Modern Warfare 2 is a sexist game. On this fact, I think most people agree because it's a war game, a typical male fantasy. Beyond that, though, the game omits women from its experience almost entirely. If you skip the infamous No Russian level, the only female contact you have is an automated voice telling you all phone lines in America are down. There are no women in the bunkers, no women in the chain of command, and I'm 90% sure that that poor astronaut also isn't a woman.

To be fair, the lack of women in Modern Warfare 2 doesn't seem as blatantly sexist as other video games where big-breasted bimbo women are shoehorned into the story for the main character to drool over. However, excluding women — who make up more than half of the world's population — from the entire cast of characters is still sexist. Like branding every copy of the game with a No Girls Allowed stamp.

Sexist or not, though, Modern Warfare 2 captured the hearts and minds of at least three feminists simply by being a good game. There may have been moments when my friends and I as women felt uncomfortable — like riding in the Humvee in the mounted gun position; there was something a little too butch about that. Overall, though, I had to conclude that we weren't shut out from enjoying this male fantasy. We just have to ask if there will ever be room for us to exist within it.

Originally my two friends and I weren't planning to spend our entire night in playing Modern Warfare 2. It was just an item of curiosity, like stealing my big brother's Playboy magazine to show off at a slumber party. The game had been out for about a week and everybody was talking about it, particularly the No Russian level. So after a gracing the first level with our presence, we decided to keep playing and see what all the fuss was about.

Two days later I still hadn't left my friends' house. Empty takeout containers littered their living room and the fashion magazines and nail polish had been abandoned in the kitchen. We were at the final level and we were screaming our heads off with all the high-octave fervor of preteen girls at a Jonas Brothers concert.

SPOILER WARNING: MODERN WARFARE 2

That moment went something like this:

"Ohmigod, you have to catch him! Don't let him get away!" This was from Felicity,* a girl in her early 20s who works in local government.

"Ooohhh... He killed Ghost!" This came from Tiffany*, a classmate of mine at Mills College — bastion of feminist principle in the West — and the owner of the PS3. She insists she bought it for the Blu-Ray player but we've all seen the stack of PlayStation One games on her bookshelf.

"We know he killed Ghost, we were there! Oh! Oh! Quicktime event!" That was me, the games journalist who couldn't name a single feminist movement leader.

After negotiating who would perform the quicktime event (me, because Tiffany pointed out I play games for a living), we sat back and soaked up the final moments of Modern Warfare 2 almost in revered silence. After the credits sequence ended, my friends and I stayed up late into the night, gossiping, mooning and moaning over every little detail in the game. Sort of the same way we do for movies we like starring people we'd like to sleep with.

"I heart Ghost," I declared. "He can carry me on his back to a helicopter any day."

"Oh come on," Tiffany replied. "You can't even see his face. MacTavish, now he's dreamy."

"The mohawk's not doing it for me," Felicity contributed. "He'd have to wear his snow cap and goggles to bed."

It struck me then to wonder about our behavior. First of all, I thought it was weird that we were lusting after Ghost and Soap as if they were Brad Pitt and Jason Statham. Second, I noticed we had moments of masculinity when our typical female language ("Omigod! Eee!") was replaced by more aggressive language ("Kill that guy! Run and knife! Go loud, go loud!"). Finally, I thought maybe we failed at being feminists. Modern Warfare 2 is sexist but we played it — and not just played it, loved it.

That last point is important because it's part of a catch-22 in the video games industry: Developers don't make games for girls because they assume girls don't play games, and because developers don't make games for girls, girls don't play video games. In other words, if I accept Modern Warfare 2 as awesome despite being not having a single female character for me to identify with in it, will Modern Warfare 3 also lack female characters?

I brought the drama up with Tiffany first. "It is possible to enjoy something despite it being sexist, not because it's sexist," she said. "I think there needs to be a move away from the language that makes some things for boys and some things for girls so we can enjoy things without using gender language."

To me, that's typical "Millsbian" language — it sounds nice, but it doesn't offer any solutions. So I asked Tiffany if she thought the game would be better with a playable female character in it.

Tiffany said no, she didn't want to play as a woman, she just wanted to see women. The non-playable character women in No Russian don't count because they offended her (and me). Here's why: they all seemed to be wearing the exact same purple shirt whereas the male NPCs had a variety of outfits. It's like the developers had no idea what women wear and copy-pasted one character model into the level to save time.

Above: Spot the women. Now spot the women without purple shirts.

Felicity mentioned the purple shirt ladies as "not real women" too, but she didn't seem nearly as offended by them as Tiffany and I were. She's inclined to forgive Modern Warfare for not really having women in the cast because she prefers that to Japanese role-playing games where all the girls are cutesy, skinny and have huge tits.

"I would have been OK with some of your radio commands coming from women, though," she said. "But I'd be more worried about having a playable female character because it might seem more like they shoehorned a woman into the game."

That made me think of the first Modern Warfare. In that game, there is a female helicopter pilot in a combat situation. For the majority of the level, she's helping your male character out — then at the end, just as you're about to escape a nuclear blast, she gets shot down and your character goes back for her and dies trying to save her.

This triggers my feminist rage in two ways. First, it's inadvertently suggesting that men wouldn't go back for other men on the battlefield — only for women (and from there, it's not much of a stretch to conclude that women shouldn't be on the battlefield). Second, it's implying that women can't drive. Seriously, why couldn't some of the male pilots get shot down?

I give Modern Warfare 2 credit for not repeating the female pilot nonsense. But at the same time, I feel like they wasted an excellent opportunity to give me, Tiffany and Felicity a female character we could easily relate to without feeling like she'd been shoehorned in: the D.C. Invasion levels. You really think the U.S. Army would care about the no-women-in-combat-zones rule when the enemy is in the White House? You would see every able-bodied adult on the battlefield at that point.

That's ultimately what I'm asking for from Modern Warfare 3: room to exist within the male fantasy. I don't just want to lust after Ghost and Soap — I want to imagine myself there with them. I don't just want to know that women are in the Army by hearing their voices on a radio — I want to see them fighting for their country the way I would if the enemy were at the gates and my country needed me. I want developers to know that I play video games too, so they should pander to me as well as men.

*Names have been changed.

At a BMO Capital Markets event for game companies and investors earlier this month, Reggie Fils-Aime presented two slides that, based on Nintendo of America research, put the population of female "primary players" of home consoles at roughly a third of the population of their male counterparts.

These "primary players" are the main users of consoles in their homes, he explained.

Of course, Fils-Aime brought this up in order to demonstrate how much of that market is dominated by female Nintendo console-owners: 80% or, roughly, nine million.

"This didn't happen by accident," he said during his presentation. "It's the result of a deliberate attempt to expand the market."

We are proud to launch this new era of virtual fashion scrutiny with a check of what the beautiful virtual people of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves are wearing during their new and critically-acclaimed PlayStation 3 adventure.

Assisting Kotaku this time are:

-Amy Hennig, Creative Director of Uncharted 2 development studio Naughty Dog. Her studio also provided the many reference photos included here.

-Heather and Jessica from fashion blog Go Fug Yourself, who asked us to refer to them as "The Fug Girls." Their blog is best at cracking jokes on poorly dressed celebrities. They were a shade kinder here. They have not played Uncharted 2 yet.

-Latoya Peterson, editrix of Racialicious, and a contributor to our women-oriented sister blog Jezebel. She has not played Uncharted 2 yet.

Let's dive in...

Nathan Drake

Amy Hennig : Drake is not a man concerned with fashion. He wears what's comfortable and practical, regardless how stained and well-worn those items of clothing may be. His only indulgences are his belt buckles, and the ring he wears on a cord around his neck – a ring supposedly passed down from his ancestor, Sir Francis Drake.

The Fug Girls: Drake's basic outfit has all the qualities a guy could need: It's comfortable, relaxed, breathable, suggests he might be super ripped, and prevents holster-chafing. Our quibble is with the accessory hanging from his belt — surely any adventurer worth his stubble knows that if you might need to break into a run, you shouldn't dangle a dagger anywhere within stabbing distance of your thigh.

Latoya Peterson: Excellent outfit for the circumstances. Casual but sturdy, easily adaptable for a variety of situations.

Naughty Dog Reference: Converse Jack Purcell shoes

Naughty Dog Reference: Henley shirt.

Naughty Dog Reference: Diesel Jeans

Naughty Dog Reference: Belt Buckle

Naughty Dog Reference: Watch

Drake In The Cold

The Fug Girls: If it's cold enough for Drake's enormous fur-trimmed sleeves — he looks like a Mongol hunter about to gnaw on an enormous leg of mutton — then why isn't Drake's bare neck totally freezing? Are scarves insufficiently manly? And would it kill an adventurer to wash his pants every once in a while?

Latoya Peterson: The shearling coat for winter weather is a nice touch.

Chloe Frazer

Amy Hennig : We wanted Chloe's outfits to be practical but sexy, and to display a sense of style. Rather than put her in shapeless cargo pants and standard-issue boots, she wears form-fitting cargos that accentuate her figure, and high boots that have a retro-designer flair. Chloe doesn't want to look too "put-together," but she's got a good body, and she knows it.

The Fug Girls: What else would you wear to scramble around the Himalayas looking for treasure than a belly shirt and a bunch of grungy accessories that might get caught on a tree and accidentally garrote you? That being said, we have to congratulate Chloe for wearing appropriately practical cargo pants. They're still tight enough to be sexy, but she also has all those pockets – so convenient for the adventurer on the go.

Latoya Peterson: Overall, the look works. It's utilitarian, and it's clear this character is out to handle her business. The shrunken tees are a bit much though - not much protection against weather or assault. They are perfect layering pieces though, so this could be easily rectified with a long sleeve kevlar undershirt.

Chloe In Red

The Fug Girls: Correct us if we're wrong, but isn't this the same shirt Chloe was wearing earlier, just in a different color? Is she like the Albert Einstein of treasure-hunters, with a closet full of multiple examples of the exact same outfit? Regardless: Better a t-shirt than a bra top.

Naughty Dog Reference: Cargo Pants

Naughty Dog Reference: Boots

Naughty Dog Reference: Holster

Elena Fisher

Amy Hennig : Like Drake, Elena tends to wear what's practical in her line of work as an investigative journalist – jeans, sturdy boots, and a blouse that will look all right on camera. In a field dominated by men, she still tries to maintain some femininity in her look, but it's hard when you're spattered with mud half the time. Her belt-mounted sidearm reflects the danger inherent in her job.

The Fug Girls: Presumably, it's no surprise to Elena that she enjoys the occasional gritty quest, so while this shirt is cute, perhaps she should shop for something more practical and less tailored — you know, so she looks like a thrill-seeker rather than a helpless disaster-movie damsel who is running away from the lava that just wiped out her law office. (Note from Kotaku: Blame us for not notifying our fashion experts that Elena is a reporter as well as an adventurer/videographer.)

Latoya Peterson: This outfit is not working for me. An anthropologist doing light field work would wear this outfit. But an adventurer? Not so sure, plus the nude colors are washing her out. Military style is back in fashion, so I would swap out the easily destroyed button up with a sturdier blazer/jacket that can be matched with her existing camisole or a scoopneck top.

Naughty Dog Reference: Shirt

Naughty Dog Reference: Shoes

Harry Flynn

Amy Hennig: Flynn's fashion is meant to betray a little more vanity than Drake's more down-to-earth clothing. Flynn's outfit, while basic, is all designer clothing – expensive jeans, designer boots, and a trendy t-shirt and necklace. Even his choice of a gunslinger-style holster is a conscious fashion choice. The differences in their clothing is meant to set up a subtle distinction between Flynn and Drake from the outset.

The Fug Girls: Nothing says, "roguish" like black clothes, leather gloves, man-jewelry, multiple weapons and a pompadour so aggressively retro that we wouldn't be surprised to hear it was inspired by the many violent downward spirals of Dylan McKay. Flynn might as well just wear a tee shirt that reads, "I'm troubled, and hot. Love me."

Latoya Peterson: Sorry, this look is completely over. The bad boy stereotype is screaming off the page. "Look at me! I'm the one in black! The unpredictable one! Do my one-liners make me look cool?" Lighten up on the black, lose the accessories and use a piece like Tom Ford's Herringbone Trench to add some drama and mystery. Plus, it's the perfect place to keep both those guns, and keep the chill off.

Naughty Dog Reference: Shirt

Naughty Dog Reference: Necklace

Victor Sullivan

Amy Hennig, Creative Director, Naughty Dog: Sully is a throwback to early action-adventure heroes like Errol Flynn and Clark Gable, with a healthy dose of Ernest Hemingway thrown in. We wanted his outfit to reflect this heritage – thus the embroidered guayabera shirt, khakis, old-school boots, and ever-present cigar. His preference for a long-barreled Colt Python revolver completes the picture.

(Note From Kotaku: Victor Sullivan was spared the scrutiny of our fashion experts. You're a lucky man, Sully! )

Naughty Dog Reference: Shirt

Naughty Dog Reference: Dockers Pants

The choice to make pregnancy a part of gameplay adds a whole layer of moral issues to development, as well as some awkward questions about how to represent all nine months of swinging hormones, morning sickness and stretch marks.

"It's actually 10 months. A lot of people don't know that," points out Clary Alward, managing editor at the self-explanatory Pregnancy Magazine, the premier publication for all stages of pregnancy.

Pregnancy in video games has come a long way from the 16-bit days where you couldn't even render a baby bump with the industry's best artists. These days we have Harvest Moon games with magic pregnancy potions, Fable II with fancy pregnancy cut scenes and the Sims franchise which has graduated from "shower of daisies" to an actual trimester system.

Pregnancy in The Sims 2 is the most realistic and gives players the greatest sense of accomplishment. Here's how it goes down: a would-be parent has to select the "Try for Baby" option when "Whoo-Hooing" with a member of the opposite sex. If the attempt is successful, a soft chime indicates to the player that the female Sim is pregnant. For the next 72 sim hours, the mom-to-be will experience bouts of morning sickness, run out of energy more quickly, need to use the toilet more often and will usually be more hungry (as a result of throwing up from the morning sickness). At the end of each 24 sim-hour "trimester," the mom's stomach will expand — that's called "popping" in pregnancy language — and on the third day, she goes into labor by grasping her stomach, writhing and moaning. Then you get a nifty little cut scene where the mom's plumb-bob (a.k.a. green glowing gem above her head) splits into two and the baby falls out of thin air into her arms.

MJ Chun, Associate Producer on The Sims 3, says the decision to include pregnancy as part of gameplay in The Sims 2 was made partially because the game featured multi-generational families. But the bigger goal was achieving a level of realism.

"One of the challenges [of realism] was communicating to the player that it was time for the Sim to go into labor," Chun said. "A couple of ideas were debated including having the Sim's water break but it was high on the icky factor and too subtle visually to easily observe in game."

So, does our pregnancy expert sign off on it?

What Clary had to say about The Sims 2 was was something between amusement and disgust: "I really am amused by the writhing and the grasping of belly and the wailing… In the movies when you see women freak out during birth — that is known as 'transition.' Transition is the most intense part of birth, including labor, including the whole phase of delivery. It's wicked, wicked painful. And so the fact that [the developer is] portraying the entire labor and delivery process as like being transition is… it's perpetuating all kinds of stupid things."

Clary also worries that the game sends the wrong message by not covering some complicated parts of pregnancy and its aftermath. For example, I told her about one my Sims that had a Lifetime Aspiration to have 10 kids. The first five pregnancies were okay — but around baby six, my Sim started to have a Fear of having a baby (this is what postpartum depression looks like in the Sims). Because she still had a Want for the baby, the Fear was canceled out when babies six, seven and eight were born. But then, baby number nine caused catastrophe.

My Sim no longer had a Want for babies and the Fear of having babies was still there even when she wasn't pregnant. On the first day of her ninth pregnancy, her husband-Sim died. I couldn't get her mood back to normal before the baby came, so when the Fear of having the baby activated, she had a nervous breakdown. To make matters worse, one of her kids had just failed out of school, so the Social Worker showed up and took all nine kids from the household.

What does this say about pregnancy? Is it realistic in that many mothers struggle with wanting a kid and not wanting one at the same time — or is it just a case of user error not to be read into too deeply?

Clary didn't think what happened to my Sim was all that realistic (especially the Therapist hallucination), but she did say that the game was sending the wrong message by limiting pregnancy to just morning sickness, labor and postpartum depression. There is such a thing as adoption in real life; courts will give unfit mothers a second chance; and it's not unusual to not want the things you thought you wanted before you got pregnant. Clary said she thought game developers should be more responsible about the way they integrate pregnancy and to always make sure that there's a point to it.

Games that have a "point" to pregnancy seem to be about establishing an emotional connection to characters. Dragons Quest V is like that — the twins you have with whichever wife you pick are a major part of the story. A more recent example would be Fable II.

Technically, your female character in Fable II doesn't get "pregnant" — you just get a cut scene that explains you gave birth and then the game resumes with a cradle in your house. It's the same for male characters as it is for female. But that wasn't the way that Lead Designer Peter Molyneux designed it.

"Originally we did plan to depict pregnancy in game with the female hero's stomach expanding," he said. Lionhead Studios decided to opt for a cut scene instead, though, after considering all the moral quandaries that come of having a six-month pregnant mom-to-be wielding a broadsword and getting cut up by bandits.

What I got a kick out of is the part where you have to be married to have kids. I didn't know that when I was trying desperately to get my character, Missy, pregnant. I eventually figured it out — after Missy had slept with half of Albion — and got her hitched to the town crier. In short order, she was at last blessed with a little bundle of joy named Finally.

All of the work I had to do to get Missy pregnant definitely did make subsequent plot choices in Fable II feel more important. I'd spent a ridiculous amount of gold to get the town crier a ring then oh-so-much time pleasing my baby son by dancing in front of his cradle — of course I was more invested in the characters than if I'd just been given these attachments at the start of the game.

Clary's reaction to Missy's story was something between amusement and unease. "There's some really strange imbalance between the real world's mores that they place on the game," she said. "And then there are… some very, very strange messages you could tease out from gameplay."

The most bizarre pregnancies I've ever experienced have been in the Harvest Moon games. The most recent installment — Tree of Tranquility on the Wii — lets you play as a boy or a girl. Each character can get married to one of the townsfolk and have a baby that they raise over the course of the game.

The way it works is that a year to the day after your character gets married in the game, the wife will faint during a cut scene. The husband rushes her to the hospital where the doctor informs the couple that they're expecting. And then the game goes back to business as usual — no "popping," no morning sickness, nothing — for three more months until the baby comes (again, in another cut scene).

It's bizarre that when playing as the girl character you're pretty much farming, fishing and horseback riding all the way up until the point of labor. Then one morning, your husband finds you lying in bed looking ill and then rushes you to the hospital to have the kid — which is essentially his only contribution to the entire process (aside from the obvious fertilization part). Jerkface doesn't even help you out on the farm or watch the kid when it wanders off down toward the river.

The implications are staggering: you have to be married, the baby will take care of itself and your body doesn't change at all physically during pregnancy and of course you can go out and till those fields! Clearly because this is a kids' game, realism isn't high on the list of priorities for the developers when it comes to implementing pregnancy. But it does strike me as a weird way to go about it, if not just plain wrong.

Clary's concern about over-simplified pregnancy in kids' games is that children will see this and it will be their only exposure to pregnancy 'til the real thing happens.

"It's like Guitar Hero," she said. "You play Guitar Hero and it's nothing like playing guitar. I would definitely argue that Guitar Hero and the like should become more like real guitar playing. So I can see a point in having children in games but I think that the gameplay should then arc toward being more realistic as it goes on in development."

The bottom line from Clary's perspective is that many of these games are designed by guys for guys. They're not going to care about realism — they only want it to be fun. That's not to say that pregnancy in a video game couldn't be fun; Clary said she could see women who play World of Warcraft wanting to get their characters pregnant just because of all the time and energy they invest into the character.

"There'd be a point to games doing this," she said, "but whether I think they can do it well or do it accurately or make it something that both men and women would be interested in… I'm kind of doubtful, honestly."

What can we look forward to in games that will feature pregnancy? Well, MJ Chun says to expect more of the same from Sims 3, plus some interesting new ideas.

According to Chun, players can now take their sim to the hospital when she goes into labor, or they can just make Mom stay home and have the baby the ol' fashioned way. Expecting mothers are not house-bound however, the way they were in The Sims 2. "Moms can lead a full life and go visit the library, visit their neighbors, go to the beach or even catch a movie," Chun said. "They [still] get maternity leave so they don't have to go to work."

Expansions in The Sims 2 introduced ways to influence pregnancy, like a cheesecake that gave the mom twins. Sims 3 will have other weird ways to influence the number and gender of babies than just food — like watching certain TV channels or trading in lifetime happiness points for a Fertility Treatment reward (which could lead to triplets).

Oh, and Chun added, "There are now playable ghosts who can have babies."

Ghost babies? GHOST BABIES!

Update: Clary emailed me the following clarification in response to the wrath of the Internet - "Pregnancy does last 40 weeks, which can either translated as more than 9 months or almost 10 months."

GameStop asks, and we assume not rhetorically, "Why not change up the typical 'girls night out' with a Madden-packed 'girls night in?'"

What exactly does a "girls night in" consist of? Playing Madden NFL '09 All Play for the Wii apparently, with its big-headed players, simplified play-calling and waggle-friendly controls, all the while becoming fluent in football vocabulary and learned in gridiron trivia.

If playing the expanded audience version of Madden doesn't appeal to you, ladies, perhaps the hot crab dip will! That's just one of many "delicious, health-conscious and easy-to-make snacks" that you'll find at the GameStop's female online reeducation program. You will, of course eat said snacks off of cute sports themed partyware and use the approved cute names ("Quarterback Quesadillas", "Fumble-Free Oatmeal Raisin Cookies", etc).

Like many of GameStop's efforts to attract female gamers young, old and fond of pink handhelds, the Madden Girls Night In endeavor is an awkward effort. Honestly, we have no idea if this is even remotely appealing or patently offensive, given that our thick foreheads block this sort of critical information from reaching our pea-brains.

What we think we do know, however, is the real reason someone felt this warranted Gamestop.com front page prominence — the "Submit Your Party Photo" link, through which Maddenettes are asked to "attach images from your Girls Night In experience" and send in.

Someone at GameStop corporate is assuredly hoping for candid photos of the bra and panties pillow fight that concludes every all-woman party. Those do happen, right?

Girls Night In [GameStop]

The recent kerfuffle over Leigh Alexander's article on mature versus juvenile sexuality in games reinforced some observations I've been making for the past few years, and highlighted a few more problems I have with the way the discussion tends to turn. Sometimes, I think it just highlights how immature the gaming community can be that we can't discuss the issue of cleavage without resorting to name-calling. Still, sex and visual culture has been on my mind recently thanks to my current research - and if being submersed in films and film culture will do anything, it will dredge up plenty of examples of good depictions of sex, bad depictions of sex, and everything in between. And to be honest, I think the gaming industry by and large has a lot to learn from the older medium of film: from the good, the bad, and the ugly.

While games aren't film, there are a lot of parallels in the ways stories are told and the fact that both are visual mediums. Certainly, there's plenty of bad sex and sexuality on screens across the world, but there's plenty of rich and wonderful depictions, too. Some people say we shouldn't look towards film, but until the medium leaps beyond our current way of telling stories via consoles and handhelds, I think we should be looking to the more established, more mature medium for inspiration (at least some of the time). It couldn't possibly hurt for the most part. It's delightful to ruminate on the emotive power of future video games with fancy technology that's way, way ahead of what the industry can currently produce - but despite the arguments against looking to film for tips on narrative design, games on the whole can barely manage to string together a creative, original, well-developed and well-written narrative.

One of Alexander's points in her Aberrant Gamer column was that it's often the subtle relationships that take on the most power - hand holding in ICO, watching the relationship of two adults through the eyes of a teenager in Final Fantasy XII. It's not the sex/sexual overtones/sexuality for the sake of titillation that so often seems to crop up in games, either with the physical acts or having pixilated tits on display. I'm of the humble opinion that it's easier to whip up a scantily clad character to insert some 'sex appeal' into a game (or movie) than it is to create that same sex appeal through, say, character development. How many films and games have thrown in the more overt sex/sex appeal as an afterthought - "Damn, we forgot the sexy bits, and people like sexy bits - let's throw in some mostly naked people." It feels like an afterthought, and that's a shame, because adding sexuality to the mix can heighten the emotional impact a story has on the viewer. A beloved-but-not-great film in my collection is The Peony Pavilion (not to be confused with the original) - after a subtle handling of the complicated friendship between two women, the not terribly convincing love scene between one of the female leads and her first man crush is not only unerotic, it's jarring, out of place, and only serves to yank the viewer out of what is otherwise a beautiful and rather dreamy film.

On the other side of the coin, one of the most erotic scenes I've ever seen (and I've watched a lot of film) is from Red Sorghum. Early in the film, Gong Li's little wedding procession is waylaid by a bandit, who pulls back the red curtain of her litter, reaches out, and squeezes her red slippered foot. She looks up at him and smiles. It's an erotic, if subtle, moment, far more so than watching various video game vixens or vapid starlets slither about on screen in few or no clothes. It's way more erotic than watching a 'sex scene' that seems tacked on as an afterthought. We're talking about squeezing a foot - even if you aren't terribly aware of the sexual power of the slippered foot in imperial China, it's hard not to see the sexuality that rolls off the screen. More than that, Gong Li's character shifts from a shy girl to being aware of the power of her own sexuality. All this with a foot squeeze and a look, the tilt of a chin, a smile. Video games are capable of this level of subtlety and nuance, but it's a capability that has, thus far, been more or less unexplored.

In short, boobs are the easy way out. Overt sexuality is an easy way out - instant titillation with the ensuing hordes of ogling fan boys and girls is a hell of a lot easier than trying to sell sexuality of a subtler stripe. Sex - and overt sex appeal - has its place, but the fact remains that it's more difficult to craft complex characters, the ones that ooze sex appeal without cartoonish proportions, than it is to put a pixelated body on display. They're less dangerous, too, people on display, easier to put in their place as a sexpot or vapid curvy creature - it's the Gong Lis of the world who are dangerous, the ones who are well aware of the power of what they aren't showing, the ones who can lure and tempt the unwitting man into god only knows what. The ones who know they have more going for them than overexposed cleavage are temptation to the extreme. The lovely courtesans of imperial China (the 'talented women,' not the streetwalkers) were renowned for their beauty, their myriad talents (usually in poetry, painting, or calligraphy), their charming company, their manners. Even wives developed friendships with these multi-talented vixens. There's no doubt that sexuality and beauty played a huge role in vaulting the talented girls to the top of the courtesan heap, but they are deeper than just their stunning figures; pretty figures and faces are a dime a dozen. The most talented had a throngs of adoring admirers (Ming dynasty fan boys and girls?) for several reasons, no matter how sharp their tongue. History, novels and films are all full of these complex, subtle women, vividly sexual beings without being shallow or cheap, but video games seem to lack in this regard.

Let's live dangerously here: any reason the good girl can't vamp around screen every now and again? Does the vamp have to be a man-eater all the time? Characters tend to be shuffled into one category or another, and there is a bit of a madonna/whore complex going on when it comes to women. Characterization of men, I must hasten to add, isn't much better, and just another example that what we really need is better writing, better narrative, better characterization. If the sad, consumptive opera singer of the aforementioned Peony Pavilion can be by turns depressed housewife, tender-hearted friend, and vixenish seductress - if complex characters can emerge out of what amounts to a very average production - why in the world can't equally complex characters emerge from powerhouse development teams at great studios with more frequency than we currently see?

One of my favorite modern films, Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love, features Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai playacting a suspected affair between their cheating spouses. Maggie Cheung, while wearing an astonishing number of tight fitting qipao throughout the film, isn't cultivating sexuality via skin. She's not vamping and pouting her way through the plot; we never see a sex scene, or anything even approaching torrid, happen between the jilted, playacting spouses. And yet - the two are wonderful to watch on screen together. It's passion of a less unbridled sort, developed with looks and posture and body language, but it smolders throughout the movie - and it's sexy as hell to watch them on screen together. Tony Leung once said in an interview that despite playing opposite each other in a number of films, he and Cheung deliberately see each other infrequently to preserve mystery in their relationship. It's partly that mystery that's devastatingly sexy, and the reason I'll suffer through having to watch Zhang Ziyi attempt to act just to see Cheung and Leung work their on-screen magic.

I don't think we're ready for the Wong Kar-wai of video games - I'm certainly not ready for Wong Kar-wai on my console or handheld - but if he and other directors can manage to convey sexuality and well-developed relationships, to say nothing of creating desirable on-screen sirens, in two hours and without resorting to cheap titillation, surely whoever's in charge of the story board for a game that may well have much, much more time to develop and explore characters than your average big screen picture could do the same. Let's have the good girl show some skin and the bad girl cover up a little for a change, or at least admit that's an option. We, and the characters, deserve more richness and diversity in the characterization mix. When the good girl goes 'sexy,' you wind up with Yuna of Final Fantasy X-2. While I think there are some arguments to be made for the 'liberation of Yuna' and ensuing clothing loss and radical change of personality, couldn't they have sexed up the clothing and character without turning her into a giggling idiot for three quarters of the game? No wonder Paine looked like she was nursing a bad headache most of the time.

This really isn't about sex, nudity, breasts, or anything else; it's all in the handling. There's a 2001 documentary (of sorts) that follows the lives of a lesbian couple in Beijing. They're perfectly normal people and a loving couple, they just like to spend lots of time doing their daily in-house activities in the buff. We see them cooking dinner, cleaning, hanging out, showering, hopping in bed - and yet, despite their nudity and their engagement in activities that could easily become fodder for softcore porn, it doesn't feel cheap, it doesn't feel like a copout. Of course, there are plenty of 'artistic,' 'independent,' or 'underground' films that are just as guilty of using gratuitous sex or nudity to say nothing more than 'Hey! Our headliners look good naked! Watch our film!'. And on the flip side, plenty of big budget pictures have tackled sex and naked people with aplomb. This is all about the direction, the cutting, the crafting of the film. This stuff doesn't just happen - it takes talent and the desire to create something more.

With all the emphasis on realism in graphics, you'd hope that people would be equally concerned with realism in characterization (I suppose that particular divide is a conversation saved for another day). Still, considering what can be conveyed visually these days, it should be even easier to create narratives and characters that are compelling in a way that the written word sometimes isn't. And no temperamental prima donna actresses to worry about!

We have the talent in spades - now it's time for the desire to create rich characters and engaging narratives to follow. Jiggling breasts et al. are, at this point, a copout - an easy way to create sex appeal. From better writing, better characterization, more thoughtful creation will flow better depictions of sexuality and sex. And I daresay some of those maligned, subtler, more 'mature' aspects will add a certain element of sexiness that is, for the most part, currently lacking in games. I wouldn't want gaming to resemble an art house theatre and nothing but, but we're in no danger of that - I'm just looking for more options, just like I have when I flip through my DVD collections. I'm patiently waiting for the gaming vixen who knocks us dead in her first appearance, and not with her unrealistic proportions. She'll appear someday ... I hope.

Some games are meant to be nothing more than entertainment, just as many movies are. Even the great 'social dramas' of the silver screen were sold to the masses on sex appeal and escape. But I'm at a loss to see how more diversity and better crafting would hurt any of us in the long run. Jiggling pixels are never going to go away - but it's time to add more (a lot more) than that.

Notes on film screens, in order: The Actress/Centre Stage [阮玲玉] (1992); The Pillow Book (1996); In the Mood for Love [花樣年華] (2000); Peony Pavilion [遊園驚夢] (2001); Red Sorghum [紅高梁] (1987); Peony Pavilion; In the Mood for Love; still from The Goddess [神女] (1934) from The Actress.

1) Women play video games. Our vaginas, surprisingly, do not stop us from using a controller.
2) The Xbox is not a widow maker. No matter how many TV specials say otherwise, men can be happy, productive individuals - both as part of a couple and a part of society - while still playing video games.
3) Movies are not the ideal place to be developing deep psychoanalytical theories about men.

Finally, a woman who isn't cursing all things video game related. I was starting to get a little lonely on the Island of Girl Gamers.

Movies and video games told me that feminists ruined men [Pandagon - thanks, Cola!]