I'm aware that this may well be an utterly redundant topic, given the fact that this site is, most likely, predominantly populated by heterosexual males, but is anyone else actually getting a bit irritated with the way in which many popular video games resort to the ridiculous insta-attention-grabbing technique of just trotting out a female character, inflating her breasts to sometimes unnatural proportions, and taking away half of what she should be wearing, leaving her in barely enough to cover her amble assets.
The most obvious example of this technique would have to be the now famous Ms. Lara Croft. I think that the majority of gamers who have played her series of games will contest that in general, the games aren't all they get cracked up to be. The gameplay is often weirdly sluggish and even unresponsive, and there seem to be a large amount of basic control problems that seem to have gone utterly unchecked throughout multiple titles and even remakes.
Yet the games still sell unnaturally well, and one can only deduce this is because the main character has the most over-exaggerated breasts I've ever seen in a video game.
This isn't just because, as my friend once told me, "its cause your gay, you just don't get it". I genuinely don't see what there is to get. Breasts can be nice to look at, if you're into that kind of thing. But it's not like it's some massively complicated in-depth strategy that only heterosexual males or lesbians would be able to truly understand. It's just shameless pandering.
To me it almost comes across as the developers of games not being able to understand that women tend to have breasts, so they feel a ridiculous fixational urge to keep pointing them out in the most ludicrous ways possible.
It isn't even just breasts. The entirety of the female form is regularly hauled out and made to dance for the amusement of gamers, as if doing so is an easy way to make quick money from them.
The stupidest example of this, which actually did make me just think "oh come on now!" takes place in 'Prince of Persia: Warrior Within'. In the very opening scene of the game we're 'treated' to a cutscene sequence in which a woman wearing, essentially, a metal bikini, is trotted out in front of us, the camera obsessively focusing on her backside as she enters the scene, and this is followed by a shot of her suggestively and very sexually stroking the chests and shoulders of her minions as the passes them.
This is bad in and of itself, but we don't even know who she is. To this day I can't tell you who this woman is. Even her name isn't really mentioned. She just appears in this way and we're meant to accept that we know absolutely nothing about her. Apparently the developers of this game found her ass and flirtatious attitude more important than a detailed character, or a back story, or even a bloody name!
It seriously can't just be me who is really beginning to tire of this attitude in game development. It seems like every time a dev team can't think of any proper motivation for a female character, they just delete 2 thirds of her clothing and adjust the camera angles to focus 'lovingly' (though even using the word in this context makes me deeply worried) on their body, almost offering up the outward beauty as a distraction from the fact that the particular character is given basic-to-no development or depth.
I'm aware this may come off as just me ranting because I'm regularly bombarded by stuff I don't like seeing when I play games, but I do genuinely believe it's become a real problem. I actually feel sorry and worried for the developers who make the choices to even HAVE characters like this in their games. They must be quite lonely people to go to such care and attention to create a Double D rack for a female character and make the camera linger on it so much. Yes, I know that characterising developers who make these choices as lonely is kind of unfair, but I can't think of many other explanations for this.
I don't really know what I hoped to achieve with this random mini-article here, so I'll end it there and leave the floor open to discussion.
The most obvious example of this technique would have to be the now famous Ms. Lara Croft. I think that the majority of gamers who have played her series of games will contest that in general, the games aren't all they get cracked up to be. The gameplay is often weirdly sluggish and even unresponsive, and there seem to be a large amount of basic control problems that seem to have gone utterly unchecked throughout multiple titles and even remakes.
Yet the games still sell unnaturally well, and one can only deduce this is because the main character has the most over-exaggerated breasts I've ever seen in a video game.
This isn't just because, as my friend once told me, "its cause your gay, you just don't get it". I genuinely don't see what there is to get. Breasts can be nice to look at, if you're into that kind of thing. But it's not like it's some massively complicated in-depth strategy that only heterosexual males or lesbians would be able to truly understand. It's just shameless pandering.
To me it almost comes across as the developers of games not being able to understand that women tend to have breasts, so they feel a ridiculous fixational urge to keep pointing them out in the most ludicrous ways possible.
It isn't even just breasts. The entirety of the female form is regularly hauled out and made to dance for the amusement of gamers, as if doing so is an easy way to make quick money from them.
The stupidest example of this, which actually did make me just think "oh come on now!" takes place in 'Prince of Persia: Warrior Within'. In the very opening scene of the game we're 'treated' to a cutscene sequence in which a woman wearing, essentially, a metal bikini, is trotted out in front of us, the camera obsessively focusing on her backside as she enters the scene, and this is followed by a shot of her suggestively and very sexually stroking the chests and shoulders of her minions as the passes them.
This is bad in and of itself, but we don't even know who she is. To this day I can't tell you who this woman is. Even her name isn't really mentioned. She just appears in this way and we're meant to accept that we know absolutely nothing about her. Apparently the developers of this game found her ass and flirtatious attitude more important than a detailed character, or a back story, or even a bloody name!
It seriously can't just be me who is really beginning to tire of this attitude in game development. It seems like every time a dev team can't think of any proper motivation for a female character, they just delete 2 thirds of her clothing and adjust the camera angles to focus 'lovingly' (though even using the word in this context makes me deeply worried) on their body, almost offering up the outward beauty as a distraction from the fact that the particular character is given basic-to-no development or depth.
I'm aware this may come off as just me ranting because I'm regularly bombarded by stuff I don't like seeing when I play games, but I do genuinely believe it's become a real problem. I actually feel sorry and worried for the developers who make the choices to even HAVE characters like this in their games. They must be quite lonely people to go to such care and attention to create a Double D rack for a female character and make the camera linger on it so much. Yes, I know that characterising developers who make these choices as lonely is kind of unfair, but I can't think of many other explanations for this.
I don't really know what I hoped to achieve with this random mini-article here, so I'll end it there and leave the floor open to discussion.
