Overview
While many males in video games can be found who have idealised physiques, or who even wear revealing attire to display them prominently, this is generally done for the purposes of fulfilling the power fantasies of the player, and is very rarely done for the purposes of sexual gratification, due to the fact that AAA video games produced in the Western world are almost entirely marketed towards 15-35 year old heterosexual males.
On the other hand, some Japanese video games use sexualized men to target female audiences, with entire genres revolving around it such as Otome games, the "Boys Love" genre, or the reverse harem genre. In contrast to their Western counterparts, the males in these games are often portrayed in a more youthful/effeminate/androgynous manner, as some pop stars or boyband members are. Sometimes, sexualized androgynous males such as this can crossover into some of the more mainstream Japanese video games, such as Vaan from Final Fantasy XII, for example. Typically, the sexualization of men in video games is far less controversial than the sexualization of women as it is far less common and is generally seen by progressives not to build on an existing epidemic of objectification in society, while such an epidemic is identified as existing for women.
There is some debate, however, over whether characters such as Raiden from the Metal Gear series are sexualized, and in some rare instances men in games may not be sexualized for the purposes of surrealism rather than provoking arousal. Examples can be found in niche games such as Muscle March or the Cho Aniki series.
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