Insight into what "objectification" is & how to fix it

[briankoontz]

But here is the thing. If Lara Croft had been Barry Croft, and they'd kept those angles in, nobody would have batted an eyelid. Nobody would be complaining about the sexualisation, or how those camera angles were "clearly" meant to show off his body. It's because their own eyes are drawn to that part of Lara by themselves because of their own perception.

No. I critique games, and analyzing all aspects of a game, including the sexualization of the most sexed-up female video game character in history, is my motivation for studying the camera work of her body. I also study the portrayal of male bodies in games and other media, and previously noted how superheroes look as if they spend 8 hours a day at the gym instead of doing what they are supposed to do and help people. Despite what comic book creators seem to believe, one can do good in the world without having a ridiculous physique, and if one takes the time to maintain such a physique one becomes useless.

Male characters in video games don't get the same camera work. I've seen some recent anime as well as recent television shows which exploit male bodies, but we should be getting rid of all exploitation, not having "equal opportunity" exploitation of everyone. Two wrongs don't make a right.

It says more about them than the developers that they see it as sexual, when to most people it quite clearly is not. Or when it is sexual, that it doesn't negate their ability to still see them as a decent character.

There's no purpose in pretending to seduce the audience. No person with any seriousness is sexually attracted to a digital image, although developers continue to believe that this makes up at the very least a considerable subset of their audience. It's an insult to gamers.

It's a myth that digital images can be sexually attractive, and like any myth can either be accepted or rejected. Accepting a myth that demeans one is really not a good idea.

There's nothing wrong with a video game character with a good body. The problem lies in the *purpose* of so very many video game characters having very specific bodies that adhere to objective criteria of sexual beauty. It's as if these images are meant to seduce the audience.

 

[Lightknight]

Male characters in video games don't get the same camera work.

It's almost as if different sexes have different proportions and angles that flatter them (tongue in cheek).

 

[Angelblaze]

Conservative people will always find an excuse to get pissed off at nudity and the like.

It's not about conservative values. It is about the fact that female characters aren't given the same respective characterization as male characters.

Fictional characters are effectively objects, so do what you want with them.

Fictional characters have this little thing called characterization. Of which female characterization is usually comparatively poor. No, fictional characters aren't really objects in the most senses of the word. They are concepts. Concepts oft brought about through characterization. Except when female characters don't have any kind or real or decent characterization, and then really are treated as objects, which is often the case.

This is a non-issue, stop being so touchy about a bit of flesh.

Let me ask, how would you like it if the majority of video games looked like this?

I'm sure people would be less whiny about Squall from Final Fantasy VIII if 1/2 of the game was about him accidentally breaking tapioca pudding containers and getting it all over his chest.

"Ah, I spilled it again."

Thank you for posting this, I will watch the living hell out of this show and buy everything I can on it just to spite half of the people in this thread constantly saying this isn't an issue, refusing to actually sit down and discuss it and instead ignorantly put their heads in the sand because they are so afraid that their delicious pixel boobies are going to be taken away.


The entirety of all of the arguments on the first page can be resolved like this:

There is a point where too much skin makes no sense - it is FINE to have sexualization but it there is a point to stop. A female character can be 'sexy' and wearing skin tight leather straps and nothing else, but having them all run around in sexy clothing is a little ridiculous. The comic book Witchblade's sexuality for example, are perfectly fine because its obvious that that is actually a major part of the series or at least what it's based on with the swords power to basically make women horny and eventually destroy them being the premise and perhaps may be the most surprisingly mature way to both tell a story and really handle it well if you get past the fan service (Witchblade the anime is a good example of how you can balance out fan service and plot.) but not EVERY female needs to look/act/dress like a Witchblade character.

TL;dr, Plate mail that only covers her nipples is not logically acceptable if the show/game/comic/etc is actually not using her character's sexuality as a major point/part of a major point in the series/game that actually either reflects on her story or builds her as a character. Witchblade makes SENSE, Catwoman's makes SENSE, Ivy's outfit in SC4 DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

And using the counter argument that there are women who actually dress like that is ridiculous because those women WANT to be objectified, they WANT the attention and objectification that looking like that can bring. But any other person who can see the forest for the trees knows not every woman dresses like that or wants to. I would really really like to actually play a fully dressed female character....I know surprising right!

Further more, I'm not even saying you can't have sexy female characters but give them personality, give them LIFE, give them something gripping that makes us like the character (Witchblade, again, good example.)

However I'm guessing that a majority of the posters that may see this post will immediately either ignore it, try to start an argument, or post next to no logical discussion.

But hey, if you feel that female objectification is alright, I will keep on buying all the Final Fantasies and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7NqRG88E-s8 that I can get my hands on just to endorse the other side.

 

[generals3]

TL;dr, Plate mail that only covers her nipples is not logically acceptable if the show/game/comic/etc is actually not using her character's sexuality as a major point/part of a major point in the series/game that actually either reflects on her story or builds her as a character. Witchblade makes SENSE, Catwoman's makes SENSE, Ivy's outfit in SC4 DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

And since when is "making" sense one of those criteria most gamers demand in games? You know i've heard people say "CoH 2 sucks, it's too realistic". Just like i don't like Arma because i believe it's attempt at being realistic is sucking the fun out of it. For some/many making sense is not only not a necessity but can even be a turn off. So while the point "it doesn't make sense" may be valid, the question whether that actually matters is also very important.

And using the counter argument that there are women who actually dress like that is ridiculous because those women WANT to be objectified, they WANT the attention and objectification that looking like that can bring. But any other person who can see the forest for the trees knows not every woman dresses like that or wants to. I would really really like to actually play a fully dressed female character....I know surprising right!

Considering a character does not have the possibility to want anything how can the idea women in RL want to do it be relevant? One could also point out that making them all have less revealing attires is objectifying them in a sex-negative way.

Further more, I'm not even saying you can't have sexy female characters but give them personality, give them LIFE, give them something gripping that makes us like the character (Witchblade, again, good example.)

However sometimes people complain about the mere fact they're being sexualized, whether or not they actually have a personality. The problem in these discussions is quite obvious: people hate sexualization for the sake of it being sexualization. Note i'm not saying you do that but that's usually how it goes. They see cleavage and go berserk: "OB-JEC-TI-FI-CA-TIUN!!!111"

But hey, if you feel that female objectification is alright, I will keep on buying all the Final Fantasies and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7NqRG88E-s8 that I can get my hands on just to endorse the other side.

Sexualization is fine, objectification to certain degrees is fine too, what isn't fine is presenting people as being solely objects due to arbitrary reasons (such as gender). Luckily the latter isn't done.

 

[Legion]

Thank you for posting this, I will watch the living hell out of this show and buy everything I can on it just to spite half of the people in this thread constantly saying this isn't an issue, refusing to actually sit down and discuss it and instead ignorantly put their heads in the sand because they are so afraid that their delicious pixel boobies are going to be taken away.

Because belittling anybody who isn't offended by fictional breasts is clearly the way to have a rational discussion, isn't it? If you wish to take the moral or mature high ground, then it's best not to take the stance that you are talking to imbeciles, just because they don't see things your way.

The entirety of all of the arguments on the first page can be resolved like this:

There is a point where too much skin makes no sense - it is FINE to have sexualization but it there is a point to stop. A female character can be 'sexy' and wearing skin tight leather straps and nothing else, but having them all run around in sexy clothing is a little ridiculous.

This is true, very true. But it's also making an assumption. That they are all wearing that type of clothing. There are plenty of examples where this is the case, but there are countless more where it is not. Acting like it is much more common than it really is, is what is getting most people dismissing it. Because exaggerations cause more damage to an argument than a lot of other things.

The comic book Witchblade's sexuality for example, are perfectly fine because its obvious that that is actually a major part of the series or at least what it's based on with the swords power to basically make women horny and eventually destroy them being the premise and perhaps may be the most surprisingly mature way to both tell a story and really handle it well if you get past the fan service (Witchblade the anime is a good example of how you can balance out fan service and plot.) but not EVERY female needs to look/act/dress like a Witchblade character.

But most people who are against the way women are portrayed would disagree with you.

Most of them would ask why she needs to be dressed like that at all. You say it's because of an in-story reason, but who wrote that story? She is a fictional character, written by a man. Therefore a man decided to stick her in that clothing. So yes it works in regards to the fiction, but it's not like she has a real reason for that clothing, it was made up by a guy who chose to try justifying it. He could have quite easily given her sensible clothing if he had wanted to, but he chose to sexualise her.

TL;dr, Plate mail that only covers her nipples is not logically acceptable if the show/game/comic/etc is actually not using her character's sexuality as a major point/part of a major point in the series/game that actually either reflects on her story or builds her as a character. Witchblade makes SENSE, Catwoman's makes SENSE, Ivy's outfit in SC4 DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

I genuinely do not understand the logic in this argument.

It's actually quite insulting. It's saying that women shouldn't be sexy unless it's for a reason. That if a woman is tough, smart, independent and capable, that it is wrong for her to also be sexy, unless there is a reason for it.

Or in other words, you are saying sexiness is only okay if it helps define the woman.

See the problem with that line of thinking? It actually puts considerably more emphasis on a woman's appearance than if they simply "happened" to be sexy as well as other things.

There is also the argument that when it comes down to it, in terms of "making sense" and "realism" you can quite easily rip any work of fiction to shreds in regards to how well they do it. Fiction only needs to make sense as far as it allows you to suspend your disbelief.

Personally I find a woman wearing skimpy clothing while fighting to be significantly more believable than a man who can shoot fireballs from his fists, but perhaps that's just me.

And using the counter argument that there are women who actually dress like that is ridiculous because those women WANT to be objectified, they WANT the attention and objectification that looking like that can bring.

Oh boy, prepare for some angry responses if certain people see this one. You are now saying that women only dress sexily for other people to notice and for attention. Not that they do it out of their own desire to feel sexy or because they find it empowering, but that they want to be treated like objects.

This could get painful.

But any other person who can see the forest for the trees knows not every woman dresses like that or wants to. I would really really like to actually play a fully dressed female character....I know surprising right!

Agreed, not all women do and not all guys do either. That is something developers are slowly starting to figure out.

But to be honest the ratio in regards to women being objectified compared to the issue people are making of it is backwards. Things are getting better and better, but the arguments are getting worse and worse. Only a year ago the new Tomb Raider game didn't exist, nor did Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite and Remember Me was just an advertisement. Compared to the era that had the original Lara Croft, gaming is considerably better than it was back when nobody seemed to think there was anything to complain about.

Further more, I'm not even saying you can't have sexy female characters but give them personality, give them LIFE, give them something gripping that makes us like the character (Witchblade, again, good example.)

Indeed, although while I personally don't mind Witchblade either way, I genuinely do not consider it to be a very good example of the point you are trying to make, for the reasons given above.

However I'm guessing that a majority of the posters that may see this post will immediately either ignore it, try to start an argument, or post next to no logical discussion.

Well I haven't done the first, I have tried to avoid the second, but I can be a little blunt with my manner of speaking, so it may come across as argumentative, and I certainly don't think my post is illogical, even if others may disagree with it.

But hey, if you feel that female objectification is alright, I will keep on buying all the Final Fantasies and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7NqRG88E-s8 that I can get my hands on just to endorse the other side.

Which is an interesting point, because on the first page somebody is complaining about the clothing in Final Fantasy X-2, so it really does show that you can't please everybody.

 

[Autotelic]

something didn't quite sit with me, the exact reason why mostly naked women in games are offensive, after all as anyone who has been a teenage boy knows gossip magazines have just as much, if not more fap material than your average gaming publication.

Why assume that 'fap material' in gossip magazines isn't offensive? Yes, there's a much larger issue with objectification in gossip magazines than there is in video games - and yes, it can be seen as offensive. I steer clear of smut in newspapers and social media sites, and I would like to be able to stay away from it in gaming.

Just because you also have objectification in more mainstream forms of media doesn't make objectification in video games any less of an issue.

 

[Savagezion]

You know when people complain about some so-called PC agenda I get the feeling they just want to act like a bigoted sexist asshole without getting flak for it.And it is a issue because women in video games are treated like pieces of meat that are only meant to help men get off while looking at them.

Honestly, most of us don't care about the flak for being called that anymore because you learn quick that the other side just want to villain-ize others. Are there problems with objectification in games? Yeah, games are no worse off than other media. But the ACTUAL accounts of it are small. We have Tera, Dead or Alive, and... I know there are a couple more more. However, the problem is, let Lara Croft wear a spaghetti string tank top in a game that is in line with the fashion of today (Not a halter top, a sports bra, or string bikini top - but instead something conservative women wear casually) and not pick a coat up off a corpse and it people cry out OBJECTIFICATION! This makes me get the feeling that people are trying to make shit up just so they can have something to ***** about. And cases like Lara happen way more freqwuently than ACTUAL cases of objectification.

I won't deny there is a pretty glaring problem with females being pushed aside for males in the spotlight but that isn't objectification. That is exclusion and those aren't the same thing. It is important to note that sales figures do back why females get excluded a lot. I understand that marketing plays a role as is the constant counter to that. However, if people are willing to spend the money to change those numbers, problem solved. Bitching about it on a forum won't change anything. Looking at Bayonetta, which actually had a good marketing campaign, it only sold ~2m copies. This puts it in the same company as Demon's Souls (poor marketing), Shadow of the Colossus (moderate marketing), and Tomb Raider 2013 that had a big marketing campaign. All fell at about 2m sales on consoles.
Now if we look at Red Dead Redemption (strong marketing) comes into 10m, Uncharted as an exclusive new IP (moderate marketing) hit 5m on one console, Far Cry 3 recently had big marketing and came in at 4m. Now, most games usually get weak to moderate marketing and fall in with around 2m sales. But those ones that have went above and beyond those numbers are either "pick your gender to play" or are simply male roles. Tomb Raider 2013 has a female with a big marketing campaign and is currently sitting at 2m sales on consoles. It is only a couple months old and has room for that to grow, but the odds of it hitting over 5m are small. SO far investing money in a female lead just hasn't paid off in gaming. You can argue other reasons but the fact is that games with a locked in female leads have yet to have a true hit and having high marketing campaigns like Bayonetta or Tomb Raider has proven to be a money sink so far.

The fact is, characters in games tend to be shallow, men and women alike. Women aren't truly objectified in 'most games', they are objectified in a very small percentage. Having a shallow character doesn't make them objectified though. I honestly think many of the blowhards crying sexism don't even understand the words they use half the time. I ain't sexist and I'll never be able to convince you of that.

Someone could easily say "You know when people complain about some so-called PC agenda sexism dominating the industry I get the feeling they just want to act like a bigoted sexist asshole a white knight who "gets" women without getting flak for it (because giving them flak makes you a sexist)

And it is a issue because women in video games are treated like pieces of meat that are only meant to help men get off while looking at them.

Then prove it. Don't be all "just look around". Because I have seen what your side has to offer and a good 70-80% of it isn't sexism. It damn sure isn't objectification, sexism is more prevalent than that. I don't see it. What I do see is people making shit up to complain about. I see people telling companies to invest millions of dollars in an idea I am OK with morally - but think it is monumentally stupid financially.

 

[Angelblaze]

But hey, if you feel that female objectification is alright, I will keep on buying all the Final Fantasies and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7NqRG88E-s8 that I can get my hands on just to endorse the other side.

This is the right attitude. Go watch hunky swimmers. Seriously, I wish all the feminists were like this instead. Instead of throwing a tantrum that DoA Beach Volleyball exists, how about a requesting fan service of your own. I can't help that God made me like looking at the female body. I am not ashamed of that and never will be. If you like looking at the male body, be proud of that fact - it is part of who you are. PLease, endorse the hell out of the other side. They are a bunch of whiny prudes. They probably need something to relieve all the sexual tension they have. (Just a guess.)

Fun fact: Female/Gay/Opposite fanservice supportive LoL players have been asking for Unprepared Garen for years. We still haven't gotten it.


So I play Dota 2 now. :3 Seriously, I should get more people on this.

 

[nonhoration]

The inconsistent ideology comes into play here when you say objectification is wrong but then say it's only wrong when certain people do it in certain ways. If a woman is fine doing it because she has a choice to do whatever she wants with her own body then it is inconsistent to then say that developers don't have a right to do whatever they want to with their own lines of code.

That's actually the part that doesn't make sense to me. I don't find a woman making her own decisions about her own body in real life to be equivalent to a team of artists deciding what a fictional woman is going to look like (though they do clearly have the right to do whatever they want, there's no game breast censor committee). For example, if I choose to wear one of those silly 'sexy [x]' costumes on Halloween, that's a decision made by one person who wants to look cute, not a large corporation trying to market my body to dudes. But like, the developers of Mass Effect noting in the artbook that they met to decide how much skin it was "reasonable" for Samara, essentially a warrior monk, to show in Mass Effect 2? Especially since the response was "silly cleavage armor is okay because she has a biotic shield"? She looks goofy.

Spoilered for novel-length response:

Without getting into any details, what is your opinion of porn? Something that objectifies women far more than men but that the women have a choice in the matter of (or they better have a choice in)? If I were pressed to answer honestly, I'd have to say that the porn industry does more to encourage objectification of women than anything else has ever done. I can't think of a single more objectifying industry and yet women are often willing participants and not always for money.

So, this might be getting into details, but oh well.

My two major issues with the porn industry are a bit similar to the issues I talked about in my other post actually: consent and violence. It is really difficult to define consent in any porn, but especially internet porn. Once money is in the equation and can be theoretically withdrawn at any time, if a woman is desperate does she really have an option to say no if a scene is changed from what she agreed to once she's arrived on set? How much amateur porn is "revenge porn" of someone's ex-girlfriend? It'd be a different sort of thing if you could guarantee that the performers that you were watching were consenting to both the acts presented and the publication of said acts, but right now as it stands, aside from a few companies who market themselves on being 'ethical', you really can't.

The violence aspect is a bit harder to quantify because some performers do consent to that stuff and everyone has their fetishes or whatever, but as a woman it kind of icks me how much of (especially straight) porn is about 'dominating' women or 'destroying' them or whatever buzz word they're using and being deliberately degrading.

Obviously women are objectified (sometimes literally treated as objects!) in the porn industry, but in a way it's almost less insidious than in our culture at large because viewers know going into it that they're watching men and women who are doing this for money. I may be wrong, but I don't see as much of an expectation that women in porn are just how 'average' women should/do look or act as I do for women in other forms of entertainment.

So then, your problem is that the roles that they're given aren't serious or is it that they're eye candy (the combination being the worst case scenario)?

I have two problems, I guess, because it's both of those. Obviously, female characters are getting more 'serious' roles now than they were when I was first getting into gaming as a kid, but there are still a lot of women in refrigerators and damsels in distress and 'two women are working near one another therefore they must fight' happening in the industry as a whole. However, a lot of 'serious' roles are rendered more difficult to take seriously by the need for sexual attractiveness of the body shape and/or costume. See Wynne in Dragon Age: Origins talking about how old she is every 10 minutes and having the exact same body as Morrigan. See Miranda in Mass Effect 2 talking about the atrocities committed by her father as the camera pans up her backside to reveal her space wedgie. See Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite doing anything in public in underwear and a skirt, because apparently her period-accurate shirt didn't show enough cleavage. See the Commander Shepard beauty contest for the new default for Mass Effect 3. Even after two rounds of that nonsense, we wind up with a character who looks like an alien compared to her male counterpart because he has a human face model and she is just a copy/paste of facial features someone thought looked attractive. On the topic of Commander Shepard: check out the differences in the scar options for male and female Shepards in the first Mass Effect. Men can have a scar that basically rips their entire face in half, while women can have a bisected eyebrow. In order to keep female characters 'attractive', aesthetic choices are made that make even well-made and well-written characters difficult to take seriously.

But not every game is that kind of game and sometimes it's just as appropriate for the woman to be underdressed as they would be in real life.

Sometimes it is, yes, and sometimes it fits the way that a character has been written for her to look that way (Isabela in Dragon Age 2, for example, would probably just laugh in the face of anyone suggesting she put on some pants) but not all the time. Since I was using a ton of Mass Effect examples earlier, Jack's relative toplessness fits her character really well and doesn't feel like pandering or objectification to me. When the in-game camera is focusing on her skin, it's highlighting her scars and tattoos - a huge part of who she is as a character - so it doesn't feel as much like someone panicked because it had been at least 30 seconds since we'd seen some side-boob and gamers need a fix.

RomComs, which I actually love, don't have bulked-up action movie types because they aren't action movies. You would find the bulked up types in romantic action movies. You also find them on the cover of many romance novels in nearly any book store that carries them. You know the one, the Fabio clones. I've never read one but they're so numerous you can't help but look in their direction without seeing it.

I don't think many men would be comfortable with a Fabio clone as the lead in their video game either. Can you imagine a poster of even a less 'manly' man like Nathan Drake running around with his shirt billowing open, hair blowing in wind that seems to only affect him? Though I'm not sure whether that would come across to most women as attractive or hilarious, haha.

Take a good look at Kratos. He's actually not insanely bulked most of the time. He's incredibly toned with very well defined musculature. He's what you see in RomComs that ever have the male take off their shirt. But then other times they bulk him up according to the occasion. He's on some kind of tightrope act in which he leans either way when needed. If you run a basic search on him for images you'll note that some times he looks like a very in-shape frat boy and other times he's the exaggerated Fabio persona. Sometimes he has a normal neck and then the next moment he doesn't. In any event, are you telling me that women would find that body type unattractive on a normal person? This has not been true in my experience.

I will be honest: my God of War career consists entirely of trying to play it once at a party and accidentally super dramatically stabbing a peasant in the face because the monster moved. So pretty much everything I know about the series comes from promo art and that one hilarious sex scene (I think it's from GoW 3) where you have to mash the thumbsticks all around.

I don't think we're defining bulked up in the same way though if this doesn't fit your definition. I don't know any women who would swoon over a dude with no neck and an arm as big as her thigh, though I'm sure there are some. Even the bulkier Fabio covers I could find don't really reach those kind of heights (though maybe this one comes close!).

In terms of my own experience and talking to female friends who are attracted to men: look at characters like those dudes in the swimming anime someone linked, or Fenris from Dragon Age 2, or Ryan Gosling in basically every film he's done since like 2004, or even Edward Cullen in the Twilight film. This might be a bit TMI, but I would personally not really find anyone significantly bulkier than, say, Rain in Ninja Assassin very attractive. As you said, many game characters are bulky to the point of being grotesque.

Do you disagree that women generally desire a thin waist, tight ass, reasonably large breasts, nice legs and a pretty face? I think they see those things as being pretty and do a lot to fit those molds, however unreasonable they may be. I don't think characters looking like that would be a problem if they had legitimate roles in the game rather than swooning or fitting the ol' screaming at a mouse from the top of a stool stereotypes.

A thing to remember as well is that beauty standards and desired body shapes have changed over time. This applies more-so when games (or other media) are trying to represent a specific time period in the past and all of the female characters still look like they got lost on their way to the CW casting offices. There is also the problem of looking realistic doing whatever the character's job is. A character with really skinny legs who is meant to be a hand-to-hand fighter who is kicking people all the time is going to look silly. Even skinny dancers tend to have really muscular legs for obvious reasons. A character who looks like a stiff wind might blow her over could be believable as a rogue, for example, but is going to look goofy if you try and call her a paladin.

Conventionally attractive women can also be completely non-objectified if they're designed/costumed like actual human beings. One thing that appears a lot in comics for example is that men are posed heroically and women are posed 'attractively' even while fighting. So you end up with these ridiculous impossible poses (or poses traced from porn, in a few cases, which is really disconcerting) but only for women. It's as if some artists think that if we can't see both breasts and a butt at the same time we might forget one exists! A woman with every feature you've described who is dressed as if she is about to do whatever her character's job actually is and is standing in a pose that conveys power and action is definitely possible, but it is rare to see it.

Then who are they generally handsome for? Gay cooties? Maybe if it was a giant naked man with a third leg flopping around. Do you think women would have a case of the gay cooties if they played as a woman that was proportionately attractive?

It's a little bit different in games because, for awhile, it's YOUR avatar. If he's handsome, then you're handsome. If he's muscular and strong, then you're muscular and strong. It isn't just a power fantasy, it's an ideal-self fantasy in many cases. Brave and strong and capable and handsome/attractive. Things that no rational human being should ever not want. So a larger right arm would mean those things.

As you said, male characters tend to be handsome in a way that men want to look. The face-model for the male Commander Shepard, for example, is a model who does a lot of this sort of thing, but you don't see anything like that from the in-game character model because that is not how companies think that male gamers want to see their character.

Re: 'gay cooties' and women: I think that women are more . . . inured, I guess, than men are to seeing images of ourselves sexually objectified and are also less afraid of possibly if you squint accidentally possibly to someone appearing gay. I have seen the argument, for example (I believe it's mentioned in a Jimquisition video?) that companies believe that male gamers don't want to play female avatars who are in romantic relationships with men because they don't want to 'feel gay' or whatever. Men tend to be uncomfortable with depictions of men as in that "reverse objectification" welder image that was going around a while ago, whereas I think women might sigh at seeing the female version dressed that way, there's not that deep discomfort with it that men seem to have. I have a friend whose husband refused to watch the episode of Castle that had the male strippers in it because it made him feel uncomfortable to see it, and it's just like "welcome to every time I try and watch anything ever."

The point of the whole thing is that there's no breast equivalent for male body types. Judging from your responses, you don't necessarily disagree that men lack those components. Do you honestly believe that if women found a specific component of men attractive that men wouldn't desire having that component in the most desireable size range? That's almost laughably wrong. I'd say the one area that is the topic of most conversations (length/circumference of penis) is so over-focused on by men that entire pyschological issues pop out of it. For that reason, I earnestly believe that if that right-arm bit was desireable that men would dislike an avatar with a small one. I would want my avatar to be that way.

My impression overall on issues regarding the penis is that men tend to think/talk about this more than women do. Obviously for a heterosexual woman it is important for a penis to be present, but on the other hand, huge monster dongs are not exactly comfortable for most women and some women don't particularly even care about penetration and orgasm easier through other methods (this got kind of lurid for a costume design post sorry). Like, if I met a dude and his penis was dragging on the ground, my first thought would be 'omg that's freaky' and not 'huge dick must bang' you know?

In some ways it is hard to ridiculously emphasize parts of the male body that women find attractive. For example, if you overdo it on abs or arms you start getting Marcus Feenix and as you said, no one wants that. But at the same time you don't see a whole lot of heroic male characters with lean bodies and high cheekbones running around with their shirts open even when it would probably be more practical to wear some kind of body armor, you know? You're not seeing Carth Onasi crying about his dead wife while the camera focuses on his tight butt.

Here's a question for you. In a video game, what do you think the ideal attractive man (for women) would look like? How does that compare to most of the male protagonists out there (rather than just the blantant examples). Keep in mind that women have different tastes and there's a reason why women flock around men like Fabio or Kevin Sorbo (Hercules TV show)

There are few characters that I can think of who were designed to be specifically attractive to women, though I know that Thane from Mass Effect was, and he's a more lithe character with a chest-window. I'm not super familiar with the Final Fantasy series myself, but when I was in university a lot of girls I knew were super into Sephiroth, a kind of skinny dude with flowing hair and a broodiness meter that goes to eleven. Fenris from Dragon Age 2 is another character I know a lot of people swoon over, and the first of the linked characters without a chest window. Ezio here has a bit of a reputation as a ladies man and a lot of women that I know really like him, and he's not particularly oddly proportioned. Nathan Drake is obviously fit and a bit on the scruffy side, but he also looks like a guy you could meet in real life. Also a lot of people I know are into Alistair from Dragon Age, though I'm not sure how much of that is physical attractiveness and how much of that is that he's a huge dork.

It should be noted that there are real differences between men and women. Physical or aesthetic differences are obviously true. But in aggregate, there are also real differences in behavior to the point that it's almost like men and women have a distinct culture. Whether biologically or socialogically (or more likely some combination thereof) based, the effect is still the same.

Innate gender differences may be at least partially socially constructed. Studies have shown that adults treat babies differently based on their perceived gender, and that they even interpret babies' behaviour in different manners depending on whether they believe the baby to be a boy or a girl. So even though differences may be present in our current society, it does not mean that the differences are inherent to women and men. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't endeavor to change things that are actively harmful to one gender or the other (for example, suppression of emotional response in men because emotion is read as inherently feminine in nature and thus undesirable) and it doesn't mean that every fictional society needs to replicate these differences.

As such, different adjectives and different emphasis will be placed on similar actions performed by different sexes. It isn't necessarily a bad thing.

You're not actually saying that it's natural to use to the word "beautiful" to describe the way a woman dies, are you?

I completely understand and really appreciate your responses. Please believe that I'm really asking questions here to hear your response and my points are genuinely meant to be up for counterpointing. If I sound rude at any point, I apologize. I can be blunt sometimes.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to appreciate how refreshing it is to meet a man on the internet who is actually willing to engage this issue and not just being angry and defensive all over the place. Thank you.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

It?s not hard (pardon the pun). What the gaming industry would be fine with sexualisation backed up by tangible character dimension and/or reason for doing so (e.g. Tifa in FFVII, Bayonetta) and more diversity (so, we can have our cheesecake and eat it, as long as there?s an equal amount of actual human female characters to play as too).

People are fine with objectification, as long as both the audience and the character acknowledge that. That?s probably why people who watch porn can watch it and not act sexist towards woman in their personal life at the same time. Heck, with the advent of social media, even known porn stars have blogs and Twitter profiles to show the other sides of their lives, not to mention even some of the interviews that nude models like Lucy Pinder get in ?lads? mags? like Nuts and Zoo.

As Bob Dylan once said, the times they are a-changing.

 

[briankoontz]

But hey, if you feel that female objectification is alright, I will keep on buying all the Final Fantasies and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7NqRG88E-s8 that I can get my hands on just to endorse the other side.

This is the right attitude. Go watch hunky swimmers. Seriously, I wish all the feminists were like this instead. Instead of throwing a tantrum that DoA Beach Volleyball exists, how about a requesting fan service of your own. I can't help that God made me like looking at the female body.

It's not a matter of liking it. Women know you like it. There's no point in doing it - it's boring.

Women like touching penises as well, but that doesn't mean they grope whoever in in range of their hands.

The main reason in real life not to look at women's breasts is to grant them privacy and personal space, and to make times when you do look at breasts to be special (during sexual encounters).

The main reason in gaming not to look at women's breasts is because they aren't women at all - they are digital images and have only the faint semblance of similarity with actual women.

The same arguments apply with respect to female gamers playing a game which objectifies the male body.

 

[generals3]

It's not a matter of liking it. Women know you like it. There's no point in doing it - it's boring.

Women like touching penises as well, but that doesn't mean they grope whoever in in range of their hands.

The main reason in real life not to look at women's breasts is to grant them privacy and personal space, and to make times when you do look at breasts to be special (during sexual encounters).

The main reason in gaming not to look at women's breasts is because they aren't women at all - they are digital images and have only the faint semblance of similarity with actual women.

The same arguments apply with respect to female gamers playing a game which objectifies the male body.

How can you go from groping, which is violating someone's right to their own body (you're enforcing something physical onto it) and being stared at, which violates no rights. People can look at whatever they bloody want. If I want to look at tits than i bloody will. If someone wants to stare at my ass than they can too.

And than it gets confusing, why even start this premise to go to a reason, which is totally unrelated, not to watch at breasts in games? If someone finds the bunch of pixels nice to look at, so what? You find that boring? Fine. Some others don't, it's not some kind of universal rule. I find farmville boring, so what? Does it suddenly make it wrong to play that game? I really don't see what you were trying to get to.

It's a myth that digital images can be sexually attractive, and like any myth can either be accepted or rejected. Accepting a myth that demeans one is really not a good idea.

Say hi to the thriving hentai porn in Japan. Nothing real about it but yet some people like it. It's not a myth simply because it doesn't apply to you.

 

[briankoontz]

It's not a matter of liking it. Women know you like it. There's no point in doing it - it's boring.

Women like touching penises as well, but that doesn't mean they grope whoever in in range of their hands.

The main reason in real life not to look at women's breasts is to grant them privacy and personal space, and to make times when you do look at breasts to be special (during sexual encounters).

The main reason in gaming not to look at women's breasts is because they aren't women at all - they are digital images and have only the faint semblance of similarity with actual women.

The same arguments apply with respect to female gamers playing a game which objectifies the male body.

How can you go from groping, which is violating someone's right to their own body (you're enforcing something physical onto it) and being stared at, which violates no rights. People can look at whatever they bloody want. If I want to look at tits than i bloody will. If someone wants to stare at my ass than they can too.

And than it gets confusing, why even start this premise to go to a reason, which is totally unrelated, not to watch at breasts in games? If someone finds the bunch of pixels nice to look at, so what? You find that boring? Fine. Some others don't, it's not some kind of universal rule. I find farmville boring, so what? Does it suddenly make it wrong to play that game? I really don't see what you were trying to get to.

It's a myth that digital images can be sexually attractive, and like any myth can either be accepted or rejected. Accepting a myth that demeans one is really not a good idea.

Say hi to the thriving hentai porn in Japan. Nothing real about it but yet some people like it. It's not a myth simply because it doesn't apply to you.

A myth is something which has meaning dependent on one's understanding. God is real to some people (based on their understanding) and is not real to others. Zeus was real to some people, not to others.

It's not "natural" to find digital images sexually attractive. It's a myth - those who find digital images attractive hold a worldview which encourages them to do so.

I am not saying myths are *false* - I'm saying people choose to believe or not believe a myth dependent on their preferences.

These preferences themselves have meaning - it means something to say it's good to ogle digital breasts - the meaning perhaps is that something which has no reality, something which is just computer code, should be treated as if it's real enough to be found pleasurable but not so real that the "woman" should take offense at the ogling.

I don't think it's an unreasonable position to take that digital images should not be treated as real, nowhere near real enough to cause sexual arousal.

Being stared at violates one's right to privacy, hence the common phrase "it's rude to stare".

If the people wherever you live have thrown away privacy as a right and a value then I pity you.

 

[generals3]

A myth is something which has meaning dependent on one's understanding. God is real to some people (based on their understanding) and is not real to others. Zeus was real to some people, not to others.

It's not "natural" to find digital images sexually attractive. It's a myth - those who find digital images attractive hold a worldview which encourages them to do so.

I am not saying myths are *false* - I'm saying people choose to believe or not believe a myth dependent on their preferences.

These preferences themselves have meaning - it means something to say it's good to ogle digital breasts - the meaning perhaps is that something which has no reality, something which is just computer code, should be treated as if it's real enough to be found pleasurable but not so real that the "woman" should take offense at the ogling.

I don't think it's an unreasonable position to take that digital images should not be treated as real, nowhere near real enough to cause sexual arousal.

Being stared at violates one's right to privacy, hence the common phrase "it's rude to stare".

If the people wherever you live have thrown away privacy as a right and a value then I pity you.

That's not the definition of "myth", well at least not the one i use and found.

Definition of myth
noun

1a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events:ancient Celtic myths [mass noun]:the heroes of Greek myth

2a widely held but false belief or idea:the belief that evening primrose oil helps to cure eczema is a myth, according to dermatologists
a fictitious or imaginary person or thing: nobody had ever heard of Simon?s mysterious friend?Anna said he was a myth
an exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing:the book is a scholarly study of the Churchill myth

What you probably meant is "subjective" or "unnatural". But neither, nor the combination of both, is a synonym of "myth".

And secondly. No you don't have the right not to be stared at. You have the right not be spied upon in your private spaces but that's it. If you walk on the streets someone is entirely in his or her right to stare at you.

 

[Savagezion]

But hey, if you feel that female objectification is alright, I will keep on buying all the Final Fantasies and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7NqRG88E-s8 that I can get my hands on just to endorse the other side.

This is the right attitude. Go watch hunky swimmers. Seriously, I wish all the feminists were like this instead. Instead of throwing a tantrum that DoA Beach Volleyball exists, how about a requesting fan service of your own. I can't help that God made me like looking at the female body.

It's not a matter of liking it. Women know you like it. There's no point in doing it - it's boring.

Women like touching penises as well, but that doesn't mean they grope whoever in in range of their hands.

First, allow me to tell YOU what is boring since you have no problem doing it to others. Seriously, who are you to tell someone else what they are allowed to find boring or not? It serves whatever point someone assigns to it. If youplan to be around this website very long you had better go look up the word "subjective" because people are going to be throwing it at you left and right, especially if you plan on stating 'opinion' as 'fact' like this very much.

Second, when did groping get involved in this? You seriously going to try and argue that women don't objectify men? Have you seen a diet coke commercial ever? This is called knowing your demographic.


Like it or not, I do think objectification will never go away and I dont want it to because if it does, then that means some law is in place that enforces us to not be allowed to express ourselves using sexuality - BUT I bet violence will still be protected under the law. Sexual attraction is natural and being enticed by the opposite sex is not evil. If you believe bouncing boobs will turn a person into a pervert, then you MUST also believe that seeing blood spilled will turn a person into a psychopath. But the reality is, everyone knows it is fantasy and are able to separate fantasy from reality because it isn't hard.

The main reason in real life not to look at women's breasts is to grant them privacy and personal space, and to make times when you do look at breasts to be special (during sexual encounters).

The main reason in gaming not to look at women's breasts is because they aren't women at all - they are digital images and have only the faint semblance of similarity with actual women.

The same arguments apply with respect to female gamers playing a game which objectifies the male body.

Um, you have heard of photo-realism right? You see, these graphics aim to imitate real life. If someone finds them sexually exciting, it is probably because they think it resembles reality close enough or whatever and their imagination can take over. It's like a monster in a scary movie. It doesn't have to be real to scare people. Just like her boobs don't actually have to be real to excite people.

I don't see a problem with being stimulated by the opposite sex and you will not convince me there is one. People as a whole have a hard time trying to see what is right and wrong. In this thread I was warned and accused of trolling for using the term "whiny prudes" (with sexual tension) as a blanket statement when the very person I quoted before used the term "bigoted sexist asshole" as a blanket statement towards me and others, but that is somehow totally OK. It's not hard to tell who the media values more. People shouting "this is a big deal" generates more traffic. People saying 'It isn't a big deal" doesn't. So don't you worry, your side WILL win this "debate" because someone can make money off your side of it.

 

[ninjaRiv]

This is a non-issue, stop being so touchy about a bit of flesh.

Precisely, but tell that to Jim Sterling. He has a soap box he gets on often to prove how intolerant he is to other view points. He doesn't seem to believe in justified disagreements on various topics he's passionate about. If you're an artist or video game designer who doesn't agree with him on some topic 100%, he will boycott the crap out of you.

Pretty sure Jim Sterling, the one presented on Jimquisition and, I think, Twitter, is just an exaggerated character. Also he has admitted to mistakes before. But if he wants to boycott stuff because he disagrees, more power to him. But I haven't seen any instances that you've mentioned so I can't comment any more than that.

His boycotting of Doug TenNapel is absolutely retarded.

Doug TenNapel DID make some rather nasty comments towards gay marriage, to be fair. I'm not down with boycotting all of his work but the guy should be told he's in the wrong. THEN AGAIN! Doug TenNapel is expressing his opinion. I don't know. I personally don't think boycotting someone's entire history of work is the right move because that can limit a person's cultural education as much as having these opinions. For example, I'm not going to burn my Ceberus books just because David Sim is a prick. Cerebus and Earthworm Jim were pretty influential. As for Jim's boycotting, he can do what ever he likes. I think it's too strong a move, sure but I still say that goes along with the over the top persona he presents to the public.

 

[ninjaRiv]

This is a non-issue, stop being so touchy about a bit of flesh.

Precisely, but tell that to Jim Sterling. He has a soap box he gets on often to prove how intolerant he is to other view points. He doesn't seem to believe in justified disagreements on various topics he's passionate about. If you're an artist or video game designer who doesn't agree with him on some topic 100%, he will boycott the crap out of you.

Pretty sure Jim Sterling, the one presented on Jimquisition and, I think, Twitter, is just an exaggerated character. Also he has admitted to mistakes before. But if he wants to boycott stuff because he disagrees, more power to him. But I haven't seen any instances that you've mentioned so I can't comment any more than that.

His boycotting of Doug TenNapel is absolutely retarded.

Doug TenNapel DID make some rather nasty comments towards gay marriage, to be fair. I'm not down with boycotting all of his work but the guy should be told he's in the wrong. THEN AGAIN! Doug TenNapel is expressing his opinion. I don't know. I personally don't think boycotting someone's entire history of work is the right move because that can limit a person's cultural education as much as having these opinions. For example, I'm not going to burn my Ceberus books just because David Sim is a prick. Cerebus and Earthworm Jim were pretty influential. As for Jim's boycotting, he can do what ever he likes. I think it's too strong a move, sure but I still say that goes along with the over the top persona he presents to the public.

Doug is a conservative, GASP! Jim Sterling hates conservatives. He expresses such retarded opinions about them all the time. He clearly grew up in Britain with parents who weren't big fans of Thatcher.

Well, Thatcher was fucked up and gave people a very good reason to hate conservatives. But perhaps your right, perhaps Jim lets his political views get in the way. Considering how big a character he is, though, I try not to hold it against him too much, considering the possibility he could be acting. But I already agreed that boycotting someone's work is too much so let's not argue over THAT! lol

 

[ninjaRiv]

This is a non-issue, stop being so touchy about a bit of flesh.

Precisely, but tell that to Jim Sterling. He has a soap box he gets on often to prove how intolerant he is to other view points. He doesn't seem to believe in justified disagreements on various topics he's passionate about. If you're an artist or video game designer who doesn't agree with him on some topic 100%, he will boycott the crap out of you.

Pretty sure Jim Sterling, the one presented on Jimquisition and, I think, Twitter, is just an exaggerated character. Also he has admitted to mistakes before. But if he wants to boycott stuff because he disagrees, more power to him. But I haven't seen any instances that you've mentioned so I can't comment any more than that.

His boycotting of Doug TenNapel is absolutely retarded.

Doug TenNapel DID make some rather nasty comments towards gay marriage, to be fair. I'm not down with boycotting all of his work but the guy should be told he's in the wrong. THEN AGAIN! Doug TenNapel is expressing his opinion. I don't know. I personally don't think boycotting someone's entire history of work is the right move because that can limit a person's cultural education as much as having these opinions. For example, I'm not going to burn my Ceberus books just because David Sim is a prick. Cerebus and Earthworm Jim were pretty influential. As for Jim's boycotting, he can do what ever he likes. I think it's too strong a move, sure but I still say that goes along with the over the top persona he presents to the public.

Doug is a conservative, GASP! Jim Sterling hates conservatives. He expresses such retarded opinions about them all the time. He clearly grew up in Britain with parents who weren't big fans of Thatcher.

Well, Thatcher was fucked up and gave people a very good reason to hate conservatives. But perhaps your right, perhaps Jim lets his political views get in the way. Considering how big a character he is, though, I try not to hold it against him too much, considering the possibility he could be acting. But I already agreed that boycotting someone's work is too much so let's not argue over THAT! lol

I loved Thatcher. She saved the country. You may disagree with that observation, just like you might disagree that Reagan was the best president of the 20th century (I think he was.)

Movie Bob does the same thing Jim does, just usually not in his main show. (He has a separate political show on his YouTube page and a another show over on ScrewAttack.)

Oooooooooooh you're a fan... I don't want to get into a political argument with you here but I'll say my piece, like you did yours: She may have done some good for the country, this I wont dispute. But she royally fucked over the working class and lower. Those people didn't protest and riot over nothing, you know. I live in a family seriously affected by the crap she brought about; taxes, job cuts, privatisation etc. The majority of people in working class and lower areas actively celebrated her death (I don't agree with that, just saying they did) and they celebrated because of the lives she ruined, the people close to them. If she saved the country, she did so with a lot of other people's blood and sweat on her hands.

Anyway, as for Bob I think he presents his opinions as fact too often which pisses me off a little.

 

[Lightknight]

I didn't see your response for some time and stopped following the page. Sorry for the delay but here's a response.

That's actually the part that doesn't make sense to me. I don't find a woman making her own decisions about her own body in real life to be equivalent to a team of artists deciding what a fictional woman is going to look like (though they do clearly have the right to do whatever they want, there's no game breast censor committee). For example, if I choose to wear one of those silly 'sexy [x]' costumes on Halloween, that's a decision made by one person who wants to look cute, not a large corporation trying to market my body to dudes. But like, the developers of Mass Effect noting in the artbook that they met to decide how much skin it was "reasonable" for Samara, essentially a warrior monk, to show in Mass Effect 2? Especially since the response was "silly cleavage armor is okay because she has a biotic shield"? She looks goofy.

If you have a problem with the objectification of women itself, then the issue is objectification and not who is doing it. So, if a team of women had produced the women from Dragon's Crown, then it should still be a problem in a consistent view. If not, then the issue is actually with men doing this and that's a valid but different discussion to be had. But that would make who is doing it the problem and not that it is happening.

So the inconsistency comes in when you begin to draw a line at when objectification is ok and when it's not. If you decide to go to a Halloween Party as a sexy-kitty-nurse-witch then you are objectifying yourself. I agree that it is perfectly within your rights to do so and think nothing of it outside this particular discussion. But, in dressing as such, you are objectifying women to your admittedly smaller audience. You would be right that it is indeed your body, but you are also representative of your sex. Likewise, a line of code is just their code, but in the female form it is representative of females. If it is not wrong for you to objectify yourself and ergo objectify your sex, then it should not be wrong for someone to objectify their own line of code even if it objectifies a sex. It would just be representative of real women who objectify themselves, would it not? Please bear in mind that this particular line of discussion is meant to be an exercise in logic rather than any accusation for or against you.

A consistent argument would be against all forms of objectification except for perhaps the extremely intimate scenarios (say a wife playing dress up for her husband and vice versa). An inconsistent argument picks and chooses which scenarios are ok. Your "she has a right to do whatever she wants with her own body" argument is just a rationalisation and honestly a red herring in that it is equally a developer's right to do whatever they want with their code too. To demand they compromise their artistic integrity is somewhat archaic, albeit in the name of feminism.

As to the chainmail bikini nonsense. We're on the same page. Besides, sexy isn't just skin. Sexy is knowing you can depend on your partner and having things in common that make the relationship meaningful. When I was still on the dating scene I knew my basic intellectual and personality needs. I dated physically attractive girls who didn't have those things and so I didn't pursue a second date or turned them down because I simply don't find a person who is all body and no brains/humor to be attractive. That's prefering the wrapper to the gift. But maybe that perception is why I am now happily married for several years to a wife I love and know that I can depend on. That she is beautiful is a nice plus but is so very far from what's needed for a relationship. However, I can't speak for all males and have known more than enough to attribute physical beauty to being worthy of love and desire. I also haven't been a 13 year old boy for some time who isn't mature enough to understand the intricacies what love should be about and what it isn't. Unfortunately, those kids also make up the gaming demographic but less so than I think these companies realise.

That being said, those women do exist. So it's not necessarily unfair to portray them. But what I don't get is what we'd lose of we started portraying capable women who were still physically attractive? What harm is there to put some brains up in there somewhere? I think writers are starting to do that and I appreciate it, but until then I feel like their writing is incredibly lazy. By the way, do you happen to watch Elementary? They swap sexes quite well there. Very pleasing and even meaningful.

Spoilered for novel-length response:

Don't hesitate to skip over something if I get particularly long winded or boring. I will not consider it any kind of admission of being wrong or some such nonsense. I understand that your time is valuable.

My two major issues with the porn industry are a bit similar to the issues I talked about in my other post actually: consent and violence. It is really difficult to define consent in any porn, but especially internet porn. Once money is in the equation and can be theoretically withdrawn at any time, if a woman is desperate does she really have an option to say no if a scene is changed from what she agreed to once she's arrived on set? How much amateur porn is "revenge porn" of someone's ex-girlfriend? It'd be a different sort of thing if you could guarantee that the performers that you were watching were consenting to both the acts presented and the publication of said acts, but right now as it stands, aside from a few companies who market themselves on being 'ethical', you really can't.

I wouldn't know, I haven't devoted any sort of time to catalogue porn. I'm also not an observer of porn for ethical reasons. I used to observe it in my youth but at some point the issue of verifying consent crossed my mind along with the other potential exploitations of the industry (adult sex slaves, potential underage individuals, ruffie victims, etc) and so I made a conscious decision to stop viewing it. Having a fiance (now wife) at the time didn't hurt that decision either.

That being said, I'm not sure being desperate needs to be part of the equation. It'd be like saying that a bank robber didn't have a choice in the matter because they were extremely poor and desperate for money. I do not consider adults who consent to be in porn knowing that it will be on the internet to be victims of some sort. By saying yes they made their bed and now they have to lay in it... for cash... To call them victims too is to trivialize the individuals who really do not have a choice in the matter. Ones who could not give consent. I bear no ill will towards such individuals at all. I just don't think they're victims.

The violence aspect is a bit harder to quantify because some performers do consent to that stuff and everyone has their fetishes or whatever, but as a woman it kind of icks me how much of (especially straight) porn is about 'dominating' women or 'destroying' them or whatever buzz word they're using and being deliberately degrading.

As stated, for the reasons given below, I cannot think of any other industry that is more degrading to or objectifying of women.

Obviously women are objectified (sometimes literally treated as objects!) in the porn industry, but in a way it's almost less insidious than in our culture at large because viewers know going into it that they're watching men and women who are doing this for money. I may be wrong, but I don't see as much of an expectation that women in porn are just how 'average' women should/do look or act as I do for women in other forms of entertainment.

This is perhaps a lack of information then. Porn does lead to expectations that are innappropriate and has been the source of a myriad of books and courses on the subject. Men, for example, may understand that those are paid individuals but they also begin to expect their partners to behave in those demeaning ways. Heck, they may even think some of those ridiculous things is actually something their partner expects. I won't get too specific, but the overall expectation of women and how they should behave in bed has drastically changed with the introduction of internet pornography. Then again, women's civil rights have also drastically changed during the same time. However, this problem is actually a cornerstone argument for many feminists so I'm surprised you'd approach it in a more dismissive way while attacking gaming that comes nowhere close to that. I believe men begin to associate those actions with pleasure and perhaps even love. They are, after all, actively conditioning themselves to think that way while "using" pornography. This would be a hell of a case study if not for the given awkwardness of performing the study.

I have two problems, I guess, because it's both of those. Obviously, female characters are getting more 'serious' roles now than they were when I was first getting into gaming as a kid, but there are still a lot of women in refrigerators and damsels in distress and 'two women are working near one another therefore they must fight' happening in the industry as a whole.

Let me respond to the damsel in distress bit. Not only has the damsel in distress been a major component of human history and folklore, but it arises out of something that every feminist campaign in the world can't change. Women are physically weaker than men. The average man has 40%-50% greater upper body strength and this is largely due to hormonal differences that give males denser bones, greater muscle mass and larger organs (bigger heart/lungs mean greater output). Even a female athlete has to do a tremendous amount to just reach average male levels and an atheletic male can easily outpace them because testosterone even helps expedite muscle development. This is why the Olympics seperate sexes. It isn't because they're old-schooled or sexist. It's to give women a platform to compete on that isn't unfair.

As such, there is a natural understanding that the women is typically the damsel and the male is typically the oppressor or hero. This still happens all the time in real life. It's cute that modern movies have a 130 lb woman knocking a 235 lb man through a wall but on some level we all need to understand that that's a farce and just meant to look cool. Guns are a great equalizer that can reverse roles and there are always weaker men and women who have trained themselves to be better physically equiped than men in a fight. But the average woman/man strength ratio is exactly as I stated and it's the aggregate values that form the perception, not the exceptions.

Additionally, the damsel in distress is an instant motivator. It makes perfect sense and readily plays off our human evolution. Men have fought for women since before history was written and this isn't a component of us that an enlighted education can just wave away. It has been bred into us culturally and perhaps even biologically. That being said, there is a difference between a useless damsel in distress and a capable damsel in distress. I mean, if games were to be trusted girls have a skull only slightly thicker than egg shells and they get knocked out as easily as one my high-five a friend. Thankfully women have mostly stopped fainting in games...

This means that humans naturally percieve women as weaker and so view actions taken by men to overpower them as fiendish and cowardly. Do you not personally agree that a man hitting a woman is more egregious than a woman hitting a man? Do you not agree that men are far more likely to be the aggressors and perpetrators of murders, rapings and nearly any other violent crime across cultures and countries? That we percieve men to be stronger than women makes the scenario more believable. This is also why the vast majority of foot soldiers we fight tend to be female. Because there's a perception of unfairness when we (males) kill or harm women, even in video games. Or, at least that perception should be there.

In this way, the classic damsel in distress isn't a problem. It's more realistic than a lot of the other scenarios and love is a lot more meaningful a motivator to gamers than some of the other contrivances writers try to replace it with. This is why the classic hero riding out to vanquish evil and save the oppressed is so captivating. Every day men struggle to impress and gain the hearts of women. Wars have been waged and nations have fallen for the chance to even be looked upon by particular women with affection. To ignore this part of humanity is to diminish the truth for the sake of a lie. The problem isn't the damsel, damsels in need do and have always existed, it's the perception that the damsel got there because she was stupid, helpless or did something wrong rather than that there was simply an evil force powerful enough to take what they wanted and she was it.

Games are getting the first half mostly right. That if something wrong is happening or if someone needs help that we should rise up to the occasion. The next part of the piece is giving the damsel a real purpose and personality too.

However, a lot of 'serious' roles are rendered more difficult to take seriously by the need for sexual attractiveness of the body shape and/or costume. See Wynne in Dragon Age: Origins talking about how old she is every 10 minutes and having the exact same body as Morrigan. See Miranda in Mass Effect 2 talking about the atrocities committed by her father as the camera pans up her backside to reveal her space wedgie. See Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite doing anything in public in underwear and a skirt, because apparently her period-accurate shirt didn't show enough cleavage. See the Commander Shepard beauty contest for the new default for Mass Effect 3. Even after two rounds of that nonsense, we wind up with a character who looks like an alien compared to her male counterpart because he has a human face model and she is just a copy/paste of facial features someone thought looked attractive. On the topic of Commander Shepard: check out the differences in the scar options for male and female Shepards in the first Mass Effect. Men can have a scar that basically rips their entire face in half, while women can have a bisected eyebrow. In order to keep female characters 'attractive', aesthetic choices are made that make even well-made and well-written characters difficult to take seriously.

This comes down to the general social trend of what constitutes attractiveness. I suppose there could also be some biological factors that contribute to what is attractive and what isn't as well. But in modern society, males can be ruggedly handsome and still have scars (which may only make them more rugged). Women with scars still aren't percieved as rugged and are often not percieved as less physically attractive depending on their scar. Now, you may mean that the option should be made. That is demanding that the developers create allowances for everything a person could possibly want whether than allocating their time for the most desireable options. This fails to take into account limited time resources available to create the customization editor.

If we start having editors that can produce anything and those features are held back, then you'd have an argument.

Sometimes it is, yes, and sometimes it fits the way that a character has been written for her to look that way (Isabela in Dragon Age 2, for example, would probably just laugh in the face of anyone suggesting she put on some pants) but not all the time. Since I was using a ton of Mass Effect examples earlier, Jack's relative toplessness fits her character really well and doesn't feel like pandering or objectification to me. When the in-game camera is focusing on her skin, it's highlighting her scars and tattoos - a huge part of who she is as a character - so it doesn't feel as much like someone panicked because it had been at least 30 seconds since we'd seen some side-boob and gamers need a fix.

Agreed.

I don't think many men would be comfortable with a Fabio clone as the lead in their video game either. Can you imagine a poster of even a less 'manly' man like Nathan Drake running around with his shirt billowing open, hair blowing in wind that seems to only affect him? Though I'm not sure whether that would come across to most women as attractive or hilarious, haha.

You consider fabio to be less manly than Nathan Drake? Are you just thinking of the long hair because Fabio is a hulk where it comes to muscle. I'm thinking Ken from Street Fighter as the Fabio game example. Long hair, lots of muscle, bare chest. Nathan Drake may have some stubble but he's about as unmanly as they come otherwise with little to no musculature and... is that a scarf or disheveled ascot? I mean, you do have your Links where you can't always tell if it is a man or a woman if you were honest about the artwork but I think we see male portrayals all over the board. Minimally dressed (Kratos), long hair (various), Bare chested (multiple), feminine and otherwise. As long as the character looks cool (like a badass) or even if the character is a joke like the Fabio archetype is now, it's still what people like. In today's times, modern handsomeness has somewhat gone away from the Fabio type and is much more in the hands of the Nathan Drake types. Would you disagree? We're beginning to see more of them because of that in, my opinion.

Handsome takes many forms and as long as the character is one of them, then it won't get in the way of the game for the player. If Fabio was still the ideal of masculinity today I would have no problem playing as him.

I will be honest: my God of War career consists entirely of trying to play it once at a party and accidentally super dramatically stabbing a peasant in the face because the monster moved. So pretty much everything I know about the series comes from promo art and that one hilarious sex scene (I think it's from GoW 3) where you have to mash the thumbsticks all around.

I don't think we're defining bulked up in the same way though if this doesn't fit your definition. I don't know any women who would swoon over a dude with no neck and an arm as big as her thigh, though I'm sure there are some. Even the bulkier Fabio covers I could find don't really reach those kind of heights (though maybe this one comes close!).

As I stated in the previous post, Kratos' musculature is not a stable attribute. One moment it is hulking and then the rest it is just very defined/toned. You showed a picture that is playing a perception trick moreso than showing a hulking individual. If you were to look at him from the side you'd see his chin is down and his face is stuck forward and down. Like one of those hilarious comics that show what a comic heroine would look from behind while striking a sexy/heroic pose (spoiler: they look silly from behind and perhaps like something is incredibly wrong with them). This brings the head down and the shoulders up, which makes him look more musculature. Not sure why they did it that way. It's better to look at the actual character models rather than the poster/stylistic renderings of him to see what I mean. Here's him with a woman beside him to put it into context. Compared to Arnold Swarzenegger, Kratos is a girly man. Kratos just has a really defined and buff body. They also gave him quite a pair of shoulders near the neck. But a hulk his is not.

Here, take a look at this more recent Kratos. Try to ignore the large pauldron and think about just his musculature against the Schwarzenegger example I linked to. Kratos is just very well defined, not hulking, at least, not most of the time. Sometimes in cut scenes and what not those muscles magically grow ten times larger. But take a look at any of the pictures of him and they either deviate from that standard character model or use the same chin down perception trick I mention.

There have absolutely been bulky characters. Haggar from Final Fight comes to mind.

In terms of my own experience and talking to female friends who are attracted to men: look at characters like those dudes in the swimming anime someone linked, or Fenris from Dragon Age 2, or Ryan Gosling in basically every film he's done since like 2004, or even Edward Cullen in the Twilight film. This might be a bit TMI, but I would personally not really find anyone significantly bulkier than, say, Rain in Ninja Assassin very attractive. As you said, many game characters are bulky to the point of being grotesque.

I wouldn't mind playing as those characters. I've even been known to play final fantasy games from time to time. Take Raiden from MGS2, people didn't hate him because he had long hair. They hated him because he was a whiney little brat. Everything from his voice to the way he complained about things. That in addition to him not being Snake or Big Boss (the actual protagonists of the series in everyone's mind). But if he hadn't had those minor annoyances I'd have enjoyed playing as him and he was about as feminine as it gets and had a lengthy nude level where he had to run for his life while clutching his nuts (as if he had any...). If I were to be honest here, I'd admit that I had much less of a problem playing as him as I did after my friends and the internet expressed hate for him. I'd only found his voice and lines annoying.

A thing to remember as well is that beauty standards and desired body shapes have changed over time. This applies more-so when games (or other media) are trying to represent a specific time period in the past and all of the female characters still look like they got lost on their way to the CW casting offices. There is also the problem of looking realistic doing whatever the character's job is. A character with really skinny legs who is meant to be a hand-to-hand fighter who is kicking people all the time is going to look silly. Even skinny dancers tend to have really muscular legs for obvious reasons. A character who looks like a stiff wind might blow her over could be believable as a rogue, for example, but is going to look goofy if you try and call her a paladin.

You missed my question there. I do agree with you that slender (no musculature) fighters are a joke. It's that "130 lb woman ***** slapping the 235 lb man through a wall" example. But my actual question was whether or not women desire to look like/have a body like the characters portrayed in games. The ability to have it is besides the point.

Considering makeup and other beauty products, breast augmentation surgeries (holy heck, people are atually willing to go under a knife to achieve a different physical look, do you ever stop to just think about that), the issue of bulemia and anorexia in women, and even differences in clothes styles seem to push heavily towards a desire to look sexy. Those things aren't atypical behaviors, they're normal. Do you have evidence to suggest that women would rather play as curveless and somewhat comely (but not beautiful) women than the standard look? I personally think they'd like to play as an appropriately dressed super model just like I would prefer to play as such in the male category.

It's when the writers make the character dumb or just plain silly that it's not cool.

As you said, male characters tend to be handsome in a way that men want to look. The face-model for the male Commander Shepard, for example, is a model who does a lot of this sort of thing, but you don't see anything like that from the in-game character model because that is not how companies think that male gamers want to see their character.

You mean because he doesn't run around with a bare chest? I don't know if that would have fit in a soldier scenario but the option would have been interesting. But since the standard clothing was various military uniforms or armor I don't know how much it would have fit. The fem-shep didn't have a particularly revealing outfit either, did she (I could be wrong here, please let me know if I am)? I think most of the individuals were generally fully clothed except for Jack and I guess she had a reason for it. I could be forgetting someone or something. But one woman was even FULLY clothed with zero skin showing.

Re: 'gay cooties' and women: I think that women are more . . . inured, I guess, than men are to seeing images of ourselves sexually objectified and are also less afraid of possibly if you squint accidentally possibly to someone appearing gay. I have seen the argument, for example (I believe it's mentioned in a Jimquisition video?) that companies believe that male gamers don't want to play female avatars who are in romantic relationships with men because they don't want to 'feel gay' or whatever. Men tend to be uncomfortable with depictions of men as in that "reverse objectification" welder image that was going around a while ago, whereas I think women might sigh at seeing the female version dressed that way, there's not that deep discomfort with it that men seem to have. I have a friend whose husband refused to watch the episode of Castle that had the male strippers in it because it made him feel uncomfortable to see it, and it's just like "welcome to every time I try and watch anything ever."

Interesting. While I don't have an issue with it, I can't fault people who would find that uncomfortable.

Note that there is a difference between playing as an attractive male and playing as a gay male in the perception of gamers (as I'm sure gay gamers have some difficulty playing straight characters in games). The idea that women are less prone to disliking the sexualization of female characters seems to provide a more legitimate condition of it being more "ok" than the opposite would be where males may have an active issue with it.

I'll also point out for the sake of context that as of 2010 when the overall gaming demographic was 40%/60% that less than 18% of the gamers whose primary console was a ps3 or 360 were female. 80% of all females owned a Wii as their primary console with 11% owning a 360 and 9% owning a ps3 as the primary. There is no more current study but also nothing to claim that those numbers have drastically changed with the 7 percentage points increase of ownership in the overall market. This is a significant disparity between the sexes when looking at the target market of AAA games. While that doesn't justify objectification it should alleviate the notion that 50% of gamers are females who aren't being represented. When major console owners are 50%/50% male/female then that will be another story altogether. It should be mentioned that less than 50% of the respondents in that study that called themselves gamers had or were planning to buy even one game over the course of 2012 (the now famous study with 47%/53% women/men gamers). Which begs the question of how loosely gamer was defined and what the increase in mobile gaming had to do with the shift in demographics. Either, that means that over half of the respondents of that survey aren't even market targets of AAA game developers.

My impression overall on issues regarding the penis is that men tend to think/talk about this more than women do. Obviously for a heterosexual woman it is important for a penis to be present, but on the other hand, huge monster dongs are not exactly comfortable for most women and some women don't particularly even care about penetration and orgasm easier through other methods (this got kind of lurid for a costume design post sorry). Like, if I met a dude and his penis was dragging on the ground, my first thought would be 'omg that's freaky' and not 'huge dick must bang' you know?

Haha, did you see penny arcade's comic on Dragons Crown regarding what the guy should look like? I think I may play as the guy in that scenario, the special attack would be a true power fantasy...

Joking aside, you're completely right on this front. A lot of it is with guy's perception of what women like and that's enough to make them want it, true or not. Women focus on some things that guys couldn't care less about in the same way. Take men who work out to the point that their muscles are grotesque. That's what they think women want (and some do) but it's a major turn off for a lot of women. But there are a lot of reasons for guys to fixate on that particular organ. Anything from porn setting a-typical sizes to slogans like, "Size matters" and all of that make men genuinely self conscious about what otherwise wouldn't be a problem. If thinking about this has brought me to any conclusion, it's that both sexes suffer from extreme self-esteem issues as a whole. That's healthy when it pushes us to be better but quickly becomes bad when it's something we can't or shouldn't change.

But I'm not sure how this contradicts what I was saying. If women fell for men with a particular feature and it was known to be attractive, that feature would be made "perfect" or exaggerated in gaming.

In some ways it is hard to ridiculously emphasize parts of the male body that women find attractive. For example, if you overdo it on abs or arms you start getting Marcus Feenix and as you said, no one wants that. But at the same time you don't see a whole lot of heroic male characters with lean bodies and high cheekbones running around with their shirts open even when it would probably be more practical to wear some kind of body armor, you know? You're not seeing Carth Onasi crying about his dead wife while the camera focuses on his tight butt.

Right, but armor often serves the appearance of a chiseled abs just as when women actually do wear armor there's a huge curve for their breasts.

But you're right, there wouldn't be close ups of his ass like there are of female characters in Mass Effect. Let me ask you, would you prefer that they come up with neutral shots or would you like the option in games to specify your desired perspective? Did mass effect have any similar shots of the male sexual options?

If my math is right and women do make up around 18% of the AAA market (computers not included, no data on them, but that 18% is also being generous), would you see that as more justification of using camera angles that would be more pleasing to males if they make up 82% of the target audience? Or should the target market's demographics and general preferences and orientation be ignored? How far should that be extended? Should panty hose be designed to be a little more comfortable in the croch region for the few men that wear them at a small expense to the comfort of the vast majority client?

There are few characters that I can think of who were designed to be specifically attractive to women, though I know that Thane from Mass Effect was, and he's a more lithe character with a chest-window. I'm not super familiar with the Final Fantasy series myself, but when I was in university a lot of girls I knew were super into Sephiroth, a kind of skinny dude with flowing hair and a broodiness meter that goes to eleven. Fenris from Dragon Age 2 is another character I know a lot of people swoon over, and the first of the linked characters without a chest window. Ezio here has a bit of a reputation as a ladies man and a lot of women that I know really like him, and he's not particularly oddly proportioned. Nathan Drake is obviously fit and a bit on the scruffy side, but he also looks like a guy you could meet in real life. Also a lot of people I know are into Alistair from Dragon Age, though I'm not sure how much of that is physical attractiveness and how much of that is that he's a huge dork.

Interesting, that's a wonderful list of examples. Thank you for taking the time to put that together. I enjoyed or would enjoy playing as any one of those characters.

Innate gender differences may be at least partially socially constructed. Studies have shown that adults treat babies differently based on their perceived gender, and that they even interpret babies' behaviour in different manners depending on whether they believe the baby to be a boy or a girl. So even though differences may be present in our current society, it does not mean that the differences are inherent to women and men. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't endeavor to change things that are actively harmful to one gender or the other (for example, suppression of emotional response in men because emotion is read as inherently feminine in nature and thus undesirable) and it doesn't mean that every fictional society needs to replicate these differences.

I would fully anticipate a social element in gender roles. The problem is two-fold.

One, you cannot verify that it was socially or biologically obtained because you cannot divorce one from the other (even the absence of being around others is a contrived culture of loneliness) and you especially couldn't state to what degree each may be combined to form the end result.

Two, even if it were purely social conditioning, you are every bit a product of your environment as you are your genetics. If you've been successfully conditioned to be one way then you can't help being that way any more than a butterfly could return to being a catepillar (forgive me if I'm unaware of some weird species that undergoes something resembling that change).

So the cause for differences in gender behavior is a non-issue. That it exists is all that matters here. Whether culturally or biologically conditioned, women and men behave differently. I'll point out that there is a significant difference between a virile male and a castrated male of nearly every species including humans. The differences caused by the disparity in hormones should not be ignored by any stretch of the imagination. Testosterone is a hell of a thing. Just like estrogen and progesterone cycles can be a real ***** (haha, I'll let you give me one free punch for that silliness if we ever meet. Please not in the face or baby maker).

You're not actually saying that it's natural to use to the word "beautiful" to describe the way a woman dies, are you?

No, but when you're talking about media that centers around death, such unnatural terms begin to make sense where they'd only work in that context. Would you agree that different contexts may demand an entirely different word palette (to appropriate the term for a range of vocabulary) to create the desired impact? Having not seen the show, I'd think that she died in an artistic and graceful manner whose description would only be fitting for females. I could be entirely wrong there.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to appreciate how refreshing it is to meet a man on the internet who is actually willing to engage this issue and not just being angry and defensive all over the place. Thank you.

I also appreciate you taking the time to hear me out to have a civil discussion. It's remarkably easy to be thrown into the cages with the angry and defensive ones rather than getting an earnest response that may help me grow in my views.

 

[nonhoration]

No worries!

If you have a problem with the objectification of women itself, then the issue is objectification and not who is doing it. So, if a team of women had produced the women from Dragon's Crown, then it should still be a problem in a consistent view.

The place where I draw the line is whether a person is able to legitimately make their own decisions. So if a woman decides to wear a particular thing, she is making that decision for herself. A model in a Victoria's Secret ad, on the other hand, isn't really making her own decision since she's being paid (beyond knowing before going in that she's going to be in a lingerie ad, of course, but the framing of the images and that weird unhappy facial expression that people think is sexy are things set up by the director, not the model). A video game character doesn't exist and thus can't make her own decisions. A lot of female artists still draw problematic art, and there are tons of male artists who can draw excellent female characters.

Your "she has a right to do whatever she wants with her own body" argument is just a rationalisation and honestly a red herring in that it is equally a developer's right to do whatever they want with their code too. To demand they compromise their artistic integrity is somewhat archaic, albeit in the name of feminism.

Oh, obviously they have a right to do it or it wouldn't be happening. There is never going to be (nor should there be!) a Cleavage Police or something to make sure characters are appropriately attired. On the other hand, I think that the samey look a lot of 'sexy' female characters have is endemic of a lack of creativity in the industry and it would be great to see a more diverse pool of characters along the entire gender spectrum.

By the way, do you happen to watch Elementary? They swap sexes quite well there. Very pleasing and even meaningful.

I think one of the things that makes Elementary fantastic is that the writers obviously respect all of the characters. They are all capable in different ways and even the character who is trans* isn't the butt of any jokes.

Spoilered for novel-length response:

Men, for example, may understand that those are paid individuals but they also begin to expect their partners to behave in those demeaning ways. Heck, they may even think some of those ridiculous things is actually something their partner expects. I won't get too specific, but the overall expectation of women and how they should behave in bed has drastically changed with the introduction of internet pornography. Then again, women's civil rights have also drastically changed during the same time. However, this problem is actually a cornerstone argument for many feminists so I'm surprised you'd approach it in a more dismissive way while attacking gaming that comes nowhere close to that. I believe men begin to associate those actions with pleasure and perhaps even love. They are, after all, actively conditioning themselves to think that way while "using" pornography. This would be a hell of a case study if not for the given awkwardness of performing the study.

It's true that perhaps I'm underestimating porn's impact on people. As you said it's difficult to quantify the actual effect because most people aren't going to admit to their friends what they watch or what they expect from women on that front if their friends are also women. I'm also not one of the anti-porn feminists, though I do believe that the industry needs more regulation in order to be a safe place for women.

I do want to make it clear however that I'm not 'attacking' anyone. My problem with objectification in gaming does not have as much to do with how said objectification might psychologically impact women (our entire culture does that, not one particular art form) as it does with a disappointing lack of creativity and a belief that seeing those images as representative of gaming is driving away women who might otherwise be interested in the hobby.

Let me respond to the damsel in distress bit. Not only has the damsel in distress been a major component of human history and folklore, but it arises out of something that every feminist campaign in the world can't change. Women are physically weaker than men.

My problem is more that this is one of the few roles for women in stories that games attempt to tell. We rarely see situations from the perspective of the damsel, and sometimes she doesn't even speak. We don't know anything about her personality aside from the fact that the lead character presumably likes her (or at least the reward for rescuing her, depending on the character). This woman isn't a character, she's a plot device to motivate the male character into action. The bad guy could kidnap the protagonist's cat and the plot would play out basically the same way.

This means that humans naturally percieve women as weaker and so view actions taken by men to overpower them as fiendish and cowardly. Do you not personally agree that a man hitting a woman is more egregious than a woman hitting a man? Do you not agree that men are far more likely to be the aggressors and perpetrators of murders, rapings and nearly any other violent crime across cultures and countries? That we percieve men to be stronger than women makes the scenario more believable.

You're right that men tend to be the perpetrators of violence in modern society, but I think the thing that makes a man attacking a woman more egregious than vice-versa is that the position of power that men generally hold over women in our culture. Women often feel like they can't escape violent situations without something much worse occurring, and authorities aren't always willing to help women who are in or survivors of a dangerous situation. There is a different social context to images of men hurting women than there is to women hurting men, and this is at least partly because it isn't a relatively recent development that men beating their wives was no longer seen as something that just happens.

In this way, the classic damsel in distress isn't a problem. It's more realistic than a lot of the other scenarios and love is a lot more meaningful a motivator to gamers than some of the other contrivances writers try to replace it with. This is why the classic hero riding out to vanquish evil and save the oppressed is so captivating. Every day men struggle to impress and gain the hearts of women. Wars have been waged and nations have fallen for the chance to even be looked upon by particular women with affection. To ignore this part of humanity is to diminish the truth for the sake of a lie. The problem isn't the damsel, damsels in need do and have always existed, it's the perception that the damsel got there because she was stupid, helpless or did something wrong rather than that there was simply an evil force powerful enough to take what they wanted and she was it.

Any time a female character is hurt and it is framed by the story as something bad that happened to a man, then the story has a problem.

As I said earlier, many of these kidnapped/imprisoned/comatose characters have little to no character development. They may not even be seen on screen until the very end of the story. There never seems to be a question of the character trying to escape her own imprisonment (except for poor put-upon Elaine from the Monkey Island series, but her capabilities tend to be framed as a joke about how inept Guybrush is at life).

A missing love interest or child is an instant motivator and allows writers to avoid having to come up with any kind of character motivation. It's not necessarily a bad story, but when it's as common as it is, it's lazy and it robs pretty much any damsel involved of any agency of her own.

This comes down to the general social trend of what constitutes attractiveness. I suppose there could also be some biological factors that contribute to what is attractive and what isn't as well. But in modern society, males can be ruggedly handsome and still have scars (which may only make them more rugged). Women with scars still aren't percieved as rugged and are often not percieved as less physically attractive depending on their scar. Now, you may mean that the option should be made. That is demanding that the developers create allowances for everything a person could possibly want whether than allocating their time for the most desireable options. This fails to take into account limited time resources available to create the customization editor.

In the case of the Mass Effect scars, however, the textures are already created and available for the male character. It actually used more resources to create prettified versions for female characters than it would have to simply port the male scars to the female head morphs. There is a mod that replaces the female scars with the male scars and it is a simple texture replacement.

It is another part of my problem with the game industry that every female character needs to be attractive all the time. Maybe someone who has survived in the wilderness as long as Sole Survivor Shepards have isn't as physically attractive anymore, but those scars tell part of the story about her life. I don't think it's too much to ask that if an option is already available to a male character, it should be available to a female character as well.

You consider fabio to be less manly than Nathan Drake? Are you just thinking of the long hair because Fabio is a hulk where it comes to muscle.

I think maybe I'm thinking of the whole Fabio aesthetic while you're just thinking of his body shape. Because when you compare Kratos to Fabio I am picturing a warrior in a flowing white shirt open to his navel to expose a hairless and possible oiled chest while his luxurious long hair whips dramatically around in the wind.

Sometimes in cut scenes and what not those muscles magically grow ten times larger. But take a look at any of the pictures of him and they either deviate from that standard character model or use the same chin down perception trick I mention.

The cut-scene muscles are probably the animators' attempt to make him look even more badass. Even little boys tend to draw characters with arms like Trogdor, so it is something that men like to see. Though I agree that the character model Kratos you linked is less ridiculously bulky than he is ridiculously well-defined. Maybe they're trying to imply that he's dehydrated like a body builder at a competition.

Considering makeup and other beauty products, breast augmentation surgeries (holy heck, people are atually willing to go under a knife to achieve a different physical look, do you ever stop to just think about that), the issue of bulemia and anorexia in women, and even differences in clothes styles seem to push heavily towards a desire to look sexy. Those things aren't atypical behaviors, they're normal. Do you have evidence to suggest that women would rather play as curveless and somewhat comely (but not beautiful) women than the standard look? I personally think they'd like to play as an appropriately dressed super model just like I would prefer to play as such in the male category.

I think I agree that everyone would prefer that their own avatar be attractive, but it's jarring to be present in a world where even all of the side characters have to be beautiful, especially when male NPCs tend to be more diverse. You can feel pretty silly when your character looks silly even if she is well written. There is a mod for Dragon Age II that gives the female Hawke the male Hawke's walking animation because the female character's walk is so exaggeratedly sexy that is looks ridiculous on a warrior. I think that many women enjoy playing as pretty or feminine characters, but it would be nice to see a wider range of looks for characters, especially now that they have a wider range of roles to play.

The fem-shep didn't have a particularly revealing outfit either, did she (I could be wrong here, please let me know if I am)? I think most of the individuals were generally fully clothed except for Jack and I guess she had a reason for it. I could be forgetting someone or something. But one woman was even FULLY clothed with zero skin showing.

Shepard's outfits were generally pretty decent, actually, but she did have that bizarre leather dress with a zipper on the butt that you could have her wear everywhere and that she wears to the party in the Citadel DLC for ME3. Many of the female characters had great costumes, especially earlier in the series, but then you had that one ludicrous NPC dress (the one Emily Wong wore), Matriarch Benezia's demonstration that the asari don't have nipples, the boob windows of Mass Effect 2 (notably Miranda and Samara), EDI's camel toe, Ashley's new ME3 armor (especially after her joke about tin foil miniskirts in the first game), and Diana Allers's bizarre outfit.

The idea that women are less prone to disliking the sexualization of female characters seems to provide a more legitimate condition of it being more "ok" than the opposite would be where males may have an active issue with it.

I don't think I'd frame it as women are less prone to disliking sexualized characters, but as women are more used to seeing sexualized characters and thus don't complain about it as much. As a corollary, when they do complain about it, they're usually met with a deluge of angry internet men telling them to shut up, so there's also that.

I'll also point out for the sake of context that as of 2010 when the overall gaming demographic was 40%/60% that less than 18% of the gamers whose primary console was a ps3 or 360 were female. 80% of all females owned a Wii as their primary console with 11% owning a 360 and 9% owning a ps3 as the primary.

You would think that game companies would want to increase their demographics to increase their profit margin, but this doesn't seem to be happening. A lot of women I know have a really negative impression of gaming, and many of their issues do focus on how women are portrayed in what bits of gaming they do see. It can be a chore to engage in a medium that feels like it doesn't want you.

But I'm not sure how this contradicts what I was saying. If women fell for men with a particular feature and it was known to be attractive, that feature would be made "perfect" or exaggerated in gaming.

I just think that it's telling that even when we're jokingly designing 'attractive to women' characters we focus on what men want rather than what women would actually prefer.

Let me ask you, would you prefer that they come up with neutral shots or would you like the option in games to specify your desired perspective? Did mass effect have any similar shots of the male sexual options?

My preference would be to see both male and female characters framed as characters whose stories matter outside of their physical attractiveness. I mean obviously in something like Leisure Suit Larry you are going to see a lot of objectifying camera shots and loosely drawn female characters, but in a game that wants to tell a serious story I would prefer not to see it. So I guess I'm trying to say that I would prefer to see neutral camera shots unless it's the type of game that would call for the other.

If my math is right and women do make up around 18% of the AAA market (computers not included, no data on them, but that 18% is also being generous), would you see that as more justification of using camera angles that would be more pleasing to males if they make up 82% of the target audience? Or should the target market's demographics and general preferences and orientation be ignored? How far should that be extended? Should panty hose be designed to be a little more comfortable in the croch region for the few men that wear them at a small expense to the comfort of the vast majority client?

What I believe is that while a male target market is being pandered to blatantly in this manner it will be difficult to make those numbers more even. As I said earlier, I would expect AAA game companies to want to increase their female demographic because AAA games are incredibly expensive to make and they want to make a profit.

One, you cannot verify that it was socially or biologically obtained because you cannot divorce one from the other (even the absence of being around others is a contrived culture of loneliness) and you especially couldn't state to what degree each may be combined to form the end result.

Two, even if it were purely social conditioning, you are every bit a product of your environment as you are your genetics. If you've been successfully conditioned to be one way then you can't help being that way any more than a butterfly could return to being a catepillar (forgive me if I'm unaware of some weird species that undergoes something resembling that change).

I agree that we are all a product of our environment and our current views are shaped by it, I just have a problem with the idea that women and men have been the way they are in modern Western society throughout time because all gender differences are biological, because it's not true. Also even today the spectrum is fairly broad regarding what any member of any gender wants to see or finds attractive.

It's also interesting to me that a lot of fictional societies portray the inequalities of our own society because it is so difficult for writers to imagine a world that is not like ours in the fundamentals (rather than just "flavor" stuff like 'they say hi by touching their noses' or something).

No, but when you're talking about media that centers around death, such unnatural terms begin to make sense where they'd only work in that context. Would you agree that different contexts may demand an entirely different word palette (to appropriate the term for a range of vocabulary) to create the desired impact? Having not seen the show, I'd think that she died in an artistic and graceful manner whose description would only be fitting for females. I could be entirely wrong there.

From what I remember the lead actress was a model who'd 'aged out' into acting because 25 is about when they take you out back with a shotgun when you're a model. She was being terrorized by a male admirer and I think she got kidnapped from a parking garage? It was mostly the phrasing of the review that stayed with me (the film was an incredibly forgettable woman-must-escape-crazed-stalker affair) but I'm afraid trying to google it will make me look like a serial killer.