Can't sleep again, so I figure I'll toss out the usual answer nobody wants to hear.
The way women are portrayed in video games is because this is what women want as much as what guys want. If you look at the characters created by and for women within the fantasy and science fiction generes they are identical to what you generally see from video game characters.
What's more the argument that the heroic ideal for men is that different is flawed. In most of the examples of "ugly guys" Jim gives your dealing with characters who represent a physical ideal as well. Even these old dudes are generally speaking ripped beyond belief when they take off their shirts. Being a bit grizzled or having some scars on the face can actually be quite attractive, and really can't be used to make an "ugly" argument in these cases especially if your going to omit characters like say Mileena or Cammy. Cammy's face being scarred being a part of her original backround, and Mileena is a horribly deformed monster under her mask (albeit you can't see it except during her fatalities). In short if your going to argue that a girl say wearing an eye patch doesn't count, then most of this won't either, since the type of argument Jim is using is "well look at the body" which is also what I'm pointing out. I mean even the wimpy looking guys have washboard tummies and a decent amount of muscle definition. Marcus Fenix has arms at least as big around as his neck. While many women will claim they aren't attracted to muscles, the truth is the vast majority are which is how things like "Chippendales" have become huge money makers, and why guys showing off their massive guns pumping iron at the beach generally don't have any trouble getting girls.
As a general rule there is no real sexism in video games, it's pretty much indicative of the generes it sets out to cover, keeping both male and female creators and audiences in mind. A much more fair argument would be that there aren't many characters in video games that don't approach some kind of heroic ideal. Even the fat guys are generally portrayed as being "power lifter" fat and are usually among the strongest characters in the games they appear in (and if you've ever watched things like "World's Strongest Man" you kind of know where they are coming from). I mean sure, we've got guys like "Mario" and girls like say "Cooking Mama" but they represent exceptions rather than the rule. This situation is so pronounced that it was kind of the point of why the guys who did "Rochard" and Yahtzee's hairy Yorkshireman were designed to look the way they did.
It's also important to note that in these arguments one has to also exclude fan fiction where pretty much some perv is going to sexualize anything. To be brutally honest I never got the impression characters like "Roll", or "Princess Peach" were really going for the sex appeal in the way they were designed. The same could be said of a lot of characters, especially ones that existed largely as overlarge heads attached to barey visible bodies in old school pixelated games.
What's more if your going to take "Vertigo" as an example, you can also go for say "Quina" or "Freya" from "Final Fantasy IX" neither of whom were attractive by anything close to a conventional standard and actually kind of went
into grotesque territory. You can even take that further by going into say "Shin Megami Tensei" games where not all of the female demons who are playable are anything close to being attractive. The point is that the exceptions are there if you bother to look and aren't so intent on just making an argument for the sake of making an argument. Also, as I said, just because someone sexed something up, doesn't reflect on the entire body of work, even if some developers did do a sexed up version of the character at some point. For example while we've seen "hawt" depictions of Samus even within the games how often does this generally come up? Part of the point was that it's generally not noticible since she's usually trotting around with so much armor there could be a talking dog inside the suit for all we know.
The way women are portrayed in video games is because this is what women want as much as what guys want. If you look at the characters created by and for women within the fantasy and science fiction generes they are identical to what you generally see from video game characters.
What's more the argument that the heroic ideal for men is that different is flawed. In most of the examples of "ugly guys" Jim gives your dealing with characters who represent a physical ideal as well. Even these old dudes are generally speaking ripped beyond belief when they take off their shirts. Being a bit grizzled or having some scars on the face can actually be quite attractive, and really can't be used to make an "ugly" argument in these cases especially if your going to omit characters like say Mileena or Cammy. Cammy's face being scarred being a part of her original backround, and Mileena is a horribly deformed monster under her mask (albeit you can't see it except during her fatalities). In short if your going to argue that a girl say wearing an eye patch doesn't count, then most of this won't either, since the type of argument Jim is using is "well look at the body" which is also what I'm pointing out. I mean even the wimpy looking guys have washboard tummies and a decent amount of muscle definition. Marcus Fenix has arms at least as big around as his neck. While many women will claim they aren't attracted to muscles, the truth is the vast majority are which is how things like "Chippendales" have become huge money makers, and why guys showing off their massive guns pumping iron at the beach generally don't have any trouble getting girls.
As a general rule there is no real sexism in video games, it's pretty much indicative of the generes it sets out to cover, keeping both male and female creators and audiences in mind. A much more fair argument would be that there aren't many characters in video games that don't approach some kind of heroic ideal. Even the fat guys are generally portrayed as being "power lifter" fat and are usually among the strongest characters in the games they appear in (and if you've ever watched things like "World's Strongest Man" you kind of know where they are coming from). I mean sure, we've got guys like "Mario" and girls like say "Cooking Mama" but they represent exceptions rather than the rule. This situation is so pronounced that it was kind of the point of why the guys who did "Rochard" and Yahtzee's hairy Yorkshireman were designed to look the way they did.
It's also important to note that in these arguments one has to also exclude fan fiction where pretty much some perv is going to sexualize anything. To be brutally honest I never got the impression characters like "Roll", or "Princess Peach" were really going for the sex appeal in the way they were designed. The same could be said of a lot of characters, especially ones that existed largely as overlarge heads attached to barey visible bodies in old school pixelated games.
What's more if your going to take "Vertigo" as an example, you can also go for say "Quina" or "Freya" from "Final Fantasy IX" neither of whom were attractive by anything close to a conventional standard and actually kind of went
into grotesque territory. You can even take that further by going into say "Shin Megami Tensei" games where not all of the female demons who are playable are anything close to being attractive. The point is that the exceptions are there if you bother to look and aren't so intent on just making an argument for the sake of making an argument. Also, as I said, just because someone sexed something up, doesn't reflect on the entire body of work, even if some developers did do a sexed up version of the character at some point. For example while we've seen "hawt" depictions of Samus even within the games how often does this generally come up? Part of the point was that it's generally not noticible since she's usually trotting around with so much armor there could be a talking dog inside the suit for all we know.
