Poll: Should Writer/Creators feel shame for Sexualization?

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

I feel the target on fighting games, is very off track from original post on onward. Can you change the title and the poll options to.-a you can forgive that I posted this as a poll, b-you can not forgive the poll, c-my target on fighting games is unfair, d-it is perfectly valid I target fighting games.

There is actually a particular consideration for fighting games, which is that the diversity of female characters is lacking.

Men in fighting games can be young, old, thin, fat, pretty, or ugly. Women will invariably be young and attractive, and the only real "variety" is cup size and some of them are pedo-bait. Even if they're not particularly sexualised, they'll all be attractive.

Fighting games aren't alone in it of course. MOBAs tend to have a very similar design ethic (LoL has been criticised for it specifically), male characters can be of all sorts, pretty to monstrous, young to old, etc. Female MOBA characters, even if they're not specifically sexualised are usually drawn to please.

I guess I disagree, about fighting have an egregiousness amount of lack in diversity of female characters, than games taken in as a whole. More so than that I was commenting on how I have heard very little about fighting games, in this topic about fighting games (or fighting fuck toys). I feel the attention garbing title is out of place in this discussion, much like a Bimini clad pair of tits.

This topic, is about shaming creators. Fighting Fuck Toys, needs more representation (focus) if this discussion is about Fighting Fuck Toys.

I like that you got me to write, Fighting Fuck Toys 4 times. Also, when I read LoL I think laugh out loud, and my eyes get real big a smile comes on my face, I think I want to play that. Then oh, League of Legends.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm referring directly to the fighting fuck toy concept.

For all criticism rallied at not only Dead or Alive, Bayonetta, Etc.
This issue has boiled over to the point, I want to make it it's own thread.
I want to speak to the masses directly on this particular subject.

The nature of sexy characters in video games.
I often get the argument that the concept is indeed offensive, especially relating women and very sexist.

I do know it could be due to body images, pandering and sex sales. But how much is too much? And how much weight does this have for creators who just genuinely want to design sexy characters?

Is there no room for that in gaming?

I really feel the need to discuss this referring not to the game themselves but to the creators.

Please refrain from defending characters. We will solely debate the makers themselves and there creative choices. This is a discussion to be had.

My Opinion

I advocate for equal oppurtunity fan service.
I honestly see no evil scenario to a sexy character in a video game. I have often been most
interested playing the most stylish, the most fabulous, the most sexy social butterfly.

I like characters who revel in being a ravishing piece of work while being fun and engaging. However, I who love sexy things am not immune to a feeling of gross, squickiness when it comes to some games.

I hate when gamers express how much they want to fuck a particular character, and how much they want games where they can have characters they want to fuck. The kinds who want tits and ass everywhere and nothing else. The lovers of dead or alive, playing for wank material and demanding devs increase breast size and bounce. The gross moe game that's borderline porn you would never play in public for anyone. Step back, think of your life. You may have just shown porn publically to everyone.

I also deeply despise the sex for award trope and see no reason to indulge in it if I have the choice. It's a whole new level of eww.

And yet, I also like writing and drawing porn and sexiness fan service. I excuse stuff like Kill la Kill and Bayonetta for many admittedly arbitrary reason.

To me, this issue is complicated. I criticize a famous artist who's injecting his wank bait into a product he has no business injecting it into. [https://twitter.com/KenPenders]
It involves 15 year old echidna girl featured prominantly in bikinis when such character had nothing to do with being sexy

Okay, well so much to say here (or re-say here) so I'll start with something I haven't pointed out much on The Escapist. That's simply that women sexually obsess about male characters as much as guys do about female ones, but as a general rule most SJWs tend to ignore it. If you go to sites like "Encyclopedia Dramatica" you'll for example find pages (or used to be able to) dedicated to specific internet personalities that took things too far, one recurring theme was girls being obsessed with male video game characters to crazy degrees, some like "Sepiroth's Slave" were beyond even the waifu thing to the point of claiming that Sepiroth was real and they were married on the astral plane or whatever. Guys tend to be made fun of more as a group, but girls are just as bad, if not worse, and just as numerous. However when you start calling girls out on stuff like this to the same extent that might happen to a guy you tend to be mobbed by SJWs and such, and eventually things like this lead to even ED having to take down or change a lot of content apparently. I simply use this as a reference point because I'm sure a lot of people are aware of EXACTLY the people I'm talking about, but haven't exactly put two and two together. One problem with a lot of internet rallies is that people tend to forget basic knowledge they already have when drawing their conclusions.

As far as the `15 year old in a swimsuit goes, I fail to see the big deal. Teens want to be sexy, and they have sex. It's part of society and growing up, and heck we've been making movies, telling stories, and writing songs about it for a very long time. I mostly have an issue when you have adults having sex with teenagers for a lot of reasons, otherwise I'm all for things like sex education and distributing condoms in schools and such, because to be blunt trying to force abstinence is a losing battle. As a general rule fathers don't want to see their 15 year old daughters being sexy in bikinis and I can't blame them, but the girls see things differently. When it comes to comics sexed up teenagers have been a big thing for a very long time because they have *GASP* teenage readers of both genders, and like it or not those are the kinds of characters girls project onto. Heck even when you look entirely at powder puff fiction, young adult novels and the like, you see some rather sexed up characters and interplay. Back when I was younger Marvel even had artists produce swimsuit issues of their female characters, I think I still have a couple. Kitty Pryde, Boom Boom, and Jubilee all had their moments at jail bait as well. Indeed most notably X-men had an underage romance between Colossus and Kitty which broke up during "Secret Wars" when he fell for an alien healer on Battle World, where previously he was nobly "waiting for her" though the intent of the relationship was hardly platonic. You could probably fill a small library just documenting the various costumes teenage super heroes have worn, and who has hooked up with whom. "Gen 13" built part of it's dynamic around randy teenagers with recurring dynamics about Rainmaker being a Lesbian who really liked Freefall, Freefall really having a thing for Grunge who was randy for all girls except her (later we learn due to hypnosis), Burnout having a thing for Rainmaker and her giving him a sort-of chance due to liking him but not really being into men, you then had Fairchild who was the most outrageously "stacked" of the group but had little romantic interest in anyone and a recurring gag is that whenever she meets someone it goes really, really, bad. Despite being teenagers you've even had bits as I remember where they would hit night spots and all hook up for the night (or not) Rainmaker if I remember tended to score fairly regularly, leaving Burnout and Grunge to discuss if there was some way they could learn to exploit that whole Lesbian thing for their benefit.

The point I'm getting at is, so what? A sexualized 15 year old in comics (of any ethnicity), that's pretty much par for the course. I wouldn't put it past being someone's personal wank material, but that's not neccesarily the case, as it's part of the job, and artists do like to draw/paint young models and it gives an excuse. Even if it is, the term "Jail Bait" exists for a reason the thing is that adults are mature enough not to act on it, and expected to be more careful, especially in a day and age when girls deliberately try and make themselves seem older so they can land dudes in bed. I've seen some really disturbing "how old is this girl" stuff through the years... some hot 20 year old in a nightclub? Nope, she's actually 12... Girls in particular seem to want to grow up fast, and perhaps most disturbingly most of them don't seem to care for guys in their own age category that might be an excusable part of growing up (like with teenagers), a problem given how such relationships are inevitably doomed and do damage on all sides, but that's an entirely different discussion.

That said, when it comes to the rest of this stuff, as I've said before, when women create heroic fantasy characters they are pretty much identical to the ones you see visually depicted in video games and such. Likewise the artwork done by male and female genera artists tends to be fairly interchangeable. The reason why things like "Bayonetta" work is that they appeal to both men AND women, basically girls want to be her, guys want to be with her. There are exceptions of course, but that is the rule, and given that today's gaming industry produces very few games simply aimed at the largest audience it means we get more "Bayonetta" games and none based around more conservative depictions that might appeal to SJWs and the like.

I'll also be brutally honest about something, while very loud, the women who tend to complain about body image issues, sexualization, and other things, tend to largely be ugly women who are jealous. Exceptions exist (they always do) but basically you don't see really hot girls that can pull these kinds of things off complaining about objectification, unless of course they lose their looks and get bitter. Not all women who aren't "super hot" are like this of course, indeed most aren't, but those that are tend to be very vocal and represent well above their numbers. The guys that get involved in this kind of thing as a general rule tend to be ivory tower liberals, your basic fat white nerd on a keyboard in mommy's basement who has had no real dealings with the issues he claims to represent. While again, not universally true, a lot of those guys who represent women's rights online tend to be people who can't score with girls and hope this will bring more feminine attention to them. It's a variation on the whole movie plotline of the sensitive nerd showing some girl how much better he is for her than the macho jerks hot girls usually tend to gravitate towards, and hopes that by this kind of crusading it will pan out the same way.... again exceptions exist, but this is a big part of what your dealing with. It's also why Bayonetta gets a sequel, and Team Ninja keeps making games, and enough money where in all likelihood their key franchises will be around for a while yet. Those complaining about depictions of women in the media, body image issues, and similar things, do not represent the numbers they try and project even if they can be obnoxious, nor do they represent "the everyman" like they claim to. Of course similar definitions can be made of a lot of SJWs nowadays, and that's what part of #gamersgate is about as is an entire front of the ongoing culture war. Your starting to see the repercussions of increasing numbers of people calling a lot of these SJW movements (not just this but across a wide spectrum) on their BS and revealing them as the paper tigers they are at a relatively crucial moment when a lot of important SJW victories seem to be imminant. Things are of course nasty because your looking at an 11th hour battle as opposed to be that has been being fought this belligerently for as long.

At the end of the day female creators will want to keep making their sexy female characters, guys will do the same. SJWs will continue to QQ it's largely about the size of their platform. Certain unattractive girls will continue to be jealous of the ones that are, but at the end of the day most girls will continue to idolize an ideal Barbie, and create Mary Sue characters when they try their hand at creative writing. In a purely video gaming front you will see girls dressing up as characters like Bayonetta at cons and the like as long as such things exis, and I imagine that will fuel the rage of the notties who get all upset that people want to take pictures of the cute girl in the sexy costume and give her the attention she wants while they tend to largely be ignored. Your geekdom focused SJW will keep up his rants hoping it will make the cute Bayonetta cosplayer like him more, but in reality it probably won't as you can guess from the way she flaunts, and ironically he'll remain oblivious to the nottie he doesn't really want either.

Perhaps not the most PC way of putting it, but that's how I see things, and where they are going. Sometime look carefully at the kinds of people making specific arguments when you can ID them, what else they say on other issues, and so on. This is why I say point out things like cosplay and such at cons, and how many cute girls run around and do this kind of thing, make videos, etc... all apparently without being held at gunpoint. If an attractive girl is making some kind of statement here about sexism in geekdom, usually she has an agenda that's promoting her, and getting her power and attention as a result, notice also that such people rarely tend to actually be down in the trenches, they tend to mostly be sitting back acting as a rallying points for very specific kinds of people whose attention as a group they tend to cultivate and thrive off of. Basically if a lot of these sexy female characters were reviled by the majority of women we'd probably be starved of cosplay girls and con photos.... and lets be honest, it's not just support from "The Beautiful People" either plenty of normal girls get in on this stuff too without complaining about it. It's a relatively small group of people, probably those who got picked on by the cheerleaders in high school too much or something.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I guess I disagree, about fighting have an egregiousness amount of lack in diversity of female characters, than games taken in as a whole.

The reason it tends to stand out in fighting games is that they tend to have quite large casts. Since you see all the examples in one place it stands out more that there's way greater variety on one side of the gender fence.

 

[Therumancer]

I feel the target on fighting games, is very off track from original post on onward. Can you change the title and the poll options to.-a you can forgive that I posted this as a poll, b-you can not forgive the poll, c-my target on fighting games is unfair, d-it is perfectly valid I target fighting games.

There is actually a particular consideration for fighting games, which is that the diversity of female characters is lacking.

Men in fighting games can be young, old, thin, fat, pretty, or ugly. Women will invariably be young and attractive, and the only real "variety" is cup size and some of them are pedo-bait. Even if they're not particularly sexualised, they'll all be attractive.

Fighting games aren't alone in it of course. MOBAs tend to have a very similar design ethic (LoL has been criticised for it specifically), male characters can be of all sorts, pretty to monstrous, young to old, etc. Female MOBA characters, even if they're not specifically sexualised are usually drawn to please.

Which is actually really the answer. If female characters were more varied then there wouldn't be any problem when some of them were blatantly sexualised.

Not really to be honest. For starters, you'd be hard pressed to find female heroic fantasy characters, even those created by women, that tend to be unattractive, or fit in the "old or fat" mould. Basically the women you see here are presented as the genera presents them, and it has nothing to do with sexist men or whatever because women don't even create the characters your talking about. Sure there are doubtlessly exceptions out there, but when dealing with things like video games they tend to be based more on the rule, rather than the exception, especially when your dealing with things like a fantasy game when half the point is to make the characters stereotypical because what they look like usually broadcasts a lot about their intended play style. In heroic fantasy we've seen heroic leads with some old, grizzled, hero coming out of retirement, or some deceptively tough fat boy (Sammo Hung made a career out of playing these) but that doesn't exist on the other end of the gender pole. You can't even say it's a problem when women themselves aren't creating or reading about the characters. If say there were a few 8+ book long fantasy series hitting the best seller lists featuring old and fat female characters, after a while I'd agree with you that the industry isn't representing a lot of the trends, but to be frank that's not the case. It should also be noted that in generas that see more diversity like say mysteries, you also see the diversity in video gaming terms. Case in point characters like Mrs. Marple and Jessica Fletcher tend to be popular as detectives (nosy old ladies that solve crimes), as a result mystery games tend to be a bit more diverse, especially when drawing upon specific franchises or author works like Agatha Cristie's stuff or whatever. When making points about video games and diversity people tend to only look at big-budget, AAA titles, and totally overlook entire generas of games that disprove a lot of what's being asserted, even the basic idea that there is a lack of female characters in games (a LOT of female characters star in mystery or adventure games which are a genera women have done a lot to keep alive... people keep making these because people buy them).

It should also be noted that when it comes to video games your already being kind of crazily inclusive when you have some of these mixed-gender rosters with greatly divergent height and weight classes. Real fighting doesn't work that way, in some game concepts it doesn't matter, but in some where it's allegedly all part of an organized tournament (The Tekken, an underground fight circuit organized by Shadoloo, Dead Or Alive, etc...) your already getting pretty crazy just by putting some of these tiny girls into the roster to fight these ginormous dudes. Of course then again some of the games get so far away from reality that it doesn't matter, and others don't actually have a tournament in the back story. Not entirely relevant to my point, but consider that conceptually a lot of these games would actually be more "realistic" if there were no female contenders at all. This applies mostly to games like Virtua Fighter and Dead Or Alive early on as those games were making a big deal about how realistic they were in terms of the styles, moves, and what could happen though they went crazy themselves later on. I imagine a lot of people don't remember the hype, but one of the big jokes about "Dead Or Alive" on the original PlayStation was that for all the sexuality it got promoted as being realistic, where in reality if that tournament happened there was like one dude that could conceivably have fought Bass just on merits of size, skill can only compensate for so much (which is why we have weight classes). When everyone is supposed to be in peak shape, and has killer skills, a couple inches of height and a few pounds can make a huge difference, and when it comes to situations where you see dudes fighting guys a head taller and 40 pounds heavier (never mind girls) it gets stupid, that only works in fantasy if your giving the smaller guy some kind of skill or physical shape advantage (ie he's a foot taller and 150 pounds heavier but full of blubber and has greatly inferior combat training if any at all). Street Fighter got away with it because of all the freak powers and by not even remotely trying for realism, ditto for Mortal Kombat, which is why I use those other ones as examples. It's kind of funny when you consider that the very idea of "Dead Or Alive" given the way it was promoted could be considered hyper-feminist.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Not really to be honest. For starters, you'd be hard pressed to find female heroic fantasy characters, even those created by women, that tend to be unattractive, or fit in the "old or fat" mould.

I wouldn't, you know.

Know why?

I have a whole damn shelf full of Terry Pratchett books and he's been writing those characters probably since before you were alive.

The rest of your post basically TL;DRs into "You can't blame videogame designers for being unoriginal hacks who parrot prior cultural conventions without thinking about them".

But I can and am, they're unoriginal hacks, just because no-one else (except the people who have) has done it doesn't excuse them.


Also: Appeal to "realism" in deeply unrealistic settings does not work unless you are attempting satire.

 

[Daniel Janhagen]

Fanservice is always a good thing. I like to be serviced (I mean, what am I paying for?). I think there should be more of it, both for me and for everyone else. Fanservice that is sexual is especially good.

So no, no shame, and yes, it would be better if there were more fanservice for everyone (women, gays, south africans, germans, japanese, transgendered, college students, academics, magazine editors... et cetera).

 

[Therumancer]

Honestly... why does anyone care? The one logical fallacy all of these people seem to make is that all male game characters are somehow supposed to represent males in general, and that all female characters are supposed to represent females in general. No, no they're not. One person is one person and is going to be radically different from the next person. If a dev decides to make a character design sexualized, okay, go right ahead and do that - it is the storywriter creating the character and the character is going to have whatever traits the storywriter decides to put in. And of one of those traits is that the character doesn't mind showing a little (or a lot) of skin, you can't criticize the developer for that - people are like that, and just because it offends you personally doesn't mean it's an abomination that needs to be destroyed. Honestly, the only time it's unacceptable is when the character's personality is just so counter to that kind of appearance that the only conceivable reason for the character dressing like that is because fanservice. On the other hand, if you are in a situation where you want to dress a character like a fanservice character even though their personality is counter to that, there are a few things you can do to make that work. For example, the character may be being forced to by another character (in which case bonus points if you make this a source of tension between two characters). Or you could go the psychology route and have it be a conscious/subconscious type of thing, where outwardly the character is very uncomfortable with what they're wearing, but internally they rather like dressing like that.

Honestly, the only reason this is a problem is because of the way religion has influenced and developed the West's sense of morality. You don't hear controversies like this over in Japan because they just don't care, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that A) They realize that banning something or making it taboo will only make people want it more, and B) The fact that most Japanese people grow up around a mixture of religions rather than one central one like in the West means that some things from each part are lost or changed. Sexuality is simply another part of the self in Japanese culture, wheras in the West, showing your ankles condemns you to an eternity engulfed in fire and brimstone. As a result, we Westerners tend to fear sexuality much more than anywhere else, especially in the US (again, primarily because of the religion issue).

Having a sexualized character doesn't make you a sexist. It just means you have a sexualized character.

Well, the argument being made by feminists like Anita Sarkeesian and her defenders is that idealized women appeal to men, and that idealized men are also a male empowerment fantasy. Basically the ripped Chippendale guy doesn't count because somehow despite all of the money spent on things like the actual Chippendales and man-porn directed at women that women don't find that appealing and thus it doesn't draw them in the same way. Likewise we're supposed to accept that women for whatever reason don't dream about, or find attraction in, a physical ideal of their own gender. Basically that supposedly all women want portrayals that match the average everywhere since they are all grounded entirely in reality.... in short it's complete BS and basically used to try and sell arguments intended to get attention. At the end of the day women creating fantasy create the same kinds of ideal protagonists that you see in video games and the like, and the hyper-sexy action girl has the same kind of appeal as the studdly action dude. Basically members of the same gender want to be them, members of the opposite gender want to be with them.

As a general rule one thing you'll notice is that those who complain about the objectification of women tend to be women who are unattractive, or guys who are lonely or have an unattractive girl in their life (whatever they might say to them). Exceptions of course exist, and the majority of people of normal or below average looks generally don't care either (and in part are content with the escapism present in fantasy). Basically the rank and file of the movements against fantasy art and the like are a bunch of very bitter, angry, people who feel they have been cheated in life by not having won the genetic lottery. Sometime take a careful look at the people your argueing with, and when your dealing with the exceptions that exist what kinds of gains they get from the position. For example Anita Sarkeesian herself isn't exactly ugly, but she's also someone who is riding a platform to fame and notoriety, and generally doesn't engage on her own behalf.

You go to cons and stuff, or just browse the internet, and you'll see pictures of tons of cute girls dressing up as a lot of these fantasy characters and such, and having fun doing it. You'll see not-so cute ones doing it for fun as well of course. Obviously women do not hate these characters or feel objectified, nobody is exactly pointing guns at them and say "yeeeesss, dress up like Harley Quinn and put videos of yourself doing sexy poses on the interwebs....", while one can point to the whole "fake geek girl" thing (which is another entire issue) I very much doubt groups like "Team Unicorn" have some pimp in the background directing them with a baseball bat during their videos. I also doubt Ubisoft had to resort to human trafficking to recruit The Frag Dolls.

Basically there is no issue, there is just a lot of bitter people who want to make an issue, and those who realize they can exploit those bitter people to their own ends.

When it comes to Japan it's a mixture of things, as I've said before Japan is largely a mirror of American culture minus the PC crap we let taint everything here, especially nowadays. A few years ago though you could say it was more overtly barbaric still, but as a general rule it's started to change itself to be more intentionally acceptable, hence why it can be argued by some that "Anime" is technically dead because the sort of borked mentality that created it is gone, or at least not allowed to express itself to the same extent it used to be. Basically where something like "Rapelay" used to be par for the course, it's become a bit more underground even there than it is now. Japan is a bit more open with porn, but at the same time the US isn't exactly lacking in it either. I mean if you have the money and desire you can get some dude to back a whole UPS truck full of porn up to your house if you want to. What's more driving cross country I noticed a surprising number of adult stores which actually got me to do some checking. Ironically it seems the coasts (east and west) with a huge PC-liberal community seem to be more prudish with such things (going by numbers which probably indicates consumption) the more conservative states who make moral arguments but are against this kind of legislation and forcing social agendas with the law seem to have more of them. I'm not a big porn consumer though so it's not like my research has been exhaustive. The point being that while Japan might have more sexual merchandise out in the open, I don't think there is that big a difference, especially seeing as your talking a multi-billion dollar industry in the US alone.

Interestingly I think one of the things with Japan is that on a lot of levels World War II hit a reset button for it, and gave it a chance to try and redefine what it wanted to be, which has been embraced with mixed degrees of enthusiasm. When it comes to gender politics in the relatively civilized world I think the big countries to actually keep an eye on are Russia, China, and India. While those countries have paid lip service to civilizing, your dealing with deeply engrained cultures with set gender roles that go back thousands of years (compared to how the US say set it's basic policies that lead to gender equality not even 300 years ago), as a result they play the whole "progressive society" card but in practice tend to wind up with very unfriendly environments where women are still expected to largely complement men, and having a woman is a sort of entitlement for a guy and a privilege for her. Hence why you still see a lot of human trafficking problems in those countries, shocking caste revelations (like how the servant of an Indian ambassador was being treated), and can even find girls willing to marry dudes they never met complete with a pre-nuptial even just to get out of the country (mail order bride modern equivalent). Those are the nations to watch, the Middle East is technically worse, but it doesn't even make pretensions of being progressive for the most part so it's on the table a lot more. Of course this has little to do with anything.

 

[mecegirl]

I guess I disagree, about fighting have an egregiousness amount of lack in diversity of female characters, than games taken in as a whole.

The reason it tends to stand out in fighting games is that they tend to have quite large casts. Since you see all the examples in one place it stands out more that there's way greater variety on one side of the gender fence.

This is by no means proof, but I really am trying to think of a female fighting game chracter that isn't young and/or conventionally attractive. The most I can think of is Panda from Tekken. Characters like Sheva and Mileenia from Mortal Kombat sorta count because of their faces, but nothing stopped developers from giving them supermodel bodies. So while its a bit off topic,now I'm curious.

Just off the top of my head, and I'm not a fighting game expert, these are the games I can think of.
Street Fighter
Mortal Combat
Rival Schools
Tekken
Dead or Alive
King of Fighters
Soul Caliber
BlazBlue
Darkstalkers
Guilty Gear

And even with games like Darkstalkers, where everyone isn't human, its hard for me to think of many distinctly unattractive female fighting characters. A little weird looking but nothing to extreme.

 

[deathbydeath]

(I mean, what am I paying for?)

I don't know, a good story/music/special effects/humor/a chance to be scared/a good time with friends/an opportunity to learn something/to reinforce a certain image of youself to others? If your only reason to spend money on a work of art is for titillation than I highly suggest you go home and re-evaluate your life. That can't be healthy.

Fanservice is always a good thing.

I would argue that fanservice only works if it doesn't clash tone of the work. For something like the Sisters of Battle from Warhammer 40k, panty shots would feel out of place and undermine the tone everything else is trying to build.

Spoiler: Example

That being said sexualization can add interesting layers to a character's design, and create dissonance or reinforce themes.

Spoiler: Example: Shori from the Eredan games

 

[Daniel Janhagen]

(I mean, what am I paying for?)

I don't know, a good story/music/special effects/humor/a chance to be scared/a good time with friends/an opportunity to learn something/to reinforce a certain image of youself to others? If your only reason to spend money on a work of art is for titillation than I highly suggest you go home and re-evaluate your life. That can't be healthy.

Fanservice is always a good thing.

I would argue that fanservice only works if it doesn't clash tone of the work. For something like the Sisters of Battle from Warhammer 40k, panty shots would feel out of place and undermine the tone everything else is trying to build.

Spoiler: Example

Sisters of Battle are already very much fanservice, as is most of Warhammer. Not very sexually oriented though.

A good story/music/special effects/humor are all examples of a great ways to service me. (A good time with friends is mostly my own doing (and my friends' obviously!)). If we get sexual fanservice on top of that, then that's just even better.

 

[fenrizz]

While I respect and encourage an artists freedom of expression, I also feel that if a society decides to shame some expression and consider them taboo then that is probably the natural response to that expression.

Should it be illegal? Hell no.
But not all expressions are created equal.
If people consider your creation an abomination then they will probably tell you so.
If society is wrong then history has showed us that others will probably join you and expand the borders of what is acceptable.

 

[fenrizz]

Spoiler

Honestly... why does anyone care? The one logical fallacy all of these people seem to make is that all male game characters are somehow supposed to represent males in general, and that all female characters are supposed to represent females in general. No, no they're not. One person is one person and is going to be radically different from the next person. If a dev decides to make a character design sexualized, okay, go right ahead and do that - it is the storywriter creating the character and the character is going to have whatever traits the storywriter decides to put in. And of one of those traits is that the character doesn't mind showing a little (or a lot) of skin, you can't criticize the developer for that - people are like that, and just because it offends you personally doesn't mean it's an abomination that needs to be destroyed. Honestly, the only time it's unacceptable is when the character's personality is just so counter to that kind of appearance that the only conceivable reason for the character dressing like that is because fanservice. On the other hand, if you are in a situation where you want to dress a character like a fanservice character even though their personality is counter to that, there are a few things you can do to make that work. For example, the character may be being forced to by another character (in which case bonus points if you make this a source of tension between two characters). Or you could go the psychology route and have it be a conscious/subconscious type of thing, where outwardly the character is very uncomfortable with what they're wearing, but internally they rather like dressing like that.

Honestly, the only reason this is a problem is because of the way religion has influenced and developed the West's sense of morality. You don't hear controversies like this over in Japan because they just don't care, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that A) They realize that banning something or making it taboo will only make people want it more, and B) The fact that most Japanese people grow up around a mixture of religions rather than one central one like in the West means that some things from each part are lost or changed. Sexuality is simply another part of the self in Japanese culture, wheras in the West, showing your ankles condemns you to an eternity engulfed in fire and brimstone. As a result, we Westerners tend to fear sexuality much more than anywhere else, especially in the US (again, primarily because of the religion issue).

Having a sexualized character doesn't make you a sexist. It just means you have a sexualized character.

Well, the argument being made by feminists like Anita Sarkeesian and her defenders is that idealized women appeal to men, and that idealized men are also a male empowerment fantasy. Basically the ripped Chippendale guy doesn't count because somehow despite all of the money spent on things like the actual Chippendales and man-porn directed at women that women don't find that appealing and thus it doesn't draw them in the same way. Likewise we're supposed to accept that women for whatever reason don't dream about, or find attraction in, a physical ideal of their own gender. Basically that supposedly all women want portrayals that match the average everywhere since they are all grounded entirely in reality.... in short it's complete BS and basically used to try and sell arguments intended to get attention. At the end of the day women creating fantasy create the same kinds of ideal protagonists that you see in video games and the like, and the hyper-sexy action girl has the same kind of appeal as the studdly action dude. Basically members of the same gender want to be them, members of the opposite gender want to be with them.

As a general rule one thing you'll notice is that those who complain about the objectification of women tend to be women who are unattractive, or guys who are lonely or have an unattractive girl in their life (whatever they might say to them). Exceptions of course exist, and the majority of people of normal or below average looks generally don't care either (and in part are content with the escapism present in fantasy). Basically the rank and file of the movements against fantasy art and the like are a bunch of very bitter, angry, people who feel they have been cheated in life by not having won the genetic lottery. Sometime take a careful look at the people your argueing with, and when your dealing with the exceptions that exist what kinds of gains they get from the position. For example Anita Sarkeesian herself isn't exactly ugly, but she's also someone who is riding a platform to fame and notoriety, and generally doesn't engage on her own behalf.

You go to cons and stuff, or just browse the internet, and you'll see pictures of tons of cute girls dressing up as a lot of these fantasy characters and such, and having fun doing it. You'll see not-so cute ones doing it for fun as well of course. Obviously women do not hate these characters or feel objectified, nobody is exactly pointing guns at them and say "yeeeesss, dress up like Harley Quinn and put videos of yourself doing sexy poses on the interwebs....", while one can point to the whole "fake geek girl" thing (which is another entire issue) I very much doubt groups like "Team Unicorn" have some pimp in the background directing them with a baseball bat during their videos. I also doubt Ubisoft had to resort to human trafficking to recruit The Frag Dolls.

Basically there is no issue, there is just a lot of bitter people who want to make an issue, and those who realize they can exploit those bitter people to their own ends.

When it comes to Japan it's a mixture of things, as I've said before Japan is largely a mirror of American culture minus the PC crap we let taint everything here, especially nowadays. A few years ago though you could say it was more overtly barbaric still, but as a general rule it's started to change itself to be more intentionally acceptable, hence why it can be argued by some that "Anime" is technically dead because the sort of borked mentality that created it is gone, or at least not allowed to express itself to the same extent it used to be. Basically where something like "Rapelay" used to be par for the course, it's become a bit more underground even there than it is now. Japan is a bit more open with porn, but at the same time the US isn't exactly lacking in it either. I mean if you have the money and desire you can get some dude to back a whole UPS truck full of porn up to your house if you want to. What's more driving cross country I noticed a surprising number of adult stores which actually got me to do some checking. Ironically it seems the coasts (east and west) with a huge PC-liberal community seem to be more prudish with such things (going by numbers which probably indicates consumption) the more conservative states who make moral arguments but are against this kind of legislation and forcing social agendas with the law seem to have more of them. I'm not a big porn consumer though so it's not like my research has been exhaustive. The point being that while Japan might have more sexual merchandise out in the open, I don't think there is that big a difference, especially seeing as your talking a multi-billion dollar industry in the US alone.

Interestingly I think one of the things with Japan is that on a lot of levels World War II hit a reset button for it, and gave it a chance to try and redefine what it wanted to be, which has been embraced with mixed degrees of enthusiasm. When it comes to gender politics in the relatively civilized world I think the big countries to actually keep an eye on are Russia, China, and India. While those countries have paid lip service to civilizing, your dealing with deeply engrained cultures with set gender roles that go back thousands of years (compared to how the US say set it's basic policies that lead to gender equality not even 300 years ago), as a result they play the whole "progressive society" card but in practice tend to wind up with very unfriendly environments where women are still expected to largely complement men, and having a woman is a sort of entitlement for a guy and a privilege for her. Hence why you still see a lot of human trafficking problems in those countries, shocking caste revelations (like how the servant of an Indian ambassador was being treated), and can even find girls willing to marry dudes they never met complete with a pre-nuptial even just to get out of the country (mail order bride modern equivalent). Those are the nations to watch, the Middle East is technically worse, but it doesn't even make pretensions of being progressive for the most part so it's on the table a lot more. Of course this has little to do with anything.

I really enjoyed reading this.
While I may or may not agree, it was certainly thought provoking.

Have a fine evening, good Sir.

 

[ThreeName]

No, I think we've come a long way in the freedom of expression of sexuality and to shame people for it would only push more towards repression of such things.

Actually this is all that needs to be said. Well done.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

It depends on the content, theme, and other things.

Say, sexualized female characters in Silent Hill 2 makes sense, it's part of the theme.

But such sexualized characters don't fit in something like... Dark Souls, where a different brooding atmosphere and themes run dominant.

Then again, if you have a character who is sexual open, doesn't mind flaunting what she had and enjoys teasing people, she may dress provocatively. Same thing for a male character, who may be all like, "Ah yeah, check out mah abs."

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I'm not fussed about the ones in fighting games if I'm honest for one reason: assuming they were a real person, and their skills were equal to the AI at it's highest, then each woman in all of those games would be capable of knocking 11 shades of shit out of about 90% of their playerbase.

As a random example, Hitomi from DoA is good looking lass who'll be a stunner when she grows up, but could probably break all of my ribs before I could set my stance.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Saying creators of fiction should be shamed for expressing their sexuality, sexual desires, sexual tastes, sex, anything, makes you sound like a thousand year old reverend.

The thing is, it's their work. It's their thoughts put onto paper, or made into a game. Saying they should feel ashamed for it is akin to calling it a thought crime. Someone else's creative work doesn't have to appeal to, or even include you, me, or anyone else.

@grassgremlin doesn't seem to be answering their own question. You've said what you prefer, but you don't say whether the creator should feel shame for making something outside of what you've stated. You also might want to edit the title.

And honestly? Half the bloody arguement for gay/trans rights is that it's fine as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. To try and shame someone over what they want to wank to just spits in the face of that (barring pornography that is produced against someone's will, i.e. child porn and non-roleplay rape porn).

Edit: wait, is Ken Panders, Ken Ashcorp? God I love his music.

Edit 2: Good topic by the way. I think it gets to the heart of what's been going on lateley

 

[Therumancer]

Not really to be honest. For starters, you'd be hard pressed to find female heroic fantasy characters, even those created by women, that tend to be unattractive, or fit in the "old or fat" mould.

I wouldn't, you know.

Know why?

I have a whole damn shelf full of Terry Pratchett books and he's been writing those characters probably since before you were alive.

The rest of your post basically TL;DRs into "You can't blame videogame designers for being unoriginal hacks who parrot prior cultural conventions without thinking about them".

But I can and am, they're unoriginal hacks, just because no-one else (except the people who have) has done it doesn't excuse them.


Also: Appeal to "realism" in deeply unrealistic settings does not work unless you are attempting satire.

You do realize that Terry Pratchett writes comedy right? His entire schtick is to make fun of traditional fantasy tropes. He thus does not apply to a discussion when people are trying to do heroic fantasy material straight on, or engaging in a different form of satire.

What's more Terry Pratchett's contributions to the field haven't ever managed to garner anything like mainstream appeal or attention despite the amount of time he's spent writing and the amount of material he's produced. Thus you do not see things attempting to sppeal to the mainstream seeking inspiration from his work. There HAVE been attempts over the years to break his stuff into the mainstream but it's mostly fallen flat, various made for TV movies and the like. What's more given how off kilter his stuff is intentionally his body of work hasn't been directly inspirational in the same way that guys like Howard, Moorcock, Leiber, Tolkien, or numerous others have been. Of course it could also be argued that the lack of mainstream acceptance is because he hasn't embraced the things that are needed to be accepted by the mainstream.

The point here being that if Pratchett and others achieved major success in the mainstream, then you'd see more things similar to what they have created influencing video games and the like. At the best they represent easter egg material if someone drops a reference into another body of work for those who also read the material. That hasn't happened though.

Otherwise if your going to bother to respond at all or try and make a point you shouldn't include a dismissive TLR, since I believe I spelled out pretty well why Terry Pratchett wouldn't fit the criteria. Of course then again nobody does, which is sort of my point.

As I also pointed out I'm also not saying that there aren't people who want things away from the traditional mould, there are, it's just that today's gaming industry is entirely based around mainstream success and going for the biggest demographic. Comparitively few games are produced. Yes it would be better if they stopped doing ALL AAA games and released a larger number of games at professional but lesser production values 'A, B, and C quality games' so to speak to cater to a wider array of people and their tastes, but that isn't how the business works as much as we'd all like it to be different. Since they go after the largest demographic, and most men and women like the kinds of characters your seeing, that is what they produce. Indeed the gaming industry will point out to previous eras where they did produce a lot of off kilter games, and I believe we even saw attempts at discworld, but simply put even when profitable these games did not generate enough profit to make them happy. Basically nobody wants to do fair work for fair pay here, everyone wants to grab onto the latest mainstream trends, strike it big, and make big bucks. Today they aren't going to make a lot of games, so if they decide to do a brawler with a female character it's a simple choice of having a character like Bayonetta who appeals to the vast majority of consumers and will make them tons of money, or making a more conservative action heroine who will appeal to less people and might make money, but not as much, and not as reliably. Basically there is a reason why we have a Bayonetta 2 and Team Ninja keeps making games in general, it's because the people who complain about the sexism, body image issues, and other things are a minority. Basically it's not just a bunch of repressed man-children that find this kind of thing appealing no matter how much a bunch of Social Justice Warriors and Feminists might wish it was otherwise. This kind of thing is heroic fantasy to healthy, normal, people and pretty much what most people want from the genera and their heroes. It's not even an issue where gaming needs to "grow up" really, it's a situation where the industry just needs to get a bit less greedy and start producing for some of the bigger and more vocal niches instead of everyone pig piling on the same kind of stuff. There is a place for action games that don't feature traditional "heroic fantasy" type ideal builds for their protagonists, indie developers have proven this via things like "Rochard", but overall the big business side of things doesn't think that piddly amount of profit is worth it's time.

 

[grassgremlin]

Are we distinguishing between "calling out" and "shaming" in this? Because the latter seems tobe included in the former quite a bit. Simply mentioning this sort of thing is supposedly tantamount to shaming in the gaming community.

No. That's my fault then when it comes to interpretation. I do think the poll might be flawed.

 

[MerlinCross]

That being said sexualization can add interesting layers to a character's design, and create dissonance or reinforce themes.

Spoiler: Example: Shori from the Eredan games

Holy **** someone else knows about Eredan! I had no idea! COOL!

OT: I'm not sure if they should feel shamed or called out for it. My thoughts on it well I'm paraphrasing a quote right now because it's been awhile and I'm tired.

"Mai Shiranui looking the way she does? Awesome. EVERYONE looking like that? No, you can do better."