A Call for Expandable Codpieces In MMORPGs

Staci Krause writes "The Core for Entertainment and Gaming has an editorial on the growing trend in MMORPGs to to make every area of a woman's anatomy customizable. The female writer of the editorial doesn't mind this at all, but would like to see the same applied to a man's anatomy as well, suggesting: 'Is it so wrong of me to want to see a well endowed man online to run around and battle hideous monsters with?'"

Comments

Random Musings

[fuzzybunny]

1 - "Gnome with a DDD cup" is not exactly an attribute that comes to mind when I think of attractive women. "Hey, lookit the ta-tas on that female gnome!"

2 - "Expandable codpieces"? Give me a break. Women are beautiful. The female body is one of the most elegant things (at least in some incarnations) created by nature. Men, well, I dunno, naked guys not being my cup of tea, but "partially decorated christmas tree" comes to mind. "Goofy-lookin" is another adjective.

3 - I always thought that women were a bit less physical than guys? Correct me if I'm wrong, I know that my female friends often look after a guy they think is attractive (male companion: *snort* "he's probably gay") but at least I figured that girls were at least a bit less apt to wolf-whistle at nice-looking men (unless they're 40-ish and desperate.) I know it's a bit stereotypical of me to say so, but I can't remember the last time I heard "hey, nice trouser snake!". But then again, maybe that's just because it's me....

4 - Girls with guns and swords and jet fighters and kung fu moves are just sexy, period. Maybe it's that I find assertive (not bitchy or dominant) women attractive, but I've heard similar statements from lots of male friends. The idea of h0t Ch1x that can blow things up, do gymnastics, and ride speedbikes (Lara Croft, anyone?) is just appealing. I've yet to see a woman get weak-kneed over Conan or Dirty Harry.

5 - If you're really into esoteric codpieces, may I suggest renting some Blackadder DVDs. Black, his codpiece made of metal....

That said, I'm all for equal rights in games. If someone wants to customize their 35th level troll barbarian in any and every aspect, great. Frankly, it'd be sort of funny to see what the 13 year old pimply gamer set comes up with--although I can't see having a Rogue constantly tripping over the enormous 5 foot schlong dragging from his left trouser leg having an enormous advantage in combat.

Re:Random Musings

[fuzzybunny]

Well, judging by the frequency of "d00000D!!11 i fukd u! Bend over u h0z3r!!1111" type messages I see when playing online, I wouldn't be so quick to rush to conclusions 8-)

Re:Random Musings

[0x0d0a]

I know no gay gamers

As another poster said, you might be surprised. I know a TF player that's gay, though I didn't know that he was gay for ages.

FWIW, a typical TF match conversation not infrequently involves something like "Sniping me from there is so fucking cheap. It was gay as hell." or someone spamming the message systemw. Besides being a semi-hostile environment, there's just not much *point* in most games in someone coming out. I mean, what the heck would you expect -- "gg" "gg" "gg" "Hey, everyone, I'm gay!" ?

I've also run into a few people that have mentioned that they're gay on IRC, an environment where people actually talk to each other. MUDs are probably the closest environment to this, but depending upon the MUD, people are frequently busy role-playing a character, and aren't particularly interested in mixing that character up with their real life self.

I have several homosexual friends--they're stylish, smart people who're usually to be found at the latest bar opening or party or whatever

This, of course, brings up the other possibility -- that people who are very socially active are more likely to come out than a (stereotypically) shy geek type. If someone's drunk and at one of those parties you mention, they might be more willing to say something than someone who spends more time around machines and may have already been harassed in school for being smart/unathletic/overweight/etc.

Incidently, I read an interesting article in the local paper back home (though I believe it was from the AP) about a gay guy who said "Why does everyone expect gay guys to be cultured, socially knowledgeable people? I'm a messy bachelor, just another Joe Sixpack."

And yes, to a man they're significantly less boorish about ogling members of your preferred sex than most of my straight acquaintances :)

It's a not unreasonable guess that it's because they've gone through enough sexuality-related emotional stress that they know what it's like, and aren't going to push it on someone else.

Re:Random Musings

[Mortanius]

lol, I don't think I've ever seen someone type h0z3r before. Is that the Canadian dialect of leetspeak?

Either way, bravo. Canadians represent, yo! :-P

Game Over

[NanoGator]

"So how'd you die?"

"Fell off a cliff."

"How'd you manage that?"

"Pushed."

"He pushed you off a cliff?"

"Well.. maybe not pushed.. more like jousted."

"Jousted?!"

"You jousted with him near a cliff?"

"Yep."

"Uh.. but you didn't have a staff."

"Well, no, not one I bought at the store..."

"???"

"It's a guy thing, alright?"

"... So he jousted you off the cliff with his.."

"Well, no, not exactly. I yelled his name and challenged him to joust, and he just.. turned around. Next thing I know there's a cartoonesque hole in the ground."

hmm

[Khyl'Dran]

Well, with some parts of the male anatomy, it would be pointless to give players the ability to customize. Everyone would just use the maximum setting anyways ;)

There already exists a cheap solution...

[stienman]

Don't you read your email? These kind of 'upgrades' are already available!

-Adam

second life

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

In second life, you can pretty much customize anything about your appearance. A friend and I tried it out one day - he went completely nuts customizing his body. In the end, he didn't look human. Huge feet, tiny waste, green skin, gigantic nose and eyes - it was quite surreal.

This is one of those days I wish we could post pictures in Slashdot threads - not that I can find the pictures I took of him in the game.

Too bad the game was too clunky. Good idea, bad implementation.

Insert standard joke

[rf0]

Replace metal sword with pork sword etc..

Rus

Only If...

[GeckoX]

'Is it so wrong of me to want to see a well endowed man online to run around and battle hideous monsters with?'

Only if I don't have to see it too ;-)

Re:Only If...

[Merk]

And only if the only dangly thing I have to see is that preposition.

It's not the size of your cod...

[Hard_Code]

...it's what you do with it

(sorry had to be said, /me ducks)

Slashdot Quote Humor

[lpp]

Am I the only one who found the quote below to be humorously appropriate to the topic?

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. -- Miss Manners

Only fair?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to make it fair, the equivalent of female breasts is the male pectorals. It's not a sexual organ. Now if you want to go about customizing codpiece size, then how about allowing the ability to customize female avatars with attributes like pubic mound size, degree of camel toe, clitoral projection, etc. Do you want your avatar's clitoris to poke out through the labia, or to remain hidden within the labia?

Want to have more customization? Bring it on!

Arms race

[jonadab]

The problem here is the mentality of males in general and male gamers in
particular. If one guy has a sixteen-inch thingy, all the other guys will
want their character to have an eighteen-incher, and if you allow that, it
won't be many more iterations of one-upmanship before you see guys running
around with, effectively, three legs, and I'm not sure it would stop there.

The only way this could be practical at all would be if the game company
charged on an exponential scale for the extra size. Then you'd be able to
tell who had the most money to blow on their character, but apart from that
things could be kept mostly in check, with most of the characters having
proportions only abnormal in the normal "more than reality" way of such
games, rather than making Salvador Dali look sane.

Re:Arms race

[JavaLord]

f one guy has a sixteen-inch thingy, all the other guys will want their character to have an eighteen-incher, and if you allow that, it won't be many more iterations of one-upmanship before you see guys running around with, effectively, three legs, and I'm not sure it would stop there.

This is the perfect way to make leveling more fun in RPGs. You think dorkmar the barbarian is working his balls off now for level 60, just imagine if he could ad another half inch to his 5 foot "manhood"?

Thank You

[Micro$will]

Now maybe the ladies won't laugh as much while I run around the West Commons naked looking for my corpse.

Interesting, but some points have to be qualified.

[Inoshiro]

The male body is as beautiful as the female body; the notion that it's not attractive is as silly as the notion that women have a lower sex drive. As guys, we usually don't go around checking other guys out -- but we are subconciously rating ourselves in to our competition. Women do this too, they just do it a lot more conciously that guys. They're willing to tell you about it ;) Plus, because of how the media works, there is a lower ratio of attractive guys to attractive girls in most things.

Women do tend to look at more of the full meal deal when talking about how attractive a guy is, but that's only natural since they get to be pregnant. If guys were the ones who became pregnant after a night of sex, I'm sure we'd all be thinking more of the long-term when looking at women. Most guys start to look at the long-term anynays, once they're past the high school relationship phase.

looks

[ggwood]

Having played Everquest for a while, I am surpriesed that there has not been more freedom to dress your character in more or less suggestive attire as desired. I jokingly refer to this as the /slutty option which you can turn on or off. Actually, I think there is room for a few options: just give people a few (say 3) different looks: encased in steel (most conservative), encased in steel...but with curves in the right places, and revealing...which I will leave to your imagination.

Essentially, the same could be done for male characters, and the details of which I will leave up to your imagination.

None of this has to involve more graphics. Currently it can all be done via "hiding" certain pieces of armor, to reveal the default clothes underneeth. Many of us in Everquest want a /hidehelm option since we are allowed to do pretty nice customization to our faces with the /pickface command - but then *no one can see it* because we ware these giant helms.

I know people who intentionally pick "crown" type helms which do not show up just so that people can see their customization. This is particularly important to women, in my experience. They want to look nice in game - and *all* female character models which don't look like monsters having huge breasts annoys them.

I think game designers would garner way more female and casual player interest with three things:
(1) a large degree of avatar customization (Everquest does okay, but there are problems - see above). Give people the option to dress as flirty or elegent or conservative as they want, and obviously allow them to change from one to another.
(2) cooperative gameplay (Everquest is great at this: you gain so much benefit from cooperation with others in groups and in guilds and there really is no emphasis on player killing except on specific servers)
(3) downtime. I know downtime is unpopular, but if you have no time to pause and rest up a bit you will never get to know anything about anyone you are playing with because you will have no time to chat. All MMORPGs probably have great chat tools, but if you have no time to use them... Of course, too much downtime is really bad - its just going to get boring.

Originally I thought GM events and dynamic content would keep me coming back to Everquest, but ultimately it is the players themselves. They have helped me out in the past so I want to help them out in the future, and together a great group of friends makes the game both much easier and more pleasent.
Face it: gameplay is always going to be better in single player games but after playing a MMORPG, I really can't bring myself to play normal offline games much. So I can build a great city in Simcity or conquer the galaxy in Masters of Orion...so what? If I have a positive interaction with someone in Eq, its far, far more rewarding.

It is the casual players, the players who bring their girlfriends/boyfriends etc. which will continue to grow the market for these games. Hard core gamers will always be there, but (1) there are not too many of them and (2) people who commit to play (with their guild for example) every night for 4-8 hours are just plain scary - as a game designer, you are not getting any more money from these people but you are going to get alot more problems from them.

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