Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[VanQ]

Weird. I thought the average American woman was actually larger than that (thanks TV). Either that or Australian women are creeping closer to the "American average".
I'll put my hand up and admit I've slept with a few women that size. Who gives a shit; nothing wrong with it. If I was a shallow narcissist I would have missed out on some good times. Just because they have a few extra pounds doesn't make them repugnant sub-humans.

Video games are fantasy, as is porn. If I based my bodily self worth on males in either area I'd be a shut in; cowering under my sheets and stewing in self-loathing.

Australia long since overtook America as the fattest nation in the world by ratio. That is, America has the most fat people by sheer virtue of population size, but Australia has a higher concentration of fat.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/australias-health-at-a-glance-were-fat-depressed-and-battling-cholesterol/story-fneuz9ev-1226765535472
http://www.smh.com.au/news/health/australia-pips-us-as-worlds-fattest-nation/2008/06/19/1213770827371.html

 

[Weaver]

In other news I really had no idea Conrad Zimmerman was a contributor here. Shows where I've been!

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

I don't think video games have an obligation to be anything, but it's nice if they give their customers what they want.

According to whom? Idealized characters are boring. Flawed characters are interesting. And you probably shouldn't bring up Hollywood considering that there's currently a major backlash against them right now for how unoriginal they are in remaking everything. You know what the majority of people who customize their characters do how? They make a character ugly for comedic purposes? Every ugly character in Game of Thrones begs to differ.

To you. Everyone has different definitions of attractive. You've honestly never heard of chubby chasers? You're projecting a lot.

Don't tell me why I'm arguing what I'm arguing. Half of modern day video game developers couldn't imagine their way out of a paper bag, and I feel very comfortable calling them out on that in general. That and when they do create female characters, half of the time they seem to go for anorexic models as a template.

So pardon my big fat American ass for thinking video games could do better. And they can. I love video games but the lack of creativity is PATHETIC at times. I've recently put in 80 hours to Sunless Sea because it had the guts to step outside of what was considered safe, and that's a rarity nowadays.

 

[Christian Neihart]

It's not like model thin with bug boobs and skimpy outfit hasn't been a default design for a while. Along with either an Ice queen or child like personality.

On a side note, where the heck are the Luccas, Aylas, Marle and Jades?

 

[Silence]

This is so beautifully stupid. For all americans out there: You know who you have to thank for reinforcing my stereotyped about you.

I'll say it: These photoshops are overweight, not "normal", and not "realistic", at least not more than the original.

 

[Silence]

This is so beautifully stupid. For all americans out there: You know who you have to thank for reinforcing my stereotyped about you.

I'll say it: These photoshops are overweight, not "normal", and not "realistic", at least not more than the original.

Why us? We haven't been the fattest for years.

It's stil the stereotype. I could switch it to english women, but I don't know if that's true, either.

 

[lastcigarette]

Why I am I not surprised this article is on the Escapist but certain other gaming & tech articles only show up on EveryJoe.

 

[Travis Fischer]

So, to sum it up...

1. This really says more about the average American than it does video game characters.
2. Nobody expects professional athletes to look like the average American, why would you expect it from people who can jump 30 feet straight up and knock out dinosaurs with their bare hands.
3. There are plenty of real-life people that look like those fictional characters, both athletes and non-athletes.
4. When all else fails, George Carlin is always right.

 

[someguy1231]

I don't think video games have an obligation to be anything, but it's nice if they give their customers what they want.

And the vast majority of them don't want to play as a fat character.

According to whom? Idealized characters are boring. Flawed characters are interesting. And you probably shouldn't bring up Hollywood considering that there's currently a major backlash against them right now for how unoriginal they are in remaking everything. You know what the majority of people who customize their characters do how? They make a character ugly for comedic purposes? Every ugly character in Game of Thrones begs to differ.

When I said "idealized", I was referring to appearance, and also only to female characters. Yes, that's a double standard, but this project only featured female characters so that's who I was focusing my comments on.

My source for what the vast majority of players create is based mainly on three sources: World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and Skyrim mods.

In WoW, among female characters, the four most popular races are human, blood elf, night elf, and draenei, all of whom are widely considered to have the most attractive females. The least popular female races are Tauren and Dwarves, who are widely considered the least attractive. Do you think that's just a coincidence? My source is the website realmpop.com. According to this site, female dwarves (the closest thing WoW has to a BBW) are less than 2% of all female characters, and less than 1% of all characters in general.

My source for GW2 is a graph released by the developers themselves soon after the game launched, which showed that Humans and Norn (basically humans but taller and the same proportions) were by far the most popular races, the vaguely-human Sylvari were third, and the Asura and Charr were by far the least popular. It didn't break it down by gender, but based on my own experiences, 9 out of 10 Charr I encountered were male. Female Charr are probably the least "conventionally attractive and feminine" female race in the game. Combine that with the rareness of the Charr in general, and I think it's safe to say that female Charr are on the same level as female dwarves in WoW.

As for Skyrim, visit nexusmods.com and look at the what the most popular mods are effecting female characters. Almost all of them are meant to make them look more beautiful (by conventional standards, that is) or give them sexier outfits.

These three games are among the most popular games that have character creation, and all three of them also offer the player with the option to create a fat female character, or at least a female character who is not considered conventionally attractive. And in all three of those games, such female characters are the least popular when it comes to player creations. Therefore, I feel comfortable extrapolating from these three games to video games in general.

As for "comedic purposes", the only times I've seen gamers showing off fat or ugly characters are in threads that are specifically about showing off the most absurd or outlandish character they've created using create-a-character features.

To you. Everyone has different definitions of attractive. You've honestly never heard of chubby chasers? You're projecting a lot.

Of course I've heard of them. They're a very tiny niche. Tell developers to make a dating sim focused on fat girls if you think they deserve to be pandered to more. As I pointed out earlier, there are already games in which the player can create fat women, and the vast majority do not choose to do so.

Don't tell me why I'm arguing what I'm arguing. Half of modern day video game developers couldn't imagine their way out of a paper bag, and I feel very comfortable calling them out on that in general. That and when they do create female characters, half of the time they seem to go for anorexic models as a template.

You have no idea what "anorexic" looks like. There's a large middle ground between "overweight" and "anorexic", and I think most female characters fall under that (and believe me, I'm very familiar with the subject). Go ahead and post pictures of female characters you think look "anorexic". I've never seen any.

So pardon my big fat American ass for thinking video games could do better.

I'll use the same argument against you that you used against me: "better" according to whom? Most gamers would not consider a sudden proliferation of fat characters to be "better".

Oh, by the way, I'm overweight as well, so don't bother trying to use any "thin privilege" argument against me.

 

[Bat Vader]

Gotta say the photoshopped ones look much more attractive than their original counterparts. That's more so because I find women that have meat on their bones infinitely more attractive than skinny women.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

So, to sum it up...

Some minor nitpicks.

1. This really says more about the average American than it does video game characters.

Actually it says more about the body image issues that Americans with eating disorders have.

2. Nobody expects professional athletes to look like the average American, why would you expect it from people who can jump 30 feet straight up and knock out dinosaurs with their bare hands.

More like, people with body image issues expect the world to conform to their ideal, rather than to ideals of attractiveness, or athleticism ideals.

3. There are plenty of real-life people that look like those fictional characters, both athletes and non-athletes.

No nit pick here, but I certainly look closer to many of the before photoshopping images. Then again I'm unusually tiny and have the benefit of a high metabolism.

4. When all else fails, George Carlin is always right.

George Carlin isn't always right, but he is right more often than not.

Really to sum up the whole article. It's a sexist group who want female video game characters to look more "realistic"[footnote]By realistic they mean overweight.[/footnote] to conform to their situation. All because they have body image issues and want to "thin shame" instead of learning to be happy with themselves, or actually do something about their situation. Now not everyone can help being overweight, no matter how hard they work, and fat shaming is also still wrong. The age old saying "two wrongs don't make a right" comes to mind for me in this situation.

 

[Jake Martinez]

Maybe all my friends are just super sexy but most people I know aren't that large.

I was thinking the same thing.

I live in Australia, and we've had a recent uptick in obesity here, but I kept thinking to myself, "Damn, Americans must be fat".

Generally I don't get the point of these articles. Like, I can tell the difference between an idealized or stylized depiction in fiction or fantasy and real life. I would assume everyone else can as well.

 

[Aerosteam]

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.

Fucking great, I was searching up examples but what I mostly got were inflation fetish fan art. >_<

Anyway, here it is:

Spoiler

Fat Princess.

That's all I can think of. XD

I get where you're coming from, however there's a lack of fat, overweight and "avarage" characters in general, not just female ones. The only fat fighting game characters you probably have in mind of is Rufus (Street Fighter IV) and Bob (Tekken 6), which is only two.

I agree we should have more chubby female protagonists. Although I'd change it to more protagonists with different body types (weight, height, age, disabilities... hair colour) for both genders. I really do want more variety with all those, but I just can't see Lara Croft or Tifa type characters doing the kind of things they do, because it would require being physically fit.

Royalty, magic users and radio chatter type characters? Now there's some potential. Like I said, they just gave bad examples.

 

[Draconalis]

I think it should be noted that average for the Japanese is incredibly thin. It's an ethnic thing, they are more susceptible to diabetes with weight. What we would think as very healthy, the Japanese think is morbidly obese. And for them, apparently, it is.

How many of these characters aren't American, but are being forced into the American mold?

 

[Nazulu]

They're just asking, which is totally fine, unlike the assholes who feel they need to attack the developers for not catering to their every whim. They're has never been anything wrong with asking in my book.

We've always known there is some lack of diversity in most video game character models, and this is a fair call. I say that, yet I think their 'average american women' substitutes are about 30 to 50 kilo's too far. They could've thought that one out better.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

You know, whenever someone says "A majority of gamers want X" I find that they usually don't have evidence to back it up.

My counter-argument has not changed. Limiting yourself to only beautiful characters when you write is like writing a novel where you're not allowed to use one of the vowels.

That's pretty limited. Especially when your argument claims that "most players" will do it. You need more than three games for most players. That's what I have to say for all of your in depth arguments about these games, you're looking at a small isolated part of gaming and trying to make a statement for all gamers. Hell, even with the statistics you bring up a good chunk of it comes down to speculation as to why the players picked what race they did. On a random note for Skyrim, I've also heard of mods that remove breast plates for armor. There's room for both in this world.

Yeah, but the problem is that two of them are MMOs and MMOs appeal to a very specific type of audience. What's more, Skyrim mods are only good on PC, so all the mods you bring up can only apply to one third of the people who play Skyrim, so really you are looking at a very small part of gaming and trying to make industry wide claims. Yeah they're popular games, but Call of Duty is also a popular game, and I'd get lynched if I tried to make a claim about all gamers soley off of Call of Duty.

And you only seeing ugly characters in threads for comedic purposes somehow proves that ugly characters are only made for being comedic?

The big hole in your argument is that you only talk about character design when it comes to character creator, and there is a wide massive world out there when it comes to character design outside of what the main character looks like.

You keep saying things like "Most gamers" and "they're a tiny niche" without any hard numbers to back it up. I don't have numbers either, but I'm not making any claims about ratios. They're a tiny niche? How do you know? Stop saying vast majority, unless there's a survey about every single character who ever played Skyrim saying what they did for a character, you can't bloody prove that.

Don't tell me what I do or do not know. I'm well aware of this.

Well there's Akali from League of Legends who has twigs for arms

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Akali_4.jpg

Riven also has twigs for arms

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Riven_0.jpg

Fuck, half the female characters in that game are dangerously thin, like Leona. Christie as shown in this article. Lara Croft's waist looks dangerously thin.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/D/Y/93814/gallery/laracroft1_w_500.jpg

Jill Valentine's arms look like they're ready to snap under the slightest pressure.

https://widowslure.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/jill-re3render.jpg

Tifa lockheart in this gallery looks rather thin and flat in the waist for someone who's supposed to be a bruiser and...ah that's enough. You've already declared I don't know what anorexia is, I have my doubt that any number of examples would convince you otherwise.

For the record, all of this women look like twigs compared to my average height, fairly in shape but not ripped mother. Who's in her 50s.

Uh...considering I said "thinking" so obviously I thought that games could do better...was that supposed to prove something? It's not making an objective claim like half of your arguments did. Oh don't worry, I was just calling you out on saying that "we wouldn't be talking about this if America wasn't so fat" This fat American ass would.

So stop assuming you know how other people think. You're very bad at it.

 

[Ian Beattie]

Snip

I don't think video games have an obligation to be anything, but it's nice if they give their customers what they want.

According to whom? Idealized characters are boring. Flawed characters are interesting. And you probably shouldn't bring up Hollywood considering that there's currently a major backlash against them right now for how unoriginal they are in remaking everything. You know what the majority of people who customize their characters do how? They make a character ugly for comedic purposes? Every ugly character in Game of Thrones begs to differ.

To you. Everyone has different definitions of attractive. You've honestly never heard of chubby chasers? You're projecting a lot.

Don't tell me why I'm arguing what I'm arguing. Half of modern day video game developers couldn't imagine their way out of a paper bag, and I feel very comfortable calling them out on that in general. That and when they do create female characters, half of the time they seem to go for anorexic models as a template.

So pardon my big fat American ass for thinking video games could do better. And they can. I love video games but the lack of creativity is PATHETIC at times. I've recently put in 80 hours to Sunless Sea because it had the guts to step outside of what was considered safe, and that's a rarity nowadays.

so basically "They don't make fat characters for me to relate with so developers are bad"

good to get to the bottom of this.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Way to oversimplify everything.

More like "They do the exact same thing that everyone else does without an ounce of creative thought"

And point out where I called developers bad. I said they were unimaginative. Because they are if they struggle to come up with original character design. But if gets the point across better, this is a small part of a very big problem. I'm just focusing on this small part because everyone seems to agree that the big problem exists, but not this part of it. And I said half.

See, this is why you don't oversimplify arguments into strawmen like you just did.

 

[Ravenbom]

The proper response to stupid flamebait articles like this is to photoshop a series of videogame characters with realistic gun and sword proportions because we've been objectifying 90 pound one-handed guns and 10 foot swords for far too long.

It's disgusting and terrifying to think that the average 135lb 13 year-old will grow up believing that 6 foot long swords are the cut off for proper one-handed swords and guns should be nearly as large as the average big block car engine.

 

[Redryhno]

Well there's Akali from League of Legends who has twigs for arms

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Akali_4.jpg

Riven also has twigs for arms

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Riven_0.jpg

Fuck, half the female characters in that game are dangerously thin, like Leona. Christie as shown in this article. Lara Croft's waist looks dangerously thin.

You are aware yet again that you're comparing a game where nothing is realistic at all and you just pulled two character splashes that don't tell the full story right? There's not a single realistic body in the bunch, well, possibly Diana. And maybe Annie.

The Akali splash you've got is from three years ago, and is a skin of hers, look at her new splash that they replaced like six months ago.

Spoiler

She's got quite a bit of leg muscle, and considering she's known for jumping on your face and her weapons are honestly secondary, her arms aren't as important especially considering the weapons she uses are more about precision than strength. Like seriously, they're kama, mini-scythes, they're not about strength, but leverage.

And then there's her model, where pretty much every action starts with her legs...http://www.lolking.net/models?champion=84&skin=0

Then there's Riven, which I'm pretty sure if you go into the lore, it's handwaved with basic D&D magic weapon logic, in that they don't weigh nearly as much as they should. Not to mention most of the time her weapon isn't that large to begin with and she's got a gauntlet for holding the damn thing as well. And it's not like she uses it perfectly, half of her attack animations are more like she's swinging a cleaver.

http://www.lolking.net/models?champion=92&skin=0

Like seriously, you could've easily pulled better examples. I'll agree that characters need more muscle, but League is not the best thing, I mean, Garen, Xin,J4, and Darius, basically the muscliest muscle that ever muscled with the muscliest weapons in the game are actually pretty damn twiggy as well, they've just got gigantic armor that covers most of it.

I do think that there could be more muscley women as well, but the problem is that alot of games that are being referenced in this thread and the 'shops aren't exactly trying to be realistic beyond a superficial level.