Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[Erttheking]

Snip

They were just trying to get the point across that the average female in gaming is thinner than the average American (Though in hindsight that just opened the window for everyone calling America fat. Even though apparently obesity rates are blowing up world wide...but according to Paragon Fury that's America's fault too. Because of course it is) not saying "these characters should be changed to this" and more "these characters don't look like the average woman". They could've done it better (Rikkuu looks rather deformed on closer inspection) but overall the average woman is not that thin. No one is saying "we shouldn't have this body type in gaming" and more along the lines of "can we get something else in addition to this body type please"

I don't see an ounce of muscle on any of them.

Ok. I don't see it in any of them.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

People who make this shit are probably the same types of folks who "reimagine Disney princesses". Seeing larger ladies like that flipping and cartwheeling would be quite disconcerting, similar to all the bizarre shit in The Polar Express, where old folks have the acrobatic prowess of Olympic gymnasts; it would plunge them straight into uncanny valley territory.

 

[Redryhno]

This just makes me wonder how Lara Croft or Riku could keep doing what she does with +15kg around their hips.

The same way they used to be able to do it with triple-D-cups?

The same way a noticeably obese plumber can jump several times his own height?

The same way Yangus or Torneko can mow down tons of monsters without keeling over from a heart attack?

We're talking about video games, pleading reality is disingenuous.

Isn't that sorta the argument being made in favor of these though? That realism needs to addressed with these body types not being realistic? If someone's going to complain that a character isn't unhealthy fat enough, people opposing it get to pull realism into it as well.

They didn't bring Mario into this, they brought Lara Croft. They didn't talk about Dragon Quest, they're talking about Tekken, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy. Games where there's a level of realism in the wacky universes they're a part of. Nobody expects realism in Mario. Miyamoto's come out and told everyone to think of each Mario game more like it's a TV series or play complete with special effects and why they play out roughly the same way each time, because everything you do is, in-universe, scripted. You punch blocks because you're supposed to and you've got a wicked SFX team, you jump on Lizards of Unusual Size because the script says so, you "massacre" countless minions because the story they're putting on demands it.

People can tolerate the gigantic jugs, there's fit people that do have abnormally large chesticles in the real world, but there's not a huge amount of people as unfit as the shops are making them into that do what those characters do on a regular basis. You either get to play the realism card completely whether it's beneficial or not to you, or you don't.

They're not insulting, or condemning these characters for being fit, as obviously they would be from the lifestyles they lead. They're simply showing what they would look like as an average American.

They're not saying all Americans are fat, it's an average; the middle-ground. If the former were the case, the average would be a hell of a lot worse off.

Their call for more realistic body type diversity does not condemn healthy lifestyles, or the characters that lead them. They just feel it would add to our constant drive to better digitally replicate our reality.

Those average body types are damn sexy.

The thing is, those aren't realistic body type diversity. They didn't reduce the boobage, they didn't tone them up, they didn't shift weight around, they just added a bunch of soft fat to them and called it a day.

And while I like girls to be heavier and not be twigs, I'd much rather it be in muscle or at the very least hard fat. Not to mention their arms and legs are STILL twigs in proportion and they've got paunches, not bellies. They don't have necks, they've got jowls, which can be fine, but normally people that are fit only really have them from certain angles, not from looking straight ahead.

And this is ignoring the fact that there's only two that even fit the criteria they're judging them by. That of AMERICANS. When nearly every character up there is not American in their country of origin. Which really sickens me because most of the people I've seen that call for this crap also talk about appropriation half the damn time like it's the worst thing to ever happen, and that's exactly what they're doing with this here and they don't even realize it, or if they do, they ignore it because it's them doing it.

The point (as stated by Bulimia.com) was to start a conversation about real-life eating disorders, using the appearances of video game characters as common ground. It's a thought exercise relating to our world, not theirs. Having conversations about realism is a interesting concern, but a separate one.

Every fictional universe is going to play fast and loose with realism one way or another. Even Batman's athlete body should've crapped out on him after about 10 years. Making this about athletics and realism misses a broader issue that warrants a discussion.

If it was to start a conversation, you'd think they'd shop REAL PEOPLE...not fictional characters...Point to those people as shopped images, or even the multitude of "pornstars look like this without make-up and costumes" images around. Or even some average people that look good with what they've got.

This just reeks more of "they need to change for us to change/be accepted"(the latter more often than the former) more than "It's ok to have your body not be perfect".

 

[Steve Waltz]

(I will say they probably represent the average American feminist, though),

...Really? We're stooping to mudslinging levels that are THAT low?

What?s this ?we?? I?m me; I?m not a part of a ?we.?

As far as mudslinging? I personally don?t see it as mudslinging. If you consider that comment mudslinging, then you should admit they drew first blood. I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

 

[ILikeEggs]

4'11" isn't an outlier? Ok, whatever you say.

Stop being disingenuous. Anyone with half a brain can tell from your sentence structure you were insinuating that she, like most athletes who look that way are outliers. Only a person with incredibly convoluted reading comprehension could conclude you meant people who are 4'11" are outliers. Also, how the hell does her sounding like a toddler factor into a discussion about body fat and muscle mass?

More to the point, people who look like that naturally, with no effort on their part may be outliers, sure. But most people can pretty easily look close to that if they were to simply change their lifestyle and habits. Would it have to be a drastic change? Sure, but for some reason, people think a drastic lifestyle change means one that is impossible to maintain, which is completely untrue if you're following an actually healthy lifestyle, rather than the crap peddled by most nutrition and health outlets.

Honestly, you don't look healthy. I'd be worried about your bones shattering if I bumped into you.

Please tell me that you're joking. If you're not, would you mind telling me whether you're from America? Is this considered underweight where you live (because it's not).

Honestly, I'm finding it hard to tell whether he's being sarcastic, or if his view on healthy body image is horrifically warped by decades of corporations telling people how and what to eat.

 

[Erttheking]

(I will say they probably represent the average American feminist, though),

...Really? We're stooping to mudslinging levels that are THAT low?

What?s this ?we?? I?m me; I?m not a part of a ?we.?

As far as mudslinging? I personally don?t see it as mudslinging. If you consider that comment mudslinging, then you should admit they drew first blood. I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

Fair enough.

Uh. America DOES have pretty bad obesity problems. That's besides the point though, they weren't using fat as an insult. You were. Besides, half of the women that were photoshopped aren't even fat at the end. They're normal sized. The average woman is NOT as thin as the pre-photoshop characters. The ones that are fat are chubby at worst.

That and calling American feminists fat out of nowhere is not how I would describe "defending" women. It's how I would describe a low blow though.

 

[Des-Esseintes]

Do the people advocating for putting obese characters in games 'just cause' REALLY want to go down the path of shoehorning them into every game and then facing all the token stereotypes that will bring? I don't think they will like the outcome.

Let the cream of the crop super athletic demi-gods portrayed in video games look like cream of the crop super-athletic demi gods please.

C'mon, bud, no one's advocating for obese characters to be shoehorned into every game.

Me personally, I would like to see a variety of body types better represented. Not entirely for some social justice reason - more so for the actual variety part. Understandably, due to videogames reliance on militarycombatpunchfacers, realism dictates that most characters look like super athletic demi-gods. But, given how many people in this thread have decried realism (and given how I doubt people want Mario to look like Chris Hemsworth or their favourite body-pillow bird to look like a female body builder) maybe they don't always have to look that way. It's not even just about the fatitude, my ex was a curvy Armenian lady - no amount of exercise was going to give her this videogame standard body.

Both genders seem to suffer from this, though women generally have the rawer end of the urine-soaked stick. To use FF7 as the example again, Tifa and Yuffie at least have some context for looking like super athletic demi-gods (though shouldn't Tifa be broader and bulkier? Whatevs), Aeris is a flower girl who occasionally casts 'cure' - so why do they all consistently have the exact same body? every lady in that game, other than Aeris's mum, looks exactly the same. It would be cool if they could've had the same level of variety that the men in FF7 do - muscle bound, skinny, average, fatty-fat-fat-fat. Again, purely just for the sake of some variety, I would prefer that. I ain't coming down hard on some social justice bent here, and I would also like some more variety in male characters, but it's pretty weird that 99.9% of female characters have the exact same straight-line with boobies character model (as opposed to pear shaped, or apple, or hourglass). The fatness factor isn't really the main issue for me.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Another issue is one of development resources. Different body types need different models, textures, animations (mocap or otherwise) and so on. It's the reason why there are so very few games with even remotely realistic body types. In Skyrim f.ex, you have male and female adult and one child model. There *are* body sliders but even at their most extremes the difference isn't dramatic (and all that happens is that the scale of various meshes is altered on the x, y and z proportionally).

When one uses a body mod in SKyrim, like CBBE or similar, it changes the body of all female adults in the game, and likewise for male models. If a game like Skyrim has so few models, what games precisely would be able to have so many? Mass Effect had one set of animations for male and female Shepards as it was. We're lucky if there is more one one model/animation of each sex as it is.

In fairness, I wouldn't have an issue with larger characters of either sex as NPCs, or weight sliders in character creation, but fattening up athletic characters is unrealistic, serves no purpose, benefits no one and requires more resources than developers have. For Heaven's sake, they can't even make AAA games that run at 60 FPS yet, in 2015. I'd rather have games that work than fat protagonists.

 

[BarkBarker]

There is a notable work of visual design here, the fact that these people are all wearing clothing suited for their original bodies. They are "visually obese", they look far too big but that's because they are too big for THEIR CLOTHES. These are small, skin showing pieces or tight fitting. They make an average person look bigger by exaggeration, it just doesn't look right. An average man or woman in tiny, close fitting clothes isn't something we often find because it's not really that appealing, unfitting clothing always makes something look ugly.

 

[Des-Esseintes]

All making established characters obese really accomplished was having people point out that they are now obese and how stupid the whole thing was. If there isn't some deeper meaning, I don't really see the point to be honest.

I think the point was: "Don't work yourself up into a vomiting, pain filled mess because you don't fit this standard."

We're two-hundred posts in of people believing there's something more nefarious in the message, so maybe they should have put it more clearly? I'm not getting where all the aggravation is coming from though myself.

 

[Redryhno]

(I will say they probably represent the average American feminist, though),

...Really? We're stooping to mudslinging levels that are THAT low?

What?s this ?we?? I?m me; I?m not a part of a ?we.?

As far as mudslinging? I personally don?t see it as mudslinging. If you consider that comment mudslinging, then you should admit they drew first blood. I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

Fair enough.

Uh. America DOES have pretty bad obesity problems. That's besides the point though, they weren't using fat as an insult. You were. Besides, half of the women that were photoshopped aren't even fat at the end. They're normal sized. The average woman is NOT as thin as the pre-photoshop characters. The ones that are fat are chubby at worst.

That and calling American feminists fat out of nowhere is not how I would describe "defending" women. It's how I would describe a low blow though.

Buddy, Rikku, Cortana, Tifa, and Sonya are all twice their pre-shopped size without any actual toning done. They're overweight for what they're supposedly doing constantly(with the exception of Cortana who is still the most hilarious choice they've got considering she's literally a piece of software in a world where software often just chooses a shape THEY want).

The best argument I can come up with in favor of them is that they had good intentions, but were rushed or done by someone that doesn't know how to photoshop.

There is a notable work of visual design here, the fact that these people are all wearing clothing suited for their original bodies. They are "visually obese", they look far too big but that's because they are too big for THEIR CLOTHES. These are small, skin showing pieces or tight fitting. They make an average person look bigger by exaggeration, it just doesn't look right. An average man or woman in tiny, close fitting clothes isn't something we often find because it's not really that appealing, unfitting clothing always makes something look ugly.

I...did not even think about this...but yeah, you're sorta right.

All making established characters obese really accomplished was having people point out that they are now obese and how stupid the whole thing was. If there isn't some deeper meaning, I don't really see the point to be honest.

I think the point was: "Don't work yourself up into a vomiting, pain filled mess because you don't fit this standard."

We're two-hundred posts in of people believing there's something more nefarious in the message, so maybe they should have put it more clearly? I'm not getting where all the aggravation is coming from though myself.

One part gaming constantly being told they need to "get with the times" when the times being referenced are a few steps back half the time, four parts drastically changing established characters and their designs, and something like a dozen parts from people thinking that this is actually going to make a difference at all when most people get more from real life/live-action media than they do from video games.

Don't you think it's sorta silly that they brought out game characters here instead of real people? That they shopped peak, ideal, physically superior characters leading extraordinary lives into looking like the common drab real life body types while insisting they still do all that stuff?

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

(I will say they probably represent the average American feminist, though),

...Really? We're stooping to mudslinging levels that are THAT low?

What?s this ?we?? I?m me; I?m not a part of a ?we.?

As far as mudslinging? I personally don?t see it as mudslinging. If you consider that comment mudslinging, then you should admit they drew first blood. I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

What should be understood however, is there is a HUGE difference between " being overweight" and having a different body type. Simply because someone is an endomoprh or an apple shape does not mean they are fat. The pictures are not actually of overweight women, they are just different body types. Not everyone can be an ectomorph, or an hourglass figure regardless of how much weight they lose. You can be underweight and still not have a flat belly due to your natural body shape. The idea that some think someone is fat simply because people have different body types does not mean they actually are, it is only showing ignorance of the human form. I personally would like to see more body types included in gaming. nhaving a variety of different heights, races, body types and personalities would be great.

More of this:

 

[Lightknight]

4'11" isn't an outlier? Ok, whatever you say.

First off, Being short has nothing to do with being thin and buff. In fact, it's easier to get fat if you're small due to less energy required to move your body without necessarily having to eat less. You insult her height and her voice without that having ANYTHING to do with the fact that normal weights specifically take height into account and insulting a voice is just petty and unrelated.

Secondly, 4' 11" is within the normal range of human height even though it's very close to (but taller than) dwarfism.

Thirdly, she's 5' tall, not 4' 11". Fact check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kacy_Catanzaro . She's three inches shorter than the world average for adult females. Three inches may make a big differences in some cases *ahem* but not here.

Lastly, do you really think I'm going to have any trouble posting images of various completely toned female athletes that are known as completely healthy?

Maria Sharapova 6' 2"

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBuc2Z6ibtB8UmjNkXDGBiNKkpt7db7KXoc8sQBlYhkBOLJXdS

So unhealthy...[/sarcasm] I mean, if you just want me to find pictures of healthy female athletes then you just have to ask. But walk into any gym in America and you'll find women that shape.

They aren't unrealistic body types. They are fully attainable through reasonable means and primarily discipline. My wife doesn't use the stair machine for an hour every night just to have assholes assume she's bulimic or unrealistic.

 

[mecegirl]

Well. They look like average American females to me. Though just making their waists a bit wider would do that. Most of the time that's part of what makes the characters look less like actual women. Even fit women's waists don't taper that much. Hell... even models as skinny as they are, get their waistlines photoshopped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKlVyUJw3TM

 

[Paragon Fury]

(I will say they probably represent the average American feminist, though),

...Really? We're stooping to mudslinging levels that are THAT low?

What?s this ?we?? I?m me; I?m not a part of a ?we.?

As far as mudslinging? I personally don?t see it as mudslinging. If you consider that comment mudslinging, then you should admit they drew first blood. I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

What should be understood however, is there is a HUGE difference between " being overweight" and having a different body type. Simply because someone is an endomoprh or an apple shape does not mean they are fat. The pictures are not actually of overweight women, they are just different body types. Not everyone can be an ectomorph, or an hourglass figure regardless of how much weight they lose. You can be underweight and still not have a flat belly due to your natural body shape. The idea that some think someone is fat simply because people have different body types does not mean they actually are, it is only showing ignorance of the human form. I personally would like to see more body types included in gaming. nhaving a variety of different heights, races, body types and personalities would be great.

More of this:

No. I'm willing to put actual, real US dollars down this. If the altered Helena, Riku or Cortana went into a reputable doctor, the doctor would give them a nice long chat about how they're very, very overweight.

Almost all of these characters were perfectly fine beforehand, or only need to be slightly bigger to present a "reasonable" image.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

This ISN'T fat:

This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

 

[Lightknight]

(I will say they probably represent the average American feminist, though),

...Really? We're stooping to mudslinging levels that are THAT low?

What?s this ?we?? I?m me; I?m not a part of a ?we.?

As far as mudslinging? I personally don?t see it as mudslinging. If you consider that comment mudslinging, then you should admit they drew first blood. I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

What should be understood however, is there is a HUGE difference between " being overweight" and having a different body type. Simply because someone is an endomoprh or an apple shape does not mean they are fat. The pictures are not actually of overweight women, they are just different body types. Not everyone can be an ectomorph, or an hourglass figure regardless of how much weight they lose. You can be underweight and still not have a flat belly due to your natural body shape. The idea that some think someone is fat simply because people have different body types does not mean they actually are, it is only showing ignorance of the human form. I personally would like to see more body types included in gaming. nhaving a variety of different heights, races, body types and personalities would be great.

More of this:

No. I'm willing to put actual, real US dollars down this. If the altered Helena, Riku or Cortana went into a reputable doctor, the doctor would give them a nice long chat about how they're very, very overweight.

Almost all of these characters were perfectly fine beforehand, or only need to be slightly bigger to present a "reasonable" image.

That's my primary point in here. Those photoshopped characters are absolutely in the obese category. While I personally think the medical definition of overweight is them guessing at best, those girls would be healthier if they lost some weight.