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Denver, 1:27 AM
Sat Dec 5
53 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/30/09
11/30/09
At the end of the day however, and, I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but its my opinion.
At the end of the day, I dont really care, if a hulking male protagonist fits, ala god of war, fantastic, its part of the stylised feel of the game, who wants to play as a beer gutted elf in their fantasy games? not me, games are a way to escape, and as humans, most of us would love to feel this good looking and powerful.
Games != real.
The exact arguement (Games arent reality) we use to defend our hobby, we ignore when we all want to sound oh so high and mighty on topics such as this.
I'm an average, every day guy, I wont be buying Bayonetta, because It doesnt appeal to me, sex does not always sell.
11/29/09
11/30/09
11/29/09
Unfortunately the world is not made up of Kotaku-commenters. No. It seems that (at present) the world is made up of idiotic Twilight fans who are obsessed about a female character who is exactly what we loathe. Weak, submissive and constantly (and I mean, constantly!) in need of rescuing by one of the nearby male leads.
*sigh* Women of the world, what are you thinking? At this rate everyone is going to follow in Twilight's popular footsteps and we're going to be flooded with dumbass weak females in all of our media for the next decade at least...
One giant leap backwards for female-kind...
11/29/09
Don't get me started at Twilight. That stuff is rancid. Kotaku is usually a blissful Twilight-free zone and let it remain so in the future.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/29/09
it's understandable for the male characters to desire being strong, but why do all these female videogame characters opt to undergo breast augmentation? to make running painful?
11/29/09
Well, those conditions do exist in nature, even if they're not common.
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/30/09
and working out doesn't increase breast size. quite the opposite.
12/01/09
"and working out doesn't increase breast size. quite the opposite."
That's what I'm saying. It takes less effort, but it's all genetics in the end. But to say that no girl has naturally large breasts is inaccurate as I personally know plenty that do. Larger than that, in fact.
11/29/09
Furthermore, her example of a "non-ripped" male protagonist is Nathan Drake. Who can climb sky scrapers with one hand behind his back.
Video game characters are the stereotypical muscular hero and busty heroin, because they represent the "ideal" forms. The only problem is that a wave of feminism has attempted and partially succeeded in changing the ideal female form, and there is no male centric movement that is an equivalent to that. In other words, although it is seen in video games often, it's something that is embedded within our society at large as well.
11/29/09
Men are not the routine victims of sexual objectification nor discrimination, and hence a shirtless dude is no big deal.
Men also are far less likely to develop eating disorders and have body distortion issues because they are not bombarded with images of photoshop'd and emaciated models and movie stars for the entirety of their teenage and adult lives.
To pretend that these two examples are comparable is laughable at best.
11/29/09
It makes me think of Taylor Lautner (New Moon's Jacob Black) and Gerard Butler (300's King Leonidas), for example. Both of those actors would have had to eat well for their respective roles -- the exact opposite of what many women think they must do in order to be "beautiful."
I've heard some people make an argument that the male fixation over large breasts, thin waistlines, and so on is psychological and evolutionary (i.e. in the end, we guys just want to know who 'best' to impregnate), but somehow that explanation never quite sat well with me ...
11/29/09
11/29/09
The point for huge breasts stands, though.
11/29/09
Ironic, with all the 15 year olds you see in the media now with D cups.
11/29/09
One big thing that I always asked, regarding "bigger breasts = better," is why there seems to be a cutoff, at which point large breasts are no longer attractive (see: many models with fake breasts, for example). Then again, not all men seem to have this cutoff. (This reminds me of some Japanese "art" I have seen. Not necessarily that kind, but "in that direction.")
Regarding your mention of men being called pedophiles for preferring smaller breasts, someone else in this article also brought up that point, and it's odd. It's a matter of taste, and for me it almost seems to depend on the context of the particular woman. (I have friends who are about my height [lower-average, I'd say] but are quite voluptuous, and I have friends who are taller than I by a few inches, and yet their breasts, while still prominent, aren't quite as large. I still think both groups of friends are beautiful.)
11/29/09
Yes, what you refer to exists, but its nothing close to being the same scale. The number of girls and women I know who seriously wrestle with body image issues is staggering.
11/29/09
Teenagers are all doing these, it's just that it's so manly and noble that nobody cares.
11/29/09
I'll acknowledge a difference in degree, but I frankly don't think there's a difference in kind. Unhealthy, objectified images, as well as healthy images, exist for both men and women.
11/29/09
I also find that people tend to pick apart and analyse such decisions to far too great an extent - while you can derive enough meaning from the character designs of a game to write your university thesis, the game designers in all liklihood, were probably mostly male, and simply tried to create "the ideal" man and woman in their games - so to them in this case, the ideal man is a muscled supercapable He-Man, and the ideal woman to them is a voluptuous Barbie archetype - who can generally do about the same things as the man would.
Personally I'd rather play a more moderate version of either a man or a woman before I'd want to play such an obviously idealized version of either - the only part of these idealized forms that I take issue with is that they reek of cliche and unoriginality. They're not offensive... just bland.
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
why oh why won't a games developer give us cowardly,fat,old,boring people the chance to play as a fat, old, boring, coward in a AAA action title.
bingo wings and balding with pudges and sagging. how could it not sell a million.
unless of course the media is one founded on escapism, in which case that has a tiny chance of not selling
11/29/09
Tiny chance, but nothing a bit of advertisement won't fix.
..I don't know. I keep getting back to this, but it really is the perception of it all that is the problem. It's possible for most to see a stereotype, and simply see it for what it is.
But.. one particular audience.. has to require particular stereotypes for the movie or game to appeal to them. So maintaining stereotypes of a specific type is suddenly a requirement - it's necessary for the presentation to be proper. Instead of simply being fantasy.
It's very curious, no?
11/29/09
First, escapism for whom, exactly? Assuming, for a moment, that all the men playing the game want to look hypermusclar and want all their female companions to be large-breasted thin-wasted wastrels (which is clearly not the case, because I'm a guy and I don't want either of those things), I think it should be clear that women playing said game would NOT want to 'escape' to that sort of world, and so games built like this are tailored to a sexist fantasy that is, in my opinion, unacceptable.
Second, there are a multitude of examples of games that sell millions of copies whose main characters are cowardly, fat, old, or boring. (Luigi, Mario, Snake, and Sonic. SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) These games didn't sell millions because people wanted to become Italian plumbers; they sold because the characters were interesting, or at least what the characters did was interesting. It was more about personality and adventure than appearance.
I remember reading that Tim Schafer scrapped the original idea for the main character of Psychonauts, an ostrich with multiple personalities, because "nobody dreams of being an insane ostrich." That said, I think the question is why some games believe it to be a NECESSITY that their characters are hypermuscular/hyperboobular, when there is plenty of evidence that people like to escape to all sorts of in-game personalities.
If the answer is a subconscious belief by some game designers that everyone wants to be hypermuscular/hyperboobular, that's a problem seated in a kind of traditional gender stereotyping that should be rooted out.
11/29/09
11/29/09
For one thing, just because there are women being portrayed in video games as something besides an assistant to the male main character, an objective along the way, or a goal to be gotten to or rescued (a la Mario, Zelda, etc) does not automatically a strong woman character make. I'd like to start off with Zoey, from L4D, a favorite of mine - while she is clearly on equal footing with the male characters during most of the game, she is portrayed as being the one needing rescuing in the trailer for the game. In contrast to the male characters, who are all brave, grizzled men, her calls to the other characters during gameplay are filled with fear and distress, because clearly women are the only ones who would be scared during a time like this. This type of thing is absolutely the norm for "strong" women characters in video games, who I would say are not nearly as strong as some people like to claim they are.
Besides that, she is missing a critical component of this argument; namely that the male characters are portrayed as strong, burly and full of testosterone because that is the type of man game companies are assuming that you (as in male gamers) want to play as. It's classic wish fulfillment - the men take on these hyper-masculine characteristics and the women in video games are relegated to secondary roles and eye candy.
Speaking of eye candy, this is the thing that she brings up that I take the most offense with - that these 'strong' women characters dressed in next to nothing are not being objectified by virtue of their being 'strong'. Absolutely not. That is not how it works. Even if you think that these characters are strong, their bodies are still a) unrealistically proportioned, and b) on display for visual consumption. You can't get much more misogynistic than that.
Ultimately, yes, I agree that these problems are getting better than they were, say, ten years ago. More companies are making an effort, and I am glad that we do have characters like Zoey, despite the fact that she is not as strong a character as Seraphina is implying. However, we still have a long way to go before women are portrayed realistically in video games and given equal roles as far as importance is concerned.
11/29/09
Bioware (Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights), Bethesda and, I suppose, Interplay (Fallout series) seem to do a very good job of sex equality in general.
Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games often give the female members of most races stat differences from the men (usually something along the lines of lower strength but higher intelligence), but all characters, regardless of race or sex, have the potential to max out their stats and skills. And Fallout, since it's dealing with real "races," understandably doesn't bother assigning race-dependent statistics.
@gozu:
What's funny is that in specific examples such as the Halo series, the canon shows all SPARTAN super-soldier candidates, male and female, as being given special drugs and surgeries to, I suppose, fulfill some people's idea of a "power fantasy." I suppose one could *try* to make an argument that the rest of the SPARTANs, especially the females, were kept out of the Halo games in order to give the player a solo male-power fantasy, but that doesn't really jive with the rules of the canon.
11/29/09
11/29/09
While I do see your point, and while I do find it intriguing that the Master Chief's journey could be considered a power fantasy, and that ...
*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS ***
... Cortana is reduced to something of a damsel in distress for most of Halo 3,
*** END SPOILERS ***
I find it very interesting that the Master Chief's character seems to contradict every aspect of this in every day. The Chief is a man who is seemingly defined by a commitment to duty, even from a young age. He's not looking to make the Covenant suffer, and he's not looking for rewards. He makes a literal promise to Cortana in particular, and he makes certain that he keeps it.
In a sense I feel like Bungie's intentions for their character (make the Chief as much of a blank slate as possible so that the player can "role-play" if he or she desires) and the established personality traits of that character, are something of a contradiction to the extent that we're talking about a power fantasy. What makes sense for one part of the canon (the games) doesn't make sense for another (the novels), but I suppose in both cases it comes down to the medium. The novels aren't being written in a first-person point of view.
11/29/09
11/29/09
I think the question here, then, is "why are we so dissatisfied with seeing 'average' people do amazing things?"
While people are entitled to their own opinions of what "beauty" is, why is an arbitrary ideal (for both sexes) constantly pushed forth as objectively and "truly" 'beautiful' ?
11/29/09
Also, large breasts are great!
11/29/09
But she hits the nail on the head, it is a double standard. Sex sells of course and that's what it's about.
Brennan did add a curious point though. Most guys psychologicly don't typically respond to the female leading over the male. But, take Bayonetta, a strong, fit dominatrix style girl whose possibly over nine feet tall. From an image point of view, we might go 'hot girl' at first sight, but how many of us would really go for a taller, better, far physically able female as a mate? Does this quality that we see mean the average gamer is a submissive who revels in the glory of better females?
11/29/09
11/29/09
I don't necessarily have an objection to the whole scantily-clad female thing (though personally, it's more likely to steer me away from a game than towards it), but the issue of female characters, even the strong ones, being portrayed as needing rescue or constantly being frightened bothers me a lot.