Why do non-mammals or non-humans need human characteristics?

[DoPo]

I think people are reading far too much into this. You could just as easily ask why are alien children usually small in games?

See, you say that and then again I can't really think of seeing any alien children recently. I know I should have seen some...sometime but I can't recall any currently. Well, only the facehuggers come to mind

However, this is also tied to aliens working really similarly to humans and other earthly living things, not just beings that defy any known properties of creatures.

 

[rob_simple]

I think people are reading far too much into this. You could just as easily ask why are alien children usually small in games?

See, you say that and then again I can't really think of seeing any alien children recently. I know I should have seen some...sometime but I can't recall any currently. Well, only the facehuggers come to mind

However, this is also tied to aliens working really similarly to humans and other earthly living things, not just beings that defy any known properties of creatures.

Well, by the same token, I can think of any number of alien creatures from various media that don't ascribe to any of our gender characteristics. If I may be so bold as to piggyback your example: the Queen alien, from Aliens didn't have tits. In games: I forget their name, but those ghost things in Borderlands...actually all the creatures from Borderlands that weren't NPC's. They were all alien life-forms with different genders but it wasn't made obvious through physical traits.

This feels like a completely biased debate, to me: only focusing on the humanoid characters --where it would stand to reason that they are human-like in physicality-- and ignoring the fact that, last time I checked, none of the dragons in Skyrim were scooting about with glorious DD's.

And I've always thought it would stand to reason that alien lifeforms would work in a similar fashion to us because, if there are other planets out there that can support life, they probably do so in a similar fashion to the way Earth does. Otherwise, by now, we would surely have found some sign of life on the other planets in our solar system.

 

[DoPo]

Well, by the same token, I can think of any number of alien creatures from various media that don't ascribe to any of our gender characteristics. If I may be so bold as to piggyback your example: the Queen alien, from Aliens didn't have tits. In games: I forget their name, but those ghost things in Borderlands...actually all the creatures from Borderlands that weren't NPC's. They were all alien life-forms with different genders but it wasn't made obvious through physical traits.

All that is well and good but OP's question is not "Why do ALL non-human species have tits" - as you showed there, that is incorrect. The actual question was "Why do non-human species have tits" with no quantifier. So it's not about all of them, it's about those that do.

And I've always thought it would stand to reason that alien lifeforms would work in a similar fashion to us because, if there are other planets out there that can support life, they probably do so in a similar fashion to the way Earth does.

Yes, but humans =/= Earth. Take a look at the thousands and thousands of other species around - even among other mammals there is more than just a humanoid form to guide us. If you move away from mammals, you find even stranger (by humanoid standards) creatures around.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

You think that's bad? Try Yu-Gi-Oh! back when Sacred Phoenix of Nepthys was new, I saw the picture and was so happy(I love phoenixes) and here was a gold, Phoenix. Then I saw it... Gold Boobs. Gold... boobs... GAWLD BEWBS! Ugh, the stupidity of it instantly killed my interest in the drawing immediately.

 

[Smeatza]

People prefer stuff that looks like humans to stuff that doesn't.

Why do you think dogs have such big heads and eyes? Because when they were first being bred from wolves those who were breeding them preferred the ones with more human (specifically human child) like characteristics.

I do have to admit though, it gets weird when you start putting breasts on cold blooded animals.

 

[rob_simple]

snip

Granted, I accept that, but it just makes sense to me that the female characters in games who are humanoid in appearance would have many similar physical characteristics because they would have, conceivably, evolved in a similar way. It's worth remembering that breasts serve a function other than being awesome to look at.

I guess I appreciate the point OP was trying to make, it's just that I wouldn't find myself attracted to fantasy-genre females if they have hooters or not, because they usually also have things like horns and gills. Sometimes I think, if you're sexualising a ten-foot cow-woman, that says more about you than the inherent sexism in the gaming industry.

 

[The_Echo]

snip

I'm no WoW-fanatic (that's Turians, right?), but in the Argonian's case, they as well as other races like them (Khajiit, Sload, Imga, and assumedly the Lilmothiit) are under the umbrella term "beastmen." So, it's pretty much as the name implies.

In the lore, not much is known about the Argonian race. They refer to genders as "life-phases," implying it may be possible that they can change gender. The amount of reptilian features they bare depends on how much Hist sap they consume as hatchlings on their Naming Day (some look almost human). But uh, I think I'm digressing.

OT: I think it's all a "beastmen" sort of thing. It could very well just be laziness on the part of the character designers. Making truly non-human, sentient races isn't the easiest thing. It's a miracle already the ones without human mouths can speak the same tongue.

 

[UrinalDook]

I'm not sure why you spend so long talking about turians, if anything they're an example of this done right. We only have one example of a female turian in the games and, well, look at her:

No tits there. Obvious sexual dimorphism from the males, sure, but she's hardly 'humanised'. In fact, in what I suspect is a nod to turian avian roots, if anything she's less visually interesting than the males - no 'plumage', shorter 'beak' etc.

Indeed, the only thing that bugs me about her looks is they eyes. I don't know they felt turian ladies needed cat eyes.

As for Argonians, the answer's simple, and has already been said. It's just easier to use the same body model for everyone, and stick a rigid tail mesh to those that need it. Moreso, it's less taxing on the systems that run it. Maybe with the next console generation and concurrent increase in memory budget, we'll see highly detailed argonians with digitigrade legs and no boobies.

And suddenly, half the Skyrim mod scene cries out in terror...

 

[darlarosa]

Never said all are misogynistic maniacs, please don't put words in my mouth. I never made that claim, my statements were obvious exaggeration.While I think sexism maybe a factor, I also brought up general design laziness as an issue

It may seem to be putting words in your mouth but it's just reading between the lines. It's there with every post that claims the industry is sexist, they forget that the industry is filled with people like you and me, and not just an entity.

"Reading between the lines" is just a rewording of putting words in someones mouth 65-75% of the time. I can criticize trends I notice without being dramatic or over stating things into mass simplifications. I'm not claiming the industry is sexist. I think society is sexist towards both men and women in a variety of negative ways that deeply impact the emotional and physical well being of everyone, and that's not even including inter-sex and gender identity issues. The gaming industry is made up of people and people have things ingrained in them by society that makes trends arise. That's not to say everybody is sexist, but that is to say trends happen because of ideas that are absorbed in some form, and are consequently displayed in some form. We accept things as norms, absorb ideas, absorb experiences(in viewing media and in life), and they impact what we create. Why is a hella lot of fantasy based on Tolkien besides general popularity? It was absorbed into Western culture as a whole. Same process.

Here I am just questioning why this trend exists because it's just weird to sexualize a monster created to be a monster in an era without the vast sexual oppression of previous eras, and an era where certain kinds of monsters are seen repeatedly in video games.I understand sexuality is often reflected in monsters(vampyre, Frankenstein's monster, etc), but video games rarely...on a whole use that symbolism regularly.

I used the wow pic just as an example, and perhaps if you are correct about the feedback that was a poor example(source? Just out of curiosity). However that's only applicable to player characters than. Most people try to make them attractive, I get that. But I suppose my real issue was the fact that "female" monsters seem to always be so overtly female in the most obvious and lazy ways. Not every non-human female should look human pretty. A female half orc shouldn't be generalized human pretty. Even if it's a feedback thing that rubs me the wrong way.

I still haven't got source on it, sadly. I'm willing to assume it's true but I'm hesitant about it now, I mailed the guy from that thread but he isn't the most active member so that might never produce results. I think the other side of it is that the more attractive something needs to be, the more human it needs to be. Depending on how attractive they want a race to be, and how central a character from that race is, they're going to vary.

I mean, it's good character design sometimes and it's other times it's laziness. It's one of the 12 principles of animation: appeal. The character needs to fit the role so the good guy isn't going to be ugly; that's the job of the evil guy. If that Orc is good or a Player Character it's going to be more human than would seem appropriate for an ugly ass Orc, but if it's an evil NPC then you're going to see it ugly as hell.

Most of the time it comes down to good and bad character design, not institutional sexism.

To me it's...juvenile. Dehumanizing enemies is boring as is good v.s bad dichotomy, which is not always the case. Besides that it's a massive oversimplification of the variaty of video games out there. Plenty of bad guys are beautiful, and ugly characters good. This is something that is often toyed with in video games.Video games actually provide the perfect way to experiment with levels of physical attractiveness per species...

-snip-

It's the most alien example of a morally neutral alien race I can think of from a game I like in which both male and female species look obviously different. It's a good example

snip

I'm no WoW-fanatic (that's Turians, right?), but in the Argonian's case, they as well as other races like them (Khajiit, Sload, Imga, and assumedly the Lilmothiit) are under the umbrella term "beastmen." So, it's pretty much as the name implies.

In the lore, not much is known about the Argonian race. They refer to genders as "life-phases," implying it may be possible that they can change gender. The amount of reptilian features they bare depends on how much Hist sap they consume as hatchlings on their Naming Day (some look almost human). But uh, I think I'm digressing.

OT: I think it's all a "beastmen" sort of thing. It could very well just be laziness on the part of the character designers. Making truly non-human, sentient races isn't the easiest thing. It's a miracle already the ones without human mouths can speak the same tongue.

Turians=Mass Effect
And I suppose...I dunno...that's still weird. Then were Argonian's originally more humannoid or is that the most enlightened form or....I dunno... Argonians are complicated

 

[Hawk eye1466]

Mostly because it's familiar and if the player likes what they see they'll become invested in that character, yes there are other and better ways to make someone care about a character but I figure developers try and hedge their bets with making the characters appealing or familiar in some way so people at least buy the game.

 

[The Lunatic]

It's basically just lazy art direction for "This is a female guise".

While Bioware is pretty good for it, they're really bad at including the gender to begin with.

Apparently female Turians all had invisibility cloaks on until recently.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

"Reading between the lines" is just a rewording of putting words in someones mouth 65-75% of the time. I can criticize trends I notice without being dramatic or over stating things into mass simplifications. I'm not claiming the industry is sexist. I think society is sexist towards both men and women in a variety of negative ways that deeply impact the emotional and physical well being of everyone, and that's not even including inter-sex and gender identity issues. The gaming industry is made up of people and people have things ingrained in them by society that makes trends arise. That's not to say everybody is sexist, but that is to say trends happen because of ideas that are absorbed in some form, and are consequently displayed in some form. We accept things as norms, absorb ideas, absorb experiences(in viewing media and in life), and they impact what we create. Why is a hella lot of fantasy based on Tolkien besides general popularity? It was absorbed into Western culture as a whole. Same process.

Here I am just questioning why this trend exists because it's just weird to sexualize a monster created to be a monster in an era without the vast sexual oppression of previous eras, and an era where certain kinds of monsters are seen repeatedly in video games.I understand sexuality is often reflected in monsters(vampyre, Frankenstein's monster, etc), but video games rarely...on a whole use that symbolism regularly.

Bullshit, you're trying to retcon your own argument. Next time you argue that the industry is sexist, make sure you word it like you just have so you avoid more situations like this.

It's just really weird, and almost insulting to the players to go "They're too stupid to know females" or "All our players are straight men who MUST BE SEEING BOOB EVERY 5.4 MINUTES OR THEY DIE".

That doesn't sound like the argument you claim to be making.

To me it's...juvenile. Dehumanizing enemies is boring as is good v.s bad dichotomy, which is not always the case. Besides that it's a massive oversimplification of the variaty of video games out there. Plenty of bad guys are beautiful, and ugly characters good. This is something that is often toyed with in video games.Video games actually provide the perfect way to experiment with levels of physical attractiveness per species...

You can call it whatever you want but AAA video games, which, let's face it, we're focusing on here, aren't the place to try anything out. Finally, that was only one example of characterization and appeal being applied, you can't seriously claim that the majority of games has an unappealing protagonist for the player to take control of.

 

[Jachwe]

I believe Blizzard did this well with the female Protoss in Starcraft 2.

You would recognize Selendis as a female Protoss but she does not look either human (aside from the generic homonoid shape) or mammal.

I'm not sure why you spend so long talking about turians, if anything they're an example of this done right.
[...]
No tits there. Obvious sexual dimorphism from the males, sure, but she's hardly 'humanised'. In fact, in what I suspect is a nod to turian avian roots, if anything she's less visually interesting than the males - no 'plumage', shorter 'beak' etc.

To both of you: The evidence you provide does counter your thesis, so you are not making a good argument. You can clearly see by comparisons to the male sex of both exaples the famles have female characteristics. You know... smaller shoulders, X shpaed instead of V shaped upper body, softer lines on hte chin etc.
Starcraft 2's example pic hides the hips with cloth. I guess they have them outstanding hipbones too, so cover it up to make it look smoother and the added antenna constitute long hair typacily associated with females. The Turian and her shorter "beak" is clearly recognized as a not as square chin as a males. Breasts are not shown because the breast is concealed by a breastplate so just imagine it because you can, I know you can.
This all works on a more or less subconscious level of recognition. On you two it works on a realy deep rooted subconscious level or how are you explaining these examples came to mind when confronted with the subject discussed? I mean they have female voices but the pictures alone are enough to see they are female especialy if shown right next to the male counterpart.

 

[UrinalDook]

What part of "obvious sexual dimorphism" did you not get? At no point did I even pretend my 'argument', such as it is, was stating turian females don't look feminine.

The subject of the thread was how 'human', or perhaps more aptly 'mammalian' characteristics are applied to evidently non-human females; or, to put it another way 'why do so many art directors take the lazy way out and just slap on a pair of tits as a means to differentiate gender in species which shouldn't biologically have boobies?' I answered that by demonstrating an example that, once again, is still obviously female but - and this is key - doesn't have boobs.

And don't try and pretend that humans are the only species where females are 'smaller' or whatever than males. There are plenty of non-mammalian species that have obvious sexual dimorphism. Hell, I even mentioned that in my last post and you conveniently ignored my references to avian sexual differences.

No, saying 'well you can always imagine there's boobs under there' does not counter anything. I can also imagine that Wrex spent all of the first game nursing a magnificent erection under his codpiece, that doesn't make it true.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe you're not familiar with Mass Effect. Let me be frank; when dealing with females, Bioware made it very obvious if they were, *ahem*, biologicaly mammalian:

Spoiler: Spoilered for size

Form fitting doesn't even come close.

But hey, at least everybody's wearing skin tight latex:

Now, with all that in mind, here's a male turian:

Compare that with the image in my previous post. Yeah, exactly the freakin' same. Believe me, with Mass Effect's aesthetic, if female turians had boobs, you would definitely see them.

And if that ridiculous, image based nerd fest still isn't enough, how about this tweet from one of the developers?
Hope this links right... [https://twitter.com/annlemay/statuses/268939810146746368]

TL;DR - Way to miss the point of both the thread and my reply, dude.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

I believe Blizzard did this well with the female Protoss in Starcraft 2.

You would recognize Selendis as a female Protoss but she does not look either human (aside from the generic homonoid shape) or mammal.

I'm not sure why you spend so long talking about turians, if anything they're an example of this done right.
[...]
No tits there. Obvious sexual dimorphism from the males, sure, but she's hardly 'humanised'. In fact, in what I suspect is a nod to turian avian roots, if anything she's less visually interesting than the males - no 'plumage', shorter 'beak' etc.

To both of you: The evidence you provide does counter your thesis, so you are not making a good argument. You can clearly see by comparisons to the male sex of both exaples the famles have female characteristics. You know... smaller shoulders, X shpaed instead of V shaped upper body, softer lines on hte chin etc.
Starcraft 2's example pic hides the hips with cloth. I guess they have them outstanding hipbones too, so cover it up to make it look smoother and the added antenna constitute long hair typacily associated with females. The Turian and her shorter "beak" is clearly recognized as a not as square chin as a males. Breasts are not shown because the breast is concealed by a breastplate so just imagine it because you can, I know you can.
This all works on a more or less subconscious level of recognition. On you two it works on a realy deep rooted subconscious level or how are you explaining these examples came to mind when confronted with the subject discussed? I mean they have female voices but the pictures alone are enough to see they are female especialy if shown right next to the male counterpart.

Oi, the Protoss male have those longer antenna ("nerve cords" in the lore) too, it just isn't visible on the male comparison shot I posted. The female Protoss have higher voices, but they communicate telepathically so perhaps they do it so humans can comprehend their genders better..?
This example came to my mind because it's one of the few games I know with non-human humanoid females without breasts, which is what the OP was about.

 

[Jachwe]

Oi, the Protoss male have those longer antenna ("nerve cords" in the lore) too, it just isn't visible on the male comparison shot I posted. The female Protoss have higher voices, but they communicate telepathically so perhaps they do it so humans can comprehend their genders better..?
This example came to my mind because it's one of the few games I know with non-human humanoid females without breasts, which is what the OP was about.

Cant argue over this one. They added antennas to the Protoss in Starcraft 2. I will stand by my argument that the asthetics of the female and male protoss conform to the conventional female upper bodies are X shaped and male upper bodies are V shaped. I think we can agree on that