Fat Chicks Love Cake

By dannyodwyer August 1, 2008 5 Comments

The line over which games can cross seems to be creeping back this way. Remember the good old days when you could shoot priests in the face with a semi-automatic gun silenced up the arse of a cat? Apparently the mass media and bored interest groups are making up for lost time as the cute PS3 action title "Fat Princess" has become the latest prey of the idiot hunt. 

For those of you not familiar with the game, I must explain the gameplay & premise because it's just hilarious. Teams of up to 16 players a side can connect over the Playstation Network and battle it out across 10 maps. It plays out as a sort of capture the flag, except instead of a flag you have to collect and transport an enormously obese woman. Naturally enough your enemy has been feeding your beloved highness cakes and Red Bull in an effort to make her escape much harder, so you have to drag her flabby ass across the battlefield. Apparently the teams must divide their time between stuffing each others portly monarch and trying to reclaim their own. You must admit, on paper this game is gold. 

For a moment lets go back to the golden age of game nonsense, before Postal 2 cow-heads, GTA IV immigrants and Mass Effect lesbian alien sex, to the days when pyramid breasts ruled the day. Much to the joy of pubescent boys worldwide the first of many gung-ho empowered female game characters was born in the guise of Lara Croft, triangular baps and all. Naturally her massive mammaries attracted the displeased attention of the most hated and irritating of interest group, feminists.

 Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for women voting and girl-power, I actually own a Spice Girls CD, but like so many interest groups, these people get wrapped up in ideals so deeply, they totally miss the big picture. The bitter pill here is that the individuals opposed to this game aren't bored soccer mom's or disgruntled divorcees, they're gamers. Check out this article for yourself. The writer argues the point of using a weighted treasure chest instead of a fat princess, a mechanic that mirrors the concept, but without the "cake and fat chicks". I'm at a loss for words. The counterpoints to feminism can be argued until your blue in the face, but it doesn't matter. If the game was called something less obvious like "Mega Capture Megami Tensei Extend HD" I'm sure it wouldn't have been an issue. God even the folks at Fox made light of it *sniger*. If designers listened to these groups we wouldn't be playing games which include:

Black Zombies (Resident Evil 5)
Immigrants (GTA IV)
Women with big breasts due to obesity (Fat Princess)
Women with big breasts due to sexiness (Age of Conan)
Games that say you're overweight, even if you are (Wii Fit)
Sex (GTA San Andreas)
Real World Tragedies (Super Columbine Massacre RPG)
Sex with genderless Aliens (Mass Effect)
Homosexual Kissing (Bully)
Scary Little Girls (Bioshock)
Torture (Manhunt 2)
Farcical Limb Dismemberment (Soldier of Fortune)

Anybody here watch movies?
Black "Zombies" (Any number of Zombie Movie)
Immigrants (Lord of War, In America, Borat?)
Women with big breasts due to obesity (take your pick)
Women with big breasts due to sexiness (take your pick)
Sex (take your pick)
Real World Tragedies (World Trade Centre)
Sex with genderless Aliens (eh…..E.T.?)
Homosexual Kissing (Broke back Mountain among others)
Scary Little Girls (Pick an Asian horror movie)
Torture (SAW 1-4)
Farcical Limb Dismemberment (Kill Bill 1 & 2)

Remember when games could explore new worlds and points of view that were different to what we experience in our own societies? Forget short-sighted publishers, this insular thinking about what games can be is hurting developmental freedom far more. Besides, with society so full of skewed messages about image and beauty do we really need to create another reason to feel bad about how we look and feel?

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