Nikko: Immersion breaking female armor. I refuse to play certain games because it seems just ridiculous to me. Like this:
This makes me so mad, not for the obvious reasons, but because it just breaks any sense of the world being real (which is important to me, follow the rules of your universe however dumb). If it’s a fantasy world where everyone’s skin is made of stone- fine- let ALL of the characters run around in skimpy armor. But when the female armor looks like this compared to the male armor… it breaks any sense of immersion to me. I completely ruined Tera for me along with other games (Nier).
Justin:
Escort quests, yeah. Or..
Like fan service…just why.
But yeah escort quests, fan service, and uhhh shooting games…regardless of genre.
welcome to video game!!!!!! customize your character; but first, choose your gender:
in case anyone thought this was an exaggeration
TERA is such a bad joke of a game. And not only that, but female characters all wear super-skimpy outfits and lean way the hell over so that you can see their panties when they run.
I mean, nothing against fanservice (although I prefer mine a bit more equal-opportunity). This game, however, is just…tawdry. Like something out of a particularly bad adult manhwa.
Also, I remember a discussion in which the scummy fanboys broke out literally every scummy fanboy derailing tactic in the book (plus a Godwin or two and an accusation of “shaming” the characters). So…there’s also the matter of the brand of fan it attracts.
Ah, TERA Online. Once upon a time, I played (and enjoyed) the closed Beta, up to the point where I had to interact with a female NPC who literally wore a metal bikini (not chainmail, actual solid metal) whose breasts still swayed–with the armor.
I actually have a mixed attitude toward the designs in the game. On the one hand, it’s all very Male Gaze, creepy, and completely impracticalor physically impossible to wear into battle. On the other hand, some of their stuff is actually well-designed (i.e. actually makes use of design principles) and is nice to look at. It’s the kind of stuff I wouldn’t mind seeing at a Haute couture fashion show (though they can’t seem to design shoes for shit).
But the game isn’t Project Runway: TERA, unfortunately.
-Icy
I love how not only is @xylophil’s satire spot-on, but also that @dreamersollux easily found an official game promo pic of exactly what it’s making fun of.
I think it’s been long enough but if you find yourself getting ready to type up a comment related to Mass Effect: Andromeda’s animations please consider watching this educational video from Extra Credits and not commenting here instead. This post is going to be a clarification of what we mean when we say Creepy Marketing Guy, and since the first post on this topic featured Samara, it’s only fair that Cora be the star of the clarification.
First, let’s start with what we do not mean when we refer to Creepy Marketing Guy. It does not refer to:
Using distinctly porny ads to promote products (be they porn or not porn), particularly if they’re generic images from a clickbait ad company
What we instead refer to is a product where you can see the development team’s intentions are to create something where every element is involved in telling a specific story – and then someone (usually marketing) steps in and makes the change specific parts of them with the assumption that the cishet male demographic needs the sexual availability of at least one female character broadcast to them in order to be interested in the unrelated aspects.
In this case, they pick Cora Harper, who is an ultra-professional soldier (one of the most battle hardened in the team), introduced as being calm in a crisis, the second in command on the mission, and seems to use “male” set of animations for her running, etc (instead of the elbows-in butt wiggle run generally assigned to female characters, including fem!Ryder).
Then you see in the outfit in the top of the post before launching into the tutorial mission, during which she appears in cut scenes like this:
Pretty much every other female character in the establishing chapters of the game has pragmatic, non-gendered attire on and off the battlefield. But, since Cora is a romance option for bro!Ryder, she apparently needs to wear a fetish outfit sculpted around her boobs and butt, while on the battlefield. The other female member of the away team who is a romance option also similarly needs to broadcast she’s got a sexy side (she also only owns one set of clothes).
All other traits other than romance option to bro!Ryder are considered secondary – to the extent now Cora looks not just contradictory to her character but out of place in the game about exploring a new galaxy, finding wondrous alien technology and shaping humanity’s future.
(This does not seem to apply to the male romance options, examples 1 & 2)
Ironically this now means she is so out of place cannot be included in marketing material without making the game look a ridiculous parody of a dramatic adventure exploring alien worlds in a new galaxy. It’s almost like they should have just given her one of the dozens of pragmatic outfits I am sure the concept artists designed for Cora before being told to sex it up.
– wincenworks
What is it with the “above boobs and under boobs belts” design feature that’s become so popular lately? Also, I thought Ashley’s outfit in Mass Effect 3 was insulting; the new BioWare studio really took it up a notch, though. … Good job?
I’ve read none of the promotional material for ME:A before it came out, so when I watched part of a Let’s Play of it out of curiosity, I couldn’t believe that Cora was this battle-hardened badass soldier type; I thought she was just another human on the ship. Her design makes me think of EDI before anything else. Those really sad attempts at actual armor pieces (like the baby plates on her shoulders) somehow make it worse, like Creepy Marketing Guy begrudgingly allowed it.
Also, send help, that butt window is staring into my soul.
You have men yelling: “yay! Boobs in games! Bigger boobs! More boob! Naked boob!”for decades. When female gamers finally got enough of a voice to say: “hey, I kind of wish there were women in video games who weren’t 80% boob by body weight”: those same men utterly flipped their shit.
This whole “why complain? You can’t tell designers what to do!” only seems to come up any time anyone but straight, white men dares make their opinion heard.
Sadly accurate.
Note how whenever cishet white audience members demand changes, those demands are met, or at the very least acknowledged. Whenever anyone else does that, it’s gonna be called “whining” or “entilement”.
Emphasis mine.
~Ozzie
Video game has a single gay male character who flirts you? Riot against the developers. Protagonist options do not include a white male? Riot against the developers. Age of Conan reduces bust sizes on female characters? Riot against the developers. Didn’t get the ending you wanted? Riot against the developers.
Women who have been gaming for years point out obvious problems?
– wincenworks
It still baffles me that wanting women in games to be designed appropriately for their job/setting is a controversial opinion to have, apparently.
I can’t believe it’s not porn.It’s the advertisement for the latest strategy game Vikings;War Of Clans!
When I thinking Viking I think uncomfortable underwear. She has a good helmet, shame about everything else. I’m sure this will sell millions of copies, and certainly won’t be forgotten within a month.
It’s not terribly surprising to discover that this image,which is hosted on a major affiliate networking site that makes bold promises:
Is actually fetish art, literally off deviantArt*, and the fetish in this case is highly sexualized female gladiators brutally killing each other. This is apparently, a stock standard image that the affiliate site keeps on their servers just in case they get a client they think will match that.
I can’t be the only one who thinks this is all more than a little messed up that a major advertiser thinks this is a great generic fantasy game image. (I don’t even want to think how they found this image in the first place)
– wincenworks
Looks like somebody searched the dA image category of “artistic nude.” Even if we’re stretching suspension of disbelief for the “almost naked gladiator fighters” trope, the design is just… boring. They didn’t even put in the minimal effort of giving her some kind of insignia or blood splatter or anything.
-Icy
*The artwork can be found here. Please be warned that the linked deviantArt account features disturbing content including gore and sexualized death.
A Marvel representative decided to blame the rich representation of new characters, particularly women, LGBTQ+ folk and people of color, in their superherocomics as a reason for their recent sales drop. They’re making a bold claim that it’s the readers and retailers who didn’t really want diversity.
Incidentally, we discussed the potential of scapegoating the strive for diversity in media if said media is unsuccessful in our “Go make your own!” article.
I was looking at a few upcoming PS4 games coming out this year and I saw this and found this character. Her name is Brunhilde and she is one of the main antagonists in the upcoming game called Valkyria Revolution. Can someone help me understand what am I looking at and why does this exists?
This pic above is a special pre-order image straight from SEGA. Yeah, I as soon I saw these I just had to submit it to BABD. First time doing this, so please tell me if I’m doing it right. Love all of the work you guys do and I hope more people stop designs like these from getting into media.
Well the main reason that it exists is that publishers and Creepy Marketing Guy really like this myth that sex sells, because well it’s essentially idea that there’s a magic, shortcut and that that it happens to allow them to get work to pay for images that appeal to them personally (and may, if they’re lucky, make them temporarily popular with certain demographics).
The other big appeal, commercially, is that if you decide that generic softcore pinups are the precious commodity that will motivate your customer base – you’ve got a fairly low effort product in comparison to say unique designs that integrate into your product’s lore, a character’s individual personality, etc.
The ultimate form of this is, of course: The asset flip.
It’s just a shame that their the games industry can’t put more emphasis and faith into the actual game.
