I see people drawing a comparison with this and the Dragon's Crown hoo haa. It's a fair point, and as someone who has sided with Kotaku, yet defended Skullgirls, I feel like I should explain myself out of what looks like an obvious contradiction.
I tend to be more accepting of games like DoA or Skullgirls, because I recognise that there probably should be a niche for cheese cake in gaming, and that DoA and Skullgirls have no delusions about sitting anywhere but within that niche. They are the Empowered of gaming - they know what they are, and don't pretend to be anything else.
But then there are games like Crown, or indeed many fighting games, hack and slash, and fantasy RPGs, in which women are all portrayed in a cheese cake style, despite staring alongside a cast of diverse and sensibly dressed males. Even Skullgirls, which aims to be cheese cake, has more conservatively dressed and proportioned characters than Crown. That's what grinds my gears; there is a tendency in games to treat all their female characters as fan service, even in those that have no explicit aim to provide wank fodder. Too often, the only depictions of women in fantasy games are that of sexy, sparsely dressed women. I imagine that if we lived in a backwards world, in which most games would only feature men if they appeared as semi-naked speedos models, I and many men might feel a little uncomfortable, bored, and discouraged from playing them. As it happens, many women feel that way about games right now, rolling their eyes at "breast plates" and ass shots. I know I do, even when this shit is there to appeal to me.
So that's the difference. I think there is a place for skimpy girls in games, but they should either be within their own niche, or they should be the exception, and not the rule, in other genres.
