Boobs in Gaming – Overdone or Just Need Balance?
The last blog post inspired some interesting thoughts and opinions. So I did a little surfing and found some interesting articles (with pictures of course) that touched on the issue as well.
Soul Calibur IV keeps laying on the sexuality
This is a particularly interesting topic in light of the controversy the MMORTS Evony faced recently. The blatant and progressively excessive use of sex in their advertising crossed over into the embarrassing and inappropriate zone.
Are boobs (or sex) used too much in gaming? My personal thought is that no, they are not used to much. I actually think there is a shortage of well done, M rated content in games. I hate seeing games get censored in the US – particularly when the mature content is actually part of the storyline (as with The Witcher).
Before you attack me with torches and pitchforks, let me add that I think there is, however, a total lack of balance here. Where’s the beef(cake)?
Particularly in graphical games, it is perfectly reasonable for people to want their character to be attractive or even hot. Some people may even want to create a persona that drips with sex appeal. But why is this usually only an option for female avatars? Why can’t someone make a really buff, rippling, super manly, romance novel cover model looking guy?
I often joke that it seems like MMO companies put their top artists and animators on female character models, boobs, and rear ends. Then when it comes time to draw the male character models, they get some interns and janitors and give them 12 hours with a Wacom tablet.
Sex can be overdone in games and in game marketing. Boobs can be overdone. But developers and marketers wouldn’t do this if not for a simple fact – people like boobs. Not just men. Women like boobs too. You need look no further than women’s magazines like Vogue, Cosmo, or Shape to see this. Put less specifically, we like attractive people. We like to look at pretty people. I’d just like to see some balance so women gamers have something nice to look at too, and so male gamers who WANT to look “hot” can do so.
I have no problem with M rated content personally, whether it’s nudity(male or female), over the top violence, etc. If it’s important to the work of art you are trying to create, put it in there.
However, I think women are sexualized to a gratuitous level in gaming(as well as more mainstream media). You don’t need nudity to objectify a woman, and in fact, I’d say the games that I’ve played that included nudity/adult sexual content actually treated the female characters FAR more responsibly than other games. As much as I like the genre, fighting games such as the Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive series objectify women too much.
Tomb Raider is guilty of it too. Which is particularly sad as Lara Croft could have easily been made into something that could be a very positive inspiration to young girls.
Ultimately, I think a game that includes a few naked breasts will often objectify women less than games where every female character has gigantic breasts and always run around wearing next to nothing.
Interesting observation. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that when games keep the nude/mature/sexual stuff when it is specifically called for (a love scene, espionage at a fashion show, or whatever) it is fine and natural. But when the characters are running around hyper sexualized 24/7, no matter what, that’s when it crosses the line for you?
That is an interesting point if I understand it properly, and I agree with it.
Having a naked woman in a shower in a game makes sense. Having every barmaid topless just to keep boys/guys excited about your game does not make sense, and is pretty bad.
Right, that pretty much nails what I was saying.
You might have noticed already that they westernized Aion enough to remove nipple clamps and thong armor. I guess the Aion angels are now even appropriate for people living in the bible belt.
I wonder why most games, including Aion, fail to have sexy, manly, whatever kind of attractive male avatars. Or is it just me, but I could create 100 attractive female avatars in the time I could come up with 1-2 male avatars that I would find acceptable.
I wonder if women really want male avatars to be extreme bodybuilders with Matt Damon’s pale babyface!
A friend of mine just started playing the Mortal Online beta, and apparently there’s a bit of drama about the nudity in that game. There’s full frontal nudity of both the male and female variety.
I think having the option to be naked in an mmorpg is reasonable. People didn’t abuse it nearly as much in Age of Conan as I thought they would. I’d generally see maybe one or two streakers a day out of the hundreds of players I saw.
I think part of what’s going on in MO is people are getting a bad impression of the game because their characters apparently start out naked. I think that forcing nudity on you as soon as you start the game is in pretty poor taste. I’m wondering if this is actually intended, or if they just haven’t coded in starter clothing/gear yet(as it is still beta).
I find this post really interesting, along with the comments to it!
Being a straight female gamer, I am able to appreciate sexy female video game characters. Hell, some of them are friggin HOT!! You’re completely right, even women like to see boobage now and again. In WoW, I actually have no male characters. All of my chars are female and I make them as visualy appealling as I can.
Does this have anything to do with what each sex considers “sexy”? It’s not hard to figure out what men find sexy in a woman … but to be honest, some of the things I find sexy in a man have nothing to do with looks. Confience and humour are things I find very hot in a guy but they are not things that can be seen.
I know that I’m a fan of boobs. I like looking at them, and I like other people looking at my character going “wow, she chose the BIG boobs”. It’s fun and harmless. People getting up in arms over the representation of boobs in video games is just ridiculous – look at our culture. Everything imagineable is marketed with sex appeal. For example, lets take clothes. There are no catalogs out there filled with fat women and balding men, or, to be blunt, ugly people, because then no one would buy the crappy clothes. Now, put them on big tittied godesses and smokin hot studs and its another matter entirely. People shouldn’t be such hypocrites.
LOL. Well said. We like hot and sexy people. It is not even a modern thing. While the specifics of how we define beauty change over time, the fact that we appreciate beauty itself doesn’t change.
Boobs specifically represent beauty, fertility, and many other positive aspects. Its really hard not to love them.
But again… game developers/artists: How about a little fair play here? I want my male characters to be equally hot and buff.
Regarding the male hot and buff chars, I wonder if they are and we just do not see it as males… but as I already said above, I often feel that male character models do not get as much attention. I know there are female artists out there, maybe one should have a heart and give the male avatars some love, too.
More often than not, it’s been my experience that using sex to sell your product means it can’t sell in any other way. As such, I’m not likely to buy it, because one, I’m not a fan of an emphasis on sexuality, and two, even if I did want to indulge in sexual exploits, there’s plenty of free stuff out there.
That may very well be true Tesh, but for MMOs I think the sex is part of the product rather than just a false veneer.
There is definitely a visual aspect of graphical MMOs, and “hot” looking avatars adds something positive to those games.
So in that regard, boobs and beefcake can be a very honest part of marketing – assuming the game itself has boobs and beefcake as well.
I played Perfect World for a few days, and a big part of their game design and programming effort seems to be in providing a robust character generator. The gameplay itself is hackneyed, derivative and the same old DIKU drudgery. Their advertising does play up the characters. It’s certainly honest in that such is where they stand out from other games in their weight class… but that’s not really what I’m calling out.
My point is that they aren’t banking on radically new or interesting (or fun) gameplay, they are banking on the characters and the graphical veneer. The advertising may indeed be an accurate representation of what the title has to offer. Thing is, the title itself doesn’t offer much beyond that, and *that* is what I’m complaining about.
I don’t have a problem with boobs or pretty female characters.
But when I get the overall feeling that the entire game is designed to appeal to a male audience (ie. people who aren’t me) then … it’s offputting. And the way they sometimes use sex to sell often gives me that impression. It’s almost like saying ‘we don’t really care about female players, they aren’t the audience we’re trying to attract’ – and that’s fine. But I’d be more likely to buy a game that COULD convince me that I was a core part of the audience.
[...] EAFAIL advertising campaign, there’s been some discussion about the use of sex to sell games. Muckbeast points out that both men and women like looking at boobs and that people like their characters to look [...]
Great boobs i love to play this game in privately
Im a young guy an I can amit I like boobs and “hot” avatars but it’s getting a little much. Especaily when to ads for these games, and to be frank I’m tired of being distraced but so much sex when I’m trying to play or just surfing the web.
ON the second note I’d love to be able to make my avatars look good too but im usaly stuck with second rate avatars wether is online or offline look at Divinity II Ego Draconis, males get about 3 faces and hair styles women get about 5-7.
Too true Kasa. Making a studly, good looking male avatar in most MMORPGs is a total impossibility.
Yeah, you’re lucky if you can make a badass looking male character in a MMO. CoH/CoV you obviously could. My male undead rogue in WoW looked totally metal, but the male alliance characters were just so wussy looking.