It all depends on the larger conversation and the overall motive behind the argument really.
If someone argues that say, women are complicated people and thus capable being many things and showcasing it as the situation requires – thus one may be still sexy when in full armor and badarse down to her bones.
If someone uses it as an attempt to silence criticism regarding character design by claiming that since the character is doing badarse things, having her always dressed in sexy lingerie makes it more impressive and empowering?
It all depends on the larger conversation and the overall motive behind the argument really.
If someone argues that say, women are complicated people and thus capable being many things and showcasing it as the situation requires – thus one may be still sexy when in full armor and badarse down to her bones.
If someone uses it as an attempt to silence criticism regarding character design by claiming that since the character is doing badarse things, having her always dressed in sexy lingerie makes it more impressive and empowering?
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…
In an alternate mirror universe where game developers are terrified of making new franchises starring male leads Gears of War, Call of Duty, Doom, Max Payne, Battlefield, and Deus Ex all star Duke Nukem and people get really angry when you say you wish they would try to make some new male leads instead of hammer Duke Nukem into increasingly tonally different games.
Thank goodness female characters in popular video game franchises never suffer from a lack of diversity in appearance or tonal incongruity.
Yes, there is one character who appears in this image line up twice – and it’s not one of the (many) obvious match ups.
– wincenworks
Given the recent hilarity with Street Fighter’s new characters being indistinguishable from some Smite characters (and also some Halloween costumes) – it seemed appropriate to bring up this reminder that so many video games seem to use more or less the same few female models.
(Warning: This game deals with a lot of dark material and imagery for this game includes a lot of themes of torture, death, psychosis and gore. I have tried my best to avoid putting any disturbing imagery in this post or linking to any directly)
We’ve had numerous requests for comment on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and to be honest it’s a complicated topic. It is true that it is a game that avoided various tropes that we’re told games need such as bikini armor, battle thongs, cleavage, etc But the outfit is still not on par with say Emily Kaldwen or Billy Lurk’s attire. (It’s still angering brodudes though)
It’s also a game where the much more important criticisms such as the handling of theme of mental illness and protagonist having locs (which Celts and Vikings did not have, which is why their descendants need various modern products to replicate them). So comparatively Senua’s attire not being terrible is minor.
The game is however is an interesting example of how even studios beginning with the noblest intentions can get pulled down by industry pressure and reliance upon media and societal standards. They started with:
They wanted it to be historical, but when it came time to find reference images… they didn’t exactly cite what I could call historically robust sources:
When it came time to scan a body for the 3D model of Senua, they went with a fitness instructor, who also happens to do modelling. She she did end up half of the things that the original vision promised she would not be, and her attire was designed more around modern fashion ideals than her origin.
The fact that it stands out to so many people as so different and that the developers felt they only had the freedom to do this much by avoiding signing on a publisher really says a lot.
Howdy folks, Myriad of Nocturnes here. I’m thinking of starting a series of posts where I bitch about shit that really grinds my proverbial gears. So, being the bonafide robot lover that I am, I thought I’d start us off with something that really just seems lazy to me.
Robots, Gender Roles, and You.
Credential wise, I’m a Transformers fan, Gundam fan, and fan of pretty much every robot focused franchise you could care to name. I love pretty much every sort of robot design, but there is one in particular that really annoys me.
You’ve all seen the content, i’m sure. A big, hulking inhuman (but masculine coded) robot with all sorts of deadly implements of war, death, and what have you….who shares a setting with a robot with ‘feminine’ coding who looks like a shrink wrapped supermodel.
It’s cowardly, if you ask me. People feel the need to assign some sort of humanity to their robot, rather than allowing it to be a robot. Why does your robot have to conform to hetero-normative gender roles? Why are all of your lady robots running around looking like human women with fancy helmets? Why does a robot have to act in a manner consistent with the way people act?
Ya’ll often share posts about making monster girls more monstrous. I just passed one today that called for people to give their orc women fangs, tusks, scars, and muscles.
I say let your robots of any gender coding have multiple arms, inhuman features, and alien thought processes. Be creative! Let your robot be any gender it desires. If you want your robot to be feminine in some manner, let it, but don’t show us that it’s feminine by giving it big anime titties.
We talk a lot about suspicious dimorphism among design of living creatures, but when this trope regards robots, it’s a special case. There’s no “they’re just naturally like that” Thermian argument to juggle. Instead, there might be the “Don’t blame us for how that fictional robot looks, blame its equally fictional creator!” variation of the agency argument.
@femfreq has an old episode regarding the inherent sociological problem with sexualizing female-coded robots:
The video focuses exclusively on gynoids in advertising, so doesn’t really touch on the even bigger problem in various science fiction and similar media.
Popular media tends to assume a robot, an artificial (not always sentient) being should either be coded male or assumed male in absence of gender signifiers. A female-coded robot is generally requires a “good” justification to look like a lady – usually some combination of being seen as subservient, providing fanservice or the Smurfette Principle. Thus making them look feminine is a bigger priority than taking advantage of the fact that robots can look like whatever – that privilege is reserved to machines which are male by default.
That leads me to quite a bold conclusion that Orisa is by far the best female playable character design in Overwatch – bearing very little gender signifiers (particularly compared to all the human women in the game) and having silhouette that is both very bulky and not entirely humanoid.
