originalparody

So… this incredible encapsulation of so many things wrong with “gamer” culture actually happened.  An “esports apparel” shop somehow managed to make a dress that was more cheerleader outfit (or chair) and in order to “show respect” to “female gamers” (also known as women) and decided to brand it as a “new identity” as though none of them have worn a dress before.  Unsurprisingly, more people liked this amazing parody than the real thing. 

They were naturally shocked to discover that most people consider it a good idea to involve women in the design of clothing for women (assuming you’re not aiming for your dress to end up on Game Grumps or you to beg men to give it to a “gamer girl” rather than wear it themselves). 

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So how did they respond to this?  Obviously, by asking for people to literally tell them let them know what “female gamers” (also known as women) wear: 

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That’s how they hilariously ended up with telling a competitor that they liked their designs as suggestions… apparently not realising that “female gamers” women who enjoy games can already get comfy clothes and gaming-themed clothes by people who talk to women before releasing the product

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But needless to say, they learned an important lesson about women’s clothing and considerations to make. Certainly not considerations like wanting gaming gear to comfy for hours of sitting around playing games.  They learned about marketing, specifically “delivery of tweets”:

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So of course, as of the time of this post their ratio’d tweet is… pinned and their most recent “likes” entry was… more like “yikes”. 

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Yes, literally all they actually learned after a full 24 hours of free feedback is that “female gamers” are women… and frankly I’m not convinced they’re going to remember that when they sober up.

– wincenworks 

Yikes indeed. There’s… so much to unpack in this and I don’t even know where to start. 

I suppose what amuses me the most about this case is that Cranium Apparel somehow could not be assed to involve any women in creating that outfit, yet once called out on casual gender essentialism of selling a cheerleader dress as their exclusive piece of “female gamer” apparel… THEY NOW ASK THEIR FEMALE CRITICS to do the job of marketing team for them for free (and calling feedback they dislike “hate”). 

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All the while shamelessly claiming that they did their market research beforehand and none of the “few females” they asked foresaw the backlash.

This company desperately needs to replace its PR and marketing departments, preferably with an all-female staff. 

~Ozzie 

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Look, I’m not saying that this marketing strategy wouldn’t be effective at getting the attention of twelve year olds… but is this really the best way to market products supposedly suitable for pre- teens?

– wincenworks

This week’s throwback: cover image that totally tells us what the game is about and is very definitely appropriate to tweens. Yup, totally.

Seriously though, while 12-year olds are not too young to begin understanding their own sexuality interest in butts, how about we don’t make them internalize the idea of reducing women to body parts? And maybe consider what kind of message it sends to 12-year old girls? 

~Ozzie 

@dinopasta33 submitted: 

The designs used in Windscar’s advertisement are an absolute travesty. Like, I’m pretty sure she needs more than a chiropractor with her back bent like that 

Wow, good find for BABD and for @eschergirls! The closest to this contorted promo pic I found from this game was this: 

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And generally WindScar seems to be very satisfied with looking like every other generically boobastic shit in our web ads tag.

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~Ozzie

What I find amusing about these designs is they are made by an Chinese company – but there’s almost no link to Chinese fashions, clothing, designs, etc.

These are basically Chinese artists looking at how Western artists have tried to imagine these costumes, then trying to make them kind of like the weird western fantasy designs they see in western video games.

Thus creating a cycle of terrible where some guy in a western company is now going to look at these and go try to outdo them….

*sigh*

– wincenworks

So, a while ago the ever classy Soul Calibur announced that for #6, there’d be a couple of guest characters: 2B from Nier Automata who you can dress like Kaine and Geralt from The Witcher… who you can dress like generic Geralt.

So why is Ivy* in the bingo?  Well, apparently she’s critical to 2B’s… something.

Because it seems that the marketing at Soul Calibur are now so over invested in the generic myth that never pays off that even 2B was not sexy enough, so she doesn’t even get to make an appearance until 30 seconds into her own intro.

And the story is apparently… all about Ivy for some reason?  None of it seems to fit with either game, and more importantly none of it explains why we don’t have a “just got out of the tub” Geralt costume.

Give the people what they want you cowards.

* Original bingo by Icy here

– wincenworks

Gotta love the video ending on the classy note of a panty shot.

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Thanks, I hate it!

-Icy

grubwizard:

if your female character doesn’t look like she has lived the life she leads and you can’t get a sense for her actual personality by looking at her because you’re too focused on making her pretty and perfect and palatable it’s bad character design and you should feel bad

It’s worth noting that, generally speaking – this is why concept artists want to be concept artists. They want to convey feelings, story and inspire the imagination. It’s not uncommon for concept artists to do staggering amounts of research in order to find ways to convey a type of character in a type of time period.

So, if you come across a product created by a major studio where they have extensive executive and production staff – it’s safe to say that any aggressively boring female character designs are done at the behest of a particular type of individual pushing a ridiculous myth to try to seem like a genius.

It is important to call out this kind of absurdity, not just to try to reduce the amount of gratuitous objectification in media – but to also spare these poor artists the indignity of having a guy try to convince them he invented anime tiddy.

– wincenworks

Elvenar continues to be the kind of game with very standard, unsexy strategy gameplay and completely unrelated marketing imagery that is basically Fantasy Porn™ (read: standard for web ads). 

And this is the sort of design that amazes me. The kind that covers over half of the Female Armor Bingo card, but doesn’t manage to score a single row. All while not being a full body image. We can only assume whether it would score high heels and/or thigh-high boots if we saw more of this poor poor lady. 

~Ozzie 

That is very uncomfortable-looking bondage clothing

– Icy 

Marking it as sensitive, just in case.

Gotta love the “creativity” of web ads presenting just another grizzled military dude as an equivalent to a generic pretty girl with long flowing hair, cleavage and belly out. Totally legit and “equal” soldier designs! Especially for a game that apparently takes place during WW2? 

Um, is that supposed to be some sort of parallel universe? Because other than USSR imagery slapped on like an afterthought, even the guy doesn’t look anything close to a soldier from the 1940s…

~Ozzie 

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Dragon Spear seems to be a new addition to the genre of generic-ass pseudo anime mobile games convinced that putting lots of boobs in them will sell better. 

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So far its reach is limited to a couple countries in East and South Asia as well as Oceania. Wonder how far it’ll expand before the inevitable flop…

Let’s take a look at the full in-game screenshot this bingo comes from: 

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(ಠ_ಠ)

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(╯ಠ_ಠ)╯︵ ┻━┻ 

~Ozzie

You mock this game, Ozzie, but look at all the cool diverse and original classes it has to offer!

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They seem to have taken artistic direction ideas from Dragon’s Crown

Did I mention the Sorceress’ breasts move during her animations? That’s how you know this is a Serious Action Game.

-Icy

Battlerite is a recent addition to the growing popular genre of “just fight people in multiplayer” games that continue to come forth with no end in sight.  Given the starter line up in this game, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to discover a large portion of their tag on Tumblr is Rule34.

What’s interesting about Battlerite, though, is that it only released on 8 November 2017, it already has two characters added (both female).

The first was Destiny.

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She was released with the first patch seemingly as some sort of afterthought that there may actually be people out there who wanted to play a female character who did not look like a child, was clearly recognizable as human, wasn’t in a hyper sexualized costume and appeared to turning up to the fight because was a warrior.

In December, they released Alysia… who looks kind of presentable from the waist up but has weird thigh highs. In her video she spends her time prancing and talking about being an artist.  I guess they’re trying to find a magic mix of objectification and actual good design.

It kind of makes you wonder whether someone in particular told them that hardly anyone wants actual badass warrior women or whether they just worried a certain demographic wouldn’t check out the game on opening day unless they were being pandered to.

tl;dr: Not only do they appear to be copying Smite’s core gameplay, they’re also copying their strategy regarding attempting to have their feminist cookie and gratuitous cheesecake too.

– wincenworks 

This game seems to go through some sort of visual identity crisis regarding female characters. A reader actually noted us that the white-haired lady, Jade, went through a “sexy” redesign some time ago: 

@emissaryofwind submitted: 

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You already talked a bit about Battlerite’s Freya before, but I was looking at this character named Jade, and noticed this. On the left is her old design, notice how apart from her hairstyle everything is very practical. Low, chunky heels (I’ve been told 1" heels are better for your back than flat heels), a full-coverage coat and shirt, a mask to protect her from inhaling dust, etc. 

On the right is her current design, complete with useless-to-dangerous mini armor plates, stiletto heels, boob window, shoulder windows, and a big hole in the back of the coat making it essentially useless.

It’s sad to see that such a good design has been replaced with a generic “sexy” design.

What a waste of a design that was both practical AND much more interesting visually (just compare the silhouette!). The new one could easily just come from some random shovelware web ad. She sticks out like a sore thumb, even next to other sexualized ladies, due to a slightly different (generic and overly detailed) art style.

Battlerite is in a desperate need of rehashing its art direction to something more consistent and not at all dependent on the creepy marketing guy.

~Ozzie 

edit: Fixed link to Alysia’s video.