how to “pander to sjws / feminists”: in depth characters and storytelling, non objectified female characters, characters of all manners of races, identities and backgrounds
how to pander to gamer boys: make titty wobble
Wow no wonder they don’t want to make games more accessible to women, they’d have to reveal their lack of actual talent.
Then they end up promoting the wrong people and we end up with this guy.
– wincenworks
Bringing this post back, since now the gamer boys directly accuse “pandering to SJWs/feminists” as the primary reason for anything they don’t enjoy about any game, like the glitches in Mass Effect Andromeda.
~Ozzie
Particularly worth mentioning that these same voices are generally for more accepting and forgiving when it comes time to apply a critical lens to games like Scarlet Blade, Haydee or asset flips… and who conveniently claim creators should be allowed to do whatever they want when a short skirt is involved.
Japanese artist Tetsuya Noguchi creates many amazing works, including this brilliantly armored kitty cat and adorable owner (who likes his cat so much he added ears to his helmet).
Guys, there’s so much room for amazing creativity if we just drop the toxic masculinity and compulsion to objectify every female character. Cute yet effective armor should be for everyone, not just pets.
As a blog focused on criticism, there’s something we come across regularly in responses to our writing – insistence that we’re “never happy” no matter how much better a particular example is than most media we feature on BABD.
Readers (though mostly detractors) question why we can’t qualify something (mostly games) as 100% positive example if it does one thing better than the rest in its medium/genre/etc.
Examples:
Samus Aran is a formidable fighter and legendary female game protagonist, so it’s totally not a big deal that with every iteration of the character she gets designed as daintier, more conventionally feminine and runs around in skin-tight undersuit and impossible heels rather than her classic power armor.
Overwatch has cast with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, therefore we should ignore how, despite that, most of its female characters are a very slight variation on the same “pretty” character mold and have costumes and poses that put gratuitous emphasis on their boobs and butts.
NieR Automata’s creator admits the main character is another skinny chick in high heels and with boob window, because of his personal preference instead of some convoluted lore-specific excuse… and that honesty means her design is beyond criticism?
It’s quite disheartening to have the audience insist that we should settle for media to be tiny bit better than mediocre and call it a day. That a game or its creator not being as bad as they could deserve to be awarded and held up as an example for the rest of the industry.
We refuse to set our standards so low that “her battle costume isn’t a literal bikini” or “has characters who are female in it” or “shows a male butt/chest sometimes” qualify a title as good, equal gender representation with no room for improvement.
Being better than a random asset-flipping game with stolen artwork in their web ads isn’t hard. Being better than your last project and learning from its mistakes should be a given. Simply not makingasinine excuses for poor representation shouldn’t be applauded. No-one is asking for perfection, but all creators should be held accountable for the product they’re selling, with its good and bad sides.
BABD in particular, instead of doing comprehensive reviews, is focused on female costume and character design compared to male ones. Yet even such specific topic can’t be talked about from both angles without someone decrying unfairness. Does it really say more about us being negative and cynical or the fans being entitled and blind to any challenging point of view?
~Ozzie
*The link leads to a satirical @pointandclickbait article, but the satire is not really all that exaggerated. Yes, really.
So there have been a range of reactions to this, ranging from people celebrating that there is finally an auteur who can be honest about their decisions (rather than assuring us of the validity of breathing through one’s skin) to groans about how unsurprising given Taro’s last game (full size):
But really, this misses the larger conversation: In a medium where the people who are investing millions are understandably concerned about what they’re getting, what kind of decisions get approved and what kind get blocked?
Basically there are various creative decisions which will be green-lit without question (literally any excuse is good enough), but others which are dismissed or allowed a brief moment then cut down.
For such a short sentence, it also carries a lot of unfortunate subtext.
Like the implication that sexualizing female characters is okay, as long as you admit to liking girls/women, as if creator’s sexuality made any difference in this context.
Which also suggests that attraction to girls naturally leads to perpetuating female objectification, even though numerous creative people who are into women somehow manage to make projects without it.
Or just the fact that justifying a very generically sexy female design with “liking girls” in general implies that she represents all girls/women, despite the fact that most women look nothing like her.
As in, rhetoric about games that is garbage, not rhetoric about garbage games. (But possibly also that.)
Obviously inspired (and based off of with permission from the lovely Ozzie) by @bikiniarmorbattledamage, here is a bingo of terrible arguments against social justice style critiques of video games. I am clearly not an artist; if you want to pretty this up, go ahead, that would be super cool.
You can use this to your heart’s content for dealing with inane arguments.
Below the cut, a breakdown of the squares and why they’re wrong.
Inspired by Bikini Armor Battle Damage’s Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo, we present to you a special extra related bingo card this week, @feministgamingmatters ’s Garbage Games Rhetoric Bingo.
Fun for the whole family to play pretty much any time any major franchise receives even the slightest call out, critique or makes an independent effort to try to appeal to more people.
– wincenworks
(Edit: My apologies for originally tagging the wrong blog, this is why you shouldn’t prep blog posts at 1am!)
As yesterday marked Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo’s third anniversary, let’s celebrate by bringing back its cousin, Garbage Games Rhetoric Bingo!
Though it’s not the
happy
kind of celebration, considering the rhetoric collected in both cards is still alive and well among the anti-media criticism crowd. The bingos continue to be very much needed as tools against it.
So there has been a lot of talk that For Honor is a perfect example of how to do female armor. Perhaps the best part about disagreeing with this was it meant a bunch of people who follow for unhelpful reasons ended up agreeing with their nemesis, Kotaku, but the second best part is it let me talk about design and signalling.
Disclaimer
For the people rushing to point out that in 50% of the classes the designs are mostly identical across genders and I agree that’s a pretty good. We also tag For Honor as a positive example.
However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have flaws and that it’s better to talk about them rather than just rubberstamp it as flawless.
Also I feel it’s important to point out that there’s literally nothing in For Honor that suggests that historical accuracy was even faintly a priority. The designs are mishmash of various elements of history and fantasy based off what the developers thought looked cool. Therefore any arguments about obscure theories in history or archaic standards are pretty much irrelevant.
– wincenworks
Default and Deviation from Default
As Lindsay Ellis pointed out in her Smurfette Principle video, media has a long obsession with presenting men as the Default and women as the Deviation from Default. You can see this pretty clearly if you assess the Samurai outfits and look for trends.
The classes available male samurai have:
Expressive masks (2 with helmets, 1 with a decorative topknot)
High profile breastplates
Skirt/fauld plating
The female only class has:
A blank mask with a generic reed hat
A robe folded to remind you there’s cleavage underneath
No plating around the waist (just the shoulders)
This visual language immediately tells the audience that the Nobushi (a term invented for the game) exists outside the Samurai standard classes, one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong.
This is also evident when you look at the female raider that her outfit was originally designed with only a male character:
Now, there is an argument going around that this shows they couldn’t have bare breasts because too many vendors would have issues with that, and that this outfit is better than a gold bikini top – that is true.
However, Ubisoft knew that they wouldn’t be able to show bare female breasts from the start – so really what this showcases is that they didn’t consider female characters until they got to a point where their best solution was “just glue some fabric over them” (good luck being impressed by her pecs).
Design Priorities
So every faction has two classes that are available to all genders, one male class and one female class. The general trend is that the male class will fit a conventional warrior mode and the female class will be a designed with a different set of priorities in mind, in the Vikings this is particularly obvious when you consider the Valkyries:
This is also particularly prevalent in the Knights when you consider that their core class (the Wardens) get their armor talked up in a cutscene – making their layered metal armor a defining trait. Knights love their formidable steel armor so much they put steel armor in their steel armor.
Except for the ladies-only Peacekeepers who only seem to use steel for their masks, greeves and the pushup bras to ensure they have a rounded bust under their organic armor.
Now, if you think this is being picky I assure you that this is generous compared to what would be expected of any professional art director. And Ubisoft is a massive AAA studio who expects those assets to look realistic in HD.
You vs The World
So, with those six classes where you can pick your gender, and the option to change your skin tone (in the classes where you will get to see skin) are still held up as a fix for many of the issues. (In the same way people proposed that Saints Row 4 fixed everything with letting you create a wide range of characters then recreate your character at any point).
The problem with this is if you look at everything For Honor pitches at the world it promotes that the default hero in this game is a light skinned man in a world of light skinned men with a few light skinned women.
What this means is any time you select a woman in the classes where that is an option, or you change the skin tone of your character to something distinctly darker – your choice is the not an act of selecting your place in the game’s world, rather it’s an act of individual rebellion: using the mechanics of the game to oppose the fluff of the game. (Not entirely unlike when you make an impossibly ugly PC in games with conventional character creators and offer a variety of conventionally attractive faces as default, or may a virtuous hero throw bottles at random people).
Conclusion
Ultimately what this means is that while For Honor allows a wide variety of people to represent themselves (cosmetically) in the game, it’s still not signalling to the world that is actually “for everyone”
Rather, it’s signalling that it’s primarily for light skinned cis men, secondly for light skinned cis women and then has options for people of color with brown skin. The reason it’s getting so much celebration is because this is, sadly, a lot more consideration than is generally given.
For Honor, like Overwatch, is not being celebrated because it has exception equitable designs (particularly compared to say Dark Souls) and inclusion – but rather because the bar for inclusion in high profile media like AAA games is so low that it should be embarrassing not to easily clear it.
– wincenworks
P.S. If you’re a giant budget developer who is planning to distribute your media to millions of people then you should also look not just to make sure you’re not just setting a default and deviation, but also that you’re not inadvertently reinforcing certain unfortunate stereotypes.
Amazing video. Should be required viewing for high school students. I may make it required viewing for my future college students.
“The Fighting Fucktoy” is my new favourite phrase.
See: Why male gaze is awful and needs to be addressed
This documentary was awesome and powerful definitely recommend that you guys watch it!
A subject we referenced a couple of times before, which constantly needs to be reiterated: there’s a crucial difference between female characters being primarily badass while incidentally sexy and characters being primarily sexy while incidentally badass.
It’s super disingenuous to obviously design a heroine’s look, personality and actions around (straight) male gaze appeal and repackage it as female empowerment just because she’s technically a powerful hero (or sometimes, a villain).
~Ozzie
This week’s throwback: Fighting F*cktoy or “How to make absolutely no progress in the way female characters are depicted and repackage it as empowerment”.
Though, as @magicmeatmarch publishes essentially every submission to its tag, we encourage all artists to be aware of potential transphobia of jokingly putting masculine characters in feminine-coded costumes and makeup. Please always be sure to not frame the humor of reversing sexualization as “that’s funny, because he looks girly”.
While is hard to draw the line, we also encourage anyone entering to remember that as terrible as costumes for female characters often are, they generally don’t include explicit material like brazenly exposed genitalia (outside of hardcore porn). Please keep that in mind when satirizing them!
