Aside from what's already been said, which to be honest I'd never really noticed before (the hot girl, the sword, etc.), I'd just like to point out that ever cover for a 'core rulebook' in Shadowrun 4th, with perhaps the exception of Runner's Companion, does do a good job of using set pieces to point out exactly what the book is about and I think that's what should really count right?

Arsenal uses a huge assortment of weapons, and the vehicle on the cover to show you that this is our gun book, here you go. Street Magic obviously shows itself to be the book all about magic by displaying a lightning spell and a weapon focus and whatever sort of crazy spirits those are supposed to be. And, while Unwired does indeed have a gunfight on the cover, the AR displays and the hacking are the major set pieces there showing you that this is the computer book, and all of the above mentioned books could probably be identified for what they are without the Title text at the top of each book announcing their purpose. And that, I think, is the hallmark of good cover design, even if there are certain formulas that all Shadowrun covers seem to adhere too.

Just my 2 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

What, all 5 of them? Hetereo women are probably not the main target audience for a RPG company.

I'm not the 1 of 5 men who happened to be lucky enough to have a gamer girlfriend. I don't know how it is in Europe but I attended GenCon this year and can say without a doubt that ladies make up a significant presence in the American gaming community. Any publisher that ignores that audience is shooting itself in the foot.

she is a runners companion (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

Yeah, "every hetero gaming woman" is an exception, not a rule, though. Unwad your panties and do the math. I'm married to a gamer chick, too, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of gaming geeks are straight white guys who like chicks in leather, guns, and swords.

And blaming the poor reputation that gamers have on artwork alone is pretty silly, especially because you claim to have been to a Gencon. Look around you. There are walking, talking, stinking, avatars of the gamer stereotype waddling around Indianapolis for the better part of a week -- the artwork that markets to and panders to gamers is a symptom, not the disease itself.

Ever hear the phrase, "at 51% of the population, women are the world's largest minority?" Hetero women (or any kind of woman) in anything from business to film to government to art to writing to sports are always going to be the exception, not the rule, if you just look at numbers. So does that make it okay to dismiss them out of hand? Please. And, yes, guys like tits. That's what it all boils down to when you talk cheesecake art. I love tits. But there's more to me as a person than my affection for breasts and taking the "sex sells" approach is always going to pander to the lowest common denominator which pisses me off. All RPGs have the potential to be more than male-centric, quietly erotic adventures.

I don't blame gamers' poor reputations on artwork alone. Yes, I saw all the fat, unwashed, basement-dwelling, two McGriddles-away-from-a-heart-attack, dorks at GenCon. That's inevitable at any comic book/sci-fi/game convention. I live in Indiana, the 2nd fattest state in the Union so I see that every day. I also saw many, many average-to-fit men and women of all ages and all walks of life, from teenage student to adult working professional. Geek is the "new cool" (whatever that means) and there's always a trickle of new faces into the gaming market and a strong force behind those new faces are women. If I was a developer trying to sell my product to this new audience and my rule book covers all had pictures of some chick with a sword and her baps hanging out... that would be a tough sell. Who would take me seriously? Mainstream comic book publishers still haven't picked up on this and yet they wonder why women don't read their books and tend to go for the independent labels.

You start up a gaming company that has a setting and rules set of the precise quality and "fun factor" as a rival (it's impossible, I know, but play along) and you put out artwork that showcases the coolness of your setting and has beefcake strapping young men on the cover to appeal to girl gamers, all in the name of fairness. Your rival gaming company (of magically the exact same quality of setting and rules set) will have colorful artwork that showcases the coolness of their setting (magically the exact same coolness as yours), and they'll occasionally toss in a hot chick in leather.

See which game company does better.

Take the high ground if you want to (which is, I think, a little silly because it's not like any Shadowrun cover has been nearly as "T&A" focused as the skanky booth babes at the White Wolf game booth year after year, and yet WW continues to have more female gamers than any other company I know of)...but the fact is game companies do what game companies have to do to show off their setting and catch the eye of their average consumer. Period.

Yes, there are hetero girl gamers. Like I said, I'm married to one. But no, they are by a long shot not the default core audience of the products being marketed by gaming companies. It might or might not be "fair" (or whatever), but it's life. I'm sure there are straight men, somewhere, that read romance novels, and I'm sure on some forum somewhere one of them is complaining about seeing Fabio all over the place. That's just marketing, and knowing (and pandering to) your prime target audience.

Critias hits the nail on the head. What interests me is WHY there are so many more female gamers at White Wolf than at other booths? What do they know that D&D, Shadowrun, etc. don't?

I've always perceived Shadowrun as one of the most gender-egalitarian games ever. I sell it that way to male and female prospects alike. Yet it still seems to attract a largely male audience.

How come? Is it the guns? Is it a lack of angsty vampires? What?

Peter

Traditional gender roles for males emphasize a goal-oriented mindset (and violence, typically). Traditional female gender roles place emphasis on social interaction (and a desire to be liked by everyone). People are still shaped quite significantly by these traditional gender roles. You should expect a game that focuses on contracted extralegal operations to attract male players more than female players.

The White Wolf settings are designed from the ground up to produce complex politics and an ingroup. They are primarily socially focussed games, which attract both guys (who typically want to achieve a result) and girls (who will typically enjoy the large amounts of social interaction involved). We should expect their player base to contain more females than Shadowrun's, on average. From what I know, Exalted does not get much female attention despite being a White Wolf game because the game's core character type do not have an established social order and all characters are assumed to begin play with a focus on achieving some goal.

Um, philosophy aside, my fellow gamer-chick and I both think Runners Companion is the best cover for the SR4 books. Heck, when I'm thinking, what kinda runner do I want to be, the short dumpy dwarf lady wearing purple boxers on the front of SR4, or the hot elf chick in leather with weapons on Runners Companion...

Have you looked at the front of a Cosmo, Shape, or other magazine aimed towards straight women? Ever see a half-naked man on one? Noooo... and there's a reason for that. I was at the gym this morning, along with a hundred other women, and not one of us were reading a magazine with a guy on the cover. And except for Cooking Light, with a picture of some reduced-calorie cheesecake, all the magazines featured women wearing skimpy clothes, bikinis, or 1,000 dollar tight dresses.

I bet many gamer women would be more likely to pick up Runners Companion and flip thru it than, say, Street Magic. It says, this is a game with leather-clad sexy women, with awesome boots, good makeup, wielding swords and kicking butt.... I can speak with confidence because I am a straight woman. And a gamer and I read Cosmo. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) (And those who met me at GenCon can verify I am, indeed, a female.)

(There is even evidence in Bull's photos that Tiger Eyes is a woman)

Well, I for one agreed with Tiger Eyes enough to put the Runner's Companion cover on my list of wants for X-mas. My wife (who incidentally doesn't game) thought it was cool enough to get it for me.

Mark

(and yes, you can come to my gamer den and see it if you want to.)

Yeah, and this year I'm gonna preview those pictures first, that was totally not a good picture of me. Bull, I expect better in 2009.

I'm not the 1 of 5 men who happened to be lucky enough to have a gamer girlfriend. I don't know how it is in Europe but I attended GenCon this year and can say without a doubt that ladies make up a significant presence in the American gaming community. Any publisher that ignores that audience is shooting itself in the foot.

I'm torn about this topic as I see gargantuan amounts of T&A when it comes to scifi in general. As an rpg experience, I think Shadowrun is different and gives its fair share of kitch with some sex appeal, but is not demeaning about it. Actually, this is what I like most about the game. I like the females on the covers as I can relate to the characters who embody the kick ass directive. As a female (Hon, count youself as one of the five men with a consort who loves gaming) I get so tired of seeing female characters (more specifically in movies than rpg games) who play the dim-whitted lay back and save me, but screw me first characters. If Shadowrun was structured in this way, I wouldn't play it...period. As for the social aspect of rpg games, I equally enjoy being a face sometimes and 'getting my hands dirty.' Just because I'm female doesn't mean I lack any testosterone (women have trace amounts along with estrogen and progesterone...why we crave sex at certain times of the month) and really enjoy beating the shit or blowing away an NPC just as much as my male counterparts. I've only been lucky enough, within the past year, to have a boyfriend who enjoys rpg games and has a gaming group....it doesn't mean I haven't wanted to play rpg games in the past. I feel it's difficult for female players to be taken seriously as gamers, unless they have a forehead shaped like a klingon, weights 300 lbs., and is annoyingly loud when she plays.

I diversify my time by enjoying comics (including manga), rpging, scifi novels, PSP games, scifi movies, and scifi/fantasy board games.

Really? Because I feel just the opposite, both with the female gamers I've known locally (through about 17 years of RPGing) and at the Gencons and Dragon*Con's I've gone to.

The gals who show up just wanting to game, well, game, and no one cares if they've got tits or not. The ones that show up and have to make a big deal about how their a girl gamer, are annoyingly loud, etc, etc, are the ones that aren't taken seriously as gamers.

Dang. As soon as I hit post I had a feeling that someone would point out the ladies fashion magazine conundrum. I remember reading an interview with Drew Barrymore prior to the release of Charlie's Angels. Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz were still on the fence about the script but she managed to convince them by saying something along the lines of "we get to wear cool clothes and kick ass. What more do you want?". So there's a perfect example of a sexy, female friendly fantasy. Yeah, obviously women have no problem looking at images of attractive women. Men read GQ because they want to be Daniel Craig with his suits, chiseled features and taught gut. Doesn't make them gay. Given a choice, most guys would rather be James Bond than Gimli.

Okay, I know I had some points I wanted to make before I went off on what sounded like an Andrea Dworkin-style women's lib rant... Oh yes.

1) It's possible to portray sexy women without falling into the lowest common denominator (ie: chicks in chainmail bikinis). Not every gamer male wants a cover that looks like Doom of Odin. Some of us do have brains and rather enjoy the subtle sexy.
2) Pretty much every cover of Shadowrun is a variation on the "action pose-out" (sexy chicks or not) with very little revealing about the setting itself. The Sixth World is actually a very rich tapestry in which many themes can be explored. My favorite scene in all the Star Wars movies is the first thirty seconds of the Mos Eisley cantina scene. Everything you need to know about the franchise is in it: the galaxy is alien, a little dark and worn but eerily familiar. Though everyone remembers the lightsaber fights and the Death Star battle, Mos Eisley is what sets the tone. Just off the top of my head, one of the standard tropes of Shadowrun is the Mr. Johnson-meet but I can't think of a single cover that shows this. That was a missed opportunity for Unwired which went down the bullets and explosions route.
3) Recycling the same-old, same-old is bad. Ask any comic reader.

Personally, my favorite cover of SR4 has been Arsenal, as it's one of the few that has stepped away from the genre conventions and doesn't take itself too seriously.

didnt the front of corp enclaves do a meet of sorts?

Actually, it did and I spaced out on that one. I really like that cover.

at least i it seems that there have been no SR4 cover so far that have shown something impossible, like that SR3 hovercar...

Or that guy on Man & Machine fighting off a legion of Cyberzom... oops, I mean "anthroform drones."

Thematically, I like what was attempted with Arsenal, but, as people have noticed, the angles of some of the weapons in the foreground are way off, and bizarre looking. It also highlighted a pet peeve I have with SR4; silly looking firearms. Most ranged weapons in the core book look like some kind of premium nerf blaster or something. Arsenal's actual contents did a little better in this regard, but there are still some guns that look flat-out silly. The prime example in my mind is the rifle in the core book derived from the XM8. (the actual name escapes me at the moment) Instead of making something that looks like a more streamlined, revised version of the rifle's source, the artist decided to not only make it impossibly geometric, but turn it into a bullpup. The future of firearms is not redesigned and huge; the future is ergonomic.

Unwired was a fun cover, and did a fine job of showing off the new AR side of the matrix, but could have had a better backdrop. Loved the floating AR windows, particularly the motion sensor and the visible user interface elements (tab switching, etc), but wished the hacker was doing something a little bit more "hacker-y". The art in the matrix chapter of the core book is a good example; you can see him manipulating the AR, but you can also see his drone hammering down on the target. Wish Unwired had him doing something like taking over a turret while he unlocked a door, but it's not a bad cover.

Ghost Cartels was.. ok. I liked the plant spirit attacking, since there isn't a huge amount of SR4 imagery on what spirits look like in action, but I hate the fact that the runners don't look differently geared for the environment. Stupid.