Game Theory: The Strategy of Sex Appeal in Dead or Alive

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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Cryselle said:
Therumancer said:
As much as I demonize liberals, this is another case where you see the problem, what was always a very solid fighting franchise has been attacked relentlessly over the sex appeal and costumes involved, which has detracted from the game, causing a lot of people to underestimate it.
I'm not entirely certain why you're exclusively demonizing liberals on this one, considering that shaming a game for being too sexy is VERY popular on the conservative side as well (recall the Sex-Box kerfuffle when Mass Effect first came out?). This is less of a partisan issue than it is a question of people seeing what they want to see and willfully ignoring the rest, which is a tactic heavily employed by pretty much everyone with an extreme view on anything.
You are 100% correct that conservatives get up to the same nonsense. When conservatives are allowed to run amok through the media unchecked we get the same nonsense from a different direction, trust me despite what a lot of people might think from some of my social attitudes I'm hardly "hard" right and a lot of conservatives consider me a bloody hippy. I've spent a lot of time and effort say defending PnP RPGs with the same tenacity you see me going after liberals, that was just yesterday's issue.

I call out the liberals here because they are the ones who are responsible for the censorship problems right now, the style is simply different. Conservatives would pull something equivalent to the "Sex Box" argument and try and get the game banned, or at least slandered high and low through as much mainstream media as possible. Liberals instead go about their stuff by claiming the material victimizes women and you see things like here with the costumes being targeted, DoA Beach Volleyball being brought up as a dangerous exercise in fetishization of the ideal female form, which is insensitive to women, and so on. Conservatives attack directly, liberals do it directly oftentimes under the guise of compromise or to act like they are protecting someone or something and trying to bring special interests to bear. The whole "well, we'll target the costumes" thing is pretty much a liberal MO and a way of applying pressure with the ultimate intent of forcing the game to change to fit it's agenda or crumble under pressure. Neither side is more or less dangerous or wrong, it's all about who is swinging the axe at any given moment, and both sides need to be targeted. Trust me if we had extreme conservatives ranting about it being a devil game out to turn all our children into perverts or something I'd be after them to, and it wouldn't be the first time I've called our Republicans for being a bunch of idiots. Basically The Republicans have things like the 700 club (not sure if it's even still around), The Democrats tend to be expressed as more through the grassroots and figureheads like Anita Sarkeesian so it can be claimed there is no organization and this all genuinely comes from what the people think and want. Both ways of doing things have their pros and cons but it's always about controlling information, and both using their preferred tactics to convince you it's in your best interests, or in the name of protecting someone or something whether it's as nebulous as the fabric of American society, religion, or various "victim" groups. At the end of the day whether you let them get away with it because your afraid the devil is going to come for your baby through whatever it is, or because your say protecting women and serving their rights, it's all about giving up control and letting someone dictate what can be said, and heard.

I'll probably be too old for it to matter, if I even live that long, and who knows what forums will be out there, but when the pendelum swings back the other way, which I expect it will, you'll probably see me going after plenty of Republicans. The party is waning right now (and no, it will not ever be truly defeated and disappear) but the winds of political fortune always change, even if people don't tell them that. Almost guaranteed you'll eventually see the conservatives pulling the same crap from a position of strength again in your life time, their techniques will simply be different but all going to the same place.
 

Cryselle

Soulless Fire-Haired Demon Girl
Nov 20, 2009
126
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Therumancer said:
Cryselle said:
Therumancer said:
As much as I demonize liberals, this is another case where you see the problem, what was always a very solid fighting franchise has been attacked relentlessly over the sex appeal and costumes involved, which has detracted from the game, causing a lot of people to underestimate it.
I'm not entirely certain why you're exclusively demonizing liberals on this one, considering that shaming a game for being too sexy is VERY popular on the conservative side as well (recall the Sex-Box kerfuffle when Mass Effect first came out?). This is less of a partisan issue than it is a question of people seeing what they want to see and willfully ignoring the rest, which is a tactic heavily employed by pretty much everyone with an extreme view on anything.
You are 100% correct that conservatives get up to the same nonsense. When conservatives are allowed to run amok through the media unchecked we get the same nonsense from a different direction, trust me despite what a lot of people might think from some of my social attitudes I'm hardly "hard" right and a lot of conservatives consider me a bloody hippy. I've spent a lot of time and effort say defending PnP RPGs with the same tenacity you see me going after liberals, that was just yesterday's issue.

I call out the liberals here because they are the ones who are responsible for the censorship problems right now, the style is simply different. Conservatives would pull something equivalent to the "Sex Box" argument and try and get the game banned, or at least slandered high and low through as much mainstream media as possible. Liberals instead go about their stuff by claiming the material victimizes women and you see things like here with the costumes being targeted, DoA Beach Volleyball being brought up as a dangerous exercise in fetishization of the ideal female form, which is insensitive to women, and so on. Conservatives attack directly, liberals do it directly oftentimes under the guise of compromise or to act like they are protecting someone or something and trying to bring special interests to bear. The whole "well, we'll target the costumes" thing is pretty much a liberal MO and a way of applying pressure with the ultimate intent of forcing the game to change to fit it's agenda or crumble under pressure. Neither side is more or less dangerous or wrong, it's all about who is swinging the axe at any given moment, and both sides need to be targeted. Trust me if we had extreme conservatives ranting about it being a devil game out to turn all our children into perverts or something I'd be after them to, and it wouldn't be the first time I've called our Republicans for being a bunch of idiots. Basically The Republicans have things like the 700 club (not sure if it's even still around), The Democrats tend to be expressed as more through the grassroots and figureheads like Anita Sarkeesian so it can be claimed there is no organization and this all genuinely comes from what the people think and want. Both ways of doing things have their pros and cons but it's always about controlling information, and both using their preferred tactics to convince you it's in your best interests, or in the name of protecting someone or something whether it's as nebulous as the fabric of American society, religion, or various "victim" groups. At the end of the day whether you let them get away with it because your afraid the devil is going to come for your baby through whatever it is, or because your say protecting women and serving their rights, it's all about giving up control and letting someone dictate what can be said, and heard.

I'll probably be too old for it to matter, if I even live that long, and who knows what forums will be out there, but when the pendelum swings back the other way, which I expect it will, you'll probably see me going after plenty of Republicans. The party is waning right now (and no, it will not ever be truly defeated and disappear) but the winds of political fortune always change, even if people don't tell them that. Almost guaranteed you'll eventually see the conservatives pulling the same crap from a position of strength again in your life time, their techniques will simply be different but all going to the same place.
Except your whole diatribe is completely ignoring what is going on here. This isn't a response to outside pressure about how the game mistreats women. This isn't an attempt to change the game. The argument is NOT that sexy outfits have no place in the game. It's an attempt (which, as I said before, I feel is somewhat misguided) to reframe the conversation about the game so it focuses on gameplay rather than the outfits, because the outfits are pretty much the only thing anybody (regardless of affiliation) want to talk about. Heck, the Game Theory video we're responding to is a perfect example of this. It's response to the whole thing? To talk about the outfits and sex appeal. It doesn't really discuss gameplay at all. Which is what DoA fans are reacting to.

Ultimately what we have here is a bunch of people who are tired of seeing a video that shows an amazing combo in another fighter getting responses talking about the skill of the players, and a video that shows an amazing combo in DoA getting responses talking about the outfits.
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
9,909
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Cryselle said:
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Except your whole diatribe is completely ignoring what is going on here. This isn't a response to outside pressure about how the game mistreats women. This isn't an attempt to change the game. The argument is NOT that sexy outfits have no place in the game. It's an attempt (which, as I said before, I feel is somewhat misguided) to reframe the conversation about the game so it focuses on gameplay rather than the outfits, because the outfits are pretty much the only thing anybody (regardless of affiliation) want to talk about. Heck, the Game Theory video we're responding to is a perfect example of this. It's response to the whole thing? To talk about the outfits and sex appeal. It doesn't really discuss gameplay at all. Which is what DoA fans are reacting to.

Ultimately what we have here is a bunch of people who are tired of seeing a video that shows an amazing combo in another fighter getting responses talking about the skill of the players, and a video that shows an amazing combo in DoA getting responses talking about the outfits.
I think you missed my point, both sides work differently. This is what you call a non-issue to begin with, the series has been around for numerous installments and other than some jokes about the costumes (even used in the advertising) nobody really cared except for a bunch of ultra-liberal feminists. Now that your seeing things swinging more leftward your seeing the typical tactics coming into play, a bunch of "fans" are trying to soft ban something that liberals object to for their own reasons, in hopes that others will rally and the company will get concerned enough to change what it's doing. Liberals try and make it look like it comes from the people like this, they do engage in direct actions as well, but that isn't how this form of censorship works. The people involved might not even realize how they are being manipulated themselves. The entire point of it is so that liberals can go "hmm what, geez, why are you targeting liberals, this is nothing on a large scale, nobody is being forced to do anything, people are just doing this on their own, there isn't an agenda at play here even if it is exactly what liberals want". It makes it easy to claim the other side is being paranoid, or whatever. As I said liberals can be direct also, but the usual methods aren't the same as say having the equivalent of the 700 club virtually kicking down your door. It's called being subtle in bringing about the change. Trust me, if it wasn't for all the feminist ranting about video games I doubt anyone would have even considered trying this, DoA was never in any real danger of being disrespected, it's now an old and pedigreed franchise that has been around since the original PlayStation, with a large installed base of players to the point where there hasn't been much danger of it dying out, and anyone who is going to be taking fighting games seriously enough for this to matter isn't going to be concerned about the costumes anyway. To be brutally honest the costumes in DoA aren't even all that, it's just that there tends to be a lot of them to collect, almost all fighting games have their sexy costumes, and it's one of the things almost all fighting games sell as DLC. Amazingly though you'll notice nobody seems to complain about what Poison wears in Street Fighter.

There is no point argueing it though, you obviously won't agree.
 

Morti

New member
Aug 19, 2008
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ObsidianJones said:
Actually as a fighting game enthusiast, I have to say it's with continued lament that I see this game just being written off as "the one with boobs". The Rock/Paper/Scissors combat with Frame advantage, juggles, Desparation moves, and stage damage makes it freaking exciting when done well. Like a sped up version of Virtua Fighter, maybe with 65% amount of the same Depth. Making it more accessible to others and more people willing to get into it.
Jake Martinez said:
I pretty much completely agree with the thesis of this video (that the sexy is core to the game, but not necessarily for mechanics reasons!)

I buy DOA because of the sex appeal. Don't get me wrong, I like the game play too, but there are plenty of other games out there that have similar or even better game play. What keeps me coming back to DOA is frankly if I am going to play a fighting game, I want to play one that has characters in it that appeals to me. Hence, I tend to gravitate towards either ones with super heroes in it (I caught the Marvel vs. Capcom bug early on in life) or ones with sexy girls.

I do not want DOA to get "less sexy" so that people will focus on the game play. I buy it because it's sexy.

I don't really understand what the hell people were thinking. The game is a small niche inside an already niche gaming market. The space it occupies will gladly be picked up by someone else if they ever abandon the design aesthetics of the game, because as is pointed out here - there is a market for sexy girls in video games.

Honestly this entire debacle is bizarre to me. The only analogy I can think of is it's like if distributors of Playboy decided that drawing bikini's on all the girls would get people to focus on the articles more or something, instead of just pissing off the people who buy playboy exactly for the sexy girls.
...
It seems more reasonable and honest to me to simply promote DOA as it is. Does this mean that it will never be as big as some other series? Almost certainly that's the case. But it doesn't need to be. It just needs to have enough fan interest that it stays relevant (and profitable).
Which highlights the core of the problem, you can't be a serious game and a chest mounted jello (because they are clearly making no attempt to go for actual breast physics) simulator. That's not to say it can't be a good game and still include the pandering, but you can't ever hope to be treated seriously if part of your design philosophy is "Hehe... boobies!". They're mutually exclusive concepts.

They need to decide what they are trying to create. If they want to create a jiggle simulator, then fine, do it, own it, but be honest about it! If they want to create a serious fighting game, then they, well, need to be serious about it. Stop shoving content into it that looks like it was designed to appeal to a boy who had just found his first Playboy (not sure that metaphor really holds up nowadays, but you get where I'm comming from).
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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Aug 28, 2008
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I vehemently disagree that sex appeal disqualifies one from seriousness. That's a puritanical notion. There's just the serious moments and the not as serious moments. What disqualifies something from being serious is an overall state of being. If all it is is sex appeal (like the beach volleyball games) then yes, that's fine. On the other hand, if what mostly is found is serious storylines and cool battles and here and there you see a bit of a jiggle or a revealing costume, then that's not enough to tip the scales and still overall the game ends up being more serious than unserious, which is the state of the competitive games.

One drop rules are illogical and not nuanced enough to sufficiently describe complex things such as games.
 

PhiMed

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Nov 26, 2008
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CrystalShadow said:
Matpat half-assing an argument again it seems. XD

The problem isn't what he's saying, but that he doesn't properly follow the implications, or glosses over important points.

Let's look at the delay caused by sexual arousal. Now, you can't nessesarily predict what will arouse any given person, but logic would dictate, if both players are heterosexual males (with similar tastes and arousal responses), the competive advantage of a player using a... sexy costume would be...?
Nothing at all.

Why? because both players see both fighters at all times. Thus, both are having their reaction times messed up by it, not just the opponent of the one using the 'sexy' costume.
That makes the advantage, if any, one of innate biology.
Which player is least affected by arousal?

Worth something to heterosexual female players, or gay men perhaps, but to anyone else, not an actual competitive advantage at all.

then, the second point about biological differences in reaction times between men and women...
It shares the same quality of stupidity as all such arguments ultimately do.

Confusing an average for a universal rule.
Human innate abilities and traits are not homogenous. They have a wide distribution, and range.
The average can certainly tell you something about large groups, but it will mess you up bigtime if you blindly apply the average to individuals.

Take height. Height is a trait with a normal distribution. Actually, if you take sex differences (of adults - children are more similar) into account, it has a binormal distribution. One peak for male, one for female.
The avarages also vary by country, but that's a side issue.

The important point however is, that, while, yes, on average, men are taller than women, it would be completely idiotic to pick a man and a woman at random and state that the man is taller, just because of the averages.
You could have a really tall woman.
Or a really short man.
Or they could both be unusually short, but still have the man be shorter...
Or not.

The average, cannot reliably predict the individual!

And if you're talking a competitive environment, the innate pressures of it will tend to select for the people that are best suited, biologically, for that environment.
Fighting games clearly, would select for players with the best innate reflexes. The averages then, become even less meaningful, because the high-level competition would be defined by the extremes, not the averages.
The most relevant issue in competition would thus be what the upper extremes are, if you're going to compare the sexes.

On a tangential note, if competitions are meant to be tests of skill, and not just innate biology, it seems that we should put people in categories based on their innate biology, as relevant to the nature of the competition.

We seperate men and women for this reason in sports, but is that really the correct approach?
I once read a study on strength differences between men and women. (there are a lot of those)
The results of many studies are predictable. Men are stronger, by some margin, on average, than women, especially in terms of upper body strength.
But, that's random people who may vary for other reasons.
This one study specifically compared top athletes (swimmers in this case).
The gap got smaller for highly trained athletes, but still persisted.

But then, buried in the notes of the study was one further point. They had started to specifically compare mwn and women of similar body types. Similar heights, weights, builds and skill levels.
You know what emerged from that?
The difference in strength between men and women basically became statistically insignificant.

Turns out, after controlling for health, fitness, and training, the supposed male/female difference in strength was illusory.
A factor not of random innate differences, but one almost entirely defined by size.
The reason women seemed weaker was entirely down to them being on average, physically smaller.
No more, no less.

(the implications for competitive sports seem fairly obvious really. In a lot of ways sorting people by bodytype or size or the like would be fairer than sorting them by sex)

So... you know. Be careful on the assumptions you make. Because you may be missing the real reason for something being the case in all the presumptions involved.
Ah, sweet. I was wondering how many posts it would take for someone to say that science is bullshit. Statistically differing means are literally the basis for most well-designed studies.