Creators, the truth is that are no shortcuts on the road to creative success, no matter what the creepy marketing guy or the person who won’t leave the comments section tell you.
While most critics are busy either wildly celebrating Batman: Arkham Knight or raging over the poor quality of the PC port, this article talks about a very important point – the inevitable diminishing of the female characters.
I feel it would be dishonest not to hold their costuming as at least partially accountable. When developers put all their design focus on making the female characters appear sexy and exposed, then it greatly reduces the options for the kind of roles they can have in scenes. The can either be:
Vulnerable and some sort of device (decoration, instrument, prize or joke but never a person)
Spectacularly over powered in a attempt to subvert the costume and play the “so badass their costume doesn’t need to make sense” card
Since Batman games always put Batman as the hero, it means there’s scant few opportunities for the second option and they usually only get one bite of the apple. Ivy in Arkham Asylum, Catwoman in Arkham City and now in order to make Harley Quinn formidable (instead of the Joker’s puppet) they gave her what’s actually the most practical outfit in the series to date:
Hey, awesome blog! You’ve already made a post about Emily Kaldwin in Dishonored 2, but I just wanted to ask your opinion on this year’s E3 in general. Not only were there more women presenters than ever, but signs of real progress when it comes to representation for women:
As noted, Emily from Dishonored 2!
The shieldmaiden from Eitr!
Lara Croft from Rise of the Tomb Raider, having finally exchanged her 90s male-gaze outfit for something one would actually raid a tomb with!
Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn! I think there’s still a discussion to be had here about cultural appropriation, but at least she was designed as a hunter rather than eye candy.
The protagonist from Recore!
Evie Frye from AC: Syndicate! I’m still really cynical about the fact that she’s more or less an add-on to her brother’s story and that she does the stealthy bits while her brother does the punchy bits, but her outfit is very reasonable.
Rae from Beyond Eyes! It’s great to see more non-violent games on display too.
The mercs from Dirty Bomb!
And of course, Faith from Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.
The majority of characters on display are still white and slim, but it’s a noticeable improvement from last year – and it was nice to hear cheers from the audience when it was announced that women were playable in FIFA and Fallout 4.
Thank you the line up. While certainly are issues with each individual game and depiction it is great that this year E3′s character line up included many badass women who are dressed to get shit done.
I sincerely hope this will become an ongoing trend in video games and one that lasts a long, long time. We shall certainly have more to say on various titles as time and further information is released.
Hey, awesome blog! You’ve already made a post about Emily Kaldwin in Dishonored 2, but I just wanted to ask your opinion on this year’s E3 in general. Not only were there more women presenters than ever, but signs of real progress when it comes to representation for women:
As noted, Emily from Dishonored 2!
The shieldmaiden from Eitr!
Lara Croft from Rise of the Tomb Raider, having finally exchanged her 90s male-gaze outfit for something one would actually raid a tomb with!
Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn! I think there’s still a discussion to be had here about cultural appropriation, but at least she was designed as a hunter rather than eye candy.
The protagonist from Recore!
Evie Frye from AC: Syndicate! I’m still really cynical about the fact that she’s more or less an add-on to her brother’s story and that she does the stealthy bits while her brother does the punchy bits, but her outfit is very reasonable.
Rae from Beyond Eyes! It’s great to see more non-violent games on display too.
The mercs from Dirty Bomb!
And of course, Faith from Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.
The majority of characters on display are still white and slim, but it’s a noticeable improvement from last year – and it was nice to hear cheers from the audience when it was announced that women were playable in FIFA and Fallout 4.
Thank you the line up. While certainly are issues with each individual game and depiction it is great that this year E3′s character line up included many badass women who are dressed to get shit done.
I sincerely hope this will become an ongoing trend in video games and one that lasts a long, long time. We shall certainly have more to say on various titles as time and further information is released.
There is a new upcoming film called Justice League Gods and Monsters. It’s an alternate universe with a different JL that uses brutal methods to maintain the order.
Here are the 3 protagonists, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman.
(That is not Diana! It’s Bekka from New Genesis.)
Look at that V cut that goes to her waist, i have no idea how that protects her (or even works at all) but at least she has a helmet, shoulder pads and a (rather unconfortable looking) neck protection right? The uniform is so weird you can barely recognize her as Wonder Woman.
These 3 are supposed to be the opposite of the original heroes. Superman is the son of the villain, Batman is a vampire that sucks his enemies and Wonder Woman is… sexually agressive.
Machinima will show a companion series, here is her episode (only 6 minutes):
She acts cocky all the time, waits until her boyfriend asks for help to go save him and after defeating the giant robot she rips his clothes off and has sex with him.
Might as well change her title to “Empowered Woman”.
Wow. It’s like the design process for this character incorporated hours of surfing TV Tropes and trying to find how to incorporate as many of the “sexy” tropes as possible.
I’m kind of impressed… it must take hours and hours of dedication and work to make something this painfully generic, soulless and ridiculous.
– wincenworks
Posted on
Lucas submitted:
There is a new upcoming film called Justice League Gods and Monsters. It’s an alternate universe with a different JL that uses brutal methods to maintain the order.
Here are the 3 protagonists, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman.
(That is not Diana! It’s Bekka from New Genesis.)
Look at that V cut that goes to her waist, i have no idea how that protects her (or even works at all) but at least she has a helmet, shoulder pads and a (rather unconfortable looking) neck protection right? The uniform is so weird you can barely recognize her as Wonder Woman.
These 3 are supposed to be the opposite of the original heroes. Superman is the son of the villain, Batman is a vampire that sucks his enemies and Wonder Woman is… sexually agressive.
Machinima will show a companion series, here is her episode (only 6 minutes):
She acts cocky all the time, waits until her boyfriend asks for help to go save him and after defeating the giant robot she rips his clothes off and has sex with him.
Might as well change her title to “Empowered Woman”.
Wow. It’s like the design process for this character incorporated hours of surfing TV Tropes and trying to find how to incorporate as many of the “sexy” tropes as possible.
I’m kind of impressed… it must take hours and hours of dedication and work to make something this painfully generic, soulless and ridiculous.
Here is the reasoning, that drive execs and marketers to pro-actively exclude women from their audiences and to pro-actively encourage a culture in which women do not feel welcome. This is why we can’t have nice things… or can we?
This is an excellent piece, by someone inside the industry, outlining quite clearly how and why so many games all but refuse to acknowledge women gamers even exist.
And it really is tough sometimes, in games. Perfectly good, reasonable people just succumb to the prevailing wisdom, feeling helpless. I’ve written female characters in games with attitude and agency, then been required to tone it down for fear of offending male players.
In one (unreleased) game, I was told to change a cut scene because “the woman NPC can’t try to save herself, the male PC must save her.” And the number of times I’ve had to remove snarky comebacks from a female NPC (“the player won’t be attracted to her”), I can’t even count.
And these were not horrible, raging sexists. But they were following market wisdom, doing what they knew publishers would require of them.
(I should add that these are all AAA games I’m talking about. The indie/mobile space I’ve worked in is so, so much more progressive.)
(Also saddening: almost exactly the same reasoning applies to the comic market’s obsession with superheroes.)
Anyway. Great article, well worth a read.
Since we’ve resumed getting the smug messages telling us that since x artist has y identity and is credited with the design of z character… well they never really elaborate beyond that but the implication is we shouldn’t worry about the design and instead should consider it above judgement.
These people always act as though the concept artist is always given unlimited creative freedom and that companies would never hire someone based off their willingness to produce problematic content whatever their background and that companies might want to hide behind the “well it was created by a woman so how could it be sexist?” rhetoric.
For some reason they are deeply concerned that criticism might cause “self censorship” (not in the actual sense of fear of being blacklisted but “making a product that targets a wider demographic sense”) but never concerned about executives making creative decisions for questionable reasons.
Honestly, nobody wishes that was true more than us – for it would mean the end of the tyranny ofCreepy Marketing Guy. Demographic hiveminds would also mean there were quick and easy solutions to pretty much every social issue since any random member could be trusted as an appointed representative. It would also have prevented things in history like… war.
Aside from the obvious issues of working out exactly who’s responsible and under what basis any particular creator was hired, there’s the larger issues these things don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re part of a trend and they’ve evolved into what they are over time.
Left unchallenged, they will continue down these paths simply because publishers are adverse to risk even if it means opportunity.
Here is the reasoning, that drive execs and marketers to pro-actively exclude women from their audiences and to pro-actively encourage a culture in which women do not feel welcome. This is why we can’t have nice things… or can we?
This is an excellent piece, by someone inside the industry, outlining quite clearly how and why so many games all but refuse to acknowledge women gamers even exist.
And it really is tough sometimes, in games. Perfectly good, reasonable people just succumb to the prevailing wisdom, feeling helpless. I’ve written female characters in games with attitude and agency, then been required to tone it down for fear of offending male players.
In one (unreleased) game, I was told to change a cut scene because “the woman NPC can’t try to save herself, the male PC must save her.” And the number of times I’ve had to remove snarky comebacks from a female NPC (“the player won’t be attracted to her”), I can’t even count.
And these were not horrible, raging sexists. But they were following market wisdom, doing what they knew publishers would require of them.
(I should add that these are all AAA games I’m talking about. The indie/mobile space I’ve worked in is so, so much more progressive.)
(Also saddening: almost exactly the same reasoning applies to the comic market’s obsession with superheroes.)
Anyway. Great article, well worth a read.
Since we’ve resumed getting the smug messages telling us that since x artist has y identity and is credited with the design of z character… well they never really elaborate beyond that but the implication is we shouldn’t worry about the design and instead should consider it above judgement.
These people always act as though the concept artist is always given unlimited creative freedom and that companies would never hire someone based off their willingness to produce problematic content whatever their background and that companies might want to hide behind the “well it was created by a woman so how could it be sexist?” rhetoric.
For some reason they are deeply concerned that criticism might cause “self censorship” (not in the actual sense of fear of being blacklisted but “making a product that targets a wider demographic sense”) but never concerned about executives making creative decisions for questionable reasons.
Honestly, nobody wishes that was true more than us – for it would mean the end of the tyranny ofCreepy Marketing Guy. Demographic hiveminds would also mean there were quick and easy solutions to pretty much every social issue since any random member could be trusted as an appointed representative. It would also have prevented things in history like… war.
Aside from the obvious issues of working out exactly who’s responsible and under what basis any particular creator was hired, there’s the larger issues these things don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re part of a trend and they’ve evolved into what they are over time.
Left unchallenged, they will continue down these paths simply because publishers are adverse to risk even if it means opportunity.
A handy armor design 101 for games (but works for other visual media as well). It approaches a lot of tropes we often discuss, like the importance of covering vital body parts or the absurdity of adding boobplates and high heels to female armor.
I especially like how the article handles the double standard in gendered armor silhouettes, a subject we alluded tobeforea fewtimes, but didn’t have opportunity to talk in depth about. Thus, here’s an excerpt:
Tight armor and layers
Looking at the Demon Hunter (Diablo III, Blizzard Etertainment, 2012) above, you will notice that while her shoulder pads and scarf increase in size with her armor level, her waistline does not. In this case, it looks like she keeps wearing only some sort of leather corset to protect her stomach, while strapping on enough excess metal on the rest of her body to build a spare suit of armor. Honestly, I would have advised her to trade the sexy female silhouette for actual protection. This would mean adding for example a gambeson and maybe also a mail under the harness, which would make her waistline several inches thicker.
[…] While you would most likely want the layer that looks like leather here to be padded to soften incoming blows, and the harness probably is too tight to actually move around in, it shows quite well how layers are put upon layers in heavy armor. This sadly means that you’ll have to choose between looking like an hourglass and surviving while fighting.
