It Never Ends

[Reed Sprung]

Now, why is it that you can't have a female character that satisfies both heterosexual men and females? Lara Croft was somewhat close, but still managed to piss women off. I remember playing through Metal Gear Solid 2 and not noticing that Solid Snake was sexualized until I saw a video that a girl made about it reviewing it and reading/hearing other girls talk about and then noticing a few things about it. Even now that I know that Snake has subtle hints of female fanservice, I still like him as a protagonist and I actually mimicked his hair and beard style when I was 15-16. I think it wouldn't a bad thing if a game studio managed that with a female protagonist.

Even though it annoys me that games that I like, like Zelda, make their protagonist effeminate, or "bishoenen," I don't get mad at the developer because I understand that people like me aren't the only ones who buy games. But I can understand why women are upset about almost all female characters being fanservice toward men, just as I would be mad if the only male characters to choose from were effeminate "bishoenen" who were directed only toward women. Although, I am still mad that an incredible military leader like Zhang He was turned into an effeminate stripper.

I also don't think that people who make sexualized female video game characters are necessarily sexist, I think they only flood the game world with them because research show that they increase sales, and, as a guy who is currently making an indie game, I can tell you that when can decide how a female character looks and dresses, it take self-control to not shrink their clothing and grow their breasts and legs.

 

[Fiairflair]

Who wants to bet there are heterosexual women out there who look at the Sorceress and honestly, un-ironically think she's the coolest thing ever?

I'm confident there are plenty of women who would be drawn to the aesthetic of the Sorceress. It is easier to be objective when you don't find the character attractive. The appearance of the Sorceress seems more likely to induce laughter than arousal, but that may just be my personal taste.

Regardless, I appreciate that vid87 has highlighted the diversity of female taste in this discussion. It can be all too easy to assume all women think the same way when it comes to sexualised characters. Sexuality is not the be all end all of character and, so long as there is more to a character, even ridiculously overt sexualisation can sometimes be overlooked.

 

[1337mokro]

There is a VERY easy solution here.

Don't like it, don't buy it.

Oh sure we can talk about how gaming should strife for this and that and stereotypes of gaming need to be broken bla bla bla however this is still a product up for purchase and that is the only decision you have about this. Just because a medium should strife towards something doesn't mean we should ban or refuse to even allow some type of games to be made.

What can be done however is dictate their success by way of your wallet. Personally I am more interested in the gameplay which is for me a deciding factor in purchases, if it's good then the fanservice is just a bonus. Call me what you want but I am not gonna lie that the characters are pleasing to the eye.

On a side note though deriding artists because they draw only women overly sexualized or vice versa or both is quite low. People that we call Renaissance Masters painted nothing but nude women during their entire lifetime. So if it's before 1970 and on a piece of canvas it's art but in a game or on a piece of graph paper it's automatically the work of a 14 year old?

Kotaku being of course the bottom feeding scum sucking nerdbaiting site that it is loves the traffic it's getting because of it.

 

[Triality]

I'm not even gonna touch the controversy. Haters gonna hate.

The most incredible thing to come out of Dragon's Crown is that it has the most pre-release fanart in the history of videogames. Floppy breasts or not, this game has won bragging rights to this attention for a long time.

 

[Yuuki]

I guess you must have missed mine... I actually like the Amazon, you don't get too many women in games with huge muscles.

Sounds more like a fetish than anything

Women with muscles do appear every now and then, however they are the nice kind of muscles which are lean and/or toned, not out-right BULKY like they've been chugging 5 liters of protein shakes every day.

Say what you want, "gigantic testosterone muscles" and "women" just don't fit outside very specific fetishes. A good example is female bodybuilding competitions, some of the competitors such grotesquely huge muscles that all their feminine features (breasts, waist-hip ratio, etc) basically disappear and you end up with something that has the face of a woman and the body of a man. Not to discredit their hard work achieving such a body but it just looks very...well, eerie and wrong. Big muscles just aren't a feminine trait.

You want a strong amazonian, look at Wonder Woman:

They gave her broader shoulders and strong-looking arms (for a woman, that is) but managed to keep her feminine.

And of course, who can forget Lucy Lawless as Xena:

 

[Brad Shepard]

all the characters in this game are overdesgined in terms of sexuality and body, both male and female alike.

 

[Defeated Detective]

Honestly, George Kamitani's may have seemed juvenile but despite our reactions and complaints, Dragon's Crown was meant to serve Japan's interest first and foremost above everyone else, this is what they like in Japan, It's just that America's video gaming scene is shaken at this point due to the whole Anita Sarkeesian issue.

What Kamitani fails to take into consideration is we're not gay because we don't like the designs of Dragon Crown's female characters(Speak for yourselves, despite despising Amazon's designs for looking unnatural, I really like Sorceress and Elf's character design), It's because what works in Japan doesn't necessarily work in the US, just because guys in Japan love this kind of thing doesn't mean guys in the US would love it too, he should've seen that the moment it's being spammed in Japanese media that Japan's birth rate is failing while we don't even have that kind of problem at all, another issue is that in our video gaming industry, the words and opinions of the female video game demographic DO MATTER, something that doesn't apply to Japan's misogynistic gaming industry.

To support my claim, the release of the character designs alone has been a good enough basis for H-Doujinshi artists who're working on hentai fantasy doujins that aren't DQ or Monster Hunter, and there's your reasoning right there.

Let me end my comment with a quote from Yahtzee, that featured another controversial game that never got released from Japan:

Now, this counterargument can itself be countered by going through the list of some other things the people have been known to like in Japan, which I won't read out in full because I'd have to brush my teeth afterwards.

 

[likalaruku]

Wow, it's like I can't go anywhere or read anything game related this month without someone taking a swipe at Kotaku. What set this off? I regulate at The Escapist daily, but I visit many many other gamer sites too, including Kotaku.

 

[likalaruku]

It is unclear to me why Dragon's Crown gets to be star of the show in this latest round of internet drama but a game like Starcraft 2, for instance, gets a free pass on their character design. Why is the Sorceress over the line but Kerrigan with her impractical zerg heels and meticulous non-chitin covered ass is somehow ok?

& TERA & Scarlet Blade....

 

[Reed Sprung]

There is a VERY easy solution here.

Don't like it, don't buy it.

Oh sure we can talk about how gaming should strife for this and that and stereotypes of gaming need to be broken bla bla bla however this is still a product up for purchase and that is the only decision you have about this. Just because a medium should strife towards something doesn't mean we should ban or refuse to even allow some type of games to be made.

What can be done however is dictate their success by way of your wallet. Personally I am more interested in the gameplay which is for me a deciding factor in purchases, if it's good then the fanservice is just a bonus. Call me what you want but I am not gonna lie that the characters are pleasing to the eye.

On a side note though deriding artists because they draw only women overly sexualized or vice versa or both is quite low. People that we call Renaissance Masters painted nothing but nude women during their entire lifetime. So if it's before 1970 and on a piece of canvas it's art but in a game or on a piece of graph paper it's automatically the work of a 14 year old?

Kotaku being of course the bottom feeding scum sucking nerdbaiting site that it is loves the traffic it's getting because of it.

I don't think any significant amount of people on the progressive end of this debate want to actually ban anything. It's just urging developers to be more progressive. I think developers should have the right to make "White Heterosexual Hero Dominates the World as He Should," but I would be a bit uncomfortable if someone did that with all seriousness.

 

[lord canti]

Has any body actually looked at the other characters? With the exception of two of them they are all overly exaggerated.

 

[Johnny Impact]

In my opinion, the body shape and objectification here crosses the line from sexy to ridiculous and frankly makes it a parody of itself. The character epitomizes the ridiculously high standards that we have set for female characters in video games and if the design wasn't at least a LITTLE tongue in cheek when the artist made it and wanted it to be taken as serious as a character in a Japanese RPG can, then I am frankly saddened by its existence.

Bingo.

These objects -- I can't refer to them as characters since they bear so little resemblance to living beings -- could only be considered attractive by deviants. Now, I'm not putting down those with, ah, differing tastes, but to me these models don't even look like people. ....Not that Marcus Fenix, Bayonetta, or any of dozens of other characters look like the sort of folk you'd see walking down the street. It just seems like the designers here went for a whole new level of distortion. I neither condemn nor applaud, but I *do* arch an eyebrow.

I'd have to say it was done to create controversy. Clearly, it worked. We're not talking about whether the game is GOOD or not. We are creating interest, boosting sales, every time we mention the game and its designs. Replace the giant quivering boobs with giant quivering dollar signs and you see what the studio decision makers saw.

Is my primary objective to this representation allowed to be that huge breasts are just a turnoff to me?

Yes and no. Breasts that size are a turnoff, but objecting for reasons of turnoff implies you think female characters should all turn you on, and any design that doesn't is wrong. Careful....

 

[PhiMed]

I will adopt the position I always do.

Don't like it? Fine.

Quit complaining about what other people create and make shit you think is appropriate. If you're correct, then people will flock to your product as the artistically and stylistically superior product, and there will no longer be a market for the things you don't like. Until then, no one cares about your petty quibbles with art design.

Edit: I also adopt this position with people who complain about the "shoehorning" of gay love interests into games.

 

[snowfi6916]

Bob, I like you a lot, and I always watch all your videos, but you are wrong here.

You claim that you are a feminist who supports everything that feminism stands for. Yet, in your next breath, you claim that you find absolutely nothing wrong with the Sorceress (or any of the other female characters that are portrayed in this game), saying that you find her "pretty".

Sorry Bob, but what the Sorceress is, and the other female characters in this game are, is objectification of women. There is no other word for it. It is painting unrealistic views about what women should be. NO WOMAN looks like this, and it is wrong for us to think that this is what they should be.

If you truly claim to be a feminist, you would be shouting from the rooftops that this needs to change, not saying "oh but I'm a pig and I like this."

I'll start. How about having female characters with realistic fucking breast sizes? Is that so much to ask? Why do they need to be so huge that they look like they are their own body, and move independent of the rest of the character?

Riot Games changed Sejuani because they realized no warrior would be dressed the way she was in the middle of winter. Her original character design had her basically wearing a bikini in a freaking snow storm. Now, she actually looks like a warrior. Yes, she is still a beautiful woman to look at, but she is not just eye candy anymore.

THAT is what we need. You can have beautiful female characters without making them into sex objects or eye candy.

 

[Lee Oyd]

Here it goes again. Buzzwords everywhere.

Here's a quick summary. If you find yourself typing any of the following terms or variants:

sexualize
objectify
eye candy
sex object
feminazi
realism
fantasy
don't buy

stop typing and read this. You're missing the point, whatever your side is.

Enough with the fucking buzzwords already.

Also, the other problem. The designer is a homophobic cuntwad.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I think the weird thing is that if I cop to the admittance of yours on the second page, Bob - I'm a hot-blooded, perpetually horny man who likes preposterous TNA - I am essentially leveling what's marketing itself a simple action hacky-slashy-brawler game to the same societal standards as pornography. "I like boobs and so I enjoy these boobs" is what I say when I'm masturbating furiously to pictures on the internet.

I understand that sex appeal in mainstream stuff is important - I mean, I was watching The Avengers again last night, and that Scarlett Johansson didn't have much left to hide - but it still falls within the realm of taste. I find The Sorceress design tasteless, and while I'd consider myself a man of no taste, that still puts this videogame on par with the sleaziest of porn. In my accepting I enjoy this, the reasons align wholly with depravity, and I think that's why it makes me uncomfortable on a women's rights basis.

 

[Lee Oyd]

^ It personally makes me uncomfortable on a "do I want to be seen playing this" basis.

 

[1337mokro]

There is a VERY easy solution here.

Don't like it, don't buy it.

Oh sure we can talk about how gaming should strife for this and that and stereotypes of gaming need to be broken bla bla bla however this is still a product up for purchase and that is the only decision you have about this. Just because a medium should strife towards something doesn't mean we should ban or refuse to even allow some type of games to be made.

What can be done however is dictate their success by way of your wallet. Personally I am more interested in the gameplay which is for me a deciding factor in purchases, if it's good then the fanservice is just a bonus. Call me what you want but I am not gonna lie that the characters are pleasing to the eye.

On a side note though deriding artists because they draw only women overly sexualized or vice versa or both is quite low. People that we call Renaissance Masters painted nothing but nude women during their entire lifetime. So if it's before 1970 and on a piece of canvas it's art but in a game or on a piece of graph paper it's automatically the work of a 14 year old?

Kotaku being of course the bottom feeding scum sucking nerdbaiting site that it is loves the traffic it's getting because of it.

I don't think any significant amount of people on the progressive end of this debate want to actually ban anything. It's just urging developers to be more progressive. I think developers should have the right to make "White Heterosexual Hero Dominates the World as He Should," but I would be a bit uncomfortable if someone did that with all seriousness.

Isn't that what they have been making in almost every single game ever? The Caucasian, brown short haired, stubbed bearded, mid twenties male slaying hundreds of millions of brown people?

I think you didn't quite think your metaphor through

Oh sure the objectives of those games aren't to take over the world but the end result is still a white male lead ending out on top of a pile of corpses with higher levels of melanin in the skin.

Yet when that happens we don't see derision for it. Why not more asians or black male protagonists? I honestly can't quite tell you when the last time was when a AAA title with a male lead didn't have a character that had the exact same before mentioned stereotypical appearance outside of make your own character games.

We can express our discontent about anything sure, but our dear kotaku baiters literally insulted the artist behind it for drawing what he wanted to draw and putting it in a game. That is going to far and serves no purpose when nobody is forcing them to play the product that features them.

The characters are overly sexualized and I don't like that seeing as it has become almost an in crowd joke how ridiculously over sexualized female characters are. There you just expressed your opinion and notified the devs about your discontent.

These characters could only be the result of a sexually repressed 14 year old. There you just insulted someone's art for no good reason other than a vague notion that doing so would magically fix the problem by deriding people into not drawing what they want.