The first point is irrelevant. I never said anything about what the fans said. I was talking about the intention of the developers. A handful of idiots doesn't make a difference to the reason for why the competition was done in the first place. Which is what you were criticising.boots said:And yet they picked the female Shepard with the long blonde hair.Legion said:No they didn't...boots said:Femshep wasn't included in the marketing until ME3 and even then they had a beauty contest (ugh) to redesign the default female character into someone more, uh, "aesthetically pleasing".
They had a competition to choose the default look for female Shepard. The only differences were hair/eye/skin colour. It's not like they asked people whether or not she should have larger breasts, smoother skin or anything.
That's hardly a beauty contest.
Come on, denial can be healthy up to a certain point, but look at the fan comments [http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/07/24/bioware-lets-fans-choose-female-shepard-39-s-new-look.aspx] on that poll
They asked people to pick the Shepard they wanted based on appearance. It was a beauty contest.
So what I am supposed to be denying, I don't know.
Also, they didn't ask people to "Pick the Shepard they wanted based upon appearances". They asked the fans to give input into the design of a female character.
A beauty contest is what it says it is. A competition to decide who is the most attractive.
This was a competition to choose the design of a character. "Beauty" doesn't come into it.
The decision was for the character to put on the box art. Because fans were asking for more advertising for Femshep. They didn't do it as a "resort". They did it because fans asked for it.boots said:If you can customise your character in-game, then it's just silly to offer the fans the choice of customising the character in the marketing as well. It defeats the purpose of the appearance customisation mechanic, which is built off the assumption that different people like different things.
My main point is that they didn't do a poll for the male Shepard's appearance "to know what the players wanted". But when it came to the simple challenge of designing a female character for box art, they were too scared to come up with and decide upon their own ideas and instead resorted to throwing options at their audience and going, "Which lady is the prettiest? Which lady will make you buy the game? Please, please tell us."
Oh, and Male Shep didn't get the same treatment, because he was already based upon a Dutch model: