Whats Wrong with the Games Industry and Female Characters, Visible in Searches for this Blog.

It has been months since I have come here, and for those who pay attention, sorry. Some may notice I have removed a couple posts, well more on that tomorrow.

Any way, I decided to check the search terms being used to find this blog. They are mostly fine, stuff like “saints row 5” or “change soldier in warface” but one very long entry caught my eye. It read “it would be funny if you could make the female soldiers on cod ghosts to wear bikinis.” Ugh. Now I tried to see how easy I got linked to because of this. I certainly wasn’t on the first 5 pages of Google, so whoever this was either used another search engine or really dug to find me.

Lets deconstruct this, as it really points out a major flaw with how the games industry, and many male gamers (many means a lot, not all), view woman.

Firstly, I am slightly mystified by “funny.” What is funny about women in bikinis? If you asked this of what ever, please do enlighten me, because I fail to see the humour value. Do you go to the beach and die of laughter? Is there something about a barely covered woman that tickles your funny bone? Ok, that last bit just grossed me out a little (think and you’ll get it). Anyway, what about it makes it funny. I presume it would be the daftness of the concept of woman running into battle wearing a bikini, especially on snowy maps. It smacks a little of Arthur and his knights riding imaginary horses throughout the entire Monty Python and the Holy Grail film. Yet, why is it funny for just the woman to be in bikini? Why not also the men? Could they not wear Budgie Smugglers? That’s a Banana Hammock for you Americans. Certainly Mount Your Friends thinks so, in a deeply disturbing wash my mind with bleach kinda way. But then again, seeing men run into battle nearly naked, or even completely, is often reserved for the ultimate of badasses, think the Beowulf and 300 films. So in what way is it different for woman?

Well that brings me onto my next point, its for the process of ogling them. There really is no other other reason for it. Look to games like Dead or Alive: Xtreme, a game made for the sole purpose of getting all their female characters in bikinis, or Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Sqaud, which combines my least two favourite things, Zombies and needless objectification. Ok, both of those are Japanese examples, but the make a lot of them (don’t even get me started on the Vampire/Demon/sun-allergic beat-em-up where you strip the baddies, although many of them are male… um I have no idea if that balances out now in my head). Sex sells. Why? Unfortunately, for all that our society is still making progress on the equality front, straight, white cis-men still have the highest disposable income. No offence if you are by the way, it certainly isn’t your fault, society as a whole still needs fixing. Back to my point! Most white, straight cis-men will be drawn to a game even more if it has even a little sex appeal. So games will often cater to that. Is it wrong? Yes. Will it ever stop? Unlikely. As long as “it would be funny if you could make the female soldiers on cod ghosts to wear bikinis” is still a phrase games will likely answer the call.

I can hear someone now (hopefully not anyone reading this blog) “But Emily (have I told you my name yet? Well I have now) didn’t you previously say you were ok with nudity as long as it serves a purpose? How is this any different?” Well my imaginary MRA sounding chum, My description of purpose was more or less aligned towards how the audience should interpret what is being shown to them. I do mention how arousal can help convey emotions, and nudity, or near nudity, can be used to convey this. However, in COD: Ghosts, you are in a war zone, shooting baddies, who in return are shooting you. You should feel exhilarated, pumped up, alive, not running around aroused. If you were playing against me, you wouldn’t get much of a look, as a large hole would be were your character’s eyes used to be. Of course you wouldn’t be playing against me, I’ll be of playing something decent while you sit around drooling over a bunch of polygons.

Warface: Boob WIndows

Trigger Warnings: Misogyny

Sorry I am a little late, but University has been a pain recently. While doing some work, I decided to download a Free-to-Play game by Crytek called Warface. I had seen some videos and thought it looked like some fun. After downloading it onto my Xbox 360 I obviously loaded it up. After a short update I came to the character select and was a little disappointed. Why couldn’t I pick a female soldier? Most modern shooters have recognised their female audience and included them. As the game is in Beta they were looking for feedback so I decided to take to the forums to mention my annoyance. Then I thought; “Maybe they haven’t been added yet, perhaps they will come in a future update.” So I used Google and found this:

At least the graphics are nice.

Yes, they are on the PC versions, probably just a little bit. Hang on a minute, is that cleavage? unfortunately yes it is. Just like Power Girl, the clothing contains a very handy Boob Window. I wonder what protection that offers? Now, these are apparently the Russian skins, and we will likely end up with our own here in Europe and American as apparently they are different in China (though still apparently sexualized) due to cultural differences in what is considered attractive. Thais right, the female characters are being designed to be attractive, not realistic (though that is kinda obvious). This is only on the female characters, although some mechanic which change a little too (according the Escapist gun recoil also varies). Male characters remain the same. Now I might be able to accept these female models if they were some form of insurgent group, as they wouldn’t have the need to follow Military doctrine and woman do sometimes show flesh for a variety of reasons (from trying to be attractive to men to the Russian Rad Fem groups who paint their slogans across their bare breasts). However, their male counter parts depict a very different style:

This is the second Decade of the 21st Century and this Shite is considered fine?

Full body armor, even the sniper who are usually depicted as fighting light so they can move around faster has armor on. I suppose the female Rifleman is a little better but it doesn’t really seem like it’s what a female soldier should wear. If ether of these two were close enough to some fire explosion, like a petrol bomb, that they didn’t die but got caught in the flames, the men would likely get minor burns while the woman would suffer major burns because they have flesh on display.

The design of the female characters has of course been defended. What is the defense? Well they were created according to player feedback. Obviously shooters attract a large male player base but girls such as myself, my sister and several friends play them too. We don’t nearly number as much as our male counterparts however, so if they all say “Lets have sexy Ladies!” we can’t have nearly enough numbers to come back with “No, let’s have realistic female soldiers. I certainly wouldn’t snipe with a top that shows my tits to whoever is firing back!” Here is a funny thing as well, when the Lead Producer Joshua Howard was interviewed by Wired (where he defended the decision) he mentioned  “it’s our job to maintain thatWarface has an authenticity to it that makes sense for us.” Apparently revealing female uniforms make sense to Crytek then. Yet, other game companies don’t seem to agree. Here is a female soldier for COD: Ghosts:

Helmets are optional.

Fully geared up, minus helmet but I think that’s because this is a character from the co-op alien thing so we would want to focus on her character (and COD male characters rarely wear helmets in campaigns too). Going back to the fact that the female models vary depending on region, but the males don’t, it suggests a major issue. What also changes depending on region in other organisations? Adverts, slogans and names. And frankly I think this is the reason for the female models. They are simply there to add sex appeal to attract the male audience. Its sort of like “Why Play Ghosts were girls wear real armor when you could play Warface and get to see Tits!?!” An interesting experiment, at the time of writing this I typed in “Warface female soldiers” into Google Image Search I got back a lot of images from Warface, with a couple of exceptions, with several being the Sniper and her Power Girl like Boob Window. I then tried “Call of Duty Ghosts female soldiers” and the fifth image was the comparison image from Warface. I think that helps to some up this insulting decision. It is Click Baiting on a game wide scale. I posted on the forums, and have yet to see a response. Likely I will be told that my concerns have been heard but I am merely one in a million. I urge others, whether you girls or guys, to go on Crytek’s forums and websites and tell them exactly what you think of their Misogynistic views.