Obviously much has been said on the subject, and usually better than I could ever manage. So really why should I bother? Well, aside from the obvious fact that this is my blog and I can therefore rant about any redundant irrelevancies I wish for as long as I like and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop me, it's because this sort of thing is really starting to piss me off.
Now, to be clear what I want to talk about here is the depiction of female characters IN GAMES. The attitude of what some commentators more charitable than I towards women in the attendant gamer culture is another issue entirely. And not really one I want to get into because whilst it makes me even more sickeningly angry than the current topic I'm not sure there's really anything interesting to be said on the topic.
It's true that a lot of people will, when this subject comes up, point out how male characters are also subject to a large amount of stereotyping in games. Of course, this is the internet. You can find just as many people who will tell you the fucking Holocaust never happened if you so much as mention the word Jew.
Pics or it didn't happen.
There are two common connecting factors between these two groups of people: They are both stupid and wrong.
Not in that the male characters are never some sort of cliche or stereotype. Of course they are. All the time. However the argument that depiction of males is comparable to that of females, and thus any complaints levelled against that depiction are somehow invalid is just SO WRONG it beggars belief. We're talking Hitler Wrong here. The fact is that even I, from my lofty throne of white male privilege can see that all the ghastly cliches are stemming from the same root. That of the MALE power fantasy. The heroes are all gruff and muscly because that's an aspirational role for the man in the action/adventure context. It might not be who we ARE, but it is who we WANT TO BE. And whilst I'm sure there are probably at least some women out there who aspire to be hypothermic strippers I'm willing to bet it's not many.
One of things that I don't see brought up very often in these arguments though is that a bit of male power fantasy isn't actually inherently a bad thing. One of the major problems with the current set up is it's sheer pervasiveness. I don't necessarily mind playing a game designed to pander to my (barely existent) notions of raw unbridled MANNITUDE. But I don't need that in every game. Or even most games.
And I gotta say, I really have no idea what a female power fantasy game would even look like. But would it really be that bad of a thing to find out? Somehow these debates always seem to come down to the whinging man children crying that girls are trying to take their guns away and replace all games with 3 hour interactive lectures about the sanctity of periods or something. I really have no idea. Somehow this seems... unlikely. Frankly I doubt games would look all that different except maybe the girls would get to dress sensibly and stop acting like muppets.
Hell, even if we decided to make assumptions based on negative stereotypes of women it doesn't mean we wouldn't get any decent games. Think of the standard assumption that all women are evil, callous, manipulative bitches. Coldly using everyone around them for their own ends. Now picture an RPG where you ARE that character. No combat, you just manipulate everyone into giving you items and killing each other through dialogue and other actions. That would be a fucking BLAST.
But let's get back talking about what we've got. And what that is a shortage of pants that makes Strike Witches look almost sane in comparison.
Take a shot for each gratuitous crotch shot. Congratulations, you are now dead.
I must admit that this had never really bugged me much until I was watching a friend play a game called Nier. Now, she was running around as a standard gruff, muscly manly man hero, doing all the sort of things one normally does in this sort of game. Namely running errands and killing things. And then the female character showed up and I was all like "What the fuck are you wearing?"
Is that.... is that nightie? Are you honestly telling me that you're running around this cold, monster infested wilderness miles from civilisation wearing nought but your sexy night things?
And then a boss showed up and she turned around.
WHAT THE COCKING HELL FUCK IS THAT? Her top doesn't even go all the way around. And her pants.... What the fuck is wrong with those pants? It's not just that they don't actually cover her ass AT ALL. The bit that really got me was the fact that they have open lacing up the back so her butthole can be as exposed to the elements as the rest of her. This woman is going to catch HYPOTHERMIA OF THE BUTTHOLE.
And the best part? This is the outfit that she apparently decided was best suited to hunting huge gribbly slime dripping monsters. I mean, even if you've got some major religious objection to wearing armour you'd think that maybe something to keep the grim secretions of the ravening horde away from your more tender areas might be in order? Seriously, strippers wouldn't wear that outfit. Because they're actually meant to have something to take off for their act.
The problem with this sort of character design is that it's not even sexy. It's just stupid. Sexually alluring and naked are not freely interchangeable terms. Indeed, the essence of a GENUINELY sexy outfit is far more about what you don't show than what you do. This doesn't make the character any more interesting or appealing. It looks like she's filming a porno. And that's perhaps the crux of the issue with these hyper sexualized characters. If I want to look at women in a sexual context I've got a whole internet RIGHT HERE. Seriously, think up any random noun and I'll find you a video of a lady shoving one up her ass. I don't need to jerk off to video games. And even if you do it's not like you're gonna want to do it while you're playing. Just turn off safe search and type the name of your favourite character into google image search. I just hope you feel suitably ashamed afterwards.
Seriously, it's not often I have to turn safe search back on in order to find the pictures I want for an article.
Never type the words Samus Aran into google if you value your sanity.
Aside from the porn angle there's also the issue of context. As I've already mentioned, these outfits are seldom exactly practical for the task in hand. And this, for me, is one of the worst immersion breaking things a game can do. The moment where you stop enjoying the story and gameplay and spend the next five minutes shouting "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WEARING??!?!" at the screen every time a particular character shows up.
This is what happened to me yesterday playing Magna Carta 2. Now, there had been at least one scantily clad character at the beginning, but that was at least on a tropical island so it didn't bug me as much as it might. The main female character thus far had been the obligatory princess.
Now, her dress is perhaps a little short, but not disturbingly so. I admit that a nice frilly dress is perhaps not the most sensible option to wear to a war, but it fit the general aesthetic of the game and genre. It didn't seem out of place compared to any of the other characters. Then this happened.
Can anyone explain to me why it's more important to keep ones armpits covered than literately ANY OTHER PORTION OF THE BODY? You don't really get the full effect here. You need to bare in mind that, in addition to wearing the minimum genital covering to avoid an X rating, ever other pose adopted by the character during interaction consists of bending forwards and sticking her assets in your face.
Oh, and she's TWELVE. Thanks for that Japan. Well, there goes my immersion.
On the bright side she seems like her character has some comedic potential. Even if that is based around her attempts to fuck the rather disinterested Minotaur looking dude. Yeah, it's kinda funny but whether or not her character ever progresses beyond the fact that sex exists remains to be seen.
Another example of the context can be found in Soul Calibur. I'm sure anyone with any familiarity with the series can see where this is going, but bare with me. See the thing is that Soul Calibur 4 actually does at least one character right.
This is Hilde. And check it out, she's actually wearing full plate armour. When was the last time you saw a woman wearing full plate armour in ANYTHING? If you're turning up to a tournament or whatever the fuck it is that's supposed to happening where half your opponents are wielding weapons larger than a cow, you'd think that something in the way of protection might be a good idea. Even ignoring the armour angle, her player 2 costume is still great. It's a fancy dress. A LONG one. Did you know it's actually possible for a womans dress to go below the thighs?
Then of course we have every other female character in the game. But let's go with an example.
This is Ivy. I'd say that picking her as an example in this discussion is akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but there's no room left in the barrel because her tits are taking up all the space. I really wanted to make a comment about how she brought a bra to a knife fight, but she couldn't even do that. I have literately no fucking clue how that thing she's almost wearing is supposed to work. I can only assume it's been surgically grafted to her nipples, because really how the hell else will it stay in place. Not that she really needs to worry to much about popping out. The only popping that will be happening to her will be those distended implants bursting as she's crushed to death under a surfboard sized sword.
But, you know, whilst all her major organs are totally exposed in a tournament rife with piercing and bladed weaponry at least she's got ONE ARM COVERED. I'm sure that'll help.
To be fair though at least with Soul Calibur you have the option of beating her to death whilst screaming "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WEARING?!?!?!" at the screen over and over again.
Strangely there is at least one game that really has a poor reputation for these sort of things that I don't have any problem with: Onechanbara.
To say that these games are bizarrely fetishized is... actually a perfectly accurate statement. Indeed, that's very much the point. When you have a subtitle like Bikini Samurai Squad then what else are you gonna expect?
Feminist icons.
So how is it that I can berate all these other games for featuring strippers, but play Onechanbara without a comment? Again, the issue is context. In, say, Soul Calibur you have reasonably dressed male characters Which only serves to highlight just how ridiculous the female characters look. In Onechanbara, aside from a couple of guys in suits on the xbox version, the only characters you have are zombies and cartoonish women. It's not as jarring. I'm not saying that it isn't kinda crazy. But it's a sort of consistent crazy. Why does the heroine dress in bikini? Because if she gets covered in blood she goes batshit crazy. Does that make even the slightest shred of sense? No, of course not. But you know what else doesn't really make any sense in the Onechanbara universe?
EVERYTHING.
The rampage mode is a feature of the gameplay. I'm sure you could have enabled such a feature in more coherent fashion, but somebody somewhere had a fetish, so what the hell! It's like reverse lampshading the issue. It's not even trying to disguise anything. Maybe that's what appeals to me about the games. Their refreshing honesty. They do not even attempt to dress themselves up as anything than a big slice of cheesecake.
I guess also helping to reduce the impact of the oversexualized characters is the fact that, at least in the xbox version, they are so firmly entrenched in the uncanny valley that I think they might be building a fort. Seriously, the jiggle physics on offer cause the unfortunate heroines mammaries to spastically jerk about like they're possessed by the unquiet spirit of a slinky that died of a crack overdose. Even I, as a man who has not been anywhere near a lady in close to decade, can unequivocally state that boobs simply do not work like that. Exactly what ratio you regard this as hilarious or terrifying is left up to the observer to decide.
Ummmmm....... No?
So I suppose for me Onechanbara hits the sweet spot in a curve very like that of the uncanny valley principle itself. It manages to be entertainingly ridiculously sexualized, rather than offensively. At least in my opinion. Your mileage may vary of course.
Like I said, there's a time and a place for a bit of cheesecake. In and of itself there's nothing wrong with a bit of cheesecake in a particular game. But when it gets to be in EVERY game, then we have a problem. I don't really have any great, enlightened suggestions to make to deal with this issue. I mean, simply explaining to developers and consumers that women aren't actually pork chops is, let's face it, a bit smegging obvious. Why should we even have to point something like that out?
Perhaps this is one of the problems many people have with the whole political correctness thing. We shut down when people start going on about how racism is actually bad or whatever. Because we KNOW that. It's like someone saying the sky is blue. Well, duh. But following that analogy, not everybody looks up. And if we only looked up one time a few years back, how is that helping? Surely it's better to check every now and then. And if the sky turns out to be green maybe we should be asking why.
It's both important and interesting to continue to consider these issues. After all, everyone likes thinking about boobs.
CHEESECAKE!!!!
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