Not that I agree with the guy, but the way you've "quoted" him here is really disgusting.
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
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Not that I agree with the guy, but the way you've "quoted" him here is really disgusting.
I'm not touching this discussion. I just want to note, we do criminalize a lot of victimless activities.
Worth noting that this also applies to Quiet with her getting horribly burned and falling out of a window at the start of the game, leading to involuntary operations that infect her with a parasite which renders her unable to talk and apparently unable to wear clothes. Also things like introducing a girlfriend / wife / female ally character only to kill them off to provide the male character with a motivation (player character wife in Shadow of Mordor for example). I agree it would probably be better to make a separate thread for that.
I mean, yeah, if something is fundamentally unpopular then no one will fund a sequel regardless of the creative vision behind it.
But it's also possible for popular things to change based on fan feedback purely because it's clear that it will make the next game more popular. There are countless examples where sequels have small quality of life upgrades compared to earlier games in a series, because it's clear that players liked the game but hated some of its rougher edges like cumbersome menus, etc.
Wtf? This is very disappointing. I'm still going to buy the game because I love Danganronpa but jeez.
Technically no. There was a spin-off which had a female lead. But this was heavily advertised as having the first female lead in a mainline game.
I'm aware and in fact I think that we shouldn't criminalize almost every victimless activity
I don't think these two things are that contradictory, honestly.
Sexism as we're discussing it here is a thing that exists in context of the society that we've built, as a set of problems in representation and treatment that have been and continue to be ingrained in how we do things. Sexism is the fact that an unsettlingly large majority of games feature anything from male gaze in the camerawork or disproportionately sexualized designs for women, to even outright soft pornography. This can render attempting to play games at all to walking through a minefield. Especially if you particularly like genres that are prone to it, but most egregiously even if you exclusively play blockbusters that are ostensibly meant for the largest possible target audience.
Sexism, as a societal problem, isn't the inherent existence of individual products that pander to you as someone attracted to women, but the overall market trends that create that minefield. It's a basic biological fact that humans tend to like sex stuff in one way or another, and there should be no shame in that. Plenty of women consume or are involved in the production of stuff like this. You shouldn't feel shame for the fact that the current market caters to you any more than a white man in the western world should spend every day of his life feeling crushing self-disgust for having been born in a position of societal privilege. That's not what most people are looking for, here, because it's ultimately unproductive anyway.
Rather, the recognition that that minefield is a problem and fighting to clean up the issue is what people are looking for.
The things you like wouldn't, inherently, be a problem if they were mirrors of a suitable alternative for female [edit: rather, male-attracted] demographics in niches where they belong, and weren't so pervasive in mainstream-targeted products. This isn't a fight to make titillating games disappear entirely, it's a fight to make developers realize that there's a time and a place for titillation and Literally All the Time and Everywhere isn't that time and place. More than with wallets, it's a battle fought through discourse and exhausting, exhausting circular debate against people that you have to continuously assume are making the same arguments over and over in good faith even though sometimes they aren't.
An extra--heck a few thousand extra--copies of a niche titillating game being sold isn't going to do much if any harm to lasting change. Like the things you like, recognize and be willing to talk about it when they're problematic. Ask questions like the one I'm responding to now, because it means you're being introspective and that's important to a healthy psychological outlook.
Perhaps most importantly, help out by tagging in when people are ready to collapse on the death-march of circuitous absurdity that is this thread and those like it. These are the things you can do to help, and things you already do as far as I can see.
I'd like to think that's a relatively reasonable stance, anyway. I like a lot of trashy stuff too so maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better. I'm not an authority on this kind of thing.
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I'd actually be interested in that because objectification is so commonly part of when a game treats women like shit. Like, Metroid Other M is probably the most sexist game I know of purely from the story, but the cutscenes are also loaded with male gaze shots every time Samus is wearing the Zero Suit. The closest thing I can think of is Soul Calibur V's roster where almost all the male characters were allowed to keep fighting into their 40s and 50s but almost every female character who wasn't some kind of immortal was retired.
Boom.
Honestly people take socio-cultural explanations for people's own thoughts/behaviours for granted. You assume what you like is all you, but society is good at helping you find that out. Do we like sexy women? Probably, heck even women do. But does "industry" know this and take advantage of it? Hell yes.
I actually really enjoyed Blade Runner 2049's perspective of women in some ways because I thought it was incredibly aware at how commodified women can be (and the BR world heightening that to some of its most saturated outcome).
EDIT: oooo that text in there too
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Gonna be honest, although those games are definitely not positive portrayals of women, I do think that it's obvious on the cover what their intended audience is and by their content. So in that regard, I'd say don't feel bad at all as it's really focused on not being a serious series but meant to be lewd and provide well, sexual satisfaction with it's over the top fantasy setting. I'm more concerned with content that is meant to be taken serious.
Any attempt to use this graphic to make an argument beyond its scope - its scope being "who wanted to buy a console outside of a retail holiday season" - is idiotic and shows a complete lack of critical thinking, as well as a failure to understand statistical data.Its not a narrative,nor im just pulling numbers out of my ass or anything, take for Example Nintendo. the one called usually the family friend console
Bring receipts showing that straight women find the "video game idealized" male form attractive. I will accept receipts from gay/bi/pan men too.
Let's do some critical thinking.
This is a forum for video game enthusiasts.
This forum has existed for like 3 weeks.
Therefore, anyone on this forum is sufficiently enthusiastic to know it exists and create an account, in that approx. 3 weeks
Any woman on this forum has proved, by having an account here, that she cares about video games enough to follow industry-offshoot news.
100% of the women who have posted in this topic find excess sexualization to be a problem [trolls excluded of course, and also it should be noted that some of the women still want sexualization in an appropriate place].
Therefore, women enthusiasts are overwhelmingly in support of the video game industry focusing sexualization in dedicated spots, while reducing it in 'inappropriate' spots, as defined by arguments previously listed.
Do you really think that this sample cannot be extrapolated to apply to a larger demographic? Statistical data always uses samples to represent larger groups.
Are you being paid to defend "the industry"? Not that it matters, I'm merely trying to understand your motivation to protect it from criticism, which most prople consider a method of collecting data for making improvements.
No.
Humans can feel contradictory emotions at the same time.
Also, having media focused on sexualization is a market that does exist, and is lucrative. It is not necessary to want that style of media to disappear, to have an opinion that the general industry has too much misogyny and sexism. One can enjoy that media and still want it to be in its place.
Are you an expert on being a victim of sexism? I would like to hear your thoughts on how it feels to be treated in a very sexist way.
That would be an interesting discussion topic. It feels like this treatment was very prevalent well before games were able to ogle characters with camera pans and the like. It would be interesting to hear if people think games have largely improved in this regard and where they are still struggling.
Edit: I really gotta see the new Blade Runner film.
I, for one, am deeply offended by the underlying premise of this thread, which implies males tend to get sexually aroused by some polygons that are somehow supposed to represent the female body.
Your statement is incomplete.
You mean, that video game developers and publishers constantly ASSUME such.
Hey, what' your avatar? It looks familiar.
When Quiet was first announced, I honestly thought she was a joke because you can use the same outfit (with different pants) in MGO2. I thought he was making fun of the tons of guys who ran around MGO with just a bikini on in a game about shooting people.
Then it turns out her design was intended to be serious and I was shook.
Then it turns out her design was intended to be serious and I was shook.
Yeah, but game publishers undervalueing their audience is nothing new.
Morte from planescape torment
What the fuck. I'm starting to think MGS3 was great in spite of Kojima rather than thanks to him.
In Wonder Woman case, for what I did see of JL (didn't see the movie) the camera between both movies is another example.
WW
JL
To show that, contrary to popular belief, I don't always find sexualization everywhere, I personally would have never even thought of the above sexualized (or even sexy), just a typical Matrix slo-mo of the main character kicking ass and taking names. Not saying that they are not, at all; just that I, myself, can't see it.
Nowhere in the thread's OP does it state that you, JustSomeone, has to find digital women sexy. I know you only want to be funny and signal virtue but don't derail the thread or fault the OP because of things it never said.
I mean it's more hard to see if you don't compare it and it's kind of a tame stuff, but the point is that the WW shot focus on the kick while the JL shot focus more on her ass. It's not about the move itself (of course that kick is not something sexualized) but how it is filmed. Probably not a big deal, but unnecesary, considering these angles are carefuly selected.
Also JL was filmed with Whedon, someone that admitted being kind of a perv lol
I thought Whedon was just reshooting parts of the film, didn't Snyder do most of the work?
This is an amazing example of the difference can framing can make in sexual objectification. Literally the exact same move, except one uses slow-mo while she's rearing up to kick, and the other uses it when her bare ass is in the center of the frame and cuts to a beauty shot. Unbelievable.In Wonder Woman case, for what I did see of JL (didn't see the movie) the camera between both movies is another example.
WW
JL
The first clip isn't even perfect with that blatant panty shot but at least it doesn't slow down to show off how hot Gal Godot is.
Oh, duh, I was meant to compare them both! Sorry, they seemed so similar I only focused on the first.
Actually, I think there's more than camerawork going on there. Isn't she just less covered in the second? She seems to wear barely more than a g-string.
Well yeah it's true that as far as I know we dont' know exactly who filmed that shot (or other shots for what I did read are "problematic" about WW).
Yeah it's hard to say but it seems like the pant is shorter? although maybe it's just the angle...
Not sure, but still, the camera angle seems to try to film different parts if you compare both.
Also, as Sami rightfuly said, the slow mo happens in different parts of the attack. You could argue that the JL slowmo happens when her kick connects but still, it also carefully happens while her ass is on the center of the screen lol
In Wonder Woman case, for what I did see of JL (didn't see the movie) the camera between both movies is another example.
WW
JL
Not only does the JL one look like it's about to break into a L'Oréal advert, but her hair jumps from her left shoulder to her right? And it's movement doesn't even match her momentum coming out of the kick?
Keep in mind, this isn't a defense of the scene, but it's worth noting this trope was extremely common in anime and manga back in the 80s and 90s (the period Snatcher came out), but they've since moved away from this (for the most part). Even Rumiko Takahashi, the woman who created Ranma and InuYasha, used similar tropes in her manga works. Final Fantasy VII, unfortunately, has a similar gag, as Cloud can go into Tifa's room (during his flashback) and takes her panties. Even worse, you can make Cloud admit that it wasn't a joke.
Japan's largely moved away from such tropes in their works (edit, for clarification, day time anime, with some late night anime occasionally delving into this, unfortunately), and older anime that re-airs in today's climate that has said content, often airs with an advisory warning, despite the content being considered "okay" back in the day. There's, admittedly, still issues how entertainment handles certain groups of people (women to a degree, as we're discussing above but their depictions of homosexual and transgender individuals is... really not great).
Yeah I think, while not perfect certainly, anime seems like it's light years ahead of a lot of games right now. I can safely watch a ton of different, current anime series on Funimation with my sister and find a bunch of great shows with some great female characters (if not leading then supporting).
I think game developers just haven't gotten the memo that women are a part of their audience while anime has and have been improving because of it.
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let's not get crazy
anime is still the gold standard for dumbfuckery in this area
Yeah I might've gone a bit overboard there, sorry, and I'm also just talking what's available through Funimation which is sill just a fraction of everything out there. I guess it'd be like equating stuff released in the U.S. in English as opposed to stuff that never leaves Japan.
Japanese computers like the NEC PC98 are labelled as retro porn machines in the West.
Kojima,like many others,did start his career with computer games
Don't know about other countries other than Italy I think, but it's legal in US as per Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, and obviously legal in Japan because they're freedom of expression absolutists (with the bizarre exception of explicitly showing genitals). Whether it SHOULD be legal or not is of course another discussion entirely.
Interesting comparison you got there. Flat earthers vs women who claim they face everyday sexism. Huh.
Heh, I've said for a long time that the Boss was a fluke. Or, well, she's a good character because Kojima's ridiculous perviness was reigned in by someone else who told him "no" about the Boss having a "laughing" exposed breast.
Kojima can sometimes produce worthwhile content when he has an editor. Perhaps Del Toro would have been able to help with that for Silent Hills, though we'll never know. But when Kojima is 100% free to do as he pleases with no restraints from anyone, well, you get shit like perving on young girls in Snatcher, or the "sexy photoshoots" of traumatized PTSD female soldiers in MGS4, or Quiet. He's got some decent ideas in him, but he's incapable of controlling himself, and I see this as Kojima having little to no respect for women beyond their bodies.
What baffle me the most about the Quiet example is, well, why she's even being debated. Many of the staunchest defenders of fanservice will still admit that Quiet is sexist garbage, because, well, it appears self-evident at this point. But somehow, you still got people using her as example to defend. Like, okay, we can discuss sexist portrayals with regards to some more nuanced but slightly problematic characters. Sure.
But Quiet? Really? C'mon bruhs.
I'd be happy to discuss the portrayal of men myself, FWIW, I just hate it when it's used as a distraction or deflection in topics about female objectification. ^^ Also, just to clarify the "power fantasy" argument; I'm not sure if that's what you meant by "scoffed and ridiculed", but I, and I assume others, don't mean to say that "it's a power fantasy" is an automatic defense of a design either, only that it's not particularly sexist or objectified. Power fantasy designs can still be criticized, and I wouldn't fault someone for taking issue with stereotypes about it. If a dude said he was sick of the "male power fantasy" stereotype and wanted more variety in types of male protagonists, I'd definitely support the notion and I would not ridicule him. Does that make sense? :) (That said, I do think that sexist stereotypes are worse than power fantasy stereotypes, for various reasons. But that doesn't mean there can't be any discussion whatsoever about it. Just time and place.)
Good post.
That would be really surprising, since its female protagonist is definitely not as described in that spoiler tag.
Right? Claire does have a uniform with pants, and she looks damn cool, but they didn't keep that because... reasons? And yeah, like, I wouldn't mind if one girl out of the entire cast had a sexy look or whatever*, but the fact that they're all like that is pretty comical. And from what little I saw of CS3's designs, it's only getting worse. Fie already looked rather silly in CS2, but that new design... blech. And I had to google Angelica, and... my god, what have they done to her? She went from this (sexy, but not sexualized, and quite badass -- though funnily enough, in-game she looks more sexualized, the character model emphasizes her breasts more and makes her outfight seem tighter), to... this crap? Dammit, Falcom! :(
I still like Kiseki games and I'll play Cold Steel 3 when it comes out, but it's impossible to not get increasingly annoyed. Trails in the Sky FC had one sexualized character, Schera, and she was a flirty personality with a dominatrix kind of style. I don't mind that. And even she gets more sexualized with every iteration, from this in FC to this in 3rd. Sigh. The fanservice also seems to get worse and worse in Ys games too.
* One of the reason I miss 90's JRPGs is that this was usually the standard in games with ensemble casts. You had a bunch of female characters, and sure, you often had maybe one that was the "sexy" one. And the rest were dressed as you'd expect them to be for their respective profession. And even the "sexy" one was usually still quite tasteful. Take Phantasy Star IV. Rika wears a leotard-type of outfit, but other than exposed thighs she's not sexualized at all and the game never objectifies her in any way. Alys, Demi and Kyra all wear pants and are dressed normally (like you'd expect a hunter, a combat android, and a mage/priest to dress, really).
Shining Force has zero sexualized females out of seven playable female characters. Neither does Shining Force II; the "sexiest" one is the master-monk (Sheela) and she still has full pants and it's not like you see the cleavage on her sprite anyway. SF3 also had tasteful, gender-equal representation.
Suikoden was the same. You'd have the likes of Jeanne and Oulan, too. But they were the exception (and stood out as such) out of the incredibly large cast. Most female characters were designed in ways that made sense and fit their characters (though even still, female characters were more likely to be designed as cute/sexy or to have more exposed skin than male ones, but it never got to the point of modern JRPGs like... this, or thisor this). Wild ARMs had no sexualized female characters (nor any damselled one, either...!). Neither did Final Fantasy Tactics.
I miss those days. [Edit: that * footnote ended up being the longest part of my post, LOL. Oh well.]
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Perhaps the worst/most hilarious thing about Quiet is that her rape scene is meant to make the trash bag bikini empowering because when the guy is trying to rape her he pulls off her trousers and that's what gives her the power to kill him or some bullshit, and therefore it is Totally Feminist And Empowering. Kojima, feminist icon #never4get
Did you get to read this Eurogamer piece at the time? I think it's quite relevant to the discussion at this point, particularly regarding that scene.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-09-04-metal-gear-solid-5-quiet-kojima-ashamed
In fact, didn't WA3 have both a female protagonist and female antagonist? That's quite the rarity as far as JRPGs go, unless I'm forgetting some really obvious examples...
I don't think so, you can enjoy fanservice and still be supportive of bettering the representation of women in media. Whether that makes you a hypocrite is another story.
As lead you mean? I haven't played WA3 is like 15 years, so I can't remember this detail, but WA1 had a female co-protagonist (Cecilia), and a female lead antagonist (Mother) as well as a female antagonist in the cast of "henchmen" villains (Lady Harken).
A game with a female lead (not co- and not counting character-created) protagonist and a female lead antagonist is pretty rare. Portal maybe? Some Metroid games if you count Mother Brain. xD Dishonored 2 is close, but Corvo is also playable. For "humanoid" villains there's Silent Hill 3. But yeah, it's very uncommon.
I love JRPGs. I grew up on them and they're still my favorite genre and a huge chunk of what I play, but I can't help but think that they're a genre that's lost the most with the passing of time and advancement of technology. Not only does the cheesy dialogue, when not properly localized, lead to pretty extreme eyeroll moments when human beings have to actually read it and perform it out loud for directed cutscenes, but, well... call me a cynic, but I highly expect that a lot of those old games would've been just as voyeuristic with the camera as present-day ones are if the technology had existed at the time.
That said, it'd be disingenuous to ignore the fact that the otaku-centric illustrators and character artists who are commonly called upon to do character design for these games have been in a seemingly never ending "escalating sexualization feedback loop" for a surprisingly long time now. We've gone quite a while without a major, fundamental paradigm shift in the en vogue aesthetic styles used by this community of artists, and some of the madness that's coming out in more unrestrained work like Xenoblade 2's guest artist blade designs has reached and surpassed the point of self parody and just kept running. People used to joke about the fact that the Neptunia series' primary creative staff is almost exclusively female, but with the way that things have been moving since the series inception they've begun to look straight up tame compared to a lot of the things produced now. Hell, two of the three designs you called out in your post were done by women also, and the way that the collective has been moving I'd be more likely to speculate that it's where they wanted to go, not directorial meddling.
Like, we're outsiders observing a slidingOverton Windowsituation specifically in the context of sexualization in design and I'm really not sure what it's going to take to stop it, but the window isn't moving in the same direction in the west and with every passing year the disconnect gets wider and wider.
Not a JRPG, but Skullgirls has a female protagonist and antagonist with the main one being Double who is...sort of humanlike
And Marie who acts as a secondary antagonist
Eh...I mean, if we're going by this, the entire Hyper Neptinia games due this and I don't think those are good for representation. In fact, there are a lot of Japanese female protagonist and antagonist but these are usually ecchi games.
Great post.
To add insult to injury, that girl is the daughter of your recently murdered colleague, and you're supposed to check on her and offer her protection from time to time, so you're the closest to a guardian she has.
Honestly I don't think the Boss was a complete fluke but I'm not that big of a fan anymore either. She's pretty good most of the time but she's still a lady wearing a weird skintight suit who exposes your chest to you very anticlimactically for a weird reason, I dunno.
Dang it, I was going to bring up KOTOR 2 with the Exile and Kreia. Technically they did canonise the Exile as female though? Kinda counts?
Don't know enough about Quiet as I haven't played MGSV, but I've written defenses for B&B Corps contradictory depictions and I'm also one of the weirdos that was bummed out that Kojima wasn't allowed to use his prototype Boss idea with the shaking snake scar. Nothing I've seen of Quiet really suggests I would feel any different on an objective analysis level, even if subjectively probably feel Kojima didn't really communicate his "ashamed of words and deeds" idea in the best way. I talk more about those kinds of contradictory qualities (intentional or otherwise) having appeal in that "objectively bad character design" thread.
On the subject of female protagonists and antagonists, there's plenty of games like that but they unfortunately are not mainstream. Not that the JRPGs named above are mainstream either of course and I imagine some of what I'm thinking of sold more than those games, but they don't pertain to the discussion as much.
As an aside, my favorite antagonist ever is female precisely because of the contradictory qualities she exhibits (and it's 100% intentional with this one).
On the subject of female protagonists and antagonists, there's plenty of games like that but they unfortunately are not mainstream. Not that the JRPGs named above are mainstream either of course and I imagine some of what I'm thinking of sold more than those games, but they don't pertain to the discussion as much.
As an aside, my favorite antagonist ever is female precisely because of the contradictory qualities she exhibits (and it's 100% intentional with this one).
real classy - just ugh. And I thought it couldn't get worse. Does noone say no to Kojima?
Quiet is actually the worst because on top of being a walking sex doll, she's extremely contradictory in how she acts around you.
The game implies at times that she might have feelings for you, but she still acts extremely aggressive or at the very least cold towards you all the time... Unless you're riding the helicopter with her! Then she acts like this
At no other point in the game she acts sexy or even flirty with you or anyone (outside of a terrible shower scene, but that's an easter egg). I seear at times I think she started as pure fanservice like in the gif, but Kojima probably pulled a tragic back story for her out of his ass once people complained about her design.
I think this is a fair point that should be acknowledged more and why I often don't like the "but a man directed her to do that" defense when people say something was designed by a woman. The doujin market (as in they answer to no one) is absolutely FILLED with women, and that isn't just on the BL side of things. Hell, there's a million+ selling VN series with erotic content on Steam that's entirely done by a woman, with I believe the only men involved being on localization duties.
Not to say the former doesn't happen obviously nor that the motivations will always be "she just wanted to draw sexy girls". Just saying, it's a very real phenomenon that IMO makes that defense fall flat. I think blaming social conditioning makes a lot more sense than "she was answering to a man", and even then this is going to be a case by case thing.
That's a nice analogy. Depressing, but accurate.
Yeah, some designs from back then wouldn't have looked too out of place today. Take Secret of Mana 2, for example (fanart, I think, but based on the in-game spites:
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