Female character models in videogames

I was just watching that new Co-op trailer for Syndicate and it looked like some good ol' fashioned co-op fun - but what made me cringe was that female agent. Everyone is wearing these cool trenchcoats etc and the female agent is of course wearing a pushup looking corset type of deal. I could only think like really, really are we still in this generation?

I used to not care really but recently it's been starting to irk me a lot more when I see that. I don't care about female empowerment, I just think it looks tacky as hell. In the past they had some great female leads like Jade in Beyond Good and Evil - she looked feminine but not butch or anything. The females in Uncharted also look great without being dressed in swimsuits. The new Lara Croft looks really great compared to her previous caricature like incarnations.

There are times when I like my females all sexy in games but thats usually when they're not directly involved with the gameplay or when it's appropriate - like if you're in a bar and there are sexy waitresses.

So I'm just curious does anyone care?

I think developers overly sexualize the female characters in many games, it just makes me roll my eyes and say, "Come on now, really?.."

Especially with the breasts..it is not humanly possible to have breasts 5 times larger than your head and for you to walk normally..(exaggeration but still..)

Also - All women walk by thrusting their hips to the side every step as if they're walking down a runway(I learned it from video games)

I could go on and on..

Needs more cameltoe.

@Still_I_Cry said:

I think developers overly sexualize the female characters in many games, it just makes me roll my eyes and say, "Come on now, really?.."

Especially with the breasts..it is not humanly possible to have breasts 5 times larger than your head and for you to walk normally..(exaggeration but still..)

Also - All women walk by thrusting their hips to the side every step as if they're walking down a runway(I learned it from video games)

I could go on and on..

This

This@MrKlorox said:

Needs more cameltoe.

Haha yes please

This thread will go places, I'm sure.

The main thing I have to offer to this is a question - Where do you draw the line between overexaggerating a female in a negative way, and overexaggerating a female in a way that makes her a character just in the same way that companies are constantly overexaggerating male characters for the same purpose (to make them characters)?

Everything is aesthetized in video games.  The men aren't musclebound badasses wearing awesome clothes because that's the average male physique and style of dress.

Why do all female character's in Arkham City have the same body type? That's the one that kinda rubs me the wrong way......bugs me I mean

@FateOfNever said:

This thread will go places, I'm sure.

The main thing I have to offer to this is a question - Where do you draw the line between overexaggerating a female in a negative way, and overexaggerating a female in a way that makes her a character just in the same way that companies are constantly overexaggerating male characters for the same purpose (to make them characters)?

When it comes to that question, it`s fine to make a girl with 34-quintuple-D tits is every guy around is a super-masculine, muscle-bound doucher. In a game like Syndicate, where the guys aren't exaggerated in any way that is directly linked to masculinity, making the female character over-sexual seems out of place and childish.

@Still_I_Cry said:

I think developers overly sexualize the female characters in many games, it just makes me roll my eyes and say, "Come on now, really?.."

I think developers overly sexualize a lot of characters, not necessarily only female ones. : )

And all male models are either fat, skinny or space marine.

ITT: Nerdy virgins complaining about the "over-sexualization" of female characters in videogames.

It doesn't concern you that the vast majority of male leads are ripped, handsome alphas with defined jawlines and manly voices?

Get over yourself.

If your topic is essentially Nurf Breasts and/or Nurf Woman, i, my friend, can not get behind you; for lack of a better term.

Just watched the trailer. Come on, it wasn't that bad. She's actually covered in an outfit as opposed to, say, female knights that seem to think showing off their abdominal area is a good idea. And on the scale of sexualized characters, she wouldn't rank that high. Plenty of male leads would go above.

Still, the fact that this example is poor, I do agree with the sentiment that nerds need to stop designing their fantasy females and putting them in games. But at the same time, justify the character is most important, people dress up sexy today in real life, why wouldn't they be able to in a video game reality?

@Cloudenvy: Fair enough.

How bout dem tig ole' bitties, eh?

To each his own.

If it wasn't for the way women are portrayed in video games, I would never have picked up fighting games. I mean Felicia is technically naked. Naked. I'm cool with it.

Ok ok seriously though, I found this blog on Comic Vine a while ago that more or less says what I always felt, but could never put into words. Although it focuses on comics, it can also, clearly, be adapted to video game females as well.

@Napalm said:

ITT: Nerdy virgins complaining about the "over-sexualization" of female characters in videogames.

are you saying it's not a big problem, because, I'm sorry, and I'm saying this as someone who's gender is female, it is. It's incredibly insulting, super sexist, and in fact made by these "nerdy virgins" you're complaining about in this very thread.

I hate when they make women disproportionate and I hate when they're in skimpy outfits. Seriously, no one REALLY dresses like that. Especially if they're going on a covert mission! >:{

All males are unfeeling gladiators with a body of steel.
See, I can do it too. 

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

All males are unfeeling gladiators with a body of steel.See, I can do it too.

I can name countless males in video games who are nerdy looking, skinny, whatever; and being buff and shit is totally in line with a usual video game, which is big tough manly dudes fucking shit up. but even females that fuck shit up are shown to be sexual objects.

This is a far bigger problem in gaming than wanton violence, destruction, killing, and straight up murder. We are totally comfortable with those things; this, however, is where is where the line gets crossed.

North America's just great!

I expected to see a lot more boobs in this thread....shame

@Giantstalker: I find it a bit disingenuous that 90% of the images on that wiki page are not actually from a game. Is the category supposed to be about sexualized women in video games or in fan art?

I generally agree with your sentiment however. The problem is that in violence it's really easy to have a good guy and a bad guy. As long as one of the people being violenced is evil then it's ok. With sex it makes us feel funny in the pants and have no idea who to root for.

Of course this topic isn't about sex but about women being treated as sex objects. On the other hand, I like it when my girlfriend treats me like a sex object. Historically societies reach a breaking point where they suddenly transition from near-equality to an extreme patriarchy. Maybe we're headed there again?

I don't care.

I don't think it's right, but sex sells. Scantily clad women are what the majority of gamers seem to want to see (especially the teenage male demographic).

I'm certainly not endorsing it, and I think it's wrong to objectify them like that, but it is unfortunately what the corporate machine believes will sell the most copies and keep the business operating.

I think those who have a problem with this are in the minority compared to those who don't or just don't care.

And, I don't know, but looking at some of the "Images" section in female wiki pages of ours, it seems that more than a few people like this oversexualization.

And every single dude is a hard-ass at the human peak of strength and agility with no flaws.

As if. A bro's gotta get his game on and his rocks off. AMIRITE?!

You bet your sweet ass I am!

@xobballox said:

And every single dude is a hard-ass at the human peak of strength and agility with no flaws.

There are more male video game characters who don't fit that stereotype than there are women who don't fit their respective one.

@UncleClassy said:

As if. A bro's gotta get his game on and his rocks off. AMIRITE?!

You bet your sweet ass I am!

Now we just gotta figure out how to get a kinect involved, and we'll make BILLIONS

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

@Animasta: Oh wait, fucking shit up requires one to be muscle-bound and good-looking with a gravelly voice? But women having big tits is out of line? Interesting.

big tits? no, but impossibly big? yes. The average breast size is B, by the way!

Come on, it is getting better at least, Lara Croft isn't being so sexualized it's creepy in the game.

Also, Gears of War 3, the series with some seriously ripped dudes, had really toned down the sexy-factor of the ladies.

@FluxWaveZ said:

@xobballox said:

And every single dude is a hard-ass at the human peak of strength and agility with no flaws.

There are more male video game characters who don't fit that stereotype than there are women who don't fit their respective one.

There are plenty of women who don't fit this stereotype too. Portal chick, Mirror's Edge Chick, Bonnie in RDR, Grim in Splinter Cell, Alyx in halflife, NPC women in Dark Souls, Spec ops Korean lady in Socom 4, NPC characters in the Fallout games, Dragon Age: Origin women and Dragon Age 2 women for the most part, Samus, Assassin's Creed main character-ish women, Uncharted women, Gears 3 women (from what I have seen), Bulletstorm lady, Dead Space lady, L4D 1/2 ladies... I could keep going for awhile, but my point is there are plenty of examples of good, non overly sexualized women characters in video games. Sure, there's a lot that are, but there's also a ton of buff dudes or really attractive dudes. I just don't see this as a huge problem, and it's quite easy to just forget about it when it happens, as it happens to both genders.

@Animasta said:

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

@Animasta: Oh wait, fucking shit up requires one to be muscle-bound and good-looking with a gravelly voice? But women having big tits is out of line? Interesting.

big tits? no, but impossibly big? yes. The average breast size is B, by the way!

No it's not, at least not in most of the first world. The amount of estrogen that's making it's way into the water system has been steadily increasing the average breast size in most industrialized nations...as well was decimating fish populations by having a disproportionate amount of female fish being born.

I would even take that map with more than a grain of salt, or any study claiming to have a real "average." Cup sizes vary from country to country and the studies almost always go by bra sales, and sizes vary from manufacture to manufacture.

The industry has been very slow to change things. I think the change needs to start with the development teams, not the in-game characters. More female designers in development teams, could curtail this BS.

@Pezen: chainmail bikini is the name for that.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainmailBikini

@Animasta: you mean "made for these nerdy virgnis", not "made by these nerdy virgins", right?

I mean, even if oversexualized women don't seem very realistic, I think those making the models are more artists than computer scientists, they may have got laid...

@Animasta said:

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

@Animasta: Oh wait, fucking shit up requires one to be muscle-bound and good-looking with a gravelly voice? But women having big tits is out of line? Interesting.

big tits? no, but impossibly big? yes. The average breast size is B, by the way!

Well, female characters could look like the female version in fable 2. But, who wants that?

I don't care.

To sum up.

In the future every female looks like Miranda Lawson due to genetic engineering. If that's the future and it's so great, why can't we have that in our games now? If games represented reality in a completely realistic way, I'd not play them, I'd just live IRL, whatever that means...

PD: some things should be done better, though http://6.asset.soup.io/asset/2440/6246_ea1f.png

@Animasta said:

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

All males are unfeeling gladiators with a body of steel.See, I can do it too.

I can name countless males in video games who are nerdy looking, skinny, whatever; and being buff and shit is totally in line with a usual video game, which is big tough manly dudes fucking shit up. but even females that fuck shit up are shown to be sexual objects.

I don't think I even need to point out the incredibly hypocrisy here.

I actively depise people who pull the whole "this offends me" shit. Grow up.

I dont really care what they are wearing. I think woman make less of a deal about the clothing of female game characters then guys do.

@oatz said:

@Animasta said:

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

All males are unfeeling gladiators with a body of steel.See, I can do it too.

I can name countless males in video games who are nerdy looking, skinny, whatever; and being buff and shit is totally in line with a usual video game, which is big tough manly dudes fucking shit up. but even females that fuck shit up are shown to be sexual objects.

I don't think I even need to point out the incredibly hypocrisy here.

I actively depise people who pull the whole "this offends me" shit. Grow up.

yes, I'm the bad person because I would like it if more women in video games had more realistic proportions.

@Animasta said:

@oatz said:

@Animasta said:

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

All males are unfeeling gladiators with a body of steel.See, I can do it too.

I can name countless males in video games who are nerdy looking, skinny, whatever; and being buff and shit is totally in line with a usual video game, which is big tough manly dudes fucking shit up. but even females that fuck shit up are shown to be sexual objects.

I don't think I even need to point out the incredibly hypocrisy here.

I actively depise people who pull the whole "this offends me" shit. Grow up.

yes, I'm the bad person because I would like it if more women in video games had more realistic proportions.

Oh, wait!, so this is about proportions? Because proportions look right to me in games like Tera, where women are quite sexualized...

@Trylkssaid:

Gallery

@SethPhotopoulos: but he is baaald!!! call the waambulance!! (Sorry, I had to)

@Trylks said:

@SethPhotopoulos: but he is baaald!!! call the waambulance!! (Sorry, I had to)

Willis is bald.

@Trylks said:

@Animasta said:

@oatz said:

@Animasta said:

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

All males are unfeeling gladiators with a body of steel.See, I can do it too.

I can name countless males in video games who are nerdy looking, skinny, whatever; and being buff and shit is totally in line with a usual video game, which is big tough manly dudes fucking shit up. but even females that fuck shit up are shown to be sexual objects.

I don't think I even need to point out the incredibly hypocrisy here.

I actively depise people who pull the whole "this offends me" shit. Grow up.

yes, I'm the bad person because I would like it if more women in video games had more realistic proportions.

Oh, wait!, so this is about proportions? Because proportions look right to me in games like Tera, where women are quite sexualized...

@Trylkssaid:

Gallery

@SethPhotopoulos: but he is baaald!!! call the waambulance!! (Sorry, I had to)

christ, do you have to pick apart my entire statement? the proportions and the clothing is the issue here, obviously, stop purposefully antagonizing me because you feel like being a troll, because this is still an issue no matter how many times you tell me to "grow up".

I don't often find myself offended by exploitation of females in games, but as an admitted prude, I do find it repellent to the point where it affects my purchasing decisions. That stuff's okay for you if you like it, but it's not for me.
 
As for the "but men in games are all beefcakes!" argument, what people fail to consider is that both the male and female characters are, usually, created to serve a male-oriented fantasy. Probably why there's more hubbub over inaccurate female portrayals--it seems more exploitative of women than of men, and perhaps it is.