Your opinion: How much has female characters in games changed (or not changed) in the past 2 years?

[CaitSeith]

Inspired on @gyrobot comments about how female representation on Japanese games is different than in the western games (heavily paraphrasing), I am asking to this site's gaming experts who have kept up to date with the latest releases (specifically played them) some questions. If you're exceptionally experienced in a specific genre, niche or game market (like Japanese games), I'd like your answer to be focused on such category of games.

- Which changes in female characters have you seen from games you played two years ago (or before) to the games released in the past 2 years? (not caused by regionalization, I want to know about the original releases).

- Have been cases where no changes happened at all?

- Which change has been more frequent? Or is the most frequent case that they have not changed at all?

Some examples of the changes I want to know about are: appearance (are the NPCs more or less sexualized? what about playable characters? what about the villains?), ratio (are there more or less playable female characters? and NPCs? and enemies?) and narrative (how have their personalities changed? are they more empowered? has "being a girl" become the main thing that makes them different from the other characters?)

 

[jademunky]

Less Bikini Chainmail.

I've seen a few self-aware devs put it in for lulz, but I can't think of any serious high-budget game in the past few years that have done that. So that's good at least.

 

[McMarbles]

A bigger pool, more diversity within that pool more choice for the consumer. This can only be a positive thing.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

A bigger pool, more diversity within that pool more choice for the consumer. This can only be a positive thing.

Unless you are into sexual designs, well then there is always Japan but they never gave two shits about Anita anyways.

 

[McMarbles]

A bigger pool, more diversity within that pool more choice for the consumer. This can only be a positive thing.

Unless you are into sexual designs, well then there is always Japan but they never gave two shits about Anita anyways.

I hear there's this thing called the Internet where porn is free.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Ah the good old appeal to internet excuse. Cheesecake is for those looking to maintain it without gettimg fired at work or chewed out by their significant others among all things.

Most of which is not being sexually repressed like the west these days as we have seen with this years E3

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Ah the good old appeal to internet excuse. Cheesecake is for those looking to maintain it without gettimg fired at work or chewed out by their significant others among all things.

Most of which is not being sexually repressed like the west these days as we have seen with this years E3

Ironically, both me and my significant other know that the other watches porn on occasion and has no problem with it. It isn't terribly hard to be open about this sort of thing with your SO and leads to a much better relationship (and you know, sex).

If nothing else, less sexualized depictions of women in gaming might just lead to the "socially inept neckbeards wanking to animated girls in their parents' basement"-stereotype being buried even more and might make more people consider games an actual valid pastime instead of something teenage boys and juvenile men does.

 

[CaitSeith]

A bigger pool, more diversity within that pool more choice for the consumer. This can only be a positive thing.

Unless you are into sexual designs, well then there is always Japan but they never gave two shits about Anita anyways.

So, have the female characters in Japan changed in any way whatsoever? Better looks? Better clothe style? More beautiful? Cuter? Older? Younger? Or they have stayed exactly the same?

 

[McMarbles]

Ah the good old appeal to internet excuse. Cheesecake is for those looking to maintain it without gettimg fired at work or chewed out by their significant others among all things.

Most of which is not being sexually repressed like the west these days as we have seen with this years E3

So lemme get this straight... you somehow think that playing eroge games at work is somehow more acceptable than just browsing porn? Pretty sure both would get me fired.

 

[jademunky]

Ah the good old appeal to internet excuse. Cheesecake is for those looking to maintain it without gettimg fired at work or chewed out by their significant others among all things.

Most of which is not being sexually repressed like the west these days as we have seen with this years E3

All my exes have been more into porn than I am, you might want to consider the types of people you choose to date.
Also there is a huge difference between being embarrassed by oversexualization in your entertainment and being sexual repressed.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

A bigger pool, more diversity within that pool more choice for the consumer. This can only be a positive thing.

Unless you are into sexual designs, well then there is always Japan but they never gave two shits about Anita anyways.

So, have the female characters in Japan changed in any way whatsoever? Better looks? Better clothe style? More beautiful? Cuter? Older? Younger? Or they have stayed exactly the same?

They have pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable on the Vita. A contest to see how far they can before it gets hit with a 17+. Mostly due to the fact it costs nothing for the devs who make such "panty quests" to make. Chainmail bikinis. Ribbons for robes and as much clothing damage without causing their local rating board to clamp down on storefront sales.

If it wasnt for a language barrier they could sell the west an uncut version where we have strip clubs in game with actual topless nudity like GTAV of their panty quest. I tell you it will sell so well to their audience that they will fall even the worst dlc schemes

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

A bigger pool, more diversity within that pool more choice for the consumer. This can only be a positive thing.

Unless you are into sexual designs, well then there is always Japan but they never gave two shits about Anita anyways.

what would you consider a sexual design, and how would you include them into the majority of western games that have a more realistic aesthetic and tone

like...would Uncharted: Lost Legacy be improved if the two female characters dressed like bayonetta...but everything else was still the same?

Realism has become something of a negative to me these days, part of the charm of why sexually appealing designs still exists in Asian game design is because they don't care much about it. That is why Korean MMOs have girls in high heel bikini chainmail armor and ribbon robes to put it mildly, it is because they are more concerned about turning their brain off.

If it's a fantasy genre, the creator is well damned allowed to do whatever they damn well pleased. They don't have to give a hoot about what's realistic unless they make the decision to which is a sad thing to see with the west as it can't disconnect itself from that.

But since you said Uncharted, a back to basics tomb raider pre-Sarkeesian era would be a first step to start, a cleavage heavy outfit or hell just take lessons from how Kojima does it with his female cast from skintight wetsuits to low cut tanks. Toss in some limb protectors and gloves and you got yourself a standard issue sexbomb explorer's outfits.

 

[EternallyBored]

2 years is kind of a small window. Anyway, more diversity in clothing, build, and style would be the most noticeable thing, as well as just having more outside of background characters. Whereas Japanese games sometimes have the issue of super generic same face anime designs where the only physical differences sometimes is between hair colors. same pointy chin triangle nose with wacky hair colors and looking like the most generic anime bullshit ever. Partially, I blame the trend in anime of the last ten years that is pushing homogenized quantity over quality that is leaking into video games to the point you get a lot of generic empty designs that are titilating or waifu bait and nothing more. On the flipside, female characters in general always seemed to be more common in Japanese games whereas In western games they were more often in the background, so it seems to be much easier to draw examples of female leads period versus the West.

Despite what Gyrobot thinks that design has never been super popular in US games as they have always trended towards realism, there's a reason Lara Croft was basically the only major sex symbol character of western games for years, to the point that when Playboy put Lara Croft in a spread about sexy video game characters she was joined almost exclusively by Japanese game Characters . Japanese characters trend more towards stylization and form over function, whereas Western characters trend towards explained function. Neither style is inherently superior, but we can see this reflected in more than just games, also in movies, books, comics , etc. Western fiction roots itself in suspension of disbelief as long as the internal rules have a logical flow, Japanese media takes a more high fantasy mystical approach that favors spectacle over explanation, in an anime you can get away with having cat girls in your sci-if without ever explaining where they came from or how they work, in a western sci-fi you are expected to have an explanation for why cat girls are in your setting and why there aren't any cat boys. This extends to sexualization, Japanese, and to some extent Korean and Chinese media can get away with having games with male characters in full armor and females in bikini armor, whereas in the West you are going to have people asking why your setting is this way.

This was true long before Anita ever came along, she did not create any of these differences, and the criticism against what the West saw as pointless sexualization was something I saw D&D nerds and comic fans arguing about in the early 90's.

As for more modern Western female characters, we get games like LOL, Overwatch, WoW, and Borderlands that mix fantastical or sexy designs and sexy outfits(Widowmaker, Ahri, Jinx, Alexstrahza, Lilith, Nisha, Mad Moxie) with traditionally attractive but realistically dressed characters (pharah, Tracer,Jaina, Athena, etc.) to character with body types that used to be mush less used: either overweight, muscular, or just not physically attractive. In the more realistic western games you get characters that have reasons or explanations for why they are there or for why there are wearing what they are, it results in a decrease in over the top designs, but the Cheesecake game has pretty much never been a common thing in the West, it is either couched in absurdism that acknowledges and mocks itself (leisure Suit Larry), or straight up apes it's Eastern counterparts so pretty much looks like an Eastern game anyway.

Within 2 years I would say it's not much of a change outside one or two AAA game examples, within the last 10 years though, I would say the change has been one that trends along a line of increasing the number and variety of female characters but still within the bounds of normal Western design philosophies from the past few decades, still mostly generically Hollywood attractive, I would say it's more a gradual evolution rather than a revolution, as these conversations were happening on fan sites and dev circles long before Anita came along to give people a single target to focus on.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

...Unless you think Square Enix made the Tomb Raider reboot in less than a year, the reboot is already "pre-Sarkeesian", given that almost nobody ever heard of her before her kickstarter went off the rails.

...Which, I mean, that's a Japanese publisher anyway?

But, I guess gaming biggest character design problem is not being able to get off while...playing games at work? Wait, who the hell is allowed to play games at work? I find there to be multiple problems with that line of reasoning.

Then, just to finish freaking the snowflakes out, an interesting video on the subject:

EDIT: Also, everything @EternallyBored said.

 

[EternallyBored]

...Unless you think Square Enix made the Tomb Raider reboot in less than a year, the reboot is already "pre-Sarkeesian", given that almost nobody ever heard of her before her kickstarter went off the rails.

...Which, I mean, that's a Japanese publisher anyway?

But, I guess gaming biggest character design problem is not being able to get off while...playing games at work? Wait, who the hell is allowed to play games at work? I find there to be multiple problems with that line of reasoning.

Then, just to finish freaking the snowflakes out, an interesting video on the subject:

Yeah I want to know what profession you can play cheesecake games at work without getting fired, it's more tame than porn but no professional office setting I am aware of is gonna be totally cool with you playing Senran Kagura where other people can see you. Even if you just keep it to lunch break, I'm gonna get a lot of awkward questions if someone saw me playing Gal gun in my office.

Shit in the more testosterone driven professions you are more likely to get shit for playing weeb bait games with underage looking characters than you are just watching straight up porn, when I did security work I had guys in line and coworkers showing me porn clips on their phone, or soft core videos of the dancers who were very provocatively dressed, you try to break out your phone and show someone a clip of monster musume you are probably gonna get called a weirdo even there. Although if anything anime and weird anime games at least don't draw the automatic pedo comparison they would have 15 years ago when adult anime was considered to be for shut ins and perverts, still never going to play a game of huniepop anywhere near my office.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Realism has become something of a negative to me these days, part of the charm of why sexually appealing designs still exists in Asian game design is because they don't care much about it. That is why Korean MMOs have girls in high heel bikini chainmail armor and ribbon robes to put it mildly, it is because they are more concerned about turning their brain off.

And also because South Korea is a highly patriarchal society that takes the notion that women have no real agency up to eleven, especially compared to western countries. Korea is literally decades behind in its' feminist and equality movements, to the point where they still struggle to get women into the workforce and even the women who are in the workforce are highly restricted to "feminine" jobs. South Korea is a society where women doesn't have much say and few women's voices, so it is no wonder that they can still create media with gender portrayals like those that American and Western European companies produced in the mid-90's.

It has nothing to do with "turning the brain off" and everything to do with the lack of gender equality in Korea and pandering to the gender that has all the privilege.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I guess the big difference is we now have the idea that any game could have a female MC. Not every game will, but you can float the idea without it being laughably impossible to happen. I mean GTA 7 could have a woman star. It likely won't, but it feels possible now.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Ehhh, honestly, not too much difference in the last two years. Some more prominent female-lead games have come out and the advertising of them has been... well, an actual thing, which has been nice, but by and large it's still pretty much the same as 2015.

Now, in comparison to 2005... whew. Even Blizzard has made some progress since then, and their character design philosophy has been 'Male = Walking Fridge/Supermod, female = super-model, new skin colour per race' since Warcraft.