Here’s a rare find. A fantasy-themed match-3 game that depicts women in actual armor.
Yes.
– wincenworks
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
A propos gender signifiers in warrior costume design… Now this case tells us a lot about the studio’s approach to creativity.
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?
But considering Drakensang’s track record, we shouldn’t be all that surprised.
Thank you @lunaia for bringing this issue to us!
~Ozzie
Guy that (supposedly) worked on a mobile game said they’d first tried not to use sex appeal. Tried some inoffensive DLC & got lukewarm response. Then they caved & tried selling things that “sexed up” the game. Supposedly they gained more male gamers (& their revenue) than they lost from girls leaving. QUESTION: Are there good visual examples of warrior women that are genuinely sexy (to teens into girls, theoretically) without being demeaning? Can we have “sex appeal” revenue w.out offensiveness?
The problem with crediting “sexing up” the game with increase in sales is that it assumes sex was the only avenue of generating interest – a theory that doesn’t hold up when you consider that some of the biggest selling game types (flight simulators, first person shooters, side scrolling platformers) often don’t include any sexual angle at all.
Back in 1970, Marvel comics experimented with putting Conan the Barbarian in comic format. After the first few issues sales began to decline and the writer, Roy Thomas (who loved Conan), went to Stan Lee (who was indifferent to Conan) for advice. Stan looked at the covers and the sales, and told them to shift away from putting animals on the covers and instead use more humanoid monsters.
They followed Stan’s advice: Sales went up again and the comic continued for twenty-three years. However you don’t see many people campaigning that “Humanoid monsters sell!“ then trying to fit them into all marketing regardless of product or target market. (And sex obviously wasn’t selling Conan, they had bikini damsels after all)
Conan the Barbarian, in his loincloth and flexing his muscles, looked like a poor man’s Tarzan (which had been the popular comic fifty years ago) when battling animals – but when battling humanoid monsters he looked like a more mature fantasy narrative that was new and unique in comics at the time.
The only narrative that sexing/male gazing up a game really provides is “This game is made to cater to the fantasy of straight men.” So if swapping out your old narrative for this one increases interest and sales dramatically – then your old narrative must have been pretty boring.
There have been numerous warrior women in video games over the years. Most of them have been under marketed, relegated to sidelines, ignored or otherwise mishandled due to general fear that they weren’t meeting the “make straight men feel important” factor that modern markets cling to as their sacred idol.
- Cate Archer is essentially a light-hearted, distaff James Bond in the No One Lives Forever franchise dresses in the attire of a fashionable lady in the 60s. Often sexy but out of character for the production. Monolith would later try to replace her with “Contract J.A.C.K.” and have since lost the paperwork so nobody knows who owns the intellectual property.
- Faith Connors from Mirror’s Edge has the fitness and style we’d expect of a free running rebel and certainly looks good on the cover.
- Mona Sax was, until the end sequence of Max Payne 2, a badass assassin who liked her tight tops but also pants and a jacket to side her gun (Mona starred in more or less equal space with Max on the cover of Max Payne 2, but is barely even mentioned in Max Payne 3).
- Aveline de Grandpré dresses in badass leather when assassinating and very becoming gowns when socializing as a noblewoman. It was originally released on a handheld device and if you want to play it on the PC or console that you play the rest of the Assassin’s Creed franchise on you need to buy it online at very specific places that weren’t marketed. (PS3) (X-Box 360) (PC)
- Left 4 Dead has Zoey and Rochelle are both attractive young women who possess the will and the skills to survive the zombie apocalypse.
- Nilin Cartier-Wells from Remember me is an attractive revolutionary – publishers not only freaked out about the idea of a female lead but also at the idea that the female lead might kiss a man. (Too much like men kissing men!)
- Borderlands 2 showcases women off all sorts and each possesses their own style and is equipped for their situation – be it adventuring, working as a mechanic or running a bar. (This game has sold over 10 million copies by the way, and been featured on BABD as a positive example)
- Casandra Pentaghast in Dragon Age certainly does not wear bikini armor or anything exploitative – but there’s no shortage of folks who find her incredibly attractive.
It’s actually not that difficult for creators to make female characters who are sexually attractive without going into bikini armor or other exploitative tropes. I mean, if you give a woman agency, ability and personality – odds are good people will find it sexy.
Essentially the problem is that the gaming industry, and many other mediums, are reluctant to take the risk of incorporating different perspectives and different priorities over “games to reassure straight white men that they’re straight and awesome”.
– wincenworks
Bringing this back this Thursday because the most important conversations to have in character design and critique thereof are not “is it sexy” or “what’s wrong with sex” but:
- What is the design really selling?
- Why should the audience be interested?
- How does it fit in with the other designs?
- How does it fit into media as a whole?
Unfortunately David Gaider has since removed his blog, but his rather excellent talk on sex and video games is still available in GDC Vault and still covers important points about perspective and privilege.
Even if you’re a soulless corporation making products purely for profit and only interested in sales – it’s worth it to consider all these points. After all, you do want your audience to like your product and to cut through the noise of what everyone else is doing.
– wincenworks
danalynnandthecallofadventure:
Guy that (supposedly) worked on a mobile game said they’d first tried not to use sex appeal. Tried some inoffensive DLC & got lukewarm response. Then they caved & tried selling things that “sexed up” the game. Supposedly they gained more male gamers (& their revenue) than they lost from girls leaving. QUESTION: Are there good visual examples of warrior women that are genuinely sexy (to teens into girls, theoretically) without being demeaning? Can we have “sex appeal” revenue w.out offensiveness?
The problem with crediting “sexing up” the game with increase in sales is that it assumes sex was the only avenue of generating interest – a theory that doesn’t hold up when you consider that some of the biggest selling game types (flight simulators, first person shooters, side scrolling platformers) often don’t include any sexual angle at all.
Back in 1970, Marvel comics experimented with putting Conan the Barbarian in comic format. After the first few issues sales began to decline and the writer, Roy Thomas (who loved Conan), went to Stan Lee (who was indifferent to Conan) for advice. Stan looked at the covers and the sales, and told them to shift away from putting animals on the covers and instead use more humanoid monsters.
They followed Stan’s advice: Sales went up again and the comic continued for twenty-three years. However you don’t see many people campaigning that “Humanoid monsters sell!“ then trying to fit them into all marketing regardless of product or target market. (And sex obviously wasn’t selling Conan, they had bikini damsels after all)
Conan the Barbarian, in his loincloth and flexing his muscles, looked like a poor man’s Tarzan (which had been the popular comic fifty years ago) when battling animals – but when battling humanoid monsters he looked like a more mature fantasy narrative that was new and unique in comics at the time.
The only narrative that sexing/male gazing up a game really provides is “This game is made to cater to the fantasy of straight men.” So if swapping out your old narrative for this one increases interest and sales dramatically – then your old narrative must have been pretty boring.
There have been numerous warrior women in video games over the years. Most of them have been under marketed, relegated to sidelines, ignored or otherwise mishandled due to general fear that they weren’t meeting the “make straight men feel important” factor that modern markets cling to as their sacred idol.
- Cate Archer is essentially a light-hearted, distaff James Bond in the No One Lives Forever franchise dresses in the attire of a fashionable lady in the 60s. Often sexy but out of character for the production. Monolith would later try to replace her with “Contract J.A.C.K.” and have since lost the paperwork so nobody knows who owns the intellectual property.
- Faith Connors from Mirror’s Edge has the fitness and style we’d expect of a free running rebel and certainly looks good on the cover.
- Mona Sax was, until the end sequence of Max Payne 2, a badass assassin who liked her tight tops but also pants and a jacket to side her gun (Mona starred in more or less equal space with Max on the cover of Max Payne 2, but is barely even mentioned in Max Payne 3).
- Aveline de Grandpré dresses in badass leather when assassinating and very becoming gowns when socializing as a noblewoman. It was originally released on a handheld device and if you want to play it on the PC or console that you play the rest of the Assassin’s Creed franchise on you need to buy it online at very specific places that weren’t marketed. (PS3) (X-Box 360) (PC)
- Left 4 Dead has Zoey and Rochelle are both attractive young women who possess the will and the skills to survive the zombie apocalypse.
- Nilin Cartier-Wells from Remember me is an attractive revolutionary – publishers not only freaked out about the idea of a female lead but also at the idea that the female lead might kiss a man. (Too much like men kissing men!)
- Borderlands 2 showcases women off all sorts and each possesses their own style and is equipped for their situation – be it adventuring, working as a mechanic or running a bar. (This game has sold over 10 million copies by the way, and been featured on BABD as a positive example)
- Casandra Pentaghast in Dragon Age certainly does not wear bikini armor or anything exploitative – but there’s no shortage of folks who find her incredibly attractive.
It’s actually not that difficult for creators to make female characters who are sexually attractive without going into bikini armor or other exploitative tropes. I mean, if you give a woman agency, ability and personality – odds are good people will find it sexy.
Essentially the problem is that the gaming industry, and many other mediums, are reluctant to take the risk of incorporating different perspectives and different priorities over “games to reassure straight white men that they’re straight and awesome”.
– wincenworks
Bringing this back this Thursday because the most important conversations to have in character design and critique thereof are not “is it sexy” or “what’s wrong with sex” but:
- What is the design really selling?
- Why should the audience be interested?
- How does it fit in with the other designs?
- How does it fit into media as a whole?
Unfortunately David Gaider has since removed his blog, but his rather excellent talk on sex and video games is still available in GDC Vault and still covers important points about perspective and privilege.
Even if you’re a soulless corporation making products purely for profit and only interested in sales – it’s worth it to consider all these points. After all, you do want your audience to like your product and to cut through the noise of what everyone else is doing.
– wincenworks
Here’s a Question:
If female character costume designers for video games and superheroes like the female form (and boobs in particular) so much, why is that they’re always putting them in harm’s way?
That’s a very good question, actually. Somehow fictional boobs and butts are precious enough to show them off whenever possible, but not precious enough to preserve?
~Ozzie