Long post this time around as there’s a few issues:
If you know female developers working on indie games and incorporating bikini armor or similar tropes is to, at the appropriate opportunity express your concerns as concerns for their production – and let them decide on how important it is to them.
If they’re interested that’s great, if not, then it is very unlikely that their production will have a profound impact on the market and she could very well have her own personal reasons for it. Personal projects are just that, personal.
However, if you are creating a game or similar production and you want to make it as accessible and welcoming as possible to as wide an audience as possible then we recommend researching the works of those talk about these things already.
And many others. Also if your production is to feature someone from a marginalized background that is not your own and be prepared to pay them. Consultants are generally not as expensive as you might think but can add massive value to your production.
In terms of actually working for a company in the industry and managing to be a positive influence, then that’s the very complicated balancing act of expressing yourself and respecting your employers. (If you work out how to master that, please tell me how).
But largely the best advice I can give if you happen to be in a company meeting is to be prepared to talk about ways they add or detract value to the production and be eager to show your working. Example:
We are aware that the blog is apparently flagged as restricted/adult content by Tumblr… though because it’s Tumblr it’s still unclear what this does everywhere.
Smite’s newest goddess, Artio, seems to be an improvement. Reasonably dressed for a girl on the battlefield, and she switches to a bear form that is actually bearlike (although with some feminine hair). (full size)
Unfortunately, the same patch that’s bringing her is bringing this Awilix skin…
Oh SMITE, I’m not sure if I should be congratulating you on moving on from ripping off Dragon Age to ripping off Horizon: Zero Dawn (rather than, I dunno, looking up the difference between Gaulish Celts and Gaelic Celts… I see that tartan and faux woad), but it seems you also chose to rip off League of Angels as well.
As a side note, remember that time SMITE released Bellona, an almost reasonably well armored goddess? Check out what skins she has now:
With SMITE, hope truly is the first step on the road to disappointment.
– wincenworks
Posted on
Kamihime Project is a strategy game where the player controls a bunch of hot girlsmercenaries Goddess Princesses. Wait, where have I heard that before?
This particular lady is apparently Gaia. It’s hard to tell whether there’s any inspiration from the mythological Greek figure… but then again it’s hard to tell anything with this. I just get more confused the more I look at her.
I get the feeling that this game will be making many more appearances on the blog, especially with Creative Characters like these:
Not to mention their interpretation of Hecatoncheires, the Greek giants with 100 arms and 50 heads….
I guess the wreath on her head is supposed to mean ‘Greek?’ I just… mm.
-Icy
Apparently (some of?) those are supposed to be actual figures from different mythologies… This game makes me want to apologize to SMITE, it really hurts.
Also, even though the promo material attempts (if you can call it that) to establish a “personality” for Gaia… it’s amazingly bland and vague AND doesn’t match the character design at all!
Okay, so we had a few people ask for opinions on Yacht Clubs Games adding the Body Swap Mode to Shovel Knight. I want to preface this by saying I completely believe that they have good intentions and have done some very progressive things (like letting you set your pronouns independent of sprites) but that it also has some issues.
The second is that while they’ve attempted to be equitable with the first rule provided: “Body swaps should be exactly as gendered as the original character.” this doesn’t factor in that largely their designs are default (male) and deviation (female). You know, The Smurfette Principle.
Lastly, and linking back to the first point, it’s important to remember that body swap options like this have a very strong tendency to promote an idea of false equality by creating a situation where gender is irrelevant. In real life, people’s gender is often very, very relevant to how the world interacts with them, their internal motivations and their general experience.
(That’s not to say there’s not a purpose to gender options or characters that exist outside of gender, but rather that one cannot just assume gender doesn’t matter – especially after heavily investing in gender roles)
To use one of their own examples, compare King Knight and Queen Knight.
Now, honestly I think the design in the sketch without the ridiculous boobplate effect was better but if Queen Knight looks like this, then King Knight should really look like Henry VIII combining his party and jousting attire:
The idea that “boobs decide if female” thing seems to be a trend with a lot of their swap designs, to the point of absurdity with some designs:
And when they don’t opt for boobs as the signal, it sadly seems to fall down to the idea that a male character has slightly more impressive armor (the most obvious example being The Enchantress) and aggressive stance than a female character.
As I said, I believe that the intention is there it doesn’t seem to have led to the actual examination of issues like “why are we sexualizing armors in the first place?” and “are we making the female characters seem out of place or a deviation?”
That can be challenging questions to ask, particularly if you’ve already got a dozen or so designs you really already love – but not asking them tends to result in re-enforcing the same old messages just in different ways.
This whole thread is definitely worth reading for a better understanding of The Creepy Marketing Guy and why so many games, particularly in early campaigns, seem to rely on generic strategies like sex sells.
So the next time you see a promotion for a game that seems to focus entirely on boobs, butts and explosions then you can be sure that it’s because the marketing guys are getting paid for the campaign, not the sales of the game, and they probably got to interfere in the process of game development, messing with the original vision of the developers, to make that happen.
So, another E3 has come and gone and there’s been time for examination, follow up by developers, etc. As you may have guessed, there’s a lot going on and a lot to unpack.
For a general overview of gender and the theme of games, I recommend checking out the breakdown of this year’s E3 by @femfreq. The general gist, there’s a lot more gender incorporation than last year, but still more than three times with male protagonists as female.
For the representation of the female characters in the violent games, well as you’d expect there’s wild variation but way too much of it is still in the bikini armor or other worrying trope zone.
In the interests of not ruining your feed, the positive examples will be on the front post and the rest below the cut.
– wincenworks
I also highly recommend checking out Tauriq Moosa’s article at @ineeddiversegames:
While some of the civilian costumes seem a little worrying, however the core gameplay uses slick gender neutral armors that are engineered for efficiency. (Gameplay trailer) (Official Site)
Due to the history of the property and the nature of the game, there’s better odds of generally getting to play an adorkable robot with a gun than a woman in the multi-player. However, seeing Iden Versio as the single player lead was a very pleasant and welcome surprise. Also the multiplayer will allow opportunities to play as Rey. (Gameplay Trailer) (Official Site)
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider by Arkane Studios
Badass black lady assassin with a mechanical eye, mechanical arm and excellent suit! And Harvey Smith talking with @femfreq about how criticism helped Dishonored come so far. (Gameplay trailer) (Official site)
Unsurprisingly Absolver still looks amazing both with character design and the concept of being a fighting game where players benefit most from mutual respect and (Gameplay video) (Official Site)
Overland by Finji
Charming art style that provides great personality to the characters and treats the female characters with equal dignity. (Overland @ E3 2017 on Cliqist) (Official Site)
Ni no Kuni 2 by Studio Gibli
Adorable production from Gibli Studios that demonstrates how much personality, actual creativity and expression you can fit into a production when you don’t handcuff yourself to tired tropes born of old myths. (Developer interview and gameplay video) (Official Site)
A tentative status as a positive example. Samus’ armor is significantly more form fitting than it was in the original Metroid 2 – but it’s great to see her back in a game that’s about her kicking ass in her power armor, with a bunch of enhancements to the gameplay experience. (Game Reveal Video) (Official Site)
Announced it will use a character creator, but traditionally Far Cry games have shown you precious little of your player character since they take place entirely through first person perspective. But, it’s definitely worth mentioning Grace Armstrong, a woman of color who will aid you as a well clad sniper.
The new game was announced but there’s not enough info to know how many of their costumes will be great and how many will be terrible. Particularly since they only showed gameplay with a male character.
Games that depicted amazing action with no female protagonists:
God of War: Be A Warrior
Spider-man
Assassin’s Creed: Origins,
Unfortunate Surprises
Beyond Good and Evil 2 by Ubisoft
The original Beyond Good and Evil starred Jade, a heroic, well dressed woman of color with a pig as her sidekick. The trailer for the sequel has no Jade, but rather a trend of women as the decorative sidekick to animals who seem to parody cultures. And well, this happens in it.
I was really hoping to be able to include this one as a positive example, but honestly it’s hard to given that the extended gameplay trailer features a nonsensical twist that results in a minute and a half sequence of an Indian man glorifying human sacrifice while, in the background, a pair of generic guards beat on Nadine and hold her down like she’s a generic civilian in the background. No gif because I very, very sincerely hope none of our followers want to watch a black woman beaten and humiliated for cheap dramatic effect.
The pants and t-shits combinations of the protagonists are uninspired at best and seem to be trying to hedge in on sex appeal. Overall though, I’m not in any way convinced this is going to give either character the same opportunities that Nate and Sully got in every previous Uncharted game.
Vampyr by Dontnod
The trailer looks so good for the first three minutes, Victorian vampires without any detours into the male gaze or manipulation of the setting to get more skin in… then this shows up on the screen:
No female combatants in the gameplay displayed. Given the female character that does appear and Dontnod’s history, I can only assume this was a concession to the publisher.
Seems to be drifting away from being a gender-flipped love letter to the Castlevania and looking more and more like a cheap game hacked together with generic store-bought assets and all the creative focus on sexy outfits and sexy scenarios for the female characters.
Agents of Mayhem by Violition
The standard issue fair of the guys get big coats, body armor, etc and the female playable characters get weird harnesses to frame their boobs. Combine that with your demo target is a male performer who incorporates his sex appeal and this is pretty generic nonsense in denial.
You may be surprised at this mention since there is quite a bit of buzz about how the Multiplayer will allow character customization that incorporates race and gender etc. Well that’s because the only way we know about this is 2nd hand reports from people who got to trial it and a tweet.
Blade Strangers was already featured on BABD as perhaps the worst game, though perhaps we should have proposed an alternative title: “Did ANYONE ask for this?” Sadly it appears we were optimistic in this assessment.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash by Tamsoft
Okay so a game about young girls in bikinis running around shooting each other with water guns is kind of questionable to begin with, but when one of the bosses is defeated by blasting bubbles off her nude body and the trailer highlights a “soak their white bikini” mini-game you’ve gone past “I can’t believe it’s not porn” and into “disturbing and creepy” territory.
