Your Gender/Sex IN VIDEO GAMES, and does it matter to you?

[EbonyBetty]

Sweet Molly, I leave for a couple days and this thread has gotten really interesting. When it comes to creating female characters they are often more restricted in their "sexual dimorphism" than male characters are. Woman characters, for the most part, do have to look more pleasing to the male eye for them to be the "good guys" or play an important part in media. Our generation is not the only ones that endorse it. From the Grimm Fairy Tales where princesses are described as beautiful and the Old Hag is well...exactly what it says on the tin which lets you know she's evil; down to Golden Age Hollywood's Wizard of Oz: "Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Only bad witches are ugly."

 

Yes, there are some female villains that are attractive but they a mixture of male sexual attraction and "fear" ("Well mark me down as scared and horny!") and is a patriarchal construct. Usually, when a female villain is attractive she has a tragic backstory, her evilness was inspired by love, she was once good but fell from grace, yada yada, to make her more sympathetic. However, if the female villain is not sexually attractive, she's just evil plain and simple. You might be familiar with Sigmund Freud's concept of "The Medusa," a female figure so ugly and horrifying that it makes men freeze up in fear and symbolically "castrates" him. Often the fear is tied to a maternal figure in the man's life because The Mother is the only female that once commanded a man (when he was a young boy and vulnerable) in patriarchal society ie "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World." Feminist scholar, Julia Walker has written and spoken about the obvious flaws in Freud's logic. in fact, Frued has a whole chapter for himself in her book. The idea of "The Medusa" caters to the "male gaze", 

suggesting the underlying idea that men cannot sympathize with a woman if she doesn't have at least one trait of what is conventionally attractive in their current society. The idea that women in media have to be at least a little pleasing to look at for men to consider her a full being. While with male (or male coded) characters in a patriarchal are automatically considered full being and are thus afforded more flexibility. How do you think the Hunchback of Notre Dame would have fared had the genders been reversed? A grotesque woman and an attractive man, would you have felt sympathy for her plight? Also, take a look at the emotions of Inside Out for instance and consider their design. Compare the creative leniency given to the physical characteristics of the female-coded emotions and the male-coded emotions. Look for how the illustrator was able to convey that each "sprite" represented a certain emotion through JUST their appearance (pretend you never saw the movie). Who is granted more creative leniency?

While most of Freud's ideas have been criticized but that doesn't keep the media from drawing inspiration aka the Id, super ego, ego. And unfortunately, the "Medusa" idea also extends for how to make a woman character "evil" such as giving her "masculine traits" both physical and personality wise. In a patriarchal society, men that are subservient to women are considered weak and vice versa: a woman is only seen as powerful by how many men she has under her heel. Granted Freud didn't "invent" these ideas since they were already ingrained in his society, but rather gave a name for them. 

 

But this is about the design of female video game characters, correct? Please tell me a protagonist of a video game who is female and fat. I'm talking belly rolls, double chin, and flabby arms and wasn't shown in a comedic light.  I again say the protagonist, not a side character, but the virtual avatar the player controls. Please tell me of a female protagonist who has dark skin (use lupita nyong'o as reference) with a wide nose (not the conventionally attractive thin European nose stuck on a black person). Tell me of a female androgynous protagonist, leans heavily towards male characteristics and is shown in a sympathetic light (no, attractive "tomboys" don't count"). Tell me of a female protagonist that dresses kind of like what society considers a "prude." aka very little skin showing, no skin tight clothing but rather baggy clothing, no breast tease, and no makeup. Also, she doesn't go through a "makeover" transformation to make herself more desirable. Meanwhile, I'll be over here counting how many female protagonists adhered to the media's ideas of attractive traits for women. But the reason why I bring this up is, a female protagonist shouldn't have to be "conventionally attractive" for a male audience to sympathize with her. To be quite honest, that's an insult to the men. Men have enough common sense to differentiate sexual attraction and empathy when looking at a character. I also want the cookie-cutter female dimorphism to be at least evened out with more realistic looking women because those type of woman exists and are most likely playing the game. 

 

TL;DR: Why the **** do Argonian women in Skyrim have titties? They're reptiles, they can't breast feed! Yes, I know/installed the mod that takes out the boobies, but that should have been in the base game. That's just basic biology folks.

[SonicMage117]

You just reminded me of a meme that I see occasionally posted on facebook which talks about society's expectations by depicting 2 pictures.. one with a large woman and a skinny man and the other a large man and a skinny woman. Of course I don't think I can post the meme here, as it probably wouldn't bare appropriate for this forum.

 

I don't think Argonian women have breasts to appeal to male players and I don't think the devs were too worried about the scientific value of the design. I think they just made them that way as it was the easiest way of identifying their sex but that is just my opinion. Skyrim has some interesting mods with sliders for anything/everything but that is a different subject all together.

 

Now to touch on the psychology of this discussion:

 

As a human race, are we really drawn to what is attractive or is that myth?

 

Every psycologist has a different view on this but I suppose that's not important, what's important is what you feel. Personally, I believe that once you reach a certain place in your life - whether it be an event or just that age, everything changes. You are no longer bound to the sexual precepts for what attracts you but what attracts you is different in a form, and this is not even limited to sex but with likings in general.

 

For ex. I may not have liked type B of woman when I was younger for reasons 1, 2, 3 but now I do because I've simply grown into that and the realization that beauty is only skin deep and doesn't last forever is a concept that has finally sunk in. Will people be attracted to the same male or female in 50 years when they're old, wrinkled and need help pooping? Or do those people live in the moment not having that knowledge or wisdom of clarity. I can understand the ignorance when people are young. As I say before, when people get married and have kids, everything changes.

 

And yes I agree with every genre having their own stereotype of a female character.

 

Unfortunately anime will always feature perfect fantasy models, western games seem to have moved on from that type of thing. While "sexy" was everything in the 90's and early 2000's, that certainly is not to be said in 2017. Lara Croft is a nice example of how the games industry has been maturing in the west. Lara in the 90's was all breasts, now she doesn't have anything really going on that makes her "sexy" but I'm willing to bet that someone out there will say "I prefer the new Lara over the old Lara, simply because she has an actual personality now so tht makes her sexier than the 90's porn star Lara"

 

Devs in the west know that if they want people to take their games seriously, to not oversex their product. With the wisdom that oversexualized women will distract players from an engaging storyline. Japan's culture is completely different. Anime/Jrpg/Visual Novel fans expect overbearing oversexualization and plead for it not to get censored so I'm pretty sure that's a much much younger audience, storywriting isn't as important because waifus are what make the game or sell it.

 

For the west, it's relatable guy/girl next door model.

 

For the east, it's cute girl/guy that fufills fantasy and desrire.

 

There really is no balance here, it pretty much leans one way or the other. I hear people saying "Ciri is sexy!" Even with a scar across her face but I wonder, if Ciri was a girl in real life, would they think the same thing. Most will say yes of course but realistically, as soon as they'd meet her they wouldn't be able to look at her because of that huge scar - indeed, the seperation of reality vs game is different as it can be lol

 

And thus, it's an interesting conversation indeed. Sometimes I have to wonder how many men above 30 are into anime and how that would stack up against people under 30 years of age. I'm not saying that anime/Jrpg/visual novels are immature by any means but I'm looking at how its evolved over the years. I was alive and already old when anime just started to become a big thing to the west, it was such a different monster then than it was now but then again, I guess everything has changed since those days.

Edited September 10, 2017 by SonicMage117

[Valmy]

TL;DR: Why the **** do Argonian women in Skyrim have titties? They're reptiles, they can't breast feed! Yes, I know/installed the mod that takes out the boobies, but that should have been in the base game. That's just basic biology folks.

 

Waaaay back in 2000 they introduced the lizard person race, the Iksar, into Everquest and a big deal was made about the fact the females did NOT have titties because obviously they were reptiles. So people are at least capable of doing it right.

 

Granted Argonians came along first, in 1994, titties and all.

[redneckdevil]

I've always wondered about why argonians have titties, but I just chaulk it up to an easy way to distinguish between male and female since the gravelly voices can sometimes make it hard to distinguish. While I am okay with not knowing and having to pay attention or at least gather some type of info myself to tell, that is me and I know I'm not Bethesda target audience anymore and it's most likely there as a quick "that's a girl!" for players with the argonians.

 

I'm used to it now, but would like maybe in future if they did away with the titties and basically made the argonians "dwarfs" and u had to study or research them to tell the difference. If they don't and go same route, I'm used to it and won't be any skin off my back.

[SonicMage117]

I really wish that were true and it was about memory/optimization... unfortunately it's not. If it was true then the game would run alot smoother on consoles.

 

I mean, how much more memory would it take if the argonians had totally different models? A few kilobytes due to compression. How would it affect character creation if it they didn't have breasts? Not at all but it would be hard for us to distinguish between malevajd female for this race.

 

Truth be told, there is a deep science around this, it's more complex than we all thought:

[Hurlshort]

I could see the art asset argument being a thing. You only have so many resources to devote. But is it true that Morrowind had breastless Argonians? Seems weird that they would change course on it. I'd love to hear from Bethesda officially on the change.

[injurai]

It's not an issue of models. Every frame you have to do mesh translations anyways, so it's literally one dot product to solve. It's how they define male and female models too.

 

Ubisofts excuse of not having not done a female lead (at the time) makes more sense, because that has to do with them having to redo all the animation capture. Otherwise you get the awkward ME3 femshep hips that move too aggressively. They had not yet created female animations for anything other than npcs.

 

I figure it just made sense to Bethesda at the time to add sexual dimorphism to Argonians. I believe a long time ago it was suggested that Argonians away from their homeland hist trees started to become ovoviviparous and had to nurse in place of the hist sap.

[EbonyBetty]

I honestly have to laugh at how crazy this thread has gotten. 

[Hurlshort]

I honestly have to laugh at how crazy this thread has gotten. 

 

I don't really see what is so crazy about it, seems like a pretty decent discussion.

[213374U]

 

I really wish that were true and it was about memory/optimization... unfortunately it's not. If it was true then the game would run alot smoother on consoles.

 

I mean, how much more memory would it take if the argonians had totally different models? A few kilobytes due to compression. How would it affect character creation if it they didn't have breasts? Not at all but it would be hard for us to distinguish between malevajd female for this race.

 

You only had one cd or dvd on console. That's not a lot and unlike PC every kB counts. And a skin takes up to MB depending on resolution. A model takes significally more.

Things get cut/reused. And no lead would allow to have a separate model if it could be a standard one.

 

Actually, female argonians without breasts would likely be indistinguishable from male argonians, allowing for re-use of the male model. Much like you can't tell at a glance the female lizards from the males. If they'd wanted they could simply have made "females" be .7 scale males and call it a day. It'd even be verisimile!

 

The real reason is, obviously, that they gave them **** so they'd look good in boobplate. Duh.

 

edit: lol, colloquial for teats is censored but "boobs" isn't? Stay coherent, Obs profanity filter.

 

edit2: "verisimile" apparently isn't a word in English, but "verisimilitude" (a derivative thereof) is. Because reasons.

Edited September 11, 2017 by 213374U

[SonicMage117]

I can't imagine how many people would be angry if there were no breasts on the female argonians, there would be an uproar on the net simply because you couldn't tell the difference. Which was the point of my first comment on the matter, I think that's the reason still, yes..

[Gfted1]

I can't imagine how many people would be angry if there were no breasts on the female argonians, there would be an uproar on the net simply because you couldn't tell the difference. Which was the point of my first comment on the matter, I think that's the reason still, yes..

Uproar gonna uproar. Just pick the flavor of the day. When PoE was still in development, Obs released a concept art of a character called Cadegund, who was wearing boobplate:

 

 

 

Then a terrific cry rose up from the forums! "This isn't realistic!" they said. "It would actually cause MORE damage by channeling the blow to the sternum!" they exclaimed. "Millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."...ok, that last one was me....but trust me....uproars happen for any and no reasons. Obs was forced to change that concept art to one with no boobplate, and iirc, the character wasn't even in the game.

[Gromnir]

 

I can't imagine how many people would be angry if there were no breasts on the female argonians, there would be an uproar on the net simply because you couldn't tell the difference. Which was the point of my first comment on the matter, I think that's the reason still, yes..

Uproar gonna uproar. Just pick the flavor of the day. When PoE was still in development, Obs released a concept art of a character called Cadegund, who was wearing boobplate:

 

image

 

 

Then a terrific cry rose up from the forums! "This isn't realistic!" they said. "It would actually cause MORE damage by channeling the blow to the sternum!" they exclaimed. "Millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."...ok, that last one was me....but trust me....uproars happen for any and no reasons. Obs was forced to change that concept art to one with no boobplate, and iirc, the character wasn't even in the game.

 

 

am knowing Gromnir didn't bother with such silliness 'til a cry went up from the defenders o' b00b plate insisting it were realistic.  we personal didn't care if stuff was or wasn't realistic, but were no way to argue b00b plate or b00b chainmail were anything but pandering to a particular taste in feminine form. were all kinda valid defenses for b00b armour, but realism were exposing the asinine lengths folks were going to defend.

 

'course am thinking gifted missed the larger takeaway from his shared recollection o' the b00b plate kerfuffle: people bought poe in spite o' a shift towards more understated b00b armour.  the sky did not fall. fans did not abandon the game 'cause o' lack o' more pronounced mammary displays. the poe purchasers were, shocking, less concerned with gratuitous content than they were with actual gameplay. a slight shift away from overt appeals to adolescent fascination with b00bies went unnoticed by any save for folks such as Gromnir and gifted who witnessed the tumult resulting from cadegund's "armour," which woulda' been more appropriate on a usc cheerleader than anybody engaging in combat. 

 

dig through the deadfire wishlist and recommendation threads.  parse the endless poe criticism threads. am having a difficult time recalling appeals for more pronounced b00b armour. if there were such, they were comic few in number.  

 

kept b00n armour in poe and folks woulda' continued to complain.  became an issue on the boards precisely 'cause some folks were all twisted up over armour designs.  removal o' such armour were noticed by almost nobody.

 

*shrug*

 

seems like it were an easy win for obsidian.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited September 11, 2017 by Gromnir

[SonicMage117]

I've seen users on there write the craziest things, complain about the weirdest stuff. Petition and boycott games because they didn't have enough flat-chested female girls to their liking.

 

You'd be surprised what people will complain about and to what length they'll go to get their way.

 

It doesn't take much these days for devs to "screw up" a game and lose hundreds of thousands of sales just because one fan says "This game doesn't have this?? Let's start a revolt!!" Makes a group or a thread or even a youtube video and causes major havok, generating all kinds of mess.

 

It doesn't matter what we think of, from a female character wearing the wrong earings, to wearing the wrong dress... it's all been done. People have made a big deal about all that kind of stuff on forums. I am talking specifically about Visual Novel/Jrpg/Anime Fighters fanbases who are extremely picky about girls in their games. Yes, I've seen it all...

 

Just look at the comments here for example...

 https://mobile.twitter.com/tsuntenshi/status/621480371121577984

 

^That is just a small example. Of course I could do more direct links but I don't think they would be much appropriate since in all honesty, the current subject on this thread would fall under "censorship" and that's one of the biggest discussions on Steam right now.

[Vaeliorin]

Please tell me a protagonist of a video game who is female and fat. I'm talking belly rolls, double chin, and flabby arms and wasn't shown in a comedic light.

If you can point me to a fat character in general in a game who isn't comic relief or evil, I'll be surprised.  Honestly, I don't care if there are fat people or not in games (creating a model/animations for fat people seems kind of pointless to me unless there's a really important reason for it), but if you're going to include them, maybe make some of them just regular people?

[Hurlshort]

SW:TOR lets you play a fairly beefy character, male or female. 

[ShadySands]

For reference

[213374U]

*big boned

[Malcador]

Those are the roids you're looking for

[Gromnir]

SW:TOR lets you play a fairly beefy character, male or female. 

 

...

 

now the folks in the thread parroting their women's studies class is amusing to us as they is seeming cartoony and hyperbolic to us, but then hurl posts and we can't help but wonder if perhaps we are being naive.

 

how on earth does the tor type 4 option females appear "beefy"? sure, compared to options 1-3, type 4 is having a bit more junk-in-the-trunk (probable dating our self) but is no way we see 4 and say "beefy" and surely not fat. the male option 4, on the other, hand is clear a fan of a high carb diet... and perhaps moderate regular exercise to give him some muscle tone. male 4 is gonna have BMI which has his doctor suggesting cholesterol tests and lifestyle alterations.  female option 4 is very much still in the normal-to-idealized range for women. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps the rhoids options is the number 3 body type.

 

https://torf.mmo-fashion.com/body-types/

 

can't tell from the images, but number 3 female is also significant taller than the other female options.  "amazon" option.

Edited September 12, 2017 by Gromnir

[ShadySands]

I'd have to agree with Grom on that

 

The male looks like a strongman competitor and the female is rocking the hourglass

[Hurlshort]

Since it was brought up, I have some pretty strong opinions on the whole climate we have today regarding weight. While I am going to be quick to defend anyone who is belittled or attacked over their bodies, I'm pretty concerned about the health implications of normalizing obesity. Living healthy and being active SHOULD be priorities in our society. 

 

Video games typically represent an ideal or exaggerated version of a person. You can jump higher, fight better, and run longer than the common man or woman. So why would obesity be common?

[SonicMage117]

Yeah, thats a good point too... I think that alot of people confuse health with developer bias or sexism.

 

If you're going to be running and fighting alot enemies, you're naturally not going to be overweight/obese. You're going to be in shape because you are optimal shape from fighting.

 

If people want the most complex character customization, I'd point them to Saints Row games. They can create pretty much anything they want there.

[Malcador]

So why would obesity be common?

Maybe it's a game set in a world where combat is carried out via drone ? :D

[213374U]

Since it was brought up, I have some pretty strong opinions on the whole climate we have today regarding weight. While I am going to be quick to defend anyone who is belittled or attacked over their bodies, I'm pretty concerned about the health implications of normalizing obesity. Living healthy and being active SHOULD be priorities in our society. 

 

Video games typically represent an ideal or exaggerated version of a person. You can jump higher, fight better, and run longer than the common man or woman. So why would obesity be common?

 

"Representation is important!"

 

"Promoting healthy lifestyles is important!"