Tag: Character Design

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Survey Shows Even Teenage Boys Think Women Are Over-Sexualized in Video Games

Survey Shows Even Teenage Boys Think Women Are Over-Sexualized in Video Games

themarysue:

A survey has found that most teenage boys—despite common wisdom to the contrary—don’t want women to be over-sexualized in their video games.

This survey has been doing the rounds of the media since it got featured in this little publication called Time Magazine.  For those interested in the actual research methods and data, there’s more information here at Polygon (including links to the entire presentation).  They also posted a response to all the publicity here.

All in all it’s more compelling evidence to support our stance that sex does not sell anything but sex.  This was something that was known (to his great disappointment) by one of the original market researches in the 1960s.

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.

– wincenworks

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A trend I’ve seen in positive female armor examples… I find neither good nor bad but just thought-provoking… In many of positive female armors, the ladies have a long, often untied and fancy (even sexy) hair. That kind of hair is usually very impractical in battle (blinds, someone can grab it), and while dudes can sometimes have freely flowing long hair, long hair is mostly girls’ thing in pop culture. Your thoughts, what is the okay-ness of giving a lady warrior long fancy hair, and why?

Largely we don’t address the long hair issues because the solution is pretty straight forward (as shown by the-hero-dies aka Kevin Warren):

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As for the okay/appropriateness – it generally depends on the consistency and suspension of disbelief.  It’s common practice in all kinds of media to have named characters go without helmets do they can be easily recognized and in more than a few productions the men have equally impractical hair styles.

When it becomes a problem is when products signal that some men are practical and/or warriors by giving them close cropped hair styles and then give women with equal responsibility fancy hair styles because they have an arbitrary checklist of traits all women need.  Such as:

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Then it’s terrible because it showcases the double standard, objectifies women and destroys the visual story telling by mixing the messages on what a character’s appearance is supposed to tell us.

– wincenworks

Gifs from this Regretroid Music Video

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nuttynutifications:

A trend I’ve seen in positive female armor examples… I find neither good nor bad but just thought-provoking… In many of positive female armors, the ladies have a long, often untied and fancy (even sexy) hair. That kind of hair is usually very impractical in battle (blinds, someone can grab it), and while dudes can sometimes have freely flowing long hair, long hair is mostly girls’ thing in pop culture. Your thoughts, what is the okay-ness of giving a lady warrior long fancy hair, and why?

Largely we don’t address the long hair issues because the solution is pretty straight forward (as shown by the-hero-dies aka Kevin Warren):

image

As for the okay/appropriateness – it generally depends on the consistency and suspension of disbelief.  It’s common practice in all kinds of media to have named characters go without helmets do they can be easily recognized and in more than a few productions the men have equally impractical hair styles.

When it becomes a problem is when products signal that some men are practical and/or warriors by giving them close cropped hair styles and then give women with equal responsibility fancy hair styles because they have an arbitrary checklist of traits all women need.  Such as:

image
image
image

Then it’s terrible because it showcases the double standard, objectifies women and destroys the visual story telling by mixing the messages on what a character’s appearance is supposed to tell us.

– wincenworks

Gifs from this Regretroid Music Video

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What do you think of the argument that women can be “sexy and badarse at the same time”

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.

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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?

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– wincenworks