I feel like the problem with unnecessary sexy womens clothing in many
games and comics is relatively well known and untill yesterday I would
have said that we are making progress in this area. This changed today
when I received an answer to a question that I had send Bigpoint, the
producer of “Drakensang online”, a free fantasy MMORPG.The question I send
them asked something like “hey team, why are women now expected to fight without pants all of a sudden? I hope this is a halloween thing because I don’t really like it. I thought you were doing really well when you added more skintone options some time ago. It would be cool if you told me what changes you made in the male costume for halloween, I wasn’t really able to make anything out. Cheers, [my name]”The answer they send, you can see above. It says: “Hello, a lot of users asked that it become better visible if a character is male or female. That is why this change was made. With kind regards […]” etc.
I don’t even know if I should be angry about this or just sad. Before female and male characters had basically the same clothing. There is no good reason (as far as I know) why gender should be made more vissible. Also, hoovering your mouse above a character will give you their name
and a (often gendered) title. This is much easier than zooming in to
spot the boob-window. You can see the changes in the pictures above. (The characters still look like before in the character menu, that is where I was able to make the before pictures.)I really want to make a point to Bigpoint about this, so pleas reblog or like this post if you agree with me. If you play the game, it would be awesome if you left a message in their feedback-forums or tell them what you think via their support page
A propos gender signifiers in warrior costume design… Now this case tells us a lot about the studio’s approach to creativity.
Developers got asked to differentiate gender of the characters, so removing women’s pants and adding cleavages was the best solution they could come up with? Really?
Assuming there truly is a huge demand for making female and male costumes more distinct, couldn’t they accommodate the designs in a more dignified way?
And if they really had to remove some items to make character’s sex/gender obvious, why not men’s shirts? Why it’s the female characters who need “adjustments”, while male ones remain the default?
But considering Drakensang’s track record, we shouldn’t be all that surprised.
Thank you @lunaia for bringing this issue to us!
~Ozzie