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So... Where is the body fat?

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Fredrik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,003
Is gaming the only medium where like 90% or all people never get represented?

At this point, in all games there is essentially just one type of people, gym/fitness people. They might be bulky with muscles but they never have what regular people have, body fat.

You never see a male main protagonist with little muscles and a belly. It's either a bulky wrestler type of character, body builder or what's more popular today, a slim fitness guy. You never see the regular guy, you know that guy that most us see every day... In the mirror! That oh so odd guy that rather play games for some reason than spend all the spare time at a gym. We're extinct!

Likewise you never see a female main protagonist with regular "of so shameful curves we all pretend we don't like here", but with an added unearthly twist... Body fat! You either see an extreme hourglass figure with a flat belly, which makes no sense what so ever since curves are fat and you can't choose where to lose fat, or you see a skinny character with barely any curves at all. Regular women with regular womanly curves, probably what you or your wife looks like, essentially don't exist in gaming, at all, well maybe as an NPC if you're lucky.

So, devs, you added the height slider, bust slider, muscle slider, even a penis slider in a future game, but did you forget the slider for body fat?
 
Lowrys

Lowrys

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,613
London
Fair point but I'm pretty sure there are exceptions: Fallout 4, for example, lets you make an overweight or other body shape character.
 
Mukrab

Mukrab

Member
Apr 19, 2020
7,688
Im not in the US so my experience might differ but i definitelly dont see 90% of the people being fat. Also how is this a gaming only thing. How is it different than shows or movies? Fat people are often comic relief in that medium and rarely are they more than that.
 
Ayirek

Ayirek

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,270
...Lots of games have this. Demons Souls, all three Dark Souls games, GTA: San Andreas, pretty sure you can make chubby characters in TES and the modern Fallout games and that's just off the top of my head.
 
Loud Wrong

Loud Wrong

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Feb 24, 2020
14,530
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Windu

Windu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,695
Every Hollywood movie has incredibly good looking people. Their idea of ugly people is to put glasses on them, this is definitely not just a gaming thing.
 

Absolute

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
2,090
Windu said:
Every Hollywood movie has incredibly good looking people. Their idea of ugly people is to put glasses on them, this is definitely not just a gaming thing.
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Why focus on hollywood? The global film industry has decent representation compared to games. It's strange the first reaction to this is to talk about other mediums and say "see? it's bad everywhere".
 
N7Commander01

N7Commander01

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Jan 2, 2020
1,077
Tokyo, Japan
Thats why Fable 2 is One of my favourite games, because you can fully have your main character be overweight, obese as both genders And have the narrative and vast majority of character interactions be exactly the same

It feels nice to represent your self in video games
 
Seesaw15

Seesaw15

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,824
Are you talking about create a character or single player story protagonist? Because a lot of games have weight sliders.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
20,440
Absolute said:
Why focus on hollywood? The global film industry has decent representation compared to games. It's strange the first reaction to this is to talk about other mediums and say "see? it's bad everywhere".
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It's just because it's more absurd in Hollywood because people have to roid up and kill themselve to look great instead of the stomach model having more definition.
 
Windu

Windu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,695
Absolute said:
Why focus on hollywood? The global film industry has decent representation compared to games. It's strange the first reaction to this is to talk about other mediums and say "see? it's bad everywhere".
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The OP asked if gaming was the only medium that 90% of the population isn't represented in the first sentence. I'm answering the topics question bud.
 
VenomousCoffee

VenomousCoffee

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,747
Yes, the characters in games are much, much more fit/lean/etc than they are in real life. I don't think it's much different than it is with films and TV, though. How often do you see a character in any mainstream media who's too obese to walk without difficulty?

But, don't most games that have body sliders for a character creator have body fat in there?
 
dabri

dabri

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Nov 2, 2017
1,728
Mukrab said:
Im not in the US so my experience might differ but i definitelly dont see 90% of the people being fat. Also how is this a gaming only thing. How is it different than shows or movies? Fat people are often comic relief in that medium and rarely are they more than that.
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It's not THAT bad in the states. The way I see it is it's not believable to have anyone who is out of shape doing the majority of things we see characters doing in these games.
I mean the same argument is made and accepted as to why woman shouldn't be portrayed in games with the figures/ clothing that they often wear. Why take steps back in representing figures as they should be in these settings?
 
Kanann

Kanann

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,170
User Banned (3 Days): Inappropriate Commentary; Prior Infractions for the Same
Oh dear Americans.....
.......

Serious, I kinda like plain girl but hate average boys protag in games, Japanese game of course.

Plain girls are charming, plain boys just feel like "prepare to self insert, losers"
 
Pickle

Pickle

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
772
I was happy to see Atelier had some body fat added on Ryza. Tired of stick thin models across games (with worst case being disgusting FF Lightning)
 
Kunjiru

Kunjiru

Member
Apr 14, 2020
1,483
Because your normal average Joe would die trying to do what these fit characters do. Also, I don't know about you guys, but I want to play as good looking and healthy characters instead of fat loser which I can be irl lmao. And I don't want overly realistic representations in games, cause they are G A M E S. I don't play them to just be in another less real version of a real world.
 
Serious Sam

Serious Sam

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,354
In most games characters kinda need to be in shape to performs these actions. Obese people can't even do a single pull up...
 
behOemoth

behOemoth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,713
Heavy Rain got one chubby main character. Max Payne 3 has some higher body fat %.
Michael from gtaV also has some higher body fat.
I think most games simply don't give the opportunity for higher above average weight classes.
 
chrisypoo

chrisypoo

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Oct 27, 2017
3,457
User Banned (3 Days): Condescending Hostility
My wife is curvy as hell but she has a flat stomach. Yes it does make sense OP, it's called squats.

Also, just because some of us are fit doesn't mean we don't "spend our spare time playing games", it just means we also train to keep up our health, speed, and strength, .....maybe because we want to be around longer to spend more time with our loved ones and play more games?
 
Deimos

Deimos

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,801
Absolute said:
Why focus on hollywood? The global film industry has decent representation compared to games. It's strange the first reaction to this is to talk about other mediums and say "see? it's bad everywhere".
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The first line of the OP is literally "Is gaming the only medium where like 90% or all people never get represented?"
 
Kinthey

Kinthey

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
22,485
Considering most of those games involve action this kind of makes sense. A chubby out of shape Nathan Drake doing those crazy stunts would look more silly than relatable.
 
Pall Mall

Pall Mall

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,426
This is definitely a problem in all mediums except like, books (not including VNs/comics). Also I would argue the percentage of people who are 'fat' is not 90% lol. I guess the closest you get to average representation is just the thin not fit look.
 
OP
OP

Fredrik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,003
nsilvias said:
in the villian and comedic character designs
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Pretty much. A huge villain or boss made to look scary or a comedic wrestler type of character in a fighting game that would snap anyone in half in a second.

Karen in RDR2 is interesting, plus sized body and more than just an anonymous NPC. She even had a dress and she had an actual story. But of course they refused to make her strong as a person, she essentially just tagged along to add cleavage and a kinda tragic element during the camp parties.
 
EggmaniMN

EggmaniMN

Banned
May 17, 2020
3,465
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Doris from Wild Guns Reloaded

latest


Big Mama from Shock Troopers, though in her case given those guns there's a lot of muscle going on too.
 
OP
OP

Fredrik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,003
Windu said:
Every Hollywood movie has incredibly good looking people. Their idea of ugly people is to put glasses on them, this is definitely not just a gaming thing.
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lol you're right, movies have issues too. If you have body fat you're making comedies. They even went that route in Thor and it pissed me off so much! So he had become lazy and fat, and all of a sudden every scene was comedy with him being drunk and burping.
 
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