Some videos you should watch

Sorry for the crappy posting schedule, folks. Because I hate having free time, I’m doing a play and going to martial arts classes at the same time – on top of having a full-time job and having a life and marriage and stuff. I’m doing my best. So because I don’t have time to finish the post I’m working on tonight, I wanted to post some video links with a bit of commentary, just so you’re not totally empty-handed until I get a chance to finish up this other, beefier post.

(Thanks goes out to my brother, who sent me two of these three links. He always keeps an eye out for this stuff for me.)

First up: Movie Bob’s take on feminism and gaming on the Escapist

So if you have gamer friends that you’d like to be more aware of why exactly feminism is important in gaming but you’re afraid that they’ll have a knee-jerk reaction to anything involving the word “feminism” or “women’s rights” in combination with gaming, get them to watch this video. It does a pretty excellent job of summing up about half of what I’ve been writing about for the last year, which is impressive since it’s all of five minutes.

Also, it has amusing visual representations of the typical internet over-reaction:

He even did a pretty decent job of dealing with issues of costume and posing, which is pretty awesome given the limited format. The issue of body diversity is pretty much glossed over, though he acknowledged pretty clearly that he didn’t have space to deal with that and also added that that’s something that everyone should be pissed about, woman or no.

So this makes me feel a little better about the Escapist than I have been recently. Not much, since they’re still paying Jim Sterling for his lazily produced misogyny, but a little better at least.

Arkham City: Behind Harley’s Hot Moves

Another link courtesy of my brother, whose commentary was simply:

I thought I was going to rage, then I giggled.

And, yeah. That’s a pretty accurate assessment.

So the video starts off showing off the new design of Harley Quinn in the Arkham City game, which I’ve raged about previously. (I mean, seriously, folks. The old Harley was already wearing full body spandex. What about that is NOT SEXY ENOUGH?):

OH YEAH. Because there’s nothing I love more than sexualized digital women who have been so fetishized that they plunge right into the uncanny valley. SIGN ME UP RIGHT NOW. *pant pant*

Hey, look at what they did there. See, the exclamation point is right next to Harley’s ass which is showing… um… quite a lot of ass-cheek in that still. And I’m not entirely certain she’s wearing underwear. (Well, okay, she could be wearing a thong.) So, yeah. Go, IGN. Way to be tasteful.

You’ll have to watch the video for the actual twist, which happens right afterward. There is one, and it’s pretty amusing. And it’s only a 30-second clip, so it’s worth the payoff.

(That said, I’m still not going to buy the game, and I’d be disappointed in anyone who does buy it for the sake of HAWT HARLEY AND CATWOMAN ACTION. But then I tend to be pretty unforgiving of companies that murder my best childhood geek memories. The Batman cartoon was a thing of beauty and anything that defiles Harley Quinn in such a manner deserves nothing but scorn and contempt.)

Marvel vs. Capcom Cartoon

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this TOTALLY AWESOME Newgrounds animation – a fake trailer for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, as presented by Iron Man/Tony Stark. Yet again, it’s a totally awesome distillation of many things that I have ranted about at great length, distilled into about 30 seconds of awesomely funny animation. It’s pretty much a summary of everything that’s wrong with the fighting game genre.

Also? I have to love anything that takes a super-macho character like Iron Man and presents him in a stereotypically video-game-female way:

Dammit. Looks like I could have sexed Abe up a little more if I’d put my mind to it…

Gender swap! Yuna and Kuja

For this gender swap I wanted another pair of male and female characters. I liked the idea of the Fran/Balthier gender-swap, but didn’t really feel I nailed the execution. But as I was casting about for inspiration, nothing hit me. Then my husband suggested Kuja, and I thought yessssssssss! Kuja would be ridiculously fun to draw gender-swapped since he’s literally the only male character I can think of that is as sexualized as the ridiculous cheesecake women I mock here on a regular basis.

But then who to swap for the female to male? Well, I thought of this excellent pinup series of sexualized male comic superheroes, and that gave me the inspiration I needed. Yuna from X-2! I was going to turn those ridiculous shorts that expose half her ass cheek into stupid banana hammock shorts!

I was so, so psyched.

Now this involved more work than my previous gender-swaps, since I had to do an original drawing rather than just a trace-over (there’s a reason I stick to trace-overs. They’re easier and much less time-consuming), hence the lack of posts. Just to make things interesting, I decided to use poses from X-2′s transformation sequences. I searched around and found a pretty decent image of Rikku and Paine’s final pose for… whatever the hell they called the Gambler class in X-2. (Lady Luck? I’m feeling lazy here.)

Making myself draw these poses was quite a challenge and took quite a while to get right. I kept roughing in a body part, looking at the whole and realizing that the pose wasn’t extreme enough. And then I’d have to erase and start over. The resulting poses are pretty tortured. Rikku’s hips are arched forward even as she’s leaning backwards. It’s doable, as long as you have strong back muscles, but you’re going to regret holding that pose for any length of time.

Amusingly, drawing Paine’s pose made me realize that she’s pretty seriously over-balanced. I became skeptical that this pose was even possible when I failed to achieve it without toppling over after several attempts. When I called my husband in to look, he maintained that the pose is possible, barely, but only if you have really good core strength. As we didn’t have a mirror handy to verify, I’m not sure which of us was right. As yet I consider the matter unsettled.

Anyhow. Enough blather. Gender-swap time! First, Yuna and Kuja’s original designs:

and now… swap!

I can’t even begin to tell you how tickled I was to be doing this. I am so very, very pleased that this turned out as well as it did; I’m feeling a bit redeemed after the Fran/Balthier swap.

Yuna actually didn’t require much adaptation. I did have to do some *ahem* research into banana hammock shorts, since it’s not something I’m too familiar drawing. I’m pleased with how the shorts came out and consider male-Yuna to be one of my more successful swaps.

Kuja also required surprisingly little adaptation. I did change the top a little to make sure that the nipples (and yes, the areola too!) could stay covered – even if it would require much body tape.

I was told I had to scan this doodle in the margins.

All in all, I consider this to be a smashing success, and really – I think I had way too much fun doing this. I suppose I should do these more often.

From the mail bag: Mostly fail, with a little win on the side

Okay, I’ll admit that I’ve been lazy this week. After my fast-and-furious post-GenCon posting spree, I needed a bit of a rest. And sure, posts like this are a bit of a cop-out, but I promise I’ll make it up to you next week with a new gender swap.

Anyhow, during the last week people have been sending me a lot of stuff to look at, and much of it was stuff I thought deserved attention and/or ridicule. So let the mocking commence!

In which entitled gamers put their privilege on display

Now it may have escaped your notice – as it did mine – that there is a video game in development called Lollipop Chainsaw that features a scantily-clad chainsaw-wielding cheerleader named Juliet who kills zombies:

Oh, hey look. It’s a scantily clad nubile young woman who will kill lots of stuff while wearing next to nothing. A thinly veiled platform for a combination of fanservice and violence – how original! Unsurprisingly, some people have taken exception to such a ridiculous character and pointed out that this game concept just might be a little sexist. Which is where gamer entitlement comes in.

Sure, Juliet isn’t exactly the most tasteful portrayal of a woman, but who cares? She’s a character in a video game that boasts an absolutely ridiculous premise. Are the actions of a fictitious girl truly detrimental to the image of females everywhere?

Ah, right. The “it’s just fantasy” argument. Yes, because really – everyone knows that humans are completely independent creatures and are never influenced by any of the media they consume ever. EVAR. End of story.

Perhaps we should focus our attention not on a video game character, but on real men and women that are sending the wrong messages, or even parents that let their children leave the house dressed like Paris Hilton. Turn on the MTV, or just about any channel these days, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Video games are the least of our worries.

Yes, because sexism in video games is such a trivial concern and don’t we have more important things to worry about? There are starving children in Africa, people. Since it is inherently true that people are incapable of caring about more than one kind of injustice simultaneously, being bothered by sexism in gaming reveals what a petty and shallow person I am for taking time away from being sad about starving children, war refugees, and sad puppies. Clearly, I am a terrible person.

Moving on…

Exhibit B begins with this article over on IGN by Emma Boyes asking whether LA Noire is sexist. It’s a pretty thoughtful and objective piece, definitely free of the vitriol and hyperbole that I like to fling around over here. She makes some pretty good points, and if anything understates how sexist the game industry itself is. Overall, it’s a pretty solid piece that is only minimally controversial, in that a woman dared to accuse teh awesome menz at RockStar of being sexist.

But you’d never guess that from the comments, which are a veritable tidal wave of scorn and entitlement:

They should have had a main, woman character in LA Noire. Her duty: to better LA from HQ, the kitchen, one sandwich at a time. LOL

its supposed to be a 50s cop show procedural as a videogame. they were sexist back then so YES… is ign writing articles sheerly for the sake of asking stupid questions?

IGN gets more and more retarded every day

who wrote this article? – a women . . .

…and so on and so forth.

But then, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised since this is IGN, the website that has a dedicated “Babeology” section of their site:

Charming.

Stupid visuals

I’ve raged plenty of times here about the stupidity of “play now” advertisements for free MMOs. Well, this one takes that stupidity to an impressive level.

Nothing too unusual here. We’ve got gravity-defying sphere-boobs the size of her head. Her “corset” must also be made of some very hard metal to contain those titanic breasts of hers, because there’s no way that a construction of mere cloth and leather could contain breasts that large and that gravity-defying. Now I will admit that her anatomy (aside from the ridiculous breasts) looks like it might be physically attainable… by a vanishingly small percentage of the human population. However, the ridiculous bikini is… well… ridiculous. And let’s not overlook that the key phrase of the ad describing the game is RIGHT OVER HER CROTCH.

And now for the win

So first up, a bit of visual win to counter the visual fail:

These are character class designs from the upcoming Namco/Bandai title – Dark Souls. And I feel like I literally cannot express how much I love these designs and want this game to be a good game. I mean, holy shit, people! The women are wearing exactly the same outfits as the men. THE SAME. When does that happen? Never. Or almost never. I’m over the moon.

For that matter, I’m delighted that the one class that does run around naked has the male iteration just as naked as the female. Equal opportunity nudity. I love it! So please, Namco/Bandai, for the love of god – I’m begging you! Don’t fuck this up!

Lastly, I’m going to link to my new favorite thing on the internet since Boobs Don’t Work That Way – a new tumblr devoted entirely to pictures of women fighters in reasonable armor. It’s a delightful collection of images of female fighters in totally badass and not sexualized armor. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

[And that's enough of that. Next time - gender swap!]

Guest Post: King of Fighters 13 is heading in the right direction

[Raelcun is the nerdy younger brother of wundergeek and sticks mostly to PC Gaming but delves into consoles now and then. He does high level Starcraft 2 commentary under the same name and some technical work on the production end for Starcraft 2 Team FXOpen E-sports. You can find some videos of his work here, but he hasn’t been as active recently.

In general he tends to agree with wundergeek on her rantings about video games and even sends her examples of the terrible works now and then for laughs and while looking over some KoF13 footage was inspired to write up a bit more of a positive outlook on some of the same issues wundergeek goes over on her blog.]

Okay, the key point in the title here would be: “is heading in the right direction”. This is extremely important, because in no way is KOF13 perfectly designed and without flaw. There are definite problems, but one of the things that has impressed me the most about this game is how much it has artistically improved from earlier entries in the series. To clarify, female characters who have been badly portrayed in previous iterations have been almost universally more positively portrayed in this game. I find this to be the focal point and the reason why I say they’re heading in the correct direction, even if there are still more improvements they could make.

First of all, I will divide the characters I’m going to be discussing specifically into a few categories: the awesome, the not-as-awesome-but-still-improved, and problematic. These classifications are by my standards and opinions; you might disagree with them, but I’m the one writing this post.

So let’s start with a mashup of all of the characters from the newest installation of the King of Fighters series:

CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW

These are all taken from the official website and are the official artwork for the newest KoF. As a whole this is pretty badass; the designs are pretty decent, there aren’t too many glaring anatomy issues, and the quality of the artwork is high overall. Mai down there on the bottom is a problem, but frankly my sister has gone over the problems with Mai many, many times in the past so I’m not going to go too in depth with her.

A side note regarding atypical male characters

One of the most encouraging things about the cast of characters I found is that there’s a specific group of characters that are a little different from the others. The men have a pretty good variety in body types but there’s also these four fellows:

Now if I were to tell you that these were all female characters, there might not be any immediate disagreements as they are designed and portrayed in a rather feminine manner. K is probably the most masculine of them all but he could probably still pass for a woman if you didn’t know any better. I find that characters like this are awesome in light of the fact that most fighting games tend to go too far into the extremes of gender stereotyping. Characters are either VERY MANLY or EXTREMELY FEMININE.
(Furthermore, it tends to be extremely apparent that a woman is a woman because her bewbs are thrust into our faces.) So it’s great that these four characters create a little bit of question in their sex. I knew that Benimaru, Duolon, and K were male, but I legitimately thought that Ash was female for quite a long time. I like the fact that this is true and the next thing to come hopefully would be more diversity in the females… (Hint hint hint)

But that’s enough about that. On to the women of King of Fighters 13, because that’s where the real controversy is. So first up:

The Awesome

This is Elisabeth, she is obviously an equestrian character and her original design was… well pretty bad, what with the unnecessary heels and the random boobage. In her next appearance the cleavage disappeared, and in her current iteration the heels are smaller a little bit more reasonable but still a mite too large. (Riding boots do have a little bit of heel to them, just not quite that much.) Overall though, her design is pretty badass, which is why she’s under the awesome instead of the “improved.” Her riding crop is reasonable and not too BDSMish and her outfit is pretty accurate for an equestrian character, and stylish to boot.

If I had to score Elisabeth out of 10, I’d give her an 8. That might be a little bit harsh considering that her anatomy is pretty good, but her waist is on the small end for an athlete. (If you don’t think Equestrians are athletes try riding horses for hours on end. Seriously, ouch.) Also, her heels (again) are just a little bit too big and narrow for real riding boots, especially since she has to fight in them too. Still she’s pretty effing sweet and if you look up footage of her on youtube she kicks some major ass as with style and grace as well.

This is King, and I have to say she is probably my favorite female from this series. She is completely awesome, as are her previous incarnations. I especially like 2003 version with the nice jacket, and her expression as to say she might deign to give you the rose, instead of the other way around. There’s not much I can nitpick on here, except maybe again her waist size for an athlete. However, not only does she wear a tuxedo, but it’s a badass tuxedo – which rocks since tuxes are usually reserved for men in most designs. On top of this usually when you see one on a woman it’s been “modified” to “fit the female form” (code for showing lots of skin) so it’s nice to see a pretty sweet female character in a real
tux in a fighting game.

Bonus points go to her for wearing the gloves as well; too many people in fighting games fight bare fisted. Hell, even professional fighters don’t do that. (Really, watch UFC.) Also, look at her shoes! Her shoes are actually pretty flat no heels. Since heels in fighting games are one of my BIGGEST pet peeves, she passes on that one as well. Overall I’d give her a 9 out of 10 when it comes to character design, the only problem here being her waist being far too small for a serious athlete who kicks some serious ass.

The not-as-awesome-but-still-improved

Next up we have the “improved”. These are the ones that still have their issues but have improved so much compared to previous designs that I wouldn’t call them terrible or a straight up “problem.”

Admittedly, Athena is VERY close to being dropped in the “Problematic” pile, but her saving graces here are two specific things: 1) her skirt length has increased significantly in the newest game and 2) her job as a character is “pop star” a job in which if you’re not being sexualized you’re doing it wrong (in Japan at least.) One of the other things in her favor is the fact that you can see there has been quite a bit of redesign going on with Athena, there are some ups and down in the previous iterations but her most recent one is not terrible.

She is portrayed a little bit on the young end but she’s supposed to be around the 18 marker, so she barely gets by on that aspect. Also, the fact that she’s wearing flats instead of heels is also in her favor. In the current design her skirt would almost fit the dress code of the high school I went to, so when it comes to skimpy Japanese school girl outfits this is pretty tame. None the less, she’s just barely in the “improved” pile and is a few design changes away from being thrown right into “problematic.” I’d give her about a 5 out of 10 on the design scale, mostly due to the fact that her breast size isn’t over the top her skirt is almost reasonable, and the lack of heels and exposed midriff.

This is Leona, and again she’s close to being thrown into the problematic pile because of the tank top.

She’s obviously a military character, and for some reason game designers seem to think that they all like to expose a lot of skin. (Like Cammy.) This is somewhat of a pet peeve in that generally when you’re getting shot at, most people tend to think that having your skin covered is a good idea.

However, there are two reasons why she’s in the less-awesome-but-still-improved pile and not in the “problematic” pile. First is the fact that she HAS PANTS now instead of ridiculous butt shorts that make her boots look just plain silly. Secondly is the fact that her outfit is close to identical to the male counterparts on her team:

They’re not 100% the same but it’s pretty damn close. (Obviously, if she’s going to have a bullet belt she can’t have the same over the top caliber that her male counterparts have or she’d look a little silly.) She does suffer from the one recurring theme of King of Fighters, though – giving pretty extreme athletes tiny waists. So I guess I’m going to stop harping on this because it happens with pretty much every female in this game. But the reason I keep bringing this up is that they are supposedly the top fighters in the world. They’re going to have muscle down there. Come on. Seriously.

Still, I’d say that she’s better than Athena at least because she has pants – which is a pretty big deal in a fighting game. Her tank top is a little bit on the silly end; I’d like to see it be a little bit more covering to match her male counterparts a bit more. But as is, I will mark is as passable. Overall this translates into about a 6 out of 10, her bewbs are a little bit on the silly end but I’ll be nice and chalk that up to the fact that if you’re going to be fighting you’re going to want some damn support and not have them be flopping all over the place painfully.

I’m going to do these two at the same time as they’re almost the same design-wise. Also, they’re on the same fighting team and therefore have almost identical fighting styles. In two most recent games, they both have had the same costume (with a color swap).

The blonde is “Mature” and the Redhead is “Vice”. (Yes their names are rather suggestive and that part makes me facedesk a little bit. But I will try not to harp on the names as it’s tough for a company to change a character name without dealing with angry nerds.) Their current outfits are both pretty badass and while the cleavage shown there is a bit more than necessary for a business suit; to be fair in game you basically can’t see it as they both spend most of the time with their backs turned to the viewer. So while I’d like to see those shirts maybe have a few more buttons done up, it’s not actually too bad in game.

Both of these characters had pretty ridiculous outfits in the past. Like, seriously, what kind of dress is that? I’ve heard of having a slit down the side but a dress that’s just open in the front? I’m glad they dropped that design and of course when the new character designs (actually their original design) were revealed, almost all of the comments were about how they missed the dresses. When it comes to the score on these two I’d give them both 7 out of 10 in design. You can’t see it in these pictures but neither of these ladies are sporting high heels, which again is good seeing as they’re jumping around and doing kicks constantly.

The problematic

The last three characters I have here are just problems. They are problems for different reasons, to be fair, but each of them are to the point where I just facedesk in reaction.

This is Kula. Now, your first reaction is probably something like, “But Raelcun! She has pants and no exposed skin!” And, yes, that is true but the problem here is that she’s fourteen and that outfit is rather sexualized for a fourteen year old. The anatomy in her 2001 outfit is frankly disturbing, and in maximum impact she’s holding a lollipop? Seriously? Her design would be fine if she was older, or maybe if her top didn’t have that nice little “BOOBS!” golden outline. There’s not much else to discuss here and this is
probably where I’ll get the most detractors. I‘m just not a big fan of the sexualization of minors and for that reason Kula bothers me.

She does get a slight begrudging nod in yet again resisting the urge to put her into heels against the efforts of seemingly the rest of the industry. And for this I’ll give her a 4; her boobs are a little large for a fourteen year old, but you know sometimes that happens. However, she suffers from the same waist problem as the other female characters, and the golden BOOBS outline is, frankly, ridiculous.

This is Mai. She is a problem. We don’t really need to discuss why as you can figure this out basically just by looking at her. But surprisingly I actually have a few positive things to say here. When looking over the gallery of official artwork for Mai I realized that this current iteration is actually a slight improvement. (We’re talking very slight here.) I mean look at the anatomy on the 2001 one, and her posture is very slightly better than 2000, though she still suffers from some serious sphere boobage. Surprisingly, though, compare this to the other pictures present here, and the Mai in KOF 13 the current one is actually somewhat preferable. See included picture below for more reference.

I could easily have included this with the first group and most people wouldn’t have known the difference, but I’m striving to have some integrity here. So the difference between this one is that it was actually rejected by the company for the 2001 game. So the designers had enough sense to realize that when the artist turned this in for Mai it was just going way too far. I don’t need to discuss why. I mean, just look at it.

She’s got some serious problems with her boobs there, pretty classic horribly uncomfortable back arch and her torso is pretty damn elongated. Anatomy wise, the current Mai – gigantic unrealistically shaped breasts aside – her anatomy isn’t actually too terrible in comparison. So I’ll give the current Mai a generous 3 in design. There’s no possible way she can fight in that outfit and have her top stay on the upper portion of her body. There’s pretty much no amount of body glue that will make that stay on while punching kicking, as well as getting punched kicked and thrown vigorously. In design terms this is what we would classify as “You’re doing it wrong.”

This is Yuri… Yuri is at first glance pretty well designed, but she is a major problem because of the fact that she has problems keeping her clothes on. The worst part is that her design is actually pretty good despite this one major factor. I’ll leave the details of this particular problem up to the fine folks over at the SNK Wiki:

• In some games, when Yuri is knocked out with a special move, the top of her costume flies off. This happens in Art of Fighting 2, The King of Fighters ’94, The King of Fighters ’95, The King of Fighters XIII.
• In Capcom vs. SNK 2, when Yuri finishes a fight with a “Dramatic KO” (finish with a super move as a counter to an opponent’s special or super move), she will attempt to tie her gi tighter. However, the belt becomes completely undone and her top opens, revealing a semi sheer undershirt. Yuri will then blush in total embarrassment and immediately cover herself. This victory pose first appeared in Art of Fighting 2 when Yuri scores a Perfect victory.

And this is where I move beyond the facedesk and have to work very hard to not smash my head into a wall. According to the game story she is in fact 18 so she’s not technically a minor but she’s drawn to look like one so I’m going to count this as “sexualization of minors, with a very thin excuse to get away from that on a mere technicality.” I mean first guesses looking at her current picture at least I would put her at 16 or 17; oddly enough the older ones look more mature 2002 and 2000 especially. But she definitely looks much younger in the current iteration and this really annoys me.

IF we assume that she learns how to keep her outfit on at this point after 10+ years of fighting then I’d give her character design a 7 in any upcoming game that features her current design plus her clothes staying on. Her breasts are reasonably done, she’s decently covered, wearing sensible shoes, and has her hair under control in a pretty reasonable manner for a fighter. I’m sorry but if you have long hair you’re going to tie it up or back somehow before you get into an organized fight. (Yet another pet peeve when it comes to fighting games.) But since she has once again shown a tendency to not tie her top tight enough I am forced to give her a generous 2 because it annoys me that much. Seriously learn to keep your clothes on it really isn’t that hard. I put this as worse than Mai because while Mai has serious issues at least she’s employing copious amounts of I assume arcane power to keep her clothes still technically in the “on” position.

Overall King of Fighters 13 is moving in the right direction and it seems to me at least that the good aspects are outweighing the bad. King of Fighters as an actual game is traditionally made very well and to see the artwork starting to match that is encouraging. The artwork for Street Fighter (I’m looking at you Cammy) is still a pretty large problem but hopefully some other games will take a gander over at King of Fighter 13 and will copy some of the positive aspects and not… Mai.

Even more E3 WTF

I know I said I’d do a post about the new Tomb Raider trailer. I guess I lied. I’m just feeling really burned out on arguments right now and don’t feel up to having one that is sure to be both heated and incredibly entrenched with no hope of either side convincing the other. Been there, done that, not up to doing it again right now. So instead I thought I’d post some of the other E3 wtf I found on sites that weren’t Destructoid.

More booth babes

Looking at the various gaming sites, you’d think that E3 was a convention devoted to booth babes, not a convention devoted to gaming and other consumer electronics. The week after the show, 1up users apparently think that the E3 booth babe roundup is the top feature on 1up.com:

But IGN is not to be outdone! First they have an E3 booth babe roundup of their own, with 135 photos no less! They also went the extra mile, though, and did feature interviews each day of the show with their pick for “booth babe of the day”, sprinkled with photos of them in their hawt booth babe outfits of course. There’s an interview with this redhead (or rather, woman in a red wig), this “fairy dancer”, and – my personal favorite – this cringe-worthy interview: E3 2011: Booth Babe of the Day Hindu Goddess.

But wait! There’s more!

Lest you get the impression that E3 might actually be a show about video games and boobs, IGN would like to assert that… nope. It’s just about boobs:

Seriously? I don’t even know what’s the most messed up thing on this page. First you have the booth babe battle itself. Because, you know, it’s not bad enough that these women are getting paid to be ogled at and pawed over by grown men who really should know better. No, what they really need is for men who would like to ogle/paw at them (but can’t, by virtue of not being at the show) to judge their attractiveness and post these ratings for the world to see. Intrinsc is clearly getting into the spirit of things by setting a high standard for what constitutes a booth “babe” versus a booth “acceptable girl”. I guess it’s a useful reminder for us feminists, who are all (by virtue of being feminists) unutterably, horrifyingly ugly.

But let’s not miss that we can get “babeology” updates and exclusive content through social media. OMG! Creepy coverage of half-naked women as purveyed by a major gaming website? SIGN ME UP!

The weirdest thing in all of this is that Kotaku only had one article featuring pictures of booth babes promoting a game. Or rather, car wash babes promoting a game. Just one. So what the hell, folks? Since when is Kotaku the classiest gaming website out there? Did I fall into an alternate universe again?

Game Trailers

On IGN I also managed to find some fail-worthy trailers I hadn’t seen on Destructoid, like this trailer for Skullgirls – a hand-animated 2D fighting game. Despite being hand-animated, each character features skimpy outfits and, if you watch closely (it’s pretty zoomed out) BOOB JIGGLING. Now, automated boob-jiggling in 3D games is one thing since you can get algorithms to do the heavy lifting (heh) for you. But it just seems ridiculous in games where the boob jiggle is hand-animated. Don’t you guys have better things to do with your time? Like, say, balancing gameplay? Or are you too busy balancing other things?

I also found this awful Catwoman-centric Arkham City Trailer complete with crotchcam, asscam, and wannabe porn riffs. I didn’t think it was possible, but this makes me want to play Arkham City even less than the interview that Destructoid did with one of the devs about Catwoman as a playable character. Yuck.

Fail-worthy features

Sometimes it’s not the games that fail, it’s the coverage of the games that fails. Over on 1up, I found this feature called: Postcard from E3: Atlus and the Booth so Sexy It Had to be Hidden (Forget Duke Nukem’s booth; the sauciest place at E3 was Atlus.)

Yeah, you can practically hear the fail a mile away. I especially love gems like:

Why such an out-of-the way location for a prominent show sponsor? My theory is that Atlus’ booth was just too darned sexy for the main halls.

Not only was the booth plastered with drawings of ladies in lingerie, it also included the newly licensed King of Fighters XIII. And when we sat down to demo the game, Atlus’ spokesdude Aram and our own Janine both decided to play as the decidedly pendulous Mai Shiranui. Swing low, sweet chariot.

And people wonder why gamers get stereotyped…

Of course, this is the same guy who wrote a feature about Irrational’s preview of Bioshock Infinite and titled it: Irrational Declares Grey the Color of Girly-Men. Then, rather than explaining this rather controversial claim straight off, his opening paragraph centers on objectifying all of the staff who work at Irrational. But hey, he objectifies them equally, which makes everything okay according to Jim Sterling.

Kotaku also wanted to get in on the fail feature fun with this feature called: What Will A Middle-Aged Ivy Look Like In Soulcalibur V?

Yes, despite the new Soul Calibur title taking place 17 years after the end of Soul Calibur IV, Ivy is going to be returning. And of course the question on everyone’s minds is: will Ivy be a MILF? In this feature, Michael McWhertor asks the important questions, like:

Would it mean a more modestly dressed Ivy?

and:

Would the ravages of time have an impact on her vast… sex appeal?

I’m glad someone out there cares enough to look into these important journalistic issues.

Two bits of actual E3 coverage win

Anyhow, the first is a video in which an E3 attendee videos a line to jump in a bouncy castle with a booth babe and sarcastically reminds the viewer that E3 is a convention for only industry professional. (That professional is a term used loosely in the gaming industry should surprise no one, right?)

The second is a bit of news I didn’t see on any other website and which actually makes me quite happy. Apparently, Lara Croft models at E3 will “never happen again”. Quite an encouraging bit of news when you consider that the Lara Croft models often did promo shoots that resulted in things like this:

Can't say I'll miss them

The fact that both of these come from Kotaku actually frightens me, but there you have it. Maybe they weren’t intending to be ironic? It’s hard to say.

WTF: The E3 edition (with lots of pictures!)

Hi, folks. I’ve been coming across so much WTF coming out of E3 that I decided it deserved its own post. I had big intentions of surfing all of the major gaming news sites (Kotaku, Joystiq, IGN, etc) for their E3 news, but it took me so long just to get through all of the fail on Destructoid that those intentions didn’t last. Besides, I can’t pretend that I don’t love picking on Destructoid, because I do. So! On to the WTF!

Fail the first: boobies are important news hurr hurr

Well, it seems like I can always count on Dale North to really cover the important things: boobies!

Real subtle. It helps that he also lists some variant of ‘pretty girls’ twice. Because who cares about getting to go to the biggest gaming convention of the year when there are BOOBIES to see? Come on people. Priorities.

Of course, given that Dale North seems to be the designated boobular cosplay correspondent, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the boob-centric nature of his E3 coverage. But remember, folks, these are boobies that think that Dale isn’t sexist, which is really all that matters.

But let me not give the impression that Dale is the only one doing some boobie-loving in the name of GARME JURNALIZM (as Jim Sterling calls it). No, it seems that Destructoid felt the need to further strengthen the mental link between its brand and BOOBIEZ by having their mascot photographed with hordes of boobular cosplayers:

Way to stay classy, guys.

The most disappointing instance of this that I saw, however, was this video by Jonathan Holmes of all people that was nothing more than a few second clip of a large crowd of attractive women and talking about how this was clearly very important video game news.

Et tu Jonathan? ET TU???

I previously had become a fan of Jonathan’s when he did a Constructoid episode featuring a conversation between Princess Peach and Bayonetta in which he examined the stereotypes that they were each based on. I also quoted Jonathan in my post about Bayonetta about his view that Bayonetta is a hollow character based on stereotypes and gender misconceptions. So I have to confess that right now I’m feeling pretty betrayed. So, Jonathan:

I know you work for Destructoid and all, but you’ve proven yourself to be different from Dale North and Jim Sterling. I expect better from you.

Fail the second: Game trailers

The obvious contender here is the trailer for the new Tomb Raider game. I’m actually going to save that for it’s own post. It might wind up being a bit short, but it’s sufficiently fucked up that I feel it deserves to be singled out. Still, there’s plenty of other completely fucked up trailers that deserve mocking.

Take, for instance, this interview with Dax Ginn of Rocksteady about the upcoming Arkham City game:

Charming thumbnail. And it gets better, the fail begins at 2:40 when the interviewer asks Ginn “tell me about this lovely lady right here”. We then see lots of clips of Catwoman in action with camera angles that play up her… ahem… assets:

And oh god, the fail-worthy interview over top just makes the whole thing worse. It’s actually kind of embarrassing, and makes me less likely to have any real interest in the final product.

There’s also the Dead Island trailer that was released which seems to heavily play up the ‘tropical island = bewbs’:

To be fair, this still doesn’t have anything on DNF. But still, it seems like a pretty cynical attempt to combine breasts, zombies, and violence to appeal to the ever sought-after “18-24 male and his penis” demographic. Disappointing.

The worst, however (okay, that’s not Tomb Raider), is this trailer for Dragon’s Crown:

Holy shit, people! Those breasts put even Ivy’s to shame! It’s a good think that skeleton is dead, otherwise her nipple would put an eye out for sure.

What’s incredibly bizarre about this game is that it’s 2D, using glorified sprites. And the sorceress’ breasts STILL jiggle every time she moves. You have to watch the video to truly grasp the titanic amounts of fail that this game has. It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen something that fails harder than Soul Calibur IV, but this trailer definitely manages that feat.

Fail the Third: DNF release party

All right, this is cheating slightly since it’s not tied to E3, but it was announced during all of the E3 hype so I’m including it. Gearbox is apparently having a release party for DNF that will feature sexay wimminz and be DJed by Jazzy Jeff. And just in case you’re not getting the theme, they’re calling the party Happy Ending:

Way to go, Gearbox. You guys never disappoint.

Bayonetta and the Male Gaze

Bayonetta is hands-down my least favorite character in any type of gaming ever. I hate her more than Ivy, more than Princess Peach, more than Other M Samus put together. She is one of the most blatantly sexualized and objectified characters in all of gaming. So it never fails to baffle me that she manages to generate a fair bit of controversy. That might sound counter-intuitive, but controversy is something that requires fervor on both sides of an argument, and I really don’t see how anyone could possibly defend Bayonetta as a positive role model. And yet, people do. So I’m going to take a look at both sides of the argument, and then weigh in with what I feel is some compelling evidence.

Pro

This is an issue I feel strongly enough about that I don’t trust myself to accurately summarize the arguments for Bayonetta as a positive character, so I’m going to let some other people do the talking for me for a moment. First, a defense of Bayonetta as a male fantasy:

She’s sexy, sexUAL, funny, ungodly strong,supremely confident, always composed, fiercely independent and often (chidingly) protective of others.

She’s on top of every situation, kicks an apocalyptic amount of ass and, though sexual, does not (as far as I can see) ever use her sexuality in an instrumental way. Instead, she relies on a personal power that would make Satan himself wet himself.

Are women actually offended that the modern man fantasizes about a woman like that? Are these poor qualities to put on a pedestal? If we think Bayonetta is an awesome character, are we somehow hurting the collective female consciousness? (Gamepot forum thread: Granted, B is a male fantasy…but is she a bad one? Are women offended?)

Also, an argument that Bayonetta is an empowering figure for women:

Bayonetta takes the video game sexy woman stereotype from object to subject, and it’s tremendously empowering. The title character uses the mantle of her sexuality as a power source. Between Bayonetta and her equally fierce rival, Jeane, it’s a women’s world — the boys just play in it. The Umbra Witches aren’t to be messed with. With this unique theme, the game itself is an artistic representation of the concept that female sexuality is its own kind of weapon. (Bayonetta: empowering or exploitative?)

Lastly, we’ll throw in a dose of “people who hate Bayonetta are just slut-shaming” for good measure:

I’ve learned something from this. If you are a God of war that wants to screw 2 concubines at once for red orbs it’s kosher. If you are a game designer that wants to include the function of jiggling the tits of the supporting female protagonists in a ninja game it’s okay. (Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2) If you are a shirtless devil hunter doing a rant about your newest thrusting and penetrating weapon you’re fine! Yet heaven forbid if a woman in a game is the main heroine and expresses she is comfortable with her sexuality!

Up until this point I thought we were making progress. I believed we could accept games as the enjoyable unrealistic fantasies they were, not compare them to reality, and let females have just as much mature rated kinky fun in video games as men did. (Bayonetta at her witch trial(It’s not feminists trying her by the way) – How some people take stuff [sic]to seriously and don’t realize how sexist they are being)

Those are generally the three main points that pro-Bayonetta advocates like to hit when they’re arguing for Bayonetta as a positive character in gaming. I don’t agree with any of these points, but I wanted to give the pro-Bayonetta camp a chance to speak for itself rather than trying to put words in their mouth.

Con

First of all, I think it’s important to consider the context in which Bayonetta was created. Bayonetta is not a real person, and as such we have to consider the source as well as the character herself in considering whether she is a positive figure. Bayonetta is the brainchild of Hideki Kamiya, a Japanese game designer who has been pretty open about describing Bayonetta as his idea woman. Furthermore, in reference to Bayonetta, Kamiya has said some pretty sexist things:

Well, if I had to pick one, I would say it is the scene where Joy first appears in the game, with Bayonetta and her impostor getting into a pose battle. That was my way of expressing the feminine notion that, to one woman, all other women are enemies. Even women walking by each other will check out what the other is wearing, and might smolder a bit with antagonism. Women are scary. (source: Bayonetta dev: to one woman, all other women are enemies)

Hair attacks are something that only a woman can do, it’s a woman’s beauty. So that’s why I came up with the hair idea. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

I strongly feel that women outside should dress like her. Like, when she does a hair attack, you’d see the skin. I want women to wear fashion like that. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

[in reference to Devil May Cry sequel being done by someone else] I wanted to do the sequel. I used to want to do the sequel, but now it’s like, some other guy’s chick. It’s not my chick anymore. And my chick got fooled, and played all around from all over, so I don’t want her anymore. I’m only concentrating on my current chick. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

But anyway that’s how we’re creating Bayonetta’s moves and all that, and that’s actually the most fun part of this game, thinking about all that stuff. So you will be able to see what everybody in the team likes in a girl from the finished project. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

[On whether her outfit really is just hair] Yes, completely hair. That means that she’s actually naked, but naked because that’s just hair, that’s not clothing. She has strong magical powers, she’s using her strength, her magical power to keep her hair on her body, to make it form an outfit. So when she gets weak or something, she might just lose her magical power, and if that happens…you know what that means. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

So. Bayonetta is a sexy character who technically goes around naked designed by a guy who is pretty sexist and coded by a studio of men who are all spending their time thinking about the types of sexy moves they want to see Bayonetta do. This for me is the biggest nail in the coffin.

If Bayonetta were an actual person, then it would make sense to proclaim that her sexuality is a choice and that she’s an empowering female figure. But she’s not a real woman. Everything about her was designed to be sexually appealing by a man who in his own words thinks that all women should strive to be as sexual as Bayonetta. These are not the words of someone who was looking to create a character that would turn stereotypes on their head, nor are they the words of someone who is genuinely interested in creating empowering female characters. Kamiya’s sole concern in creating Bayonetta was to create an action character who was his ideal woman and designing her for maximum sex-appeal for the straight male viewer.

It all comes back to the male gaze. (Seriously, please visit that link if the male gaze is a concept you’re not familiar with.) When looking at fictional characters like Bayonetta, you can’t disregard the creator. It’s not enough to say that she embraces her sexuality, because at no point did Bayonetta ever get to make a choice. Her creators made the choices for her. So I totally agree with Jonathan Holmes in his assessment of Bayonetta:

she’s an empty shell of a character; a shell made from here creators’ sexual fantasies, negative stereotypes, and misconceived notions of the female gender.

As for the people who claim you are somehow sexist or slut-shaming when you hate on Bayonetta, the same point applies. Bayonetta is not a person with agency, she’s a fictional creation devoid of any free will or choice. It is not slut-shaming to decry Bayonetta as a hollow stereotype whose sexuality is nothing more than a harmful perpetuation of the stereotypes surrounding female sexuality. It is a judgement on the designers and writers who created her to be what she is. Bayonetta is not for women, plain and simple. She is designed by men for men. As such, I feel no need to pretend that she’s a positive role model.

The compelling evidence

Sometimes, a picture is worth 1000 words. Moving pictures can be worth even more than that. So I took it upon myself to edit some clips together that illustrate Bayonetta at her most sexual and pair it with some appropriate music. (Although I realize that my choice in songs will date me, alas.) Therefore, I submit the following as an argument for why Bayonetta typifies the male gaze:

>Gender swap! The Magna Carta edition

>It’s been too long since I’ve done any original art for this blog, and I’ve been itching to do more! I knew as soon as I started working on that post about Hyung Tae Kim that I wanted to do another gender swap using his artwork, but it took me a while to find the time to sit down and do one.

Choosing an image was difficult. A lot of HTK’s art is heavily distorted, and I wanted to experiment with actually not correcting anatomy this time around to see what the effect would be. However, I also really wanted to see what would happen if I took on a figure with an unnecessarily detailed crotch. For some reason, I wasn’t able to find an image that was both very, very distorted AND very crotchular, so I settled for something crotchular and still a little distorted:

So this is Celestin Roaa from the Magna Carta series. This presented a huge challenge with the crazy boob perspective, and also with the costume – but I think it turned out well:

The costume presented quite the challenge, in that there wasn’t any real male equivalent of the clothing that she was wearing. I compromised and gave my gender-swapped version a codpiece and chaps. Amusingly, I didn’t realize how phallic the design on the codpiece was until after I drew it. I did try to give him a bulge, since Ken-doll superheroes with no visible bulge have always irritated me, but I think it was a bit obscured by the crazy codpiece. Alas.

The figure is softer than I intended, but I think that’s more a result of me attempting to change as few lines as possible; I changed as little as I could to have the figure still be interpreted as male. (I’ll admit the beard was me hedging my bets.)

Anyhow, in all other regards I’m quite happy with how the ridiculousness comes through. The chaps + codpiece are a wonderfully ridiculous combination, and the codpiece especially draws attention to the “HEY EVERYBODY LOOK AT MY CROTCH”-ness of the original pose. I think the low cut of the codpiece also helps make the sexualization extreme enough that it actually reads as sexualization. Were he wearing pants, I don’t think that even the bare chest would really read as extreme sexualization the way the mostly bare chest with bikini top does with the original figure.

I think next time I’ll tackle something with more obvious figure distortion, just to see what happens. I suspect it won’t translate well, since the parts of the female body that get distorted don’t really have male equivalents. But that unknown is part of why I’m doing this. I enjoy highlighting the ridiculousness of the imagery, sure. But the experimentation of what works and what doesn’t is neat too.

I’d also like to do more re-designed characters, but I was having trouble deciding which character I should take on next. Anyone have any suggestions?

>Apologetic linkspam: Have some WTF, and also some win

>

Okay, folks. As promised, here’s a bit of extra WTF to carry you through the weekend. I resolve to fail less starting next week, but as I’ve discovered I need my weekends. Those two days to detox from all the icky shit I look at during the week in the name of research for this blog are important. Srsly. You don’t even want to know some of the shit I stumbled across by accident while researching “clothing damage”. Brr.

Anyway. Here’s some WTF to console yourself with.

WTF the first: yet more creepy shit from Japan

So. There’s this thing in Japan called a hostess club, where lonely young men go to spend time with women who are employed by the club, and by spend time I mean just that. Some of them will have board games, others will just have coffee… whatever. Anyhow, I stumbled across this article about a Japanese romance game centering around young women who work at a particular hostess club.

…yeah. Because stalking women home from work is totally romantic.

Anyway. No idea on if it’s being translated – these screens are all in Japanese. But here’s a taste:

If you want to see more, you can see the full article with lots, and lots, and LOTS of creeptastic screens here. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. (And don’t get caught reading it at work.)

WTF the second: dear Nukezilla, I heart you

Okay, this isn’t so much WTF as an awesome repudiation of WTF. So remember the fail-tastic IGN Gamer Girl Christmas Gift Guide? If you haven’t seen it, please do go glance through it. Don’t bother reading the text if you’re in a hurry – just check out the photos. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

… yuck, right? I mean, I’m pretty sure anyone who would attach a photo like this to an article supposedly about gifts for “girl gamers”…

Okay, why is she making Seductive Face at SACKBOY? That’s just creeping me out.

…has never really talked to a woman that games. (And yelling ‘tits or GTFO’ over XBox Live doesn’t count, fellas. Neither does sending ASCII penises in chat.)

Anyway. John Kershaw over at NukeZilla wrote this amazing rant about how horrific that feature was. It starts off with “girls, meat, what’s the difference?” and gets better from there.

John Kershaw, I don’t know you, but you are my new hero.

WTF the third: The Bayonetta creator said something misogynist? NO! SAY IT ISN’T SO!

So everyone is familiar with Bayonetta, right? I have to say that she’s hands down one of the best female characters to come out of the gaming industry in the last few years. She’s strong, well rounded, not sexualized and… okay even I can’t maintain the sarcasm.

Anyway. She’s inspired a fair amount of controversy, which isn’t too surprising since one of her main attacks involves spreading her impossibly long legs to kill things with her ladybits sword.

Bayonetta. Feminist icon and role model.

Anyway, Hideki Kamiya – the creator of Bayonetta – apparently thinks that all women view each other as enemies. Which begs the question… He designed a title with a female lead… why?

Oh right! The tits. I mean, sorry – the ass. Almost forgot. Kamiya is clearly an ass man.

…okay, that’s enough fail. So here, have some win:

Troll data analysis

Blogger Kirbybits got involved in that whole Penny Arcade internets fiasco and got a lot of internet traffic to her blog. Interestingly, she decided to analyze comments to see what sort of trends troll comments display. The results are super-interesting! You can read the post here, but be warned there’s lots of super-graphic language involving threats of rape.

And that’s all I have time for today. I’ll check in a few times this weekend just to make sure people aren’t setting themselves (or each other) on fire in the comment threads, but otherwise I’ll see you Monday!

>Yuna: yes I liked X-2. Suck it up and deal. (possible spoiler warning)

>I’m having a really shitty day, so I thought that I’d write about something that I liked rather than going off on another rant that I really don’t have the mental energy for today. So today, here’s a love letter (so to speak) to one of the greatest female characters ever, who – like Lightning – would have been perfect in every way if she’d been wearing pants:

There’s a reason why I’m addicted to Square and BioWare games – both companies know how to write some fantastic female characters. And Yuna was the first character I ever encountered in my gaming life that made me sit back and say ‘holy crap, she is such a fantastic female character!’.

Okay. So enough peaens to Yuna. Just what makes her so awesome? Let’s start with the fact that she’s a complete and total badass. The first time you meet Yuna, she’s tired and sweaty from just having completed a huge ordeal – successfully summoning her first aeon:

Now that I’m a summoner, I could totally feed you your heart on a plate. Just sayin’.

So right off the bat, Yuna is established as a powerful character. She’s no fragile little flower, waiting for a big, strong, manly hero to solve her problems. Aeons are entities of unbelievable power, so being able to call and control them confers with it a certain base level of badassery. I mean, when someone can call something like this to do their bidding:

(Oh, she can also walk on water, bee tee dubs.)

…it pretty much means you shouldn’t mess with them.

What I liked even better about Yuna was that she didn’t fall into the “powerful weakling” trap that’s so common with many female characters in JRPGs. From the outset, Yuna was the leader of the party who had the skills and knowledge to get the job done. Really, Tidus – the protagonist – was just along for the ride. And how great is that? How many times in gaming do you see a female character really, truly in charge? Even the strongest male character, Auron, deferred to Yuna’s judgement when they were at odds.

And let’s face it, it’s not like Yuna’s job was all sunshine and puppies. Nope. She was walking a road that ended, as far as she knew, with certain death. What’s more, she had to deal with the aftermath of disasters that left hundreds of people dead in their wake, and she was constantly being scrutinized as a public symbol of hope. But Yuna never whined or complained like you’d expect of a more strereotyped character. She did what she had to do.

One of the things that I loved most about Yuna was that she was either the saddest happy character or the happiest sad character I’ve encountered. Both roles are pretty stereotyped – pretty much any JRPG you play will have at least one genki girl. And many JRPGs and anime have stereotyped sad girls (often sad girls in snow). I love the fact that Yuna managed to turn both stereotypes on their head. When Yuna is sad, the player is sad because she’s a genuinely endearing character. And when she’s happy, it doesn’t ring false like it would with a genki girl.

Furthermore, her sadness doesn’t detract from her strength or otherwise make her seem like a weaker character. She has her moment of sadness, then she straps on her big girl boots and gets on with what she has to do. Her sadness, rather than being seen as a weakness of character, helps to define her strength because even when she is most sad she doesn’t let that sadness control her life. That’s powerful stuff.

Let’s face it. If you found out the person you fell in love with wasn’t real, you’d be pretty sad too.

The thing that makes me appreciate it all the more is that Yuna’s sadness in X-2 mainly stems from not being able to be with Tidus. And that makes me appreciate her refusal to sit around and mope even more. She’s moving forward with her life, not sitting around and being all weepy because of a man. Yuna’s shenanigans in X-2 aren’t all about saving the day, sometimes they’re about having fun, pure and simple. And sure X-2 was full of fluffy “girl power” moments involving Rikku and Paine, but frankly I think that’s the sort of thing that gaming needs more of – not less.

In the end, Yuna manages to be a strong, well-rounded character who never loses sight of herself or her ideals. And maybe best of all, she manages to save the day and rescue the prince instead of being the damsel in distress. At the end, Yuna’s actions bring Tidus back – which wouldn’t have happened if she’d sat around being a sad girl in snow (or in sand, considering that Besaid is pretty tropical.)

I’m not too proud to admit that I cried.

Now if only more women in games were written as well as Yuna, I’d have a lot less to complain about. …and okay it would be nice if she was wearing shorts that didn’t expose the lower half of her buttocks. Details…