Do we really want this?

[Ih8pkmn]

I think it's rather disgusting. I fail to see how we find woman with mammary glands bigger than their heads attractive. I saw a woman with proportions like that on the street once. I didn't even know it was physically possible to run a mile in 5 minutes until that day.

 

[TiefBlau]

It's hot.

It's also ridiculous and goofy as fuck.

I tend to treat characters like this for what they really are: porn. Probably the distrubing Japanese kind, but with less tentacles.

 

[Zantos]

Yes females are overly sexualized, but so are males.
Every female's a stick figure with basketballs on her chest and every man is a shaved gorilla with permanent five o' clock shadow.

I really like the way that as i read this i see in your avatar possibly the only female character that doesn't subscribe to this statement. Good on you Tali d'..... vas something or other.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Yes there is too much sexualization and I'd like to smack the industry like small dog and say "no, no, no, don't do that, hey no, noo." It's not only demeaning to women but just short of a personal insult to me because the people who sell games actually think they can drag me in with this shit. No, some of us have managed to exit puberty, thank you very much.

 

[Treblaine]

Love how 2/3 of the OP's examples are from utterly terrible games that shouldn't be broadly representative of the industry at all.

Also the woman in 2nd example from Ninja Gaiden Sigma isn't more outlandishly dressed than what hollywood gets away with. I mean take Avatar, you had a female humanoid running around topless for most of the film, with only some tastefully placed necklace beads hiding her nips.

In fact, this isn't a video game trend, have you turned on MTV recently? Any music video, Lady Ga Ga and Katy Perry spend most of the time naked and barely concealing their X-rated parts, and the Rap videos are even worse, well I say worse, those hip-hop-honeys are are like the opening part of a strip-tease.

Video Games are broadly much tamer. Yes extreme violence but sex and even sexual content is pretty rare in video games.

 

[Treblaine]

How bad are video games at this REALLY? Dead or Alive beach volleyball was years ago and it tanked.

Here is a typical list of highly rated and popular games from last year (2010):

Metro 2033 = no sexy ladies
Bioshock 2 = no sexy ladies
STALKER: Call of Pripyat = no sexy ladies
Mass Effect 2 = VERY tame sex-scenes
Supreme Commander 2 = no sexy anything
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 = no sexy ladies
Assassin's Creed 2 = too busy killing for sexy ladies
Just Cause 2 = no sexy ladies
Splinter Cell: Conviction = again, the most erotic thing here is Michael Ironside's voicover...
Split Second: Velocity = nothing
Blur = not even a sexy girl to start the races
Singularity = I don't think women even exist in this universe
.Aliens Vs Predator = sausage-fest
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty = Nothing
Blazblue: Calamity Trigger =
Witcher 2 = I believe you see one boobies, then nothing
Darksiders = no nothing
Civilisation V = Cleopatra...
Dead Rising 2 = nothing
Fallout: New Vegas = oh, the whores, I guess so... revealing yet not that apealing
Nail'd = no hot ladies
Call of Duty: Black Ops = nothing

the OP has found a few exceptions that only stand out as extreme BECAUSE they are exceptions, I don't think people realise quite how much more other media formats get away with in terms of female nudity and hyper-sexualisation of women.

I think it's interesting that such a male dominated medium as Video Games can be so devoid of sex. Maybe because it is replaced by the greater male urge for violent competition?

 

[TriggerHappyAngel]

Let the industry continue, I don't mind

 

[migo]

As a lesbian, I feel I can comment from both points of view.

I don't like the over-sexualisation of women in games. I find examples like the above more off-putting than attractive, as well as a reinforcement of the stereotype that all gamers are men, and all men are slobbering neanderthals.

Sadly, yes. Although it's easy enough to look at that a bit more objectively. Porn's restricted to adults, so it's more that it's eye candy for teenagers who haven't quite figured out how to use the internet yet.

For one thing - women simply don't look like that. Particularly in the second picture (is that Nina from Tekken? I'm not sure) - boobs simply cannot be that enormous and pert. You will never see a woman with a rack that large and buoyant. It's ridiculous.

It can get pretty close (yes, I'm speaking from hands on experience, and no, no implants), and that's totally feasible given her outfit has a lot in common with a corset. Now what's ridiculous is a woman with a rack that big is going to be in way too much pain from bouncing to be an effective fighter.

I also dislike the implications behind the fact that so many women in games exist as eyecandy rather than serious characters. I'm no feminist, but I do dislike the extent of objectification of women in games. I hate that the man is always the hero, and the woman is the boobacious love-interest.

You're just playing the wrong games?

Personally, I don't find the above examples attractive. I much prefer to see women in games like Jen, from Primal [http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2002/playstation2/primal/p_790screen001.jpg]

You don't think the camel toe is overdoing it?

or April Ryan of The Longest Journey [http://kisd.de/~krystian/blog/thelongest_opener.jpg] (April not necessarily being attractive, but still one of my favourite female characters in a game).

She's got a bit of uncanny valley effect going, but otherwise has a plausible figure - but the skinny arms combined with her breast size put her as a pretty damn implausible outlier.

 

[migo]

One thing's been bugging me.
What the fuck is a "mangina slave"?

I'm not sure what exactly a manginga /slave/ is, but a mangina is when a guy tucks his dick and balls between his legs and holds his legs together so it looks like maybe he's got a vagina instead. Think the final scene in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

As for the general topic, the biggest fans I've come across IRL of overly sexualised and unrealistic women are other women. As the fetishisation of Alyx Vance shows, once you hit past puberty guys are more interested in virtual girls they think they might actually get.

 

[Chibz]

This is exactly what makes it nearly impossible to get female games to even consider playing video games.

Such a zarking shame, too.

 

[migo]

I don't think that's the case at all. I think it's more that mainly most game devs are men, so video games just aren't appealing. One of my (girl) friends loves King of Fighters and her favourite character is Mai. Another one is a huge Street Fighter fan and her favourite character is Cammy. So generally, girls who like fighting games like the hot female characters, but the ones who don't just don't like fighting games to begin with, so it really wouldn't matter what you do with the character models.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

What ever sales. Not to sure why people can't just freakin' Google Search.
Hell, I've found equally or more perverted pics without wanting to, on Google.

I really hate games that use sex as the main saling point. 'Cause you know it's gone to be a bad game, but it's gone to sale because of half naked people.

 

[migo]

That's probably why Heavy Rain is so highly rated.

 

[Saint of M]

I've covered this topic in a some of my blogs. This is a problem we have had in every form of art or entertainment. it seems the moment mankind invents something or an art form we have found to use it in pornography or make pornography with it.

Now sensuality and nudity have been done in a tasteful ways before, but at the moment we have seen so much that the suply is greater then then demand. We see so much we are now desensitized, to this type of content, so we have to go bigger and more blatant.

However now its getting to the point where it is too much and all but the horniest of us are getting annoyed by this. I can appreciated beauty when I see it, but but not like this.

Since Yuna is overplayed in this area, I'll go for DMC's lady.

DMC3: While the school girl outfit and the occasional shown mid-drift is there for fetish fuel, and she is an attractive young girl. However I saw her as more of a strong young woman, who was willing to play rough with the big boys and kick ass with the best of them.

Go to number 4 and we have a girl in short shorts that are so small that they are practicable little boy undies, and apparently nothing underneath that shirt that is already halfway done bursting apart. While her chest hangs more realistic then most video game females, she has gone from a key plot device and major character, to only being there for a few brief moments for the a minor plot device and some pans at her cleavage and butt.

That is what we got.

Plus some girls are not helping things much either

while i can agree with the beginning part of your post, what is so wrong with those pics? it basically shows that those characters CAN be realistic and that girls aren't as fat as we realistically try and make them out to be sometimes

point taken. I've seen skimpier outfits, this might be a better one:

 

[Kiju]

The majority of gamers are teenagers.

The majority of gaming teenagers are probably virgins, and have never even gotten close enough to one of these sorts of women to even touch them.

Thus, they can fantasize and "enjoy" themselves while looking at these characters being under their power and control.

Honestly? ...yes, I think they've gone way...way too far. The "armor" for a female in most MMOs is very...shall we say, useless? Exposing the breasts, the sides, the hips, knees, and the vast majority of the torso in a swordfight is a one way trip to becoming twice the woman they used to be...or half, however you look at it. If they're hookers/strippers/ladies-of-the-night, then fine, dress them like that.