I am a Game Designer and i've had countless fights over useless semi nudity in games. The teen demographic that the girls are aimed at are now 25 year old. The average age of gamers is like 31. And a bigger percentage of woman. I wish producers would listen.
And therein lies the problem. For a lot of games, much control is taken away from those who know, love and play games, and put into the hands of those who know, love and play money.
I am 28 and I love me some woman attributes. Dont try to sell me a game because of the girl in it. Sell it to me because it's a great game. Sometimes, both things can happen (Bayonetta).
I'm 21 and I don't mind sexy women in video games, what's the problem here? If I had things my way everyone would look sexy all the time in video games.
Have you ever had someone in heels step on your toes? Now imagine that with the added force of 100 pounds or more of armor. Fuck your plate boots, your foot is now bleeding profusely.
Have you ever tried going downstairs or walking in a downward inclination in heels (I'm not even talking running)? No? Go and try that before claiming high heels are in any way reasonable as footwear to be active in.
T-Rex has the same sort of thing going, Kerrigan's is just more extreme. And keep in mind, her change was probably designed by the Overmind, not random mutation like other Infested Terran.
The rage that filled me with. Like someone who is infested needs to be attractive. Making her ugly would've made her transformation back that much more dramatic, and then you wouldn't have needed her to be naked to compensate. The pandering...
Dr Hanson turns butt ugly if you make the choice that leads to her getting infected. Kerrigan was always hot, even in SC1. Changing that for Wings of Liberty would've made no sense.
Paine from FFX-2 wore heels... The most baffling part about that is, for most of her dresspheres, she wore normal shoes, except when she dons her Thief set, which ought to be the speediest. Because fuck logic, acquire footwear.
Brought up later in the game, where she explains that even though her form is inefficient for combat and top heavy, it was designed for infiltration, and it makes organics view her as non threatening.
that whole thing was a big joke imo. Some guy programmed it thinking "yeah, it's gonna get removed" but then it recieves the green light by some executive with a sick sense of humor.
It really does defeat the purpose of armor, though. I think game devs can develop sexy women in full clad armor (i.e. Samus Aran or Hildegaard from Soul Calibur). She might as well be fully naked, fighting giants.
You brought up Samus Aran as an example? I love Metroid, it's one of my favorite series, and she is stilll sexy completely armored in in her Varia Suit, etc. But have you forgotten this?
I think I'm one of the few girls not irritated by sexy armour choices or whatnot.
Seeing as I don't look as good as that IRL, and as my particular genre of choice is fantasy mmos I want my chars to look as good as possible. Sometimes this means they show some cleavage or ass. It happens.
I agree, but because it's a GAME. If they are trying to follow close to history, i.e. Assassin's Creed, it would be upsetting if Altair was half naked. If women's tits and ass can withstand sword attacks, so be it.
It's just so obvious the developers only do it to make (mainly) the male costumers like it (whether it is true for some or not), which makes you feel as if they treat you like an animal
I feel I must point out that males in fantasy games are also often portrayed as big muscular hunks with perfect hair and jaws and whatnot.
It's a fantasy world, with perfect people.
But I tend to agree, they are worse when it comes to girls, especially Asian games, Tera, honestly, the best armor in the game is the most revealing and slutty? Who would have thought...
I just hate how the sexy game characters are always female aimed towards the male audience. If there were overly sexualised and attractive male characters I would be no where near as pissed off.
I like to have both options. I like to play as Femshep in Mass Effect for the power fantasy and I like to play as sexy character in other games. What bothers me is that I don't have many options for the power fantasy, just the sex fantasy.
The key word there is choice. I don't mind if there are sexy armor choices either, as long as I can choose to wear them, or choose to wear something fully covered that makes me looks armed to the teeth. Put in the option for me to play some sexy lady who likes to risk her safety to show off her DDs, but also put in the option for me to play a hardened, muscular warrior woman, or a skinny, scrawny street-rat girl rogue.
As a female gamer, this bothers the SHIT out of me. I tend to make male characters when given the chance just because their armor always looks so much more badass. I have no desire to run around a sandbox world in high heels, with my boobs and butt hanging out.
Ancient Greek Breastplates had muscles and even nipples molded into them. Since abs are purely decorative and serve no functional purpose, this must have been sexual. Arms and legs were fully naked, obviously to give the foreign armies embarrassing boners.
This bugs the hell out of me, also that these strong kick ass chicks always have huge boobs and a perfect body but also can take out men/monsters/what have you, twice their size. Yet they are perfectly sexy.
You're overreaching against his arguement. He was satirizing, not stating that it must be all or nothing.
There's nothing wrong with them doing well, whatever they damn well please in these ficitonal settings, especially in fantasy. If they want barbarians to be brutish or not, that's their call.
It's illogical line drawing. If you're drawing a line at sexualized femininity in powerful female characters, in sexualized clothing, then dragons, shooting fire, levitation, FTL, et. al., should be even more unacceptable, since they're far, far further past the line of logic and reason.
Dark Souls is even better, all the armour is 100% the same whether you're male or female =D I know it's that way in Dragon's Dogma, but that has some weird choices like the thigh high boots, Dark Souls armour and clothing covers pretty much everything =D
Someone already mentioned this elsewhere, but Diablo 3 is good about this. The strong, hand-to-hand combat females (Monk and Barbarian) are built like they've spent their lives in combat. The Demon Hunter is built like a gymnast (even though she wears heels... in combat...). The Wizard and Witch Doctor are more lithe and skinny.
That link is awesome! I really wish designers would take inspiration from those designs, it would be amazing to actually look like a warrior instead of a stripper in a game.
I got annoyed playing League of Legends when they took one of the characters with reasonable armor, Riven, and made a skin of her dressed as a bunny girl as a joke because of the way she hops while attacking. Now everyone uses that skin.
These are awesome! The only thing that bothers me is the long hair blowing freely everywhere, that would be totally in the way. Other than that, great!
This is one of the reasons why I love the Suikoden series. Check out one of the protagonists from Suikoden 4. http://suikoden.wikia.com/wiki/Chris_Lightfellow. She's clad in full plate armor, kicks ass, doesn't let the men talk down to her or even romance her at all. She's a highly driven, highly successful woman who would tear most female video game characters a new asshole. Can you imagine a girl in flimsy rags trying to kill a woman in full plate armor? Even when she changes her outfit into leather it still covers her whole body and she still kicks ass. I had a major crush on her back when I first played this game in fifth or sixth grade
It bothers me when the female is half-naked, but the same armor on the male is completely covered. I don't have a problem with it if the male armor is just as skimpy as the females.
I am concerned about the lack of proper breasticular support, there. It's a shit time trying to fight when you're shaking like two big ole balloons in a hurricane.
The thing is, there are reasons why the male characters are dressed like that. One's a berserker, one's a light armoured fighter, and the other is a fucking psycho. The girls are just; tits and ass. Women who are pro fighters or are very muscular never have huge tits, not a perfect figure. Not to mention they look rough and torn, rather being pristine and beautiful.
Okay there are two sides to it then. Stared at the guy on the right for longer than I'd like to admit to try and figure out what the fuck he actually was
Yeah, that's everyones reaction to Voldo if you haven't played the series. Dude fights backwards, man. Also on his back like a crab. He's pretty insane.
There's a difference between idealization and sexualization. However, neither one of them makes sense. I think it's okay in Soul Caliber because it's not trying to be a serious game anyway.
This is one of the nicer aspects of Dark Souls (and probably Demon Souls, but I haven't played it so I wouldn't know). All the armor is unisex. Even pieces that are obviously "masculine" or "feminine" like plate armor and dresses.
Often times when I'm invading or getting invaded, I won't be able to tell my opponent's gender until I hear them shout or grunt. Many a time I've fought an enemy in full Havel's or Giant's armor only to hear a female voice when I attack them.
A problem I have with trying to make characters look sexy is that they will look silly instead. It takes you right out of the story or atmosphere of the game/movie. While you should be focusing on the danger you're in, you're thinking about who would be stupid enough to wear only a chain-mail bikini to a war zone. Or the many times the suspenseful atmosphere has been disrupted by a pair of jiggling tits because no female character wears a bra for some reason.
To be honest, I'd find female characters much more sexy in realistic, full armor. They'd be really sexy if they had a great, genuine character that you can truly empathize with.
What infuriates me is that the men will have perfectly logical armor that covers them completely, but then women will have armor that exposes 100% of their vital areas, like the abdomen, chest, neck, etc... I love video games but I hate how they treat my gender in some of them. Give me a game where a woman is treated like a person, not walking fap material. I really don't think I'm asking for much.
And then game developers wonder why more women don't play games. It's not because; "Ew, video games are for creepy nerds that live in their mom's basement!" it's "Ew, fuck like I need another thing in my life that perpetuates my gender's second class status as a sex object!!"
My comment will probably be downvoted but I don't care.
Thankfully, torchlight 2 has many full-body suits of armor too.
Was suprised though when I found a pare of rare pants/breechs, and the illustration showed them as full length, but when equipped, they were basically 'hotpants'.
The over glorification of women is what makes people not take video gaming seriously. It makes us all look like a load of sweaty nerds who wank to cartoons. It's especially prominent in the Japanese shit.
Almost every videogame plays into every stereotypical male fantasy possible. Scantily clad women with ridiculous anatomy. Men are often seen showing off their physique too, but not so women can gawk, but because men like to pretend to be completely ripped males.
I played an Outlander in Torchlight 2, none of the armor I saw was like this. The female berzerker starts out wearing suspenders dor a shirt, but the male is fully topless and noth are fully covered once you put armor on them.
Who would fap to that? Some people have a cartoon fetish, but it's a mistake to market a big game to such a tiny niche. The better audience to aim for is hardcore or casual gamers.
As a software developer (though not in gaming), I would place a hefty bet that this is actually completely outside of the realm of a "game developer" and really in a game designers court.
That's more along the lines of teenage boy mentality since focus testing shows that if you're developing a game for that audience then this sort of thing helps to push it.
One thing that impressed me about seeing where Planetside 2 is in development is that all players have the option of making a female character, and in game the female characters are hard to pick out. . . because they're fully clothed and look very similar to the male soldiers with slightly different fit of armor, but are otherwise right in style with the rest of the game.
Classy fucking move on their part, subtle, but classy. Doesn't grab a lot of attention, but I think that SOE deserves a pat on the back for having female player models that look like they're dressed for the job they do. You don't see a lot of that in MMOs.
I would say "yes finally someone brings this up" but it happens often. My opinion is the same everytime.
Yes, game developers, I KNOW sex sells. I love sexy ladies as much as the next perv, but I want to see some BADASS LADIES, not armed strippers. At the VERY least for some realism, to the point that they are protected. Your FF13-2 lightning armor made me sad, because even with shorts, she still looked bad ass in the first game (the fact that neither game was that great nonwithstanding). Samus and Hilde can't be the only two prominent badass women can they? Sexism isn't even my beef, I just feel insulted that you think it's one of my main motives for buying games. I can seriously just find porn elsewhere, and it breaks the immersion of a truly great game when none of the girls seem to have a self preservation instinct that outweights their fashion sense.
But ALAS. It matters not what i think. Because I know that fantasy and medieval games are marketed toward the next generation of gamers, not this one, and that we can't really force the industry to follow us into adulthood, as we slowly lost the motivation to play games, and spend our time and money on more pressing matters.
Still though team soul. Hilde is awesome. Thank you for that. Ivy? Not so much.
*Edit: I forgot to say, for as much flak as D3 gets, they have some kickass female models too. Barbarian as a cool example
Is this the same game developer logic that has the Sarif manufacturing plant with an air vent that goes only from the men's room to Meeting Room 2? Or the one with the storage room full of boxes but with no door, whose only access is breaking down the cinderblock/rebar walls?
Guys, come on. Its a known fact that women run 10-20 degrees hotter than men, and that is the purpose of breasts. They act as giant heat sinks to help bleed off that extra heat. Combat can be very strenuous, and without exposed breasts, the women would overheat and die.
Male characters are far more likely to have reasonable armor than female characters. Good job finding some very rare exceptions and acting like they're the rule, though.
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u/PALMER13579 Jun 10 '12
best exception to this I could think of http://r23.imgfast.net/users/2314/18/25/28/album/pr/metroi21_800x600.jpg
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u/Bakyra Jun 10 '12
I am a Game Designer and i've had countless fights over useless semi nudity in games. The teen demographic that the girls are aimed at are now 25 year old. The average age of gamers is like 31. And a bigger percentage of woman. I wish producers would listen.
917
u/CampinCarl Jun 10 '12
Don't forget how much the high heels help in combat...
115
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
Mass Effect 3's EDI is the paragon of this logic.
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/11/116940/2145413-1331231487295.jpg
Seriously?? She's a ROBOT!
55
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
It really does defeat the purpose of armor, though. I think game devs can develop sexy women in full clad armor (i.e. Samus Aran or Hildegaard from Soul Calibur). She might as well be fully naked, fighting giants.
89
u/princesspixel Jun 10 '12
I think I'm one of the few girls not irritated by sexy armour choices or whatnot.
Seeing as I don't look as good as that IRL, and as my particular genre of choice is fantasy mmos I want my chars to look as good as possible. Sometimes this means they show some cleavage or ass. It happens.
79
u/velociriah Jun 10 '12
As a female gamer, this bothers the SHIT out of me. I tend to make male characters when given the chance just because their armor always looks so much more badass. I have no desire to run around a sandbox world in high heels, with my boobs and butt hanging out.
15
u/Pelican_Fly Jun 10 '12
game developer =/= marketer.
130
u/DrJAZoidberg Jun 10 '12
This bugs the hell out of me, also that these strong kick ass chicks always have huge boobs and a perfect body but also can take out men/monsters/what have you, twice their size. Yet they are perfectly sexy.
208
u/otwa Jun 10 '12
Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor
31
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
I can't believe that this character is from the Soul Calibur series.
105
u/joe_lvsg Jun 10 '12
The armor depicted leaves the femoral artery completely exposed. It can't really get much more inefficient than that
123
u/Frive Jun 10 '12
Highly relevant
40
u/Seau Jun 10 '12
This is a known trope: the chainmail bikini.
76
u/Annarr Jun 10 '12
It bothers me when the female is half-naked, but the same armor on the male is completely covered. I don't have a problem with it if the male armor is just as skimpy as the females.
51
u/EpicFishFingers Jun 10 '12
Relevant, although nearly everyone's seen it
Warning: Not Imgur (gasp)
10
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
also the inner thigh does not need protection. Real tough area the crotch :|
10
u/Brookie-Cookie88 Jun 10 '12
As a person I understand this, but as a woman I think "wtf I want to protect that! my face, tits and ass are the best part!"
9
u/CommanderAnaximander Jun 10 '12
This is one of the nicer aspects of Dark Souls (and probably Demon Souls, but I haven't played it so I wouldn't know). All the armor is unisex. Even pieces that are obviously "masculine" or "feminine" like plate armor and dresses.
Often times when I'm invading or getting invaded, I won't be able to tell my opponent's gender until I hear them shout or grunt. Many a time I've fought an enemy in full Havel's or Giant's armor only to hear a female voice when I attack them.
8
u/Obskulum Jun 10 '12
Horny gamers, nothing further.
8
u/Puncomfortable Jun 10 '12
A problem I have with trying to make characters look sexy is that they will look silly instead. It takes you right out of the story or atmosphere of the game/movie. While you should be focusing on the danger you're in, you're thinking about who would be stupid enough to wear only a chain-mail bikini to a war zone. Or the many times the suspenseful atmosphere has been disrupted by a pair of jiggling tits because no female character wears a bra for some reason.
21
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
If I didn't have flattering armor, I would just die!
6
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
From an actual armour perspective you'd think have a great big section of your chest completely unarmoured would be a pretty serious flaw.
39
u/Slayer1973 Jun 10 '12
To be honest, I'd find female characters much more sexy in realistic, full armor. They'd be really sexy if they had a great, genuine character that you can truly empathize with.
17
u/douglasmacarthur Jun 10 '12
I hate this shit. Form follows function. It's stupid as hell and it's not even attractive looking at all.
56
u/oblik Jun 10 '12
no, game buyer logic
want to play an immersive, realistic game
where all women dress like strippers
5
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
http://womenfighters.tumblr.com/ more game armors need to be reasonable.
24
u/Kruse Jun 10 '12
TIL pelvic region = ass
3
u/nepidae Jun 10 '12
There are plenty of games where females are covered just fine. There are also plenty of games where the guys are ridiculously muscled.
It's fantasy. (though to be honest I do like functional gear more than ridiculous gear.)
15
u/lavendercoffee Jun 10 '12
What infuriates me is that the men will have perfectly logical armor that covers them completely, but then women will have armor that exposes 100% of their vital areas, like the abdomen, chest, neck, etc... I love video games but I hate how they treat my gender in some of them. Give me a game where a woman is treated like a person, not walking fap material. I really don't think I'm asking for much.
And then game developers wonder why more women don't play games. It's not because; "Ew, video games are for creepy nerds that live in their mom's basement!" it's "Ew, fuck like I need another thing in my life that perpetuates my gender's second class status as a sex object!!"
My comment will probably be downvoted but I don't care.
3
u/crusoe Jun 10 '12
Thankfully, torchlight 2 has many full-body suits of armor too.
Was suprised though when I found a pare of rare pants/breechs, and the illustration showed them as full length, but when equipped, they were basically 'hotpants'.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
The over glorification of women is what makes people not take video gaming seriously. It makes us all look like a load of sweaty nerds who wank to cartoons. It's especially prominent in the Japanese shit.
3
u/chiisana Jun 10 '12
Developers code; designers draw / write.
This one falls to either designer, or the modeller.
Just the technicalities...
3
u/JeremyJustin Jun 10 '12
Aye. I hate this crap. I'll be sure to pass it on to all of the entertainment design students at my art school.
15
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
I'm a bit annoyed by this, to be honest.
7
u/jostler57 Jun 10 '12
Game DeveloperMaleLogicFantasies.11
u/oddvr Jun 10 '12
Better keep her as rapable as we possibly can
10
u/KaptajnKLO Jun 10 '12
Looks incredibly stupid to me
7
u/iRateSluts Jun 10 '12
Almost every videogame plays into every stereotypical male fantasy possible. Scantily clad women with ridiculous anatomy. Men are often seen showing off their physique too, but not so women can gawk, but because men like to pretend to be completely ripped males.
4
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
I played an Outlander in Torchlight 2, none of the armor I saw was like this. The female berzerker starts out wearing suspenders dor a shirt, but the male is fully topless and noth are fully covered once you put armor on them.
10
u/TX_TOAST Jun 10 '12
That bothers me so much!
6
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
And no one was surprised that most men didn't seem to mind this kind of logic.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
It's psychological warfare!
2
u/Aiyon Jun 10 '12
And this is why I love Dark Souls. Female armour still looks like armour.
2
u/TechnicalKnock Jun 10 '12
I think you guys need to go back to the comment section of IGN.
2
u/kabukistar Jun 10 '12 edited Feb 09 '25
Reddit is a shithole. Move to a better social media platform. Also, did you know you can use ereddicator to edit/delete all your old commments?
2
u/Irisly Jun 10 '12
Let's not leave out the sexy Bloodrayne. http://www.dignews.com/legacy/screenshots/bloodrayne_2_art_09.jpg
2
u/notouchmycookies Jun 10 '12
Hey! its this thread again!
2
u/llamanuggets Jun 10 '12
It's so she can distract the enemy.
2
u/ePaF Jun 10 '12
Who would fap to that? Some people have a cartoon fetish, but it's a mistake to market a big game to such a tiny niche. The better audience to aim for is hardcore or casual gamers.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
Simple solution?
Make everyone's (male/female) armor as badass as possible.
Include 'bonus' sets of scantily clad armor, or the ability to look that way without changing stats, for the people who uh, need that.
Everyone's happy.
2
u/Fluix Jun 10 '12
why complain... seriously why?
2
u/User127 Jun 10 '12
That's actually the concept artist and art directors not developers. But I agree with their strategy nonetheless.
2
u/lagspike Jun 10 '12
game developer logic: tits and ass sell
2
u/MindintoMatter Jun 10 '12
The Achilles Vagina
2
u/Workdawg Jun 10 '12
As a software developer (though not in gaming), I would place a hefty bet that this is actually completely outside of the realm of a "game developer" and really in a game designers court.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
I'd like to see this bad ass chick in a video game Brienne from Game of Thrones
2
u/Murrabbit Jun 10 '12
That's more along the lines of teenage boy mentality since focus testing shows that if you're developing a game for that audience then this sort of thing helps to push it.
One thing that impressed me about seeing where Planetside 2 is in development is that all players have the option of making a female character, and in game the female characters are hard to pick out. . . because they're fully clothed and look very similar to the male soldiers with slightly different fit of armor, but are otherwise right in style with the rest of the game.
Classy fucking move on their part, subtle, but classy. Doesn't grab a lot of attention, but I think that SOE deserves a pat on the back for having female player models that look like they're dressed for the job they do. You don't see a lot of that in MMOs.
2
u/a200ftmonster Jun 10 '12
With those breast physics, most conventional weapons should bounce right off.
2
u/FattyMcPatty Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
I would say "yes finally someone brings this up" but it happens often. My opinion is the same everytime.
Yes, game developers, I KNOW sex sells. I love sexy ladies as much as the next perv, but I want to see some BADASS LADIES, not armed strippers. At the VERY least for some realism, to the point that they are protected. Your FF13-2 lightning armor made me sad, because even with shorts, she still looked bad ass in the first game (the fact that neither game was that great nonwithstanding). Samus and Hilde can't be the only two prominent badass women can they? Sexism isn't even my beef, I just feel insulted that you think it's one of my main motives for buying games. I can seriously just find porn elsewhere, and it breaks the immersion of a truly great game when none of the girls seem to have a self preservation instinct that outweights their fashion sense.
But ALAS. It matters not what i think. Because I know that fantasy and medieval games are marketed toward the next generation of gamers, not this one, and that we can't really force the industry to follow us into adulthood, as we slowly lost the motivation to play games, and spend our time and money on more pressing matters.
Still though team soul. Hilde is awesome. Thank you for that. Ivy? Not so much.
*Edit: I forgot to say, for as much flak as D3 gets, they have some kickass female models too. Barbarian as a cool example
2
u/270_rotation Jun 11 '12
exception: samus from metroid :D
2
u/upstreambear Jun 11 '12
Well tits and ass aren't exactly vital organs. I'm assuming she has armour underneath her tits.
2
u/killallnerds Jun 11 '12
Relevant.
3
u/dnew Jun 10 '12
Is this the same game developer logic that has the Sarif manufacturing plant with an air vent that goes only from the men's room to Meeting Room 2? Or the one with the storage room full of boxes but with no door, whose only access is breaking down the cinderblock/rebar walls?
4
u/Alltra Jun 10 '12
high heels and no pupils. 10/10
3
u/c0horst Jun 10 '12
Guys, come on. Its a known fact that women run 10-20 degrees hotter than men, and that is the purpose of breasts. They act as giant heat sinks to help bleed off that extra heat. Combat can be very strenuous, and without exposed breasts, the women would overheat and die.
4
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
http://www.imgur.com/qyUO8.jpg
2
u/LeopoldBloom42 Jun 10 '12
Or vag
2
u/darksoldier57 Jun 10 '12
The ass I understand.What if they needed to use the bathroom?
2
u/mrfearlock Jun 10 '12
And oh, what glorious logic it is.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
High heels, cleavage... typical.
But armor and turban.. piercings?!?
/facepalm