Nevermind the awful anatomy, that’s some pretty good Bingo right there. But wait, it gets worse on Steam… because then I saw this game called “Dark Blood Online”, a F2P MMORPG (because there aren’t enough of those, apparently) featuring, ahem… this gem:
Yikes.
For fuck’s sake, can we at least keep that to shitty mobile knock-offs? ;_;
There’s another MMO by the guys that did League of Angels — Knight’s Fable: http://knight.gtarcade.com/ I have not seen a single reasonably-armored female character on their websites. Behold!
Look at all those pointy bits. Most of their advertizing involves the female characters, though there are guys. Strangely, their armor and clothing offers full coverage.
Lastly, here is one of their actual advertizements on Facebook, un-cropped and unaltered.
Yep. Makes me want to cheer. How about you?
O_o I… have nothing to add. You probably said everything that needs to be said about this game already, lysander-gustav.
~Ozzie
Protip: If your default marketing idea is “A sexy woman in an improbable costume, but leave most of her fact out…”
I was coming of Fable and feeling pretty good about playing a female character that could look and be whatever, however, and whereever I wanted, and needed a new RPG.
Oh, this Lost Odyssey thing is supposed to be pretty awesome.
Hey it even looks like there’s a chick on the cover. Let’s take a look at the characters…. oh.
God, this requires a bingo. This is one of the most ridiculous costumes I’ve ever seen.
The other women on the main cast don’t fare much better, although nothing is as WTF as that.
This one looks relatively bearable… until you see it from behind.
Here, have a random boob window!
And just to make us feel all fuzzy inside, here’s a sexualized child:
I decided not to buy the game.
The most horrifying thing about this game is that it was published by Microsoft exclusively on the X-Box 360, that’s the forerunner to the X-Box One – a console that’s for the WHOLE FAMILY to enjoy!
While checking up on this game I didn’t find a single mention by a professional reviewer about the costumes or the worrying sexualization of a child – but I did find a refreshingly honest review by a user on MetaCritic (of all places), here’s the most important part:
It says something about feminism when a character having rocket-powered high heels in a video game is a hot-button issue, like this is the most important thing going for them at the moment
And these are the same tools who post shit like “gonna crush the patriarchy with my six-inch heels” too, you’d think that with Smash’s mostly-male roster they’d be in favor of it
You know there’s a difference in actual, real life women choosing what they wear, and a video game character being presented by writers in a certain way, right?
And no one is saying that Samus’s ridiculous, impractical, and laughable costume change is the BIGGEST MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE EVER. But it is, obviously, a VISIBLE one and offers a widely accessible platform to talk about the double standard of video game costuming.
Emphasis mine.
Gotta “love” all the people who suggest that by caring about things like video game character design feminism apparently lost its priorities (and somehow, shifted all focus from any other issues, cause heavens forbid the movement cared about multiple things at once!).
It’s totally not the other way round, right? That we see the actual impact that popculture products like videogames have on the society at large and do our best to spread awareness of it!
So… since I haven’t heard anything like this… I went and asked one of my gamer friends who happens to be a woman what she thought. Here’s how she started her response:
“Please provide sources, if you’re going to attempt to tar girls with the same brush that is clearly lubricated by entitled male gamer tears, then you must provide the burden of proof.”
From there the rage intensifies and it gets kinda nerdy, so I shall just share the highlights:
“You’re referencing art of ZERO SUIT Samus, which rose to popularity with Super Smash Bros, which has targeted a younger demographic. It’s become commonplace to see Samus OUT of her suit rather than in it, despite it being an iconic image of Metroid. Back in itty bitty pixels, we saw as a bonus at the end of a game that Samus was a girl, thats it.”
“If they’d spent any time actually IN the gaming community of tumblr … then they’d be aware that the community ISN’T vocal in favour of Samus’ new look”
“She’s 6 foot 3 too, mind you, and weighs 90kg. The recent sexualisation/slimming of Samus is a move on NINTENDO’S part, not the gamer fangirl base.”
So to make sure this wasn’t a one off, I asked another friend:
“Firstly, Dudebro McFedora, you have no basis to say that women don’t like Samus. The odds are that you’ve probably never talked to a girl that’s played the games.”
From there the rage intensifies – so I will just share some of the highlights:
“I will say that I particularly want her shoes. They’re spark shooting death heels to beat up people. It’s wonderful; who wouldn’t want that?
They are not appropriate for SSB though BECAUSE THEY’RE FUCKING PUMPS. You can’t run around in that shit!”
“Samus in her armor is fantastic because it creates this unique position where anyone can play her and entitled ‘macho boiz’ never think to say, “Oh shit I don’t want to play as the girl” or “Sweet, the girl character is fucking hot.””
“Samus Aran is my role model.”
Also, I seem to recall seeing amazing fan art by women:
And amazing cosplays:
This is not to say there aren’t female gamers who only discovered Samus when they announced her high heels of doom, female gamers who really want to cosplay Samus in heels because they’ll look cute and sexy or female gamers who like the Zero Suit better than the armors for other reasons.
I say this theoretically because I did look to try to find some of them, and between quick searches for them and searches to find choice examples of art and cosplays… I didn’t find a single woman who suggested that she only became interested in Samus due to the Jet Boot heels.
So if you have come across women who only got into Samus due to the high heels, it’s still quite ridiculous to decide those particular women are somehow representative of women or female gamers as a whole. Particularly since the character first appeared in 1986 – so has had quite a while to grow a diverse fan base.
Trying to dismiss and/or erase huge numbers of female fans just so that you can try to pretend gender stereotypes are facts is pretty much the reason why the rage intensified.
