Big Jiggly Boobs in Games... is it really worth all the QQing?

[Marik2]

I think its good within reason. if the character is busty as a character trait then it's fine (one storyline I wrote had a character who would always cover her breasts because they got in the way of combat but under extreme conditions would use them as a distraction. sort of my de-construction of over-sexed characters) but if EVERY girl in the game is overly busty that it becomes ridicules and insulting (DOA extreme) then it is pointless and juvenile unless the game is self-aware.

You know now that I think about it PSG doesnt have stupid bouncy boobs(like a bunch of anime out there), its really a nice change of pace.

The boobs look sexy but arent outrageously big or stupid.

I want to know how this got so popular so fast... My girlfirend LOVES this show, but i dont get a lick of it.

IMO its because the show is basically a "what if Japan bought Cartoon Network?" scenario.

The animation mixes between east and west makes the show refreshing and unique.

And plus it makes fun of anime cliches like that scene was making fun of those magical girl transformations.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

*Flings a bag of bras at Miracle...............*
Now you're scared, lol!
OT - Breasts really don't bother me, I'm a woman, I look down and............. boobs. Not sure why this is an issue on either side, tbh!

AAAA [runs away from cootie filled bras]

I dunno, I find boobs in games very distracting, and not for the right reasons. They, along with sexy scenes, always look silly and awkward to me. Yes, even in ME2.

 

[.Andi.]

Somehow, I don't think big breasted wimmins are in danger of being left out of the gaming world.

It doesn't make sense for Laura Croft to have big breasts. It drowned the series in stupid back in the late 90's. Seriously - go look up the old commercials. It doesn't make any sense for an international explorer who is running around all the time to have them.

Also - worst breast physics: Bloodrayne. They'd jiggle everytime you talked to someone. it's like BR has breast-jiggling telekinesis

 

[spartan1077]

Big boobs are useless. What do you do with them beside drown/suffocate? Anyways, it's just sexual exploitation in games so men will buy it, and do some strange things without their partners knowing. If they bought a pr0n game, then their partner/mom would know and be pissed, but by getting games that are near the same(show large breasted women in skimpy clothing) it's the same...without the nagging...I say stop being sensitive and just ignore it.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I see a lot of people here and in other forms of media arguing about the "unrealistic" depiction of women in video games and other media. They all go through these long, often boring discussions trying to prove their points. However, in my drive to break all that nonsense down into what really matters, I come now to this. There are some things we need to get clear first though.

1: Large Breasts and hips are considered more attractive and desirable in a woman than small ones. This applies to every single notable culture and society on this Earth, with few exceptions. While some societies and cultures may favor one over the other (Western cultures tend to prefer the hourglass shape, Africans the pear, Asians the apple, etc.), universally the flat shape is not consider attractive, or as desirable. Don't believe me? Any college or university student with access to their psychology department's lab equipment can use their eye scan machines to do any number of different experiments on eye movements, descriptions and desirability. Its not hard, and the results are near universal.

2:Men are just as, if not more so, exaggerated in media as women are. Yet there is very little said or done about this anywhere. Exhibit A: Marcus Fenix, Dante (DmC), Edward Cullen.

This being out of the way; I see no problem with the way women are depicted in most video games; games that are clearly attempting to be realistic do not depict women is such ways as the OP is going on about; from Ghost Recon to Battlefield to Fallout to Call of Duty, everyone (generally) is being depicted as fairly average or normal.

Games which are not trying to depict normal or average things or people, however, do not depict them as such. This applies to basically every other kind of game out there. Dead or Alive is trying to be realistic. Neither is Tomb Raider (or at least they weren't). Even Samus, long touted as a great, shining example of what female characters could be, has a body that supermodels would kill for.

And this is because if you're going to spend hundreds, thousands of hours working with a character, unless their blandness or outright ugliness is going to serve a purpose, then why the #$$%^& would you spend all that time making a character like that? Video game characters, both male, female and otherwise, are depicted as perfect or over the top because thats what people like; its what they want to see, because they can't see it anywhere else. If people wanted to see average, normal looking people, they would go the #$%%^ outside, where they could see more of them than they could shake a stick at.

 

[lacktheknack]

Personally, I don't think Lara's breast reduction is a loss. Nothing makes me sit back and think "Well, THIS isn't realistic" like DD cups.

Seriously, I know hundreds of girls, and only one has noticeably large breasts. And she can't stand them.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I think its good within reason. if the character is busty as a character trait then it's fine (one storyline I wrote had a character who would always cover her breasts because they got in the way of combat but under extreme conditions would use them as a distraction. sort of my de-construction of over-sexed characters) but if EVERY girl in the game is overly busty that it becomes ridicules and insulting (DOA extreme) then it is pointless and juvenile unless the game is self-aware.

You know now that I think about it PSG doesnt have stupid bouncy boobs(like a bunch of anime out there), its really a nice change of pace.

The boobs look sexy but arent outrageously big or stupid.

I want to know how this got so popular so fast... My girlfirend LOVES this show, but i dont get a lick of it.

My brain isn't quite sure what it just saw there. It and I can't come up with anything.....someone mind explaining?

 

[Compatriot Block]

Because big boobs are best boobs...

You sure about that?

See, I think you misunderstood him.

He said boobs. That girl appears to have attached a flabby ass to her chest.

 

[Marik2]

I think its good within reason. if the character is busty as a character trait then it's fine (one storyline I wrote had a character who would always cover her breasts because they got in the way of combat but under extreme conditions would use them as a distraction. sort of my de-construction of over-sexed characters) but if EVERY girl in the game is overly busty that it becomes ridicules and insulting (DOA extreme) then it is pointless and juvenile unless the game is self-aware.

You know now that I think about it PSG doesnt have stupid bouncy boobs(like a bunch of anime out there), its really a nice change of pace.

The boobs look sexy but arent outrageously big or stupid.

I want to know how this got so popular so fast... My girlfirend LOVES this show, but i dont get a lick of it.

My brain isn't quite sure what it just saw there. It and I can't come up with anything.....someone mind explaining?

Its what happens when Japan buys Cartoon Network.

 

[Lukeman1884]

I think its good within reason. if the character is busty as a character trait then it's fine (one storyline I wrote had a character who would always cover her breasts because they got in the way of combat but under extreme conditions would use them as a distraction. sort of my de-construction of over-sexed characters) but if EVERY girl in the game is overly busty that it becomes ridicules and insulting (DOA extreme) then it is pointless and juvenile unless the game is self-aware.

You know now that I think about it PSG doesnt have stupid bouncy boobs(like a bunch of anime out there), its really a nice change of pace.

The boobs look sexy but arent outrageously big or stupid.

I want to know how this got so popular so fast... My girlfirend LOVES this show, but i dont get a lick of it.

My brain isn't quite sure what it just saw there. It and I can't come up with anything.....someone mind explaining?

What's not to get? Two girls who transform their clothing into weapons that they use to kill mosters.

On-Topic: I generally play games because they have good gameplay. Do I like watching girls with big jiggly breasts prance around on screen? Sure. Would I like it if they had bigger, jigglier breasts? Probably, up to a point of course. But to me, all these things are just the icing on the cake the is a fun game. If the icing is tastier, so be it. If it's poop flavoured(ie, ugly unattractive characters), then no, I'm not gonna enjoy it, but it doesn't ruin the cake. Well, I suppose it would. Maybe this isn't the best metaphor. Oh well.

 

[Jumplion]

Lara, whom I have played as and enjoyed since the very first Tomb Raider... Ok yeah, those boobs weren't always tastefully presented, but while they were definitely eye candy for some, I don't feel that they overshadowed Lara's IDENTITY as a character. She was still this super smart, super savvy, super kick ass first true super heroine of video games that could turn you on as quickly as she could snap your neck.

Ahahahahahahaha!

Okay, all joking aside, Laura has aged. I've read the same article as you did, and they state that while Laura was an icon in the 90s, that is no longer applicable nowadays. Having a standard "yeah, she's sexy, but she's also super smart and kick ass and stuff!" does not work anymore. Similar to Duke Nukem, you could keep going with the standard, smart, athletic, buxom archaeologist, but nowadays that just seems like pandering to the lowest common denominator. Sure, there's nothing wrong with the occasional 90s nostalgia, but that will only get you so far.

Does the redesign really need to turn her into an emo-looking, angsty, Twilight saga reject? Even more to the point... All of this talk of turning her into an emotional, slightly insecure, horror movie survival type girl who at first cries and shivers and acts desperately and then is stronger for it leaves me a bit concerned. I'm all for deeper characters, but is the answer to her being a "sex" symbol to take her the complete opposite direction and make her severely "vulnerable?" Lara, while buxom was always a rather strong feminine character, and while I'm sure there is some merit to the argument that she (as a role model) might have encouraged those unrealistic expectations of the female form, trying to turn her into an "every woman" type character doesn't exactly feel as if it's going to accomplish much either, other than to make a large number of insecure women who don't like being reminded of how physically inadequate they might be compared to other girls feel a bit vindicated.

Words like "emo" and "angsty" get tossed around so much that it's getting extremely frustrating and annoying. It seems that showing any emotion that is slightly pained, sad, or angry will be classified as "angsty". Somehow it's okay to portray emotions as blandly as possible in what I like to call "blandism". This is something that bleeds through all medium, not just video games, and it's really pissing me off and it's something I hope I'll be able to fix if I ever get in the industry.

But from what we're getting in the GameInformer article, Laura is fresh out of college and exploring lands with her fellow colleges and a professor she looks up to. Suddenly, she is shipwrecked and awakes upside down, wrapped in a cocoon, with a dead body next to her. She lights herself on fire to escape, crashes to the floor and screams in pain. Then she meets a psychotic villager and has to kill him to survive (the article states that death will have a weight to it). She's muddy, bloody, and scared as fuck.

How the hell should she react?

Whether you like this new direction is not the issue here, nor is whether or not they will succeed.

So what say you, Escapist community? Is the "big boobs", "women as visual sexual objects" stuff truly as relevant as it's being made out to be, or should we stop being so sensitive about the whole issue?

There's definitely a place for all sorts of hooters out there, but it is definitely not something that we are being overly sensitive about. This is a problem that spreads through all media, this is not exclusive to games. This is not the 90s anymore, people are grown up, and people don't just want boobs to jump around like helium balloons anymore. Video games are still a young medium, and if we can overcome objectifying the sexes (yes, males are not excluded from this problem, just look at all those hunky space marines) then the industry will be better for it.

 

[Jumplion]

Snip

I know I won't be answering you're entire post (PM me if you want a further debate on this, I would love to continue this conversation), but I would like to quote/paraphrase MovieBob here;

"I hate the sentiment of 'not everything has to be about something, man!' It's such a defeatist statement. I mean, sure, not everything has to be about something, but isn't it better if it is? Movies are all the more better when stuff is happening to people you care about."

 

[Marmooset]

What? People are quitting every game with big beasts? That's what QQing means, not crying.

Apologies if I'm not the first to point this out, but QQ'ing does mean crying. It's two eyes with tears in the corner.

 

[presidentjlh]

It's not something I really care about nor notice when I'm playing a game, I'm more interested in merely surviving and killing my enemies in most of the games I play, and in the others, well, they're sports games, again, not an issue.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

1. Redesigned laura is still supermodel in her appearance, she just doesn't look like a barbie, and her breasts still seem fairly large.

2. If "Large Breasts" are part of the characterization of your character, you have a failed character.

3. Laura is still killing the fuck out of sucka's, she's just doing it with climbing picks and flareguns now.

4. Being realistic and vulnerable doesn't make her less badass. This isn't like Samus Aran, who got character assasinated into a whiny needy emo when she had been a badass bounty hunter for years. This reboot is set at the BEGINNING of Laura's career, she's a college kid on a bloody internship.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

What? People are quitting every game with big beasts? That's what QQing means, not crying.

Apologies if I'm not the first to point this out, but QQ'ing does mean crying. It's two eyes with tears in the corner.

Contrary to popular belief, QQ is not a set of crying eyes. It actually originated with the advent of Warcraft II. On battlenet, you could press ALT+Q+Q to immediately exit the match and program. Thus the term "QQ" was to tell people to just quit because they are unskilled. The term later developed and lost it's origin and is usually mistaken as crying eyes.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=QQ