This week on Blizzard Does Women Better, Watch as they introduce a new hero to their free MOBA Heroes of the Storm via sexy demon skins for the ladies! How Original™!
The three lucky ladies are Jaina, Zagara and Sonya (from left to right):
(Though, don’t be fooled by that awesome concept art of Sonya, her in-game model is of smaller frame and has no defined muscles.)
So let’s take these in order, shall we?
Jaina is an ice wizard (basically) whose regular outfit just looks really stupid, besides not making any sense. Her demon skin replaces her 70s pants with booty shorts, and while she does gain “armor,” it’s in the laziest possible way. [x]
Her design brings to mind the Draenor, rather than demons. It’s so generic, I don’t even have anything to say… And what’s with the colors?
As for Zagara, you may notice that she is not even a person. She’s the “Broodmother of the Swarm,” an “ant queen” type of creature; she doesn’t even have a face, despite that strange exoskeleton boobplate. The maw in the front of her bug abdomen spews various things in combat. So of course her demon skin makes her Hot Bug Lady. [x]
I mean, we know she has weird bug arms and huge bubbling pustules on her insect-like abdomen, but look at those titties! This is the second Zagara skin that gives her a sexy face, but why include her in this particular promotion at all, for the release of a lich character from WoW? Do they think their zerg-birthing monster needs more sexy lady skins to even out the fact that she’s a bug? ಠ_ಠ
Finally, we have Sonya, the lady barbarian from Diablo III. Her demon skin still reveals about as much as her regular, although for some reason she has platform shoes now? This is called the Death Knight. Much spooky. [x]
Also, the design screams “we didn’t know how to make her demonic.” There is a skull on every piece of armor she’s wearing, and her weapons! This is even more baffling when you realize that this skin came out concurrently with the Deathbringer skin:
It’s the exact same skin (save for the weapons), except no spooky scary helmet, and actual padding under her armor… so why?? Why did they take the padding away from the Death Knight skin? I thought they were just doing the typical fantasy barbarian thing, where they sort of wear kind-of clothes, but apparently not!
Doing women better, though.
-Icy
So, Divinity: Original Sin 2 started off looking kind of promising. Despite their head animator throwing a public tantrum on deviantArt, Larian Studios did seem to be making a fairly attempt to improve next time, after all someone had instructed Thierry to fix the artwork (to his great upset) in the first place.
So on 1 October 2015, their Kickstarter finished successfully.
On 11 February 2016, they published results of a survey they did which showed completely unsurprising results for a studio where creative leads can post rants about their right to be paid to objectify:
On 10 August 2016, it became pretty clear that Larian Studios decided the thing to do with this information was to double down and go back to their regular double standards:
Around May 2017 they started using their current iconic line up, the front and center lead of which has such a ridiculous costume it appears their advertising team feels the need to hide it:
Ironically, despite this apparently being less of Creepy Marketing Guy and more part of the studio culture, a lot of the content could be pretty good and they could probably get a lot more female players if they didn’t strive to save the booplate.
Alas, it seems to commitment knows no bounds:
Can’t imagine why they have so few female players…
– wincenworks
Ah, one of our favorite repeat offenders… Seriously, though, what am I even looking at?? Is this a Red Bull ad?
So I looked up this character and the wiki page had this to say:
Only the most elite knights of the continent of Hiquba are permitted to join the Starka Temple Knights. It is considered the highest honor to join their ranks… At the grand induction ceremony in their hallowed temple, their captain Fortunata looks on forlornly. Her heart grieves at the thought of how few will live to see the end of the next war.
I have a few questions: If these soldiers are the most elite, why will so many of them die? How do they replenish their ranks? Why does the captain worry about her fully-armored soldiers dying, and not herself, who appears to be wearing a Victora’s Secret armor lingerie? Did her left foot step into a wormhole, and is that why it’s disappeared? …What’s with the cherubs…??
Her evolved armor looks a lot better, though she still forgot her pants at home, and I don’t even want to theorize on what’s happening with her breasts…
But with the improved armor comes a worse lore entry:
Fortunata leads her fresh recruits to subjugate the
ogredemonic brutes that have crossed into their borders. The unfortunate young soldiers, lacking in the strict training characteristics of the Starka Temple Knights, serve as little more than human shields. Despite this handicap, Fortunata exhibits superb technique and strength, slaying the horde with ease. She is more than willing to prove how she earned her lofty position.
What???? This lady is awful at her job, how has she not been fired? Or jailed?? She’s just leading fresh recruits to die to demons when she supposedly has an army of professionals! Is this an insurance scam? Why is she leading recruits when she’s supposed to be commanding the elites? No wonder that cherub is glaring at her!
Get her, cherub!! #TheTruthAboutFortunata2k17
-Icy
That equal opportunity fan redesign of one Saint Seiya Online armor we reblogged on Friday made us look up more double standard armors from that game… and let’s say we won’t be running out of potential Female Armor Bingo material for some time.
This thing really aimed for the stars with all the shamelessly applied bikini armor tropes. I don’t think we got so much of the bingo card cleared in a while!
Also “nice” bonus of how even when a guy on the model sheets get a pose with more personality, like this one, the lady’s pose still is some variation of “Come play, my lord!”.
~Ozzie
Generally we try to avoid negatively highlighting indie games for a variety of factors.
- They’re more likely to be conforming to market expectations set by big companies than to influence the trend of the market in general
- They’re often being made as a singular creative vision rather than for-profit focus of making a marketable product
- Since they’re not working for profit and raising capital, indies often can’t afford to make their own assets and just have to use whatever’s available
- They’re often made by people still working out how they want to make games, and so commit all kinds of beginner mistakes
With the exception of a few games that get wide spread attention due to hilarious juxtaposition between what they promise and what look to they deliver (eg Haydee and Axe Princess) we tend to leave them alone.
So why am I bingo’ing The King’s Heroes? Because, well while Aldorlea Games claims indie status, it’s a bit confusing if you look at their Steam listing sorted by date (showing the oldest here)
They’re less of an Indie studio and more of a shovelware factory, and while this game does pretend (kind of) to have some male empowerment it also makes the ratio pretty obvious:
– wincenworks