have a story brewing whilst there was no model in use and their vision of what lays beyond is crucial that the skin they make be female and a specific skin tone.

All the little details on the walls, those could be hard to see when recorded in 360p even if he did stop long enough to show them. I do recall seeing "The cake is a lie" scrawled, but that was because it was also quite large at one point.

Could they have made these references gender neutral? One part of the script did say Bring your Daughter to work and not Child, why have two days?
If GLaDOS says Chell, could she not also be recorded to say David?

At the end of the game, the face mask could come off in first person and she or he could just walk away still in first person, so now unmasked we still have no idea what we look like.

Being Chell or David could be triggered by our steam profile if it has gender as an option, so it negates asking if we want to play as male or female masked avatar.

Though the ending was retconned with the intro to portal 2 in the third person, you can still do the same tripped up and dragged back down from their POV.



---



I still believe that going forwards especially if VR takes off, anything in the first person should tread lightly with regards to giving you a pre defined character that you are supposed to be, I concocted two twist hypothesis but these could work as shorts just as much as games.

---

Regarding your final paragraph, there was a shit storm going down about just that, a historically accurate portrayal of Bellerose I think, during the middle ages, being accused of white washing when the dev had checked with historians to see if anyone from Africa could have been living there at the time considering Europe at the time wasn't keen on Moors.

[KabeRinnaul]

It's like you're trying to prove that Chell is nothing more than a camera POV by pointing out all the ways you could change it so she's even more just a camera POV. I really can't follow the logic of this, or why you're so insistent upon it.

[Kheldarson]

As respawaning takes 'cloning' but still retains body mass tattoos etc into account its easy to forget if something is trying to be grounded in reality, so yes I concur that a realistic cloning facility would not have an over fed clone even if the original was clinically obese, not that the actor pictured for an example of Latisha is.

Chell could have been clothed like the Stig to side step the ability to see yourself as not yourself. This could lend to twist endings of "Chimpanzee, Alien or Robot." it all depends on how the story was conceived in regards to what was already established, had they made the 19 test levels with a HL rig skinned as Chell they might go "OK we keep the girl, so there's no Gordon Freeman shock ending, now how do we progress the story."

Or someone could have a story brewing whilst there was no model in use and their vision of what lays beyond is crucial that the skin they make be female and a specific skin tone.

All the little details on the walls, those could be hard to see when recorded in 360p even if he did stop long enough to show them. I do recall seeing "The cake is a lie" scrawled, but that was because it was also quite large at one point.

Could they have made these references gender neutral? One part of the script did say Bring your Daughter to work and not Child, why have two days?
If GLaDOS says Chell, could she not also be recorded to say David?

At the end of the game, the face mask could come off in first person and she or he could just walk away still in first person, so now unmasked we still have no idea what we look like.

Being Chell or David could be triggered by our steam profile if it has gender as an option, so it negates asking if we want to play as male or female masked avatar.

Though the ending was retconned with the intro to portal 2 in the third person, you can still do the same tripped up and dragged back down from their POV.

Your entire point here seems to be that "as long as I ignore the story ramifications, we can make any character into anything." Which is true. I can change Sherlock Holmes to a woman. Or a black man. Or a transgendered person. Each one is going to be a tiny bit different from the original Sherlock though, and that's going to affect the story and how it plays out.

My point was that, unlike a game like Myst where the game is designed to deal with you, the player, as the character, Chell is an integral part of the story. She is part of GLaDoS' story. To change her is to change the story. You're changing the puzzle by changing the clues. And that's a big part of character design choices: what are you trying to convey by this?

I'm writing a superpowered setting involving a mundane girl and supervillain. The girl's white. Why? Because 1) that's what I'm most comfortable with and 2) she's a play on the superhero tropes. She's supposed to be the Lois Lane, Pepper Potts, Mary Jane type girl who ends up with the hero, but she's with the villain at the end. This is a conscious decision on my part. To change her to another color or look would be to pull away from the base trope too much and take away from my purpose.

So we have to ask the same questions of any other character. Yes, we can show lots of issues with lots of females; that's why we focus on them. But not all NPC's have to be anything more than a random NPC. By the same token, not all mute protagonists, even from the first person look, are going to be just player stand-ins. Chell has a purpose. And part of the larger game is figuring that out, and by extension, figuring out GLaDoS. Who is the main character.

I mean, hell, the exit song is easily interpreted as a goodbye to a child. And given what we discover about GLaDoS and Caroline, it makes sense that there may be a mother/daughter paradigm with Chell. You lose that if you make Chell a "David". You lose that if you make her a "Latisha".

And that's the point.

Regarding your final paragraph, there was a shit storm going down about just that, a historically accurate portrayal of Bellerose I think, during the middle ages, being accused of white washing when the dev had checked with historians to see if anyone from Africa could have been living there at the time considering Europe at the time wasn't keen on Moors.

It's still a design decision. If you're portraying, say, a township in West Virginia, are you going to have ethnicities? Sure, you could, but it's still a rare thing in some areas and is considered "unbelievable". And that's part of what developers have to deal with too. Creating a believable setting while still encouraging a more diverse setting.

[TheHuckster]

Okay. Yes, they could have done those things. But they didn't. Because that didn't meet the style of game they were going for. Just like Gordon Freeman, they wanted at least some identity of the character you were playing. Whether or not you don't know what her full story is, or what her life was before the events of the game, or even what her voice sounds like doesn't matter. You know at least a few things about the character, so freaken what? That's the choice Valve made when developing the game.

Hell, I could just turn this on its head and say "Why did Myst just use a generic and neutral term like 'The Stranger' to identify the character? They could have given The Stranger more identity and it would be the same exact game." The answer is: Because that's the decision they made. There's really no other reason but that. It's no different than their choosing blue and orange to color the two portals, or giving the turrets an egg shape. It's part of the overall style and theme of the game.

I would agree that VR is probably going to be more immursive in that you are going to be yourself (although even then you can still choose to be anyone you want), but Portal wasn't a VR game, so even that doesn't satisfy your point.

[Ginger Tea]

EDIT: teach me to open the text box and do something else and not notice 3 other replies ...

Because when it comes to first person games I prefer to be the one in the game not someone transported into someone else's body.

It's called immersion.

The two possible parents, if they were not referenced in HL as having a daughter, then there is a clean slate approach, if it says in the HL lore that both had an unnamed daughter and the graffiti alludes to you being the child of one of them, then OK lore is lore, the game alluding you to be the daughter of a white family can't have a black or Hispanic son, fair point that's biology.

If there is no lore, why couldn't they have written it ambiguously and let us feel like we are the son or daughter of either parent and leave their racial appearance vague too?

Hence bringing up quantum leap a fair few times.
I have drawn the conclusion that even when he is in a woman's body he hears his own voice just as we the audience hear and see him, granted in the mirror he sees the body he has jumped into, but shares no memories with that person.

Why do I believe he hears his own voice and not hers?
I would put it as a psychological fail safe, that and coupled with the episode where he was talking to Al and was in the body of a chimp, had he not had such a fail safe he would be screeching at Al and be getting no where with his aid in the future just as he was getting no where with the researcher (unless I'm remembering the story wrong and he did indeed spend the entire show screeching, nearly 20 years is a long time to forget an episode you saw once).

Outside of playing Quantum Leap the video game, I tend to not want to be someone else when in first person.

Although I have it and could play it for the exposition, I feel that I would rather have 500 levels from the workshop as the mechanics intrigue me more than anything else, but who would I see looking back at me?
Chell, Atlus or Peabody?

For the workshop version, I would rather customise my look or download a valid skin. But if the game by default says "you can only be Chell" then it would be like going about your day to day life as you, then when you look in the mirror you see someone else. I don't want that in first person.

If portal was in 3rd person I don't care, I am a puppet master, first person I AM the test subject.

I feel that's the reason Batman is 3rd person and Master Chief first, just as any soldier you can be any male on the planet, granted it makes immersion non existent for female gamers, but I might be a small minority of people hung up on video game dysphoria, especially as we head towards the possibility of viable home VR.

I would have a hard time thinking I was batman if all I could see were the gloves, but we have many amnesiacs to explain away why you have no idea how or why you got there in the first place.

Doom3 Guy and both Ripleys do not bring me out of the game as they have their own autonomy in the story, supplied either by cut scenes or in game dialogue. If Chell wasn't silent I wouldn't feel this way about her, ditto for the game being in 3rd person.

Evolve playing as a monster isn't a biggie, its a power fantasy same as depth playing as a shark.

On the flip side, the hunters from evolve or Team fortress, not an issue, I know going in that the class looks like that, but TF is not a story based game afaik, just CTF and other team death matches.
Evolve and story, no idea, for me it would be a coop only experience unless I could be the monster in single player mode.

I don't think Booker can be changed to a woman without changing EVERYTHING about Infinite, but portal could have been tweaked to give you both options of gender even race could change with a new line reading if Aperture Lore is not carved into HL when the game was released.

Or just plain and simply left you looking at a mask un able to tell if you were male or female under the clothes. GLaDOS might have had a child, that child might have been a girl, you are a woman playing the game ergo, you might be that child. Then swap the genders for a male player.

[Andara Bledin]

The answer is: Because that's the decision they made. There's really no other reason but that. It's no different than their choosing blue and orange to color the two portals, or giving the turrets an egg shape. It's part of the overall style and theme of the game.

Actually, it's notably different.

The fact that, stylistically and traditionally, women are portrayed as motivation for the male protagonist rather than independent agents with their own agency is most of the problem.

Diversity for the sake of the fact that the world is a diverse place and you want to make everybody welcome is good, but diversity for diversity's sake with no other goal is only a tiny victory.

Making the PC a different gender or color with the only reason being "why not" is ok, but choosing an alternate race or gender for reasons that resonate within the game setting somehow is preferable.

In the case of Portal, Chell being female is part of the story that is being told. It matters to the story that she is female. It wouldn't be the same with a male protagonist because part of the story is the interaction provided by GLaDOS and the animosity, perhaps even jelousy, that the AI displays towards her.

In games that allow for romantic entanglements, such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age, are improved when the potential lovers can't all be wooed by the same PC. Some should be attracted to males, some to females, and for a more realistic experience, different races and classes (as applicable) should elicit different responses in addition to the actions you choose to take.

Diversity is about a lot more than skin tone and gender, but those were a good place to start when every protagonist in the sphere was the 'generic white dude hero.'

[Kheldarson]

EDIT: teach me to open the text box and do something else and not notice 3 other replies ...

Because when it comes to first person games I prefer to be the one in the game not someone transported into someone else's body.

It's called immersion.

And that's fine for you, but I, and many others, found no issue with the format. And still doesn't change that there are story related choices that went into the design of Chell.

The two possible parents, if they were not referenced in HL as having a daughter, then there is a clean slate approach, if it says in the HL lore that both had an unnamed daughter and the graffiti alludes to you being the child of one of them, then OK lore is lore, the game alluding you to be the daughter of a white family can't have a black or Hispanic son, fair point that's biology.

If there is no lore, why couldn't they have written it ambiguously and let us feel like we are the son or daughter of either parent and leave their racial appearance vague too?

Why are you talking about Half-Life? Is there a family dynamic there too?

If you're still referencing Portal, I've already discussed the lore. It's in what GLaDoS fixates on as insults. It's in Ratman's drawings. It's in how and what GLaDoS has you do.

Although I have it and could play it for the exposition, I feel that I would rather have 500 levels from the workshop as the mechanics intrigue me more than anything else, but who would I see looking back at me?
Chell, Atlus or Peabody?

For the workshop version, I would rather customise my look or download a valid skin. But if the game by default says "you can only be Chell" then it would be like going about your day to day life as you, then when you look in the mirror you see someone else. I don't want that in first person.

If portal was in 3rd person I don't care, I am a puppet master, first person I AM the test subject.

If you don't care for the exposition and the, well, game itself, that's fine, but to declare a story driven choice as wrong simply because they don't give you options in a different area of the game is asinine. Sorry. If you want to specifically complain that you can't change your model in the workshop area, fine. I can buy that. But to extend that complaint to the rest of the game...

I don't think Booker can be changed to a woman without changing EVERYTHING about Infinite, but portal could have been tweaked to give you both options of gender even race could change with a new line reading if Aperture Lore is not carved into HL when the game was released.

Or just plain and simply left you looking at a mask un able to tell if you were male or female under the clothes. GLaDOS might have had a child, that child might have been a girl, you are a woman playing the game ergo, you might be that child. Then swap the genders for a male player.

Portal can't be tweaked any more than Infinite could. Both stories revolve around relationships (mother/daughter; father/daughter). Both games have in game clues and hints related to the specific character model (posters, drawings). Chell is not a blank slate. She may be a silent character, but she is not blank.