Hm. A bit disappointed to be honest, I thought you would be much more open-minded about that topic. It didn't go as deep into the topic as I was hoping.
You acknowledge the fact that men are objectified too, yet - for whatever reason - you decide it's less important than female objectification.
May I ask why? When it comes to objectification you can't simply say "This is worse!". It's all about the feels.
I think the problem runs much deeper than sexualisation, which is mostly what you've addressed. Sexualisation isn't the only form of objectification. Objectification also applies to actions of characters, i.e. We only care about that person as long as the person serves a purpose.
I really don't understand why you keep using Kratos and the bro-dudes from Gears. You're not helping your case. They are not men as much as they are things. Kratos is a killing machine. He has no ideals. He loves to get sidetracked whenever there's more violence to gain. Remember GoW3, he had no real reason to chop Gaias hand off but that didn't stop him. He's as empty and shallow as those walking boobs and every little character he had in GoW1 is gone. He became a caricature of what he was.
Kratos and the bro-dudes are things. They are machines. They have to work or they won't have any worth.
I also find it curious that you completely left out male characters like Dante or any male character from Final Fantasy. I'm sure you know the term bi-shonen. Remember that Cowboy dude from FF8? What was he if not a female fantasy? He could be on the cover of some sex-romance novel right now and you couldn't tell the difference. There is a reason why women are much more likely to feel attracted to games like Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy 8 and it's not just the combat system.
I played DMC3 in front of a female friend and she started forming a creepy smile on her face when she saw Dante fight off hordes of enemies half-naked. She went animalistic when she saw the new Dante flying completely naked through his trailer. Did you forget about that? That's male sexualisation right-fucking-there!
Do you think your idea of Idolization applies to any of the protagonists from the GTA series? Because I don't think so.
You continue to show DoA Beach Volleyball, but we all know that this is a game for a specific target audience. And that's what it all boils down to: Target Audience. Let's be serious here, female gamers are still few. They are not the 47%, unless we start counting Facebook game users and we shouldn't. Because those wouldn't touch a game like Tomb Raider even if you payed them too and these are the only games we care about.
I'm not a fan of the DoA series, but I remember the female characters had personality and not just boobs. But that was not the goal of the spin-off. Yes, DoA BV was a spin-off, not an AAA-Title. If you want to make a bigger point, you need to use bigger and more examples. I think games like DoA BV are terrible. Embarrassing even. I don't play them and I might even skip Dragon's Crown because of the design. I simply do not like this kind of design.
And you know what? That's okay. I'm not the target audience. That's all that this is about. Women who want to play videogames already play them. I'm not even mad at Vanillaware for their objectification, because their MALE characters are just as objectified as the female characters. I won't play it, but it's their right. They should do what they want.
We shouldn't let the Anita's, who barely cared about Videogames 2 years ago hijack videogames with their ideology that everything should bend to their needs and wants, that their voice is the only one that needs hearing. Which seems to be something you contribute to, Jim, as you said at the end "It's a different problem and it's not equal."
Why not? If we want the change, then we should attack the subject on both ends and not leave one group behind. We already did that in real life and it shows in the high suicide rate among men/boys.
We need to push games for more than just female characters that look ugly or male characters that look like the wet-dream of a 14 year old Bieber Fan. Games need better writing. They need better goals. They need to stop giving a fuck about numbers and stop listening to marketing people. Seriously fuck those rim-jobbers. They are ruining the creativity of the industry.
We need to do things differently, ask new questions.
Why should Link save the princess? What if he refuses to do so? Is Zelda the object that needs to be saved, or is Link the object that constantly has to save her?
Maybe we should ask those questions.
Or maybe not. Maybe we should leave some games be the way they are. I hate Mario games. I think they are boring. I don't want to change them, because I'm not their target audience.
Oh and btw:
Instead of saying that publisher's claim that "Female main protagonists don't sell" is absurd, why don't we look at the reason of why they would believe that? What do the numbers look like? How much truth is behind that statement?
And what if some men enjoy playing as a man more? After all Gender seems to be important to the identity of a lot of people. So is it really bad? Is a man who rather plays Drake than Lara an asshat? Is a woman who rather plays Lara than Drake an asshat?
Why?
btw²:
Check out this website and guess the target audience of these novels:
www.romancenovelcovers.com
Let's hijack that shit.
That last part is without a doubt true. On this we can agree.
