Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[Erttheking]

Snip

None of those people are so bare bones that they're showing off their rib cages.

 

[Redryhno]

First, I live in the USA and many of those images are simply not representative of what you see. At least not in the rough age range of the women depicted here. This is not at all representative of the body shape and weight of women you would find on, say, the average university campus or at a bar for upper 20's\low 30's. I would like to know how they came to their average female body. I get the feeling that they used the mean where they should be using the median.

Second, "heavy" Cortana is hot.

Yeah, that's another thing. They look more like my mother, who's nearly sixty and has been on and off fitness for the past twenty years(really shitty back problems have made it difficult for her to keep it up though, been off it for something like two years at the moment) and she considers herself horribly overweight. Not because of some kind of social pressures, but because she can't fit into the clothes she bought when she was "thin", which was still alot thinner than these shopped models.

Not to say that I don't see women my age that look like this, but they're a minority. Considering most of the characters are in their late teens to early twenties, normally the prime physical age for most people, it's honestly sorta normal once you factor in most of them rely on their bodies being in peak physical condition to SURVIVE most of the stuff they go through.

I mean, I would love most of them to have more muscle, but this is just fat that's tacked onto them...

I'd also like to add that I think it's a great idea for them to show that people can be happy at various weights, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the healthiest. I'm all for people not being suicidal or hating themselves to the core because of what they look like in comparison to others, but this isn't the way to go about it. Because these are FICTIONAL FANTASY CHARACTERS.

The better way to go about this would be to shop real models here.

Snip

None of those people are so bare bones that they're showing off their rib cages.

You sure? You can see the middle and far right girl's ribs pretty well...

 

[Ian Beattie]

Fourth. CHILL! Jesus Christ, it's people criticizing a lack of creativity in video games.

A lack of fat people isn't a lack of creativity

 

[Neverhoodian]

These comments...good God, these comments...

"Chubby"

"Thunder-thighed"

"Fat ass"

"Morbidly obese?!"

Jesus Christ, people. Society has a warped view of the human body indeed if it considers these Photoshopped pics to be "morbidly obese."

 

[Ukomba]

Terrible, I've seen cos-players look better... but I've seen them look worse too.

 

[Asclepion]

And the average American woman can't do a backflip kick into someone's face, either.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Thank you.

I'm not sure that's how it works. And frankly I don't see how criticizing body types in media or feeling pressured to convert to the norm because of overwhelming pressure (Which is a big problem world wide). And I don't really see what "Always feel the need to be loved" has to do with this. It's more like "Not being judged for not falling in line." Hell, sometimes I'm pressured to play basketball just because I'm call. Society has a lot of uncreative and narrow minded twits who want everything to be nice and static.

I doubt most other countries have concern over the internet being slower, but when that came around in this one just about everyone else jumped on the government for it. And plenty of these things seem stupid, depression seems stupid to people who haven't gone though it. Human beings are a very un-elegant race. (That and I'm pretty sure Belemia exists in other first world countries)

Where is the shaming? All it says about developers is that "They say that they portray everything as hyper-realistic yet seem to struggle with the female body" and they say nothing about players. It's criticizing trends, don't take it so freaking personally.

That's the point me and so many others are trying to get across. When having average weight, a woman can look gorgeous. Standards of unrealistic thinness aren't needed. (Ok fair enough, the photoshops kinda fucked it up. I still think Christie was a massive step towards being realistic though. Not to mention they're chubby at worst, and I consider the way people are calling them much worse to be very telling)

Actually apparently 700,000 people in England suffer from eating disorders.

http://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-beat/media-centre/information-and-statistics-about-eating-disorders

Like I said, we are not a graceful species at all.

 

[Erttheking]

Fourth. CHILL! Jesus Christ, it's people criticizing a lack of creativity in video games.

A lack of fat people isn't a lack of creativity

Good thing I didn't say that. Only ever creating un-muscular runway models that seriously need to eat a cheeseburger on the other hand, IS a lack of creativity.

 

[ILikeEggs]

Well, that's kind of related to the concern that the group has, that the ever presence of this kind of body image represents an unattainable ideal for the average person, the pursuit of which could result in the development of the eating disorders they provide information about.

I intensely dislike the defeatist attitude that "Not everyone can have a physique like a runway model, therefore they should accept whatever terrible shape they're in as some sort of normal", but at the same time I do agree with the first part of the statement.
However, just because no one can reach a certain type of bodily perfection, doesn't mean they shouldn't be concerned about their health and working towards improving it. The main problem in this whole issue is not portrayal of the human body in magazines, ads, movies, TV and video games; the big problem is the shitty advice and health propaganda spewed out by a massive amount of medical and nutrition professionals, who are backed and funded by shitty science from shady corporations.


Look at the old food pyramid, for example. 6-11 servings of carbs in a day? Whoever the hell thought that was a reasonable guideline was probably out of their tiny little mind. Hell, the FDA has no recommended upper limit for sugar consumption in a day. If only the government and medical establishments actually gave a damn about people's health, rather than the bottom line of how many sugar/carb filled processed foods they sold, people might actually have reasonable, scientifically sound nutrition and exercise guidelines to follow.

With about four hours of strength training/high intensity interval training a week, and a diet that's low in sugar, carbs, heavily processed foods and higher in fat and protein, with a good variety of nutrient sources, most people can get to a point where they have some visible musculature, and little or no flab around their thighs, stomach and arms.

Also, I love that Wonder Woman fan art. That's what I was hoping the DC cinematic universe WW would look like, and then they went and cast Gal Gadot. Sigh.

 

[Callate]

No one is going to change the standards by which people judge others to be beautiful by trying to shame artists into presenting something in line with an agenda contrary to "looking attractive to the artist and/or his/her boss" and/or "selling well".

This doesn't significantly occur in fashion magazines, television, or movies, where there's at least hypothetically a limit imposed by the actual actors/models that they can capture in their images (despite the well-documented modifications of Photoshop and the like). Why would anyone expect it to occur in a medium that isn't nearly as constrained by reality?

The good news is that the studies I've seen roundly suggest that actual people don't expect their potential mates to meet the standards supposedly set by models, actors, porn stars, and video game characters. I think we'd be far better off reminding those with a potential for self-image problems where the reality lies when it matters- in the people who actually judge you, fairly or not- than trying to make the fantasy line up with the reality when there are all sorts of forces not unreasonably aligned against that ever happening.

 

[Rastrelly]

Maybe people should be encouraged to lose weight rather than making their fictional characters fatter.

*Braces for incoming hate*

People should be encouraged to lose weight if they are overweight and gain weight if they are underweight, this is more like correct approach. Though, considering modern policies I see in societal government, I'd say such politics would be hypocritical towards current approach of 'whoever you are, you are sooo beautiful and unique!!!1111'

Captcha: comfort zone. Yeas, captcha, you're right, as always.

 

[PunkRex]

Legitimate thing to ask for I think.

However, these are American average body types in real-life. Things like The Legend of Zelda, Halo and Final Fantasy don't have to have woman who look like this. Not to mention Lara Croft and fighting game characters, in which you have to be physically fit to do what they do. They gave bad examples to be honest.

Hey, HEY! Stop being so understanding and polite, we won't have none of that here.

Butt cereal, it's perfectly fine to ask for representation but this is kind of a silly way to do it. Most video games are about characters under taking high amounts of physical activity, chances are they wouldn't be anything but athletic, also 'average American' and average human are two very, VERY different things.

Granted, there are a far larger amount of over weight male characters in video games then female ones, so it's a fair complaint.

On a side note, I'm a 26 year old dude who weights 9 and a half stone, WHERE'S MY REPRESENTATION!?... I'm joking of course, I wouldn't fancy my chances in a life or death tournament or fighting some incarnation of the God of death with nothing but a sword.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

uhhh... I think whoever made these "realistic proportions" forgot that there are women out there who have incredible figures and not everyone is chubby or thunder thighed

Hush you! Fat people need to believe everyone else is fat too.
These forums don't need more reasonable people spewing facts and observations!

 

[ecoho]

so let me get this straight they took a bunch of characters who live in a world were they are constantly fighting and made them the same size as the average American woman......hers a thought how about we compare those girls to say female MMA fighters or hell half the medics in the US military(I believe they still have the largest number of female service members in there)
the only one in those pictures that seems legit is the GTA girl who could actually look like that, the rest lead too active a lifestyle to ever look like that.

 

[LazyAza]

This pisses me off on so many levels. And I love the idea of encouraging more body diversity in game character design but for the love of god this is NOT how you do it. Geezus. All they've done is vandalize existing artwork, shame people who may have body shapes similar to the original character designs, promote poor health and excessive eating and generally make a whole joke out of the entire point of doing this in the first place.

I mean ffs some of these women characters have muscular definition and solid bone structure because they are super physical and strong and need to be to be good at what they do and this is a BAD thing to these people? garrhhh so infuriating. The worst one by far though is Cortana because that version of her used an actual real full body scan of the lady they based her on, and she wasn't skinny or unrealistic in her body shape at all.

 

[Fox12]

Maybe people should be encouraged to lose weight rather than making their fictional characters fatter.

*Braces for incoming hate*

You most certainly didn't mean it, but you kinda pointed out the problem when you refereed to a character getting realistic proportions as "getting fatter". One of the stars of the Sopranos suffered from anorexia, and while the show was still running, she beat the problem and started eating properly and gained weight to the point where she was average for her size. People called her fat.

American views of the female body are kinda messed up right now. People think super unhealthy thin is the default for women and there's a lot of pressure to meet that unreasonable standard, the media playing a big hand in pushing it, and me and quite a few other people are starting to notice it and are being really creeped by it. I saw a mannequin in a store 6-12 months ago, then looked at my average height Mom who has been on a major exercise and healthy eating trip for awhile now. It was disturbing how much smaller it was. Reminds me of this.

Spoiler

http://i0.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/av1.jpg?zoom=2&resize=680%2C1019

Add to it, that Christie character from Teken 5 actually looks like she's anorexic, I can see her freaking rib cage!

In my mind, this more of a testament to how absolutely morbidly obese the average American is, more than anything.
If it's a statement about how women are portrayed in video games, that's fair enough, but I'd rather not everyone be Bob from Tekken in my fiction, thanks.

These women aren't obese. They're normal sized.

EDIT: *Sigh* once again people take criticism of video games way too personally.

Good lord, Nabooru needed to gain a little weight. You could fit a band-aid around her waist.

It's a little weird the two normal views of weight in America are morbidly obese or painfully thin. It's polarizing the image of a healthy body.

 

[Ishigami]

Yea nice...

My issue with stuff like this will always be: They (Devs) don't have to depict average, normal or realistic bodies.

Some examples are rather baffling on top of that. Cortana for example is just holographic image, it has no need to look realistic or human at all for that matter.
The GTA V cover girl was made apparently with Kate Upton in mind, she actually looks a lot like this.

The very next thing is what is an average American women? (On that note: Helena is French and Christie is from Brazil)
I mean if they took the average weight than that figure is probably distorted by a lot of overweight people. Being too slim is bad alright, being too fat however is too.
What I'm saying is that they apparently went from underweight to overweight and want to promote a healthier body image? does not compute for me...

Not to mention that a lot of these characters are supposed to be super fit and trained, the opposite of the average couch potato.

 

[EvilRoy]

I guess I'm in favour of an anti-bulimia message, but I have to say... If you're going to photoshop the characters to fall in line with average body size, maybe you shouldn't have picked the average from a country with 1/3 the population considered obese.

Because that is going to skew the average away from healthy.

 

[maninahat]

Legitimate thing to ask for I think.

However, these are American average body types in real-life. Things like The Legend of Zelda, Halo and Final Fantasy don't have to have woman who look like this. Not to mention Lara Croft and fighting game characters, in which you have to be physically fit to do what they do. They gave bad examples to be honest.

A game can have whatever shape of women they like, but show me the games that experiment with having chubby (or even just "average") female protagonists. Even fighting games will have the odd fat male fighter, but in the games industry, such women practically don't exist.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Legitimate thing to ask for I think.

However, these are American average body types in real-life. Things like The Legend of Zelda, Halo and Final Fantasy don't have to have woman who look like this. Not to mention Lara Croft and fighting game characters, in which you have to be physically fit to do what they do. They gave bad examples to be honest.

I agree on the bad examples point - the women they chose are all highly active and athletic in their game-life and have every reason to be highly toned -- even Rikku plays Blitzball and has every reason to be in great shape for it. The Dead or Alive 5 chick I don't know? might be an exception, not familiar enough with the game to honestly make a judgement. Cortana - computer generated image so? yeah no reason for her to have or not have a certain shape beyond aesthetics of the designer of her program. The Bikini girl from GTA 5 is a potentially legitimate example though - but in the collection she's in there aren't many others.

If they'd chosen some less-active characters, perhaps Princess Peach, who, for most of the games she's in either sits around or drives a car. Some random eye-candy chicks in certain games whose jobs seem to be essentially to sit around some guy's house/palace/harem/bar etc. would probably be better examples, if only because they're not given any reason to be fit and active as main characters or characters in a fighting game.