Warmachine – Necrotechs

@recklessprudence submitted:

So, I was reading your past Warmachine commentary, and got to the part where you said that ‘Skarre comes from an army where the female commanders are always sexy ladies – and the male characters… significantly less attractive’, and I thought “Surely not! I read Master Necrotech Mortenebra’s lore and remember her disdain for the flesh she escaped by becoming the undead horror masterpiece of engineering and magic she is now, and I vaguely remember the model, she’s just an only-partially humanoid  robot with her soul animating it, there’s no reason for her to be like that”

…and then I looked up her model.

image

Yes, that is boobplate. On a spider-robot-lady who barely has a face. Why was that the crucial aspect one of the greatest masters of combining Necromancy and Engineering the world has ever seen focused on?

Especially when a focus on her sex appeal was nothing that was in the lore, and in fact her disdain for the weakness of flesh (not anything in particular, just the fact that bodies need food and water and fairly narrow climate tolerances and time to heal and whatnot – the whole organic thing)

Hell, even her subordinate necrotechs are undead for the most part, grotesque monstrosities of necromantic technology that look like this:

image

PP, I love your game, but… really?

…On the plus side, she has no ribcage under that to be broken, like a normal undead, just more mechanisms of her robot body? But then, it’s still going to guide both ranged fire and melee strikes into a spot, repeatedly. And I don’t care what you’ve built your new body out of, or how thick the forcefield generated by your will married to sorcerous technology surrounding your body is, you don’t make your third century by making things easier for your many enemies!

I personally have this theory (that I cling to out of desperate fear of the alternatives) that armies like Cryx end up with sexy undead because the creators have trapped themselves into using boobs, wasp waists and thongs as their signals that a model is female.  Particularly if they’re “evil”.

Once you’ve set that convention, or simply decided to adhere to it in order to conform with market expectations – you paint yourself into a corner with the designs.  Doing the undead horror who’s more machine than flesh as a different attracts attention to the convention and breaks the “language” of their visuals and opens it up to criticism.

Sticking with the conventions, however limiting and silly that ends up being, invites people to respond to anything ridiculous as “it’s just fantasy”.  That of course, only holds up so long as lots of people stick to the same conventions – so they all find themselves trapped in an unspoken agreement.

– wincenworks

Warmachine – Necrotechs

@recklessprudence submitted:

So, I was reading your past Warmachine commentary, and got to the part where you said that ‘Skarre comes from an army where the female commanders are always sexy ladies – and the male characters… significantly less attractive’, and I thought “Surely not! I read Master Necrotech Mortenebra’s lore and remember her disdain for the flesh she escaped by becoming the undead horror masterpiece of engineering and magic she is now, and I vaguely remember the model, she’s just an only-partially humanoid  robot with her soul animating it, there’s no reason for her to be like that”

…and then I looked up her model.

image

Yes, that is boobplate. On a spider-robot-lady who barely has a face. Why was that the crucial aspect one of the greatest masters of combining Necromancy and Engineering the world has ever seen focused on?

Especially when a focus on her sex appeal was nothing that was in the lore, and in fact her disdain for the weakness of flesh (not anything in particular, just the fact that bodies need food and water and fairly narrow climate tolerances and time to heal and whatnot – the whole organic thing)

Hell, even her subordinate necrotechs are undead for the most part, grotesque monstrosities of necromantic technology that look like this:

image

PP, I love your game, but… really?

…On the plus side, she has no ribcage under that to be broken, like a normal undead, just more mechanisms of her robot body? But then, it’s still going to guide both ranged fire and melee strikes into a spot, repeatedly. And I don’t care what you’ve built your new body out of, or how thick the forcefield generated by your will married to sorcerous technology surrounding your body is, you don’t make your third century by making things easier for your many enemies!

I personally have this theory (that I cling to out of desperate fear of the alternatives) that armies like Cryx end up with sexy undead because the creators have trapped themselves into using boobs, wasp waists and thongs as their signals that a model is female.  Particularly if they’re “evil”.

Once you’ve set that convention, or simply decided to adhere to it in order to conform with market expectations – you paint yourself into a corner with the designs.  Doing the undead horror who’s more machine than flesh as a different attracts attention to the convention and breaks the “language” of their visuals and opens it up to criticism.

Sticking with the conventions, however limiting and silly that ends up being, invites people to respond to anything ridiculous as “it’s just fantasy”.  That of course, only holds up so long as lots of people stick to the same conventions – so they all find themselves trapped in an unspoken agreement.

– wincenworks

recklessprudence submitted:

Can we talk about The Mandate for a little bit? I mean, the concept is one of the two games that I have been dreaming of since I was about eight, of an empire in turmoil and you as a captain given a mission to reunite it – which you can choose to do, or you can decide to become a pirate, or join the rebels, or align yourself with a reformist faction, or carve out your own empire, or anything else the devs think of.

Combat is both infantry boarding teams and space fleets of about one to five ships of various sizes, with the ability to actually have a boarding action happening at the same time as the fleet engagement, on one of the ships involved, and with the boarding team’s actions affecting the ship action!

And apart from the game itself, which looks shaping up to be wonderful, the devs have built a character modeling system that can handle nearly any body type, and have taken care to model women as respectfully as they have men. I mean, look at this articlethey have no Creepy Marketing Guy! That’s amazing!

And in all of it, they’re putting women in all the roles men can have – from boarding team, to engineers keeping the ship running, to captains. The leader of the empire, Empress Anastasia Romanov, who ascended to the throne just in time for the Rebels to strike, is portrayed as a stronger ruler than her father and one who realises that there will be hard work ahead of them.

The everyday uniform your captain wears is a light hardsuit, capable of keeping you alive when the bridge is holed and the atmosphere vents, and look at it! It looks like actual functional (if stylised) armour – but the male version looks near-identical, and the stylisation is to make it look like an 1800s naval uniform, not for any ‘sex appeal’!

I mean, just read this quote from the earlier-linked article:

“Perhaps there are meticulously theorized marketing implications for gender representation in games, tacitly discussed by marketers with twirly moustaches at board meetings,” he says. “With 48 percent of all gamers being women according to ESA it seems a little misguided to actively aim to please only half of your potential customer base while alienating the other half. Besides some guys prefer to roll female characters… In any conceivable version of a space-faring future for humankind, there would need to be women…

How awesome is that?

image

Just thought I’d share.

I highly recommend that everyone check out the art e-book that is freely available on the web site.  It’s full of awesome imagery and on par with many art books that I’ve paid for.

– wincenworks