When men internalize this concept (again, not all of them do!) it damages their ability to relate to women based on their minds, rather than their bodies.
We'll have to agree to disagree because I don't agree with this at all. I feel people are more than capable of differentiating fantasy and reality. That just may be my personal opinion. I understand that you may feel very strongly about this particular issue, and I respect that.
It's not showcasing a part of the world that is inherently misogynist. It's just fantasy tropes. It's just chainmail bikinis.
I laughed pretty hard at this
Yeah....I rather not get into an argument with someone named "Eat it you nasty pig", but what is misogynistic about fantasy tropes and chainmail bikinis? It's really just a part of how fantasy has been. It's not universal, it's not a set-in-stone law that every woman in RPGs must wear next to nothing, but it's kind of silly to say that this isn't a part of the history of fantasy.
Sure, it makes no sense, but it's just something that is, it's not a direct assault on women. If anything it's just a reference to something tasteless.
EDIT: Here's a bigger question I want answered: Do you think wearing chainmail bikinis or having big boobs makes a female character less capable or empowered? Why should the clothes that they wear have any bearing on that at all?
you seem to have this idea that because a trend or style has been around for a long time, it can't be misogynist. It doesn't have to be an 'assault' on women to be misogynist, either.
Like, why have a chainmail bikini at all? It would probably be extremely uncomfortable (even moreso than regular armor), and certainly isn't functional. It's there (shocker) to provide titillation for a mostly-male audience. A dude in armor can just be a dude in armor, but a woman has to be 'sexy' as well. This 'matters' because it reinforces that same view of women as it exists in society, and also because it means the fictional work in question probably doesn't have any redeemable female characters. The venn diagram of 'strong female characters in fantasy' and 'chainmail bikinis' doesn't have much overlap, because a character is only given a chainmail bikini in the first place if she's only there to attract a male audience.
We will have to do the same because I disagree for the exact same reasons, it's like that because it's fantasy. Men are unrealistically ripped, women are unrealistically busty and scanty. I can't say I've been witness to men throwing a fit over a girl in fantasy wearing perfectly functional armor, but I can assure you that women who are not sexualized do exist in fantasy. There's some examples posted in this thread.
what makes 'because it's fantasy' an acceptable counterargument here? All fiction is ultimately fantasy. The 'Fantasy Male' is unrealistically ripped because presumably, being really strong is useful for carrying big axes and cleaving down monsters and because being big and strong is an appealing power fantasy that people have. The 'Fantasy Woman' is busty and scantily clad because that's also a fantasy people have; what's less clear is why it should be acceptable for female characters to be so overtly sexualized for no reason.
The issue here is that there is no acceptable physical fantasy for the female, so the best physical representations of females in games are disappointingly realistic.
There's an audience for impossibly muscle-bound males and impossibly slight, androgynous males, but the number one thing people want in a female is a normal, forgettable realistic appearance, notwithstanding innovations in character, which is a whole different ball game. Having a normal looking character doing extraordinary things is empowering, but males have that too. That is pretty boring for a visual artist and it makes it difficult to come up with a unique style.
Muscle up a female enough and she'll basically look like a well muscled male due to how anatomy works. If that's the direction you want to go in, then cool, we've got examples. But other than secondary sex characteristics, which for females happen to be a lot more involved in morphology than males, how can you experiment with female portrayals that shows imagination without angering sensibility? If proportions are out and clothing (the most functional armor mimics a male body type purely for practical reasons) is out, then what else is there? Or do we really just want normal, realistic looking females juxtaposed in the otherwise insane culture of a game, where everyone else plays by different physical rules?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Why do ads for Mad Men show off Christina Hendricks if her golden globes are totally superfluous to the show?
Better question-- why isn't there a giant stink about Christina Hendricks showing cleavage in Mad Men marketing or the show? Because it's not a show about that and to complain about it would make you look a bit intimidated and possibly puritan. It's not as if women aren't appealed to in similar ways as well. Everyone gets their desires exploited.
Do you really think that Christina Hendricks isn't tired as fuck about having her boobs be the subject of every interview?
Jon Hamm is pissed off that one desirable piece of his anatomy is the subject of a one tumblr account, and he doesn't even have to answer questions about it every time he sits down for an interview or does a photo shoot, nor have it included in the advertising for Mad Men.
Yeah so pointing out the wrong somewhere else seems pretty irrelevant to your argument.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
When men internalize this concept (again, not all of them do!) it damages their ability to relate to women based on their minds, rather than their bodies.
We'll have to agree to disagree because I don't agree with this at all. I feel people are more than capable of differentiating fantasy and reality. That just may be my personal opinion. I understand that you may feel very strongly about this particular issue, and I respect that.
It's not showcasing a part of the world that is inherently misogynist. It's just fantasy tropes. It's just chainmail bikinis.
I laughed pretty hard at this
Yeah....I rather not get into an argument with someone named "Eat it you nasty pig", but what is misogynistic about fantasy tropes and chainmail bikinis? It's really just a part of how fantasy has been. It's not universal, it's not a set-in-stone law that every woman in RPGs must wear next to nothing, but it's kind of silly to say that this isn't a part of the history of fantasy.
Sure, it makes no sense, but it's just something that is, it's not a direct assault on women. If anything it's just a reference to something tasteless.
EDIT: Here's a bigger question I want answered: Do you think wearing chainmail bikinis or having big boobs makes a female character less capable or empowered? Why should the clothes that they wear have any bearing on that at all?
you seem to have this idea that because a trend or style has been around for a long time, it can't be misogynist. It doesn't have to be an 'assault' on women to be misogynist, either.
Like, why have a chainmail bikini at all? It would probably be extremely uncomfortable (even moreso than regular armor), and certainly isn't functional. It's there (shocker) to provide titillation for a mostly-male audience. A dude in armor can just be a dude in armor, but a woman has to be 'sexy' as well. This 'matters' because it reinforces that same view of women as it exists in society, and also because it means the fictional work in question probably doesn't have any redeemable female characters. The venn diagram of 'strong female characters in fantasy' and 'chainmail bikinis' doesn't have much overlap, because a character is only given a chainmail bikini in the first place if she's only there to attract a male audience.
We will have to do the same because I disagree for the exact same reasons, it's like that because it's fantasy. Men are unrealistically ripped, women are unrealistically busty and scanty. I can't say I've been witness to men throwing a fit over a girl in fantasy wearing perfectly functional armor, but I can assure you that women who are not sexualized do exist in fantasy. There's some examples posted in this thread.
what makes 'because it's fantasy' an acceptable counterargument here? All fiction is ultimately fantasy. The 'Fantasy Male' is unrealistically ripped because presumably, being really strong is useful for carrying big axes and cleaving down monsters and because being big and strong is an appealing power fantasy that people have. The 'Fantasy Woman' is busty and scantily clad because that's also a fantasy people have; what's less clear is why it should be acceptable for female characters to be so overtly sexualized for no reason.
The issue here is that there is no acceptable physical fantasy for the female, so the best physical representations of females in games are disappointingly realistic.
There's an audience for impossibly muscle-bound males and impossibly slight, androgynous males, but the number one thing people want in a female is a normal, forgettable realistic appearance, notwithstanding innovations in character, which is a whole different ball game. Having a normal looking character doing extraordinary things is empowering, but males have that too. That is pretty boring for a visual artist and it makes it difficult to come up with a unique style.
Muscle up a female enough and she'll basically look like a well muscled male due to how anatomy works. If that's the direction you want to go in, then cool, we've got examples. But other than secondary sex characteristics, which for females happen to be a lot more involved in morphology than males, how can you experiment with female portrayals that shows imagination without angering sensibility? If proportions are out and clothing (the most functional armor mimics a male body type purely for practical reasons) is out, then what else is there? Or do we really just want normal, realistic looking females juxtaposed in the otherwise insane culture of a game, where everyone else plays by different physical rules?
how much experimintation really goes on with male body types? What are some 'imaginative' portrayals of male bodies that would be weird or sexist if applied to females?
In games (and other media) in my experience is that female characters are 1) almost never unattractive or overweight absent a specific, dramatic reaspn and 2) are sexualized much more, and more often. You can find examples of all kinds of male and female body types aside from that (and with the stipulation that most fictional characters tend to be stereotypically attractive.)
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It's too easy to find a male body that would be weird if applied to females cause all you'd need is a guy without a shirt on.
well actually
You are right in that we find all kinds of male and female body types. It's just that variation in male body types is much safer, since there is no focus for male sexual attractiveness:
Can you imagine a female autobody?
Males can be beautiful too (protip: look like a female)
Hey Enoch, good buddy, how ya doin
Non-power fantasy:
Prerequisite fat guy:
Pff body horror who cares:
A robot with a codpiece. Why not. Robots are cheating though
Safety first:
I'm actually having a hard time finding games that vary further from reality where the female isn't just the male body with a ribbon or pink color or whatever. Or characters like this:
The counters to this are generally all body horror where anything goes and it doesn't actually matter how sexual anything is. And of course there's Saints Row 3 where you can carry a big package or large breasts. Or both with the right mods. Also there's skullgirls, but it doesn't count cause people have a problem with it, just like they have a problem with Dragon's Crown, although probably to a lesser extent.
I mean, biologically, what makes a male sexually attractive that isn't also inherent in a female? What exactly could you exaggerate in a male that would be appealing to females but make males cringe in disgust? Cause I don't believe that last part of the Batman comic. If there is a male power fantasy that exists, there is also a male sexual fantasy, where they want to be attractive to women. These are both physical fantasies that may or may not correlate with what is possible in real life. Therefore, what fantasy do women have that can be manifested in physical form?
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
When men internalize this concept (again, not all of them do!) it damages their ability to relate to women based on their minds, rather than their bodies.
We'll have to agree to disagree because I don't agree with this at all. I feel people are more than capable of differentiating fantasy and reality. That just may be my personal opinion. I understand that you may feel very strongly about this particular issue, and I respect that.
It's not showcasing a part of the world that is inherently misogynist. It's just fantasy tropes. It's just chainmail bikinis.
I laughed pretty hard at this
Yeah....I rather not get into an argument with someone named "Eat it you nasty pig", but what is misogynistic about fantasy tropes and chainmail bikinis? It's really just a part of how fantasy has been. It's not universal, it's not a set-in-stone law that every woman in RPGs must wear next to nothing, but it's kind of silly to say that this isn't a part of the history of fantasy.
Sure, it makes no sense, but it's just something that is, it's not a direct assault on women. If anything it's just a reference to something tasteless.
EDIT: Here's a bigger question I want answered: Do you think wearing chainmail bikinis or having big boobs makes a female character less capable or empowered? Why should the clothes that they wear have any bearing on that at all?
you seem to have this idea that because a trend or style has been around for a long time, it can't be misogynist. It doesn't have to be an 'assault' on women to be misogynist, either.
Like, why have a chainmail bikini at all? It would probably be extremely uncomfortable (even moreso than regular armor), and certainly isn't functional. It's there (shocker) to provide titillation for a mostly-male audience. A dude in armor can just be a dude in armor, but a woman has to be 'sexy' as well. This 'matters' because it reinforces that same view of women as it exists in society, and also because it means the fictional work in question probably doesn't have any redeemable female characters. The venn diagram of 'strong female characters in fantasy' and 'chainmail bikinis' doesn't have much overlap, because a character is only given a chainmail bikini in the first place if she's only there to attract a male audience.
We will have to do the same because I disagree for the exact same reasons, it's like that because it's fantasy. Men are unrealistically ripped, women are unrealistically busty and scanty. I can't say I've been witness to men throwing a fit over a girl in fantasy wearing perfectly functional armor, but I can assure you that women who are not sexualized do exist in fantasy. There's some examples posted in this thread.
what makes 'because it's fantasy' an acceptable counterargument here? All fiction is ultimately fantasy. The 'Fantasy Male' is unrealistically ripped because presumably, being really strong is useful for carrying big axes and cleaving down monsters and because being big and strong is an appealing power fantasy that people have. The 'Fantasy Woman' is busty and scantily clad because that's also a fantasy people have; what's less clear is why it should be acceptable for female characters to be so overtly sexualized for no reason.
The issue here is that there is no acceptable physical fantasy for the female, so the best physical representations of females in games are disappointingly realistic.
There's an audience for impossibly muscle-bound males and impossibly slight, androgynous males, but the number one thing people want in a female is a normal, forgettable realistic appearance, notwithstanding innovations in character, which is a whole different ball game. Having a normal looking character doing extraordinary things is empowering, but males have that too. That is pretty boring for a visual artist and it makes it difficult to come up with a unique style.
Muscle up a female enough and she'll basically look like a well muscled male due to how anatomy works. If that's the direction you want to go in, then cool, we've got examples. But other than secondary sex characteristics, which for females happen to be a lot more involved in morphology than males, how can you experiment with female portrayals that shows imagination without angering sensibility? If proportions are out and clothing (the most functional armor mimics a male body type purely for practical reasons) is out, then what else is there? Or do we really just want normal, realistic looking females juxtaposed in the otherwise insane culture of a game, where everyone else plays by different physical rules?
From what I can tell You seem to be arguing that designers don't experiment with differing female body types purely because they're scared of "angering sensibility", wheras males can be drawn however.
But if they're so petrified of angering sensibilities, why are there so many characters designed with huge boobs?
I mean its not like the current standard is that all or the majority women in games are drawn conservatively. Designers are clearly NOT tip toeing around about skimpy clothing, petrified to offend. So who, exactly are you describing who is currently being restricted?
Also, why is "experimenting with interesting designs" a binary axis of sexy/not sexy?
I mean its like you're saying "well we cant draw SEXY because that would offend people, but we cant draw NOT SEXY either, so what else can we do? There are literally no interesting stylistic ways of portraying the human female form other than those two?"
It's too easy to find a male body that would be weird if applied to females cause all you'd need is a guy without a shirt on.
well actually
You are right in that we find all kinds of male and female body types. It's just that variation in male body types is much safer, since there is no focus for male sexual attractiveness:
Can you imagine a female autobody?
Males can be beautiful too (protip: look like a female)
Hey Enoch, good buddy, how ya doin
Non-power fantasy:
Prerequisite fat guy:
Pff body horror who cares:
A robot with a codpiece. Why not. Robots are cheating though
Safety first:
I'm actually having a hard time finding games that vary further from reality where the female isn't just the male body with a ribbon or pink color or whatever. Or characters like this:
The counters to this are generally all body horror where anything goes and it doesn't actually matter how sexual anything is. And of course there's Saints Row 3 where you can carry a big package or large breasts. Or both with the right mods. Also there's skullgirls, but it doesn't count cause people have a problem with it, just like they have a problem with Dragon's Crown, although probably to a lesser extent.
I mean, biologically, what makes a male sexually attractive that isn't also inherent in a female? What exactly could you exaggerate in a male that would be appealing to females but make males cringe in disgust? Cause I don't believe that last part of the Batman comic. If there is a male power fantasy that exists, there is also a male sexual fantasy, where they want to be attractive to women. These are both physical fantasies that may or may not correlate with what is possible in real life. Therefore, what fantasy do women have that can be manifested in physical form?
The question asked was "would those portrayals be sexist if applied to females" and I dont think many of them would, I certainly could imagine a female autobody, or a female mutant, or a female large wrestler, or a female guybrush threepwood (who pretty much exists already in Elaine), female contortionist voldo-type might have weird submissive vibes but-fuck it, so does voldo, female androgonous vampire is practically too easy.
I cant understand why you would hold up any of these designs as evidence of why female designs "have" to be restricted by necessity or something.
When Fable 2 came out, levelling strength on a female character led to them becoming large and muscular, and people lost their shit about it. If you go and look up that game now people still bitch. It was pathetic.
Looking it up I can see complaints, "she-hulk" ect but the question is, are the people complaining the same people the same people complaining about stuff like the sorceress?
It may be you get complaints regardless of how you choose to portray women but that's inherent to creating literally anything - you're never going ot please everyone and always going to piss some people off so the decision has to be made, who do you want to piss off?
Personally if I was a game designer Id be A OK with pissing off the people who called the fable 2 women "beastly".
Jeedan on
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
You know. I'm not going to lie.
I didn't enjoy my female character getting all bulked out in Fable 2.
I mean I didn't turn the game off and go post on the internet about how much rage I'm feeling but I was pretty eh about it. Why I kept her strength mid-range.
That said, I didn't enjoy my male character getting super buffed either. It made them look cartoonish in a way I didn't like.
But I will say as far as Fable 2 went, it didn't annoy me that you could make buff characters, it annoyed me that it was tied to stats.
Luckily, the game was piss easy so I could make characters I found attractive without being penalized too much. But eh.
The question asked was "would those portrayals be sexist if applied to females" and I dont think many of them would, I certainly could imagine a female autobody, or a female mutant, or a female large wrestler, or a female guybrush threepwood (who pretty much exists already in Elaine), female contortionist voldo-type might have weird submissive vibes but-fuck it, so does voldo, female androgonous vampire is practically too easy.
I cant understand why you would hold up any of these designs as evidence of why female designs "have" to be restricted by necessity or something.
I actually did not answer Eat it's challenge with those images (except for Voldo) which were put in just to demonstrate that we have no qualms about varying the male image, which has led to a proliferation of interesting designs, most of which aren't featured here since I just portrayed the most sexually relevant ones. For Alucard, we also tolerate and even admire males with feminine features, whereas we feel uncomfortable playing females with masculine features for some reason. Looking back on it though, could you see a female equivalent of Nine-Toes anywhere else than in Conker's Bad Fur Day?
So say there is someone that really wants to experiment with female design but is sensitive to the issue of female rights and self-respect. For the sake of being on topic, let's say they want to make a muscular female that people will enjoy playing. Fable 2 has already shown that people don't really care for muscular females. Again, I am still the only person that remembers Hammer:
Admittedly this is a less than flattering picture of her because Fable 2 was a less than flattering game. Females don't want to look like males, generally, or at least a certain type of bulked out male. That is unfortunate. Therefore, Dragon's Crown Amazonian:
This person is unquestionably female, though realistically she has a tremendously uneven muscle balance and will break her spine in five minutes of any sort of activity. So now, look up "muscle woman" on google images on your own time and try to find a basis for this design choice. At some point, the oblique muscles will have to bulk up to stabilize the "core" allowing the proper transition and dissemination of total body movements between the upper and lower frame. This is incompatible with a significant waist/hip ratio. However, this waist/hip ratio is foundational to the female body profile, and is the main reason why extreme musculature on a female masculinizes.
Therefore, this art is as unrealistic as any depiction of a female, while accomplishing the goal of depicting a muscular female that is not masculine, at the cost of suffering from Liefeld syndrome. If we reject this art, can we still accomplish the objective of depicting a muscular female that is popular? Because we cannot control the purchase decisions of people who don't want to see anything but an exaggerated feminine body. The domain of the artist is already constricted in that regard, unfortunately, and there's not a lot anybody but Leonard Nimoy can do about it. We can control whether we tolerate these depicitions to give conscientious artist freedom to find alternate pathways to flank the barrier of the massively unappealing female, or we can further restrict the field on the other side, hopefully concentrating the amount of artists forced to work within severely restricted parameters acceptable to everyone, homogenizing female depictions and improving them via minute, glacier-speed changes.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
Oh the subject of muscular females I do wonder why people are sticking to the bodybuilder archetype(which is rare even in real life) compared to the more realistic fit type.
You know people throw out characters like Hammer and the Amazon...but personally I though a very interesting design was Meryl from MGS4.
She had a very soldier-ish build without being too exaggerated.
Like I looked at her and I thought, "Yes, this is pretty much what I would expect a female soldier whose been through intense training to be built like."
I guess the problem I have with this body type discussion is that there are multiple types.
That was just one axis. The common theme throughout those, however, is breaching the bonds of realism, which males do absolutely freely without complaint. Females, however, are beset on all sides with various difficulties. Meryl, Shepard, and etc are realistic depictions of females with explainable deviations from the norm within the bounds of reality, but ultimately their forms resemble eachother. Whereas males can be monsters whenever they wish, and their profiles are markedly recognizable from a mile off. TF2 even counts on this.
Another axis would be in the direction of Parasite Eve. All these examples I'm bringing up are what Tycho rightly calls Icons - archetypes successful at accomplishing an objective depiction heretofore evasive of public appreciation.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
+1
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
Actually. Just to disagree with you on one thing. I would say that Shepard's body type is probably one of the worse offenders. She's suppose to be a highly trained N7 officer but she's build like a toothpick.
That said I think the reason for men being able to get away with being exaggerated more than females comes from the fact that when you look at artwork a lot of the time its the upper body that tends to be exaggerated. And since males generally do have very drastic differences in size even in real life that tends not to bother people as much.
I think an interesting look at that would be Gears of War.
I found it pretty jarring when in GoW3 as big as the males were, the females were "normal"(also in GoW when you put Carmine up to the rest of the Cogs). But like you said I just shrugged that off as them using a lot of steroids. But before I had the female characters to compare them to I actually thought that CoGs came from some race of giant people(I'm serious).
But I do see your point. Maybe people find it generally more acceptable for males to be big because a male can be big and still be considered attractive by average standards.
The question asked was "would those portrayals be sexist if applied to females" and I dont think many of them would, I certainly could imagine a female autobody, or a female mutant, or a female large wrestler, or a female guybrush threepwood (who pretty much exists already in Elaine), female contortionist voldo-type might have weird submissive vibes but-fuck it, so does voldo, female androgonous vampire is practically too easy.
I cant understand why you would hold up any of these designs as evidence of why female designs "have" to be restricted by necessity or something.
I actually did not answer Eat it's challenge with those images (except for Voldo) which were put in just to demonstrate that we have no qualms about varying the male image, which has led to a proliferation of interesting designs, most of which aren't featured here since I just portrayed the most sexually relevant ones. For Alucard, we also tolerate and even admire males with feminine features, whereas we feel uncomfortable playing females with masculine features for some reason. Looking back on it though, could you see a female equivalent of Nine-Toes anywhere else than in Conker's Bad Fur Day?
So say there is someone that really wants to experiment with female design but is sensitive to the issue of female rights and self-respect. For the sake of being on topic, let's say they want to make a muscular female that people will enjoy playing. Fable 2 has already shown that people don't really care for muscular females. Again, I am still the only person that remembers Hammer:
Admittedly this is a less than flattering picture of her because Fable 2 was a less than flattering game. Females don't want to look like males, generally, or at least a certain type of bulked out male. That is unfortunate. Therefore, Dragon's Crown Amazonian:
This person is unquestionably female, though realistically she has a tremendously uneven muscle balance and will break her spine in five minutes of any sort of activity. So now, look up "muscle woman" on google images on your own time and try to find a basis for this design choice. At some point, the oblique muscles will have to bulk up to stabilize the "core" allowing the proper transition and dissemination of total body movements between the upper and lower frame. This is incompatible with a significant waist/hip ratio. However, this waist/hip ratio is foundational to the female body profile, and is the main reason why extreme musculature on a female masculinizes.
Therefore, this art is as unrealistic as any depiction of a female, while accomplishing the goal of depicting a muscular female that is not masculine, at the cost of suffering from Liefeld syndrome. If we reject this art, can we still accomplish the objective of depicting a muscular female that is popular? Because we cannot control the purchase decisions of people who don't want to see anything but an exaggerated feminine body. The domain of the artist is already constricted in that regard, unfortunately, and there's not a lot anybody but Leonard Nimoy can do about it. We can control whether we tolerate these depicitions to give conscientious artist freedom to find alternate pathways to flank the barrier of the massively unappealing female, or we can further restrict the field on the other side, hopefully concentrating the amount of artists forced to work within severely restricted parameters acceptable to everyone, homogenizing female depictions and improving them via minute, glacier-speed changes.
"People feel uncomfortable when they see muscular women" is an argument for why all games seem to feature stereo typically sexy women, but its not an argument as for why it should be so.
I agree in a sense that what people "expect" a woman to look like is much more limited than the standards as applied to men, but that's the essential core problem - that the status quo w/r/t female beauty is kind of fucked. (As with the implicit expectation that all women in games should BE beautiful)
Jeedan on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
In terms of designing athletic figures for action games, there are, you know, (maybe NSFW if your work objects to swimsuits) references for that kind of thing. Personally I'd like more thought to go into both male and female designs, for artists to study what kind of work creates what kind of body, and create designs accordingly.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
That was kind of what I was asking. In general as far as body types go what exactly is "different" enough.
Its funny but when we talk about body types I do think it is funny that in general most characters are the same height(though I know this does have to do with gameplay in some circumstances).
Really, not even talking weight or muscle mass, I would love to see a lot more experimentation with height, facial definition, and body build in other areas.
Basically, I would love to see something other than "standard brown-haired white male" and "standard blonde-haired white female" as far as looks go.
My guess is they don't want to go creating so many skeletons or weighing so many variables. That's why every random enemy goon is exactly the same height with faint palette swaps on clothing, gear, etc.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Oh the subject of muscular females I do wonder why people are sticking to the bodybuilder archetype(which is rare even in real life) compared to the more realistic fit type.
You know people throw out characters like Hammer and the Amazon...but personally I though a very interesting design was Meryl from MGS4.
She had a very soldier-ish build without being too exaggerated.
Like I looked at her and I thought, "Yes, this is pretty much what I would expect a female soldier whose been through intense training to be built like."
MGS4 Meryl is also interesting because she was heavily redesigned at some point in development, unlike any of the other characters shown off early on. She initially looked much as she did in MGS1, before getting bulked up a little and getting an older, more worn face. The reaction wasn't great, as I recall. I liked it just on the grounds that she should have looked older, it was 10 years after MGS1 after all. Can't go giving MGS4 too much credit for having equal badass female characters though - it was the one with the B&B corps. :P
Oh brilliant
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
I wasn't even MGS4 credit for anything. Just bring up a design I thought was interesting since really as far as muscled females go I find that the overexaggerated look tends to be a bit easier to find in games than a simply toned one.
Neither to a great degree.
As for the B&B corps. Meh, I can't say I have a problem with having attractive characters in games. Just that I think there are different kinds of attractiveness but you only tend to see the most vanilla kind in games especially when it comes to female design.
I think once the thread starts talking about how even renderings of females are unfair that it's sort of past that argument now
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
so, if the sorceress made me think: "yah i get it... that's a little shameless" the valkyrie made me think: "wow... this is where "sexy" jumped the shark."
Still a ton of people who don't understand the difference between a caricature and a rendering.
I'm just flabbergasted at how willing people are to be told they should be mad.
If any of these pieces were in a museum, they would be treated with respect, not idiocy.
If any of these pieces were in a museum, respecting them would mean deconstructing them viciously.
As I pointed out, people aren't shy about these things in other mediums. In no other genre is critical discourse expected to stop with "no, stop criticizing it, its art!"
Trying to work out what it stands for, what the artist was doing and what it says about society is exactly what people do with art. Art isn't just a bunch of people looking at a thing and going "hmm, wonderful, transcendent, amazing".
I mean you're effectively saying "Its art, therefore its stupid to have an opinion or an emotional reaction to it"
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Because it's not a huge attack against gender or against fantasy stereotypes in particular. It's not showcasing a part of the world that is inherently misogynist. It's just fantasy tropes. It's just chainmail bikinis. It's just something that is and not the huge assault against gender politics that everyone seems to be making it out to be.
You realize that just because something has been done a certain way for a long time, regardless of if it is in fantasy, in video games, TV or whatever else that does not - in any way - make it actually correct to do so. It also doesn't make it any less sexist or misogyinst, in fact it is these things because they have been the prevailing dominant stereotype in fantasy for a long time. This doesn't mean it shouldn't exist, but I am hardly going to go about defending yet another game perpetuating these ridiculous stereotypes all over again. To me the argument that people are bringing up about this being "art" is a laughable one, because there is so much of this stereotype in fantasy art there is no need to defend it whatsoever. It's the default assumption at the moment and has been for a very long time. In fact the very idea you can defend this as "something that is" is what is inherently sexist about this, because we certainly shouldn't be taken absurdly proportioned scantily clad women in female fantasy art as the "norm". That's what people are arguing about.
When I was young, sometime in the 90s, the reason that I even got into RPG games and fantasy in the first place was because it was the first types of games I found that told me that my character could be just as strong and capable as any boy character.
Sure, if you had the completely unrealistic physique of a supermodel and didn't wear a lot of armor on top of that. I don't exactly think that many of those portrayals are exactly portraying what you think they do: For example the seven sisters in Forgotten Realms who Ed Greenwood portrays as being powerful women, who are then easily seduced by his creepy old man persona in the form of Elminster.
Why exactly can't they be every bit as capable and not be an idealized male sexual fantasy (in this example, quite literally) while they are at it?
It was just their choice of style (which the game let me change if I wanted! Nothing else let me do that!) and it didn't cause them to be weak or helpless playthings.
Except for when I pointed out that some of the best statted armor and equipment for women were actually some of the most visually ridiculous (this is something that has actually been addressed by some games though, such as Guilds Wars 2 that gives a wide variety of different armor with the same overall stats, but different looks so you can find something that suits your aesthetic without being penalized for it - kudos to them). So if you didn't want to look ridiculous, yet wanted a character that had the best gear you were absolutely shit out of luck.
Maybe that's why I don't like it when people call fantasy's history as some kind of misogynist breeding ground of hate and intolerance.
Not played a lot of MMOs where people realized you were (or just thought you were) a woman then. Or for that matter how I have seen women treated at Dungeons and Dragons tables/conventions in the past. A lot of this is the whole "chainmail bikinis" subsection and the fact these tropes view women as objects.
Like if there was some kind of hard limit on how large their boobs are until they quit being a good character.
I snipped most of this, but you seem to have no grasp of the idea that because this is so prevalent in that the vast majority of depictions in women are impossibly proportioned supermodels wearing barely any armor it's a problem for many who say "This makes me very uncomfortable" who never get into it (or view it as puerile male fantasies, which in fairness some of it actually is). If there was more diversity in the first place this argument you are making would be much more coherent and agreeable: The fact is there still isn't that great amount of diversity in fantasy characters". Ridiculously proportioned individuals who wear barely any clothing are the norm, not the other way.
And yet, here I am, years later and people on the internet are telling me that it doesn't matter what my role in the story is or what kind of personality she holds, it's about what clothes she's wearing! It's about how skanky her lipstick makes her seem! Her breasts are too large and make her look like a plaything! I'm sorry, I can't get behind this argument, those 'sexist' stereotypes are still more progressive than most depictions of women that we see even today.
No, they aren't progressive in the least (or at least not in the way you seem to think) and contribute to sexist attitudes and depictions of women. Why does a woman need to be ridiculously proportioned and wear barely any clothing to be seen as the equal of a man? I can't see this argument being reasonable and it doesn't indicate to me that fantasy is "progressive" whatsoever. Quite the opposite, as it tells me it's still mired in sexist tropes about how women should be perceived in fantasy, such as what produces the ridiculous characters seen in Dragon's Crown. Again it's not inherently wrong that characters have absurd proportions or lack any clothing at all, it's the amount of it that reinforces these negative stereotypes as "normal" that's the major problem in general.
If I'm understanding some of these arguments right, the portrayal of the sorceress should be immune to criticism because the guys are exaggerated too. If so, may I ask how you'd feel about Hawkeye dressed like that?
I don't particularly care if some game artist wants to draw ridiculous breasts that defy the laws of physics. However, I do care that this is one more particularly egregious example of women being objectified in games, which in turn leads to a culture that gives rise to things like "fake geek girls" and booth babes and the normalization of men as the primary audience; women as a barely noticed peripheral. The sorceress is not there for me. She's there for the guys. And the male characters are there for the guys too.
I realize I am not the intended audience, and if this game existed in a vacuum, it wouldn't matter in the least. But when quite nearly every game is made for Very Definitely Not Me, and I am given increasingly "logical" arguments by fellow gamers as to why I shouldn't be outraged by that* so that they may feel better about their exclusion of me, damn right I'm going to complain. Feminism is about equality. Check out that Hawkeye Inititive link, which simply takes female comic book characters and replaces them with Hawkeye, look me in the eye, and tell me these portrayals of women are equal to those of men.
*Seriously, I can't be myself - a woman - in a game because you want it to be "historically accurate"? Funny how that doesn't seem to apply to anything from history that might make life harder for the intended male audience.
If I'm understanding some of these arguments right, the portrayal of the sorceress should be immune to criticism because the guys are exaggerated too. If so, may I ask how you'd feel about Hawkeye dressed like that?
I felt funny. But the Superheroine costume redesigns lower down were awesome. Like, exactly the sort of thing I want to see Marvel and DC to explore. They won't, of course, because it might not sell as well.
I realize I am not the intended audience, and if this game existed in a vacuum, it wouldn't matter in the least. But when quite nearly every game is made for Very Definitely Not Me, and I am given increasingly "logical" arguments by fellow gamers as to why I shouldn't be outraged by that* so that they may feel better about their exclusion of me, damn right I'm going to complain.
In all fairness, not "nearly every" game does that, just the vast majority of fantasy-based ones. And also shooters. And sports games.
As has already been pointed out, aside from the obvious "games are for boys" reasoning, there's an inherent difficulty in making a "physically strong-looking but also visually appealing" female. You can argue that not every player character needs to be at least vaguely good-looking (even Marcus Fenix has a grizzled handsomeness to him), but you'd be wrong. It's less about the art, and more about the money. If it weren't, we'd regularly see massive variations in characters.
For guys in our current society (and for much of Western history), being physically strong is part of being visually attractive. It's a direct correlation. For women, however, that tends to not be the case. What's more, the "standard" of what makes a woman attractive changes fairly regularly. Does that mean the game devs shouldn't try? Quite the opposite, actually- but again, its about the money. And lets be honest, most large publishers aren't going to eagerly approve something that doesn't appeal to a significant slice of their consumer base.
I agree that yes, one of the reasons things aren't likely to change soon is because ultimately, its all about the bottom line. Which means its safer to do whats always been done and avoid risk. All that matters is what sells, not whether its good or thoughtful or damaging or whatever.
Its important to note though that hasn't gone unrecognized, its exactly why many critics directly tie feminist issues into critiques of capitalism in general.
Still a ton of people who don't understand the difference between a caricature and a rendering.
I'm just flabbergasted at how willing people are to be told they should be mad.
If any of these pieces were in a museum, they would be treated with respect, not idiocy.
Thanks for the contribution, could you tell us how we are supposed to react?
With care.
Everyone is in a heightened state of awareness regarding the portrayal of women in gaming, and with good reason. That's a very good thing! But I feel like people are shooting first and asking questions later on this one.
And sorry if I was flippant, I'd made a post explaining more of this many pages back, but i'm sure it got lost in the shuffle.
Still a ton of people who don't understand the difference between a caricature and a rendering.
I'm just flabbergasted at how willing people are to be told they should be mad.
If any of these pieces were in a museum, they would be treated with respect, not idiocy.
Thanks for the contribution, could you tell us how we are supposed to react?
for starters, not with instant outrage and not by taking it entirely at face value. also, look up what "symptomatic" means. also, try to take a less binary approach to thinking, so you don't end up like this guy I quoted below. Just because you can post it on a forum doesn't make it true or even valid. That's the problem...everyone has an opinion on it, but they jump into it like an asshole walking into a theater in the middle of movie and starts to pass reactionary judgment without seeing the first half. Forums just enable this "everybody gets a trophy" stuff and don't actually encourage critical thinking, which is a skill you have to actually put effort into developing. There's actual history and context to learn on the topic, but most of you are content to volley the bullshit you "feel" about the topic (in lieu of actual hard info, which is out there, ready to be learned) back and forth in hopes of winning an internet argument. And that's why I don't post on forums.
Why do ads for Mad Men show off Christina Hendricks if her golden globes are totally superfluous to the show?
Better question-- why isn't there a giant stink about Christina Hendricks showing cleavage in Mad Men marketing or the show? Because it's not a show about that and to complain about it would make you look a bit intimidated and possibly puritan. It's not as if women aren't appealed to in similar ways as well. Everyone gets their desires exploited.
Do you really think that Christina Hendricks isn't tired as fuck about having her boobs be the subject of every interview?
Jon Hamm is pissed off that one desirable piece of his anatomy is the subject of a one tumblr account, and he doesn't even have to answer questions about it every time he sits down for an interview or does a photo shoot, nor have it included in the advertising for Mad Men.
Yeah so pointing out the wrong somewhere else seems pretty irrelevant to your argument.
Do you know for a fact that she is tired as fuck about it? Or that she isn't happy-as-fuck about it? or that she isn't neutral-as-fuck about it?
I was pointing out the wrong somewhere else, but the point was to make a comparison between audience reactions.
and sexualized marketing isn't inherently wrong, unless you're just that adverse to sex. feel free to use that as proof of my evil, latent sexism.
Still a ton of people who don't understand the difference between a caricature and a rendering.
I'm just flabbergasted at how willing people are to be told they should be mad.
If any of these pieces were in a museum, they would be treated with respect, not idiocy.
Thanks for the contribution, could you tell us how we are supposed to react?
for starters, not with instant outrage and not by taking it entirely at face value. also, look up what "symptomatic" means. also, try to take a less binary approach to thinking, so you don't end up like this guy I quoted below. Just because you can post it on a forum doesn't make it true or even valid. That's the problem...everyone has an opinion on it, but they jump into it like an asshole walking into a theater in the middle of movie and starts to pass reactionary judgment without seeing the first half. Forums just enable this "everybody gets a trophy" stuff and don't actually encourage critical thinking, which is a skill you have to actually put effort into developing. There's actual history and context to learn on the topic, but most of you are content to volley the bullshit you "feel" about the topic (in lieu of actual hard info, which is out there, ready to be learned) back and forth in hopes of winning an internet argument. And that's why I don't post on forums.
Why do ads for Mad Men show off Christina Hendricks if her golden globes are totally superfluous to the show?
Better question-- why isn't there a giant stink about Christina Hendricks showing cleavage in Mad Men marketing or the show? Because it's not a show about that and to complain about it would make you look a bit intimidated and possibly puritan. It's not as if women aren't appealed to in similar ways as well. Everyone gets their desires exploited.
Do you really think that Christina Hendricks isn't tired as fuck about having her boobs be the subject of every interview?
Jon Hamm is pissed off that one desirable piece of his anatomy is the subject of a one tumblr account, and he doesn't even have to answer questions about it every time he sits down for an interview or does a photo shoot, nor have it included in the advertising for Mad Men.
Yeah so pointing out the wrong somewhere else seems pretty irrelevant to your argument.
Do you know for a fact that she is tired as fuck about it? Or that she isn't happy-as-fuck about it? or that she isn't neutral-as-fuck about it?
I was pointing out the wrong somewhere else, but the point was to make a comparison between audience reactions.
and sexualized marketing isn't inherently wrong, unless you're just that adverse to sex. feel free to use that as proof of my evil, latent sexism.
You say everyone needs to stop being outraged and "learn critical thinking" but the whole middle paragraph block of you post is just pure rant. Like, there's no angle or argument or fact being presented its just "you guys are assholes and so full of shit and furthermore;"
Its annoying because you asked some questions earlier in the thread and I thought "ok, I'm gonna try to resist the temptation to snark and put in as much effort to give a concise, solid answer as I can" and yet here we are?
Chill?
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
If I'm understanding some of these arguments right, the portrayal of the sorceress should be immune to criticism because the guys are exaggerated too. If so, may I ask how you'd feel about Hawkeye dressed like that?
I felt funny. But the Superheroine costume redesigns lower down were awesome. Like, exactly the sort of thing I want to see Marvel and DC to explore. They won't, of course, because it might not sell as well.
Why do ads for Mad Men show off Christina Hendricks if her golden globes are totally superfluous to the show?
Better question-- why isn't there a giant stink about Christina Hendricks showing cleavage in Mad Men marketing or the show? Because it's not a show about that and to complain about it would make you look a bit intimidated and possibly puritan. It's not as if women aren't appealed to in similar ways as well. Everyone gets their desires exploited.
Do you really think that Christina Hendricks isn't tired as fuck about having her boobs be the subject of every interview?
Jon Hamm is pissed off that one desirable piece of his anatomy is the subject of a one tumblr account, and he doesn't even have to answer questions about it every time he sits down for an interview or does a photo shoot, nor have it included in the advertising for Mad Men.
Yeah so pointing out the wrong somewhere else seems pretty irrelevant to your argument.
Do you know for a fact that she is tired as fuck about it? Or that she isn't happy-as-fuck about it? or that she isn't neutral-as-fuck about it?
Well of course it would be nice for her if she liked it or didn't care, since those are the only reactions she's allowed to have. But since she's actually stated that she's fucking tired of talking about it, we already know the RNG didn't come up right for her on that one.
and sexualized marketing isn't inherently wrong, unless you're just that adverse to sex. feel free to use that as proof of my evil, latent sexism.
I love how you begin with implication that any criticism of you will be proof that someone is averse to sex. Then your next line is about what a sad, abused victim you are. Double score, man.
If you really want to go for the trifecta, you could make a post explaining how men really have it much harder than women and women have all the advantages in life.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I've seen arguments in the last few posts on why we can't have realistic female figures which seem to boil down to "because the artist and/or the audience would find that boring."
I'm part of the audience, and I wouldn't find that boring. (Perhaps I'm an outlier, but I really don't think so.) And my sympathy for the artist, particularly one who has been hired to produce work to spec rather than indulge their VISION, is... lacking.
If your character is boring because their physical proportions aren't exaggerated (in any direction), then IMO you need to work on other aspects and ways to make them interesting.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Umm...can people explain what they mean by realistic?
Because really most game's don't have exaggerated proportions like DC.
I mean yes, most games have character's with supermodel proportion, but that I a real if overused body type..
And my sympathy for the artist, particularly one who has been hired to produce work to spec rather than indulge their VISION, is... lacking.
Alright, show of hands, who in this thread has actually played Odin Sphere?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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The issue here is that there is no acceptable physical fantasy for the female, so the best physical representations of females in games are disappointingly realistic.
There's an audience for impossibly muscle-bound males and impossibly slight, androgynous males, but the number one thing people want in a female is a normal, forgettable realistic appearance, notwithstanding innovations in character, which is a whole different ball game. Having a normal looking character doing extraordinary things is empowering, but males have that too. That is pretty boring for a visual artist and it makes it difficult to come up with a unique style.
Muscle up a female enough and she'll basically look like a well muscled male due to how anatomy works. If that's the direction you want to go in, then cool, we've got examples. But other than secondary sex characteristics, which for females happen to be a lot more involved in morphology than males, how can you experiment with female portrayals that shows imagination without angering sensibility? If proportions are out and clothing (the most functional armor mimics a male body type purely for practical reasons) is out, then what else is there? Or do we really just want normal, realistic looking females juxtaposed in the otherwise insane culture of a game, where everyone else plays by different physical rules?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Also, George Lucas' handling of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Do you really think that Christina Hendricks isn't tired as fuck about having her boobs be the subject of every interview?
Jon Hamm is pissed off that one desirable piece of his anatomy is the subject of a one tumblr account, and he doesn't even have to answer questions about it every time he sits down for an interview or does a photo shoot, nor have it included in the advertising for Mad Men.
Yeah so pointing out the wrong somewhere else seems pretty irrelevant to your argument.
how much experimintation really goes on with male body types? What are some 'imaginative' portrayals of male bodies that would be weird or sexist if applied to females?
In games (and other media) in my experience is that female characters are 1) almost never unattractive or overweight absent a specific, dramatic reaspn and 2) are sexualized much more, and more often. You can find examples of all kinds of male and female body types aside from that (and with the stipulation that most fictional characters tend to be stereotypically attractive.)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
well actually
You are right in that we find all kinds of male and female body types. It's just that variation in male body types is much safer, since there is no focus for male sexual attractiveness:
Can you imagine a female autobody?
Males can be beautiful too (protip: look like a female)
Hey Enoch, good buddy, how ya doin
Non-power fantasy:
Prerequisite fat guy:
Pff body horror who cares:
A robot with a codpiece. Why not. Robots are cheating though
Safety first:
I'm actually having a hard time finding games that vary further from reality where the female isn't just the male body with a ribbon or pink color or whatever. Or characters like this:
The counters to this are generally all body horror where anything goes and it doesn't actually matter how sexual anything is. And of course there's Saints Row 3 where you can carry a big package or large breasts. Or both with the right mods. Also there's skullgirls, but it doesn't count cause people have a problem with it, just like they have a problem with Dragon's Crown, although probably to a lesser extent.
I mean, biologically, what makes a male sexually attractive that isn't also inherent in a female? What exactly could you exaggerate in a male that would be appealing to females but make males cringe in disgust? Cause I don't believe that last part of the Batman comic. If there is a male power fantasy that exists, there is also a male sexual fantasy, where they want to be attractive to women. These are both physical fantasies that may or may not correlate with what is possible in real life. Therefore, what fantasy do women have that can be manifested in physical form?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Sparkly vampires mostly.
It's why I always wear those plastic vampire teeth and sprinkle glitter over myself.
From what I can tell You seem to be arguing that designers don't experiment with differing female body types purely because they're scared of "angering sensibility", wheras males can be drawn however.
But if they're so petrified of angering sensibilities, why are there so many characters designed with huge boobs?
I mean its not like the current standard is that all or the majority women in games are drawn conservatively. Designers are clearly NOT tip toeing around about skimpy clothing, petrified to offend. So who, exactly are you describing who is currently being restricted?
Also, why is "experimenting with interesting designs" a binary axis of sexy/not sexy?
I mean its like you're saying "well we cant draw SEXY because that would offend people, but we cant draw NOT SEXY either, so what else can we do? There are literally no interesting stylistic ways of portraying the human female form other than those two?"
The question asked was "would those portrayals be sexist if applied to females" and I dont think many of them would, I certainly could imagine a female autobody, or a female mutant, or a female large wrestler, or a female guybrush threepwood (who pretty much exists already in Elaine), female contortionist voldo-type might have weird submissive vibes but-fuck it, so does voldo, female androgonous vampire is practically too easy.
I cant understand why you would hold up any of these designs as evidence of why female designs "have" to be restricted by necessity or something.
It may be you get complaints regardless of how you choose to portray women but that's inherent to creating literally anything - you're never going ot please everyone and always going to piss some people off so the decision has to be made, who do you want to piss off?
Personally if I was a game designer Id be A OK with pissing off the people who called the fable 2 women "beastly".
I didn't enjoy my female character getting all bulked out in Fable 2.
I mean I didn't turn the game off and go post on the internet about how much rage I'm feeling but I was pretty eh about it. Why I kept her strength mid-range.
That said, I didn't enjoy my male character getting super buffed either. It made them look cartoonish in a way I didn't like.
But I will say as far as Fable 2 went, it didn't annoy me that you could make buff characters, it annoyed me that it was tied to stats.
Luckily, the game was piss easy so I could make characters I found attractive without being penalized too much. But eh.
I actually did not answer Eat it's challenge with those images (except for Voldo) which were put in just to demonstrate that we have no qualms about varying the male image, which has led to a proliferation of interesting designs, most of which aren't featured here since I just portrayed the most sexually relevant ones. For Alucard, we also tolerate and even admire males with feminine features, whereas we feel uncomfortable playing females with masculine features for some reason. Looking back on it though, could you see a female equivalent of Nine-Toes anywhere else than in Conker's Bad Fur Day?
So say there is someone that really wants to experiment with female design but is sensitive to the issue of female rights and self-respect. For the sake of being on topic, let's say they want to make a muscular female that people will enjoy playing. Fable 2 has already shown that people don't really care for muscular females. Again, I am still the only person that remembers Hammer:
Admittedly this is a less than flattering picture of her because Fable 2 was a less than flattering game. Females don't want to look like males, generally, or at least a certain type of bulked out male. That is unfortunate. Therefore, Dragon's Crown Amazonian:
This person is unquestionably female, though realistically she has a tremendously uneven muscle balance and will break her spine in five minutes of any sort of activity. So now, look up "muscle woman" on google images on your own time and try to find a basis for this design choice. At some point, the oblique muscles will have to bulk up to stabilize the "core" allowing the proper transition and dissemination of total body movements between the upper and lower frame. This is incompatible with a significant waist/hip ratio. However, this waist/hip ratio is foundational to the female body profile, and is the main reason why extreme musculature on a female masculinizes.
Therefore, this art is as unrealistic as any depiction of a female, while accomplishing the goal of depicting a muscular female that is not masculine, at the cost of suffering from Liefeld syndrome. If we reject this art, can we still accomplish the objective of depicting a muscular female that is popular? Because we cannot control the purchase decisions of people who don't want to see anything but an exaggerated feminine body. The domain of the artist is already constricted in that regard, unfortunately, and there's not a lot anybody but Leonard Nimoy can do about it. We can control whether we tolerate these depicitions to give conscientious artist freedom to find alternate pathways to flank the barrier of the massively unappealing female, or we can further restrict the field on the other side, hopefully concentrating the amount of artists forced to work within severely restricted parameters acceptable to everyone, homogenizing female depictions and improving them via minute, glacier-speed changes.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
You know people throw out characters like Hammer and the Amazon...but personally I though a very interesting design was Meryl from MGS4.
She had a very soldier-ish build without being too exaggerated.
Like I looked at her and I thought, "Yes, this is pretty much what I would expect a female soldier whose been through intense training to be built like."
I guess the problem I have with this body type discussion is that there are multiple types.
It isn't just Exaggerated--Normal--Exaggerated.
Another axis would be in the direction of Parasite Eve. All these examples I'm bringing up are what Tycho rightly calls Icons - archetypes successful at accomplishing an objective depiction heretofore evasive of public appreciation.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
That said I think the reason for men being able to get away with being exaggerated more than females comes from the fact that when you look at artwork a lot of the time its the upper body that tends to be exaggerated. And since males generally do have very drastic differences in size even in real life that tends not to bother people as much.
I think an interesting look at that would be Gears of War.
I found it pretty jarring when in GoW3 as big as the males were, the females were "normal"(also in GoW when you put Carmine up to the rest of the Cogs). But like you said I just shrugged that off as them using a lot of steroids. But before I had the female characters to compare them to I actually thought that CoGs came from some race of giant people(I'm serious).
But I do see your point. Maybe people find it generally more acceptable for males to be big because a male can be big and still be considered attractive by average standards.
"People feel uncomfortable when they see muscular women" is an argument for why all games seem to feature stereo typically sexy women, but its not an argument as for why it should be so.
I agree in a sense that what people "expect" a woman to look like is much more limited than the standards as applied to men, but that's the essential core problem - that the status quo w/r/t female beauty is kind of fucked. (As with the implicit expectation that all women in games should BE beautiful)
Its funny but when we talk about body types I do think it is funny that in general most characters are the same height(though I know this does have to do with gameplay in some circumstances).
Really, not even talking weight or muscle mass, I would love to see a lot more experimentation with height, facial definition, and body build in other areas.
Basically, I would love to see something other than "standard brown-haired white male" and "standard blonde-haired white female" as far as looks go.
MGS4 Meryl is also interesting because she was heavily redesigned at some point in development, unlike any of the other characters shown off early on. She initially looked much as she did in MGS1, before getting bulked up a little and getting an older, more worn face. The reaction wasn't great, as I recall. I liked it just on the grounds that she should have looked older, it was 10 years after MGS1 after all. Can't go giving MGS4 too much credit for having equal badass female characters though - it was the one with the B&B corps. :P
Neither to a great degree.
As for the B&B corps. Meh, I can't say I have a problem with having attractive characters in games. Just that I think there are different kinds of attractiveness but you only tend to see the most vanilla kind in games especially when it comes to female design.
I'm just flabbergasted at how willing people are to be told they should be mad.
If any of these pieces were in a museum, they would be treated with respect, not idiocy.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
so, if the sorceress made me think: "yah i get it... that's a little shameless" the valkyrie made me think: "wow... this is where "sexy" jumped the shark."
If any of these pieces were in a museum, respecting them would mean deconstructing them viciously.
As I pointed out, people aren't shy about these things in other mediums. In no other genre is critical discourse expected to stop with "no, stop criticizing it, its art!"
Trying to work out what it stands for, what the artist was doing and what it says about society is exactly what people do with art. Art isn't just a bunch of people looking at a thing and going "hmm, wonderful, transcendent, amazing".
I mean you're effectively saying "Its art, therefore its stupid to have an opinion or an emotional reaction to it"
Sure, if you had the completely unrealistic physique of a supermodel and didn't wear a lot of armor on top of that. I don't exactly think that many of those portrayals are exactly portraying what you think they do: For example the seven sisters in Forgotten Realms who Ed Greenwood portrays as being powerful women, who are then easily seduced by his creepy old man persona in the form of Elminster.
Why exactly can't they be every bit as capable and not be an idealized male sexual fantasy (in this example, quite literally) while they are at it?
Except for when I pointed out that some of the best statted armor and equipment for women were actually some of the most visually ridiculous (this is something that has actually been addressed by some games though, such as Guilds Wars 2 that gives a wide variety of different armor with the same overall stats, but different looks so you can find something that suits your aesthetic without being penalized for it - kudos to them). So if you didn't want to look ridiculous, yet wanted a character that had the best gear you were absolutely shit out of luck.
Not played a lot of MMOs where people realized you were (or just thought you were) a woman then. Or for that matter how I have seen women treated at Dungeons and Dragons tables/conventions in the past. A lot of this is the whole "chainmail bikinis" subsection and the fact these tropes view women as objects.
I snipped most of this, but you seem to have no grasp of the idea that because this is so prevalent in that the vast majority of depictions in women are impossibly proportioned supermodels wearing barely any armor it's a problem for many who say "This makes me very uncomfortable" who never get into it (or view it as puerile male fantasies, which in fairness some of it actually is). If there was more diversity in the first place this argument you are making would be much more coherent and agreeable: The fact is there still isn't that great amount of diversity in fantasy characters". Ridiculously proportioned individuals who wear barely any clothing are the norm, not the other way.
No, they aren't progressive in the least (or at least not in the way you seem to think) and contribute to sexist attitudes and depictions of women. Why does a woman need to be ridiculously proportioned and wear barely any clothing to be seen as the equal of a man? I can't see this argument being reasonable and it doesn't indicate to me that fantasy is "progressive" whatsoever. Quite the opposite, as it tells me it's still mired in sexist tropes about how women should be perceived in fantasy, such as what produces the ridiculous characters seen in Dragon's Crown. Again it's not inherently wrong that characters have absurd proportions or lack any clothing at all, it's the amount of it that reinforces these negative stereotypes as "normal" that's the major problem in general.
Thanks for the contribution, could you tell us how we are supposed to react?
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I don't particularly care if some game artist wants to draw ridiculous breasts that defy the laws of physics. However, I do care that this is one more particularly egregious example of women being objectified in games, which in turn leads to a culture that gives rise to things like "fake geek girls" and booth babes and the normalization of men as the primary audience; women as a barely noticed peripheral. The sorceress is not there for me. She's there for the guys. And the male characters are there for the guys too.
I realize I am not the intended audience, and if this game existed in a vacuum, it wouldn't matter in the least. But when quite nearly every game is made for Very Definitely Not Me, and I am given increasingly "logical" arguments by fellow gamers as to why I shouldn't be outraged by that* so that they may feel better about their exclusion of me, damn right I'm going to complain. Feminism is about equality. Check out that Hawkeye Inititive link, which simply takes female comic book characters and replaces them with Hawkeye, look me in the eye, and tell me these portrayals of women are equal to those of men.
*Seriously, I can't be myself - a woman - in a game because you want it to be "historically accurate"? Funny how that doesn't seem to apply to anything from history that might make life harder for the intended male audience.
I felt funny. But the Superheroine costume redesigns lower down were awesome. Like, exactly the sort of thing I want to see Marvel and DC to explore. They won't, of course, because it might not sell as well.
In all fairness, not "nearly every" game does that, just the vast majority of fantasy-based ones. And also shooters. And sports games.
As has already been pointed out, aside from the obvious "games are for boys" reasoning, there's an inherent difficulty in making a "physically strong-looking but also visually appealing" female. You can argue that not every player character needs to be at least vaguely good-looking (even Marcus Fenix has a grizzled handsomeness to him), but you'd be wrong. It's less about the art, and more about the money. If it weren't, we'd regularly see massive variations in characters.
For guys in our current society (and for much of Western history), being physically strong is part of being visually attractive. It's a direct correlation. For women, however, that tends to not be the case. What's more, the "standard" of what makes a woman attractive changes fairly regularly. Does that mean the game devs shouldn't try? Quite the opposite, actually- but again, its about the money. And lets be honest, most large publishers aren't going to eagerly approve something that doesn't appeal to a significant slice of their consumer base.
Its important to note though that hasn't gone unrecognized, its exactly why many critics directly tie feminist issues into critiques of capitalism in general.
With care.
Everyone is in a heightened state of awareness regarding the portrayal of women in gaming, and with good reason. That's a very good thing! But I feel like people are shooting first and asking questions later on this one.
And sorry if I was flippant, I'd made a post explaining more of this many pages back, but i'm sure it got lost in the shuffle.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
for starters, not with instant outrage and not by taking it entirely at face value. also, look up what "symptomatic" means. also, try to take a less binary approach to thinking, so you don't end up like this guy I quoted below. Just because you can post it on a forum doesn't make it true or even valid. That's the problem...everyone has an opinion on it, but they jump into it like an asshole walking into a theater in the middle of movie and starts to pass reactionary judgment without seeing the first half. Forums just enable this "everybody gets a trophy" stuff and don't actually encourage critical thinking, which is a skill you have to actually put effort into developing. There's actual history and context to learn on the topic, but most of you are content to volley the bullshit you "feel" about the topic (in lieu of actual hard info, which is out there, ready to be learned) back and forth in hopes of winning an internet argument. And that's why I don't post on forums.
Do you know for a fact that she is tired as fuck about it? Or that she isn't happy-as-fuck about it? or that she isn't neutral-as-fuck about it?
I was pointing out the wrong somewhere else, but the point was to make a comparison between audience reactions.
and sexualized marketing isn't inherently wrong, unless you're just that adverse to sex. feel free to use that as proof of my evil, latent sexism.
You say everyone needs to stop being outraged and "learn critical thinking" but the whole middle paragraph block of you post is just pure rant. Like, there's no angle or argument or fact being presented its just "you guys are assholes and so full of shit and furthermore;"
Its annoying because you asked some questions earlier in the thread and I thought "ok, I'm gonna try to resist the temptation to snark and put in as much effort to give a concise, solid answer as I can" and yet here we are?
Chill?
I you like those, check these redesigns out.
Well of course it would be nice for her if she liked it or didn't care, since those are the only reactions she's allowed to have. But since she's actually stated that she's fucking tired of talking about it, we already know the RNG didn't come up right for her on that one.
I love how you begin with implication that any criticism of you will be proof that someone is averse to sex. Then your next line is about what a sad, abused victim you are. Double score, man.
If you really want to go for the trifecta, you could make a post explaining how men really have it much harder than women and women have all the advantages in life.
I'm part of the audience, and I wouldn't find that boring. (Perhaps I'm an outlier, but I really don't think so.) And my sympathy for the artist, particularly one who has been hired to produce work to spec rather than indulge their VISION, is... lacking.
If your character is boring because their physical proportions aren't exaggerated (in any direction), then IMO you need to work on other aspects and ways to make them interesting.
Because really most game's don't have exaggerated proportions like DC.
I mean yes, most games have character's with supermodel proportion, but that I a real if overused body type..
Alright, show of hands, who in this thread has actually played Odin Sphere?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.