languray submitted:
Haydee is a legit actual game, you can buy for real money ($14.99 USD) on Steam. The dev team for this game was made up entirely of Creepy Marketing Guys. The main character is literally just a pair of (constantly jiggling) boobs, on top of an ass in a thong that screams chafing, and bare legs with pumps. In a sci-fi action game. The worst part is, the character doesn’t even get a face! Literally her head is a blank white surface, robbing her of any humanity or agency beyond pure sexual characteristics.
Here’s a game TONS of readers asked us to talk about. @languray’s summary seems pretty spot-on.
A faceless pair of cyborg boobs and prominent butt (carefully shoved in the third person camera at every angle) running around environments that can be summed up as Poor Man’s Portal.
It’s also quite impressive how uninspired the official Steam description is:
“Haydee” is a hardcore old-style metroidvania mixed with modern-day third person shooter and platformer mechanics. As well as a sexy character.
“[Insert title] is [insert adjectives that pander to stereotypical gamer] [insert buzzword game genres]. As well as a sexy character.”
Funnily, despite not sharing the same aesthetic or mechanics, Hydee’s “more like this” recommendations on Steam are for Sakura games and similar titles including nudity and/or sexual content (also, for reasons unclear, one casual platformer about Jesus). No other “metroidvanias mixed with modern third person shooter and platformer mechanics”, though.
Guess it’s official that having gratuitous female sexualization front and center means otherwise completely different games are basically the same genre.
~Ozzie
This game is a worrying example of how much the myth that sex sells can distort design priorities. It seems clear that the main character model was basically the main focus of the developers, and the fanbase.
This model is not only used for the Player Character, it’s used for:
- decorating walls (starting in the very first room)
- signaling danger with pre-populated corpses in pits and traps
- providing loot off pre-populated corpses in other places
So basically they’ve used it to tell players to go over to an area for a reward, to avoid an area due to danger and to tell the player this room was boring so they added boobs. Another “sexy corpses” game. Just what the world needed.
Unsurprisingly, given it’s target market, it’s reviews are in many ways more entertaining than the game. If the achievements are to be believed, less than 3% of players have finished the game and less than 50% earn an achievement after the tutorial… yet it has “mostly positive” reviews.
That and well everyone who might be interested in judging it on it’s merit can tell not to bother spending the money or time on it.
– wincenworks
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
So, while most VR developers are interested in novel concepts and ways players can interact with the virtual world… there’s other ones who just want to get as creepy as they can without getting arrested.
Roller Girls is quite amazing in not only is it a VR game that doesn’t promise any VR elements (it requires a gamepad and is various arcade games) but is made by a studio who’s whole tagline is they want to make VR games. Seriously.
– wincenworks
Ghost in the Shell
@whereismywizardhat submitted:
THE MARKETING
THE LESS CREEPY MARKETING
Oh boy does Ghost in the Shell look like it’s going to be the latest in comic book adaptations that misses the point at every level. Aside from the obvious issues with white washing the protagonist and relocating from a fictional city to a real one (seriously, just make a new story) we now have, well their approach to whether or not to sexualize the protagonist.
The original 1995 anime movie adaptation made a few changes to the protagonist Major Motoko Kusanagi, she was shifted from being a young woman who performed frequent fan service and was very emotionally expressive to a sterner woman who might be in her forties with on brief periods of non-sexual nudity. Unsurprisingly, given the tone and weight of the subject matter, it went over really well with audiences.
Based off the recent collection of images, the makers of the latest adaptation are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Which is ridiculous given that the original movie was massively successful in its own right, massively influential on media in Japan and the rest of the world without trying to rely on white “star power” or pandering.
This is what happens when a classic is repackaged by people are using outdated assumptions on what actually sells tickets. The tyranny of Creepy Marketing Guy continues.
– wincenworks