Tag: Blizzard

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A thought from BABD:

We really don’t need you to explain us that Blizzard is a bit better than they used to when it comes to female armor.

We wouldn’t talk about their games if the problem wasn’t still prominent enough to be, well, a problem.

Also: since when the fact that something problematic was done in the past make it any less problematic? Aren’t we allowed to point at a thing and say “it is not okay now and it was not okay back then”?

~Ozzie

Every time someone assures me World of Warcraft is better now… I have a look to see how it looks today.

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Then I remember how Nintendo has been increasingly interested in having Samus play out of her badass armor, Elder Scrolls went from mostly okay to comical failure.

– wincenworks

more on World of Warcraft | more on how long bikini armors have been around

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karniz replied to your post “have you seen the armor for characters on Diablo III, and if so, what’s your opinion on them?

Why do you guys just look at concept/promo art and not actual in-game armors? The actual armor within DIII is very well designed and not as sexualized as the samples you show. I feel it’s a disservice to your viewers that you don’t do more research..

Oh wow, you’re telling me that the promotional material Blizzard creates to market Diablo 3 are completely misleading and non-representative of the game… and not only has nobody mentioned this before but somehow it’s my fault?

Wow, I better look into that right away. Thankfully there’s always YouTube to provide us with Let’s Play videos so I can take screenshots that look slightly off since the live footage is always in motion and was never intended for still frames!

I bet the the in game models look completely different.  I bet they’re huge and so detailed that you’d be a fool to look at anything but what the actual in game play looks like.  It’d be ridiculous to propose that Diablo figures are displayed, by default, so tiny that you can’t make out any real detail beyond basic colours and silhouette right!?

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Oh… well never mind! The first thing you do when you start one of these games is create a character.  Obviously the Barbarian models in character creation will be completely different to those used in promotion and the ones that someone made gifs (from gameplay) of!

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Oh wow… what a co-incidence!  Oh well, there’s always the Demon Hunter right?  It’d be ridiculous to think that they’d use that stupid stance where she poses one leg in front of the other, sacrificing her balance to flaunt her hips! Or have her arms posed to both look like a she’s trying to be an action movie star and draw attention to her boobs.  That’d never…

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Wait a minute… does this game actually have all the problems previous suggested? Is it possible I just use promotional art and cleaned up gifs because they are easier to read and communicates clearer?

Is it possible that this kind of rampant double standard and objectification of women is so common in gaming that many people just assume it’s justified and normal?  And that it’s long overdue people called it out and didn’t just forgive games because there were a few good examples in it if you looked?  Or even games where it’s mostly good with some outrageously bad items used in marketing?

Outrageous! Someone should start a blog about this kind of thing… they could even like, make some sort of checkbox game to help illustrate the point!

– wincenworks

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have you seen the armor for characters on Diablo III, and if so, what’s your opinion on them? i think they’re actually very practical compared to other games and if a piece of armor’s revealing on a woman it’s likely to also be revealing on its male equivalent :)

I don’t think I would ever describe any outfit from Diablo III as “practical”.  Which is okay in itself, fantasy that conforms strictly to reality isn’t much of a fantasy.

That said, I feel there is only one outfit for a character in Diablo III that deserves celebrating – the Crusader.  And I suspect she only got her outfit because of the moral implications of her occupation:

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All the others may be equally revealing, but are designed with very different stories and themes to them.  For example, as is appropriate to our blog, Barbarians.

First there’s the male barbarian. A massively muscular individual on a huge skeletal frame – his heart exposed due to his apparent unwillingness to match a breastplate with his oversized pauldrons and horned belt.

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Female barbarian, equally exposed per se but her frame is less bulky, her pauldrons less over done, she has no big horns before her and her outfit is structured to ensure nothing obscures the silhouette of her boobs:

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And of course, there’s the desktop wallpaper that’s seems to be a homage to Red Sonja in wardrobe, hair and general presentation.

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A lack of armor or even clothing is not inherently a bad thing.  It is not by accident that a totally nude warrior will not score Bingo, but a suit of battle lingerie will.  Depending on your circumstances, it may even be safer and healthier to disrobe before battle.

Outfits should not be measured by some sort of skin quota – there are some amazingly terrible outfits that cover a lot of skin.  Rather it has to do with the purpose and priorities behind the designs, no amount of tweaking a male version’s armor or arbitrary coverage rules is ever going to disguise when a design prioritized being sexy over being badass.  Rather it tends to just make things even more absurd:

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All of this is sadly pretty standard for fantasy and video games in general due to the strange belief that (regardless of what other aspects they have) at least the highly visible, if not all, female characters must present aspects like cleavage in order to be successful.

Which is really ridiculous when you remember that some of them (coughUbisoftcough) really seem irrationally adverse to including playable female characters in the first place.

– wincenworks

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freelancerwizard:

me: *check out new mmorpg*

Female armor: sideboob, underboob, boob window …

And yet, even with all three they could barely compete with World of Warcraft’s official merchandise:

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Though I find it difficult to believe that this… thing… ever inspired anyone to rush to register an account.  Seriously, I don’t even have boobs and it hurts just to look at it.

– wincenworks