xPixelatedx said:
I would have a lot more of a problem with those "
female character designs" if the men weren't equally absurd.
Men don't look like that. It just seems to be the artist's style to exaggerate gender qualities.
Men are big, muscled brutes? Well, mine will be the biggest and most muscled brutes! Women have breasts? Well, mine will have ridiculous breasts!
etc. He took the qualities people often focus on (consciously and subconsciously) and embellished them in a stylistic way, and because he did it with both genders, this technically had nothing to do with women specifically.
Now, if the men looked like real people, but the women looked the same as their current designs, THEN I would be very disturbed.
I find games like DoA Beach volley ball VERY disturbing.
This argument has come up once or twice, and it's an understandable one, but also an ultimately flawed one.
Yes, this is clearly about exaggerated gender qualities, but it's important to remember that those gender qualities are not entirely biological, they are societal. Specifically, over-emphasizing muscular physique in men is derived from the perception that men derive power from physical strength. Similarly, over-emphasizing breasts or butts in women is derived from the perception that women derive power from physical desirability. The reason this is a problem should be fairly obvious, but I'll be a little more specific since the whole point of this video is discussion.
To put it simply, rippling muscles are associated with power because people who have them are generally capable of great physical prowess. However, the reason large breasts are associated with power is because the women who have them are perceived as desirable to other people. In other words, muscles = powerful on your own, breasts = powerful through someone else (probably a man).
In other words, a dwarf built like a brick shit house is not the same thing as a sorceress with planetary breasts. What WOULD be the same thing would be something more like what Penny Arcade outlined (slight NSFW):
http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-svhrTpg/0/950x10000/i-svhrTpg-950x10000.jpg
Aside from just being funny, the point isn't that the sorceress looks unrealistic, it's that the parts of her that are unrealistic are the parts that are perceived as appealing to a particular gender/sexuality. A guy might say that they have no problem with the unrealistic male characters, but if there was a male character whose junk was enormous and wobbly, it probably would make you feel at least a little bit uncomfortable.
One might counter by saying that they still wouldn't mind because they could just pick a different character who doesn't have weird junk, but imagine if almost every male character in the industry had weird disproportionate junk and the women didn't. Doesn't that seem a teensy bit alienating? What if this game had three male characters, two of them had enormous balls, and only one of them looked normal? Wouldn't you feel a little bothered that you essentially only have one character choice that didn't make you feel uncomfortable?
Again, this isn't necessarily a condemnation of this particular style. I actually kinda like it in a weird perverse way. But it's not difficult to understand why a lot of women feel alienated by this industry, and it's also not difficult to remedy that. We don't have to get rid of these character designs, but the people who complain about them have a right to be upset and to feel uncomfortable with how their sex is portrayed in general.
, who want to dress and look sexy. To me the intellectual thing to do is accept the difference in people and not force your view of "morals" onto an individual.
