I know you already wrote a bit about Velvet Crowe’s design from Berseria, but may I ask for your opinion on Magilou’s? I think you’ll find her design… charming, especially her book skirt.
Well… the hat works.
Honestly though with the book skirt I’m not sure what’s more upsetting – the idea of the bruises and chaffing you’d get from leatherbound books slapping and rubbing on your legs… or that someone would do that books!
Also it looks like the buckle on top edge of that front book is resting… right on her mound. So yeah, for her sake I hope nothing bumps it.
Please let me share with you a tale of hopes and disappointment, starring Riders of Icarus, by our old mutual friend Nexon.
“Well, that is an interesting looking class. I wonder how it looks on females. It probably has a battle skirt or something.”
“Good lord, is that actual full plate? Armored legs and everything?”
“Oh. I don’t know what I expected.”
Yours, vonBoomslang
Nexon is such a wild ride, I mean I struggle to understand how the same people publishing Vindictus also publish Dirty Bomb!
Looking at the promotional screenshots for this game, one might easily be tricked into believing that the armor for ladies would not be terrible:
I mean it doesn’t look great, but the main issue is the stock-standard boobplate that seems to be mandatory in so many fantasy RPGs these days. Even the trailer isn’t too bad for the first sixty seconds… then:
Apparently there are still people out there who believe that the MMORPG market is not yet over saturated with this exact same style of double standard nonsense. Somehow.
Please let me share with you a tale of hopes and disappointment, starring Riders of Icarus, by our old mutual friend Nexon.
“Well, that is an interesting looking class. I wonder how it looks on females. It probably has a battle skirt or something.”
“Good lord, is that actual full plate? Armored legs and everything?”
“Oh. I don’t know what I expected.”
Yours, vonBoomslang
Nexon is such a wild ride, I mean I struggle to understand how the same people publishing Vindictus also publish Dirty Bomb!
Looking at the promotional screenshots for this game, one might easily be tricked into believing that the armor for ladies would not be terrible:
I mean it doesn’t look great, but the main issue is the stock-standard boobplate that seems to be mandatory in so many fantasy RPGs these days. Even the trailer isn’t too bad for the first sixty seconds… then:
Apparently there are still people out there who believe that the MMORPG market is not yet over saturated with this exact same style of double standard nonsense. Somehow.
And now we have a tip for dudes wanting to draw dudes that appeal to ladies in a very sexual way:
Instead of designing attire to show off how powerful, unflappable and stoic the character is – consider something that shows off little vulnerability, the kind that you want to share with someone you want to get intimate with (in a sexual way). Obviously mileage varies but I think you’ll find this method appeals to a lot more ladies than various Kratos style clones do.
If you have to: Design a gender neutral costume that you could imagine a really sexy lady rocking, then put a fit but not overly muscular dude in it and make sure you give him a spectrum of emotions.
Personally I think everything about it can be summed up by the final moments, where the host (MatPat) boldly announces he’s proven something then immediately backtracks to say it’s “just a theory”. Also I think that it’s pretty morally reprehensible to try make a video shaming a community for trying to be more inviting. In this case it’s even worse than the absurdity of the SMITE video that MatPat made. So I feel obligated to vivisect it so we can reference to it later.
The (really long) full in depth breakdown is below the cut, but here’s the core of what I really want people to take away: Game Theorist is not a channel for actual discussion of game issues, it’s goal is not to make you better informed. If you’re looking for that, I highly recommend ditching MatPat and instead checking out what Jamin Warren has to say every week at PBS Games Show. For starters, you’ll see Jamin do something that GT never does:
In this case I did find at least one of MatPat’s sources and confirmed that he completely misread the information. This is only possible if he didn’t read closely or investigate – meaning he just rushed to find something to confirm biases and allow for pretentious claims of “it’s science!”.
(Simply put: “The smartest show in gaming”, isn’t)
So what is Games Theorist? It’s a way for the GT crew to make money by pretending to be clever in a way that flatters people and builds trust through reassurance – right before a message from their sponsor. Much like how some ads tell a heart warming story followed by an endorsement for a company. Basically every episode GT is the “bait” portion of an ad. And so, you should never expect that will challenge the status quo too much (unless it’s by reassuring their audience it’s not their fault and/or they’re different).
To quote the immoral Don Draper, “Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are okay.”
There’s simply more money and more praise in it for the GT crew to tell you placating stories about how the things you don’t like are bad and the things you like are okay than there is for them to challenge the audience in a way that might alienate some and get others so invested in a single discussion that GT doesn’t plan to return to.
That’s why MatPat will tell you SMITE goddesses aren’t commercially sexualized even though they clearly are, or that regardless of what the community who play it say – sexy costumes are essential to Dead or Alive strategy. He wants his audience to come away from the video feeling that he made them feel OK with whatever them are doing, so them’ll come back again and again and again.
Seriously, MatPat himself has said that defending these costumes makes you a mindless puppet of the games industry because they basically leverage outrage to get publicity and hence attention (or course, it’s not your fault – you couldn’t have known unless you were MatPat!). He’s also more or less as shameless as they are, putting affiliate links in his video descriptions, one minute ads at the end of the videos and well…
So seriously, before you take anything MatPat or any other Game Theorist crew member says – remember that they have a vested financial interest in telling you you not that just what you want to hear, but that you’re smarter for believing it. He also has a vested financial interest in keeping his subscriber count as high as possible (not just from direct ad revenue but from credibility as a branding/SEO consultant).
All trying to make up bizarre and convoluted explanations behind this sort of thing does is get in the way of making better productions (and then leading to outrage when the property starts failing).
As a side note, unfortunately PBS Games Show has concluded – but if you’re still looking for genuinely insightful videos on how video games work and the important concepts within, I highly recommend Mark Brown’s Game Maker’s Toolkit.
Personally I think everything about it can be summed up by the final moments, where the host (MatPat) boldly announces he’s proven something then immediately backtracks to say it’s “just a theory”. Also I think that it’s pretty morally reprehensible to try make a video shaming a community for trying to be more inviting. In this case it’s even worse than the absurdity of the SMITE video that MatPat made. So I feel obligated to vivisect it so we can reference to it later.
The (really long) full in depth breakdown is below the cut, but here’s the core of what I really want people to take away: Game Theorist is not a channel for actual discussion of game issues, it’s goal is not to make you better informed. If you’re looking for that, I highly recommend ditching MatPat and instead checking out what Jamin Warren has to say every week at PBS Games Show. For starters, you’ll see Jamin do something that GT never does:
In this case I did find at least one of MatPat’s sources and confirmed that he completely misread the information. This is only possible if he didn’t read closely or investigate – meaning he just rushed to find something to confirm biases and allow for pretentious claims of “it’s science!”.
(Simply put: “The smartest show in gaming”, isn’t)
So what is Games Theorist? It’s a way for the GT crew to make money by pretending to be clever in a way that flatters people and builds trust through reassurance – right before a message from their sponsor. Much like how some ads tell a heart warming story followed by an endorsement for a company. Basically every episode GT is the “bait” portion of an ad. And so, you should never expect that will challenge the status quo too much (unless it’s by reassuring their audience it’s not their fault and/or they’re different).
To quote the immoral Don Draper, “Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are okay.”
There’s simply more money and more praise in it for the GT crew to tell you placating stories about how the things you don’t like are bad and the things you like are okay than there is for them to challenge the audience in a way that might alienate some and get others so invested in a single discussion that GT doesn’t plan to return to.
That’s why MatPat will tell you SMITE goddesses aren’t commercially sexualized even though they clearly are, or that regardless of what the community who play it say – sexy costumes are essential to Dead or Alive strategy. He wants his audience to come away from the video feeling that he made them feel OK with whatever them are doing, so them’ll come back again and again and again.
Seriously, MatPat himself has said that defending these costumes makes you a mindless puppet of the games industry because they basically leverage outrage to get publicity and hence attention (or course, it’s not your fault – you couldn’t have known unless you were MatPat!). He’s also more or less as shameless as they are, putting affiliate links in his video descriptions, one minute ads at the end of the videos and well…
So seriously, before you take anything MatPat or any other Game Theorist crew member says – remember that they have a vested financial interest in telling you you not that just what you want to hear, but that you’re smarter for believing it. He also has a vested financial interest in keeping his subscriber count as high as possible (not just from direct ad revenue but from credibility as a branding/SEO consultant).
All trying to make up bizarre and convoluted explanations behind this sort of thing does is get in the way of making better productions (and then leading to outrage when the property starts failing).
As a side note, unfortunately PBS Games Show has concluded – but if you’re still looking for genuinely insightful videos on how video games work and the important concepts within, I highly recommend Mark Brown’s Game Maker’s Toolkit.
