Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[Ticklefist]

My take-away:

Heroes are not of average weight. Heroes are ideal.

 

[Redryhno]

Impressive amount of missing the point going on. Yes, there are people who are thinner than average, but not everyone is, by definition. Yes bulimia might seem a strange disorder, but that doesn't mean it isn't a serious and widespread one. Yes, you can try to "encourage" fat people to lose weight if you want to avoid the issue, only people have been trying that nonstop for many years and it hasn't worked.

It's had pretty mixed success sure, but I don't see how making imaginary characters heavier with "soft" fat and not muscle or even "heavy" fat is going to change the self-motivation problem at all.

If anything it seems like it's just trying to make it seem like it's ok to be that size(which it is honestly, if you truly want to be like that I'm not going to stop you,much like smokers, they know the risks better than most people, but most people in that situation don't) and it isn't healthy to have that kind of mindset in a country where most of our food has copious amounts of corn syrup and is heavily processed to begin with.

 

[Damien Granz]

The thing is, these characters aren't supposed to be 'average'. They're supposed to be fit, or athletic, or muscled, or seductive heroines. These are the roles they play. They're not just someone who got up off the couch and decided to go adventuring.

You're talking about women (albeit fictional women) who are very active people. They don't eat 3000+ calories and then sit around. They're fighting, running, climbing, training, carrying, riding, and all other manner of physical activity. It doesn't make sense to use the characters from these franchises. If you want some overweight females represented in the game industry, come up with new ones, don't promote sabotaging ones that already exist.

The thing is that, the body shape you see, it's not even fit or athletic, it's morbidly thin. Active people don't look like an hourglass about to break in half if they leaned forward, with 100% of their body fat and muscles in their breasts and butt only. That's the article's point is that it gives people the impression that being 'fit' means being morbidly thin, especially ironic when people here are arguing and thinking having a BMI over 1% being overweight.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Is there a point to this? We know damn well fictional characters are idealized, and the vast majority like it that way, while the rest seem to be ignoring setting, game mechanics, visual styling, characterization, lore, and other facets of game development so that game developers can focus on making characters look slightly different as that's the most vital element to originality.

 

[ZiggyE]

The thing is that, the body shape you see, it's not even fit or athletic, it's morbidly thin.

No, it really, very sincerely is not. Morbidly thin is if they look anorexic, but they don't. They look fit. They look healthy. At best you can say that some of them look a little unrealistically proportioned, but none of them look "morbid".

 

[Alar]

The thing is, these characters aren't supposed to be 'average'. They're supposed to be fit, or athletic, or muscled, or seductive heroines. These are the roles they play. They're not just someone who got up off the couch and decided to go adventuring.

You're talking about women (albeit fictional women) who are very active people. They don't eat 3000+ calories and then sit around. They're fighting, running, climbing, training, carrying, riding, and all other manner of physical activity. It doesn't make sense to use the characters from these franchises. If you want some overweight females represented in the game industry, come up with new ones, don't promote sabotaging ones that already exist.

The thing is that, the body shape you see, it's not even fit or athletic, it's morbidly thin. Active people don't look like an hourglass about to break in half if they leaned forward, with 100% of their body fat and muscles in their breasts and butt only. That's the article's point is that it gives people the impression that being 'fit' means being morbidly thin, especially ironic when people here are arguing and thinking having a BMI over 1% being overweight.

This does not strike me as morbidly thin. She's skinny and athletic.

Also, being underweight can be more easily compensated with supplements, vitamins, and more water intake. That alone takes care of a lot of the health issues with being underweight. The same cannot be said for being overweight. That is a much longer, more arduous road to combat. I should know, I am overweight.

 

[someguy1231]

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.

I wouldn't call games like WoW, Guild Wars 2, and Skyrim "a small isolated part of gaming". They're all among the most popular games being played at the moment. I feel like you're moving the goalposts. I provided evidence to back up my claims, and now you're claiming that it's not enough. And you pretty much admitted later on (with your Skyrim survery remark) that it's pretty much impossible for me to provide enough evidence.

This is the same way opinion polls work. A sample is taken (usually of 1,000-1,500 people) and then extrapolated to an entire population. This is widely considered a legitimate way to gauge public opinion of social and political issues. Why should the same principle not apply to gaming? Hell, my "sample size" is FAR larger than the ones typically used for opinion polls, yet you continue to dismiss them.

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.

You're really grasping at straws. I wouldn't call it "speculation" so much as "deductive reasoning". Have you heard the saying "If I'm going to stare at an ass, it might as well be a hot girl's ass"? It's more than just a saying. Tons of male gamers, when asked why they play as a female character, gave that saying (or minor variations of it) as their reason.

I'll ask you again: do you really think the most popular female races also being the most attractive (according to the game's players) have no connection whatsoever to each other?

As for Skyrim mods, there are mods for that game for practically anything and everything you can imagine (I speak from experience). The mere existence of a certain mod proves nothing, especially if it's far less popular than other certain mods.

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.

All games are made to appeal to a "very specific type of audience". It's just that some of those "types" are much larger than others. CoD's character customization is far less detailed and thorough than many other games, and even the largest characters possible aren't that fat. CoD is irrelevant to this discussion, since the

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.

The reason I focused on character creators is because they're the only opportunity for the player to decide how a character should look in the game. This character is the one they're going to be seeing by far the most frequently as they're playing the game.

Of course there's a "massive world" regarding character design, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the type of characters the players themselves want to see and play as, so the best way to gauge that is to see what characters they create. All of the female characters that were photoshopped in the original subject of this thread are protagonists or co-protagonists in their games. This isn't about whether generic NPC #752 should be fat or not.

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.

Putting the aside the fact that I did provide "hard numbers", let me ask you this: how do you know that players who want to play an ugly and/or fat female character are not a "tiny niche"? Go ahead and name me one game in which the player can create such a character, and those characters comprise at least, let's say, one-third of that game's female character population. Go on. I'll wait. If there really were as many "chubby chaser" gamers as you seem to think there are, we'd be seeing alot more fat women running around in games where the player has the option to create one.

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

Oh, so now you're telling me not to tell you you're wrong when you claim you can tell whether a fictional character is suffering from a real-life medical condition just by looking at them. Yup, that's definitely a sign of someone who is confident in themselves...

REQUEST DENIED!

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.

Those characters are not "anorexic". At all. I've known plenty of real-life women who looked very much like them, and their weight and BMI was perfectly healthy. You know absolutely nothing about what "anorexic" looks like. Post as many "examples" as you want. It'll prove nothing but your own lack of understanding.

You're just proving something I've known for a long time: on the internet, "anorexic" means "thinner than me".

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.

Look, I've played a ton of games with character creators, including many where the player can make their character fat. And in every single one of those games, fat characters were very rare, especially among female characters. If I can't make an assumption about gamer's tastes from that, then how could I? I can't interview every single gamer about their tastes and preferences. Nor does every game make the preferences of its players publicly available.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's had pretty mixed success sure, but I don't see how making imaginary characters heavier with "soft" fat and not muscle or even "heavy" fat is going to change the self-motivation problem at all.

I don't think that was the point. I think they were just saying "Hey, most female video game characters are skinnier than average", only with some photoediting thrown in. They aren't going to change anything that way, but I doubt they intended to.

If anything it seems like it's just trying to make it seem like it's ok to be that size(which it is honestly, if you truly want to be like that I'm not going to stop you,much like smokers, they know the risks better than most people, but most people in that situation don't) and it isn't healthy to have that kind of mindset in a country where most of our food has copious amounts of corn syrup and is heavily processed to begin with.

I don't buy that at all. Fat shaming is not going to go away just because we've got some not skinny video game characters. And fat shaming doesn't make people not fat anyway. People keep trying it, and it keeps not working.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

I'm sorry. Athletic? Fit? People keep trying to frame criticism against these bodytypes as being anti-healthy body, but that doesn't make any sense. You see, these women have nothing to them. Not just fat, but muscle either. It's especially hair pull inducing when it comes to characters like Tifa and there is not an ounce of muscle to her despite the fact that she's supposed to be a brawler. I want to see muscular women in addition to women who are larger and aren't built like fashion models. Gaming is pretty poor at delivering both of them.

 

[ZiggyE]

You see, these women have nothing to them. Not just fat, but muscle either. It's especially hair pull inducing when it comes to characters like Tifa and there is not an ounce of muscle to her despite the fact that she's supposed to be a brawler. I want to see muscular women in addition to women who are larger and aren't built like fashion models. Gaming is pretty poor at delivering both of them.

It's very rare for women to grow muscle at the rate of men do. Tifa looks fine for a brawler who lives in obscene poverty. None of these girls look like they have "nothing" on them at all. You're position is ridiculous. They look more or less like normal, fit women. This is just typical skinny or fit-shaming by the pro-fat crowd who are unable to see that obesity is a serious health condition, to the point where you believe normal is anorexic.

 

[Redryhno]

It's had pretty mixed success sure, but I don't see how making imaginary characters heavier with "soft" fat and not muscle or even "heavy" fat is going to change the self-motivation problem at all.

I don't think that was the point. I think they were just saying "Hey, most female video game characters are skinnier than average", only with some photoediting thrown in. They aren't going to change anything that way, but I doubt they intended to.

If anything it seems like it's just trying to make it seem like it's ok to be that size(which it is honestly, if you truly want to be like that I'm not going to stop you,much like smokers, they know the risks better than most people, but most people in that situation don't) and it isn't healthy to have that kind of mindset in a country where most of our food has copious amounts of corn syrup and is heavily processed to begin with.

I don't buy that at all. Fat shaming is not going to go away just because we've got some not skinny video game characters. And fat shaming doesn't make people not fat anyway. People keep trying it, and it keeps not working.

"Skinnier than AMERICAN average" you mean...which is quite a bit heavier than the rest of the world, and alot of it has to do with our food and preservation methods.

And when did I say that fat shaming needed to happen? All I said was self-motivation needed to get to a self-sustaining point. Shaming CAN work with certain people, hell that's what most interventions are based around after all, but it's not a recommended approach at all and I did not even mention it. All I said was that we shouldn't tell people that being quite overweight is a healthy approach to life. So you stop that crap right there.

 

[Tilly]

Tifa looks fine for a brawler who lives in obscene poverty.

Lol obscene poverty? She lives in a world where if you kill wild animals, they drop money

 

[Alar]

Snip

I'm sorry. Athletic? Fit? People keep trying to frame criticism against these bodytypes as being anti-healthy body, but that doesn't make any sense. You see, these women have nothing to them. Not just fat, but muscle either. It's especially hair pull inducing when it comes to characters like Tifa and there is not an ounce of muscle to her despite the fact that she's supposed to be a brawler. I want to see muscular women in addition to women who are larger and aren't built like fashion models. Gaming is pretty poor at delivering both of them.

I agree that there need to be more body types, especially more muscled women, but you don't seem to know much about fit or athletic people. If someone runs daily and has a slim body type, that's fit. If they have a slight amount of tone and are at a healthy weight, they're athletic. When you look at that picture of Lara, does she NOT look like she's at a healthy weight with some muscle tone? She's got more than just a runner's physique.

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Skinnier than AMERICAN average" you mean...which is quite a bit heavier than the rest of the world, and alot of it has to do with our food and preservation methods.

True.

And when did I say that fat shaming needed to happen? All I said was self-motivation needed to get to a self-sustaining point. Shaming CAN work with certain people, hell that's what most interventions are based around after all, but it's not a recommended approach at all and I did not even mention it. All I said was that we shouldn't tell people that being quite overweight is a healthy approach to life. So you stop that crap right there.

You said that it wasn't healthy for people to have the mindset that it's ok to have a certain body type (which is average for the American woman). That looks a lot like fat shaming to me, but I might have misread you, in which case I apologise.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

I'm sorry. Athletic? Fit? People keep trying to frame criticism against these bodytypes as being anti-healthy body, but that doesn't make any sense. You see, these women have nothing to them. Not just fat, but muscle either. It's especially hair pull inducing when it comes to characters like Tifa and there is not an ounce of muscle to her despite the fact that she's supposed to be a brawler. I want to see muscular women in addition to women who are larger and aren't built like fashion models. Gaming is pretty poor at delivering both of them.

I agree that there need to be more body types, especially more muscled women, but you don't seem to know much about fit or athletic people. If someone runs daily and has a slim body type, that's fit. If they have a slight amount of tone and are at a healthy weight, they're athletic. When you look at that picture of Lara, does she NOT look like she's at a healthy weight with some muscle tone? She's got more than just a runner's physique.

In your last post you said that " They're fighting, running, climbing, training, carrying, riding, and all other manner of physical activity." Wouldn't that result in just a little bit of muscle?

*Looks at picture* A bit. And she's a massive exception to the trend.

 

[Redryhno]

"Skinnier than AMERICAN average" you mean...which is quite a bit heavier than the rest of the world, and alot of it has to do with our food and preservation methods.

True.

And when did I say that fat shaming needed to happen? All I said was self-motivation needed to get to a self-sustaining point. Shaming CAN work with certain people, hell that's what most interventions are based around after all, but it's not a recommended approach at all and I did not even mention it. All I said was that we shouldn't tell people that being quite overweight is a healthy approach to life. So you stop that crap right there.

You said that it wasn't healthy for people to have the mindset that it's ok to have a certain body type (which is average for the American woman). That looks a lot like fat shaming to me, but I might have misread you, in which case I apologise.

Are you telling me that letting people think being overweight is a good thing? There's alot of delusions going on about fat weight and content the last few years, and I'm sorta sick of seeing the "healthy at every size" crap peddled about.

I agree with what I believe the core concept to be, that of being happy with who you are before you go changing anything and that you change for YOU and not for THEM, but that's not how it's being used most of the time. It's just another excuse to be a lardass without taking responsibility for it.

Again, if anyone wants to be like that, I completely understand and I'm not going to insult them for their informed choices, but there's far too many people that actually think they're healthier simply because of that mantra. Again, much like smokers, they're aware of the risks involved and have made their choices. Not much else you can do.

Snip

I'm sorry. Athletic? Fit? People keep trying to frame criticism against these bodytypes as being anti-healthy body, but that doesn't make any sense. You see, these women have nothing to them. Not just fat, but muscle either. It's especially hair pull inducing when it comes to characters like Tifa and there is not an ounce of muscle to her despite the fact that she's supposed to be a brawler. I want to see muscular women in addition to women who are larger and aren't built like fashion models. Gaming is pretty poor at delivering both of them.

I agree that there need to be more body types, especially more muscled women, but you don't seem to know much about fit or athletic people. If someone runs daily and has a slim body type, that's fit. If they have a slight amount of tone and are at a healthy weight, they're athletic. When you look at that picture of Lara, does she NOT look like she's at a healthy weight with some muscle tone? She's got more than just a runner's physique.

So they just run now? In your last post you said that " They're fighting, running, climbing, training, carrying, riding, and all other manner of physical activity."

*Looks at picture* A bit. And she's a massive exception to the trend.

I think you want to read his post again. In no way did he say that they were just running, he just gave running as a real world example.

 

[Tanis]

Since when was being fat 'Average'.
O, wait, AMERICAN.

Yeah...

Sorry, but as a fat person TRYING to get to a HEALTHY weight...
I don't like stuff like this.

You're not 'plus sized' or 'more lovin' sized' or, whatever.
You're fat.

You need to, like me, eat ONE slice of cake instead of THREE.
-Like I used to.

I mean, seriously, STOP.IDOLIZING.UNHEALTHY.FAT.

I, genuinely, don't get people who think being overweight, or fat, is something to be encouraged.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Uh, they're three games in a world made up of tens of thousands of games. And two of them are stuck in the same genre. Guild Wars 2 isn't even that popular, it only sold 3.5 million copies, which hardly makes it a heavy hitter that can show the opinions of everyone in gaming. And it's probably telling the WoW is slowly losing steam, so it's hardly the king of games that it once was, because people are getting bored and moving on from it. Hell if we're going by sheer numbers we should be taking the mobile market into account. Me pointing out the flaws in your argument is not moving the goalposts. And don't talk about moving the goalposts when I started talking about characters in general and you shifted it to customizable characters only. Your evidence is flimsy at best, especially Skyrim where the only argument you really have is "there are a lot of sexy mods". At least Guild Wars and WoW had numbers (That you didn't cite) Skyrim doesn't even have that, it has circumstantial evidence at best. Yeah pretty much. As it turns out, proving a demand for something exists is infinitely easier than proving that it's superior to all other demands. Because opinions tend to vary from genre to genre and you only included the opinions of MMO players, yet for some reason you kept pulling the "most gamers" card. I don't count Skyrim because of how insubstantial your claims were there.

Could've said the same for you. Deductive reasoning usually requires a lot more solid evidence to go on. "This website has a lot of sexy mods" and "most Skyrim players have sexy characters" aren't really connected provided every single Skyrim player uses that website and downloads the mods out of mandate. And what about female gamers?

Did I say that they didn't? I'm simply pointing out that you can't take the results from a game that's really lost a good chunk of steam over the years and apply it to ALL of gaming.

Oh? The mere existence of a mod proves nothing? Glad we came to an understanding. So the existence of sexy mods prove nothing. (Pick one or the other. Either mods prove a demand for something or they don't, you can't have it both ways)

You know, I don't recall specifically making any arguments about character customization and more about characters in general, not sure why you keep bringing it back to that. And yes, that's what I'm trying to say, specific games have specific audiences, MMOs have their own and those audiences don't speak for all of gaming.

Still seems pretty arbitrary. I mean just because I never went out of my way to customize a black character doesn't mean I wouldn't want to play a game with a black character as a main character.

Like I said above. Just because a person doesn't go out of their way to create a character that doesn't look a certain way, doesn't mean that they would refuse to play a game with a character like that. And question, how many players actually put that much time into customization? I would think a good chunk of them would either randomize their character or go with a default. Hell, most of the time my customization is limited to getting a hairdo and eye color I like.

Hard numbers about WoW and Guild Wars II. Not all gamers. And you keep making claims about "most gamers" despite WoW's fanbase not even making up 10% of gamers, and not sharing the same tastes as all gamers. Because of the constant demand for them that seems to be loud enough to get forums like this one into a frenzy every time it gets brought up? Certainly seems like there's a rather significant demand for it. Question. How many games actually ALLOW you to make fat women? I've played quite a few games where you can customize. Only ever saw it in the Souls series and Dragon's Dogma. Hell, most games don't even let you make muscular women.

I said she looks like she's anorexic, not that she's got the condition. Read what I say. No, I'm not against being corrected, I'm against people being dismisses without base. So if you want to correct me, give me a reason why I'm wrong and don't just say I'm wrong.

Yeah see? Your argument there was "No" and all you had to offer was personal experience. I offered my personal experiences too, how does that make me wrong and you right? And tell me, where those people that you knew IRL supposed to be brawlers, ninjas, mountain climbers, police officers, and soldiers? You know why they look anorexic to me? Because they are way too thin for the jobs they're supposed to be doing, it makes them look unhealthy and unreal. And no, I've run Akali by a female friend in the past, and she also agreed that she looked unhealthily thin. You know, you just kinda declared that without much backing it up.

Considering that a good chunk of these games are single player, I find it questionable that you knew that. Sounds like you're going back to MMOs again, and as I've said many times before, MMOs don't represent gamers as a whole. They represent gamers who like MMOs. Simple. When you make those assumptions, you don't speak for ALL gamers. Say "This type of character is popular among gamers" not it's popular among most gamers" because you can't prove that and it makes it look like you're projecting your views onto gaming as a whole.

 

[ThreeName]

We've hit a point where the average women's ideal weight is only four pounds lower than the average women's actual weight 15 years ago.

If you think current body trends are acceptable, that these photoshops represent some sort of "normal" weight range in anything other than the statistical sense, you're so fucking wrong.

 

[Redryhno]

We've hit a point where the average ideal women's weight is only four pounds lower than the average women's actual weight 15 years ago.

If you think current body trends are acceptable, that these photoshops represent some sort of "normal" weight range in anything other than the statistical sense, you're so fucking wrong.

To be fair, there's not a whole lot wrong with being 140 as a woman, but then again, I grew up with girls that were often equal to the guys in height and so could carry the weight better as well.