Tag: representation

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Women at E3 2015

Anonymous submitted:

Hey, awesome blog! You’ve already made a post about Emily Kaldwin in Dishonored 2, but I just wanted to ask your opinion on this year’s E3 in general. Not only were there more women presenters than ever, but signs of real progress when it comes to representation for women:

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As noted, Emily from Dishonored 2!

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The shieldmaiden from Eitr!

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Lara Croft from Rise of the Tomb Raider, having finally exchanged her 90s male-gaze outfit for something one would actually raid a tomb with!

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Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn! I think there’s still a discussion to be had here about cultural appropriation, but at least she was designed as a hunter rather than eye candy.

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The protagonist from Recore!

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Evie Frye from AC: Syndicate! I’m still really cynical about the fact that she’s more or less an add-on to her brother’s story and that she does the stealthy bits while her brother does the punchy bits, but her outfit is very reasonable.

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Rae from Beyond Eyes! It’s great to see more non-violent games on display too.

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The mercs from Dirty Bomb!

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And of course, Faith from Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.

The majority of characters on display are still white and slim, but it’s a noticeable improvement from last year – and it was nice to hear cheers from the audience when it was announced that women were playable in FIFA and Fallout 4.

Thank you the line up.  While certainly are issues with each individual game and depiction it is great that this year E3′s character line up included many badass women who are dressed to get shit done.

I sincerely hope this will become an ongoing trend in video games and one that lasts a long, long time.  We shall certainly have more to say on various titles as time and further information is released.

For those interested, the Mary Sue also did a post on games with female protagonists that includes the promotional videos.

– wincenworks

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thiefontherun:

okaysional:

greybanshee:

cathsith:

caseywojtek:

missrep:

exgynocraticgrrl-archive:

Miss Representation

Dr. Caroline Heldman breaks it down 

OMG THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS

Amazing video. Should be required viewing for high school students. I may make it required viewing for my future college students.

“The Fighting Fucktoy” is my new favourite phrase.

See: Why male gaze is awful and needs to be addressed

This documentary was awesome and powerful definitely recommend that you guys watch it! 

A subject we referenced a couple of times before, which constantly needs to be reiterated: there’s a crucial difference between female characters being primarily badass while incidentally sexy and characters being primarily sexy while incidentally badass. 

It’s super disingenuous to obviously design a heroine’s look, personality and actions around (straight) male gaze appeal and repackage it as female empowerment just because she’s technically a powerful hero (or sometimes, a villain).

~Ozzie

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So, earlier we showcased WayForward’s tendency to go with either franchises or sexy girl games – and a lot of people rushed to claim that it was unfair to critique a character who uses bellydancing as a game mechanic, so let’s look at how they portray a pirate.

It’s also worth mentioning that the developers are not too heavily linked to the genie and bellydancer concept, they treat it more as a toy to play with.

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I also feel it’s important to point out (as we’ve mentioned previously) it’s not okay to grab a culture and spin it up for sex.  Bellydancers, especially traditional ones, do not wear fetish, low-rider pseudo-harem pants and a strapless top.  They actually wear elaborate costumes involving layers of skirts, decorations and carefully crafted cholis to ensure there are no wardrobe malfunctions.

We wouldn’t say a game was okay for having a sexy character who ran around wearing slippers, a g-string, tutu and wonderbra because we’re told she’s supposed to be a ballerina.   We shouldn’t rubberstamp this because we understand bellydancing to be a sensual performance.

– wincenworks

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Speaking of things randomly glued to the nipples…

Basia submitted:

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, there’s a pink-hair deadface girl dressed in one banana and two strawberries D:
May be of interest for your blog.

Onechanbara seems to be a franchise where they sort of do reverse brainstorming.  They scribble down every idea that comes to their head, then they throw out the good ones and try to make the bad ones worse. I mean, those costumes look pretty terrible but they’re not much of a leap from the regular costumes.

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In addition to the ridiculous fruit costumes, this latest installment seems to feature antagonist who appears to be black girl with a chain around her ankle… what could possibly go wrong?

– wincenworks

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It’s one of those designs that makes me think there should be a custom bingo card for it. A bingo that includes squares like “WTF am I looking at?!”, “Over-accessorizing” and, of course, “Extreme racial/cultural insensitivity”.

~Ozzie

You know – most designers are happy commodifying and dehumanizing one culture at a time… in this case it’s like they were trying to cram as many as possible into one drawing of a generic pretty white girl.

That’s impressive… in a sickening, terrible kind of way.

– wincenworks

more about exotification in character design on BABD | more about cultural appropriation in costume design 

can be found here, here and here

on costumecommunityservice 

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re: this post on double standards of body type diversity in SMITE and Overwatch

(yellow)

cited: our first post about Zarya

(green)

CLEARLY, Zarya can not be a step in the right direction AND a token exception AT THE SAME TIME, because… Uh… It’s so not like she’s literally the only female Overwatch character who is not conventionally pretty*, thin and/or sexualzied, right?

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…right???

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How about “she’s BOTH a token exception and a step in the right direction”, then?

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~Ozzie

Okay… well, if we limit ourselves to just athletes in say… Olympic level condition… this is a sample of the body and features diversity we might expect:

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Given that Blizzard has said they’re making this game to improve representation for women in video games and even address things like “why all the bikinis?”

Zarya is currently the quick “we fixed it” response from a company with a long history of going back on their “fixes”.  They’re preaching that they want to fulfill the desire for diversity – but the sexy purple skinned assassin lady, a robot, a gorilla all got priority over so many types of real people.

Currently they are only vaguely close to meeting their stated goals due to a few isolated, individual characters.  Pretty much all the tokenism alarm bells are ringing loud and clear.

“Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.“ –  Edward H. Harriman

– wincenworks

*Not to say that Zarya is ugly. She’s still “unconventional” in the safest way possible.

more on character design | more on Blizzard | more on Overwatch

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theworstblogdotgeocities:

lowpolyhighfun:

A friend’s request for a bodily comparison of the gods and goddesses of Smite.

bikiniarmorbattledamage

I’m having a flashback to this Overwatch silhouette comparison (pre-Zarya, the token exception, that is):

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original source: [x]

Eyup. Typical. Men tend to be all shapes and sizes, while women are just slight variations of the same “shapely” figure.

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[x]

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[x]

~Ozzie

With a very few exceptions, pretty much every time I see a game brag about diverse body shapes – I wonder if they hired the same “expert” consultant that Levi’s did:

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– wincenworks

more on double standards | more on character design | more on SMITE | more on Overwatch

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While this costume does score fairly low on the bingo, mostly due to lack of attempt to make it even look protective, I wanted to bingo it because it highlights another example of exotification.

We recently promoted a petition taking a stance against extofication in roleplaying games, and there have been important developments since. 

When Resident Evil 5 was first released everyone  from games reviewers to the British Rating Board rushed to assure us it was officially “not racist” – however when the game creates a “tribal” outfit like this for the elite counter-terrorist operative who happens to be a woman in “Africa” (rather than a specific country on the continent, thus eliminating any sort of expectation of accuracy/research).

There are numerous cultural groups spread across the many nations of Africa who have different styles and standards of dress – the only ones that would have this are westernized elite who are essentially parodying the traditional residents.  That’s not a good image to promote.

(Before anyone… I see you, rushes to tell me how this shouldn’t count because it’s an “extra” please consider that this costume is not nearly as offensive as one of the main groups of antagonists in RE5)

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– wincenworks

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We’ve been noted by several watchers that Blizzard, in response to Overwatch female character designs criticism, added a new heroine to the game’s roster, Zarya.

paganpaladin said:

What are your thoughts on Zarya from Overwatch?

shswildcat59 submitted:

i noticed this wasn’t submitted yet. i could totally be wrong. but Blizzard’s new game Overwatch just released a new character and i think she looks fairly decent. the boob/sleeveless shirt is a bit meh? but hey its probably supposed to be form fitting/Underarmour type shirt so maybe its supposed to look like that http://us.battle.net/overwatch/en/heroes/zarya/

Sas Alexander submitted:

So, I have seen Overwatch mentioned here before, and I just found Blizzard added 2 new characters to the game. One of them is Zarya, a muscular, Russian woman in a pretty cool armor. And why? Because the fans asked for diversity! She still have a booblate, but it’s at least a progression.

kureijiatisuto said:

I’m curious if any of you have seen the new female character announced for Overwatch. Her name is Zarya. She isn’t perfect, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. Thoughts?

Gotta admit, she looks glorious. Not as glory-ous as Joe Keatinge/Sophie Campbell Glory, but close, and we sincerely hope she’s a start for more genuine body diversity among Blizzard’s heroines.

Still, why the boobplate? And why couldn’t they do this in the first place, without the need to be called out on bingo-worthy designs and the disturbing gender dimorphism in Overwatch?

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With Blizzard’s less-than-stellar track record, Zarya is merely a baby step. A step in the right direction, but nonetheless a baby step.

~Ozzie

In isolation, I have to admit those guns alone make her pretty awesome despite the boobplate.  However, much like with another “band aid” female character, Bellona – I can’t help but see a lot of issues with this:

  • Maybe it’s just the haircut, way they’ve stylized her features and the gorget… but I can’t help but think she reminds me of a certain man and if he was a visual inspiration it’s all kinds of problematic.
  • Fans asked for diversity, so they got the muscular Russian, heavy gunner stereotype.
  • All the problems that were in Overwatch before are still there now
  • Blizzard have a history of saying they recognize a problem, they’re going to fix it, making a token effort to look like improving and then going back to their old ways.

If someone promises to do something, delivers trash and then says they’ll fix it – it’s kind of nice if they bring you a little gift… but only if they actually fix what they promised.  Blizzard hasn’t done that, they’ve just done a rush job that’s broken them out of “all women are skinny” mold.

They haven’t gone and fixed the original designs, they haven’t admitted they made some major design mistakes or fixed anything in the line up aside from add a new female character.

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I mean don’t get me wrong… I’m thrilled that they decided to make a female heavy weapons expert and I hope that this helps every studio get over their fear of creating female characters that don’t look like Barbie – but it doesn’t fix any of the other problems, or show any willingness to.

– wincenworks

more Overwatch on BABD | about double standard in Overwatch character design | more about character design on BABD | more about double standards on BABD

edit: Changed Sophie Campbell’s name accordingly in my comment. Thanks to starryeyeddowner for the heads up!
edit 2: fixed the link to above artist’s Glory gallery

~Ozzie