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Post by Komori on Feb 9, 2012 23:07:05 GMT -5
I suppose being an artist it's a bit more difficult for me to get beyond that visual image. And, sure, there's no one "ideal man" image per se, but it's frustrating from a character design standpoint to see such interesting male characters, and then different hairstyles plastered on the same woman. Granted, designing female characters is more difficult, but not so difficult that there can't be a single older woman or fat woman in gamedom.
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Post by Killix on Feb 9, 2012 23:11:46 GMT -5
Heehee, Street Fighter. They don't do that to just women. XD You should see the sprite sheets of Urien or Gill, they're pretty much like that. Both are men who fight in nothing but thong underwear. At the beginning of the match, Urien explodes his clothing off, and Gill dissolves his. XD If you want a female Street Fighter who isn't strippalicious: Makoto can kick plenty of butt without dressing like a prostitute, inventing her own laws of bounce physics, or fighting in high-heels.
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Post by Stal on Feb 9, 2012 23:13:58 GMT -5
I suppose being an artist it's a bit more difficult for me to get beyond that visual image. And, sure, there's no one "ideal man" image per se, but it's frustrating from a character design standpoint to see such interesting male characters, and then different hairstyles plastered on the same woman. Granted, designing female characters is more difficult, but not so difficult that there can't be a single older woman or fat woman in gamedom. Without a doubt. And female design is utterly ridiculous. When one's chest should be generating its own gravity well, or you have to add bouncing to a -fighting- game (Mai, again), I mean there's definitely a lot of issues. I want to make it clear I do recognize that. But I think some of the imbalance disappears when context is considered. But mostly a lot of it just comes from a very Patriarchal society (Japan) and the vestiges of patriarchalness that comes from our own culture.
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Post by Komori on Feb 9, 2012 23:14:17 GMT -5
I didn't say they just do that to women. I was just countering Gav's claim that Chun Li wasn't a sexualized fighter. And I'm not familiar with those other fighters, I've only ever played like the SNES one.
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Post by Killix on Feb 9, 2012 23:17:33 GMT -5
I didn't say they just do that to women. I was just countering Gav's claim that Chun Li wasn't a sexualized fighter. And I'm not familiar with those other fighters, I've only ever played like the SNES one. I didn't say that you said that they did that to just women, it was just a comment on that sprite sheet and Chun Li's sexualized sprites. That's why I left your comment out, and only quoted the image. EDIT: I see how it could be mistaken. The "you" was a general "you". Not a reply to your post. XD; I'm familiar with quite a bit of that series. They have loads and loads of characters. XD
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Post by Komori on Feb 9, 2012 23:23:41 GMT -5
Oh, my mistake then.
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Post by Jason on Feb 10, 2012 0:30:34 GMT -5
After skimming through, I'd like to bring up a couple of questions: Why do you consider designing characters with sex appeal a negative thing? Most are still treated just as well as other characters so why is fanservice considered a negative trait? And even with characters that are treated solely as fanservice to attract gamers to the game, why is that considered a problem as well when there are other characters to make up for it? The best example was listed in the article I quoted: Batman Arkham City. You can take three male characters: Batman, Joker, and the Penguin (the article mentioned the Doctor, but I'm unfamiliar with him). You've got three male characters who are vastly different from one another, and only Batman could really be considered attractive by any stretch. Now, take the three main female characters: Catwoman, Harley, and Poison Ivy. Anti-hero slut, villain slut, and nearly-naked villain slut. All completely obvious fanservice. Not all women are curvy, slinky, sex machines, but where is our female Penguin? Where are the middle-aged women? Or the fat women? Or the downright ugly woman? Where are these "other characters" who make up for it? They don't exist.. I can name 20 male game characters who are definitely not fanservice. Can you name me five women? I probably didn't make it clear but when I said "make up for it" I meant characters that are designed with fanservice in mind yet are still characters outside of the fanservice/fanservice isn't the only thing that defines them as characters, as opposed to characters who have none outside of their appearance. Maybe it's just the type of games I play or have seen most most female characters seem to fit that category pretty well. As far as other forms of media, I'd say it depends on what you're reading/watching.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 10, 2012 1:46:40 GMT -5
So about Stal's comment on romance movies, what about the romance novel genre? It's almost exclusively dominated by lady authors, and they have some seriously trashy boy covers. I even own a couple, and it is the most embarrassing thing to read in public, ever. You are aware that that middle one is one of four characters in that game you can have sex with, right? I didn't say you couldn't name 5 women who had interesting personalities or backstories. I said name 5 women who weren't fanservice: who weren't sexualized versions of females. I mean like this: These men were not designed as sexy men. A rare person would find any one of those people even remotely sexy. Look at this wide range of male characters, with a wide range of body types. Heck, three of them are fat! Look at the variety of designs of these men, and look at the women you listed. If those are the ones you can think of, then you're only proving my point. So I'm going to play devils advocate here and focus on in-game women being generally beauteous and sexualized. (I totally agree on the whole other aspect of gross boys on Internet needing to grow some things and learn some manners.) Most game programmers are guys. People make games that they want to play, and characters that they want to see. I'm sure they don't go into it thinking "We're gonna make this chick totally shallow except for her HOT BUTT, BABY! YEAH!!" I'm not trying to justify or condone the notion of sexism, or to argue that women shouldn't get a better showing in video games. But the root of the issue, as I see it, is that games are geared for men precisely because they are made by men; and it isn't going to change until more women become interested in the making of them. I've worked for a couple game companies, and I'm telling you, I was seriously the only girl programmer in that place. Unfortunately, women often aren't interested in making games. (They also aren't interested in things like Electrical engineering, by the way, before we get into a case of stereotypes breed stereotypes.) I honestly can't give you a good reason why. A lot of women take the introductory programming courses, but very few stay. I've never met a girl who devoted herself solely to writing code all day long, but I could name you so many guys whose only interest in life was code. The point I'm trying to make here is that video game characters are, in general, made by men. Yeah, of course it's completely awful that all video game women seem to have big boobs and small waists. But it's also sort of unfair to say "you're sexist for not making more women-oriented games!", when the people who make it are all guys in the first place.
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Post by Gav on Feb 10, 2012 2:31:37 GMT -5
Okay, maybe Chun-Li wasn't the best example. XD I still don't think she's as bad as Tifa though.
And yeah, agreeing with Stal that just because you can have sex with a character in a video game doesn't make them sexualised. If they dresed like a hooker, that's one thing. But Bioware is for the most part pretty good at giving romanceable charaters believable personalities and backstories. Otherwise, you could say Alistair was fanservice, and while he seems to be immensely popular, he's not running around in only his underpants unless you make him, and even then you're setting yourself at a disadvantange because, whoops! No armour, you die.
I consider characters sexualised if they're explicitly dressed or act so obviously that it's to attract the eye to go places that would have, well, impure intentions.
As for why there aren't average-looking women in video games, well, to be frank, I don't know how to answer that. (I thought Leliana was pretty average-looking. I mean, she's pretty like you'd expect most characters to be, but she wasn't whoastopanddrool). In a sense, characters in video games are supposed to be fantasy. You wouldn't want to play as a couch potato with a beer belly or an acne-ridden teengar. Hence lots of video game characters have impeccably perfect skin, no blemishes, and even their scars seem to be designed to garner attraction. The bulk of characters were designed such that even if they weren't beautiful/handsome, they wouldn't make you recoil in horror. And to go with Crystal, yeah, most programmers were/are men. They go with what they know, and back then and to a lesser extent now they don't have much dearth on how to design female models such that they wouldn't be attractive one way or another.
(You could look at the Broodmother, since we're on Dragon Age. Man that thing could devour 8 Wal-mart's worth of pork rinds.)
It's not like it's the women's fault that there aren't enough female programmers to make a difference, but unless there's a dramatic shift I wouldn't be surprised to see a fair amount of booty in games/comics. And really, there are a lot of men that dislike the sexualised versions of characters. And I'm sure there're women who designed sexualised females, too.
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Post by Enn on Feb 10, 2012 4:54:14 GMT -5
Talking just about video games, there certainly do exist strong female characters who aren't overly sexual- April Ryan from The Longest Journey, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil (where, in comparison, the main male character is a farting pig guy), Elaine from Monkey Island, Nico from Broken Sword, even Portal has Chell (and GLADOS, if you can count an evil robot, haha). And there's the games where you get to set your gender, race etc. But the examples that leap to mind are few and far between, and most of the ones I've listed above are from puzzle games. Thinking of a different genre, fighting games, we have games like Dead or Alive (and it's spin off where all the female characters play beach volleyball in bikinis), and almost every fighter has its resident women in far-too-little (Ivy from Soul Calibur, Cammy from Street Fighter). So I wonder if it varies from genre to genre- either way, there is a pretty huge problem in vast chunks of the industry. It's not just sexism, too. I found this interesting article from 2009 here, and at that time only 3% of video game characters were recognisably hispanic, and of those almost all were background/NPC characters. African Americans are in games in big numbers, but skewed towards sport and celebrity-tie-in games. And although they don't talk about it, when was the last time you played a gay main character (other than in games where you get to make that choice, like Fable, Bioware games etc.)? We have plenty of romance stories in video games, so many characters with girlfriends, or flirting with women. Have we ever had a main male character actually flirt with another guy? There are games where women are strong, independent characters, sometimes even ones you get to play as, and there are games where the men prance around shirtless for no good reason. But they're in no way evenly spread, or repersentative of the real world- or even just the people actually playing games. This 2009 leaflet breaks down gamer demographics, at least in terms of age and sex in the US- 25% of gamers in 2009 were over 50, but how many main characters were? As stated above, women make 40% of gamers (43% online), but only 10% of main characters? (I saw an argument above about how games are made by men, coders, so of course there's sexism because they're coding what they want- well, I mean, there were coders on Cooking Mama, I doubt those coders set out thinking 'you know what's amazing, let's make a game where you bake sugary treats'. There are people with oversight on these projects, people who get to do concept art, people at all stages that can have an influence, directors, publishers- there are all sorts of opportunities for someone to say 'no, let's not put Poison Ivy in that ridiculous get-up' or 'maybe we shouldn't shove Samus Aran into a bikini after a whole game of her being badass'.) EDIT: New figures from 2011: women make up 42% of gamers now.
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Post by Komori on Feb 10, 2012 8:56:50 GMT -5
And, regarding most game programmers being guys: Most film directors are also guys. This LA Times article says that of the top 100 films of 2007, only 2.7% were directed by women. So then, even the "women-skewed romance movie genre" is almost entirely directed by men. And while it's silly to say the movie industry isn't also sexist in some regard, it's definitely doing a much better job than the game or comics industry. Besides, using the reasoning that "Oh, it's men making the games, so of course women are going to be portrayed as sex items" ..... Isn't that the whole argument in the first place? That those men are sexist? If they can't be expected to portray women fairly because they're men, then aren't they the problem? Is that saying, "This sexism thing isn't going to be fixed until women can get in and fix it themselves, because the men certainly aren't interested in changing anything."
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Post by jdb1984 on Feb 10, 2012 9:40:32 GMT -5
When I use Catwoman in Arkham City Challenge mode, I switch her to the Animated skin. Yes, she still has a big chest, but at least she's fully clothed (I don't have a choice in Story mode).
When I did encounter the female villains, I thought of them as, well, villains. Someone who needs some butt-kicking, not sexual objects to faun over while they blab on.
When I walk into a game store and see a female (either behind the counter or shopping), I just ignore the fact and continue doing what I was in there to do.
And yes, FIM is probably one of the best examples of strong females in any show I've seen since the Powerpuff Girls.
The article makes some very good points, but what he said is not true of all straight white male geeks. There are some that do see females as what they are, rather than stereotypes.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 10, 2012 9:55:49 GMT -5
And, regarding most game programmers being guys: Most film directors are also guys. This LA Times article says that of the top 100 films of 2007, only 2.7% were directed by women. So then, even the "women-skewed romance movie genre" is almost entirely directed by men. And while it's silly to say the movie industry isn't also sexist in some regard, it's definitely doing a much better job than the game or comics industry. Besides, using the reasoning that "Oh, it's men making the games, so of course women are going to be portrayed as sex items" ..... Isn't that the whole argument in the first place? That those men are sexist? If they can't be expected to portray women fairly because they're men, then aren't they the problem? Is that saying, "This sexism thing isn't going to be fixed until women can get in and fix it themselves, because the men certainly aren't interested in changing anything." Good point xD Although, isn't that why the stereotype of "beautiful women in Hollywood" exists? Stal and Gav also brought up pretty good points about beauty being different for men vs for women. I don't know about the "is that saying that sexism isn't going to fixed unless women do it" part. The people who write these things, like Nick pointed out, should know better. I'm just making the point that people tend to make what they like to see... or what they think their players want to see. And when most of the people making it are of one gender or another, there's going to be skewing. I'd also like to say that while I'm all for a change on these sorts of attitudes, I'm kind of curious on whether or not they actually work. Do they?
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Post by Komori on Feb 10, 2012 10:12:18 GMT -5
Probably xD Isn't that why the stereotype of "beautiful women in Hollywood" exists? Also, while film directors may be guys, the actors, script writers, backstage people, make up people, and so on may not be. I mean, it's the difference between "the leader is a guy" and "everyone in the company is a guy". Okie dokie, well this article says women make up 13.6% of writers, 19.1% of producers, and even only 32.8% of speaking roles. And this one says that 21% of the top 250 films in 2007 employed ZERO "directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, or editors."
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Post by Crystal on Feb 10, 2012 10:15:48 GMT -5
Which is why I'd just edited it out of my post when you quoted that. Because I couldn't back it up. OOPS I tend to need to go over my posts a couple times before they actually say what I mean. Stuff that I type up late at night, like the long one above, always kind of come out slightly skilted. First of all, could there please be a day when people don't see what I wrote and decide to bluntly disagree for whatever reason? I feel like I'm being talked to like a child. Whatever happened to "From my perspective"? I never got around to replying to this. Don't worry about it, Sae. =) Opinions that are controversial or easy to reply to are replied to en masse in D&D, and it can be a good thing - it means people are talking about the opinion you offered. I'm pretty sure I just got bluntly disagreed with about five times just now. it can be painful, but that's also what makes it fun. Try to emotionally detach yourself a bit from your post and opinion, and look at it kind of 'from above'. As you get better at it, you'll also get better at backing up your opinion in such a way so that people will agree more than disagree with you. The idea is to make them stop and think "Well.. that's a good point", and also to acknowledge the points they make in return to your opinion.
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