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beneficii
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29 Jul 2015, 7:12 pm

Now, granted, I do like Final Fantasy series, at least up through the PSX games, but one thing I thought strange and made me feel uncomfortable playing the series was the tendency for female characters to be scantily clad. I first played FF4, when I was like 7 or 8, and noticed the 2 female characters Rosa and Rydia (when she grows up) being scantily clad. I thought that this was strange. The only time when I saw girls and women this scantily clad was either at the pool or at the beach. Why couldn't they just wear normal clothes (or at least clothes as normal as the male characters)? Would it have cost sales so much if the women wore normal clothes instead of the bikini-style wear that they had?


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Fnord
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29 Jul 2015, 7:39 pm

Three questions:

1) Which sex - male or female - is in the majority among the game-designing community?

2) Which sex - male or female - plays most of those video games?

3) Which sex - male or female - are those games written for?

If you answered "male" to more than one of these questions, then I leave it up to you to figure out why women are presented as scantily-clad eye candy in those games.



Skibz888
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29 Jul 2015, 7:46 pm

Fnord wrote:
Three questions:

1) Which sex - male or female - is in the majority among the game-designing community?

2) Which sex - male or female - plays most of those video games?

3) Which sex - male or female - are those games written for?

If you answered "male" to more than one of these questions, then I leave it up to you to figure out why women are presented as scantily-clad eye candy in those games.


Actually, 2 is debatable. Polls show that female gamers have come to equal male gamers, and in areas such as PC gaming, they actually outnumber males:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/th ... gamergate/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... oesnt-know
http://www.pcgamer.com/researchers-find ... ber-males/
http://www.statista.com/statistics/2323 ... eo-gamers/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/fem ... mographic/

And so on and so forth. It's 1 and 3 which are the problem.



beneficii
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29 Jul 2015, 7:59 pm

Is this sort of fan service really a requirement for many male players, like it would make or break the game for them? FF4 and other FF games have so much going for them outside of fan service, like compelling stories, interesting characters, great music (I love Nobuo Uematsu!), well-done FMV's (from FF7 on), and other factors.


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Jacoby
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29 Jul 2015, 8:17 pm

Skibz888 wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Three questions:

1) Which sex - male or female - is in the majority among the game-designing community?

2) Which sex - male or female - plays most of those video games?

3) Which sex - male or female - are those games written for?

If you answered "male" to more than one of these questions, then I leave it up to you to figure out why women are presented as scantily-clad eye candy in those games.


Actually, 2 is debatable. Polls show that female gamers have come to equal male gamers, and in areas such as PC gaming, they actually outnumber males:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/th ... gamergate/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... oesnt-know
http://www.pcgamer.com/researchers-find ... ber-males/
http://www.statista.com/statistics/2323 ... eo-gamers/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/fem ... mographic/

And so on and so forth. It's 1 and 3 which are the problem.


Just because a person plays games on the their mobile device or Facebook I wouldn't call them a "gamer" at least in the traditional old school sense. That's a new market and not what I think of when I think video games. Like my mom probably spends hours every week playing Candy Crush, does that make her a hardcore gamer? I would say the old market is still largely dominated by men but I do think think there a lot more women playing these days even on online FPS which is abuse I will not put up with. They apparently enjoy these games believe it or not so maybe they're not in support It's a market economy, if there is a demand for more female orientated games then it will be met but that doesn't mean censorship of what others like is the answer which is the real desire for some here.

I would say if anything the medium has been heavily censored and controlled as far as content goes. It is so ridiculous that we're still arguing about video game cleavage like the 1950s consider the current state of popular culture, only in the repressive world of video games is this type of criticism even given the time of day. What it comes down to is that it is seen as a children's medium and people always want to force their views and morals on them, people need to understand that adults play games to and I believe in free expression with no exceptions.



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29 Jul 2015, 8:27 pm

It's not just about "video game cleavage". It's about how women are portrayed overall.

Give women the same armor and uniforms as men, and you will see that the women's armor is more tightly fitting to the women's exaggerated proportions.

And where women are not player characters, they are portrayed in even more revealing clothing than the NPC men.

It's all about providing a visually gratifying experience for the male gamer, with little or no support designed in for female interests.



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29 Jul 2015, 8:35 pm

Jacoby wrote:
Just because a person plays games on the their mobile device or Facebook I wouldn't call them a "gamer" at least in the traditional old school sense. That's a new market and not what I think of when I think video games. Like my mom probably spends hours every week playing Candy Crush, does that make her a hardcore gamer? I would say the old market is still largely dominated by men but I do think think there a lot more women playing these days even on online FPS which is abuse I will not put up with. They apparently enjoy these games believe it or not so maybe they're not in support It's a market economy, if there is a demand for more female orientated games then it will be met but that doesn't mean censorship of what others like is the answer which is the real desire for some here.


Mobile gaming undoubtedly pushes the female gaming demographic upwards, but the numbers for console gaming are hardly insignificant. In the case of PC gaming, female and male gamers are equal and that's not because of any extraneous factors such as mobile games; all serious female gamers I know are PC users and most of the PC gaming communities I've been a part of have a large female demographic. Of course, I can't help but feel there's significantly less sexism in exclusively PC games over console games.



Jacoby
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29 Jul 2015, 8:41 pm

Fnord wrote:
It's not just about "video game cleavage". It's about how women are portrayed overall.

Give women the same armor and uniforms as men, and you will see that the women's armor is more tightly fitting to the women's exaggerated proportions.

And where women are not player characters, they are portrayed in even more revealing clothing than the NPC men.

It's all about providing a visually gratifying experience for the male gamer, with little or no support designed in for female interests.


I don't buy it, look at other popular culture geared towards women and tell me where that is reflected. Video games appear heavily censored compared to other traditional forms of media, I find the fact that people are even thinking about try to control it to be disturbing. The interest of "realistic portrayals" isn't the interest of the consumer, that's about ideology and not reflected by the rest of society.



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29 Jul 2015, 10:08 pm

Jacoby wrote:
Fnord wrote:
It's not just about "video game cleavage". It's about how women are portrayed overall. Give women the same armor and uniforms as men, and you will see that the women's armor is more tightly fitting to the women's exaggerated proportions. And where women are not player characters, they are portrayed in even more revealing clothing than the NPC men. It's all about providing a visually gratifying experience for the male gamer, with little or no support designed in for female interests.
I don't buy it, look at other popular culture geared towards women and tell me where that is reflected. Video games appear heavily censored compared to other traditional forms of media, I find the fact that people are even thinking about try to control it to be disturbing. The interest of "realistic portrayals" isn't the interest of the consumer, that's about ideology and not reflected by the rest of society.
I've heard this argument before ...

... from guys that also admitted video games were the only places where they could see what "real" women looked like. :lol: :roll:

If soft-core porn wasn't so important to them in their miserable little lives, they wouldn't be arguing so fiercely to keep it.



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29 Jul 2015, 10:26 pm

Fnord wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
Fnord wrote:
It's not just about "video game cleavage". It's about how women are portrayed overall. Give women the same armor and uniforms as men, and you will see that the women's armor is more tightly fitting to the women's exaggerated proportions. And where women are not player characters, they are portrayed in even more revealing clothing than the NPC men. It's all about providing a visually gratifying experience for the male gamer, with little or no support designed in for female interests.
I don't buy it, look at other popular culture geared towards women and tell me where that is reflected. Video games appear heavily censored compared to other traditional forms of media, I find the fact that people are even thinking about try to control it to be disturbing. The interest of "realistic portrayals" isn't the interest of the consumer, that's about ideology and not reflected by the rest of society.
I've heard this argument before ...

... from guys that also admitted video games were the only places where they could see what "real" women looked like. :lol: :roll:

If soft-core porn wasn't so important to them in their miserable little lives, they wouldn't be arguing so fiercely to keep it.


and I've heard the same argument from religious conservative concerned mothers, personally I think people should mind their business and not judge others but that's just me.



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29 Jul 2015, 11:07 pm

Nudity doesn't even matter when you're young.. you have no prejudices at that age, so seeing nudity is pretty normal. It doesn't become a problem until society inflicts a social stigma on your state of mind to have some sort of prejudice against public nudity. It's understandable to have these prejudices on nudity and existence in its bare form in general. The problem comes into place when exposure is used to entice or manipulate people into a predisposition of lust. It comes in many forms and it isn't just lust. it's broadcasting and commercialization as well.

I'm not saying I know the solution, I'm just saying it's a double-edged sword.

The more that's concealed, the less it takes to entice.
The more that's revealed, the easier it is to find your place.

This isn't some big secret, or unknown thing. It should be pretty obvious to everyone.
Same as how each and every one's prejudice gives them tunnel vision. Everything is always the same in a tunnel, no more, no less, and the only thing that's in there is pride in fallacy.



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30 Jul 2015, 1:07 am

beneficii wrote:
Is this sort of fan service really a requirement for many male players, like it would make or break the game for them? FF4 and other FF games have so much going for them outside of fan service, like compelling stories, interesting characters, great music (I love Nobuo Uematsu!), well-done FMV's (from FF7 on), and other factors.



It often is, yes.

The internet itself confirms just how strongly this can affect people. Consider things like hentai, yaoi, shota, loli, and so on. Those things are all over the Net, to the point where you might crash into some of them when not looking at all, depending on your browser's current settings. And sometimes even DESPITE it's current settings. But yeah, those things are EVERYWHERE. There's so much of them, and tons of them sell for actual money. Hell, this happens even at anime conventions; there's a huge one here that appears every May (near Chicago), and in the giant vendor hall, most years there's always this one hard-to-miss booth that has TONS of that stuff. It is hard to miss because one of the people working that booth will continuously shout about it at the top of his lungs; even with the constant cacophony of the overall event and bazillions of people in that place, he can STILL be overheard. Not that he NEEDS to yell... the lines of people waiting for a look at said booth says alot on it's own.

And of course it's not all porn, specifically, that you might find on the net or whatever, but often characters that are setup just to look hot, and that attracts as well.

Developers and publishers these days understand and are aware of the draw of all of this, so it is put into the games to help them sell. Even if the "armor" that results from it is amazingly illogical.


Fnord wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
Fnord wrote:
It's not just about "video game cleavage". It's about how women are portrayed overall. Give women the same armor and uniforms as men, and you will see that the women's armor is more tightly fitting to the women's exaggerated proportions. And where women are not player characters, they are portrayed in even more revealing clothing than the NPC men. It's all about providing a visually gratifying experience for the male gamer, with little or no support designed in for female interests.
I don't buy it, look at other popular culture geared towards women and tell me where that is reflected. Video games appear heavily censored compared to other traditional forms of media, I find the fact that people are even thinking about try to control it to be disturbing. The interest of "realistic portrayals" isn't the interest of the consumer, that's about ideology and not reflected by the rest of society.
I've heard this argument before ...

... from guys that also admitted video games were the only places where they could see what "real" women looked like. :lol: :roll:

If soft-core porn wasn't so important to them in their miserable little lives, they wouldn't be arguing so fiercely to keep it.



Dont be so quick to judge... you cant know that of a person unless you know them closely enough. You dont have to be "miserable" in order to get into such things.

I can get into that sort of thing myself, to an extent (though anything I look at tends to be VERY tame, regardless of just what "it" happens to be, even if it does involve nudity or whatever) yet... miserable? I'll not go into too much detail, because people get weird about it and sometimes have negative reactions, but I'm not exactly in a position that anyone in their right mind would consider "miserable". Were I to try to claim such a state to friends of mine, they'd probably complain/yell a bunch and then resent me for it for weeks.

And no, a lack of a "relationship" doesnt immediately cause a state of being miserable, before someone says that. I dont have one, this is true, but I also specifically dont WANT one. I'd accept a sack of bees before I'd go for that sort of thing. I dont understand the assumption that people often have... that if you dont have a boyfriend/girlfriend you must be in a sad state. But then, I dont understand ALOT of assumptions people make.


My point though is that it's damn silly and also just bloody stupid to make such an illogical assumption about someone like that, particularly someone you dont know well, or dont know at all.



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30 Jul 2015, 3:25 am

Misery wrote:
My point though is that it's damn silly and also just bloody stupid to make such an illogical assumption about someone like that, particularly someone you dont know well, or dont know at all.


To be fair, there's only so many assumptions one can make about the intentions of people who decry peoples' desire to see less jiggly, big-breasted video game women objectified in skimpy clothing as "disturbing" and "repressive" "censorship".



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30 Jul 2015, 3:45 am

Skibz888 wrote:
Misery wrote:
My point though is that it's damn silly and also just bloody stupid to make such an illogical assumption about someone like that, particularly someone you dont know well, or dont know at all.


To be fair, there's only so many assumptions one can make about the intentions of people who decry peoples' desire to see less jiggly, big-breasted video game women objectified in scantily-clad clothing as "disturbing" "censorship".


the objectification of jiggly, big breasts has been around for a lot longer than videogames. i can see how females in particular can be offended by seeing this so much in videogames. it doesn't necessarily have to be jealousy, but disgust at man's objectification of women in general.

someone has mentioned this already i think, but the sad thing is that the audience these jigglies are mainly targeted towards are young virgins. Beyond masturbation, and initiation, boobs aren't even that big of a deal aesthetically. if you don't objectify women, you can share moments with them. otherwise, you're just selfishly masturbating to your desire of them, and it's completely one-sided.

The point is that the producers are selling out to the many people that want to see that sort of stuff, and there really is nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't blame the producers themselves, people get what they gave. they wanted, and they received.

All of man isn't just going to wake up one day and say, hey, what's the deal with jiggly tits anyways? why does everyone love them so much? That will never happen. It's just a part of society, and people have to learn to accept it...no matter how humiliating it can be. We're all subject to humiliation in one way or another anyways, so join the club. It's not like utopia is at the end of a long line of insults...just die anyways regardless.



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30 Jul 2015, 5:48 am

The problem isn't with sexual objectification. Well...okay, yeah, that is a problem in and of itself, but in terms of video games, it's part of a larger issue. "Gamergate" had just as much to do with in-game sexism as it did with grown adults arguing the merits of whether or not it was acceptable to threaten women. Adding women's soccer teams to soccer games shouldn't result in boycotts because "that darn feminism is ruining everything". That mentality is disgusting to me, and that mentality is what causes these issues.

And as far as game development goes, using "well, sexism is always going to be a problem" to justify objectification is pathetic. If someone's enjoyment of a video game hinges entirely on having the female characters overly sexualized and not on the story, gameplay or the characters themselves, that's their problem. The decision to dress female characters in sensible clothing should not be a hot-button issue as to whether or not a game is any good, unless it's a game specifically made for exploitation (e.g. those 'Dead or Alive' beach games). Game developers should have no obligation to cater to the whims of horny virgins, not in an era when hardcore pornography is easily and freely available at the click of a mouse.

Look, I work on horror movies, all of which have had gratuitous nudity...I get the appeal, but it's exactly what it is: gratuitous. It may be a movie and not a game, but stuff like 'Mad Max: Fury Road' has proven that you can have a quality product which appeals to both male and female demographics and attracts both critical and popular acclaim without needless sexualization and objectification. There's no excuse to fight for skimpy clothing and overtly sexualized features on women in video games except for one: "I want to look at women as objects". It's not even real women, which makes this whole argument even grosser.



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30 Jul 2015, 6:05 am

the dead or alive series is actually pretty good despite its sexual objectification. a lot of games are filled with big ole titties just like anime, and that's just how it's going to be as long as people ask for it. trying to put an end to it would be pretty foolish, but i can understand why some people would find it offensive.