The Big Picture: Gender Games

[Aureliano]

Really well done, Bob. Really well done. You picked a topic, took a strong and interesting stand on it, and took it the whole way through. Kudos.

Extra points for not trying to defend the defensive gamer dudes on this one because you're simply not trying to take away their boobs. Instead you're trying to allow ladies to actually be characters in games instead of always just being strippers. That's absolutely laudable.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I disagree. Half of the appeal of Aya Brea was her broken bird/heroin chic/artsty/angsty nude aesthetic. The entire first game is seduced by the dark power of lesbianism eliminating man (seriously a major plot is destroying the individual touch of men even in their own semen to have EVE create the perfect child) thing. She inescpicably spends the first level is tight dress.

But it was all still elegant and, especially for the time, stylish and new dichotomy of normalcy and posh with brutality and freaki-ness (great for a largely 'first' modern rpg unifying the conventions of modern movie and the pre-lotr fantasy rpg). Something that is mirrored with Melissa-Eve and her evolution into monstrous opera diva, living incubator, a raggedy afterbirth/caraccident and finally mad naked fairy queen. Sexual imagery clings to the series something fierce. but with some meaning and class even if only really stylish body horror clash

PEII WAS a disaster where the art and post and semi-style went to just porn, we got a shower scene and Brea couldn't wear pants in the desert while fighting doberman sized scorpions (seriously I face palmed at this as much as the damned tank control). She was dressed as a pandering playmate more more acurately the game seemed unable to find its legs stealing RE controls, Lora Croft's outfit, Squall Leonhart's sword...and the monsters just seemed more... contrived and dumb as to horrorific and unique and made even less sense.

3rd Birthday seemed more a return to form. Even better. Less wain etheral half dumb stares more alert processing looks. Her powers don't have her having hot flashes before "sexy" fainting (in that way actual people don't actually fall) and the vest and torn jeans with emphasis on the gun. . . Okay its a model pose, but at least rock/grunge and I see worry but not dumbfounded etheral mindlessness OR generic nothing but ass kicking here. There is a sexy there but like I could see on a street but not at the expense of me thinking there is a person facing some tough shit there.

And then the clothing mechanic (facepalm) sigh. No... just NO.

....Way to miss the champ like a point

 

[Lieju]

Agreed.

Also speaking as a someone who likes women, I do not find 99% of those 'sexy' female characters, well, sexy.
Even ignoring the fact that I find good characterisation and intelligence sexy, and looking just the physical appearance, anorexics with balloons taped on their chest wearing skimpy clothing leaving little to imagination is not my idea of attractive.

Not to mention, huge breasts with jiggle-physics just make me feel bad. Do you have any idea how painful that would be?
There are good reasons why women generally wear bras, expecially when doing sports.

 

[RJ Dalton]

wheres the rule63 of

?
they dont exist, probably because it wouldnt be attractive, to a mainstream audience at least...

Just because it made me curious, I had to check out your claim for myself and you, sir, are wrong: http://rule63.paheal.net/post/view/13747?search=E._Honda
It's safe for work, don't worry.

On a side note: Why the fuck are there Russian characters in my recapcha?

 

[JMeganSnow]

I find it amusing that you complained that women aren't presented in any way other than to be sexy--yet numerous of those shots conveyed all sorts of personality traits. Perhaps the problem is more that you're so fixated on the tits that you can't see past them.

I expect that much of this can also be attributed to the fact that there is rampant fear of homoeroticism among men--since even the suggestion of esthetic appreciation for other males is supposed to be completely emasculating in "normal" culture. If they played up the sexy aspect of *male* characters, male gamers would flee screaming in fear. You could even say that women have the higher status here, because they're free to be expressly sexual, whereas men are required to keep it in the closet.

Most of the cultures in the world that *actually* subjugate women *do not* permit women to openly express their sexuality--in fact, a woman appearing in a sexy outfit is more likely to be cursed or stoned (or raped to "teach her a lesson") than celebrated. There was a time when this pertained in the U.S. and Europe as well. The ability to display women as "sex objects" is actually a huge step forward in freedom for women, and ought to be embraced as such if people are REALLY concerned with "women's issues".

You know who the real Neanderthals are? The people on the Bioware forums who object to Isabela as a LI because she's a "slut" and a "whore", as obviously evidenced by her forwardness and open sexuality. The solution is not to demand that Isabela be covered up, but to demand that people who make assumptions such as these be called what they are: imbeciles. Being openly sexual is not an indictment on Isabela (or Bioware!). The reaction is an indictment on the rigid douchebags who can't see past the tits.

My beef with feminism (and with most "isms") is largely that they take ONE fact that has MANY complex reasons behind it, ascribe ONE reason to it that favors their prejudice on the matter, and then complain about it, thus tarring everybody and anybody with the same brush. If your goal is truly to see women treated as *individuals*, why do you demonize your opponents as if they belonged to some faceless collective? And, worse, why do some feminists go about this idea of "freeing women" as a return to some kind of horrific neo-Puritanism where women or artworks who flaunt their sexuality are once again reduced to the state of being offered up for public stoning?

And still worse, after you've turned actual women into rigid prudes, you go after the men who turn to artwork for consolation and ruin whatever small pleasure they take in it.

If you want to improve the world, go around trumpeting the things you find *good*. There's enough whining, complaining, and sourness already.

 

[omegawyrm]

Bayonetta was so great but it, sadly, wasn't really surprising that a lot of people missed the point. I get that it was made by a male designer who explicitly said that he wanted the character to be sexy, and there are plenty of reasons to be wary of the game coming from that sort of origin. Anyone paying attention though would pretty easily be able to see that the primary metaphor the game operates on is that of a woman who uses the expression of her sexuality as a weapon to destroy the masculine symbols that dominate women sexually and physically, and the game contextualizes those symbols as religious imagery (I don't think I'd be too far off if I suggest that the game draws pretty heavy parallels to Catholicism in this area) which give the conflict a pretty significant historical weight. If that doesn't fit with the definition of empowerment, I don't know what does.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Bayonetta was so great but it, sadly, wasn't really surprising that a lot of people missed the point. I get that it was made by a male designer who explicitly said that he wanted the character to be sexy, and there are plenty of reasons to be wary of the game coming from that sort of origin. Anyone paying attention though would pretty easily be able to see that the primary metaphor the game operates on is that of a woman who uses the expression of her sexuality as a weapon to destroy the masculine symbols that dominate women sexually and physically, and the game contextualizes those symbols as religious imagery (I don't think I'd be too far off if I suggest that the game draws pretty heavy parallels to Catholicism in this area) which give the conflict a pretty significant historical weight. If that doesn't fit with the definition of empowerment, I don't know what does.

One problem though: Bayonetta ain't sexy. At all. She has no sense of grace or elegance to her supposed sex appeal and flaunts it WAAAAAY too much, almost like someone who's so insecure about their supposed beauty that they have to shove it in everyone's face every five minutes. Kamiya just doesn't have the ability to be able to address the idea of sexual expression

 

[Jennacide]

Good on you Bob. That about sums up my feelings for the most part. Ones that have gotten some rather odd reactions from how I think. For example, I take little issue with Ivy Valentine. Especially since SC5 has her donning more clothing again. But it was never the clothing that bothered me, the fact she's putting more on shows that as a character she has gotten older because she literally has. Her oversexaulized poses ingame (not counting art, those did generally bug me) made sense, because her intention was to be a character aware of her sexuality and uses it as a weapon along with her WHIP sword.

No, the characters I took issue with were Sophitia and Taki. Two characters that had oversexualized moves, which went completely against the character painted. Sophitia is supposed to be a champion of the Greek pantheon, and a wholesome character. Then she wins a fight and basically says "I'm so so pretty, check out my boobs." in victory pose. Or Taki, a goddam ninja, who in SC3 and 4 had a victory pose where she is literally shoving her chest out there. Fun fact for those that don't know, what few women were able to be warriors or soldiers in fuedal Japan, be it doing assassinations or whatever like a ninja would, wrapped their breasts down, so they wouldn't get in the way. Taki has like G cups. THIS DOES NOT COMPUTE.

I do hope you do a video on the stupidity of the super model complex in gaming. It's so out of hand except by a very small handful of studios that understand woman can still be strong and attractive without having to be 'classically' beautiful. (I'm looking right at Valve for this one.) What makes it worse, in the example of Alyx, is that she's a strong but down to Earth looking heroine, and idiots go and do shit like this: http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/504/halflife22.jpg
Yup, that's what Alyx needed. A face of a super model, bigger tits with jiggle bones, and more navel showing. And you wonder why women tend to assume men are all misogynist idiots.

 

[Aisaku]

After watching the video I felt it was... unfinished. Bob led to the point but he didn't really cover it in detail. He didn't give a proper shoutout to games that do regard their female characters as deep and nuanced as any other characters. Oh well.

This is why I always preferred Aya Brea to Lara Croft back in the PSX days. Aya had a semblance of substance, of character and character growth.

 

[moosek]

Overwhelming amount of fighting game examples... Which are developed in Japan... Just saying.

I'm not gonna dispute that gaming is inundated with under-characterized/over-sexualized female characters, but I will say that it isn't my job to change this issue. I'm a consumer who, until last December, was a heterosexual teenager. I'm fairly literate to games, along with many other forms of media, and I realize that the only power I have is to either vote with my dollar or complain on a message board. Neither of those actually does anything without a lot of people agreeing with me.

I didn't buy Dead Space 2 because of their dumb ads about moms disliking my games. My mom would probably like that games content, because she worked on the sets of Aliens and The Thing. I don't play fighting games because of the promise of tits. In fact, no fighting game character or story is fleshed out very well because of the arcade roots of the genre.

 

[omegawyrm]

Bayonetta was so great but it, sadly, wasn't really surprising that a lot of people missed the point. I get that it was made by a male designer who explicitly said that he wanted the character to be sexy, and there are plenty of reasons to be wary of the game coming from that sort of origin. Anyone paying attention though would pretty easily be able to see that the primary metaphor the game operates on is that of a woman who uses the expression of her sexuality as a weapon to destroy the masculine symbols that dominate women sexually and physically, and the game contextualizes those symbols as religious imagery (I don't think I'd be too far off if I suggest that the game draws pretty heavy parallels to Catholicism in this area) which give the conflict a pretty significant historical weight. If that doesn't fit with the definition of empowerment, I don't know what does.

One problem though: Bayonetta ain't sexy. At all. She has no sense of grace or elegance to her supposed sex appeal and flaunts it WAAAAAY too much, almost like someone who's so insecure about their supposed beauty that they have to shove it in everyone's face every five minutes. Kamiya just doesn't have the ability to be able to address the idea of sexual expression

Uh, well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm going to disagree. Both me and my fiance think Bayonetta was a really fun and sexy character, and I don't think the subjective opinion on whether you find the character sexy or not changes what the central metaphor of the story is. I don't really think what you said damages my thesis that Bayonetta was an empowerment fantasy for female sexuality, and that was really cool because that's kind of a novel, or at least rare, narrative, especially in video games.

 

[Soak]

I'd say, summed up quiet well for a 5min video!
Now, what i don't get is, that while i recognize more arguments from the, lets call it "reasonable side", demanding less stereotyped, more realistic and deep characters, or other, new approaches (despite, lets face it, some characters we just love to be polarised as they are), why are game companies seldom responding to this? When a game is released with a well made female character (or a very well made character in general), it usually gets awesome reviews for this, so why won't some companies recognize the importance of this matter? And i think those who'd cry about their "sexy stylized females" removed from games, while i think this is evitable by itself, the "other" side would overweight eventually.
And they should fucking stop trying to tell me it is "natural physics", that boobs bounce three times after every movement, why some still do this in their games, animations or whatever?!
More refering to games right now, i think the matter as a whole is much bigger and needs some more time to be discussed and changed.

 

[Sjakie]

you make a good point but I just dont care about this since i am a hetero male and more often then not i like how companies portray those pixelated women as sexy.
Yes, most pixelated women are there since 'sex sells', but that goes for almost all advertising/products.
I dont hear guys complaining about the Old-spice commercial and that one actively puts down all boyfriends/men in favor of a sexual fantasy geared towards women.
Point is: whining never solved anything. You either suck it up/let it go, or go out and do something new and constructive with that. An example that comes to mind is how the new Lara Croft looks more cool then sexy this time around.

And lets face it, a lot of those 'complaining feminists' just need to grow thicker skin instead of fatter ... skin. But this goes for everything that whiners whine about: sexual, racial, political and moral.
Free speech, apparantly, is only good if people that complain about something get their way and that is not free speech but censorship!

 

[Jennacide]

After watching the video I felt it was... unfinished. Bob led to the point but he didn't really cover it in detail. He didn't give a proper shoutout to games that do regard their female characters as deep and nuanced as any other characters. Oh well.

This is why I always preferred Aya Brea to Lara Croft back in the PSX days. Aya had a semblance of substance, of character and character growth.

Well Bob does only have 5 minutes to work with or so.

As for the Aya to Lara comparison, that's sorta not fair, honestly. Aya in the first game was a better character, but then went down the same slope as Lara. The character Lara started with wasn't that bad, but do to bogus rumors started as jokes in EGM (how countless urban legends of gaming started), the Nude Raider joke became big and Lara was quickly changed into a sex symbol instead of a human being. When Lara is allowed to be Lara, the character isn't bad at all, sometimes really good. Case in point: Guardian of Light. In that she's exactly what she was meant to be, a female Indiana Jones with an equally sharp wit. At least Lara is getting another chance because of GoL and the remake, whereas Third Birthday was about the most offensive thing they could of done to Aya. But it's SE, so I pretty much expected that.

 

[lead sharp]

That was good that and relevant to what's happening in the New DCU.

 

[Beliyal]

Or maybe make a female character that you don't want to fuck? Just a thought. Maybe have an actual person who happens to be female, and not an object of sexual desire?

All right, then. Why don't we talk about how the leading men in video games always look handsome and well-built, then? There are seldom any fat or ugly men in games, especially in many RPGs, where there is only one body type per gender for every human NPC. Normally, both sexes are portrayed in a way that makes them attractive to most people. I'm just trying to say that if it's going to be that way, it might as well be equal for both men and women in all respects. I mean, I'm all for seeing a bunch of non-attractive people in video games, as long as it's not just the women.

I agree with you regarding the fact that it has to be equal for both, though I wouldn't say that it's really the issue of being "handsome" or "pretty". In visual media, virtually all characters are good looking; after all, it's a visual media, and people need something nice to look at for hours. There's nothing wrong with that in my opinion. I like to look at nice people, men, and women as well. However, there's a difference between being handsome, pretty or just generally good looking and looking like you jumped out of a porn. And it's mostly women who look like they entered the wrong studio on their way to porn filming. They are not just good looking, they are exaggerated in such way that it's neither plausible nor does it make sense for them to be a part of that video game/movie/TV show/whatever.

A lot of people immediately mention muscled men, but to those men, muscles are an essential part of their job description and come from life-long training. Soldiers, warriors, policemen and similar types of characters cannot perform their jobs without some amount of muscles (especially if they carry around unrealistically huge weapons). However, when it comes to women, they seem to have an unrealistic look that makes me think "She can't possibly do that" and breaks immersion; their bodies are in no way connected with their jobs, they do not benefit from it and they would actually be at a rather great disadvantage with such proportions. Huge boobs are not necessary for a woman to do any job, they actually pretty much get in the way, can cause severe back pains and don't do much for your agility. Huge boobs in combination with tiny arms is even more ridiculous (Lara Croft would be the prime example here I think, and no matter how much I love her, she is just plain ridiculous. Just look at her arms; she can't possibly lift her own body with them, let alone do all those acrobatics. It simply does not work and I don't care about it being just a game where you kill dinosaurs and mummies). If we include a really small waist and other silly proportions, women usually end up looking like they could not physically exist and for no other reason than to be an object to look at. Exaggeration exists in male characters as well and it's equally annoying, but at least bigger-than-head muscles serve a purpose. You know, they make him fit for battle and I immediately do not fear that my character will snap like a twig if someone touches him (also, muscles are not in there for those men to be sexualized; comparing them to boobs makes no sense as most women do not find huge muscles as the object of desire. A man flaunting his muscles demands respect and shows how awesome he is, which are personality/ability traits. A woman flaunting boobs in a suggestive cleavage does not say "I radiate authority!", she says "I clearly want your dick!"). I also know that men are not a uniformed life-form, attracted to such silly proportionated women, but characters like that still exist. There are other things about female characters that go into the equation such as impractical hair and useless outfits. As Bob said, it's not even just how the outfit looks and the pose is much more important. Still, when I see some female outfit, I usually groan in annoyance because I immediately assume that the person who designed it obviously never saw a real woman or never left the house for that matter. Anyone who thinks it is easy or normal to do anything but pole dancing and stripping in those kinds of outfits, needs to go out in the world and meet someone from the 50% of the Earth's population. Thongs, bikinis, cleavages, strips, see-through clothes, high-heels... Do they really have a logical, practical and useful possible usage for a game character that is supposed to be a human being with a brain and characterization, abilities and a personality? No (with the excuse of a character who despite that, has strong characterization and it's a part of their character. It can be done well, but it's mostly done because it's a cheap way out and supposedly, it brings profit because "sex sells").

Anyway, yes, I agree with the fact that characters in general, regardless of the gender and media, need to be slightly more realistic. I don't necessarily want them to be ugly or fat, I just want them to make sense and to be in tune with what the character does, which also includes the outfits to match that person's personality. If a woman is a perverted *****, let her have her cleavage (although, huge boobs and silly proportions are still not necessary to convey the message). If she's supposed to be a fucking awesome heroine that kicks ass, make her look like that. I wouldn't want Lara to be ugly and masculine, I'd just like for her body figure to make sense with what she does for a living. Same with men, really. No need to exaggerate with muscles, not even a heroic warrior needs to have arms bigger than his head. Handsome and pretty people can stay, they are not the problem, and handsome men are not the equivalent of ridiculously sexualized women.

Also, great episode, Bob!

 

[dkyros]

They are just doing it for the 'greater good'. I think it is pretty safe to say that a majority of people that play the kind of games that contain skimpy outfits are males so its just fan service. Pandering to their audience if you will.
If people want to change it make heterosexual males the minority of the gamer base and then you can throw in something that will please the new majority. But I think this is already the case for certain games. You don't see many males playing farmville and you dont see skimpy outfits on farmville.

 

[kickyourass]

I was wondering if Bob was gonna do this topic and it's good to see him coming at it from a different angle. Now that I've thought about it, he's right, I've been gaming for something like 15 years and and now that I think about it, out side Nintendo almost every game I've played with a major Female character has had her in some variation of "hey, I know I'm in the middle of a sword fight but I'm gonna pose like this is a goddamn photoshoot." Fuck even Nintendo isn't immune from that is seems with that Zero Suit Samus design in Brawl.

 

[coates32]

Ah, 3rd Birthday, probably the most sexist and poorly written game EVER to have come out of Square (written by resident hack Motomu Toriyama no less). Aya had always been sexualized to a degree considering that there was quite a bit of promotional art like her wearing her jacket but not a shirt underneath, one where she was nude but covered in blood, another where Eve was nibbling on her ear (with Aya CLEARLY not enjoying herself), or where she was nude surrounded by...stuff. Even the shower scene in 2 was relatively harmless. T3B...whoo, I can't even BEGIN on where that game drops the ball.

So true. The clothing-tearing physics (and that it was actually a game mechanic concerning how well your "armor" of jeans and a t-shirt protected you got less as they got torn to ribbons) was in really poor taste.

You can see the decline in Aya's character as the cover poses get less and less evocative. First game, she's as determined as Kratos - and her character is deep and interesting.

Third Birthday, she's vacant, walking fan-service - and her character is flat.

What's more, the gameplay fell along with her character. I still replay PE1 for the really good and unique combat. PE2... less so. Haven't finished Third Birthday - got distracted by other, better games.

To be fair, El Shadai and X-men Origin: Wolverine did have the same clothes/armor ripping mechanic.

I do that 2 thing need to happen in the game industry to make things more fair. First, there needs to be more non-sexualized (and more diversed body-types for) female protagonists. Second, some blatant beefcake would be nice for those into that, even though Japan seems to be slightly ahead of us when it comes to that.

I was wondering if Bob was gonna do this topic and it's good to see him coming at it from a different angle. Now that I've thought about it, he's right, I've been gaming for something like 15 years and and now that I think about it, out side Nintendo almost every game I've played with a major Female character has had her in some variation of "hey, I know I'm in the middle of a sword fight but I'm gonna pose like this is a goddamn photoshoot." Fuck even Nintendo isn't immune from that is seems with that Zero Suit Samus design in Brawl.

You got to admit that the Zero suit did make more sense than most of the other underclothing Samus wore under her suit in most of the other Metroid games.

 

[Realitycrash]

How a character poses is VERY open to interpretation. Morrigan Aensland gives that pose, because she's a succubus, and could kill you seven times before you blink, so she can afford to show off. Cammy has a stronger fighting stance then almost the entire SF roster, there's nothing feminine about that.

By the way, nice use of Marcus Fenix (360) and Nathan Drake (PS3) to cover the Nintendo fan-boyism. Not gonna quiet the crowd though.

So yeah, bad character design for women? I don't even understand why this is still an issue when people have the internet and a simple google search can get any amount of nakedness you could want. This applies for any media that tries to use sex to "enhance" the experience. I just find it pandering.

Thank you, I'v been saying this for a long time. I remember getting SC2 when I was 17, starting to play with Taki in her red body-suit (the one where the boobs bounce like crazy with every little move) and just going "Oh HELL no".
I don't care that it is sexist (which I think it is), I just find it distracting and pandering. If I want to look at animated boobs, I got hentai just one google-search away.
When I play fighting-games, I want to kick ass, not masturbate.

So, I say, go with same rule as should be applied to movies/literature/televison: If sex/sexuality of a character doesn't directly add to the story, the mood or the immersion, cut it the hell out.