Slashdot Mirror
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?'"
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.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
"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."
"Derp de derp."
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
Don't you read your email? These kind of 'upgrades' are already available!
-Adam
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.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
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!
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.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.