Girls in Gaming

It works that’s why they advertise that way. If you want a simple example of this consider Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and Beach Spikers. The Former had ridiculous women and flat gameplay. The Latter had tremendous gameplay and fairly beautiful women who look like more attractive atheletes. DOA XBV is a big hit, went Platinum Hits on xbox and a sequel is on it’s way to the 360. Beach Spikers is pretty hard to find nowadays and their likely won’t be a Revolution version of it despite the fact that it had really good arcade gameplay for single or multi-player.

But let’s call a spade a spade, this isn’t just a phenomenon in the gaming industry. Outside of books, all the entertainment industry is that way. Why are actresses considered old at 30, but Sean Connery can be a leading man in his seventies? Why can’t fat actressess get a job but Danny Devito can? Why are Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman the only female stars today who were also stars when we were little kids? Because society does relegate women to the role of being there to be pretty. Why are their social double standards that say a woman who is driven is a bitch wheras a man is a “go getter? Because their are bussiness double standards about the way women should act. Yeah games are guilty of using women as sex objects in their marketing but they’re really just indicative of larger trends that show how far the women’s movement still has to go before things are really equal between the sexes.

The trouble with Girlspy was that Zoe isn’t the best columnist in the world and the focus became very much that she’s reasonably attractive. She often said very little in her columns and focused on stuff that really wasn’t very much grounds for debate. In some ways She reminds me of the introductory composition students I’ve tudored especially girls who don’t like to take a strong position in their writing which results in the lot of words and nothing said paper. Thus the only subject for discussion became Zoe’s pictures of herself.

Not every gamer is immature, just like not every gamer is a guy. However, companies advertise to the mainstream and apparently the video game mainstream is immature.

It does work, and it’s just another item in the developers bag of tricks. It’s a bit like how some of them restrict their development to sequels and risk-free games that are guarunteed to sell well. It’s not really very good for gaming as a whole, but it makes money, and as in any other industry, that’s what it’s all about. Even with Girlspy - it’s whatever gets more page impressions.

Infact, I’d say all of the developers’ tried and trusted tricks are exploits of human nature to some degree. And of course the younger kids are the ones most susceptible to that style of marketing. Still, at least the new Lara Croft is reportedly going to have a realistic cup size for once. So perhaps some developers are getting their act together, but we’ve a long way to go.

I don’t see the industry “getting better” with their big busted women. So what that Lara Croft is getting a “realistic” bust size in her one new, probably crappy game. What about Unreal Championship 2 for the XBox? Some chick with two cyber swords and two giant tits.

Honestly, it is embarassing. I can’t walk into some of the game stores with my girlfriend, because at 24, it isn’t cool to have to stand around pictures of half-naked chicks in public, while 15 year old boys jizz in their pants over this crap.

Also, it is insulting. If an advertising company thinks I’m going to buy a game because of a “hot” fake woman, they can dream on.

Speaking of that awards show mentioned by Pseudonym let me just say, if in some oddball twisted universe, this kind of crap actually mattered and meant something, to someone, maybe the gamer girls out there or whatever, the women who should win awards are Alyx? from HL-2, Samus Aran, and Jade (BG&E.) Smart, intelligent characters who were designed to be “pretty” but not painfully sexual.

As many people have said already, developers design and advertise women like this because it works. Just look at that game show advert. I have seen dscussion about it on many forums and this has led even more people to click it and learn about it. This sort of discussion would not arise if the advert did not have a picture ajoining it. It would probably be ignored like most of the ‘Drugs are bad’ adverts on Forumplanet.

And you cannot discount the teenage market. Im 17, and ive been playing games since I was about 10 and spending seriosu money on them. Now I have never bought a game just because it has a scantily clad woman on it, but it has made me pay more attention to that game and thus increasing my chances of getting said game. People say dont judge a book by its cover but that is exactly what a lot of people do. People say one of the reasons ICO didnt sell was because it had a rubbish box art. Maybe its chances would have improved if Yorda had been a well-endowed 18 year old girl. It would take a lot away from the game, but it may have sold better.

The gaming industry also hasn’t completely gotten away from the idea that all gamers are nerds, thus can’t get a decent woman in real life and thus like getting games where they can fantasize about the character. Until we can shake that image off, women are going to always be like that in games.

I think it is, in a way, a force of habit. Game designers have used pretty women in their games for ever, so when they’re designing a game now, and designing a female character, they’ll make her attractive, and nobody thinks about it as odd. Guess we can blame the fact that most designers are guys.

However, the same often happens to male characters. In WoW, especially the Night Elf and Human females are designed to be attractive. But if you look at the male characters, they are also ridiculously muscular. The only people with normal bodyshape seem to be the gnomes.

Its how it works in movies. Unless someone’s bodyshape has special significance, they will always be made pretty. Simply because people prefer looking at pretty women.

I do agree however, that the industry should stop with the crazy, straight-out-of-porn costumes they have for some female characters (this is also the case for some WoW items: a metal bikini is NOT realistic armor).

We don’t have those problems in the Horde JD between the cow people, the undead, trolls and orcs we have probably the most unsexy combination of creatures it was ever the mind of man to put in a high profile video game.

There’s no doubting that games are full of women who are, shall we say, disproportional or at the very least in dire danger of knocking themselves out if they break into anything faster than a brisk walk. However, let’s get one thing out of the way now:

No one likes to look at a minger

Seriously, we may be getting pissy that women in games mostly look like they have an alternative career in porn but we’d be even more upset if we were confronted with some horse-faced genetic disaster. For example, Tomb Raider won’t have been anywhere near as popular if Lara Croft looked like this.

OK, so that’s got that point of fact out of the way. But here’s another - you don’t tend to find that many ugly men in games either. Seriously, most blokes in games are either portrayed as Arnie or Bond wannabees. It’s a rare day that you’ll find some spotty kid or someone who looks like they spend most of their day propping up the bar of their local, eating pork scratchings and breaking wind. It just doesn’t happen since it doesn’t appeal to our sense of what heroic looks like.

Let’s face facts here. Games are typically action-oriented so that pretty much rules out characters that don’t look action-oriented. Movies can have unattractive actors/actresses since they often attempt to show more realistic drama (go with me on this one) than games do. It’s just a fact that our ideas of heroic don’t involve some rough old bird…

All the above said, I do think that shameless titilation is not really acceptable. Heroic may well show a woman to be attractive (hey, she needs to be fit to do all the running, right?) but I’m sure there is no need to show her in adverts whipping her pants off or something. That neither adds to the character (quite the opposite) and probably does alienate gaming. Looking good is fine, but soft-core porn is ridiculous and unnecessary unless it the only way that you can get people to play your game.

I also pondered upon this subject after playing Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

Just who, i wondered, does scantily glad computer generated women scrreching “Come on Prince - hit me harder” actually appeal to?

The answer of course must be immature young lads and to a lesser extent immature older lads - who think that this sort of thing is actually titillating.

Personally I don’t find computer generated woman a turn on. They just simply aren’t real.

Now I respect the fact (just) that some people do - but surely there is no reason to spoil the atmosphere of a game series just to accomadate these people?

And on the subject of the TV station whose advert Unimaginative Pseudonym posted I was annoyed by that as well.

I actually went to the site and believe me folks humanity can sink very, very low. Just reading some of the comments wanted me to bang my head repeatedley off the keyboard hopefully indenting the words “fuck off” upon my head (sadly I knew this was physically impossible so I didn’t bother).

To all those people that perpertuate this rather annoying phenomenon all I have to say is “get a life and get a girlfriend.”

I’m not saying that games characters, female or male should look plain or even ugly, it’s just the whole getting excited by it all aspect disturbs me.

The fact is strong female characters can be done, all you have to do is look at characters like Nico in the Broken Sword games. Smart and yes I suppose she is made out to be good looking but that is not what she is about.

Game developers should just stop being so lazy and only appealing to the lowest common denominator and start making a real effort in their characters both female and male.