Women on Sex and Videogames

KillerBetties.com continues to produce interesting female oriented gaming commentary. Their latest piece is entitled Sex and Videogames, with several female gamers commenting on the likes of Leisure Suit Larry, the Anarchy Online 'Play Me' ads, and the breast size of electronic actors. From the article:"Do you think the shift towards breeding game designers in college with specialized degrees is going to detract from the casual-gaming young female? Companies so intent on hiring people with only complete devotion to videogames... I didn't know I wanted to make games until my last year of college."

Comments

all we need is better rumble packs

[evilmousse]

here's a game guaranteed to get your girl off ^_^;;

finally stoner videogame boyfriends and needy nontechie girlfriends can be 100% on the same page!

Young AND a girl

[JNighthawk]

This poor child has to face both stereotypes.

Boobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Women constantly complain about boobs in games, but look at the cover of women's magazines: boobs. They clearly like looking at boobs too.

Re:Boobs

[Sentry21]

While you point out an interesting contradiction, keep in mind one subtle difference: the women on magazine covers are women - they are real. Perhaps they are more 'beautiful' (read: airbrushed) than the average woman, but they are still real. Real breasts, real hips, real legs.

Women in videogames are pretty much 100% fantasy. Waists so thin they can wear a wedding ring as a belt, breasts so huge that no material existing today could truly contain their gravity, and of course, so much jiggle that any real woman would be unable to maintain her balance. Oh yeah, and no depth. They just kill things, or look pretty (or both).

The best comparison is between video games and porn - the typical non-amateur 'porn star' is so over-inflated and made-up that they bear no more resemblance to the average woman than the average man does. You never see their personality, and most consumers don't really care anyway.

Let's have realistic woman, let's have interesting women, let's have personalities. Look at Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, or Alex from Half-Life 2. Real women, and attractive (insofar as they're not real) - not hard on the eyes, but not unrealistic either. As such, they're easier to realte to as well, for any gamer.

Boy, would that be nice.

Re:Boobs

[drinkypoo]

The women on magazine covers are as real as the rubber shark in Jaws. Just like film, a photograph can be altered (or just shot!) to make someone look any way you want. The lighting, clothing, makeup, and hairdressing conspire to make them look substantially different from the way they REALLY look before you even get to airbrushing, digital retouching, et cetera. The clothing they wear shapes their breasts and in fact the rest of their body, and the pose you see them in on the cover is typically one of tens or hundreds and chosen because it makes them look as good as possible. In other words, they NEVER look like that, and even their body only looks like that for fleeting moments.

My girlfriend just got Sudeki (you know, chick with huge gazongas on the cover, holding her arms above her head) and was actually partially motivated by the fact that Maxim gave it a high rating. The women in the linked dialogue might be representative but they don't speak for all female gamers and they need to build a bridge, get over it, and vote with their dollars. The guys in games are unrealistic too, but I don't give a shit because I'm playing the game, not critiquing its artwork.

Re:Boobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Women in videogames are pretty much 100% fantasy. Waists so thin they can wear a wedding ring as a belt, breasts so huge that no material existing today could truly contain their gravity, and of course, so much jiggle that any real woman would be unable to maintain her balance. Oh yeah, and no depth. They just kill things, or look pretty (or both).

Yes, because MEN in videogames are so realistic! It's not like they have stupidly large muscles or anything, is it? It's not like the veins are basically bursting free of their limbs at all, right? And hey, the men in videogames have so much depth! It's not like they just kill things, right?

Videogame characters are caricatures. Female, male, it makes no difference. The attempt to paint it as some sort of anti-female crusade is just baseless politics. Ignore it.

Re:Maxim should make games.

[Ra5pu7in]

Gak, as a woman gamer even I wouldn't find "sagging breasts" and "child bearing hips" attractive. The girl from Dark Alliance isn't ugly, even if these gals don't think she's pretty. Very cliche'd, but it really is true that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

I don't think women getting a larger market share would stop games from marketing using sex or making games that include sex. That's like thinking that more women buying magazines will reduce the number of guy magazines. Women getting into games will simply provide support for developers and programmers who want to try different things - like an RPG with female heroes that doesn't focus on changing clothing or an FPS with female characters who dress and act like real military women do.

Must not read womens mags.

[DAldredge]

These women must not read any womens magazines as they are just as 'bad' if not 'worse'. Of course, they could just be jealous that they do not get as much attention as they think they should.

Begin Quote:

Sarah: Here's another rant on sex in videogame advertising. It's an endless cycle, girls don't play because the ads are clearly geared towards men. They don't feel like game development is a good place to be. They don't join the industry to change things, so things stay the same.
Telka: Sexuality in ads will exist as long as you have uncreative minds clamoring away on the idea "
that their audience is entirely male."

Gee, I wish I looked and behaved like Duke Nukem!

[aok]

How many guys look and behave like Duke Nukem or most other male characters in video games?

Do we play those games because we wish we were big juiced-up tough guys or is it just funny and fun to play? Are we worried that if girls see Duke that they'll expect us to look and act like him?

Anyway, you can't prevent what guys find physically attractive in females. The reverse is also true. If I'm an ugly bastard, that doesn't mean all male characters in video games should also be ugly bastards.

Women?

[softspokenrevolution]

I don't see why video-game companies are trying to appeal to a non-existent audience. We all know for a fact that women aren't real.

Did /. really have to link to such a bad article?

[Flyboy Connor]

This article is terrible. It is just a page ripped from a chat session between four women who have little interesting to say about "Sex in Games", who have no qualifications to talk about the subject (apart from the fact that they are women), and who quickly degenerate towards yakking about game advertisements without saying anything profound about them.

Surely there is a lot that can be said about "Sex in Games" from the female perspective. But it should be said by a woman with a brain who writes an article because she has something meaningful to say, and knows how to bring an argument.

So my mind boggles why /. felt it necessary to link to this stuff.