We’ve been noted by lots of our lovely followers that Square Enix changed their minds about their mobile game protagonist who caused such an outrage a while ago.
Sorry if this is information you already know, but the mobile Final Fantasy game, Mobius (originally Mevius), has had some design changes. Due to ‘negative’ feedback, the main character now has less skin showing. Meanwhile a new female character has been announced. What are your thoughts?
indirajartwork (who also suggested this post’s title) submitted:
Where are all the dudebros to cry about censorship and creative freedom NOW? O__o
Morrigan submitted:
Remember that skimpy male armour from FF Mevius? Well, turns out the SJW cabal has been forcing Square Enix to abandon their sacrosanct artistic vision and censor themselves… I’m sure the brave knights of free speech will protest this blatant censorship, right? Surely, Squeenix will be called prudes who hate sex after this? ….Right?
Have you heard the news about Mobius Final Fantasy? OK PREPARE FOR GENERAL LEL@GAMERS basically the champions of FREDUM OF SPEUCH and ANTI-CENSORSHIP are now defending squeenix censoring a male character’s scanty outfit due to complaints from whiny male gamers. BEAUTIFUL. /popcorn
Thankfully, Square Enix recognized how uncomfortable it would be for men to play as a character who was designed as a sexual object before an active, heroic subject, and announced today that they had modified his design.
[…] Thank you for being so understanding, Square Enix.
Can’t say I’m surprised or angry, but very much disappointed.
And said people are more than happy to shield this change with the good old “creative freedom” excuse. The same creative freedom that would most likely be called “censorship” or “entitlement” if the such redesign was applied to a female character instead.
So, apparently, there IS such thing as “too sexy”… but only under condition that you are a man.Who knew, right?
~Ozzie
I am really disappointed in my fellow men for this one. Ever since I started helping out here they’ve always been so eager to tell me how people who bothered by a sexualized depiction of their demographic should respond.
“Go make your own.” Pretty self explanatory. Just start a studio that makes computer games professionally, produce critically acclaimed games that sell in record amounts and in twenty-eight years you could be showing them how it’s done.
“Realize it’s a fantasy game were anybody can have a magic powers.” So nothing needs to make sense and nothing matters… really they should be campaigning for him to have less clothes, that way it’s more fantasy-ish right?
“Enjoy it as a celebration of male form.” It makes men look good so that’s got to be good for all of us right?
“Just stop.” Okay, I’m not sure how this one helps but they seem very confident about it.
Speaking of “censorship” vs. “pandering”, thought it would be appropriate to bring this post back for the Throwback Thursday. As a reader @ms-silver remarked under our last post:
… These are probably the same guys who made that one male character from that FF game put on more clothes. But then again, making dudes wear more clothes isn’t censorship, clearly.
We’ve been noted by lots of our lovely followers that Square Enix changed their minds about their mobile game protagonist who caused such an outrage a while ago.
Sorry if this is information you already know, but the mobile Final Fantasy game, Mobius (originally Mevius), has had some design changes. Due to ‘negative’ feedback, the main character now has less skin showing. Meanwhile a new female character has been announced. What are your thoughts?
indirajartwork (who also suggested this post’s title) submitted:
Where are all the dudebros to cry about censorship and creative freedom NOW? O__o
Morrigan submitted:
Remember that skimpy male armour from FF Mevius? Well, turns out the SJW cabal has been forcing Square Enix to abandon their sacrosanct artistic vision and censor themselves… I’m sure the brave knights of free speech will protest this blatant censorship, right? Surely, Squeenix will be called prudes who hate sex after this? ….Right?
Have you heard the news about Mobius Final Fantasy? OK PREPARE FOR GENERAL LEL@GAMERS basically the champions of FREDUM OF SPEUCH and ANTI-CENSORSHIP are now defending squeenix censoring a male character’s scanty outfit due to complaints from whiny male gamers. BEAUTIFUL. /popcorn
Thankfully, Square Enix recognized how uncomfortable it would be for men to play as a character who was designed as a sexual object before an active, heroic subject, and announced today that they had modified his design.
[…] Thank you for being so understanding, Square Enix.
Can’t say I’m surprised or angry, but very much disappointed.
And said people are more than happy to shield this change with the good old “creative freedom” excuse. The same creative freedom that would most likely be called “censorship” or “entitlement” if the such redesign was applied to a female character instead.
So, apparently, there IS such thing as “too sexy”… but only under condition that you are a man.Who knew, right?
~Ozzie
I am really disappointed in my fellow men for this one. Ever since I started helping out here they’ve always been so eager to tell me how people who bothered by a sexualized depiction of their demographic should respond.
“Go make your own.” Pretty self explanatory. Just start a studio that makes computer games professionally, produce critically acclaimed games that sell in record amounts and in twenty-eight years you could be showing them how it’s done.
“Realize it’s a fantasy game were anybody can have a magic powers.” So nothing needs to make sense and nothing matters… really they should be campaigning for him to have less clothes, that way it’s more fantasy-ish right?
“Enjoy it as a celebration of male form.” It makes men look good so that’s got to be good for all of us right?
“Just stop.” Okay, I’m not sure how this one helps but they seem very confident about it.
Speaking of “censorship” vs. “pandering”, thought it would be appropriate to bring this post back for the Throwback Thursday. As a reader @ms-silver remarked under our last post:
… These are probably the same guys who made that one male character from that FF game put on more clothes. But then again, making dudes wear more clothes isn’t censorship, clearly.
Couldn’t help myself but bingo the Nords: Heroes of the North ladies. And considering how generic most of their ideas look, the results surpassed my expectations by far!
For the love of Freya (no, not this Freya), the “rebel”-haired lady almost broke the bingo O_O
noticed that humans in the game also score a bit of the Rhetoric Bingo, based on info found in this screenshot (full text available here):
Adorned with traditional blue war-paint meant to invoke magical protection and enhance battle skill, Valkyries fight with grace, precision and cold cunning.
Um, at least they don’t outright say whether or not the magical paint actually works?
If it’s of any consolation for all the above absurd, here’s another pic of that exceptionally big viking lady:
Couldn’t say she’s not sexualized at all, or that her costume wouldn’t score some bingo points, but compared to other girls, her look is closer to Heroically Idealized and way more on par with the beefy shirtless men in the game.
I feel like the problem with unnecessary sexy womens clothing in many
games and comics is relatively well known and untill yesterday I would
have said that we are making progress in this area. This changed today
when I received an answer to a question that I had send Bigpoint, the
producer of “Drakensang online”, a free fantasy MMORPG.
The question I send
them asked something like “hey team, why are women now expected to fight without pants all of a sudden? I hope this is a halloween thing because I don’t really like it. I thought you were doing really well when you added more skintone options some time ago. It would be cool if you told me what changes you made in the male costume for halloween, I wasn’t really able to make anything out. Cheers, [my name]”
The answer they send, you can see above. It says: “Hello, a lot of users asked that it become better visible if a character is male or female. That is why this change was made. With kind regards […]” etc.
I don’t even know if I should be angry about this or just sad. Before female and male characters had basically the same clothing. There is no good reason (as far as I know) why gender should be made more vissible. Also, hoovering your mouse above a character will give you their name
and a (often gendered) title. This is much easier than zooming in to
spot the boob-window. You can see the changes in the pictures above. (The characters still look like before in the character menu, that is where I was able to make the before pictures.)
I really want to make a point to Bigpoint about this, so pleas reblog or like this post if you agree with me. If you play the game, it would be awesome if you left a message in their feedback-forums or tell them what you think via their support page
Developers got asked to differentiate gender of the characters, so removing women’s pants and adding cleavages was the best solution they could come up with? Really?
Assuming there truly is a huge demand for making female and male costumes more distinct, couldn’t they accommodate the designs in a more dignified way?
And if they really had to remove some items to make character’s sex/gender obvious, why not men’s shirts? Why it’s the female characters who need “adjustments”, while male ones remain the default?
