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On The Feminine Form In Gaming
heartless_ writes "The GamerGirl team over at Gamergod.com has an interesting article delving into a male driven industry. This time the subject of discussion is the sometimes overzealous portrayal of women in games." A well-considered piece, with thoughtful references to the works of Camille Paglia and Naomi Wolf. From the article: "He also highlights several games that, instead of focusing on the female form in its big-breasted glory, showcase women who are intelligent, strong, and powerful. He insists, 'The protagonists highlighted above illustrate that plenty of excitement can be provided by female leads who will, in turn, bring in female gamers - not to speak of richer gameplay options. Additionally, as McIntosh says, most women gamers are "confident enough not to feel threatened" by sexist imagery, merely finding it annoying and disappointing.'"
The first section, on the history of the feminine ideal in western film and TV, got me thinking about other cultures.
Really, what would these writers think of fertility idols? Talk about exaggerated body types and... er... attributes (both male and female).
Why can't women who are intelligent, strong, and powerful in games ALSO be big-breasted?
Go back to the beginning of the comic book or look at the covers of old pulp fiction novels. Women have generally always been drawn as buxom and willowy, giving off that hint of repressed sexuality just waiting to come out. Guys ate it up and still do. Would Wonder Woman be as big a draw if she were flat-chested? Girls would still like her but guys would look elsewhere for their eye candy.
So now that gaming and the Internet are the places you find hordes of adolescent males, is it any wonder the trend continues? And so Lara Croft picks up where Wonder Woman leaves off. It may be the 21st Century, but some things aren't going to change anytime soon, not without some sort of ground-swell by woman gamers/artists.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
right - all those gigantic-muscled commando types.
In general are game avatars supposed to represent real people? Isn't one of the reasons we play games to escape the limits and boundaries of our normal experiences?
Having worked in the games biz for over a decade I am going to share with you all a secret...
The vast majority of people in the games biz have girlfriends, wifes, or other form of sexual partners.
The amount of time spent on the female form in our games? Close to zero.
Yes, the female form is usually idealized in games.
And for that matter, so is the male.
And while we're at it so are zombies, aliens, vehicles, buildings, and just about everything else we stick in a game.
It is appealing for people to want to portray the industry as patethic little dorks masturbating in their cubicles over bouncing breast physics in games and the poor women of the world soldiering on in the face of such behavior in men ready to throw their cash at the games market if the 'little boys would just grow up and be as mature as women'
Too bad it has no realtion to reality.
40 percent of our time is spent thinking about and implementing what we think would be fun.
40 percent of our time is spent thinking about and implementing what we think would look cool.
And 10 percent of our time is spent think about and talking about where we are going to have lunch.
But these people need to stop fucking acting like it's just the *women* in games. Yes, you won't often see a flat-chested female in a game, but you probably won't see a male character with anything less than a near perfect, lean, muscular body. So either start complaining about the men in games too, or (preferably) just shut the fuck up.
Just because something is obvious doesn't mean that it's true. I'm one of the three people who plays Matrix Online, and I know quite a few people in the game. I'm male, but play female avatars because I don't feel like looking at a guy's butt for hours on end as I play the game. I know some other men who play female avatars, and also women who play female avatars, and men who play male avatars. This is all just anecdotal, but here's how my experience breaks down:
1. All of the men who play female avatars pick the female avatar with the smallest breasts and hips.
2. Women who play female avatars are all over the spectrum, but seem to have a tendency to pick avatars with big or medium breasts and hips.
3. Men who play male avatars tend to choose the middle-size or small avatar more often than the giant avatar.
I haven't run into a lot of female players who play male avatars, either because they don't admit it or because there aren't any - I don't know. I'm not counting the people I haven't asked, so my sample is small.
And as for clothing, the people who have female avatars all tend to wear sexy clothing, whether the player is male or female.
MxO is in one sense not the best example, because there's a limit to how risque the character's outfit gets, and none of the character wear anything that looks like armor, so there's no male/female mismatch there. All of the characters can dress up styley or dress down, and for the most part people dress up, not down, even to the extent of choosing clothes with fewer buffs that look nicer.
(in anime, the lead love interest if often voiced by a woman)
Actually, even the most girly-looking "bishounen" in anime have deep, husky voices in the original Japanese track, especially if the male love interest is somewhat shrouded in mystery.
It's generally American animation houses which think women have better "cartoon" voices. Bart Simpson, for example, is voiced by a woman.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Maybe I'm just an ignorant sexist male game developer. Admittedly, I've only ever worked on driving games, and games with no women in them. But still...
The "thoughtful" references to the authors mentioned makes it sound like the games industry is some sort of male consipiracy, trying to force women to look like Lara Croft. I don't really see how they stretch to that, thought. Beyond fighting games like DOA or Rumble Roses, I don't see much in the way of game designers turning to "jiggle technology" instead of gameplay (and even DOA does tend to change a little from version to version). To be honest, looking back through time I can't think of that many games with hugely overblown female avatars at all, especially in comparison to overblown male avatars.
And lately, of course, we're tending more towards first-person games where you don't see any avatar at all, except in cutscenes. Or games like Tomb Raider where the size of the breasts are immaterial because of the chase-camera view. As I said, I've worked on driving games, where your gender is never even referred to.
So, since the article only says this is a big problem in lots of titles and never actually mentions any of them by name (the "jiggle" leads me to think of the fighting games I mentioned before, as well as the spinoff Beach Volleyball game), what should we as game producers be doing to combat the male conspiracy to twist women's appearances to our evil will?
Also, as a final aside, anyone else find it interesting that the recent Playboy game was designed by Brenda Brathwaite, who is in fact a real actual female woman?
Game dev and music blog
I'll never be as tall, strong, fast, or rich as Kevin Garnett.
... or are these feminists saying that the female ego is far more fragile than the male one?
Being shorter, weaker, slower, and poorer than him all make me far, far less successful at impressing members of the opposite sex that I would be if I had all that going for me.
Why am I able to enjoy a Timberwolves game and admire Kevin Garnett's remarkable athleticism without becoming "intimidated and demoralized" by the unrealistic ideal of manhood which he projects? If half of what various feminist wonks are saying is true, seeing KG play a ball game should make me hate myself.
Women who see Lara Croft's enormous hooters and react with anything more than dismissive laughter are clearly in need of therapy. Yes, she's an "unrealistic ideal," but you clearly have a dangerous mental separation from reality if you feel it's one you need to aspire to.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I disagree that making the female characters extremely beautiful, big breasted, and scantily clad only appeals to men. Just look at your nearest MMORPG if you want proof. Every single real life female that I know who plays MMORPG's *always* selects the super-beautiful heroine girl. I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule but you will be hard pressed to find a real life female who's playing a dwarf in World of Warcraft for example.
Funny you should say that. I play WoW with my wife and a female friend. My wife plays a troll and a gnome, and my friend plays a dwarf. So, of the three female characters I'm personally familiar with, none of them are sexy.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
1. Most men like looking at sexy women.
2. Most women also like looking at sexy women.
1. Most (I presume you mean straight) men like looking at sexy women because it causes an instinctive postive reaction or stimulation.
2. Most women look at sexy women because they want to evoke the same reaction and are looking for the guidelines. Ergo, women look at sexy women not because they like looking at sexy women, but because they like getting positive attention especially from men.
The whole debate about the ethics or morality of the media promoting imagery of sexy women is the question of whether women should be encouraged to pursue a particular version of beauty simply because it pleases men.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
The incident is still immortalized in the halls of the SCA in the form of a song called "I'll see your six (and raise you thrity-five.)" (Yes, I'm a society member.) Quite a few women fight "heavy" as we call it, and by and large they have much more in common with Rosie the Riveter than they do with Laura Croft. Large breasts abound, but there is a muscle and bone structure behind them to back it up (and to allow them to hit like the hammer of god.) Even the lightest of the simulated kits we wear weight close to fifty pounds, add in a five pound ratan "sword" and the ability to swing it for an hour or more at a stretch, and you've got to have quite a bit of muscle. (If you think five pounds doesn't sound like much, try holding the average yellow pages at arms length for any length of time.) My point is, even though these women are quite lovely in their own right (heck, I married one of them!), they hardly look like the stuff of Playboy fantasy that dominates the female characters in computer games. Rather than blame society for this, however, I think it has more to do with male psychology. You have to be quite confident in your manhood to make a move on a woman who looks like she could squash you flat without so much as breaking a sweat. Most men just aren't up to that task.
He forwarded me to a supervisor, who explained that they monitored 'socially-unacceptable' behaviour and while this type of entry was insulting and directly compared smaller men to children, it was considered socially acceptable to discriminate based on height. I was actually grateful for the conversation, because it led me to a new research project where I studied height descrimination in North America (worse here than anywhere else in the world) and I used that research for my masters thesis. Small men face virtually identical obstacles when it comes to promotions and pay to what women see, for example. I would have never known that if I hadn't been curious.
I'll tolerate anything except intolerance.
The whole first part of TFA is about how women are personified in games like Barbi and not like real women and how it's bad. BOO HOO
Show me a game where the men are not idealized for the setting! (including Leisure Suit Larry)
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Your point is well-taken, but it's worth noting that there's a difference. Gordon Freeman is buff, good-looking, and competent, but he's never really presented in anything resembling sexual terms. I think a lot of (male, heterosexual) gamers would have been put off the game if he had been. For example (stop reading here if you put a whole lot of value on your heterosexuality), imagine Gordon Freeman in cut-off shorts and a tank top. He'd be presented primarily in a sexual fashion, rather than as a competent hero, and you probably wouldn't be quite so interested in playing the game.
So Gordon Freeman, say, or even somebody more muscular, like Sarge from the Doom series or that guy from Serious Sam (Sam?), are not good counterexamples. It's very rare to see a man in a comic presented in a primarilly sexual fashion.
There are comics out there that present men as sexual objects (I discovered from reading Allison Bechdel's wonderful autobiographical comic The indelible Allison Bechdel). I'd provide a direct link to such comics, but I'm at work, and don't so much feel like doing a search for "sexual men cartoon" right now. But the characters are kind of passive, the mostly react to the actions of others, they tend to have features exaggerrated to the point of absurdity (much like Blondie's features in the comics), and they are not anybody you'd want to play in a computer game.
So, even though we often see competent, fit men in computer games, you rarely see them sexualized. Women characters portrayed entirely as sexual objects are also rare (I suspect), but not quite as rare as men. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few women characters that seem similar to a Gordon Freeman-style portrayal: Kate Walker, from Syberia; Samus, from Metroid; Cate Archer, from No One Lives Forever and (I'm not sure if this counts, since she was introduced on TV before video games) Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These are portrayals of women who are attractive, and yet aren't primarily sexual characters. Male or female, you don't mind playing them. Contrast them with the utterly forgettable but ubiquitous female characters you see running around wearing tiny thongs. I wish I could post an example - they're all over the place, but the games tend to suck, and I can't remember any names - only asses.
I think an interesting borderline case is Lara Croft. I didn't really know any women who had a problem with her when the first game in the series came out (although some did note that her short shorts and tight shirt seemed designed to attract men), but when the second game came out, and it was revealed that programmers had enhanced her various features, almost all the women I knew pretty much gave up on the game without trying it.
Anyway, my point is that competent, fit men are not really the equivalent of women who are presented as sexual objects.
Why can't it be both? http://www.hwpr0n.se/! attractive females posing with computer equipment!
[ummm, not really NSFW - no naked anything - but the spirit of it is
But, why it the world would anybody feel threatened by 'sexist' imagery?
Feeling "threatened" is the epitome of the feminist mindset and quickly makes *any* situation about personal safety and/or mental stability... and it's impossible to argue with either.
Saying it has doesn't make it so.
For someone who is invoking economics, you seem to have a pretty shallow grasp of the field. There is more than the Chicago School, you know. You could start with reading "The Affluent Society" bij J.K. Galbraith. And here's a more recent citation. It's the first hit when you google for 'sovereign consumer' for crying out loud.
No, it's not a given. It's your hypothesis. Please demonstrate it.
Advertising is a billion-dollar industry. QED.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?