Kotaku - Objectified Women Felt Like A Relic Of The Past

@uninspiredcup: it was a bit hardcore. My frog rage got away from me

Get your white straight males to a safe zone, the sjws are coming!!!

@howmakewood: yep, the Japanese aren't doing, yet, and I don't know if they ever will, if their mangas are any indication of it.

That article is embarrassingly bad and anybody agreeing with it are sad miserable tools.

@uninspiredcup:

I see where she's coming from but I'd also have to agree with the developers on this. Most of things we need to do in terms of cool design involves being over the top. So as a girl gamer, you have to accept that when you're going into something like Ivy's skimpy outfits. You don't have to like it but it's existence is a part of free reign over creativity.

You can get used to it too and when you have to compete with other players, you have no choice but to get used to it. It's stopped bothering me a long ass time ago. Now I can even stomach the hard stuff like Senran Kagura. Hell, I can poke fun around it too like the ability to play with the boobie bits in the dressing rooms! Imagine a guy having to do that if Senran Kagura changed everyone's gender! That takes hardcore gaming dedication!

I'd be very surprised if what you describe doesn't already exist somewhere in Japan and nobody wrote a preachy article about it.

What gamers? Idk bout u but I like my women sexy in my games

Ugly women and ugly men for everybody now

Soon as someone tells me that something is not acceptable or that i shouldn't like it i make it a point to relish in it even more.

More sexy ladies in games for the win! (and sexy dudes, i don't care) lets really trigger these people.

These idiots seem to forget we are animals before we learn to be people, our base nature is not always wrong and something to be completely ignored it's something to be tempered, sexual attraction both male and female is one of the most important and natural things about the human race....it's literally what keeps the human race going.

It's odd to me that some cant separate sexual attraction of a form with the respect of a person as an individual, it's like these people are projecting their problematic views onto the rest of us

more boobz plz.

excuse - do i really need one ? it's in my nature :-)

A 'female' perspective. Because female gamers don't want sexualized characters? She needs to understand that her opinion does not necessarily reflect that of a large group and that the 'problem' she sees is one that is quite subjective.

In short: she seems to have a problem with the character design, and considers that reason enough to complain to the developers in the name of women.

Maybe I should complain to the developers that there is no battle royale in SC6, in the name of all gamers? Because I am a gamer so I am sure I can speak for all gamers in the world. They would love that.

"If SoulCalibur 6 feels out of place at E3 2018, that’s in part because of where Bandai Namco hopes to place it, alongside the rest of gaming’s mainstream appeals." Why the **** make every game the same? They're not all your games, Cecilia. I play these games too. Does my opinion matter too? "But the era of The Last Of Us Part 2 is also the era of Senran Kagura, of games that don’t feel the need to pretend to be something they’re not, to pretend that the titillating scenes got there by accident." Oh Cecilia. Show me one game that isn't pretending to be something it isn't. Pretend is in the definition of a game. Pretend is the whole reason we play games.

@naz99: it's weird to be attracted to polygonal and fictional people, TBH.

Women sexualize themselves in how they behave and dress that perpetuate it. But yet of course men are never sexualized *cough Chip N Dale male strippers

@pimphand_gamer: it's one thing when a woman sexualizes herself because she wants to, it's a choice she is making.

It's another entirely when men create sexualized women in media to pander to men which will consume it.

Anyway, the western media knows it is, indeed, a thing from the past as most new games, movies, HQs and TV shows are not sexualizing women anymore. Or at least are trying not to.

Horses for Courses

I agree with you. Doesn't belong on system wars.

And yet romance novels exist for women when the men in them are portrayed merely as mobile romantic penises.

Should men have a problem with the portrayal of themselves in them seeing as they are written by women and pander to women?

A thing of the past?

haha right-o

Gotta laugh when a man defends this situation, not realising he hasn't bothered to watch many films/tv shows/magazines aimed at woman, and how sexualised men are in those.

Where every male marvel lead now has to have a topless scene in every film.

where the top selling womans book ends up being about a Rich abusive masogynst that is both rich and hot playing bondage games.

Magic Mike was an over the top success

Woman drive the shops that have half-naked body builders outside of them to advertise (Yet if there was a woman in a bra outside of a shop, or something less revealing like HOOTERS that is SEXIST)

but yea forget it, lets have more of this without applying the same standards:

haha look at the "stupid" male model thumble (like 4 of these adverts).

Now make a modern product in reverse and see what reactions you get... from people like you no less.

And this is a choice the content creator is making. Do you want to spread censorship, or something?

What's next? No more lewd paintings? What a time to be alive...

@lightsbane: I never said it should be banned or censored, I'm just saying that western media is moving away from it, as the mainstream public are not happy with this kind of depction of women anymore and there are more and more women consuming games, movie, HQs and the like.

Those are the facts.

@kali-b1rd: I'm not bothered by any of the situations, again: the media is moving away from sexualizing women, that's just how things are nowadays, if you're bothered by men being sexualized, do something about it.

I really don't mind when it happens.

But this isn't even western media, and the Japanese don't see things quite the same way.
Luckily, they didn't put a leash on anime or manga, and I doubt they will put one on freaking video games.

This is basic freedom of expression. Let the creative minds create whatever worlds and characters they want. If you don't like it, all you can and should do is not purchase their products.

Are people really that insecure about themselves that they want to abolish all sexuality?
Out of sight, out of mind?

I don't mind either way.

That to me (both being sexualised, in the right context to the medium) is absolutely fine.

There is a balance to all of these political things, if equality is truly what people want, then the reverse situations need to be recognised. The last half a decade has lent far too left, and "Protect everything that isn't a white male in any situation" was at its peak... its calmed down again now though.

The balance works both ways.

Either way, I still find it hilarious that sexualisation is still considered worse than violence. "Yea Lara Croft's body is more realistic now" ... "But she is a stone cold killer that murders 100s of people" funny stuff.

And women create knights in shining armor in the media. It's a difference of the sexes. Men judge visuals to determine if a female can bare healthy children and women judge status to determine if a male can provide for those children. Any woman in a movie displaying her feminine physique is being sexualized whether you realize it or not. Just look at Dark Phoenix movie that comes out later this year...she's not a fat ugly chick is she? Skin tight clothes, check, attractive actress, check...sexualized, you bet. Otherwise you would see an ugly actress that can position herself for the same role but that role, in part is sexualization...tha'ts why they didn't pick some ugly chick.

Hollywood is just trying to work around social media feminism from which many groups are just trying to program everyone into thinking objectifying women is a bad thing and men are objectified as well. Putting women in positions of power, lead roles, etc doesn't have anything to do with objectifying which is giving an expression. A beauty pageant is an object giving expression, that being competitive beauty. Has nothing to do with down grading the roles of women. It's not a thing of the past rather it's recognition is being redistributed to be more palpable to changing tastes.

Somehow you just got programmed to think objectifying means downgrading a group to be a sex toy and that's not what it means. How women are treated is a result of how men instinctively behave vs how women instinctively behave but no one is crying about how men with Ferrari's are being treated differently by women now are they?

I doubt that the mainstream isn't happy with it XD

I mainly hear the radical feminist sites complain about it, and some newspapers and sites like Vice and Kotaku have several of those writers. I think it's more of a cult thing than a mainstream thing at the moment. It's a taste thing. Maybe it's trending.

If we want to think of it as more than a taste thing, it becomes tough to have it make any sense. And I don't think large groups of people would fall for something like that.

To have an ideological or ethical problem with women looking unrealistically sexy in a video game you have to argue somehow that a video game character represents a real person in this world or even all people, but specifically of that gender and nobody else. You would have to argue that a game represents reality in a way that can be confused with reality (is this what women should look like?) or that it is undesirable for society to have it portray reality in an unrealistic way in some facets. (Why not violence then?) That is a neigh impossible case to make. Because it is not very rational. It doesn't make much sense. You are basically talking about either a mentally ill audience, or likely the inverse effect: people who play games with unrealistic women have a better idea of what actual women are like. Maybe if we gain a deeper level of understanding of media... but I really don't see it as a high priority concern especially given all the other things in games that are 'misrepresenting' reality. It just doesn't make sense to look for a problem that lines up exactly with one sex no more no less, and looking for how it may have deep negative impacts on society that have been hidden from us so far.

I honestly don't think all men or all women feel the same about this. Some people don't appreciate sexualization and find it offensive and others are perfectly comfortable with it. I don't personally like that aspect of games, but that doesn't mean I get to speak for everyone. If you want a fighting game with more realistic looking people then why not make one? I mean if you want to try to convince the makers of a game to change their style that's fine, but you can't expect everyone to be on board.

We need more inclusive superhero's, for the woomanz. Like heavy flo here.

oh for the love of god, it is how I am saying it is.

1. people on the Right are doing EXACTLY the same thing, they just think they are justifed but the left is not. which means its NOT the action or approach (like they try to claim) but the substance the position (like they claim its not)

2. everyone SHOULD be social justice warriors. the moniker is stupid at its core

Yes exactly. I think gaming can embrace all of these things. We can have games with very realistically 'portrayed' or more ideally 'portrayed' virtual 'women'. And we can have games with sexualized bodies. It's not meant to be a lesson of reality, it's escapism first and foremost. So I find it ludicrous to try and change all of gaming to the image of a couple people online. To me it's akin to how some companies thought that all games should be like WoW when WoW became successful. Or all shooters should be like COD. That all games should be brown. Of course that's not true. And in those instances gamers were quick to point it out, too.

One of the best things of gaming and why it has become so big is that all sorts of people with all sorts of interests can find games they like to play. We shouldn't strive for less variety in games but for more variety. I want Ellies and I want Lara's and I want Jades and I want Sophitia's. They can all exist. We shouldn't push for the extermination of a character style or virtual clothing style just because one group of people doesn't find it appealing.

Don't you guys know by now? Men aren't allowed to like things that some women don't. By the way the rules will change again tomorrow because they can't even agree among themselves what we're allowed to like or not.

I'd play that game

@jereb31 said:

We need more inclusive superhero's, for the woomanz. Like heavy flo here.

I have to agree over all; they feel dated, and frankly I feel a little embarrassed.

Alyx Vance was, imo, the first likable, non-sexualized adult female character I've ever encountered and she was simply great. This was in 2004. It's 2018 now.

The thing that makes it worse is their refusal to acknowledge they are doing it. Or more specifically, them trying to justify it.

This reminds me of the time when we found out about Quiet from MGSV, and whats-his-name was like "There's a reason she is naked, and when you find out, you will be ashamed of your words" lol. Yeah, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally ashamed. Meanwhile, Quiet is shaking her butt, posing like a cat, and looking sexily at the camera while you're chilling in the helicopter with her. Sorry, what was the reason again? GTFO.

Sorry, but the Japanese game developers seem to be incredibly stubborn when it comes to certain things.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention Cindy from FFXV who, you guessed it, was "not deliberately sexualized". This, of course, after the lead asked his team to tone down here excessive breast jiggling. And while they might have toned down her sexualized appearance (did they?), they certainly forgot to make her a competent character instead of a gas-dispensing, car-washing wench. Oh no, god forbid we let the lady work on the car (that's Grandpa's job!), she just get's to "help out" a bit.

I like pretty ladies, I like unrealistically pretty ladies in my video games even; if I wanted realism and realistic women, I'd go outside. But excessively sexual? Pass. Do people even like boobs that big anymore?

To be fair, people aren't reading romance novels for the plot. They're essentially pornography.

Meanwhile, some people say they play Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive for the gameplay, yet...the target audience is obviously young teenage boys, given the pornographic nature of the female characters' design/moves/physics.

The article isn't wrong in saying that SC6 feels like a strange step back for a mainstream game. Most games lately have treated woman as people rather than objects, so seeing something as blatant as Ivy's costume does stand out more than it did 10 years ago.

while I agree with your sentiments, being proud of being a SJW is like being proud of your self-righteousness, or one's elitism, and so on. I mean yeah it's good to have confidence, and enjoying cultured or expensive things is fine, but when you let it take over your personality then you've taken it too far.

If I have caviar and champagne once in a while and don't brag about it, that's fine. If I start talking about how great caviar is and how much I spent on it and how I won't eat anything else, I've crossed a line. I've become an elitist douche.

Likewise, fighting for a just cause and equality is all well and good, but when you take it to extremes and refuse to see other perspectives, are constantly combative, and so forth that's a problem; that's what a SJW is.

There have historically been commercials with half-naked women that are not sexualized and no one has gotten in an uproar. Shampoo commercials, for example; they often show various curves and a lot of skin, but because she is just naked taking a shower, something we [hopefully] all do every single day, it's not sexual to us. I've seen bathing suits, bikinis even, advertized on TV and magazine, but because the woman was swimming or playing at the beach with her family and friends, it wasn't perceived as something sexual.

A lot of video games can't claim the same.

I think people are missing the point between basic human anatomy, and sexualizing it to make a profit.

You don't make porn every time you take a shower, as someone once said.

I have a feeling a lot of these hangups are uniquely American...

Bemused by this comment. Every single male I've known, or come across, did not suddenly stop finding the female form attractive after making it past 19. Seems like a straw-man.

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Prior to the Internet as we know it, we had Baywatch, which in no uncertain terms was soft-core pornography, they outright hired Playboy models to run around in slow motion. It was one of the most popular shows in the world 20+ age groups.

Also seem to be detaching , like it's not part of the gameplay enjoyment. It's a visual medium. Part of the pay-off in these games, is seeing your tools in action once you've learned to utilize them properly.

first off people expressing their opinion is not being 'self-righteousness' if you objectively look at what these so called SJW are actually saying the vast majority of the time its not remotely 'self-righteous'

second off, trying to get people to be against people speaking their opinion is less about SJW and more about censorship.

if you can get a population to be literally against the act of speaking ones opinion but not the opinion itself then you can walk all over them

Yeah I saw that last week, didn't bother reading, just rolled my eyes and continued hyping the game, Soul Calibur 6 is gonna be the best fighting game of 2018, hands down!

@Planeforger: you're right on point.

When you have a character like Lara Croft who used to be a souless and cold doll with clothes completely unsuited for the kind of things she do and breasts that looked like a basketball becoming a normal, or at least, beliavable woman, you know it is time to move on from these extremely sexualized characters.

It's more of a Japanese cultural thing, rather than a specifically video game thing. Apparently, feminism isn't really a thing in Japan...

Yea, that's just, not true at all. Indeed, part of the problem with the later games was the stories and relationship with her characters moving away from Tombs.

So yea, never played em.

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Also her cloths changed level to level as games progressed. And her climbing gear was actually pretty close.to typical rock climbing gear.

Not that it actually need to realistic. It's a game where she fights a T-Tex in the first level. i.e. fun

@Jag85: you're right, it's not, women there are completely different from western women.

Not completely different, but there are some differences between women in Western and Japanese cultures. Bayonetta, for example, is occasionally seen as a "sexist" character by Western feminists. Yet Bayonetta was actually designed by a Japanese female artist, who sees her as "empowering".

Besides differing views on feminism, another reason is different attitudes towards nudity. In feudal Japan, it was the norm for men and women to bathe naked together, until it was outlawed by the Meiji government to bring Japan more in-line with Western Judeo-Christian values.

Moar Crying From SJW journalists. Can’t geat enough of that.

They were never just objectified, they were also subjectified. You can play as one and they are on equal footing as all other characters.

@Jag85: I myself don't see Bayonetta as sexist as she is fierce and use her sexiness in order to get what she wants, she kicks everyone's asses and it's a femme fatale. I love femme fatale characters actually, specially when they manipulate everyone.

http://soulcalibur.wikia.com/wiki/Ivy

@uninspiredcup: I was referring to the games until angel of darkness, where she was, indeed, a souless doll.

From legend and beyond she began to has more personality and was slight less sexualized, I find the Lara from this era to be completely acceptable, but for today's standards, she wouldn't fit at all. The media doesn't accept that anymore and I believe the developers, at least the western ones, doesn't have any desire to go back to that type of character.

Which again, would be false.

@uninspiredcup: I failed to see anything showing any personality on that video.

She feels like an avatar for the player.

I personally wouldn't care if they made women more realistic looking in games. Lets be honest, the only group that would have a personal stake in this would be virgins and prepubescent boys so I don't see the big deal.

@recloud: Seriously are you buying into this shit? SJW's are the most triggered group of babies ive ever seen. If a developer wants to make their characters sexy let them without the witch hunt.