Tag: marketing

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Indivisible is a crowd-funded RPG by the creators of Skullgirls, the project was successfully funded and flooded our inbox with requests for commentary.  It opened up with the trailer below, and revealed more info and characters as it reached funding goals.

Now, as you can see the cast game has a very diverse cast both in terms of demographics, and in quality of attire.  

While overall it’s easy to see why so many people are getting excited about this, a couple of major issues jumped out at me.  So, for now, I’m going to address the matters that are specific to BABD in very broad strokes.

(Obviously this is based entirely off the crowdfunding campaign, since the game isn’t released yet)

Things that are awesome, specifically related to the blog:

These things are not awesome:

  • Phoebe’s outfit seems to be ridiculously sexualized, as though to compensate the audience for her being bulky in size
  • Anja’s transformation in the in game footage doesn’t seem anywhere near as intimidating or powerful, rather more of a cutesy palette swap
  • Qadira doesn’t appear on the line-up above because she was one of the last characters to be revealed.
  • Conventional sexy ladies seemed to be prioritized up the front of the line-up, to the extent Thorani’s gets dangerously close to the women as reward trope.
  • Pretty much all the guys have weapons and/or obvious martial abilities while Thorani, Yan, Phoebe, Zahra and Nuna (ie most of the female early release Incarnations) look support or non-combative roles
  • I have no idea what is going on with Yan’s costume… it looks suspiciously like like a Playboy Bunny outfit.

So overall, there’s some really cool stuff and I can really see why many people are super hyped up for this game, but in the context of the issues this blog examines, there are some big problems here.

Some of them might get changed before release, but a lot of them are also with how they choose to pitch this game.

– wincenworks

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Since ELOA keeps throwing its browser ads at me, I figured I might as well bingo one of them.

Wait, is that a pec window on a male character I see in another ad?

image

I’d probably be more excited if he was posed as weirdly as the lady next to him… who also has way more improbable skin windows in her “armor”. I wouldn’t even know where to begin bingoing her.

~Ozzie

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Who’s gonna break it to that lady character and explain to her that this is not appropriate attire for hacking and slashing?

~Ozzie

Yet another female character who looks unimpressed that her first quest is to find who stole the rest of her outfit.

– wincenworks

Posted on

Stop insulting our intelligence by pretending there’s a good reason for naked women in videogames

Stop insulting our intelligence by pretending there’s a good reason for naked women in videogames

For the most part, I do like the article – particularly as it’s not just Cortana’s wardrobe that’s worrying. However it does (in it’s final paragraph) make a critical error in that it assumes that somehow the marketing and promotions for a game are inherently different and separate from the creation of the game itself.

As wonderful as it would be for us to live in a world where creative teams are insulated from Creepy Marketing Guy by armies of private security equipped with electric cattle prods and canisters of mace, this simply isn’t reality.  Especially not in the case of auteur productions where the person overseeing the marketing campaign is the one overseeing the game development.

Despite there being no rational reason to believe that sex actually sells, we still see plenty of examples where female characters are given ridiculous outfits in the belief it will sell a few thousand more units.  Sometimes it’s in complete contradiction to the context of the product and sometimes it’s from a range of outright horrifying concepts.

It’s gotten to the extent where many of them have now pushed franchises and their own styles into a point where they have no idea how to make them less hostile to women without losing their branding.  Thus enforcing the idea that women should only play games made specifically for women (which will not be treated seriously by the industry, despite sales and the industry stealing ideas from them left, right and center).

Games are a business and that, unfortunately, means that marketing will never be completely separated from production. Instead of living in denial, we should focus on pushing games to use the right kind of marketing.

– wincenworks

I also take issue with how, in its final paragraphs, the article implies that ridiculous excuses are provoked by critique which asks about consistency in female character design. And that critics should be free to criticize but also refrain from bringing extra attention to the controversies… However that’s supposed to work.

I’m glad the article says that the game developers should be honest about intentions behind their designs. And that their sexy lady justifications insult the audience’s intelligence. Still, it would be overall better analysis of the problem without taking the “let the games speak for themselves" angle.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Stop insulting our intelligence by pretending there’s a good reason for naked women in videogames

Stop insulting our intelligence by pretending there’s a good reason for naked women in videogames

For the most part, I do like the article – particularly as it’s not just Cortana’s wardrobe that’s worrying. However it does (in it’s final paragraph) make a critical error in that it assumes that somehow the marketing and promotions for a game are inherently different and separate from the creation of the game itself.

As wonderful as it would be for us to live in a world where creative teams are insulated from Creepy Marketing Guy by armies of private security equipped with electric cattle prods and canisters of mace, this simply isn’t reality.  Especially not in the case of auteur productions where the person overseeing the marketing campaign is the one overseeing the game development.

Despite there being no rational reason to believe that sex actually sells, we still see plenty of examples where female characters are given ridiculous outfits in the belief it will sell a few thousand more units.  Sometimes it’s in complete contradiction to the context of the product and sometimes it’s from a range of outright horrifying concepts.

It’s gotten to the extent where many of them have now pushed franchises and their own styles into a point where they have no idea how to make them less hostile to women without losing their branding.  Thus enforcing the idea that women should only play games made specifically for women (which will not be treated seriously by the industry, despite sales and the industry stealing ideas from them left, right and center).

Games are a business and that, unfortunately, means that marketing will never be completely separated from production. Instead of living in denial, we should focus on pushing games to use the right kind of marketing.

– wincenworks

I also take issue with how, in its final paragraphs, the article implies that ridiculous excuses are provoked by critique which asks about consistency in female character design. And that critics should be free to criticize but also refrain from bringing extra attention to the controversies… However that’s supposed to work.

I’m glad the article says that the game developers should be honest about intentions behind their designs. And that their sexy lady justifications insult the audience’s intelligence. Still, it would be overall better analysis of the problem without taking the “let the games speak for themselves" angle.

~Ozzie