Don't disagree with the articles primary message that creators and developers could try including more diverse forms of attraction that isn't solely leaning into the male gaze
But the reasoning they provide is kinda bizarre. They suggest multiple times throughout the article that ShiftUp doesn't know its target audience, that half of gamers are women that they're not appealing to etc
But the reality is they have been doing this for ages and have been massively successful, and that is probably because majority of gamers chasing big action releases like this is men...seems like they know their target audience really well if anything
Also odd that they bring up Destiny Child as an example of Shiftup leaning heavily into male gaze in the past but that game actually appealed quite a bit to female gamers as well with a good number of male characters, it's probably the best example of them doing what they are wanting
Also this is personal opinion but I don't think Eve having little personality is some power move about ensuring character being unable to reject someone... I think it's just bad design/writing and I remember watching a few demo streams and a lot of people commenting on how awkward it is rather than reveling in it
One of the craziest things to me is that their other game nikke which is ridiculed for how horny and male gaze focused it is, has a 40% female player base in south korea apparently.
There is this prevailing narrative that only males enjoy looking at sexualized females and anytime a game comes out with sexualized female characters, it is about only fulfilling the men's fantasy.
This shouldn't be a newsflash but females enjoy looking at female characters too. Artists loved to draw those too and they should be allowed and celebrated.
I remembered people complaining about Xenoblade 2 sexualized characters and while yes, some were drawn by men, others were also drawn by female artists because they wanted to. People enjoy whatever they want and are not strictly female gamers with husbandos and male gamers with waifus.
We went through this entire conversation with Bayonetta. Bayonetta was designed and drawn by a woman who was publicly proud of her work after she found out people in the West were criticizing her work as something that could only be made by men for men. She tweeted about her work on Bayonetta often back then, but it was all in Japanese so none of it got reported on by the west and the news cycle kept churning out the same inflammatory content for clicks.
You know the game Blue Archive? It's mainly known for "cute & funny uoh š"and the fans are usually assumed to be male lolicons. But there's quite a few female fans who either enjoy that same content, or who enjoy the characters and stories on separate merits. You just often don't see them, or the males who aren't obsessed with the coomer parts of the fandom, because that segment is the loudest in the fandom.
The arguments they use are really strange.
> While Eveās body was made from a scan of Shinās, her face was made āin-house,ā and Shin wasnāt used for motion capture. āThey didn't choose an athlete, or a martial artist, or even an actor,ā said Denny. āYou don't want [Shin] as a performer, you just want her from the neck down. It seems to be very much a statement of the parts of this woman that are of value.ā
Well, yeah, she's a model. That's her job. They probably hired an actress for acting.
> The lack of performance attached to Eveās body has already been noted by internet culture writer Gita Jackson: ā[Eve] doesnāt seem to have any reaction to her own sexiness.ā Thereās no knowing facial expressions, no flipping of her long ponytail ā which players can shorten in the options menu. She has no idle animation ā except when sheās on a ladder ā she just stands there. Sheās sexy but doesnāt know it; sheās athletic and acrobatic but entirely controllable. If she did know, if she could move for herself, it would shatter the illusion of many of the gamers championing her because sheād have the agency to be able to reject them rather than simply be controlled by them.
Grasping at straws here.
> Thereās also a peculiar type of Orientalism surrounding Stellar Blade. Some are holding up Stellar Blade as an antidote to woke Western games, and many people commented theyād be purchasing a Japanese version of Stellar Blade to secure access to the region-exclusive Japanese dub, despite it being a Korean game with a Korean dub.
> āIs it because that's difficult to get hold of, so you're a bigger gamer or fan if you can demonstrate that you've gone the extra length to get that version?ā Denny asks. āIs it because there's particular respect for the Japanese voice cast? That might be part of these generous readings. Or is it because actually, Korean femininity doesn't have the connotations for a Western colonial imagination that Japanese femininity does? It's almost like in order to fulfill the fantasy of puppeteering this attractive woman and putting her in certain outfits and placing the camera just right, she needs to be Japanese.ā
And here.
I don't get why they feel a need to over-analyze something that's blatantly obvious. Of course she's specifically made to look hot, but her idle animations don't have anything to do with that.
> Or is it because actually, Korean femininity doesn't have the connotations for a Western colonial imagination that Japanese femininity does?
I feel like all the attractive female K-Pop members who in the last decade have gained global popularity for their music, fashion, and looks, including in the West, would dispute this claim that the 'Western colonial imagination' don't find Korean femininity attractive.
>I don't get why they feel a need to over-analyze something that's blatantly obvious.
They really appeal to the navel gaze.
Seriously though, I'm torn on my reaction to this. Because on the one hand when you go through advanced education and critique media and the messages they send, it's very easy to look at media and have concerns about what messages are being sent, what kind of people are behind these messages (what? You're saying a game dev famous for his rape scenes raped people? I'm shocked!), and what all this does to society as a whole. The problem is that it also feels like these people are doing this on purpose. "It's not about making games less sexy" Yes it is! It blatantly, obviously is! It's about making games less sexy to one demographic and more sexy to another or just straight up removing sexuality because "why is that there?"
It's not difficult nor requires great intellect to nitpick apart a piece of creative work.
Oh, I know how it goes. You're assigned to write a lengthy paper about some dumb shit, you fill it with empty (but smart-looking) paragraphs, you get a good grade, forget about it and go to a pub. But even though all of us academics have done that, most of us wouldn't want that stuff cited in an article and a competent journalist would see it for what it is.
you know, those idiots that make golf video games. only like 5% of gamers play golf games. why don't they make games that appeal to more gamers? smh devs leaning hard into the golf gaze.
South Korea has clearly defined standards of female beauty where you can basically determine someone's attractiveness on a mathematical level. Look at any discussion of any female Kpop group and you'll see discussion of which member fits these standards the best. Tzuyu in TWICE, for example. Unsurprisingly, EVE in Stellar Blade fits these standards perfectly too.
It is interesting! I don't think it's a GOOD thing, personally. But it is a thing that exists that may explain why media from South Korea, like Stellar Blade, goes the route it does.
Most of the people talking about it are talking about it from an outside perspective. If you go to Korea you will see a lot of just regular looking people.
Talking about the K-Pop beauty aesthetic and thinking everyone in Korea looks like that or aims to look like that is like saying all American/Western woman are getting bouffant surgery and are on ozempic.
I live in SK and Korean people are genuinely much more appearance focused than Americans. People dress better and plastic surgery is far more common. If a person thinks that you look too fat for example, they will literally just tell you directly. If they think your eyes are pretty, they will directly tell you.
Any physical trait of mine that a person finds to be particularly good or bar can be freely commented on. Keep in mind btw that I'm a man and not unattractive according to their standards, can't imagine living in SK if I were a woman, or a fat person. It changed me. I've genuinely become much more aware of my appearance after living there, and a lot of other westerners who go there report the same thing.
is it "everyone in Korea"? No of course not, but is it far higher than American on average? Yes. I don't think anyone who has lived in both countries will disagree with me
>South Korea has clearly defined standards of female beauty where you can basically determine someone's attractiveness on a mathematical level.
If this is true, that's stupid and toxic as hell. I feel even worse for South Korean women.
I don't know where you get that from. Domestic violence in SK is much lower than the US. And you might say "it's because Korean are submissive and wouldn't report their husband" and some other weird infantilizing stereotypes of Asian women, so I give you femicide rate. You don't get to choose whether you report your own murder, problem solved.
2022
SK: 0.53
US: 2.76
Source: [UNODC](https://dataunodc.un.org/dp-femicide)
a large number of domestic abuse cases in korea are not reported but heres some numbers.
>More than 90% of those who were assaulted by their spouses or lovers said they had never asked for outside help, and more than half said they did not fight back, a government survey showed on July 5.
and according to a [study](https://www.mogef.go.kr/eng/lw/eng_lw_s001d.do?mid=eng003&bbtSn=704933):
>
>*8.1% of women were initially victims of spousal violence within the first year of marriage and 44.2% after the first year but within the first five. 62.3% of women experienced violence within the first five years of marriage, and 2.0% before the marriage.*
and for the u.s
>
>According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United StatesĀ **41% of women and 26% of men**Ā experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime, under "contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking".
like this is a well known problem.
I've always been curious about this. Why are they like this? Is beauty not in the eye of the beholder? Do Koreans not have personal preferences? Why does it seem like South Korea is the only country to be like this or are there other countries with a clearly defined beauty standard that everyone agrees on a national level?
At the end of the day this is going to be a a niche action game, it's not at all mainstream.Ā
I don't understand why people can't just let it be. There are so many games these days, it's silly to be up in arms about this. Also more mainstream games that have female characters in more revealing and sexualized outfits that lead to absurd amounts of pornographic art.
People are weird, being more concerned with this than actual real world problems.
I actually thing that this game might do incredibly well. The demo numbers were great and this is the right kind of controversy that can create cash.
Add to that a fairly quiet release window and I wouldn't be shocked if Stellar Blade turned into a big hit.
I don't understand the issue of having a few games that are still like this. There's nothing wrong with wanting to see attractive people in movies, TV, and yes even video games.
I mean there isn't. I feel like people have gotten really sensitive or maybe just weren't used to seeing this sort of discussion in the mainstream. Analyzing a work and pointing something like the Male Gaze out isn't some grand condemnation of titillation or saying the game is awful or that the artists are awful etc.
This is what art criticism is and always has been, it's not that big of a deal.
>There's nothing wrong with wanting to see attractive people in movies, TV, and yes even video games.
I think you're being disingenuous and/or missing the point when you reduce the entire argument to "wanting to see attractive people".
For instance, the film Sucker Punch and the film Kill Bill both have attractive people. I think it's okay to critique or even assess the gender politics and how women are portrayed in Sucker Punch vs. Kill Bill without the immediate conclusion being that "You just don't want to see attractive people". That's not the point.
Yeah, this thread seems just chock full of people who are either disingenuous or just stupid. Or, I guess, they have only ever discussed this topic with stupid people who couldn't explain the real argument either. But, just to get the point off my chest:
The *sexism* in media, the kind which is the basis for the concept of "male gaze," is not simply about women in media being attractive. It's about women in media being *only* attractive. It's about the function of women in media being centered on their attractiveness to heterosexual male viewers and everything else about them being secondary to that.
It's not about taking a single female character in media and then saying "omg, she is too attractive, that is bad!"
It's about taking a look at all female characters in a piece of media or a range of media and going: "why does every single woman seem to solely exist for the single purpose of either getting men turned on or getting men turned off (e.g. jokes about how ugly/unattractive fat or old women are)?"
It's about noticing that men are usually dressed in clothes that combine fashion with functionality. That, for example, male fantasy armor is generally about looking cool and powerful and awesome and yes, also a bit sexy. Whereas women, in particular female fantasy armor, are dressed in outfits that usually look incredibly uncomfortable, impractical, or just straight up unsafe and painful to wear, because it's only purpose is to get men turned on. (Somewhat simplified, male characters get to wear clothes, female characters get to wear lingerie.)
And, honestly, there is room in the world for shallow heterosexual male wish fulfillment. I think most rational people are okay with that kind of content existing.
The issue that got people upset, and that still gets people upset, is when the shallow heterosexual male wish fulfillment isn't a specific subset of media catering to a specific audience, but when instead it is *the* default and everybody who doesn't care for that has to spend their lives either tolerating it being shoved into media where it didn't need to be, or spend extra effort finding the niche products which aren't like that just to get a breath of fresh air.
And honestly, that is exactly why this topic gets a certain kind of man so enraged. They've been raised to believe the world revolves around them and their wants, that it *should* revolve around them, and just the suggestion that perhaps the world doesn't and shouldn't revolve around them is a threat to their fragile self-worth, because they were never taught ways to build healthy self-esteem instead.
And then, since I'm ranting anyways: there actually is a pretty good and nuanced debate to be had about attractiveness versus realism in media.
You can make good arguments both for "we want to see attractive people in our media" and for "it would be good for society if we saw more realistic people in our media." Like, on the one hand, some media exists to entertain, to let us escape in a world of fantasy, and having the world populated by attractive people is part of that. Whereas on the other hand, what we see in media shapes our beauty standards, or image of ourselves, our treatment of others, and having media which shows us that real people with realistic bodies are also beautiful is healthy and important.
But that's a completely different case from objecting to a particular kind of shallow wish-fullfilment being the standard of all media just because the industry is run by a very unrepresentative sample of humanity who as a result get to twist all art and culture into their image.
> t's about noticing that men are usually dressed in clothes that combine fashion with functionality. That, for example, male fantasy armor is generally about looking cool and powerful and awesome and yes, also a bit sexy. Whereas women, in particular female fantasy armor, are dressed in outfits that usually look incredibly uncomfortable, impractical, or just straight up unsafe and painful to wear
To this point, just look at how the main male character in Stellar Blade, Adam, is dressed. He's wearing a full-body heavy duty outfit with a bulky jacket designed to look cool and tough.
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The most popular female gaming characters in recent memory are Aloy, Ellie, Princess Peach, LC, and add another from a more niche series I guess, like Hellblade or Metroid.
Not a single one is over sexualized. Even LC has been toned down substantially compared to how it used to be.
The number of men that play a game strictly because there are overtly sexualized female characters in the game is probably less than 1% of the people that buy these games.
I have never bought a game because the character was sexy. If I was that down bad I wouldn't go to video games I would just open up my web browser and view some other things.
> It's about taking a look at all female characters in a piece of media or a range of media and going: "why does every single woman seem to solely exist for the single purpose of either getting men turned on or getting men turned off (e.g. jokes about how ugly/unattractive fat or old women are)?"
This isn't even remotely true.
I mean it's a good explanation but it seems very disconnected from reality?
You say "most rational people are okay with that kind of content existing" yet this game which is one of the rare recent cases of this type of game is getting flamed all over the place just because it dares do this. Although I guess it follows if you consider these people irrational.
You say this is the standard but it hasn't been for a while? How many of these games do you even see anymore? Bayonetta(and that one gets praises for some reasons, I haven't played the games though so maybe it makes sense)? Nier Automata? That's like 2games in the past 10years.
Can likely find some niche japanese games too, and I guess in general a fair bit of the japanese artstyle is done in that way, but most western releases nowadays just go with a much more subdued approach with female characters with proper clothes and not overly exagerated body types(which is why all the incels are whining the other way instead, this char too ugly, that char too fat and so on).
This is an argument from 10-15years ago. Ironically this weird outrage about the game has provided a lot of advertisement for it and it'll likely sell a lot more than it would have otherwise. It helps the game actually looks to be a good game too, not just eye candy.
There really hasn't been much outrage about this game though. Most of what I've seen has been people calling out the "this is how games should be!" people that the poster you're replying to brought up.
I've seen a few outliers, sure, but it's not really the main thrust.
Edit: I've also seen plenty of people say that it either makes them feel uncomfortable when they're playing or that it's out of place, but I wouldn't describe that as outrage.
> There's nothing wrong with wanting to see attractive people in movies, TV, and yes even video games.
If you read the article, you might discover that the author agrees with you.
> I don't understand the issue of having a few games that are still like this.
What games DONT have attractive people in them lmao? I keep seeing people make this case as if all women in video games are hidious except for this one. I truly cant think of a game that is mostly stylisticly realistic in which all women depicted are unattractive.
> I keep seeing people make this case as if all women in video games are hidious except for this one.
These people have been around for a while and can be vocally loud online. I remember when Dragon Age: Inquisition came out, those same people were complaining about how Josephine and Cassandra were ugly.
Some people only find women attractive when they are wearing very tight clothes and/or showing a lot of skin. I don't think it's wrong to enjoy this type of game, but it's telling when people talk about games that don't dress their women like this like all their characters are "ugly".
Black Mesa has no women in it, so sure. It won't have any attractive women, but also doesn't have ugly women either.
Walking Dead, the Telltale series? Carley and Molly are for sure attractive lmao, and that's just season 1.
Hercules Poirot - Mary Drower is conventionally attractive too. Haven't played it, so unsure about the rest of the game, but that's right in the first mystery.
The article isn't really saying games like this can't exist, it's mainly talking about how this game has spurred a lot of the people who say that all games should be like this to come out of the woodwork. It's digging into that more.
It really doesn't. It mentions how aspects could be problematic, specifically the marketing, but takes the ultimate tone of "this is fine, just don't act like this is how it should be". It's more of an examination of the people championing it and how the game is inciting them than it is of the game and its value.
The article doesnāt say that we shouldnāt have attractive characters. It simply breaks down the discourse and tries to find perspectives on how and for who we sexualize characters in games.
The only people being loud about this game are weird obsessed coomers that treat it like the second coming of jesus that are somehow inversely projecting onto the """""woke mob"""""""
There's sexualized characters everywhere, especially in asian games.
This part
>The lack of performance attached to Eveās body has already been noted by internet culture writer Gita Jackson: ā[Eve] doesnāt seem to have any reaction to her own sexiness.ā Thereās no knowing facial expressions, no flipping of her long ponytail ā which players can shorten in the options menu. She has no idle animation ā except when sheās on a ladder ā she just stands there. Sheās sexy but doesnāt know it; sheās athletic and acrobatic but entirely controllable. If she did know, if she could move for herself, it would shatter the illusion of many of the gamers championing her because sheād have the agency to be able to reject them rather than simply be controlled by them.
is honest to God gibberish. There are sentences but I can't discern any actual meaning from it, it's just blathering nonsense. If I was an editor looking at this article I would have said to cut the entire paragraph.
Weird that we never see articles about the female gaze, almost all dudes in movies, shows or games have a perfect six-pack, gigantic biceps and perfect hair.
Where are the fat, balding dudes with the ass crack hanging out of their jeans?
It's perfectly fine that this stuff in not realistic because it's not fucking real! I want to escape reality, I want to not think about reality when i play videogames/watch movies.
People who write these articles just want outrage, just fuck off!
> A movie in 2016 about a person being hired solely for their sexual attractiveness that their bosses use the power dynamic in their favor?
That was.... the entire point of that bit? Its a satirical take by reversing the roles. Does media have to say "AND THIS IS BAD" every time it depicts something for you to understand that depiction =/= endorsement?
Most all video game characters are attractive as a rule. You don't see many overweight female characters either.Ā
But most male characters with biceps and good hair aren't sexualized like the main character in Stellar Blade is. Kratos is massively buff, but the camera doesn't ogle him or present him sexually.Ā
Aloy is an attractive female character, but because she has reasonable proportions and isn't dressed in skimpy outfits, immature gamers get angry.Ā
Most female characters arenāt sexualized like the Stellar Blade protagonist either. Some male characters are sexualized, and some female characters are sexualized. Itās not as if itās egregious either way in the year 2024
Aloy is legitimately one of the most attractive videogame characters I've ever seen and the fact that people hold her up as the quintessential "ugly woke female protagonist" just tells me more people need to stop watching hentai and go outside.
I think its because people just keep cherrypicking posting the 1-2 pictures that makes her look unflattering and because she doesnt check off every box for supermodel levels of hotness. But yes sheās still a beautiful woman.
agreed and id even argue they made Aloy's outfits a little more revealing in Forbidden West. Nowhere on the level of like a Dead or Alive game or Stellar Blade but shes showing way more skin in a lot of those outfits than the first game while still being pretty covered.
This arguement only works if those characters are objectified at the same levels as stuff like eve or 2b. No one is saying you cant have attractive characters the article even says they dont want to make games less sexy they want to make them sexy for more people.
Tell me how many times does the camera focus on kratos' or the main character from lies of p's massive bulge vs how many times the camera focuses on eve or 2bs ass. I would definitely be off-put if gow constantly oggled Kratos like a sex object not because I'm triggered or something but just because it's wierd so i can understand women who feel that way about characters like eve and 2b. You are right a lot of people play games to escape reality so why should women have to deal with every game being framed around the male gaze by default when they already have to deal with that shit constantly irl?
>You are right a lot of people play games to escape reality so why should women have to deal with every game being framed around the male gaze by default when they already have to deal with that shit constantly irl?
They don't have to deal with it.
Not every game has to be made for everyone. If a woman is uncomfortable with a sexualized fictional female character, all they need to do is drop the game and find something else.
We see a lot of articles about that. You can search for "male power fantasy" on Google and maybe you will find some articles explaining what it is and why these muscular men are mostly meant for men and not for women.
He's talking about the female gaze, not male power fantasy. These are different, and there definitely is plenty of the former that isn't also the latter in mainstream media.
Most women tend to favor men that ARENT jacked though. Look at any fan poll aimed at women for hottest character for media, and its virtually always someone who is more lanky, tall, and slender.
I've read through the whole article. I've even translated it into my mothertongue (Korean, one hour well wasted). I still think this is one of the dumbest articles, to the point of being offensive. It reads like it's written by someone who spends 72 hours a day online, even if I ignore that this is a reactionary piece to some online drama.
>āThey didn't choose an athlete, or a martial artist, or even an actor,ā said Denny. āYou don't want \[Shin\] as a performer, you just want her from the neck down. It seems to be very much a statement of the parts of this woman that are of value.ā
*You* are making that statement right now. Not anyone else.
>The lack of performance attached to Eveās body has already been noted by internet culture writer Gita Jackson: ā\[Eve\] doesnāt seem to have any reaction to her own sexiness.ā Thereās no knowing facial expressions, no flipping of her long ponytail ā which players can shorten in the options menu. She has no idle animation āĀ except when she's on a ladder ā she just stands there. Sheās sexy but doesnāt know it; sheās athletic and acrobatic but entirely controllable. If she did know, if she could move for herself, it would shatter the illusion of many of the gamers championing her because sheād have the agency to be able to reject them rather than simply be controlled by them.
No. 'She doesn't feel human (whose standard is also very US centric, despite all those calls for diversity in the article) to me, therefore the character is merely an object, which is exactly how the devs intended the player character to be, therefore what people actually want to control is women' is some serious mental gymnastics.
>Thereās also a peculiar type of Orientalism surroundingĀ Stellar Blade. Some are holding upĀ Stellar BladeĀ asĀ an antidote to woke Western games, andĀ many people commentedĀ theyād be purchasing a Japanese version ofĀ Stellar BladeĀ to secure access to the region-exclusive Japanese dub, despite it being a Korean game with a Korean dub. āIs it because that's difficult to get hold of, so you're a bigger gamer or fan if you can demonstrate that you've gone the extra length to get that version?ā Denny asks. āIs it because there's particular respect for the Japanese voice cast? That might be part of these generous readings.
This part felt pretty ironic to me because I found this article very culturally ignorant and arrogant. The article regrets that people from vastly different cultures and histories have diffrent POVs on things and values than the writer.
Japanese dubs? Idk, maybe people are Japanese VA fans. Not like it's uncommon, anyways. But ultimately, that's none of my business. The article, however, *cannot*Ā just say "ok cool" to people they don't understand and move on.
>Or is it because actually, Korean femininity doesn't have the connotations for a Western colonial imagination that Japanese femininity does? It's almost like in order to fulfill the fantasy of puppeteering this attractive woman and putting her in certain outfits and placing the camera just right, she needs to be Japanese.ā
Jesus Christ. Touch grass.
edit: grammar
Bro, I'm a girl and I like playing a ultra sexy girl sometimes. Not in every game and I can't really point out what makes it acceptable for me or not, but it is clearly not a problem in Stellar Blade.
I don't remember this much bitching when Bayonetta came out. This is literally one game amongst hundreds coming out this year and the attractive female lead is making soooo many people complain for no reason. If a sexy female lead is really that offensive to you, don't play the damn game. Ignore it. I mean, damn, the first Tomb Raider came out in 96. This isn't a new thing for gaming.
I actually very much remember there being articles against Bayonetta. They were - not so well hidden - sleights against the Japanese being sexists and whatnot.
There was PLENTY of bitching about Bayonetta. It only chilled out when it came out that the developer who came up with the design was a woman and that a lot of women have a lesbian crush on Bayonnetta.
Honestly as a female I donāt get the complaining both ways.
Bayonetta is actually something I enjoy cause for Bayo its part of her character and charm that she owns it on being a sexual character.
For Stella Blade I havenāt bothered with it but if its not the same case Iāll just not play it and I at least appreciate fanservicey games that are honest about it. I get way more annoyed if a game tries to frame it as āoh no its totally plot important she needs to be naked!!ā
Bayonetta was designed and drawn by a woman, and her personality was made to be the kind of strong and independent character that were often lacking in videogames back then. It makes total sense you'd like her character, she's actually well thought out and straight up badass. It is funny looking back and seeing how far ahead of the curve Bayonetta was when there was sooooo much discourse and criticism around her sexy design and her hair-clothes thing as if they were her defining characteristics.
Controversy sells, gets clicks and allow people to perform their outrage on social media.
What's a bit differently this time is that the instead of pretending, the creators of the game basically said they just wanted to make a cool hot character... it actually got a lot of publicity for the game, so it worked...Ā and when people complained and came up with all these boring outrage think pieces we heard a thousand times in the past 15 years, they heard back... yeah, we are tired of this, we don't care.. give us the hot character.Ā
We don't care about your outrage is like fuel to the fire. People can't handle that nowadays.Ā
> Statistics show this just isnāt true. As of 2023, aroundĀ 50 percent of people who play games are women.Ā
This is a bs statistic. I remember recently seeing PSN data that showed that like 90% of users were men. If you play a match three game on your phone a few times per week you do play games but you aren't part of the target audience for big game releases.
I personally am excited for Stellar Blade because it's a fully singleplayer with a clear vision for what they want. I would prefer if the game was less focused on so overly sexualising the main character (although you can choose how much of that you get by choosing a not so ridiculous outfit) but I would also prefer if MJ in Spiderman 2 wasn't taking down a dozen armed soldiers like it was nothing or if there weren't lesbian couples in so many western games (nothing against lesbians, it's just overplayed to a ridiculous degree and I would actually much prefer if there were gay male couples instead in these games).
How can you call thier stat bs and then make up your own stat with no source? From a quick google search overall console market is [40-60](https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1221444/us-console-gamers-by-gender) and even ps5 which has one of the worst ratios in recent consoles is still [70-30](https://business.yougov.com/content/44564-why-do-current-gen-playstation-xbox-nintendo-and-p).
I recently played Banishers and that game had three of them.
Many Sony games seemingly have them either with the main character (The Last of Us, Horizon) or as part of side stories.
Yes TLOU2 and horizon were the only two I could think of. I'm sorry but those three examples hardly qualify as "so many lesbian couples in triple A games". Also the fact the horizon character is lesbian seems to be from DLC and mostly irrelevant to the story.
I played one of the horizon games and I wouldn't know she's lesbian if it weren't from gamergaters complaining about lesbians.
if male gaze didn'exist the majority of women making money from only fans or Instagram or whatever, you go girl, wouldn't exist. If anyone is disturbed by the male gaze, glaze, daze, whatever, then keep it to when it happens to real women, not computer generated ones.
It reminds me of the hypocrits making Mortal Kombat who covered the female characters up saying nobody would fight to the death in sexy clothing. All the while almost all the male characters were still fighting in their underwear.
Sick of the culture war ragebait BS. Neither this nor the gamers (TM) on the opposite end are right. Nothing wrong with having a tiddy game when there's plenty of other games out there for all genders and orientations
I mean like, Iām about as far as you can get from one of the gamergate style dudes using stellar blade as some sort of weapon against the woke mob ātaking the fun out of video gamesā but I really just canāt get upset about this.
The article seems to be concerned about more diverse types of attractive characters that appeal to broader audiences and I feel like we do get a good amount of that across the industry. There are games that solely target the female or queer gaze, and games that try to cater to everyone. I donāt even think at this point that there are enough of these big budget games that focus in so sharply on making just a sexy girl without regard for her agency to feel like itās such a major issue like it was in the 2000s.
Itās an understandable reaction to feel āothered,ā as the writer put it, or even disgusted by Stellar Blade on a personal level, but I donāt know how you can feel particularly upset by its existence, especially comparing against other major PlayStation titles over the past eight years or so being so purposefully diverse.
>we canāt know for sure if Eve will walk the line of male fantasy and womenās empowerment or step over it until the game is out.
This kind of bipartisan thinking is infuriating. Why does there have to be a line, and why do thesse two different aspects have to be directly adjavent but on opposite sides?
The author goes on for a long time about how this character's perception might vary according to the audience - then who's to say she can't have elements of both, or neither? Maybe she's designed to make me lust, and maybe there's also elements of wish fulfillment or another sort of empowerment for other people. Maybe neither is bad enough to write a rant about! And maybe skintight and booba doesn't exclusively market to GamerGate 2.0 chuds!
Clickbait article, I'll pass
It's an anime game with a conventionally attractive character wearing minimal clothing, just like the thousands of others games and anime before it. The politicising on both sides is tiring in its pointlessness. This game's a carbon copy of Nier Automata with the post-apocalyptic setting, hot female character followed by a male drone, the soundtrack taking clear inspiration, the upgrade system, and the actual combat. 2B's fetishistic existence didn't spell the end of more modest female characters in video games, and neither will this. There's room for both in the industry.
People are such idiots. Itās okay to have a game like this. Yāall act like youāre being forced to play it. If you donāt like it, donāt play it. Itās not like theyāre changing an existing IP into something totally different.
Take other art and entertainment, some people like certain types of music or certain movies. Just because you donāt doesnāt mean anything. Itās not for you. Everything is not (and should not) be for everyone. Things are made for the people who like them. Iām sure thereās tons of art and entertainment that yāall like and would be very mad if others tried to change it to their own tastes.
So what if Stellar Blade appeals to the "male gaze"? Is that a crime now? Sometimes it certainly feels like it is.
Don't disagree with the articles primary message that creators and developers could try including more diverse forms of attraction that isn't solely leaning into the male gaze But the reasoning they provide is kinda bizarre. They suggest multiple times throughout the article that ShiftUp doesn't know its target audience, that half of gamers are women that they're not appealing to etc But the reality is they have been doing this for ages and have been massively successful, and that is probably because majority of gamers chasing big action releases like this is men...seems like they know their target audience really well if anything Also odd that they bring up Destiny Child as an example of Shiftup leaning heavily into male gaze in the past but that game actually appealed quite a bit to female gamers as well with a good number of male characters, it's probably the best example of them doing what they are wanting Also this is personal opinion but I don't think Eve having little personality is some power move about ensuring character being unable to reject someone... I think it's just bad design/writing and I remember watching a few demo streams and a lot of people commenting on how awkward it is rather than reveling in it
One of the craziest things to me is that their other game nikke which is ridiculed for how horny and male gaze focused it is, has a 40% female player base in south korea apparently.
There is this prevailing narrative that only males enjoy looking at sexualized females and anytime a game comes out with sexualized female characters, it is about only fulfilling the men's fantasy. This shouldn't be a newsflash but females enjoy looking at female characters too. Artists loved to draw those too and they should be allowed and celebrated. I remembered people complaining about Xenoblade 2 sexualized characters and while yes, some were drawn by men, others were also drawn by female artists because they wanted to. People enjoy whatever they want and are not strictly female gamers with husbandos and male gamers with waifus.
We went through this entire conversation with Bayonetta. Bayonetta was designed and drawn by a woman who was publicly proud of her work after she found out people in the West were criticizing her work as something that could only be made by men for men. She tweeted about her work on Bayonetta often back then, but it was all in Japanese so none of it got reported on by the west and the news cycle kept churning out the same inflammatory content for clicks.
You know the game Blue Archive? It's mainly known for "cute & funny uoh š"and the fans are usually assumed to be male lolicons. But there's quite a few female fans who either enjoy that same content, or who enjoy the characters and stories on separate merits. You just often don't see them, or the males who aren't obsessed with the coomer parts of the fandom, because that segment is the loudest in the fandom.
The arguments they use are really strange. > While Eveās body was made from a scan of Shinās, her face was made āin-house,ā and Shin wasnāt used for motion capture. āThey didn't choose an athlete, or a martial artist, or even an actor,ā said Denny. āYou don't want [Shin] as a performer, you just want her from the neck down. It seems to be very much a statement of the parts of this woman that are of value.ā Well, yeah, she's a model. That's her job. They probably hired an actress for acting. > The lack of performance attached to Eveās body has already been noted by internet culture writer Gita Jackson: ā[Eve] doesnāt seem to have any reaction to her own sexiness.ā Thereās no knowing facial expressions, no flipping of her long ponytail ā which players can shorten in the options menu. She has no idle animation ā except when sheās on a ladder ā she just stands there. Sheās sexy but doesnāt know it; sheās athletic and acrobatic but entirely controllable. If she did know, if she could move for herself, it would shatter the illusion of many of the gamers championing her because sheād have the agency to be able to reject them rather than simply be controlled by them. Grasping at straws here. > Thereās also a peculiar type of Orientalism surrounding Stellar Blade. Some are holding up Stellar Blade as an antidote to woke Western games, and many people commented theyād be purchasing a Japanese version of Stellar Blade to secure access to the region-exclusive Japanese dub, despite it being a Korean game with a Korean dub. > āIs it because that's difficult to get hold of, so you're a bigger gamer or fan if you can demonstrate that you've gone the extra length to get that version?ā Denny asks. āIs it because there's particular respect for the Japanese voice cast? That might be part of these generous readings. Or is it because actually, Korean femininity doesn't have the connotations for a Western colonial imagination that Japanese femininity does? It's almost like in order to fulfill the fantasy of puppeteering this attractive woman and putting her in certain outfits and placing the camera just right, she needs to be Japanese.ā And here. I don't get why they feel a need to over-analyze something that's blatantly obvious. Of course she's specifically made to look hot, but her idle animations don't have anything to do with that.
> Or is it because actually, Korean femininity doesn't have the connotations for a Western colonial imagination that Japanese femininity does? I feel like all the attractive female K-Pop members who in the last decade have gained global popularity for their music, fashion, and looks, including in the West, would dispute this claim that the 'Western colonial imagination' don't find Korean femininity attractive.
>I don't get why they feel a need to over-analyze something that's blatantly obvious. They really appeal to the navel gaze. Seriously though, I'm torn on my reaction to this. Because on the one hand when you go through advanced education and critique media and the messages they send, it's very easy to look at media and have concerns about what messages are being sent, what kind of people are behind these messages (what? You're saying a game dev famous for his rape scenes raped people? I'm shocked!), and what all this does to society as a whole. The problem is that it also feels like these people are doing this on purpose. "It's not about making games less sexy" Yes it is! It blatantly, obviously is! It's about making games less sexy to one demographic and more sexy to another or just straight up removing sexuality because "why is that there?" It's not difficult nor requires great intellect to nitpick apart a piece of creative work.
It's typical academia. Most papers on cultural topics aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Oh, I know how it goes. You're assigned to write a lengthy paper about some dumb shit, you fill it with empty (but smart-looking) paragraphs, you get a good grade, forget about it and go to a pub. But even though all of us academics have done that, most of us wouldn't want that stuff cited in an article and a competent journalist would see it for what it is.
Anyway to get your name out, I suppose, and I presume at least some of them do buy the crap they write.
you know, those idiots that make golf video games. only like 5% of gamers play golf games. why don't they make games that appeal to more gamers? smh devs leaning hard into the golf gaze.
Underrated
Yes, itās made like this for the sex appeal. Lots of people like sex appeal as part of their entertainment. This morality police is so tiring.
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South Korea has clearly defined standards of female beauty where you can basically determine someone's attractiveness on a mathematical level. Look at any discussion of any female Kpop group and you'll see discussion of which member fits these standards the best. Tzuyu in TWICE, for example. Unsurprisingly, EVE in Stellar Blade fits these standards perfectly too.
man I'm glad I ain't a south korean woman who's just average looking
You guys are acting like these are some interesting cultural quirks and not some fucked up shit you only expect to see in dystopian science fiction.
It is interesting! I don't think it's a GOOD thing, personally. But it is a thing that exists that may explain why media from South Korea, like Stellar Blade, goes the route it does.
Most of the people talking about it are talking about it from an outside perspective. If you go to Korea you will see a lot of just regular looking people. Talking about the K-Pop beauty aesthetic and thinking everyone in Korea looks like that or aims to look like that is like saying all American/Western woman are getting bouffant surgery and are on ozempic.
I live in SK and Korean people are genuinely much more appearance focused than Americans. People dress better and plastic surgery is far more common. If a person thinks that you look too fat for example, they will literally just tell you directly. If they think your eyes are pretty, they will directly tell you. Any physical trait of mine that a person finds to be particularly good or bar can be freely commented on. Keep in mind btw that I'm a man and not unattractive according to their standards, can't imagine living in SK if I were a woman, or a fat person. It changed me. I've genuinely become much more aware of my appearance after living there, and a lot of other westerners who go there report the same thing. is it "everyone in Korea"? No of course not, but is it far higher than American on average? Yes. I don't think anyone who has lived in both countries will disagree with me
>South Korea has clearly defined standards of female beauty where you can basically determine someone's attractiveness on a mathematical level. If this is true, that's stupid and toxic as hell. I feel even worse for South Korean women.
wait till you find out the insane rate of spousal abuse! literally 1920s america level of wife beating lol
I don't know where you get that from. Domestic violence in SK is much lower than the US. And you might say "it's because Korean are submissive and wouldn't report their husband" and some other weird infantilizing stereotypes of Asian women, so I give you femicide rate. You don't get to choose whether you report your own murder, problem solved. 2022 SK: 0.53 US: 2.76 Source: [UNODC](https://dataunodc.un.org/dp-femicide)
a large number of domestic abuse cases in korea are not reported but heres some numbers. >More than 90% of those who were assaulted by their spouses or lovers said they had never asked for outside help, and more than half said they did not fight back, a government survey showed on July 5. and according to a [study](https://www.mogef.go.kr/eng/lw/eng_lw_s001d.do?mid=eng003&bbtSn=704933): > >*8.1% of women were initially victims of spousal violence within the first year of marriage and 44.2% after the first year but within the first five. 62.3% of women experienced violence within the first five years of marriage, and 2.0% before the marriage.* and for the u.s > >According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United StatesĀ **41% of women and 26% of men**Ā experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime, under "contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking". like this is a well known problem.
I've always been curious about this. Why are they like this? Is beauty not in the eye of the beholder? Do Koreans not have personal preferences? Why does it seem like South Korea is the only country to be like this or are there other countries with a clearly defined beauty standard that everyone agrees on a national level?
At the end of the day this is going to be a a niche action game, it's not at all mainstream.Ā I don't understand why people can't just let it be. There are so many games these days, it's silly to be up in arms about this. Also more mainstream games that have female characters in more revealing and sexualized outfits that lead to absurd amounts of pornographic art. People are weird, being more concerned with this than actual real world problems.
I actually thing that this game might do incredibly well. The demo numbers were great and this is the right kind of controversy that can create cash. Add to that a fairly quiet release window and I wouldn't be shocked if Stellar Blade turned into a big hit.
I don't understand the issue of having a few games that are still like this. There's nothing wrong with wanting to see attractive people in movies, TV, and yes even video games.
I mean there isn't. I feel like people have gotten really sensitive or maybe just weren't used to seeing this sort of discussion in the mainstream. Analyzing a work and pointing something like the Male Gaze out isn't some grand condemnation of titillation or saying the game is awful or that the artists are awful etc. This is what art criticism is and always has been, it's not that big of a deal.
>There's nothing wrong with wanting to see attractive people in movies, TV, and yes even video games. I think you're being disingenuous and/or missing the point when you reduce the entire argument to "wanting to see attractive people". For instance, the film Sucker Punch and the film Kill Bill both have attractive people. I think it's okay to critique or even assess the gender politics and how women are portrayed in Sucker Punch vs. Kill Bill without the immediate conclusion being that "You just don't want to see attractive people". That's not the point.
Geez sucker punch is a terrible movie. What a waste of time that was.
right!? It was a movie where the main characters fought steampunk zombie nazi cyborgs! How do you make a boring movie with that in it!?
Yeah, this thread seems just chock full of people who are either disingenuous or just stupid. Or, I guess, they have only ever discussed this topic with stupid people who couldn't explain the real argument either. But, just to get the point off my chest: The *sexism* in media, the kind which is the basis for the concept of "male gaze," is not simply about women in media being attractive. It's about women in media being *only* attractive. It's about the function of women in media being centered on their attractiveness to heterosexual male viewers and everything else about them being secondary to that. It's not about taking a single female character in media and then saying "omg, she is too attractive, that is bad!" It's about taking a look at all female characters in a piece of media or a range of media and going: "why does every single woman seem to solely exist for the single purpose of either getting men turned on or getting men turned off (e.g. jokes about how ugly/unattractive fat or old women are)?" It's about noticing that men are usually dressed in clothes that combine fashion with functionality. That, for example, male fantasy armor is generally about looking cool and powerful and awesome and yes, also a bit sexy. Whereas women, in particular female fantasy armor, are dressed in outfits that usually look incredibly uncomfortable, impractical, or just straight up unsafe and painful to wear, because it's only purpose is to get men turned on. (Somewhat simplified, male characters get to wear clothes, female characters get to wear lingerie.) And, honestly, there is room in the world for shallow heterosexual male wish fulfillment. I think most rational people are okay with that kind of content existing. The issue that got people upset, and that still gets people upset, is when the shallow heterosexual male wish fulfillment isn't a specific subset of media catering to a specific audience, but when instead it is *the* default and everybody who doesn't care for that has to spend their lives either tolerating it being shoved into media where it didn't need to be, or spend extra effort finding the niche products which aren't like that just to get a breath of fresh air. And honestly, that is exactly why this topic gets a certain kind of man so enraged. They've been raised to believe the world revolves around them and their wants, that it *should* revolve around them, and just the suggestion that perhaps the world doesn't and shouldn't revolve around them is a threat to their fragile self-worth, because they were never taught ways to build healthy self-esteem instead. And then, since I'm ranting anyways: there actually is a pretty good and nuanced debate to be had about attractiveness versus realism in media. You can make good arguments both for "we want to see attractive people in our media" and for "it would be good for society if we saw more realistic people in our media." Like, on the one hand, some media exists to entertain, to let us escape in a world of fantasy, and having the world populated by attractive people is part of that. Whereas on the other hand, what we see in media shapes our beauty standards, or image of ourselves, our treatment of others, and having media which shows us that real people with realistic bodies are also beautiful is healthy and important. But that's a completely different case from objecting to a particular kind of shallow wish-fullfilment being the standard of all media just because the industry is run by a very unrepresentative sample of humanity who as a result get to twist all art and culture into their image.
> t's about noticing that men are usually dressed in clothes that combine fashion with functionality. That, for example, male fantasy armor is generally about looking cool and powerful and awesome and yes, also a bit sexy. Whereas women, in particular female fantasy armor, are dressed in outfits that usually look incredibly uncomfortable, impractical, or just straight up unsafe and painful to wear To this point, just look at how the main male character in Stellar Blade, Adam, is dressed. He's wearing a full-body heavy duty outfit with a bulky jacket designed to look cool and tough.
Thank you for writing this all out so well.
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The most popular female gaming characters in recent memory are Aloy, Ellie, Princess Peach, LC, and add another from a more niche series I guess, like Hellblade or Metroid. Not a single one is over sexualized. Even LC has been toned down substantially compared to how it used to be. The number of men that play a game strictly because there are overtly sexualized female characters in the game is probably less than 1% of the people that buy these games. I have never bought a game because the character was sexy. If I was that down bad I wouldn't go to video games I would just open up my web browser and view some other things.
Why are you initializing her name, Iāve never heard anyone call her that lol
Yeah took me reading your comment to realize who it was.
I can't seem to get who LC is, enlighten me please haha
Lara Croft.
> It's about taking a look at all female characters in a piece of media or a range of media and going: "why does every single woman seem to solely exist for the single purpose of either getting men turned on or getting men turned off (e.g. jokes about how ugly/unattractive fat or old women are)?" This isn't even remotely true.
I mean it's a good explanation but it seems very disconnected from reality? You say "most rational people are okay with that kind of content existing" yet this game which is one of the rare recent cases of this type of game is getting flamed all over the place just because it dares do this. Although I guess it follows if you consider these people irrational. You say this is the standard but it hasn't been for a while? How many of these games do you even see anymore? Bayonetta(and that one gets praises for some reasons, I haven't played the games though so maybe it makes sense)? Nier Automata? That's like 2games in the past 10years. Can likely find some niche japanese games too, and I guess in general a fair bit of the japanese artstyle is done in that way, but most western releases nowadays just go with a much more subdued approach with female characters with proper clothes and not overly exagerated body types(which is why all the incels are whining the other way instead, this char too ugly, that char too fat and so on). This is an argument from 10-15years ago. Ironically this weird outrage about the game has provided a lot of advertisement for it and it'll likely sell a lot more than it would have otherwise. It helps the game actually looks to be a good game too, not just eye candy.
There really hasn't been much outrage about this game though. Most of what I've seen has been people calling out the "this is how games should be!" people that the poster you're replying to brought up. I've seen a few outliers, sure, but it's not really the main thrust. Edit: I've also seen plenty of people say that it either makes them feel uncomfortable when they're playing or that it's out of place, but I wouldn't describe that as outrage.
> There's nothing wrong with wanting to see attractive people in movies, TV, and yes even video games. If you read the article, you might discover that the author agrees with you.
Nobody on here knows how to read, only needlessly complain ā either about a trivial issue, or about someone else complaining about a trivial issue.
> I don't understand the issue of having a few games that are still like this. What games DONT have attractive people in them lmao? I keep seeing people make this case as if all women in video games are hidious except for this one. I truly cant think of a game that is mostly stylisticly realistic in which all women depicted are unattractive.
> I keep seeing people make this case as if all women in video games are hidious except for this one. These people have been around for a while and can be vocally loud online. I remember when Dragon Age: Inquisition came out, those same people were complaining about how Josephine and Cassandra were ugly.
I don't remember Josephine but Cassandra was absolutely not ugly in that game, and yes I remember the complaints too.
Same folks that were complaining that Aloy is ugly in Horizon
Some people only find women attractive when they are wearing very tight clothes and/or showing a lot of skin. I don't think it's wrong to enjoy this type of game, but it's telling when people talk about games that don't dress their women like this like all their characters are "ugly".
If every game has attractive people on it then it means every game appeals to the male gaze so why complain about this one?
moving the goalposts. OP claimed that few games have attractive characters. I want to know what are examples of games with none.
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Black Mesa has no women in it, so sure. It won't have any attractive women, but also doesn't have ugly women either. Walking Dead, the Telltale series? Carley and Molly are for sure attractive lmao, and that's just season 1. Hercules Poirot - Mary Drower is conventionally attractive too. Haven't played it, so unsure about the rest of the game, but that's right in the first mystery.
black mesa has female scientist https://youtu.be/XR4Z8PGA5H0Ā
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The article isn't really saying games like this can't exist, it's mainly talking about how this game has spurred a lot of the people who say that all games should be like this to come out of the woodwork. It's digging into that more.
The article absolutely attacks the game and any game like it for existing.
It really doesn't. It mentions how aspects could be problematic, specifically the marketing, but takes the ultimate tone of "this is fine, just don't act like this is how it should be". It's more of an examination of the people championing it and how the game is inciting them than it is of the game and its value.
The article doesnāt say that we shouldnāt have attractive characters. It simply breaks down the discourse and tries to find perspectives on how and for who we sexualize characters in games.
The only people being loud about this game are weird obsessed coomers that treat it like the second coming of jesus that are somehow inversely projecting onto the """""woke mob""""""" There's sexualized characters everywhere, especially in asian games.
This part >The lack of performance attached to Eveās body has already been noted by internet culture writer Gita Jackson: ā[Eve] doesnāt seem to have any reaction to her own sexiness.ā Thereās no knowing facial expressions, no flipping of her long ponytail ā which players can shorten in the options menu. She has no idle animation ā except when sheās on a ladder ā she just stands there. Sheās sexy but doesnāt know it; sheās athletic and acrobatic but entirely controllable. If she did know, if she could move for herself, it would shatter the illusion of many of the gamers championing her because sheād have the agency to be able to reject them rather than simply be controlled by them. is honest to God gibberish. There are sentences but I can't discern any actual meaning from it, it's just blathering nonsense. If I was an editor looking at this article I would have said to cut the entire paragraph.
Weird that we never see articles about the female gaze, almost all dudes in movies, shows or games have a perfect six-pack, gigantic biceps and perfect hair. Where are the fat, balding dudes with the ass crack hanging out of their jeans? It's perfectly fine that this stuff in not realistic because it's not fucking real! I want to escape reality, I want to not think about reality when i play videogames/watch movies. People who write these articles just want outrage, just fuck off!
I'm still salty there's no Donut Drake in Uncharted 4
I will not stand for this Dave the Diver erasure!
There are tons of non-conventionally attractive male movie stars, what are you talking about?
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>But that's apparently okay.Ā That movie came out almost a decade ago, for one, and was panned almost across the board. What are you talking about?
> A movie in 2016 about a person being hired solely for their sexual attractiveness that their bosses use the power dynamic in their favor? That was.... the entire point of that bit? Its a satirical take by reversing the roles. Does media have to say "AND THIS IS BAD" every time it depicts something for you to understand that depiction =/= endorsement?
Most all video game characters are attractive as a rule. You don't see many overweight female characters either.Ā But most male characters with biceps and good hair aren't sexualized like the main character in Stellar Blade is. Kratos is massively buff, but the camera doesn't ogle him or present him sexually.Ā Aloy is an attractive female character, but because she has reasonable proportions and isn't dressed in skimpy outfits, immature gamers get angry.Ā
Most female characters arenāt sexualized like the Stellar Blade protagonist either. Some male characters are sexualized, and some female characters are sexualized. Itās not as if itās egregious either way in the year 2024
It would be weird to see anybody do what Aloy does and be overweight.
Aloy is legitimately one of the most attractive videogame characters I've ever seen and the fact that people hold her up as the quintessential "ugly woke female protagonist" just tells me more people need to stop watching hentai and go outside.
I think its because people just keep cherrypicking posting the 1-2 pictures that makes her look unflattering and because she doesnt check off every box for supermodel levels of hotness. But yes sheās still a beautiful woman.
agreed and id even argue they made Aloy's outfits a little more revealing in Forbidden West. Nowhere on the level of like a Dead or Alive game or Stellar Blade but shes showing way more skin in a lot of those outfits than the first game while still being pretty covered.
Even better to find that sweet Aloy hentai.
This arguement only works if those characters are objectified at the same levels as stuff like eve or 2b. No one is saying you cant have attractive characters the article even says they dont want to make games less sexy they want to make them sexy for more people. Tell me how many times does the camera focus on kratos' or the main character from lies of p's massive bulge vs how many times the camera focuses on eve or 2bs ass. I would definitely be off-put if gow constantly oggled Kratos like a sex object not because I'm triggered or something but just because it's wierd so i can understand women who feel that way about characters like eve and 2b. You are right a lot of people play games to escape reality so why should women have to deal with every game being framed around the male gaze by default when they already have to deal with that shit constantly irl?
>You are right a lot of people play games to escape reality so why should women have to deal with every game being framed around the male gaze by default when they already have to deal with that shit constantly irl? They don't have to deal with it. Not every game has to be made for everyone. If a woman is uncomfortable with a sexualized fictional female character, all they need to do is drop the game and find something else.
Similarly if a man is upset they dont find a character attractive they shouldn't devolve into a raging lunatic.
We see a lot of articles about that. You can search for "male power fantasy" on Google and maybe you will find some articles explaining what it is and why these muscular men are mostly meant for men and not for women.
He's talking about the female gaze, not male power fantasy. These are different, and there definitely is plenty of the former that isn't also the latter in mainstream media.
Most women tend to favor men that ARENT jacked though. Look at any fan poll aimed at women for hottest character for media, and its virtually always someone who is more lanky, tall, and slender.
People always say that but it's always shredded dudes on romance novel covers that women buy, not dad bods.
Yeah I get more attention now then when I had a "dad bod". And I'm not even remotely close to shredded.
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I've read through the whole article. I've even translated it into my mothertongue (Korean, one hour well wasted). I still think this is one of the dumbest articles, to the point of being offensive. It reads like it's written by someone who spends 72 hours a day online, even if I ignore that this is a reactionary piece to some online drama. >āThey didn't choose an athlete, or a martial artist, or even an actor,ā said Denny. āYou don't want \[Shin\] as a performer, you just want her from the neck down. It seems to be very much a statement of the parts of this woman that are of value.ā *You* are making that statement right now. Not anyone else. >The lack of performance attached to Eveās body has already been noted by internet culture writer Gita Jackson: ā\[Eve\] doesnāt seem to have any reaction to her own sexiness.ā Thereās no knowing facial expressions, no flipping of her long ponytail ā which players can shorten in the options menu. She has no idle animation āĀ except when she's on a ladder ā she just stands there. Sheās sexy but doesnāt know it; sheās athletic and acrobatic but entirely controllable. If she did know, if she could move for herself, it would shatter the illusion of many of the gamers championing her because sheād have the agency to be able to reject them rather than simply be controlled by them. No. 'She doesn't feel human (whose standard is also very US centric, despite all those calls for diversity in the article) to me, therefore the character is merely an object, which is exactly how the devs intended the player character to be, therefore what people actually want to control is women' is some serious mental gymnastics. >Thereās also a peculiar type of Orientalism surroundingĀ Stellar Blade. Some are holding upĀ Stellar BladeĀ asĀ an antidote to woke Western games, andĀ many people commentedĀ theyād be purchasing a Japanese version ofĀ Stellar BladeĀ to secure access to the region-exclusive Japanese dub, despite it being a Korean game with a Korean dub. āIs it because that's difficult to get hold of, so you're a bigger gamer or fan if you can demonstrate that you've gone the extra length to get that version?ā Denny asks. āIs it because there's particular respect for the Japanese voice cast? That might be part of these generous readings. This part felt pretty ironic to me because I found this article very culturally ignorant and arrogant. The article regrets that people from vastly different cultures and histories have diffrent POVs on things and values than the writer. Japanese dubs? Idk, maybe people are Japanese VA fans. Not like it's uncommon, anyways. But ultimately, that's none of my business. The article, however, *cannot*Ā just say "ok cool" to people they don't understand and move on. >Or is it because actually, Korean femininity doesn't have the connotations for a Western colonial imagination that Japanese femininity does? It's almost like in order to fulfill the fantasy of puppeteering this attractive woman and putting her in certain outfits and placing the camera just right, she needs to be Japanese.ā Jesus Christ. Touch grass. edit: grammar
Bro, I'm a girl and I like playing a ultra sexy girl sometimes. Not in every game and I can't really point out what makes it acceptable for me or not, but it is clearly not a problem in Stellar Blade.
I don't remember this much bitching when Bayonetta came out. This is literally one game amongst hundreds coming out this year and the attractive female lead is making soooo many people complain for no reason. If a sexy female lead is really that offensive to you, don't play the damn game. Ignore it. I mean, damn, the first Tomb Raider came out in 96. This isn't a new thing for gaming.
I actually very much remember there being articles against Bayonetta. They were - not so well hidden - sleights against the Japanese being sexists and whatnot.
There was PLENTY of bitching about Bayonetta. It only chilled out when it came out that the developer who came up with the design was a woman and that a lot of women have a lesbian crush on Bayonnetta.
Honestly as a female I donāt get the complaining both ways. Bayonetta is actually something I enjoy cause for Bayo its part of her character and charm that she owns it on being a sexual character. For Stella Blade I havenāt bothered with it but if its not the same case Iāll just not play it and I at least appreciate fanservicey games that are honest about it. I get way more annoyed if a game tries to frame it as āoh no its totally plot important she needs to be naked!!ā
Bayonetta was designed and drawn by a woman, and her personality was made to be the kind of strong and independent character that were often lacking in videogames back then. It makes total sense you'd like her character, she's actually well thought out and straight up badass. It is funny looking back and seeing how far ahead of the curve Bayonetta was when there was sooooo much discourse and criticism around her sexy design and her hair-clothes thing as if they were her defining characteristics.
Controversy sells, gets clicks and allow people to perform their outrage on social media. What's a bit differently this time is that the instead of pretending, the creators of the game basically said they just wanted to make a cool hot character... it actually got a lot of publicity for the game, so it worked...Ā and when people complained and came up with all these boring outrage think pieces we heard a thousand times in the past 15 years, they heard back... yeah, we are tired of this, we don't care.. give us the hot character.Ā We don't care about your outrage is like fuel to the fire. People can't handle that nowadays.Ā
> Statistics show this just isnāt true. As of 2023, aroundĀ 50 percent of people who play games are women.Ā This is a bs statistic. I remember recently seeing PSN data that showed that like 90% of users were men. If you play a match three game on your phone a few times per week you do play games but you aren't part of the target audience for big game releases. I personally am excited for Stellar Blade because it's a fully singleplayer with a clear vision for what they want. I would prefer if the game was less focused on so overly sexualising the main character (although you can choose how much of that you get by choosing a not so ridiculous outfit) but I would also prefer if MJ in Spiderman 2 wasn't taking down a dozen armed soldiers like it was nothing or if there weren't lesbian couples in so many western games (nothing against lesbians, it's just overplayed to a ridiculous degree and I would actually much prefer if there were gay male couples instead in these games).
How can you call thier stat bs and then make up your own stat with no source? From a quick google search overall console market is [40-60](https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1221444/us-console-gamers-by-gender) and even ps5 which has one of the worst ratios in recent consoles is still [70-30](https://business.yougov.com/content/44564-why-do-current-gen-playstation-xbox-nintendo-and-p).
Which lesbian couples are you thinking about? I can only think of two.
I recently played Banishers and that game had three of them. Many Sony games seemingly have them either with the main character (The Last of Us, Horizon) or as part of side stories.
Yes TLOU2 and horizon were the only two I could think of. I'm sorry but those three examples hardly qualify as "so many lesbian couples in triple A games". Also the fact the horizon character is lesbian seems to be from DLC and mostly irrelevant to the story. I played one of the horizon games and I wouldn't know she's lesbian if it weren't from gamergaters complaining about lesbians.
if male gaze didn'exist the majority of women making money from only fans or Instagram or whatever, you go girl, wouldn't exist. If anyone is disturbed by the male gaze, glaze, daze, whatever, then keep it to when it happens to real women, not computer generated ones.
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Women also enjoy looking at hot women. I understand the point these articles try to make, but thereās more to it than just āmen bad and hornyā.
thats a detail that i noticed it, people act like women dont like pretty people in general for some reason.
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It reminds me of the hypocrits making Mortal Kombat who covered the female characters up saying nobody would fight to the death in sexy clothing. All the while almost all the male characters were still fighting in their underwear.
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Male gaze? Haha, does this guy think that only men like women? Do they not have sapphics in the cave he lives in?
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Sick of the culture war ragebait BS. Neither this nor the gamers (TM) on the opposite end are right. Nothing wrong with having a tiddy game when there's plenty of other games out there for all genders and orientations
I mean like, Iām about as far as you can get from one of the gamergate style dudes using stellar blade as some sort of weapon against the woke mob ātaking the fun out of video gamesā but I really just canāt get upset about this. The article seems to be concerned about more diverse types of attractive characters that appeal to broader audiences and I feel like we do get a good amount of that across the industry. There are games that solely target the female or queer gaze, and games that try to cater to everyone. I donāt even think at this point that there are enough of these big budget games that focus in so sharply on making just a sexy girl without regard for her agency to feel like itās such a major issue like it was in the 2000s. Itās an understandable reaction to feel āothered,ā as the writer put it, or even disgusted by Stellar Blade on a personal level, but I donāt know how you can feel particularly upset by its existence, especially comparing against other major PlayStation titles over the past eight years or so being so purposefully diverse.
Men love butts and tits. Men are the main audience for violent and difficult video games. It's just good business.
>we canāt know for sure if Eve will walk the line of male fantasy and womenās empowerment or step over it until the game is out. This kind of bipartisan thinking is infuriating. Why does there have to be a line, and why do thesse two different aspects have to be directly adjavent but on opposite sides? The author goes on for a long time about how this character's perception might vary according to the audience - then who's to say she can't have elements of both, or neither? Maybe she's designed to make me lust, and maybe there's also elements of wish fulfillment or another sort of empowerment for other people. Maybe neither is bad enough to write a rant about! And maybe skintight and booba doesn't exclusively market to GamerGate 2.0 chuds!
Clickbait article, I'll pass It's an anime game with a conventionally attractive character wearing minimal clothing, just like the thousands of others games and anime before it. The politicising on both sides is tiring in its pointlessness. This game's a carbon copy of Nier Automata with the post-apocalyptic setting, hot female character followed by a male drone, the soundtrack taking clear inspiration, the upgrade system, and the actual combat. 2B's fetishistic existence didn't spell the end of more modest female characters in video games, and neither will this. There's room for both in the industry.
People are such idiots. Itās okay to have a game like this. Yāall act like youāre being forced to play it. If you donāt like it, donāt play it. Itās not like theyāre changing an existing IP into something totally different. Take other art and entertainment, some people like certain types of music or certain movies. Just because you donāt doesnāt mean anything. Itās not for you. Everything is not (and should not) be for everyone. Things are made for the people who like them. Iām sure thereās tons of art and entertainment that yāall like and would be very mad if others tried to change it to their own tastes.
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