I won’t pretend that the excessive T&A in some games don’t irk me at times, but it does make me all the more appreciative when female armor in video games aim to be a bit more classy.
These are some of the sexiest sets I could find. They’re sexy because they’re badass, and show a female game character doesn’t need an exposed thong to kick some serious ass. I mean, she can wear whatever she wants to kick ass, but we all know we don’t always have a choice, and you can’t deny it isn’t as practical.
The one thing I love about the Bioware RPG operas is you you can play the exact same character as a male or female. Despite how monotonous DAII’s environments and questline was, I enjoyed the game (to an extent). Female Hawke armor is exactly the same as the male Hawke armor, so there’s no debate as to whether they over-sexualized fem-Hawke. Also it’s sexy as hell – look at that badass armored-claw!
I’m a big fan of the armor sets in Diablo III altogether; they really touched down on the personality of each class. The Monk has to be one of the most durable classes in the game, and their armor may be the most elegant. Again, the armor seems practical, doesn’t stray too far from the male version by adding extra boobage, and even looks comfortable!
The only other time you see Aela’s armor in a non-modded game of Skyrim is on any female draugr crawling around in acient tombs peppered around the map. It’s got this amazingly ancient style to it, and I love how she finishes the set off with some gritty warpaint. I always wondered how she stays warm on cold nights in Skyrim, but if you become a member of the Companions, you’ll find out.
I don’t think female dwarves get enough recognition as to just how unbelievably badass they are. They’re generally the lowest played races in most MMO’s, but can rock that heavy armor just as well as a male dwarf. I think the only reason I’d generally play a male dwarf over a female, is females don’t have beards. Slap a fancy, glittery beard on a fem-dwarf, and I’m good to go. High-level Ironbreaker gear in particular is so intricate and decorated, there’s no denying she looks freakin’ fabulous.
I know, I know, I love these guys. The unique thing about their cultural armor, is it’s a PART of them. There’s something so whimsical about sprouting your own armor…I had a hard time picking just one type to show off, so here’s a medley! I know some in the picture are male butwhatchugonnado?
Photo reply is on :p. What are your favourites?
I made it myself! Components include the hearts of my defeated foes!
– wincenworks
Not particularly refined design-wise, but I have just sheer appreciation for complete gender-neutrality of this armor.
Recently, a friend sent me this image. It had been passed on by her boyfriend; it had reminded him of me. One might expect that connection to fill me with satisfaction, that I, a game designer and writer, am instantly associated with forward thinking and feminist ideals. Instead, I felt humiliated.
This is a great article that does a good job of explaining exactly why arguments excusing ”sexy armor” are invalid and altogether ridiculous.
This awesome article not only thoroughly explains why there’s no way to logically justify sexualization of female characters in video games, but also highlights the struggles that women in the industry go through:
The thing is, in this industry, you don’t want to be “that girl.” The world has communicated very thoroughly, with Anita Sarkeesian’s death threats, with so many comments on Kotaku, and with comments in the hallways of the workplace and the podiums of conventions, that being “that girl” is bad. Real bad. Potentially end of career bad.
But it’s not just dangerous for potential ramifications on career trajectory. There’s also a social component of how “that girl” is insufferable, annoying, and should be punishable by shaming.
Many female game designers, anonymously and publicly alike, confess how they have to deal with sexist standards of the industry, just so they can keep their jobs. It’s a legit problem that men, especially the ones chanting “sex sells!” or “it’s intended for male gamers!”, are either blissfully unaware of or willfully ignorant (my bets are on the latter option, though).
Please guys, read the whole thing.
~Ozzie
People are often quick to dismiss arguments against the conventional wisdom that “sex sells” as “politically correct” idealism. But one of the most compelling argument against the slogan comes from the other side of the political spectrum.
David Ogilvy was one of, if not The great iconic Ad Men of the 1960’s. Unsurprisingly he was deeply invested in the idea of gender roles and claimed “I am less offended by obscenity than by tasteless typography, banal photographs, clumsy copy, and cheap jingles”. He also (literally) wrote the book on how to create effective advertising and measure the effectiveness of your advertising.
He was, amazingly, admantly against introducing sex to sell any product that wasn’t inherently sexual in itself for one simple reason:
All his research and experience in advertising told him it would not work.
What did Ogilvy very sincerely believed was the first step in creating effective advertising an massive sales? To create a high quality product.
That way all that was required was to sincerely show the customers why it was a great product and the rest would take care of itself.
So when developers distort their products (comics, books, movies, video games, etc) by cramming sexualised imagery into them with the mentality of “sex sells” so “more sex will sell even more” they are actually sabotaging their product’s reception, reputation, sales and it’s marketing campaigns.
At least according to an old white man from the 1960s who always assumed women should be house wives… and also happened to be one of the greatest thinkers in advertising.
So, until recently there wasn’t much commentary on video games on this blog simply because Ozzie doesn’t have the particular interest in the types of titles people put forward.
Since I (wincenworks) love arguing about these types of video games I’ve been going through backlog of messages regarding female armor and general sexism in video games.
The most commonly mentioned topic is video games that allow you to choose your gender and provide similar options in terms of clothing etc to both options. This is, in itself, an awesome idea and my initial reaction to the announcement of such a thing, particularly when it extends into other factors like race, build, age, etc is always the same:
Some franchises that have been mentioned in regards to this:
Dark Souls (which is the only title in this list I haven’t played)
Mass Effect
Dragon Age
Saints Row
Elder Scrolls
Now, I will probably later do a more in depth write up on some or all of these games. However I feel that there are two common issues in both these titles that can be addressed in a singular post. (Though since I haven’t looked into it enough yet, Dark Souls will be excluded from on the presumption of innocent until shown to be guilty.)
1. Similar but different armor
In Bioware (Mass Effect and Dragon Age) and Bethesda Studios (Elder Scrolls) games there exists this strange tendency where armour magically re-styles itself dependent on the gender of the wearer. We’ve touched on how this happens in Skyrim.
This re-enforces a variant on the Smurfette Principle (you may need to refer to this and this further commentary) where the female Player Character (PC) and even Non Player Characters (NPC) appear to be feminized versions of a male characters.
Often this is to the detriment of the effectiveness of the outfit. Even allegedly identical suits of Heavy Armor can be amazingly different:
This is compounded when marketing focuses entirely on one gender option and leads the player to think of the female option as a novelty and highlights everything changed in their outfits and leads to the game feeling too much like this.
Sadly also franchises are notoriously unreliable for this. Mass Effect 1 at least made everyone wear armor that looked like it’d provide some protection, Mass Effect 2 decided some female characters didn’t need all that armor… ‘cause boob!
Skyrim provided pretty close matches with just the occasional boobplate or similar issue, but pkudude99 has advised us that it looks like Elder Scrolls Online is a massive step back in female armor quality:
The whole rest of the outfit looks fully functional — she even has a gorget to protect her neck!. Why’d they ruin it with that cleavage window?
If nothing else, we’re living in an age where there are massive sites for mods on pretty much all kinds of games (and that’s good). The people who want the silly sexy super armor are going going get the silly sexy super armor, there’s no need for developers to cram it kicking and screaming into the core product.
2. The PC is fully customizable but the rest of the world…
Some video games offer you the chance to design your PC from scratch, and then to use shops etc to dress them how you like. Sometimes however, the rest of the game world does it’s best to neutralise this benefit. The worst franchise for this is, without a doubt, Saints Row.
Saints Row is a game where you… don’t really wear armour, you just wear clothes, but somehow still manages to maintain a sexist dynamic in relation to armour and battle costumes and a false dichotomy of allowing choices for male and female PCs. This, naturally, overflows into the writing, level design and overall feel of the game.
Sure the PC can go gallivanting around in anything from a three piece suit with a stylish hat and leather gloves to their birthday suit (make up and tattoos optional) but the rest of the world still forces generic female gang members to dress in impractical clothes and gendered tropes.
Even when you do unlock an option to turn your gang members into soldiers (the only ones in the game who wear armor of any sort) – soldiers can only be male (even though a major antagonist in Saints Row III is a female soldier).
Sometimes the game may even start with presenting major female characters in a variety of outfits but then decide to up the sexy as the game progresses. Like Kinzie in Saints Row IV, for example:
And there’s the after party at the end of Saints Row IV where everyone has their Super Armor (which does not make them invulnerable):
Mass Effect shows us a world where we have influence and technology from half a dozen alien races – but a casino still looks like this:
In Saints Row and early Elder Scrolls games the worlds are pretty much designed to cater to Male Gaze in every possible way. (This is a NSFW shrine to the Saints in Saints Row IV, notice one of these things is not like the other.) Even Skyrim has some questionable costuming decisions that have already been highlighted on BABD.
I can’t help but think that if your male PC and your female PC should dress with radically different levels of sexualisation to look equally at home in their world, then you’ve lost one of the real benefits of allowing customisation.
So yesterday, Kelly Thompson released an article for She Has No Head! where she discusses 6 recent Female Superhero costume designs that she feels are an improvement of what came prior.
Amongst the designs that were chosen was my Psylocke design, which is in the company of artists like Meredith McClaren, Ross Campbell, Mark Brooks, Jamie McKelvie, Phil Noto, and Jesus Siaz. Not a bad group of artists to be grouped with, if I do say so myself.
Basically the gist of the article was about costumes should be designed by artists who also know fashion and design, rather than just pencilers who will have to be drawing that character for their book, and how when the right person is tasked to design the costume that it will have a far better outcome. She went through and chose characters who she felt needed the update, and talked about how the redesign was an improvement.
Characters like Psylocke, Glory, Poison Ivy, Ms Marvel, Jubilee, Valkyrie, and Domino.
And as anything involving comics, hatred quickly followed the heels of this article. what else would you expect, right?
But within the comments, a few points were being brought up that puzzled me that I sort of wanted to address, Instead of my initial reaction which was to get into a comment war. Thankfully, that was a path I didn’t go down because I had things I needed to do with my day and I couldn’t waste it in what would undoubtedly become an insult match.
One of the ideas that kept coming up was the notion that there is a trend in current female costume designs that the designer must pander to screaming feminists by covering the character from head to toe and take away all of the characters sexiness and by result make them boring.
Now I’ll be honest, I don’t like being yelled at by feminists. But I also don’t like to be yelled at by womanizers, or kids, or anyone. So I want to just rule that out as a motivation. No one wants to get yelled at.
Secondly, sexiness is subjective. A character can still be considered “sexy” even if it doesn’t fit with your tastes. To say that by giving a Female character a piece of fabric to cover her ass cheeks up is ruining her sexiness, ALL that means is that YOU think that an exposed ass is sexy. There is absolutely no way to make a blanket statement about that. Some people think a baggy shirt on a girl is equally as attractive as an uber skin tight shirt.
Sexiness has NEVER been a factor when I design a character. Sex appeal ONLY comes into play when the characters PERSONALITY dictates that as a factor.
The CHARACTER must be first and foremost the inspiration and guideline for all the decisions made when trying to design the clothing. NOT what you want to see on a characters to get your rocks off. I find that frankly immature, and an insult to the character you are trying to do justice to.
Granted, what is “correct” by the character is also incredibly subjective. Everyone see’s a character differently. This is Fact. This is the exact reason that everyone has different favourite characters, we each see something different that attracts us to them. The best a designer can hope for is that their interpretation can ideally appeal to the largest majority possible of that characters fan-base. No one wants to have a design that fans hate, but you can’t please everyone.
And just to speak for myself, modesty was never a factor. I never approached storm’s, or psylocke’s, or spiral’s design with the sole intention of hiding their skin. The amount of real estate that ended up being covered or not was ENTIRELY dictated by my attempt to respect the character. There was no “psylocke has to be fully covered because it would be indecent for any of her skin to be showing”. I wanted to have her covered because I felt that a character who is performing stealth assassinations would want as little wound-able flesh showing.
My go-to example of a character that should be showing skin is, of course, Emma Frost. Here is a character who prides herself on her looks. She is an incredibly confident character mentally, and likes to show off herself physically. Emma Frost flaunting it works because it works for HER. She likes control, she likes power, and one of the best tools for that is her body. She can turn heads with her body, she can command attention with it. She wouldn’t even need to use her telepathy to have someone lose focus. Emma Frost is incredibly intelligent, she knows what she is doing. There has to be a REASON for the skin.
Even with male characters. Namor doesn’t need to cover up anything because he is indestructible. Armour would give him no benefit, and would probably hinder him. In fact, having Namor show off skin actually helps to tell a lot about him as a character. It shows his confidence, it shows he isn’t afraid to be attacked, and it largely makes sense given he lives in water.
Colossus doesn’t need full covering, because all he has to do is become metal, and he has his own protection.
There has to be a REASON.
To what tactical function would a spy need her cleavage hanging out? Does it help a character who is an acrobat?
There is nothing inherently wrong with cleavage, but it needs to be based on either the characters personality or by what they do. I cannot stress this enough. It cannot just be cause the artist felt like drawing a zipper down.
Fan-Service is no longer a logical reason to do anything. The Story should be the Fan-service by being a good story and doing the character justice, and the art should support that.
And, an Artist’s tastes are an entirely defendable reason for something, but dont try to pass it off as anything else. You can argue that it makes sense for psylocke to wear less clothing because she wants less covering her to hinder her mobility, and that does hold some water to it. It does make sense to a point. But to say the stripes of clothe on her serve any other function that just for appearance sake is laughable. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong about just saying something is drawn that way because thats what the artist likes. I do it all the time. There are things that I draw a certain way, that Ross draws a certain way, that Mark draws a certain way. It’s one of the weird double-edged swords about comics, but a lot of the audiences participation with the comic is determined by the artist and their tastes. It’s just one of those things where the artist holds a lot of power in their hands, and as such, there is a level of accountability that the artist owes the readers, but the readers arguments must come from a place of logic, rather than just “You ruined her because I want to see more tits!!”. No one has time for that
Covering characters works. Uncovering characters work. The character determines what will or will not work. There is no mandate. There are no threats. At least there weren’t for me when I designed X-force. I had incredible freedom to design as how I saw fit. As I assume how it went for the other artists that designed the marvel costumes.
I find it funny that out of the 6 costumes in that article, 5 were designed by guys. I think that just goes to show that there isn’t this gender mental block that makes men unable to design practical costumes for the opposite gender.
Anyone can design any costume for any gender as long as they approach it with with respect and understanding.
And thats my rant on that haha
Excellent commentary about priorities and goals in character design.
It’s baffling to me how some creators can spend time pondering over the exact history of a character, or how to compose a shot to homage to a classic work, then turn around and decide that it is VITAL that a female character has to be as sexy as possible even if it goes against all other aspects of her and her story.
I mean really, I would think the way they dress would be considered far more important an aspect about the character’s expression than the occasional line they drop about what school they went to.
– wincenworks
Took the liberty of bolding the most relevant parts for emphasis (and to break down the great wall of text that this article is).
You know why it irks me? Because that shit ain’t practical, and hell, it doesn’t look comfortable either. Sure, it looks nice, gives the bad guys something to look at, but will it work in a fight? Will it protect the user against swords or arrows or whatever else is being thrown their way? They better goddamn hope those chain mail bikinis are enchanted with a force field, cause that’s not going to save anyone from any lethal hit.
They’re a badass and have the skills to not get hit? I call bullshit. Even the most seasoned warrior (minus the Greeks) knows better than to give an opponent any possible opening. Armor is there for a reason, and that’s to cover for you when and if you make a mistake or there’s something you cannot deflect.
Not to mention, I think having cold hunks of steel rubbing against my girl parts would be the most uncomfortable and unbearable thing ever. I hate underwire bras enough, but a bra made entirely out of steel wire? Haha, no, There is no way that would work, even for aesthetic purposes. Not to mention the chaffing in the nether regions, good god. Metal chaffs. Knights wore clothing underneath their armor and chain mail for a reason.
Oh, and just because it covers doesn’t mean it’s practical, while we’re at it.
This breastplate is a bit of an improvement, but still has major flaws. The way that it curves around each breast would direct blows inwards, closer to the heart. Armor can be pierced, and after enough hits, guess where this breastplate is most likely to be pierced? That’s right, the cleavage. That’s why armor tends to be very rounded, so blows are deflected away from vital organs and such. Makes sense? I think so, too.
What is good female armor? Any armor that men would wear, basically. Like I said, there tends to be a lot of room in the front for the girls, so there should be no problem fitting them in. Here’s some examples of good (or better) armor:
Oh, and this little jewel~
So yes, you can be a badass, feminine heroine- with the proper, practical protection on.No excuses.
A new rule of thumb:
If you wouldn’t look impressive holding a bunny, you’re not going to look impressive holding a weapon.
– wincenworks
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My boyfriend called me while I was at work to tell me about it. He sent me an email with pictures of this new “soldier” and I had to show the women I work with (also Marines, current or former). We couldn’t believe it wasn’t some sort of joke. One of my coworkers even said, “Oh, yeah; she’ll definitely last in combat so long as she isn’t worried about a tit popping out.
For those of you who live under a rock, the female soldier character in question is Quiet from new MGS game.
Hope it’s self-explanatory why actual women in military aren’t amused by her costume design.
~Ozzie
A reminder that early in the Metal Gear franchise, female soldiers looked like this:
– wincenworks
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Maybe it’s because you’re taking the same strategy you would in designing characters for comics or video games and applying it to real people, except fictional characters are a representation of how you choose to see people or wish them to be portrayed, whereas real people get to do their own choosing, because nothing is more sexist than denying someone the right to choose, regardless of what that choice may be.
