Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)

Nope that's a separate instance. There was one in town with a lady dressed in ridiculously tight clothing with the camera hovering around her butt. I was just like.. come on.. really

I'm talking about running around in town and seeing some grimy dudes who look like they live in a worn in type of world, then some jarring, outstandingly dressed/presented women who seem to exist to wait for the player to approach them and flirt with them. Again, it was a while ago so I don't have the exact instances readily available. I'll have to go back and look. But it was enough for me to be pulled out of the world building/story/sense of immersion.

 

Nintendo had some experience of this with the Wii U as well

https://mynintendonews.com/2014/08/...sers-males-account-for-93-and-females-only-7/

Notice the age grouping as well. You'll tend to find most early adopters branch in around 18~30.

Then again, not many people really bought a Wii U, even up to a year ago. Not having an AC game on it was a silly move. To use AC in this way discussing target demographics does concede there might be some truth in this, but I have experienced some aren't as keen to listen to the potential that genres can influence male/female divides. As I joked about above though, any guys not playing AC are missing out! At least a Switch AC will be able to be played on the big screen.

 

The Witcher is perhaps better than many other games, if only because it’s female characters are written with considerably more depth than their fellows in other games. They are still given heavily sexualized designs that contrasts with their actual characterization and personalities, however. And this is after benefiting from an excuse where sorceresses nigh uniformly adhere to the “vain and beautiful sorceress” trope. Yen, Triss, Keira, and Phillipa don’t engage in the melee, have spells that protect themselves from missiles, and have invested loads of magical effort into becoming beautiful. That doesn’t excuse the sexualization of any more mundane women.

Case in point: Ves. Ves is a hardened warrior and lieutenant to Roche, leader of the Temerian special forces. There’s nothing about her personality that suggests flirtiness or any kind of sexual nature. So why does she wear a top with the laces undone, completely exposing her cleavage, as she charges into battle?

Ciri also fights with a sword, while wearing chunky heels and not bothering to completely tie her shirt together. Her design is just so you can see a bit of her bra. Considering her nature, and the paternal, protective feelings that the player (through Geralt) is supposed to feel towards her, why deliberately introduce that element of sexualization in the design? It’s not like the character would be any less attractive if her shirt covered her entirely.

 

This is one reason I've never understood guys who don't want women in gaming. Or, similarly, in technology fields. But I've never had to wonder why women wouldn't want to be one of the very few in those fields.

 

Ah, ok. I missed some context there.

 

Interesting stuff, thanks!

 

I dont hate sexualised designs because they are sexualised, I hate them because most of time they dont make any damn sense.

Recent example would be Xenoblade 2

Spoiler

Im a dude tho so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cant speak for the girls here

 

Thanks for posting that. It was unfortunately pretty noticeable that the other voices started to dwindle as this thread went on.

 

All of the extremely marginal "examples" of refutations to the blatant sexism/racism that has been THE STANDARD in games for decades and can't be refuted is stomach churning.

10 games or so over the ENTIRE history of gaming where male character's butts are shown/focused on is a false equivalent for pretty much any given year up until the last few where EVERY woman's butt has been the main/only reason for their inclusion in games. It's ridiculous that I even have post this, but whatever man.

I'm really to the point where I believe everybody that just flat out disagrees with everything Anita Sarkeesian says is a misogynistic bigot, I mean even in some cases against their own best interests. It's just disturbing.

 

Wow, thanks to everyone for sharing this. I hope people here on Resetera and those lurking take this to heart.

 

1. First bolded point is vehemently not true. The Witcher, which we're talking about above, for example, features a shirtless Geralt, like, all the time. The problem is not that men are not sexualized in games, it's that they, by societal standards, are figures of domination and power over women. Also, I'm not going to avoid a game simply because it has a sexualized woman. It's not fair to us female gamers to have to walk on eggshells when it comes to games we may enjoy simply because men don't want to lose their virtual boobies.

2. As I said, sexy women sells because they're often viewed, in games, movies, and even real life, whether you believe it or not, as figures to be dominated by men. We inherently lack the societal standing and the power to treat men as objects like it happens to us. This is a long running reflection of historical and societal trends; in other words, women have been given a "caretaker" role and left to stay at home, bear children, and serve her husband. We have been historically dominated and subjugated for male gratification, whether it be sexual or otherwise. It's only in the last century or so that women have begun to hold significant positions of power, but this doesn't mean that society views us any differently. It is even still the norm in MANY countries. This point was made earlier in the thread.

 

I fail to understand what does it have to do, the switch is not some exception in gaming, maybe they don't like the system, maybe it's to expensive, maybe they don't like Nintendo games... there's a lot of different variables that just sex'ed games (something that the Switch also has btw, look at Xenoblade 2) and not sexed games.

Thanks Morrigan. I hope people take the time to read your post.

 

Doesn't even make sense to me, because like I pointed out in my post-- as a girl who gamed, I was showered with attention. Quite clearly, dudes wanted more chicks to game with.

And yeah I know a lot of women don't enjoy being hit on all the time, so that's another issue, but from a guy's perspective I cannot understand why they wouldn't prefer MORE women around if it seemed like it was such a positive thing.

 

I think it is important to fight sexism, but don't games exist to do what you couldn't or shouldn't do in real life? I could never drive a car through pedestrians or kill nazis or watch a half-naked sniper girl in her prison cell in reality. I like to do those things in games because it is a fantasy. I think using games as an education on how to morally behave is wrong and I have doubts that it even would work: After all we don't have a million serial killer kids even though games "teach" that way of thinking. So apparantly players can already tell reality and fantasy apart. But then what should be wrong with sexism in games?

Because if we take that as a real issue, shouldn't we fight all games where people shoot people as well? Or where reckless driving is promoted? No gamer , male or female, wants that, right? So let games be games and let us fight sexism and racism and violence where it matters, the real world.

 

I actually wish MS and Sony were as transparent as Nintendo seems to be. Although there is this from MS for Xbox in the US (Europe would be interesting, Japan not so much as no one owns one lol)



https://www.windowscentral.com/here...out-xbox-one-owners-microsoft-shared-partners

I literally can't find anything recent about Sony/PS4.

Given the average person screaming on XBL, this married with partner stat shocks me the most.

 

You're being incredibly myopic here.

You're right, the point of gaming is to be entertaining, and to some extent, to serve as a form of escapism. So what justifies us women from being excluded from that?

I want to sit down and play video games and have a good time. It's much, much harder to have a good time if I'm constantly showered with reminders of how men love to view my sex.

And seriously, at this point #GamerGate should be proof enough that no one is immune to being influenced by the media they consume. It's disingenuous to assert otherwise.

 

Unless you believe that other consoles also have that same gender divide the Switch is currently an outlier. It's true that it's perhaps too early to make a call, but it then at least tells us that Nintendos tamer image has no effect on early adopters. And the point was less about why women don't buy a switch, it's more that Nintendo largely avoiding fan service heavy games doesn't seem to have a positive effect, which makes you question where exactly that lies on the list of priorities when buying games

 

I understand the need for balance in this. It's always better to have diversity in character representation, and genuinely have enjoyed a lot of games that have female character designs that are realistic non-objectified characterizations. It makes things vastly more interesting at times.

I also enjoy games for escapism. Sometimes in my media, whether it be movies, television, games, or even novels, I want a bit of titillation. Yes, it's not a realistic or altogether respectful portrayal of women (or men, or whoever) but that's exactly the reason I consume media at times. I'm realistic and respectful all day long. Sometimes I want to enter a world of dragons and bikini armor because it's so ridiculous and it's titillating and it's exciting. There's nothing inherently wrong with that either.

People need to realize that advocating for more positive and diverse character representation in games doesn't mean that's how they want every game to be, they just advocate for more of it. That's a good thing. We can have games that titillate as well as games that take their subject matter seriously. It doesn't particularly matter to me if some of it is out of place as long as we have the diversity of representation, frankly.

 

Hmm. Maybe some of these men are angry because that situation didn't work out the way they wanted it to.

 

What about the women who game that want to escape from being objectified in the real world? Who are "realistic and respectful all day long" but still have to endure an unending litany of sexists and sexism and then have to deal with it all over again in their favorite game(s)? Being sensitive to gender issues isn't mutually exclusive with games that entertain or titillate.

 

Honestly, the Switch sales or Nintendo style of gaming was irrelevant.

The guy that posted that was saying that sexualization wasn't the problem about women not being invited into gaming, even when we have women here saying so.

So, at the end, I can say a lot of shit about my point of view like the rest of us, but I cant talk for the women, I'm just another man, so if anyone wants to truly know the opinion from women, well, they are here to ask (and listen) why they are not invited or why they don't buy a Switch.

But my point (adressed to him btw, I know you didn't write that post) it was sorely that you can't come here mansplaining to women what they feel or not feel about gaming and sexualization.

 

Price and motivation. I and another poster said to you when you're having to pay £300+ for a console, it's going to be the hardcore market diving in first. That's usually heavily skewed towards males, probably in the 18~30 bracket. Even when the price comes down, you might need a good diversity of experiences featuring the higher desires here. Mario and Zelda are probably pretty diverse in M/F players, if we're to believe completion/fantasy and design are key priorities.

I'm trying to find Nintendo official breakdowns for Mario/Zelda, as AC isn't on the Switch yet. I'm struggling a bit to find anything, but here is a Zelda survey





http://www.zeldainformer.com/zelda-...more-older-than-younger-fans-interesting-fan/

If anyone has official stats from Nintendo on Mario/Zelda please post them. It seems while Nintendo can be more transparent, they don't necessarily release their stats for all their games.

 

Good stuff, again, thanks for that. Total of 56% married/unmarried living together and 42% female ownership, interesting.

 

Okay, so it's about sexualised designs contributing to the fact that women are judged on their attractiveness more than men. And that said judgment is harmful to women. Okay, I can see that argument. But again I'm not sure I agree.

Seems to me like society has always valued women's beauty more than men's, and that this is the reason why we see more sexualised designs of women in the media. It feels like a symptom of our cultural relationship between male sexuality and female beauty, not a cause. Would taking sexualised designs out of all video games really change the different way we see and judge male and females bodies? I can't see it. I don't think this is something you can actually legislate out of the human condition, to be honest. I think it's a natural difference in the genders. Men are more visual and value physical attractiveness higher than women do, thus women are heavily pressured to be attractive. Media reflects that pressure, it doesn't create it, though it can increase its reach or effect on a girl I suppose.

Obviously anyone verbalising judgment of a woman's looks to belittle her is guilty of harassment and a shitty person. But is said harassment caused by seeing sexualised women in media? Again, I don't think so, personally. I think this stuff arises from deep-rooted sexism that begins with behaviour observed at home.

As for censorship, from wikipedia: "Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or "inconvenient" as determined by government authorities or by community consensus.

This is how I define it, and it's close enough for me to say that this kind of criticism IS related to censorship - bearing in mind the community consensus part of the definition. Trying to create a community consensus whereby people can't or won't make certain types of art - that's absolutely censorship.

As for your first point, I'm just trying to ask why it's alright to 'sell sex' in certain situations but not in others. I don't get that. That was the point of much of my post. Many people absolutely DO release porn from the accusation of sexism, as far as I can tell. I'm looking for some kind of consistent rule as to the sexualisation of women in games, I guess.

I always reckoned Dragon Age would have done better it wasn't 50/50 but I could absolutely be wrong. I certainly avoided it and that was one of the reasons why. There are so many games out that that pander exactly to my tastes that I'll almost always just choose one of those. Which I know is privilege in action and I'm fortunate to be in that situation, but there you go. Many other men are too. Are there any stats as to the gender makeup of Dragon Age players? Was it particularly popular with women?

But I suppose this example shows the difficulty of separating the gender issues from the game issues because many people whether or not they liked that idea of the 50-50 split would buy the game anyway because there aren't many blockbuster RPGs like it, in much the same way that a woman who doesn't like seeing female sexualisation will have suffered through Cindy in FFXV because it's Final Fantasy and there are no other RPG series like it. You can't really pin the entire sales fortune of a game on any one small issue like this which makes it tough to determine how much of an effect it has. It's just a little influence in a whole series of influences.

 

No argument is going to be stronger than this collection of posts right here. Thanks for compiling this Morrigan, and thanks to everyone who contributed to it.

 

I gave my opinion based on what I have seen growing up and am not defending either point I just feel more open communication would get things in a better place. I do not have the answer to your question, I think it is part of my point. They are not openly speaking to each other is my point. They are speaking but it seems in almost every case one tries to speak over the other to push their point instead of reaching a happy medium.

Many times either the journalist/critic speaks over the dev and tries to make him change his work with words and humiliation and other times the dev are the ones being pieces of shit. Women have gotten the worse of it for sure, but it is still an issue for both ends.

I was actually referring to this era specifically since it was where I have seen most of these questionable character designs come from. Both from the dev standpoint and the consumer there was a lot of focus on sexualized fantasy/scifi.

Another in a long line of conversations that have never happened.

 

Damn. This is pretty much perfect. Thank you.

It's not just that half-assed explanation for the most glaring question. It's a more insidious thing that goes beyond her sexualized appearance. Like why the hell does Cortana fall in love with Master Chief? There's no good reason for it, it has no narrative weight in the game at all and it's handled without the slightest care. It's there just to appeal to the fantasies of male players.

 

Although, that's primarily about the creation of the main character. I don't doubt some female players create a male character.

Mass Effect 3 was more male tipped for Sheppard

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mass-effect-3-players-prefer-male-shepard/1100-6405842/

Again, that doesn't mean that female players aren't playing as a male Shepard.

Either way, on these stats, DA does have more female MC's than ME.

 

They spend a lot of time together and he makes her feel necessary. Also he treats her like a person instead of a robot. I am not saying that women like that in general, but it's plausible that one would develop feelings for the Master Chief he saves the world and the universe. People fell in love with people for less, hell I would fall in love with Master Chief if he saved the world and I am not even into Spartans

 

While it's great to have input from women here, it would be kind of foolish to think that they speak for all women. That's something that goes both ways, if a woman would post here that she's not bothered by it it wouldn't be representative either. Add to that, that the women who we're talking about are the ones who wouldn't post on a gaming forum. The opinion of the general audience is something you can only really back up with studies or surveys which I haven't seen so far (but good chance that I missed it)

 

C'mon, dude. You know why the Dragon Age games are popular with women. Hint: It's their staple gimmick.

 

https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/ This actually says that 48% of the Dragon Age Inquistion player base was female. And BioWare MMO, SWTOR, also has alot higher % of female gamers then are normal in that genre(3 times higher if you exclude SWTOR from the average). That would suggest if you design for women, they will come. You just have to actually design for them first. And Dragon Age Inquisition was actually BioWare's fastest selling title, so including women in the design demographic clearly didn't hurt them (Including Women, also doesn't mean excluding guys- there's nothing really objectionable to guys in DAI)

I'd also like to point out that I play SWTOR and have encountered a number of other women that also play it online. Despite this, and despite using a female avater, people still think I'm dude.

 

What?

 

I don't know what you are implying but it's probably ignorant.

And so it is.

 

lol, that's the age-old fear of "over-friendly" World of Warcraft player with a female avatar, is actually a 40-year-old dude behaving suspect. Of course, people should just believe you if you say, but you know what the internet is like.

But yeah, that's why I said going on those "numbers" directly from Bioware has the flaw that just because a game character is created as a sex, doesn't mean the person behind it is that sex. Part of roleplay and fantasy can be about attempting to be something you're not. I mean, people like being cats and lizards in TES! Or Orcs, trolls and cows in WoW. Although I'd guess human is still the most played class on the alliance side. Probably millions of men playing as female humans xD

 

The romances.

 

Leather, plate and chain armour with equivalent, similar designs for both men and women?

/seamlessly back on topic

 

What the fuck?

 

Cortana is an incredibly advanced, intelligent AI. Why would she feel so insecure about herself that the basic decency of Master Chief towards her would be enough to make her fall head over heels for him? Because she was conceived that way by us men, for us men. The perfect nice guy fantasy.

 

Please explain to me how I'm wrong.

 

In 2 out of the 3 Dragon Age games, my romances have betrayed me and in the one that they didn't, I died cus I didn't want that Romance Option to sleep with my kinda-friend-clearly-up-to-no-good witch. Yeah, I totally play for the romances.

 

And here it is another example of what I said in my last post.

 

Ad a

As a western male the FFXV cast was, well.. tolerable. A bunch of little pretty boys with big swords. They were typical anime stereotypes. I didn't really have an opinion of them either way but I definitely wouldn't classify them as male power fantasy. At least not in the west. I fully understand women's stance on this issue though exemplified by my unease when Max had romantic options in Life is Strange. It must be like that all the time for women in most games.

 

Because it's a supposition without any factual (or otherwise) evidence to support it? Do you have evidence that the main reason women play Dragon Age is because of the romance options?

 

I played them because they're immersive, choice-driven RPG's with a diverse, interesting cast and great world and lore building. Plus a great combat system and many different avenues for gameplay.

Get the fuck out of here with this "women are only in it for the romances" bullshit.

 

I'm not gonna really get into this tangle, except to say that I think it would do the world a lot of good if we had less Quiet, and more Bayonetta.

 

Gladly.

Not all women are into romance.

The fact that Dragon Age is popular with women only for the romance options is ignoring the fact that the game allows you to role play as a fully characterized and badass woman. It's ignoring that they gave women armor options that didn't expose her tits and ass. It's ignoring that women can't fall in love with the world or the lore or the characters and their story arcs. It's ignoring that the game was well made and a woman can't get into the gameplay or enjoy it as a game.

"Hur dur women only want to kiss boys"

Don't be so daft.

 

Again with the nerd gatekeeping. Women have to constantly prove that they're "real fans," how is this any different? Do you want all of the women on ResetERA to come in here and tell you what their gaming habits are? I don't think any of us on this forum should have to justify why we play the video games we do.

 

You need to expand your Overton window on female characters a fair bit.