EDIT: One thing I'd like to point out is that skimpy or form-fitting clothes shouldn't be an area of discussion. Speaking from personal experience as a game modeler it's much easier and more practical to model form-fitting clothes than it is to make anything of significant complexity. Keep in mind that these game artists are working under strict polygon counts and animation specs and the character design has to reflect such.
I read an article on IGN recently about the top ten trends that are destroying video games. I was happy to see Gears of War prominently featured in more than one of these trends but thoroughly confused--as I usually am--by their "female leads" entry, where they pan a number of games for their use of leading female characters. To quote:
"It's not clever anymore; it's not special. It's become a bad cliche that is as predictable as it is ultimately degrading. Let's stop pretending that's it's still a unique feature."
Surprisingly the writer had absolutely nothing to say about space marines, but I digress. Something about this one just didn't feel right. It was difficult to tell what the writer was objecting to. On one hand it starts by picking apart the characters' physical appeal and fingers game companies for using them as a lure for horny gamers as Yahtzee does with the most recent Tomb Raider game. On the other hand the "worst recent offenders" listed are Mirror's Edge, Prince of Persia, and Resident Evil 5.
What? Really? The Tomb Raider: Underworld team spent MONTHS studying a model's ass to make sure Lara Croft's butt would bounce exactly the right way and they're picking some of the least most degrading uses of women in games to date and fingering them as degrading? Personally I think that those examples were unfair. Faith in Mirror's Edge seemed like a natural enough lead. I really couldn't see a man playing that part or being as sensitive to the changes in Faith's world as she was--nor for that matter could I see a woman in Marcus Fenix's shoes. Meanwhile for as much as I despise the new Prince of Persia game I can't say that the partner NPC mechanic would feel 100% natural with a big dude hugging the Prince or vomiting out flowers everywhere. Resident Evil 5's choice of having a female partner seems natural enough to me as well; it's like Malcolm Reynolds and Zoie. Somehow it just kind of makes sense.
I just don't get what this article is objecting to. Are we objecting to women being objectified and idealized? Are we objecting to women being employed as a political tool in the gaming market? Are we assuming that EVERY use of a woman in game narrative is for that purpose and that all game writers inherently have all-male casts in their imaginations? Is IGN imposing a quota on the number of games that are allowed to have leading or supporting female characters? Are we objecting to women being involved in games, PERIOD?
All of these raise even more absurd questions. Are we supposed to pretend all characters are abstinent and that human beings don't have libidos when we write our stories? Would they prefer it if Lara Croft were morbidly obese or had bucked teeth and crossed eyes? Is that the sort of character they think we should want to play as?
I could go on with this for hours, but the real question at hand here is: are we really so jaded about games and game characters that we don't trust writers far enough to just HAPPEN to imagine female characters in certain roles as they write the script? That this is genuinely their vision and might in their mind be the best choice for the story?
I'll grant there's a lot of really legitimate criticisms you can make about women in video games and that too often they aren't realistically portrayed, but I feel skeptical about those criticisms as well. I think objectification is a two-way street. If you're going to pick apart Ada Wong you have to take the chainsaw to Leon Kennedy too. My girlfriend swoons over him more than I've seen ANY guy get hot over Lara Croft. In fact, the majority of attraction to game characters I've witnessed has been girls gawking at game guys, USUALLY of a type more effeminate and idealized than I've ever seen in my entire life. But in so many of these cases are guys who aren't attractive or idealized in some fashion really so objectionable or uncalled for? I wouldn't WANT Leon to be any different, myself.
I'm not completely in defense of objectification here. I draw a line at the point when it becomes absurd but the game takes itself seriously. Bloodrayne, Dead or Alive chicks, and Xenosaga, I'm looking at you. I think that a lot of the visuals for these characters, otherwise, seems pretty appropriate to the storytelling genres that they're a part of. Lara Croft SHOULD be this idealized but very outdoorsy-looking woman. I could see them taking her down a bust size or two and maybe making her clothes look somewhat less uncomfortably tight, but somehow she just seems appropriate given the tone of the story, the way Harrison Ford made perfect sense as Indiana Jones--who I WILL ADD did plenty of womanizing and, although he isn't quite James Bond, had plenty of sexual intonations about him.
Maybe that's a stretch. I certainly never LIKED Lara Croft, let alone liked her as much as I like Indiana Jones, but the point is still there. While too many characters aren't realistically portrayed and I think it would be healthy to see some girls who I could actually believe are girls and--maybe more to the point--who I can actually believe are properly dressed for their roles or represent archetypes women might actually WANT to fill the way male game characters fill archetypes men like, I don't think abject down-to-earth realism is always appropriate in favor of the exaggerations we so often see and I think that a lot of our criticisms in this area are misguided and high-minded nonsense. We may as well be criticizing comic books for their over-idealization of people in general at this point.
I read an article on IGN recently about the top ten trends that are destroying video games. I was happy to see Gears of War prominently featured in more than one of these trends but thoroughly confused--as I usually am--by their "female leads" entry, where they pan a number of games for their use of leading female characters. To quote:
"It's not clever anymore; it's not special. It's become a bad cliche that is as predictable as it is ultimately degrading. Let's stop pretending that's it's still a unique feature."
Surprisingly the writer had absolutely nothing to say about space marines, but I digress. Something about this one just didn't feel right. It was difficult to tell what the writer was objecting to. On one hand it starts by picking apart the characters' physical appeal and fingers game companies for using them as a lure for horny gamers as Yahtzee does with the most recent Tomb Raider game. On the other hand the "worst recent offenders" listed are Mirror's Edge, Prince of Persia, and Resident Evil 5.
What? Really? The Tomb Raider: Underworld team spent MONTHS studying a model's ass to make sure Lara Croft's butt would bounce exactly the right way and they're picking some of the least most degrading uses of women in games to date and fingering them as degrading? Personally I think that those examples were unfair. Faith in Mirror's Edge seemed like a natural enough lead. I really couldn't see a man playing that part or being as sensitive to the changes in Faith's world as she was--nor for that matter could I see a woman in Marcus Fenix's shoes. Meanwhile for as much as I despise the new Prince of Persia game I can't say that the partner NPC mechanic would feel 100% natural with a big dude hugging the Prince or vomiting out flowers everywhere. Resident Evil 5's choice of having a female partner seems natural enough to me as well; it's like Malcolm Reynolds and Zoie. Somehow it just kind of makes sense.
I just don't get what this article is objecting to. Are we objecting to women being objectified and idealized? Are we objecting to women being employed as a political tool in the gaming market? Are we assuming that EVERY use of a woman in game narrative is for that purpose and that all game writers inherently have all-male casts in their imaginations? Is IGN imposing a quota on the number of games that are allowed to have leading or supporting female characters? Are we objecting to women being involved in games, PERIOD?
All of these raise even more absurd questions. Are we supposed to pretend all characters are abstinent and that human beings don't have libidos when we write our stories? Would they prefer it if Lara Croft were morbidly obese or had bucked teeth and crossed eyes? Is that the sort of character they think we should want to play as?
I could go on with this for hours, but the real question at hand here is: are we really so jaded about games and game characters that we don't trust writers far enough to just HAPPEN to imagine female characters in certain roles as they write the script? That this is genuinely their vision and might in their mind be the best choice for the story?
I'll grant there's a lot of really legitimate criticisms you can make about women in video games and that too often they aren't realistically portrayed, but I feel skeptical about those criticisms as well. I think objectification is a two-way street. If you're going to pick apart Ada Wong you have to take the chainsaw to Leon Kennedy too. My girlfriend swoons over him more than I've seen ANY guy get hot over Lara Croft. In fact, the majority of attraction to game characters I've witnessed has been girls gawking at game guys, USUALLY of a type more effeminate and idealized than I've ever seen in my entire life. But in so many of these cases are guys who aren't attractive or idealized in some fashion really so objectionable or uncalled for? I wouldn't WANT Leon to be any different, myself.
I'm not completely in defense of objectification here. I draw a line at the point when it becomes absurd but the game takes itself seriously. Bloodrayne, Dead or Alive chicks, and Xenosaga, I'm looking at you. I think that a lot of the visuals for these characters, otherwise, seems pretty appropriate to the storytelling genres that they're a part of. Lara Croft SHOULD be this idealized but very outdoorsy-looking woman. I could see them taking her down a bust size or two and maybe making her clothes look somewhat less uncomfortably tight, but somehow she just seems appropriate given the tone of the story, the way Harrison Ford made perfect sense as Indiana Jones--who I WILL ADD did plenty of womanizing and, although he isn't quite James Bond, had plenty of sexual intonations about him.
Maybe that's a stretch. I certainly never LIKED Lara Croft, let alone liked her as much as I like Indiana Jones, but the point is still there. While too many characters aren't realistically portrayed and I think it would be healthy to see some girls who I could actually believe are girls and--maybe more to the point--who I can actually believe are properly dressed for their roles or represent archetypes women might actually WANT to fill the way male game characters fill archetypes men like, I don't think abject down-to-earth realism is always appropriate in favor of the exaggerations we so often see and I think that a lot of our criticisms in this area are misguided and high-minded nonsense. We may as well be criticizing comic books for their over-idealization of people in general at this point.
