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Sexualisation and body image in video games
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- Опубликовано: 14 авг 2024
- This is my attempt to dive into the divisive and very emotionally charged world of sexualisation and body image in relation to video games.
Please keep things civil and respectful in the comments.
Sexualisation/body image meta analysis 2022 - www.sciencedir....
Sex sells - But only to males article -
www.marketingw...
Study with territory control experiment -
med.stanford.e...
00:00 Intro
1:41 The Problem
2:59 Physical representation - Male
8:56 Physical representation - Female
11:40 Physical representation Conclusion
14:49 Women in gaming and game development
15:16 Early game development landscape
17:48 Gender comparison of solo developers
20:26 Sex and marketing
25:01 Female targeted games and sexualisation
26:26 Does sexualisation lead to sexism?
30:05 Does sexualisation lead to sexism? Conclusion
33:05 Sexualisation and player immersion
34:44 Sexualisation and player immersion - What to do about it
42:27 Closing thoughts
![Finesse2Tymes & Og Boo Dirty - Real Recognize Real [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3xb4bl5PWF8/mqdefault.jpg)
ATTENTION! - PART 2 IS UP ON MY CHANNEL PAGE and expands on what I've said here. Feel free to check it out
Heyo, Thanks for stopping by, Please keep things civil and respectful in the comments. I know this is a divisive and emotionally charged subject so I'm being a little hopeful but hey, gotta try.
EDIT - Guys, I play Nikke a lot and I really like the game. I was just trying to explain the argument that many feminists make about objectification, don't get it twisted, I'm not coming for your waifus
Glad to hear it! You like Chun-Li's thighs: I like 2B's magnificient behind. (^w^)
Seriously though, you make some very good points throughout, and although you did have me a bit worried at the start that you might be on the side of the feminists, you came at this issue from both sides of the aisle, which was great. The only thing I would pull you up on is that Japan is a very different beast when it comes to male/female representation in the video game industry. For sure, some of the best stuff I've ever come in contact with was by women. Unlike the West, which seems to have a very skewed attitude towards such things, who better to know exactly what men like to gawp at than the women themselves? (=^_^=)
I went from hating this game and any weird, weeby gacha-related stuff with my literal life and avoiding it with a ten-foot pole, to actually being on the verge of playing NIKKE due to friends in the Discord server convincing me.. What am I doing with my life, lol
@@LavaCreeperPeople Yeah, I think we've all been there at some point. Speaking for myself, there was a time just after I started studying Japanese back in the mid 90s - round about the time the WWW launched as it happens - that I was so overwhelmed by the culture shock that was Japan, I actually swore off certain newsgroups and sites for months due to the ambivalence. Heh, it took a certain Sailor Mars doujinshi to lure me back and I haven't felt that way since. Indeed, for me, the language is what makes it all exciting, even more so than the imagery itself. (^_~)
"Sexy and I Know It" lmfao
@@sasamisa1806 :D!
as an artist there's one thing to say: drawing muscles is fun and shows anatomy knowledge
The human body in its prime athletic condition is fulfilling and fun to draw.
As an artist that sucks at anatomy, that why i draw em chubby lmao
As another artist trying to learn anatomy, I imagine it’s fun to draw once you get the hang of it. Using tons of references to build your visual library enough to draw them from imagination must be the most satisfying feeling ever.
As an artist who had to deal with his mother beating him across the face because she saw my references and thought they were "perverted" when said references weren't even sexual and didn't show genitalia, I say fuck people who wanna treat the human body like it's a perverse, shameful, grotesque thing, I still struggle with drawing/modeling women because I worry it makes me some kind of pervert, I'm in the process of unlearning a lot of bad stuff from my upbringing lol but I do feel in time my confidence will be restored
@@Falkrye Keep on keeping on brother.
Let's not lie to ourselves. Most men and women wants to see someone attractive from opposite sex rather than unattractive.
Even the same sex! Whenever this topic is brought up it's always so hetero lol... I LOVE PEOPLE. I think people are inherently sexy. You have to actually work pretty damn hard to make them ugly to me. Somehow western gaming manages to do it every time with the assumption that I as a woman don't want to see cute girls and would be offended to be given an opportunity to be sexy in my escapist game.
right, if this was just about sex sells, then men would be a lot more sexualized in video games. But many men somehow can perfectly accept and even ignore female sexualization but feel uncomfortable when men are sexualized.
idk about women, but particularly for men, even from the same sex. men aren't fond of seeing some obese neckbeard or degenerate coomer being glorified. they romanticize figures that embody the peak of masculinity, like the gigachad
@@cooltwittertag give an example of what you mean please
@@cooltwittertag
The vast majority of people playing games are men.
The vast majority ( 99% ) of men are heterosexual so they like women.
It is then normal for developers that whant to apply the idea of "sex sells" to sexualise women over men.
And yes most men if not all dont mind playing whit some buff dude and be the good looking strong warrior that saves the day takes all the chicks and recks full armies.
I'm a woman studying game art and programming at university and one of the interesting things I feel the need to point out is that even among people my age, many women in my course have very little exposure to major parts of gaming throughout our lives and as far as I can tell this is still an issue for young kids right now. I never saw any kind of game console until I was about 10, and had no ability to play on one because they always belonged to my friends' brothers or dads. PC was the only thing I had and now going into the games industry I feel very little motivation to make games for other platforms because I have no attachment to any of them and no experience with any major franchises (e.g. literally any Nintendo franchise or anything that's ever been console exclusive). If a young girl has no brothers there's a legitimate chance that they wont get to play a video game on anything other than mobile of PC for more than the first decade of their life. I believe this to be THE largest contributor to the uneven gender split in the industry.
I'm sorry, but how is that anybody's fault but your own?
you can say that about any hobby, is it "mountain climbing" fault that i was never introduced to it , or my own , because i had no interest im it?
@amirdarkone3615 I see where you're coming from, but I really don't think having the chance to play lots of video games growing up is the same as having the chance to go mountain climbing as an adult. People understand why mountain climbing is something they might want to try out but the issue I'm talking about is girls not having any knowledge of what they're missing out, on and so they reach adulthood not knowing that gaming could be something they'd really enjoy.
And I'm specifically commenting on why not as many women as men go into the games industry, not just who plays games for fun. If you didn't play games growing up, there's very little chance you'll choose a path of study that will take you into the games industry.
@@saddestsphere
i understand what you are saying,
but I'm old enough to remember when people would call you all the insults in the book because you were interested in video games, instead of something else. i remember when gamers were radioactive to pussy, girls laughing at you because you weren't interested in sports.
and now that gaming has become mainstream,same people cry that men are excluding them from gaming.
you people did this to yourself
i shouldn't have to role out red carpet for you to be interested in gaming.
I kinda desagree like if you live with a tv youre are bound to find out about gaming consoles and because of marketing bullcrap most people just seeing ads would want to buy games in that era
Now its even easier because well i think everyone watches at least one gaming youtuber
As and example i am a huge fan of nintendo's franchises (kirby main) and i never had a console or brother or dad that liked the nintendo games
But i saw the fricking nintendo switch and and yes i dont have a switch but -piracy is allways an option- and one of my favorite things to do is watch certain people playing game (tbh most games that i know o prefer watching people playing it than playing it myself)
I think i could pass my point across but if i couldnt il just blame my lack of being fluent in english
@@saddestsphere To be fair, men talk about videogames online all the time, but many women and girls don't take them seriously and even think they are being immature or dumb.
I like that you showed RE4make footage because I doubt many (straight) women would have played that game if Leon and Luis were ugly. That game did a LOT for the female gaze, and the popularity of the shirtless/nude mods kind of speaks for itself. Another fun development is how Dead by Daylight has backpedaled from "it would be out of character for this character to be shirtless in public" to shamelessly selling shirtless/beach skins for all the male characters. Sex sells to women too!
I did notice women adored how much of a dork leon is. Hes handsome, competent and funny. Hes a catch
there is a notable difference though, male character's attractiveness, for female audience, is mostly presented by the way they talk, at least this is the most effective way in mainstream cultural product (exclude the controversial "shotacon" for now) a revealing outfit can be a nice addition only after they're already shown as possible romance companion, but in most cases, not necessary nor sufficient. In many cases (take genshin impact for example, their monetization is completely character centered) men's sexuality is presented by wearing more, not less.
Leon is a gigachad, not just because he's handsome.
As a woman, myself, Leon definitely does it for me. So does Ashley. So does Ada. So does Luis. Literally every main character in RE4 Remake is hot, but they also act and feel like real people, if you ignore the whole... Las Plagas situation.
@@lcs.1094 Well this is flat out wrong. Men aren't just attracted to body image and that's it, that is a stereotype that really needs to fucking die already. What made me attracted to my wife was her outgoingness (as opposed to my personal near-hermit lifestyle), ability to see the world in such a beautiful way (again as opposed to my own jaded worldview), her laugh that I swear you could feel the warmth in as much as hear, and her ability to engage in a conversation with me about any possible topic I bring up, competing at either the same (or a even higher) intellectual level no matter what the topic was. The fact that she was slim, cute freckled skin and had red hair was just an added bonus in my eyes and I spent the entire time absolutely stupified that someone like me could end up with someone like her.
In any case, it works the exact same way for fictional female characters. Take Tali from Mass Effect. You don't even get to see what she looks like considering her alien biology forces her to be in what amounts to a full biohazard suit at all times, and she was always my go-to romance character for that series.
Just like depicting women as a walking set of tits isn't exactly indicative of real life, it works the same when you try to think of men as just walking, occasionally talking, dicks.
"I want more games that would make me feel uncomfortable as a male, but you stay away from Chun-Li's thighs." is a great way to express the lesson. Make things you want to make, and if you want to make it for as many people as possible, or you want it for a specific audience, or want it for 10 people, you go for it.
Chun Li's thighs are a national treasure and there should be a Nicolas Cage movie where he steals them.
yep agreed, but if the developer doesn't like that kind of stuff, what they should do instead is give the player the choice through mods, never restrict the potential to improve the game by outside sources.
otherwise your just being a Nazi game dev who doesn't want people to like your game and also doesn't want them to play or purchase your game or future games.
restriction of choice is the worst thing they could do in this situation.
That's the thing with modern media discourse, not just games. People, and most often women, will see something THEY don't like, something that isn't targetted at THEM, and complain that it should change to satisfy THEM, because it's not really about representation for them, it's about power and control, and ultimately revenge for "muh patriarchy"
If there were more games that made guys uncomfortable, you think most guys would care? Probably not, they'd just ignore it and play the games they do like.
@@goleogthais one of the top comments brought up a similar conclusion by noting how the same women who call out sexualization in games or general media (when it happens to women specifically), do not call out romance novels that involve tons of sex scenes.
This is because stuff like romance novels, are populated by a female demographic, so when if it would be objectifying for the men for female authors to write and for women to read about fictional romance and sex novels that depict the male character in whatever her fantasy is (like say being a kind big tall dude with light muscles), a lot of women won’t call it sexist or objectifying by their own logic solely because the genre is dominated by women (along with honestly most written/text porn and romance books in general).
In any other media where the dude is sexualized, those same women will tell you every single time: “well that’s not sexualization, that’s what men like!” no matter if the men are even naked.
This logic does not apply back to any woman who may also like seeing sexy women on screen, as they do not exist for the sake of that previous retort, and the woman who sexualizes those fictional men also just don’t exist for the sake of that retort.
@@goleogthais youre a man so of course you wouldn't see the problem with the normalization of the oversexualization and objectification of women. its not about women wanting things to ONLY appeal to THEM but that they would like to not be treated as sex objects. of course if they MUST at the very least they could sexualize the men more. Of course they wont do that because for some reason it makes men mad and uncomfortable when a man appeals to women and women start simping for them. just look at how made men got when they noticed women simping for Ghost from Call of Duty.
The word misogyny gets thrown around so much that it makes me wonder if people actually know the meaning. The basic meaning is hatred towards women
Agreed, I do think it's kind of just an easy attack word. I know, for me, i care deeply for my wife and the women in my family, I would feel horrible if I was somehow hurting them. It's an easy way to horrify someone that actually cares. Ironically, I doubt a misogynist cares about being labeled correctly.
I've noticed women use memes too much and don't understand them. Not stupidity, but latch on to an easy button to avoid topics they have no interest in, but may need to confront for a victory. Something like that.
Right, problem is twitter/reddit lefties lack a desire to approach ideas with rigor and to be as right/righteous as possible.
So, the fact that you will sexualize a woman or tie them to the male gaze implies a desire to control them and thus implies misogyny and therefore is misogyny.
Not making this up either.
Not straw manning.
We've seen how these people talk.
It's the same with any other buzzword used by these people. Misogyny, incel, far-right, fascist, etc. are all just terms for anyone that says something they don't like. They have zero correspondence to their actual meanings.
The woke mob and liberal cultists have altered, hijacked, watered down, and deliberately misused alot of words because of the shock value and emotion behind them. They misuse the term fascist, nazi, terrorist, misogynist, rape, healthcare. This is far from a new tactic. The actual take away here is the use of highly inflammatory and derogatory language as a shaming tactic to manipulate people. Most people want to feel like they are good people with a good set of morals. Assigning these obviously negative adjectives to very minor things makes people second guess what they see as good or acceptable and ultimately get tricked into changing who they are. Thats the real high level observation
"The artist has such a happy look on his face, I didn't have the heart to stop him" is the most wholesome Japanese thing I've heard.
And guess what drew more players to the series and got us the other greats like Dancer of the Boreal Valley.
For some reason Dancer of the Boreal valley gets me bricked up while most of obviously sexualised characters doesn't. How does it even work. Person designing it must be genius.
@@martintyrmer5484 bro got turned on cause of the sound 💀💀
That is gotta be the thing...@@Aurora-bv1ys 💀
What I like about this the most is that not changing it happened to be a wise choice, given how the Gwynevere in Anor Londo was an illusion made to trick us into following the path the Gods wanted. So in the end it was actually beneficial to the story telling of her character design, to have an attractive appearance overall.
@@martintyrmer5484 Who the fuck starts a confersation liker that I just sat down!?
So another thing that gets overlooked too is how attractive people influence others around them. Solely because they're attractive, they are more trusted and believable, and people are willing to like and follow them. If you're trying to sell a game, esp a new IP with a new character, make them attractive to have this influence on your customers.
Why would anyone make a video game where all the characters are butt ugly? No one wants to look at that and it doesn't add to the story or gameplay. That's why games are made with attractive characters. It's that simple.
@@sebaschan-uwu To be fair, there are games where the characters are not attractive on purpose as a way to appeal to an aesthetic, and it works if the aesthetic in itself is good, matches the tone of the game and the characters are well done... Bioshock, Sally Face, The Last Door, The Last of Us, GTA and Red Dead Redemption are some of the examples I can think of at the top off my head. But again, the "uglyness" must match what it's being conveyed, otherwise, it just looks unappealing.
@cristalido3640 the only game I've played out of those is the last of us, and the characters aren't ugly, they just aren't models like in most other games. They look like pretty normal people. None stand out as ugly to me, even though the visual style of the game portrays everyone in this dark way that makes everyone look dirty and rugged.
@@sebaschan-uwuThere is a certain audience for that.
I think a better way to look at this would it be "less attractive" rather than "ugly." What I mean is characters that are more aligned to the average, standard body shape rather than an extremely high level of exceptionally rare physical attractiveness. It doesn't need to only be one extreme or the other.
I can't speak for everyone, but I do enjoy when characters are more normal looking at less hyper-sexualised, men and women alike. I don't have any problem with those designs existing - heck, Bayonetta is one of my favourite games - but I simply find it easier to empathise with more grounded characters.
The exaggerations often take me out of the experience, unless that's the intent of the game. Not every game needs to be high art, after all.
@@sebaschan-uwuthe last of us 2, mass effect
As male player, I do favor female characters. They are generally nicer to look at, and they get noticeably more attention on that aspect.
However, when I get mostly free choice on looks, like in ESO, my ladies have modest curves and tasteful, functional clothing.
My gf is the one who insists on making hypersexual girls and she *loves* the options she gets.
All in all, for me the fun in that type of character is seeing her have fun with them.
I feel this in my soul
Like come on devs give me more customizable male characters too!
lol
isnt it in general that its is a vocal minority of woman who complain about the sexualisation that woman get in video games while most understand how the world works?
I don't really understand why it often comes down to a group of woman complaining about what men like but when men do it it is sexist.
And to be honest, I don't like the Hyper Sexualised style.
Sure... boobs.... but When I have a character creator and play in 3rd person I rather look at a woman then a man XD
And it better be a normal looking woman.
Even my Final Fantasy 14 character wears normal armor because it looks better ^_^
I do play female because I think their model looks better than male
Thing for me is that video games are not meant to be reality. They're an escape, an opportunity to have things that are 'idealized' and not real.
Also it's a man's hobby so it's socially acceptable to go against while nobody is talking about 50 shades of whatever type of stuff women like to read/watch/play as.
@@CheeseOfMasters I don't care how many shades they add, I never want to see that movie or its sequels again 😂
@@livaveragegamer damn straight
Videogames are an artform. They can act as an idealized escape, but they don't have to be. Like any other piece of art, videogames can communicate an infinite list of subjects and perspectives. Sometimes they are meant to be closer to reality. (I know you didn't say otherwise, this is aimed toward people who use this train of thought to criticize the medium whenever it steps outside their comfort zones.)
Exactly, I play games as a mean of escapism. In other words finding my own definition of idealized fantasy including sexualized female characters.
Not to be the ''both sides'' kind of guy, but this video is honestly the best I've seen on then topic, calls out many biases and drawn out talking-points I have seen people spew, and depending on which circle your in you'll get dogpiled or praised for the opinions you debunked in the vid. Got fatigued with the topic so I personally ignore it, but this video was top tier and the fact you have knowledge on fitness and worked in the gaming industry etc adds even more merit.
Thanks boss, ah yeah, it's tough and I did my best to make it in a way that it doesn't polarise the issue into a circle jerk, I don't think anyone can really achieve true neutral or anything but I hope it can be a springboard for further conversation. A lot of what is out there is presented in a closed win/lose scenario so part 1 is taking the toys off the table so the adults can talk, so to speak.
why are people afraid of being "both sides" isn't that like the epitome of understanding. I mean do you WANT to pick a side and join a tribe of thought?
@@awesomepsume There's no issue with it depending on the topic, but some people will state you have no valid arguments or opinions, if you do the both sides thing, so I just wanted to put it out there (Using my main RUclips account btw for this comment)
@@PolomanartSo true! I don't get why people are like this! So many times when having discussions with friends and family, I give a very middle of the road kind of take, and get accused with a saying (Basically calling me a cat on the wall which'll jump to either side as it sees fit).
So the only 2 options are join a side and engage in tribalism, or be accused of being a sly fox who'll stay on the side till I see a victor and join them?! Seriously?
Isn't like, the whole point of a debate to understand both sides?
@@Polomanartthose people are gaslighting you. They want to shame you into agreeing with them.
I'm a woman currently in the conceptual stages of developing an RPG with dungeon crawler elements, and I guess you could call it a duo game development cause I'm also working with my best friend on our game. I agree with getting the story you want out into the world and video games have so much potential for storytelling and characters.
dungeon crawler, sounds nice. Good luck to you guys.
Best of luck, and happy holidays!
Although I agree, I don't ever remember a game because of its story. Good storytelling is nice, but if the story isn't interesting to begin with, no matter how it's told, it means nothing. My favorite games have nothing to do with it's story. I like Skyrim, not because of it's story. I like Total War, not because of its story. Story is a secondary in gaming.
Gaming has much more potential for self-reflection of the player through imagery/symbols rather than storytelling.
Take for instance my favorite game of all time: Fable. A massive success this game. Know why? Because whatever path you chose, your image reflected it. Also, Jack of Blades looked so cool. I never realized he was the villain until I was older, which caused me to question my sanity. I idolized Jack. I wanted to be Jack, whatever that meant. As an adult, I realize I cannot be Jack in a "civilized" society and that's depressing... Thing is though, it's not the video game's Jack I wanted to be. It was the creation of Jack in my own mind, based upon my perception of his image that I aspired to embody. My ex wife even belittled me and tried to convince me to take Xanax because my idolization of Jack must mean that I'm inherently evil. She's my ex because it turns out she was the evil one. (Physical abuse)
As we get older, we become less connected with what makes life, including video games, beautiful. I think the current state of society proves me right.
All in all, sexualization in video games proves exactly what is so great about games... An amazing medium (if not the best and only) to create visual art. What that art does is irrelevant to the whole.
@@sheogorathprinceofmadness2223 Funny, I had the opposite reaction. Which again goes to show that what people see in a game is mostly a matter of taste. I like stories and RPGs and have forever. Most of the games I remember fondly come from story-based memories. The ones with amazing plot twists have lingered with me for decades. Final Fantasy. Hades. Brood Wars. And it isn't like StartCraft was primarily a story-based game, but I remember Kerrigan's story arc because it was epic. What I'd say is that story may be a secondary element, but if you have solid-but-simple game mechanics, you can weave amazing stories to pull your game ahead of others in the space.
While I sympathize, I don't agree.
I love the lore of the Elder Scrolls universe, but I could care less about a story being told.
Final Fantasy 7 was my life as a kid. The Legend of Dragoon was better, despite its less-than-fleshed story.
RDR2 is hailed as the best game of its kind, yet it's mechanics are so bad, it hardly makes up for the story.
In hindsight, this game will be remembered for its story, not for its gameplay.
Not a good game. But hey, the sales records prove me wrong, am I right?
As a female, I have no issues with seeing cute and beautiful women in games, I want to see more of this too, even a woman can find another woman aesthetically pleasing, even if she doesn't swing that way(I do ^^;), and the same can go for men too I'm sure.
You best believe im playing a massive gigachad with a pompadour in every game where it's possible
Men have admired peak physique for millenia, that's why we have greek and roman sculptures. I have no problem with looking at a man and seeing "damn I wanna look like that too"
I don't know if it's related but that's what i've always thought when looking at the magazine section in supermarkets, i just assume women like looking at beautiful women, but then the anti beautiful video game movement began and i was very confused.
One thing that bugged me is that the video said that men are more likely to have their appearance altered for comedic value, as if that's a bad thing for men.
I see it as a good thing for men to have comedic representations, alongside power-trippy muscle daddy representation, alongside tall slender pretty boy representation. I personally love playing as the jolly fat guy when available. Women only have sexy, where it's just a hot lady with interesting hair and clothing, or sexy+, where it's a sexy lady but she's also a sniper, or a ninja, or a barbarian, but she's always sexy.
Like, women don't have a female junkrat, and I can tell you, women want a female junkrat. All bitches wanna be doing nowadays, other than eat hot chip and lie, is go goblin mode and be loved as a worm, why can't women have a weird little twitchy bony girl whos not sexy and you don't wanna fuck (i mean, someone always gonna wanna fuck any character that exists, but you get what i mean)
What a stupid opinion. Having sexually unrealistically proportioned characters can detract from any story a game is trying to tell, or even from gameplay like the exaggerated jiggle physics from Dead or Alive. Unrealistic proportions are only fine in cartoon-styled games, and only if they don't increase ten fold the sexual parts of any body like Overwatch did.
So i may be misinterpreting your comment but i'd rather not see more cute and beautiful women in games, same with males. Realistically proportioned characters are always better for anything it's trying to do (unless it's a sci-fi with drugs or a cartoon).
I personally think a game character shouldn't "represents" the player irl, its a game with its own universe after all, it doesnt need to adhere to our universe standards. However sometimes the design logic in games still threw me off not in a bad way, but more to amusing. For example Bayonetta hair acts both as a weapon and clothes is a wacky and cool concept, or like how hilarious dante go shirtless in DMC3 just to flex his abs while comboing a demon. So yea, I don't really boot up a game, expecting the character needs to represents irl accurate body structure, accurate representation of technology or something in the line of that because in the end of the day, its a game that meant to be enjoyed. I mainly value gameplay and story of a game also how the design logic fits with the character job/personality. (Ex. Lara Croft dress accurately for someone that I expect that do a lot of jungle exploration and require a lot of mobility for her athleticism)
if people want ''representation'' they should play a game where they create their own charactee
@@xLuis89x RPGs used to fill that role, as they were heavily based on DnD. But since the 2010s the meaning behind it got watered down to where any adventure game with stats was being marketed as one.
I totally agree! It’s supposed to be an escape from reality, and the only women who complain about being “misrepresented” are never the ones who actually play the games
Lara's iconic look from the original games wouldn't be a good choice for jungle exploration. Too many things around that can give you a nasty time just from brushing up against the leaves or bark. Face isn't as big of an issue since you are generally going to avoid getting things into your face but you'll generally be less attentive to the rest of your limbs.
On the other hand Lara's look might be what you wear if you didn't have to worry about such real life things because it's a game. Much like how an arcade racing game doesn't perfectly model car physics.
I think the main difference between the unrealistic male and female bodies in games is who their target audience is. Sure, the absolutely massive characters like Kratos or the Doom Guy are absolutely not achievable for normal men, but their physiques are meant to appeal to the male audience. They aren't made so women can gaze at their attractiveness, but instead they look the way they do so mean can audibly say "HEALL YEAH!" whenever they look at them.
Female characters ALSO appeal to the male audience. This is why I believe these bodies affect women more negatively. Not because they are unrealistic, but because they poorly represent what women what to see. Women aren't generally seeing these characters and going " FUCK YEAH! I WANNA BE HER!", but instead they're more like "Why tf is she in a bikini? This is literally WWII".
@tealppup5180Just look at SF6's Marisa. Some straight men (me) like her design and how fresh it is while others hate her so much they think she's a man or that the game is woke for it.
As somebody who doesn’t really play the games where many complain about over sexualization. I am viewing many of these games from an outside perspective and I don’t feel the misrepresentation a lot of the time. Most of the time I am of the opinion that a game is to escape from reality. When you play a game you want to have fun and while I do want them to tone it down but I am open to change although I think the issue is overblown I still feel a bit gray in the topic so I am interested in your view.
Also worth noting that the gold standard for writing an attractive character is "Those of same gender want to be this person, and those attracted to that gender want to bang this character" and it should be the same for females and males.
Where games and other media go wrong is when they either make women a sex fantasy for a certain kind of chauvinist or a power fantasy for a certain kind of feminist and neither one is really all that attractive to a well-adjusted adult human, whether as a self-insert or a hypothetical mate, so they're just crap characters in general.
I dont know if that's really the case, I think men are more negatively effected by this than women simply because no women are being held back from anything irl because of this. Sure you could argue it's raising beauty standards to an unachievable level. Or that it's creating a hypersexualized image of women. But it's doing that to men, men who already very likely weren't getting dates with women anyways.
If women were the gender that's supposedly "more isolated/lonely than ever" then maybe I'd take this claim a little more seriously, but that's not the case it's males who are often experiencing lonleness and isolation as the norm, not females. Men are the ones lashing out violently because women don't want them. Men are the ones taking their lives more often than fenales because of isolation and lonleness.
Most normal men aren't going to mistreat or reject women because they aren't like video game characters, but shut in anti social perpetually online types probably will, but once again women weren't going after those men anyways because they're weird, and usually so antisocial they never interact with women to begin with. Or they've been rejected every time they made a move. So if anything it's holding those guys back because they're the ones who realized it's easier to gawk at a digital Hottie than it is to get an actual relationship with a real person that isn't based wholly around them being hot looking.
And even besides dating, most women weren't even making friends with those guys or interacting with them in any way. It might still be a problem for hyper insecure types who think they're not "good enough" because they aren't some hypersexualized caricature of a woman. But that same thing happens to men and those people need to grow as people, the industry shouldn't get rid of hot or over the top looking characters because they made someone insecure, because those people's insecurities are their own problem, and they're going to feel that same insecurity every time they see a good looking person IRL or in a movie or on a magazine etc.
I actually think this take that "hot characters in video games are bad" is just as baseless and nonsensical as saying "violent video games are bad." Because at the end of the day it is what you make of it. You might think it's in poor taste, but that's not grounds for eliminating it entirely.
Well the solution is to make more male characters that appeal to women, I think Leon is a good example
the problem I think a lot of people have with sexualized female characters is for a very long time the only choice for female characters in video games was the sexualized version. Look in most older MMO's especially the cash grabby ones every female character is in skimpy clothing and you either can't change outfits or the best female armor is skimpy. I don't have a problem with sexy characters as long as I have a choice on whether or not my character is sexualized. I want to be able to choose what my characters wear especially in an MMO where the entire point is self expression.
then go play dress - ups, and not mmos, you look in wrong genre.
@@ejokurirulezz thats not what they said, its that for the most part theres only sexualised female characters and its only changed very recently
@@antoniag8146
not true, i used to be playing wow and in that game people (including women) would go out of their way to find Skippy clothes for their characters.
most people like sexy,men and women.
@@AmirDarkOne yeahh i dont disagree w u, the problem is while men are sexualised in some games and not in others, women are always sexualised especially in the past
@@antoniag8146
both men and women get sexualize
why do you think kratos is half naked, freezing his nipples in "god of war" ? by any logic he should have clothes.
but he doesn't, because sex sell.
I cant believe i found a video the actually adresses the other side of the argument.
When i saw the thumbnail i though "Oh no, another video that will tell me sexualization in games is hateful towards women and that we should stop anyone from doing it"
Incredible work man. Thank you so much for this.
No worries, thanks for watching boss
I was expecting it as well, and then he hits us with "boobs are great". It was at that moment that I knew it was going to be a good video.
I've never found a video that painted it as wholly bad. I'm not sure if those really exist.
@@TheNobleFive Feminist Frequency's older videos were ultimately that way. Quality of their videos improved over time so they aren't as bad as the original ones (though I don't know how things went in the last few years).
Ludiscere's Xenoblade video was also like that, I think... but its been several years since I watched it. A well made video, but its littered with false claims, relies on a mental trick, and he tried to deny the existence of male sexualization, which he doubled down on in the comment section... but deleted because too many people called him out on.
...its not really uncommon to find videos like that when within circles promoting feminism and equality... after all, the videos on the subject are often trying to challenge the norm wherein sexualization is already common, so there is no need to provide any counter points unless it is to argue against said counterpoints.
Fully agree
I think the biggest problem is the lack of variety in female (and male) sexiness if that makes sense. Give them muscles, make them chubby, make them thin, offer variety. And the same should go for men. As an artist, that is what is one of the most fun things to do. Experimenting with body shapes. And I think there is quite a lack of that. Though it's getting better.
Make them curvy, not chubby. I get that some people are in to chubby people but they're far and few between. Put a picture of a typical 90's runway model in front of someone, along with a picture of Lizzo, and it's pretty obvious what 95% of men will choose.
@@----.__ I don't mean as chubby as Lizzo, but her size should certainly be an option too :). The 90s runway model is there too, right with the chubby lizzo, next to the thin guy, the tall muscular guy and the chubby guy.
Once again, variety of sexiness is what I mean :D
@@----.__I mean just because it's not for you doesn't mean they shouldn't exist,and men aren't the only audience,not everything has to be about what men are sexually attracted to
@@moonbunnygw8342the thing is! NOP! the majority of men do like to see thin women and the few womwn that are more curvy are rare LET alone chubby women! OTHERWAYS we will see and equal portion women of all sizes! but that ain’t the reality!
@@moonbunnygw8342 Who said everything had to be about men? Surely women could write their own games too, right? Why aren't there all female developers making AAA games that are loved by the masses? Why is that? I guess you've never been invited to a hen's night, because women don't order "chubby" strippers unless it's a joke, they go for fit, muscular men for strippers. I live in reality, you can live wherever you like though!
The thing that I think is largely more dangerous than overtly sexualizing characters in a game is the not as explicit socializing that rewards a bad behavior. The Notebook I've seen as an example of this. The Ryan Gosling character does creepy things and doesn't accept that no means no, but because he's attractive and the story rewards him, that could normalize a way of iterating with people that is harmful. The reason it could be more dangerous as a movie is that there is less of a disconnect as we are seeing real people and the rules of the movie are so close to actual reality.
Now this is interesting and sadly true
In Nier replicant if you try to peek at Kaine's butt she will hit you and similarly if you kept looking at the crotch area of the main character in Death Stranding he will also punch you
Who are the main consumers of the notebook?
Same thing with Twilight.
So your argument is, Fiction affects reality...How delusional of you. I play GTA but have never thought nor wanted to commit violence. And I'm sure many others who play games like these do to. 🤦♂️
Honestly as a woman I do not care about sexualization for the most part, I love me some good tits, but there are some instances where it just irks me
Like, we are in the middle of an active warzone, why are you risking a nip slip? Or when their bodies are their only defining character trait, which mostly points to bad writing but whatever
The only point of females is to have sex with men, that's why when i see people complaining about sexulization i jsut call them gay
I mostly agree, but not on the last part. Men generally do not care about character traits/personalities. Like, a shy girl wearing slutty clothes in a video game means nothing to me, because it reflects real life.
The majority of men will agree with me-- we have all been jaded by the person who's actions do not match their words. And there's no going back from that. I never question this stuff anymore, because if I did, then I would have to be invested-- I would have to care. And although it's much harder not to care, it's much more fulfilling.
Women have made it to where they force men to define their character based upon their looks. And if the men disagree to, then they are gay or "not a real man".
but whatever, amirite? What can we do? Does it really matter? Nah, at the end of the day, I want a woman with a nice body and she wants a man who cares about relationship development. I can simulate what she wants amazingly, and get what I want, and she can simulate what I want amazingly, and get what she wants. When we start to question the mutual parasitism is when the fabric of reality begins to unravel into what we have today. Loneliness and apathy.
@@sheogorathprinceofmadness2223 people like you are why I feel bad for straight women. If you only want a nice body out of a woman why not just get a life size sex doll watch vr porn ai girlfriend whatever tf. Legit why bother with the extra work of a person and their romantic emotions if you do not want to emotionally invest yourself too? If you're saying "because I want the real thing", just get a prostitute no? Red light districts exist for a reason
As a man, I disagree with the guy above me. Like, hard disagree. He doesn't speak for me, nor any of the men I know or admire.
In all honesty, I pity men who have those sorts of beliefs. They likely never had a good male role model growing up, which makes me very sad for them.
@@sheogorathprinceofmadness2223 capitalism and the commodification of beauty standards have done that to men and women, not necessarily women to men. I say this because we all live under the structure of capitalism.
Gonna be honest, I didn't came here with high expectations. But, I AM leaving incredibly surprised and informed. Can't wait for part 2.
Same. I feel like I’ve seen so much feminist drivel on the subject that any time the topic gets brought up I automatically assume the worst. I’m glad I ended up clicking through
Yes
What many people, especially about the Anime industry, get wrong is that actually a lot of those artists are female themselves, maybe the thought of "a woman enjoying to draw girls in bikinis and skimpy clothing" is completely overshadowed by the general point of "Only males enjoy sexualized females'
From experience writing for NSFW comics, a lot of lewd and porn content creators actually are women. For them what they got was the fantasy of imagine themselves being as attractive as the character, and wearing all kinds of pretty or sexy outfits, and the power it gives them over the men they meet. They like to fantasize about getting to be the prize.
Those "critics" won't think that far lol.
All they want is just to ridicule and get internet validation from that.
@SchwarzeRitter
Any who try would write them off as having " internalized misogyny" because they're ideologically radical and insane.
Makes sense, men do fantasize about big muscles so why wouldn't women fantasize about big boobs
...or that those female creators in question are often at the hands of the "big old male executives" having the final say over the final product.
15:36 I think it was a feedback loop. Games didn't appeal to girls so few girls played, so developers erroneously thought girls didn't like games instead of understanding that they were making games that didn't appeal to girls. The developers of Pac-Man tried to make a game with a wider appeal and it sorta worked. Men and women play different games most of the times but there's a lot of overlap.
28:05 aren't all Nikke objectified? Not only sexually but in general since they are expendable robots. It was one of the reasons why I stopped playing, the story is way too depressing.
Nikke literally exists so people can JO while playing it. That's it's entire reason for being. And frankly I think a lot of gacha games and mmos are in that same boat. They put a hot girl in the game as eye candy, and then plaster the game with lazy boring design and combat that wouldn't even be tolerated if the character didn't look like they belonged in a p0rnograpgic peice.
Like seriously, if you took the hot girls out of nikke NOBODY would play it. It literally plays itself and every mission is the same exact thing.
@@BigWheel. Not entirely true. The women are a draw to keep you engaged, but there's a very clear passion in whatever team is involved with the overarching story that NIKKE tells. As williansnobre said, it's downright depressing a lot of the time despite all the TnA in the character designs, and a non-insubstantial portion of the fans are very invested in it.
But yes, it would be a LOT less popular without the big bouncing bresats.
@@MitchFromFBS The depressing story is in harmony with the other tropes. The goal is to make you care about the characters and the easiest way to do that is to make the character tragic. Sadness is up there with sex in story writing as far as how easy it is to create interest and concern. And I think pity is the emotion on par with pulling money out of a person with sexy. So yeah, the checkbox after "[ ] Booba" is "[ ] Tragic" in making appealing characters. Sadness has even broader appeal as it tends to actually draw those that would not be motivated by sex appeal (often women) even more than sexualizing males would so win/win/win.
"She is so cute! Did you see her story? It was SOOOOO sad... Oh my god! I love her so much!"
Game Devs: "HA! GOTTTEEM! HA!"
it wasn't erroneous, if you look at games that sell and the genre they belong to, you will see that most women do not play games beyond the normie genres (battle royale and RPGs), and even in those markets, there really isn't much you can do to "appeal" to women.
@@yesyes-om1po The erroneous part was assuming that women don't like to play when the issue was that they were being offered games that were not interesting to them.
Space ships shooting stuff was not something they were interested in, so when they took a step back and instead of trying to make the games they already had appeal to a female audience they just experimented with a different kind of game it worked.
It is the correct approach, you foster a new audience without throwing your current one on the trash. The complete opposite of how how Disney is handling franchises for example, they allienate their audience while trying to shift to another, but try to sell the same product, one that the new audience had no interest in, only with a superficial change and they get surprised when it fails.
If they are playing the games something in them does appeal to them otherwise they wouldn't be playing, be it farming simulators, puzzle games, RPGs, dating sims or gacha character collectors.
If you want dismiss these as normie games that don't count that's up to you.
I don't want to attack any of your points, but there is one thing I would like to address: the point that not many women worked in the video game industry. I can't dispute your personal experience, but there were a lot of women actively working on games in various roles back then (80s, 90s). In the US, but also in Japan, their names were often lost in the credits or replaced in western releases. Street Fighter 2 is a prominent example of this. So relying only on the credits and game media from that time is an unreliable source.A good point to start being 'A Brief History of Women in Video Games', available on Google Arts&Culture or 'The Street Fighter Lady'.
As to why there are less solo female developers than male I think is very easy to explain. On the one hand, most solo developers do not start out with solo game development as their main source of income. Some may end up giving up their job to focus exclusively on game development once their project has progressed enough to attract a publisher, or after the game itself starts generating income. This means they are developing the game essentially in their free time alongside another job. Regarding the sheer amount of different skills one needs to develop a game, people who end up making their own game likely alreday have an adjacent job where they have acquired at least some of those skills, such as a job in tech. This is where it is glaringly obvious why you find less female solo developers. It's because they are already less represented in those jobs, ergo there will be less women overall who would even consider starting to develop a game than men. It's a pipeline business in more than one way and it's leaking in all directions. No need to be surprise at there being less solo female game developers when this is a trend that is observed in almost all of the involved sectors. Added to that is the time factor. You need a lot of free time to develop a game. Women, especially married women with children, still do the largest amount of household and care work alongside their regular jobs. In other words, most adult women simply don't have any time in their day left to start a big project like a video game.
To this I would like to add visibility. Women like to stay anonymous on the internet and don't broadcast their gender on the internet if it is not necessary to do so. In gaming circles, an anonymous user's gender is usually assumed to be male. You may actually have missed a bunch of games made by solo female developers that were released under pseudonyms/screennames because you assumed they were male. And games that don't get big/commercially successful like Stardew Valley or Minecraft simply never attract enough interest for anyone to report on the developer or interview them, thereby revealing their gender to the public. Like, how would you even find that information for the tens of thousands of small/free games that were made in the last 20 years or so? Do you think people broadcast "hey, I'm a female solo game developer and this is my game" on the internet? They would immediately get antagonized, harrassed and doxxed. No, people just don't specify their gender, everyone assumes they are male and they go their merry way.
This sorta also makes sense.
yes.
as a woman i've always been interested in art, videogames and programming/development, but from my prospective it simply doesn't look that accessible to me, and if i had the will to push towards it anyway i would prefer to leave out my gender as the male gaming community still keeps gatekeeping for some reason
@@yumekyn6283 Bro nobody gives a shit if ur a woman, if you make a good game its a good game and if you make a pile of garbage its still a pile of garbage. Please tell me, who is the 1 person gatekeeping women from being developers and how do you know them?
@R83145 Say it louder for the people in the back
@@fuy1648Have you ever been in a COD game or a rainbow six siege match where one of the players (no matter their skill level) is harassed because their mic gave away it was a female player? I know I have.
I personally think its the issue of making it a personality point for women or female characters. As opposed to just having a character with a bigger bust, and we tend to forget that it can be natural. I have been trying to design more female characters (as a girl myself) with bigger busts or more curves to keep it diverse, but a part of me does fear someone would assume I'm being sexist or pervy.
I think there's a case to be made that a diversity in bodies coming off as sexualization goes to show how sexualized female characters are not just in how they're depicted, but in how they're perceived.
@@Ayzev If you make a hot girl dont be surprised when people are attracted to hot girls
I wonder, are sexy characters also just seen as solely just that to the same people who criticize those sexy female characters? I hear people used to rag on bayonetta for being too sexy and only being a sexualized character, but then bayonetta fans pushed back in defense by saying that she actually does have her own characters. I find that characters like Supergirl or starfire or any sexy character are ragged on by people saying they are only sexualized with no character, but if you even watched Teen Titians, some of the Animated Justice leagues shows, or actually read/play any media that the character appear in, you’d know they don’t just look pretty, but have their own personality but are then written off by people who attack those medias because the character is too sexy, or maybe she had too much bust, maybes she showed midriff, and if you have a female fetal character, then she’s basically not a character to those people (because flirty people who flirt with other people they like don’t exist and is not a character I guess, even tho that same character have more traits than that)
I think that's a big part of the issue that didn't get addressed. Female characters are given sex appeal IN PLACE OF character.
@@metaltigerdude5780 Got it in one, dude
Honestly how I understand the argument of "games are oversexualizing the female characters" is that many games, even those considered "triple A" sacrifice character depth, substance, and writing for just simply making them more physically attractive. Like you said people who played Bayonetta might agree with the use of her sexual apperal because they are aware with the story and substance in the game (I haven't played bayonetta, but that's just a guess). And yeah I do think that also is a concept that can be applied to male characters in videogames, but since most videogames have a male playable character, mostly modeled and written by men, as it is a largely male dominated field, and most people playing these games, be it street fighter, metal gear solid, etc. are men, the issue is way harder to spot (also this is as a fact of life, not as putting the blame on anyone). All that being said, I am a cis man in the game development field, so I get it. I see it more as an issue of diminished quality and less an issue of destructive effects on the players social behavior.
I must say I don't like your comment near the end of "I want more games from the female perspective. I wouldn't play them, but [...]", that just seems like a little tonedeaf to say, I mean to each their own for what games they like, but you're talking about encouraging women to get into game creation, and then instantly goes, "Nope, not me tho". Idk otherwise a good video, even if I don't agree with everything, and it did get a little long winded at the end. Good work tho.
The last comment at the end rubbed me a little wrong too, though I assume the creator didn’t mean to. How can women try to make a name for themselves in the industry if we as men won’t play the games from a woman’s perspective? Women have been playing games catered to men for decades of gaming, I think it is only fair we could do the same and just as easily enjoy them ourselves.
@@Crappy9922Women play video games just not those for males. Not seeing alot of female fans of GTA or Halo
@@grinko1222 Untrue across the board.
There are plenty of women that actively play or wish to play games that are targeted towards a male audience. Is it always a majority %? No. But just look at competitive pvp games that have, if not mixed target-audiences, are at least fairly neutral, like valorant, and the way women are routinely treated over comms - there are lots of documented reasons why women are more a) reluctant to participate in a male-dominant online community, and b) don't want to be associated with gaming on a more broad social scale. The second has dramatically changed since the early 2000s - women in gaming are still stigmatized, but no longer is it uncool or geeky for a girl to be into games, in fact, it's now becoming the opposite, just with different challenges.
Historically, a large percentage of all games are developed and produced by male-dominated teams, and in the same vein as what OP and crappy said, women have either had to just go along with it and play what's available, or find a way to break into the field themselves if they want to create what they want to play. The latter is hard to do for social reasons - as I said earlier, women in gaming face stigmatization and sexism. Same reason probably that I had several guys laugh their ass off when I mentioned during a convo about D4 that I had played the previous Diablo games too, with one of them shooting back that I probably never made it past act 1.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Again, like OP said, Liv's comment is incredibly backhanded, and frankly is the reason why we have so few female game devs and so few female-pov games. Imagine if women flat out refused to play games from a male perspective. It's not that more games would come out to cater to them, companies would just assume women don't like games and double down harder on their male audience.
@@almightyaufheben2635 I think it's also an unfair message to expect women devs/players to go on a huge uphill battle to change the landscape against all odds. Feels a bit like "It's not my problem, fix it yourself" kind of statement.
It reminds me of an interview with Terry Crews, where he said how American slavery most likely ended not because black people fought and overthrew the slavers, but because there was enough white people, who recognized how messed up it is and fought against it from the position of power they had. I'm not a history expert but that idea of people in power being responsible for change, or the lack of it, the most applies in many things, even outside of politics.
@@MrFr2emanGames are an art form, people shouldn't be forced to do something
is the fact that there are very few hypersexualized representations of women in gaming not a clear indicator of misogyny? there's only one thing for female characters to be in gaming, does that not reflect a broader social attitude towards what we expect of women?
The problem isn't that video games sexualize men or women - it's that certain people in our society have made EVERYTHING sexual. Are boobs great? Yes. But a lot of times, they are just part of the design of a character. More often than not, unless we're talking about an explicitly sexualized character (like in a VN or something), it's just an aesthetic choice the artist made.
exactly!
certain people in society make everything look more sexual than it actually is, like, what is sexual about thicc thighs? its just thighs that have been enlarged via workout, which can be attained by any woman with no real physical disability (like being paralyzed, or having a disability that literally makes your muscles decay), big tiddies being a little more understandable as to why since those are genetics based (unless taking estrogen like the trans women also work for regular women), however neither are a problem unless you as a person can't distinguish reality from fiction.
at the end of the day, its all just fanservice that even many women enjoy!, im not kidding women also enjoy female fanservice which is pretty wild tbh.
@@arakemi1080 It's all related to child-bearing. Big thighs are signs of a large uterus, which decreases child and mother mortality. Big boobs are signs that a woman can produce enough milk for a newborn, which decreases the risks related to SIDS.
And it's not like men aren't sexualized. Men, I find, are more sexualized, especially in videogames. There aren't skinny, lanky protagonists, and most gaming avatars are so bulked up on something... They're also small below the belt. Like Marvel CGIing Namor's family jewels
@@nuance9000 honestly I couldn't know for sure if it's related child bearing or not, but one thing I know for sure is that a woman can go to the gym and work her glutes to get thicker thighs, just like how men can work their upper body with the same weight and get strong arms and bigger chests.
That and the fact that the women that do talk about women in games being hyper sexualized are also the same ones that are very likely to also have an onlyfans account.
that prety much always be the case just search how Prehistory human do they statut back in the time it not for nothink that without contraception woman have 10+ child in a lifetime human love sex it was always the case and will always be the case
@@nuance9000 Fun little fact boob size doesn't determine how much milk they have. Big boobs can have a hard time producing and small boobs can produce a ton. It just depends on the person/genetics or health conditions.
As a girl, I don’t care about sexy girls I just want more sexy male characters that ALSO dress sexy (like Link from the last two Zelda games). Some variety in female character design would be nice, such as showing more love to flat girls or in character creator games having the option to wear more conservative clothing rather than only bikini armor but ultimately I do not care.
Champagne from Azur lane is pretty nice
When you say Link dressing sexy, I hope you don't mean the Gerudo outfit.
@@SogonD.Zunatsu it's weird how many people latched onto that even though it's supposed to be a degrading and humiliating joke (but what should i expect from internet porn addicts)
There are plenty of sexy male characters if you bother to look. There are also character creators that offer the option of dressing the female character conservatively if you bother to look. Also no girl who isn't little is completely flat.
@@MetaKnight964 not as many as sexy girls tho, why would I need to look if most games just sexualize the guys as much as they sexualize girls
This is an amazing video and this should get the respect it deserves as an artist I feel like I should be allowed to draw what I like as long as its legal and one thing that plagues my mind is the fact that while I'm still a novice and by no means a professional but aware that sexualisation will eventually be an issue and I believe this is the best way to approach the subject and if I ever do run into this issue I'll be sure to link you video since more people need to see this.
One part of why fewer women are in game development that wasn't overtly discussed in the video is that as a result of a lot of video games being passion projects, a lot of video game devs are people who grew up with the medium, and 20 or so years ago when said devs would have presumably been first getting into video games there were a lot fewer women growing up with video games than there are today. Thus, the demographics of video game developers is to some extent a natural development of the demographics of those who played their first video game ~15-20 years ago. Additionally, if you look at a breakdown of engagement with video games by gender you will soon come to the realization that most the genres that are most heavily skewed toward women in terms of engagement are nearly overwhelmingly time wasters on mobile, rather than games games with a more serious tone on consoles or PC. I'm talking of the difference between mobile games one might play on their daily commute, as opposed to console or PC games one would typically dedicate time to give one's undivided attention to. That's not to say, that there aren't more serious genres that appeal to women, but I am saying that most of those more serious genres that appeal to women are more of a common middle ground than they are games specifically catered toward women. Men, women, and non-binary folk are all about equally likely to enjoy games like Baldur's Gate 3, or the original Mass Effect trilogy as each other, even after accounting for the fact that all else is not equal. Such games are the common middle ground that appeals relatively equally to people of all sexes, genders, and sexual orientations. I'm not necessarily saying that all these people like such games for the same reasons as each other, only that they like the games in the first place. Growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s I noticed that my male peers were a lot more likely to be into video games than my female peers and that at the time girls held a more sizable stigma towards video games and those who engaged with them than boys. The world has come a long way since then. However, I'd say it is safe to say that women as gamers are more highly represented in more recently introduced genres of games, largely centred on types of hardware that emerged within the past 20 years namely smartphones. I don't know what the statistics are for whether men or women form a larger proportion of "whales", "whales" being the demographic being catered to in most games with a "freemium" financial model, or even if such data exists in a parsed and sorted form. However, I think such data and statistics would be highly valuable in such a discussion as this. Especially so, considering that "freemium" style games regularly make upwards of 90% of their revenue from the top 1% of spenders, and that such financial models in games were popularized in the mobile scene before becoming more widespread to the chagrin of many gamers myself included. I expect if it is going to ever happen we will see a meteoric rise in the number of proportion of women among game devs within the next ~5-15 years, loosely correlating with the advent of mobile games ~15-20 years prior. If it doesn't happen then, it will likely not come to pass and would mean that the number of women as game devs is heavily influenced by factors related to gender other than the number of people of people who grew up with games who are women. Strong arguments were made in this video as to some of these potential factors using data from relatively current figures. I'd be interested to see what the future brings in terms of representation of women within game development.
Yup yup, Genshin and Valorant for example have a higher proportion of female playerbase I never would've seen coming growing up. Not complaining though far from it!
Also, women are generally more risk-adverse than men (neither a good nor a bad thing) and being a solo dev is a massive risk in on itself. It involves dedicating years and money into an inconsistent project with no prospect of success, let alone a way to go back without wasting too much if things go south. It's easy to look at the projects that suceeded without looking at the way more numerous failures. Also, i wouldn't be surprised if there are women who don't want to do it because if they fail it'll be a "woman moment" and be used as deterrents for other women in the industry, food for thought.
When it comes to sexualization, to me as a female at birth, I actually like 2B from Nier Automata.
Yoko Taro said he just likes women in heels and that's why he designed her that way. Just the thought of a guy wanting pretty women in his game is not disgusting to me but kinda sweet? And it's funny and kind of believable that in the future military grade androids would just look like 2B cuz a guy wanted pretty women. I think I like it cuz I'm actually a digital artist myself and I also only draw pretty characters cuz it makes me happy. Playing pretty characters makes me happy.
I'm trying to think of examples of women being sexualized "in a bad way" and honestly a lot of fighting games have female characters that lack style which makes them look like they lack a good aesthetic for example they wear things on a "slutty Halloween costume" level of clothing. I like women in Guilty Gear for example. They all seem to have their unique fashion sense. That's why people like Bayonetta cuz she actually is working it and it's her staple. She is perfect in her aesthetic and no amount of nudity will make people dislike her.
At the end of the day, everyone likes boobs. Even women love boobs, especially the ones that claim they are straight. I'm glad that you acknowledged the fact that you don't relate to or understand women being disgusted by sexualized female characters. It's how I don't understand why someone doesn't like a 1% body-fat Jojo character in video games, either.
faaaaacts
as also a female and digital artist, the problem to me is not the sexualization, but how it's done. it can absolutely be expressive and fun.
@@insektas There's also the way people react to sexualised characters cause.. oh boy... some of em are really weird..
The fact that Bayonetta was deliberately and painstakingly designed by a woman makes 99% of people who equate "sexualization of women in fiction" with "morally bad and disgusting" shut up.
There definitely is a balance. For example, I dislike the tropey anime fan-service. Stuff like "MC falls on top of girl and grabs her tits" or the sex pest character that gropes everyone they meet. And yet I love the character designs in Bleach (which includes sexualised women). Sexualisation is not the problem, it's the ones in bad taste that put people off which I feel most people agree on. And yet there is a loud minority that takes it too far and screws up this discussion for everyone. I've seen some instances of female artists who draw sexualised (or not even sexualised, just non-average proportions) feminine characters get blasted online (by a loud minority) for no reason other than some moral superiority complex.
I haven't finished the video yet, so I might edit this once I do, but I just want to share my thoughts about solo women developers. There might not be an abundance of them in your research (and that is perfectly understandable!), but I myself find that there are plentiful of them in the visual novel/RPG maker indie game genre, and that there are quite a lot of popular solo woman developers in that niche (the ones that I can recall from the top of my head are: funamusea (the creator of mogeko's castle), accha (the creator of dreaming mary), Uri (the creator of the strange men series), etc).
This is just an observation of mine and not backed up by any scientific sources or anything, but I feel as though women tend to gravitate towards story or character driven games rather than focusing on gameplay, which is why there are an abundance of them in the dating sim/visual novel/RPG maker genre. Or maybe I'm just biased since I'm friends with some women indie devs in the genre and am a very small, woman indie dev myself (under another name). Just sharing my thoughts on the matter though! I do wish more women solo devs are more known and could be more successful in the industry. Otherwise, I found this video to be insightful and an eye opener so far!
Edit: Adding more to my comment after watching the two sections after the gender comparison of solo developments, I'm happy that you're aware of otome games! I feel some wouldn't consider that genre to be an actual game, but I do. It's just a more story focused game than other genres, imo. While using sex to appeal for women seems much more complicated than men, I feel like you have to strike a good balance between character story and their design. Most women (and I believe some men as well) will not fall for simply good and attractive character designs. There has to be more than just that, like their personality and backstory, how they tie in with the narrative and themes of the game. A good example of something that strikes a nice balance would be Nitro+Chiral visual novels. You can argue that they're just selling hardcore sex between guys, but when you actually play the game, the plot runs much deeper than just sex between two guys. I'll even say that 90% of the visual novels are plot and the rest of it is sex. I guess tldr, women prefer sex with substance. Of course, there are some games where sex is the main appeal and some women do love that as well, but I find that those types of games aren't as popular compared to its more narrative-driven counterpart.
Sorry for the long comment and I hope you don't mind! I simply wanted to share my thoughts!
Wrong, many women don't care at all about plot and only go for sexiness, in contrast many men love a good plot.
@@MetaKnight964 i don't think it is inherently wrong. not every person is the same, but what shows is that most female solo devs are into the visual novels development.
while it is true that someone's gender does not define their interests in one or the other, but time does show that the majority of men are more easily pleased from sexualisation probably on a higher average than woman. might be related to how man naturally want to spread, while woman naturally had to be more selective to ensure survival of offspring.
@@MetaKnight964 I read this in a facetious tone, idk hard to take serious, but I think there's a reason @ivana2609 said "observation of mine" and "I feel" and "maybe I'm biased". They are giving anacdotal evidence of something, which yes does not conclusively mean that what they are stating is fact, but does substantiate it. And on top of that I have to agree with them on most points. I know several solo female game devs and I know some that do action games and some that do VNs and rps, and I don't think it would be wrong to say they are better at focusing on story development. Again what I just stated is anacdotal and not a fact for all of mankind, but to defend a point.
I wrote a longer comment also, but just wanted to say that this is a very well worded and phrased comment, 10/10
I think they nailed Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3. Which is a game that appeals to women. He's attractive to many women.
Really great video! thoroughly related to the section of how it's more difficult to sell sex to women over men. Through my girlfriend, It's become painfully apparent that for a woman, sexy things are a lot less clear cut, way more vague and unknown, and seem to vary wildly from person to person.
That's true for men too, though. Not all men like big boobs. Not all men like the same hairstyles. Some men want to be stepped on, some men want a girl who wouldn't hurt a fly. Men's tastes are incredibly varied and dynamic, and yet we have no problem marketing to them. You only think women's tastes are mysterious and complicated compared to men's because you don't pay attention, and a lot of people in the game industry, especially in the west, have the same problem. But Asia seems to have figured it out pretty well; they've never had a problem selling guys like Cloud, Link, Sesshoumaru, the BTS boys, Leon Kennedy, etc to women. Otome games and BL manga are also huge business there. Even in the west, recent games and properties like Hades and Baldur's Gate 3 have been having great success catering to women in recent years, a lot of people just aren't seeing it because they write them off as "woke" or whatever other BS buzzword is being used to denigrate anything that doesn't cater specifically to straight white men.
The reality is that women aren't any harder to entice than men, and it is SPECIFICALLY the insistence that they are that is damaging because it's used as one of many excuses to dismiss women's tastes as inscrutable and continue ignoring them as a demographic.
@@ValkyrieTiara yeah, more difficult, not impossible. astarion sent my girlfriend reeling for weeks.
@@ValkyrieTiara Fucking thank you. Just like in so many aspects of life, from entertainment to even the medical field, women have been neglected for a long time and hence misconceptions have grown that are annoying at best and even life threatening at worst (women being more prone to being dismissed or neglected by medical professionals). We are all just people and, men or women or nonbinary pals, a lot of us like pretty or sexy people but are still individuals with varying tastes. (Also a big reason why this video did cause me to cringe at several points. Especially, though, when the creator dismissed feminism as a whole movement when discussing studies... dismissing a big movement that was and is fighting against the discrimination of a whole group of people for no stated reason is just kinda disgusting imo).
@@ValkyrieTiara You have to inhale an huge amount of copium (or be a woman) to put on the same level men's tastes and women's tastes, by mentioning that men don't like any size of boobs for example if they're not exactly the way they like it the most. People who says “flat is justice” for example aren't saying they dislike any sort of size other than mostly flat, just that they tend to prefer flat, which is vastly different from women liking tall men or muscular men, which would render any short or non muscular men invisible to their eyes. Well it's the same for everything else, so don't try to make it like women's tastes are as simple (or as complicated, depending on your point of view) as men's tastes: even bisexual who got the chance to date both genders will all say women are more complicated to please.
Men can be satisfied by just showing them a pair of boobs in video games or manga, even porn, anything, really, while women need a whole storytelling and history of the character, what's his entire personality, and need him to show how intelligent or charismatic he is in a lot of situations, for women to _maybe_ appreciate the character. Ask to the video game industry which is easier or more profitable between creating a deep character, with a whole personality developed all along the story and evolving with the main character, which would romance the female character and show her his intelligence, his charisma (wallet sometimes too), and so on, or just develop a game which shows women half naked (if not totally naked) doing a bunch or random things, whether they're competent in them or not.
The simple huge discrepancy of women's romance/porn games compare to men's romance/porn games and their profitability already tells everything.
@ValkyrieTiara. Uhhh ignoring them as a demographic is the choice that makes the most sense, y'all are sending too many mixed signals.
19:45 this point completely ignores the fact that gatekeeping is occurring at every stage of the education system lol. in the 80's, there was basically a 50/50 split in computer sciences. Now it's like 90/10. there's no way you didn't come across this stat if you spent hours trying to find women-solo-dev video games.
I was about to say, game development is at the intersection of a bunch of disciplines that women were discouraged from participating in for most of their existence.
@@arms7260it's stupid because you tell women they shouldn't go in an industry where it's mostly men, keeping that industry as mostly men
@@thatitalianlameguy2235 well the industry sucks for them. my degree was computer science, and the professors and a lot of my peers were unfair or shitty or creepy to the women studying it, but then when they fuck off to applied math or chem or something along those lines because of it, the remaining women get an even worse hand. it's shifting, but far too slowly. and it's not super fair to say the next decade of CS major women have to sacrifice their sanity so we can get over the gender gap and normalize it. more effort should come from hard incentives and stuff from the universities.
@@thatitalianlameguy2235 to be clear, I'm agreeing with you, just expanding on what you said.
@@elliotts5574 you should not discourage women from following their dreams by starting out on the worst foot and telling them the entire industry is filled with creeps.
This video was incredibly honest and raw and very fun to engage with! These kind of mental gymnastics directed at seeking truth and reality are wonderful.
I'm really not sure I can agree. It really felt like he just ignored the entire main argument, that there are social factors that gatekeep women from game development, and he just narrowed it all down to biological essentialism. Like with the Twitch Streamer part.
The 40+% of women streaming on Twitch are ABSOLUTELY not all titty streamers. It's just a small minority that found a specific niche. But he picked out one titty streamer and chose to focus in on her to make a really dishonest point about how "maybe most women on Twitch are just gaming for the money...?" I follow a fair number of female streamers as well as knowing a few personally. The idea that women are just 'fake gamers' is just so misguided and out there.
I can absolutely agree with people just playing what they want and having the freedom to pick sexy options on all sides. But it's the parts of this video where he starts misinterpretting studies and making really weird bad faith arguments to just be like "I guess women are just built different" where this video really loses me, and it loses me HARD.
@@dethhollow I don't think the intention was to say "All girls use twitch to sell their bodies" but more so that it's very clearly and definitively the most popular thing a girl can do on there, and the fact that almost every single man there doesn't have any of that type of content. You go to twitch right now and you're going to see at least a couple camgirls. But even smaller ones can be sexualized, especially vtubers since you don't actually need to attractive at all since you're using a model. The point is that girls have a very good incentive to cater towards men like this, whether it be for popularity or money, and you see that just by browsing twitch. Do all women do this? Nah, but let's not be silly and call them the minority or say it's niche.
@@autocorrect5456 He didn't show any proof that it was popular, though. He basically just found one titty streamer and went "I guess these numbers are a lie then, huh?"
Like you can't show me hard data and then dismiss it on an anecdote. That's just not a very good argument at all.
Hell, even if say 50% of women were using sexualized vtuber models or revealing facecams.... what would that actually prove here...??? He found one girl trying to promote her OnlyFans. That doesn't mean all or even MOST titty streamers are 'fake gamers' or whatever. I'm not even sure there's a notable audience for Vtubers using their models for porn as their main grift? The only one I can think of is ProjectMelody?
What does this even mean for people like me who are men or might be trans or NB but use a female Vtuber model? Does that mean I'm a fake gamer with my long history of doing regular streams for low view counts?
You can't just look at a thumbnail and just decide that someone's running a grift or whatever just because of how they present. That'd honestly be pretty sexist and kind-of weird for a video that's trying to defend the idea of sexualized characters in general.
@@dethhollow ...you're blowing this way out of proportion. The fact is that sex sells, and it's easy to see when you go to twitch and there's less obviously sexualized content the further you scroll down. He is specifically referring to so-called "titty streamers" as a very good reason to sexualize your content if you're a girl. "But those are just camgirls linking onlyfans!" Yes, on a streaming site used and known for video games. "Well there aren't THAT many of them!" Maybe so, but they're always pretty damn popular. He never said every girl who streams is a "fake gamer." Just that using games as a means to rope in more viewers is a very viable tactic on a website known for gaming. More viewers=more money. He even used the most popular example with like 6 million followers and you're questioning if it's popular or not? Just go there yourself. Front page and there's tits and ass right in your face. What more could you possibly need...
Now, to clear up any confusion: lets reiterate the question he asked that precedes everything that was said:
"Which sex do you think is more likely to be able to leverage playing video games as a business without caring that much about video games?"
You're the only one here bringing up "fake gamers" and asking for answers from questions that were never asked. Also I don't care if you're a man, woman, dog, cow, airplane. Sexualization is clearly defined when you see it. Thumbnails are what get people clicking. Now I think this is funny so answer me this: with your content, as a guy, you're using a vtuber model that has clearly visible jugs that dresses up in outfits like a bunny suit. Do you think people view that as even slightly sexual? If you answer yes, then you should understand what I'm saying. Sexy stuff is always a plus, whether or not the person is intending for it to be. Even if you aren't using it to get more viewers, the fact is still there that it should get you more. Now, if you were a girl or using a voice changer, would you have even more viewers? Well, probably, yeah. But that's enough of that tangent...
@@autocorrect5456
--- "He is specifically referring to so-called "titty streamers" as a very good reason to sexualize your content if you're a girl."
Okay, but why does that mean they shouldn't count as Gamers? That's the entire argument here. If it doesn't matter then this entire thing is kind-of pointless.
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--- ""But those are just camgirls linking onlyfans!" Yes, on a streaming site used and known for video games."
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You haven't proven that yet, and neither has the video. You found one girl with an Onlyfans. So what? Unless you can actually prove there's a pattern of SPECIFICALLY female streamers using Twitch as a cheap way to promote porn, it's completely pointless.
You just don't have data here. You have an anecdote. Which is basically worthless, as far as I'm concerned.
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--- ""Which sex do you think is more likely to be able to leverage playing video games as a business without caring that much about video games?"
You're the only one here bringing up "fake gamers" and asking for answers from questions that were never asked."
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What do you think is being implied with that statement?
35:49
LivAverageGamer states that there are only two reasons why women aren't as involved in development assuming they account for roughly 46% of gamers. It's worth noting that this is a complete fallacy because both choices completely ignore all social factors that would effect this, but that doesn't matter for now.
The first option he gives is that it's all nerd rage and people just don't care about female representation in game development. Let's push this one to the side for now, but keep in mind his exact words are that the reality is "likely a mixture" of both of these.
The second option he gives is that there just aren't as many women in gaming as we've been lead to believe.
36:25
"The second (option) is that maybe there aren't as many female gamers as we think there are playing games as a hobby."
There is zero ambiguity here. The argument is literally that a notable percentage of Female Streamers, in LivAverageGamer's own clear words, by his OWN logic, are fake gamers who only stream games to make money.
And his proof of this is literally that one popular titty streamer just uses Twitch for publicity.
Nothing I've said is even remotely wrong here. That's just unironically the argument he's bringing into this as one of his main two reasons for why women aren't involved in game development.
Now.... if you want to know what *I* think the reason is, it's more along the lines of "A lack of role models", "Less women in STEM for complex social reasons", and "TONS of misogyny and sexual assault gatekeeping women in the professional gaming industry."
I feel like you can pretty easily back up all of those things in one way or another, but that's just my take.
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--- "Now I think this is funny so answer me this: with your content, as a guy, you're using a vtuber model that has clearly visible jugs that dresses up in outfits like a bunny suit. Do you think people view that as even slightly sexual?"
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Yup. Absolutely. And I genuinely don't care at all. I've got my own reasons for wanting to do it.
Part of it's just basic brand recognition, part of it's just because it's a good way to have something like a facecam without it looking bad, and part of it's just because it's fun and I just like having something people can redeem points for that I can make jokes about.
I don't feel like I've got any real boost since doing it or anything and it's clearly not winning me the big views. But it's still just something I want to do, you know? Simple as that.
That being said, I feel like I've used it pretty responsibly. Like the model's main outfit is pretty modest, and I've only really done bikini stuff for point redeems or whatever. I feel like I've justified the bunny suit pretty well, too? Like the Barbie Review was streamed on Bunny Day, which was a goofy coincidence, and I think I used it for a thumbnail about an anime episode involving a costume party once...? I feel like that's pretty fair, it's not like I'm just shoving fat boobs in every thumbnail or anything, lol.
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--- "Sexy stuff is always a plus, whether or not the person is intending for it to be. Even if you aren't using it to get more viewers, the fact is still there that it should get you more."
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You would think so, but my biggest period was during the Digimon Podcast streams for Frontier and Tamers. I honestly feel like people care about the topic way more than whether I'm using a model or not.
Although point to what you're saying, the most viewed gaming video I've ever done was literally called "The Fanservice Episode", which was a pre-model video showing the bath scene in Danganronpa. So sex does sell. It's just not something I'm getting much of a boost out of.
Like, look at this another way.
If someone just wants to see boobs then why would they watch me over any other bigger, more popular, vtuber that's going to fill that Niche? You need to actually work to make stuff people like on top of other factors. And what goes into that is going to be way more complicated than just whether or not someone is a sexy girl.
I think a few things come together to make this a great video, A. You actually have a viewpoint that you wish to defend. B. Your experience with the gaming industry not just as a consumer, but also as a worker C. You as a person are mature and secure enough in your sexuality that you freely admit your own desires D. You obviously did a fuck ton of reading on the existing viewpoints on the topic
The argument that idealized bodys are an inspiring yet impossible goals might hold up with musculature but not with general beauty standards, which is especially problematic for women. Huge breasts are just not something you can work towards without plastic surgery. And I dont think its beneficial to hold up unrealisticly slim and prettyfied bodys as something to work towards. I have nothing against caring about outwards appearance and figure if someone likes it, but it gets problematic when people start feeling they must do it or else they look bad. Its mostly a problem for women, the standard for man is high muscle mass witch was well discussed in the video. And from personal experience I can tell that beauty standards are a real problem, some women in spite of being slim feel they must be even more, and put on a lot of makeup or else they will look bad. I know a person who for years felt bad with her body, because she felt she had to much fat, despite the fact she doesnt have unhealthy amount of it. By the way she eats less than me and I have always been slim despite not exercising a lot so its genetical. And of course video games arent themselves responsible for it, but they are a part of a bigger issue. Maybe it would be a bit easier for people to accept having more fat, and unperfect face if all of the important characters in fiction werent this ideal beauty standards. Fiction has some influence over reality especially for childreen and teens and seeing all major heroes be a certain way can change peoples perception of reality. Also "its not real, so x doesnt matter" is a bad argument for me, fiction often discusses real life problems, or its presentation of different topics promotes certain worldviews. Its also a reflection of reality and can be analyzed through these lenses.
you immediately forgot about the "impossible" part right after mentioning it.
if you or anyone else is a grown adult and cannot tell that fictional characters have impossible beauty standards and feel like you need to live up to those obviously fake impossible standards, that is YOUR problem, and nobody else should be punished for your issues by being forced to have ugly fictional characters.
nobody here is arguing for having sexualized characters in media for children. That's obviously not acceptable for a number of reasons.
@@powerbeard5653 and you seem to have missed my point. I personaly dont have problems with feeling like I dont live up to fake standards, but its very common for people to feel like it. Its a broad problem that would exist even without fiction, but fiction can reinforce it. For exaple assuming you are straight (if you arent then swich the example other way) it would feel bad if all major characters ever in ficion were gay wouldnt it? And the fact that you describe more realistic depictions as ugly proves to me how the beauty standards influence your peception of reality.
THIS, like it was a wake-up when he said that those who carry around the mindset of shaming themselves for unrealistic depiction are the ones who have the unhealthy mindset. That much is fair.
But constantly SEEING stuff that's unobtainable, *especially* with the current beauty industry and how we have not moved away from a non-self-objectifying mindset, *does* hurt. Like you said, it's contributing and a result of a larger issue that society has not moved past yet.
About the lack of solo female developers, i think there are deeper societal reasons than "women don't want to". It is probably a complex topic, but here's my small piece of salt to the pile:
Solo game development is an activity that uses many different skills, but one of arguably the most important is coding. You can make a game (success aside) with amateur art, a bad story, bad design, no music, etc, but you cannot make a videogame without at least a moderate to expert understanding of coding and software development. And while women are in no way "less suited" to software development than men, they have historically been pushed out of (or at least underrepresented in) programming jobs and education until pretty recently (remember the whole stink about the author of the code for the photo of the black hole being a woman?). I remember when I started studying software engineering in college a couple years ago, and the university was celebrating that a whole 25% of it's students were girls. It's a societal issue of gendering jobs and careers, and media for children pointing to some jobs as desirable only for some genders.
How many times have you seen a show where a girl's dream is to be a programmer instead of a singer, or where the cool hacker sidekick is a woman?
So as a summary to my ramble: More than women not wanting to make games, i think it's more that a core ability needed to make games, programming, has been a male domain for way too long, and has a high societal barrier of entry for women.
this bro!
Honestly, creators should just make what they want to make. I can understand someone not likeing female characters being very sexualized. I personally love it, it's why i like anime and japanese games to much. But what i can never understand are the people that have the mindset of " i don't like this so it shoudn't exist and anyone who does like it is a bigot" or whatever other buzz word they wanna use
Kinda wonder if part of the problem is in how social media rewards us. The like, dislike and how algorithms work ends up punishing people that have balanced points of view and rewards points of view that drive "engagement"
@@livaveragegamerThat is one of the greatest theories i've read recently. I never thought about it that way, but the amount of women shaking ass or intentionally showing off their bodies on my instagram reels is ridiculous. I'm here looking for comedy, I get women shaking it. Not what I'm looking for, but what straight man is gonna say they don't like seeing boobs.
@@livaveragegamer I think it's not just the reward aspect, but also the format that incentivizes short, quick takes, and as soon as you think of them. After being on the internet for a while, you notice how many people are too quick to give their opinion on something, before even taking in the full context of what they are engaging with. This isn't something you can do in real life, without bearing the consequences of it immediately. Imagine if people were required to watch the full video before leaving a comment. Probably half of the comments on YT would disappear.
@@wellwellwell881 100% agree with this
@@livaveragegamerIt’s an engagement economy. You see phenomenon occur in hate watching.
People will purposefully say the most out of pocket out of hand things just for attention.
The reason why there aren't so many female developers in gaming is that there aren't so many female developers in general. The fact that 1/4th of game devs are female is actually impressive, considering that less than 1/4th of all devs are female
Women are usually not encouraged to pursue a career in tech, and the ones who do are usually very career driven, so even less encouraged to start their own solo project that requires time and dedication they could otherwise spend towards their career. On the other hand I have seen a lot of women doing solo projects of mobile games, which require way less time and effort, and is way easier to do as a hobby
Hm not sure if women are not encouraged enough to go into tech or they just generally arent as interested or passionate about it in general... For me that there are less solo developers of games is a great example of lack of passion and willing to take the risk on it. Now women are generally speaking more risk adverse and also often less extreme in their approach or passion at times you can say.
So it might just stem from Gender differences, but it doesnt change the fact that any women if she has enough passion could be a solo developer for the next big hit indie game, but they are basically none.
I don't understand where the belief that women aren't encouraged to pursue STEM comes from. In my college days there was a massive push to get women into STEM while there were basically no resources for men.
@@voymay At least in my experience, women are encouraged by many teachers and schools to go into tech, but are very discouraged by their peers. Who the hell wants to go into a career where you will be objectified, harassed, and treated as less than by your majority male peers? Only the extremely passionate.
The simple fact of the matter is that not a lot of women are interested in gaming, let alone developing them.
@@XoOLelouchOoXplease until 40 years ago they WERENT ALLOWED TO
Don’t start that bullshit about NOT INTERESTED
Men still LOVE shaming women for having a career and not being a home maker
Fields dominated by men also are likely to treat the few women present MUCH worse because of the isolation from staff that might care about female issues with harassment
I want to point out the difference in outfits. If you compare sexualized male and female characters the female ones will have far less closing, and much more uncomfortable and unrealistic clothing then male characters. As a girl I can tell you - you can reduce the complaints about seualization by 80% if only you dress female characters a bit more appropriately. You don't have to reduce the "assets" in most cases! Sexualized male characters are usually way better dressed than sexualized female characters.
In Bayonetta's example, she has a comfortable looking full body skintight sute. She isn't wearing a bikini. Even with all of the poses and moves, it is not really offputing cuz she is covered, and her nude scenes are short and somewhat disguised. In comparison characters from Mortal Combat, Nikke and others make my eyes roll immediately.
The clothing of men in games is far closer to being reallistic in the given the setting than that for women.
Also most women don't hate all sexualization that much, but we hate it when it is done in a cheep and distastefull manner. The worst offender for me is when devs add extreme jiggles. Yuck.
You hate it because surprise-surprise - they are made to appeal for men, not to you. You are simply not the target audience. I also don't like looking at sexualized male characters made for women. Why do all the devs have to cater to you? I like my waifus in short skirts and tights, get off of them. It's also funny how a lot of people complaining about sexy dressed female characters praise onlyfans models and say that women can wear whatever they want. Ok I agree, it's their choice, now ifф real woman can dress like this why can't a fictional one do the same??? Also Bayonetta's outfit she is not dressed comfortable or appropriate for battle, def not with the heels.
Also your assumption about complaints being noticabely reduced if you devs would expose a little bit less of female character's skin is 100% wrong. It's your personal opinion that for whatever reason skintight outfits are more appropriate, all people have different opinions on what is too sexualized. For a lot of people a female character simply having a sexy body is already too much, and I mean like for A LOT of people. Bayonetta is not different from Nikke in that regard, you just happen to personally find it not bothering to you. Also to a lot of people tight bodysuit is even hotter than half-naked body, and there are even a character like this in Nikke, her name is Alice. Tight bodysuit is just another type of sexy outfit, it happens to show less skin but it's not inheretly different from miniskirts, cleavages, etc. Even if devs cater to you and expose less skin of their female characters there will still be countless people crying over other types of fan-service in games that are clearly not made for them
Nikke's clothes are part of Charm.
my god, it's been so long since I've heard someone state reality or at least likely reality, rather than try to sell controversy or parrot misunderstandings. Thank you! You've genuinely cleared my mind of a decade of propaganda fog and reminded me what sanity sounds like.
I also want to note, with your take on videogame streamers. There are tons of female streamers are are genuinely in it because they love games, but they're not as sexualized. In fact, a lot of women and girls would avoid streaming due to how they were treated (either being belittled and called horrible things for being too pretty, or getting harrassed for not being pretty enough) until the explosion of vtubing gave a lot of these women security and a sense of separation from being objectified, as it feels a lot less gross to have men objectify and draw porn of your cartoon avatar than of your real life body.
It gives me goosebumps that there are enough men out there that would harass women in streams, male dominated jobs, etc to make women being uncomfortable an expected universal experience. Are the men not being raised properly or is it innate in them to do this?
@@jessy1982nope, definitely not. My Italian mother would reach across the country and wreck me if she were to find out I as an adult acted the way some of these "men" act.
Vtubers are arguably more objectified than irl women.
@@lunkee6972 That's not the point but yeah. Fantasy characters were/are and will always be objectified.
@@lunkee6972thats true, should still say a lot about how men treat women in the gaming space tho. but a lot of girls can probably handle that since many of them have a layer of security behind their avatar. There is an obsession with doxing these girls too ive noticed
Generally I nope out of these topics given how quickly they devolve into chaos, but you had such an open minded and wholistic approach that I found myself captivated for the whole video duration. Good stuff!
Thanks boss! thanks for taking the time to watch.
I agree wholeheartedly with you on that. I also agree with LivAverageGamer that boobs are great.
The attention of this video is well deserved, i'm glad it blew up on your channel so well. This is the most academic approach to this field of study I've ever seen in video form. Sincerely appreciated. Especially all the context around bodybuilding and how muscle mass/fat interacts and how that is misrepresented in games.
18:03 I want to correct you on this point: while its obviously true that industry hiring practices can't explain the gap persisting in indie game development, (if it does, in fact, persist there --- I can't find the relevant stats on indie game developers,) educational gatekeeping _can._ Governments were strongly influenced, as I mentioned in my other comment, to promote men in the programming industry, including in curricula, and this has gone to shape educational standards today. There's been concerted effort to reverse this, and the timing of women becoming more prevalent in the field again seems to fit with when those efforts really started to make headway, about one to two decades ago, (so, when game devs now entering the field would have been in middle or high school.)
It's not that male game-devs successfully stop a majority of women from getting jobs programming, but that school councilors do a good job in convincing young girls that they should pursue other interests. High school cliquishness then reinforces this after the fact.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's not true that within the solo dev scene, that what the "general populace does when free of influence" can be seen, because there IS an influence, and it's in education. I mean, if you don't teach women to be literate, you'll see few female self-published authors, correct? Programming requires literacy in programming languages.
I do want to add I don't necessarily think that the only way things can heal is if its like, perfectly balanced, or that a larger percentage of programmers are women than not, its just a fact that your difficulty finding female game devs is largely shaped by the educational institutions. And some of that might even be emergent from how educators try to teach autistic girls to be less autistic, but will actually nurture hyperfixations in autistic boys if they're STEM related.
I remember a time when I told girls I was into games and they said ew, then told the rest of the girls I was gross. So much for being myself. If there was anything preventing women from getting into games it was their own social circles. Us nerdy men want more girls who are passionate about games. The problem is we have been fooled so many times by women who claimed to be passionate only to find that their love for games didn't really run that deep. In some cases it was only a means to get attention.
I can't say I particularly care about more girls getting passionate about games, because they usually get passionate about the parts I don't care about. Throughout history, men and women generally didn't have the same hobbies other than some exceptions. Don't need to have a wife or girlfriend that likes games, as long as they aren't discriminating against me playing them. There's other things in the world to talk about with them.
it's also hard to tell men about things that are interesting to women, even in media, we're divided and to each one of us, there will always be some biases, and generally, there will be different genres for women or men
the damaging way (which ironically is the most profitable way) of making things interesting is to try to appeal to as many as possible, which would generally lead to controversies and the 'ew' factor for both, and that's how things are going with equality in something as innocent as video games, women and men are just different
if you guys generally try to ask women you would be surprised about how little do you know about the games that are generally appealing to us, much like we don't love the thing you love that much, it's just preferences, and the act of trying to understand you guys
Not all men are into games either. Or each other games. Theres rts, moba, jrpg, arpg, roguelikes, card games, gacha games, metroidvanias, soulikes, survival games, batle royale games, fps, idle clickers, the sims, pokemon, tower defense, sports games, match 3, city builders, 4x strategy, etc.
Women ☕
As a woman, I really like playing games. But I don't really have a specific genre I really like. If I enjoy it, I like it. And I'm really bad with FPS games and platforming. Maybe I'm just not good with thinking quickly and prefer games that give me time to think.
I like RPG games or RPG Maker games. Some simulation games like Stardew Valley. Then the hard ones like Fear and Hunger. What else... I like gacha games like FGO and Genshin Impact. And Rhythm games like Phigros (currently only Phigros). I also like Identity V.
This is all I can remember at the moment, but I do really like playing games.
I have followed a rule of "if it fits in the setting/character and doesn't do negative impact irl, then its ok." If this fantasy game has bikini armor women, there should also be bikini armor men. If there are men with full plate armor, there also should be full plate armor women.
Also I want to bring up one case where developers made a game with protagonist being somewhat sexualized man, but the backlash from certain kind of men made the developers change his outfits. It was some Final Fantasy mobile game, where you controlled only one man, who changed outfits with jobs. It was during the whole gamergate bs.
I REMEMBER THAT CHARACTER he was gorgeous and his old design was so pretty too :(
That’s a pretty good way to articulate it. The discrepancy between men and women in video games has always been the thing that’s bothered me the most. Like, in a fantasy game you’ll have giant buff male orcs covered in armor, but then the female orcs are tiny and half-naked, and there’s no option to make a big buff orc woman or small orc man.
I think that was Mobius Final Fantasy
"Bikini Armor Men"? As in barbarians with naught but loincloths and boots?
@@mistery8363 for example yes
Honestly, I think making characters cute and/or beautiful and/or cool is great.
The problem with women designs, imho, comes from assuming that all this traits should default to one body type: big bazadongas and a waist that could fit through a needle hole
Like overwatch did it quite good, actually. They had plump characters, muscled characters, tiny and slim characters, etc. and all of them were pretty.
I would also advocate for at least one not pretty women character, dressed in garbage with a gross hair. Like. Sometimes you feel bad. And you just wanna play with a rat woman. The absolute "im depressed and look bad for it" women. Just roleplay as her dogging through a thrash and making bad decisions.
Digging through a trash like a rat man doesn't always hit right.
Remarkably, one of the Elder Scrolls game let you did that, and it was very fun.
Since you talked about man, i kinda want to add that it all applies to man too.
The reason why people refuse to see sexualisation of male characters is that for a lot of people this amount of muscle isnt appealing.
We need cute and cool and pretty man characters, plump, lanky, dad body types.
We need a few rat man also :)
If you don't make it big bozonngas and madsive butt then you risk getting interviewed by chris hansen
It's fantasy not supposed to be real , the characters are To be extreme and fantastical. That's why it's called escapism. People need to chill
A gamer through and through, came for the booba, stayed for the sadness.
I call it the "Nier automata manoeuvre"
Tia the girl in the thumbnail is one of the best example of this tbh, i can imagine that she was a student that died during a school attack then revived as Nikke.
Also I really wish that Nikke someday gets a triple a game based on it, like most of the battles would be absolutely rad if animated, like battle between alteisen and infinity rail, like imagine train vs train shooting ballistic missile and particle cannon side by side,
You mean Nier Automata xD
it's ok , just blame Donkey
I think the sexualization wont be so much a problem if we get just some balance. I like hot characters. I also understand how important it is that we get more than just "hot". do both, damn it.
Yeah, people shouldn't complain about sexualization at all in my opinion. I don't even think there has to be a "balance" as you say, as long as the game is good who cares how many boobs are flying around? People often go and say "it is over sexualized, I don't like it" instead of "this game is incredibly bad, the only thing it has is hot women" which should be the only correct take about sexualization because it should never be a problem
@@TOBY-jy7bz I respectfully disagree.
Most games with "fanservice" have plenty of meat behind that, they are real games not some cheap attempt at getting easy money.
It's not the game devs fault, it's the players. They are the ones sexualizing the characters. I should know because as a teen I heard of rule 34 and decided to see if it was true. It is, i don't care what the character looks like in game, people will find a way to sexual them. I found images of Stars from mario, they don't even have bodies and yet people online gave them a body to satisfy their desires. We need to combat porn addiction if we really want to see true progress towards the end of sexualization.
@@neffdigitydog except its not as black and white as u see it. this video proves that. sex sells, so they sell and we buy. I personally prefer when the sexualization is left to the fanbase. one game that does it well is Limbus company. the horny aspect is practically nonexistent or very subtle yet community goes absolutely feral. its fun, cool and healthy. It also proves that we dont need tits and ass under our nose to find something hot.
17:20 Another piece of the puzzle worth considering is that programming had formerly been a woman's profession, but women were driven out of the field en masse. (Britain actually forcibly retired most of their female programmers, which ended up costing them their reputation as the leading country in the field.) In many non-western countries, women still make up a higher percentage of the programming field _to this day._
It's also worth noting that within 3 decades is when games stopped being marketed as "fun for the whole family" to primarily marketed towards boys. This gendered aspect of videogames didn't come from nowhere.
Oh, and I do also want to add --- that isn't to say anything about the rest of the subject matter, and it certainly says nothing about whether or not videogames can cause misogynistic attitudes. What it does say is that some institutions, like, for example, the British government, are responsible for misogynistic attitudes that can show up in gaming circles and in the industry, (which are widespread enough in my experience to explain why so many female gamers complain of them.)
But I generally am of the opinion that media is simply a bellwether, telling us what people are thinking, rather than causing us to think the same, the real influencer of attitudes and beliefs are institutions and material incentives. Statistically speaking, a majority of people do what's in their own interest, and rationalize it morally after the fact, and this has a huge influence on the production of bigoted attitudes, not media itself.
Not that I have any academic credentials, it just is an idea that emerges pretty intuitively from the idea that material conditions influence culture very strongly, and seems to explain and predict quite a lot from my own personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt. Supposedly the basic methodology of using material conditions to predict cultural attitudes is one of the more successful methodologies, so I'm just trying to use that methodology in my own layperson sort of way.
My main issue is that attractiveness isn't the same for both genders. For women attractiveness defines their value. If you're ugly, you have lesser chances at success(pretty priviledge) in both marriage and career. As a man, being attractive is a bonus but not neccessary for their value.
Games are designed for the "male gaze" simply because it shows "valuable" women.
I mean for me as a woman, idc if the girls are hot and sexy, I just want the guys to be too lol. That's part of why I mainly play japanese-made games. The men are just as gorgeous (brother Nier, Axel, Dimitri, Zack Fair, Joker/Akira, Aymeric, Lancelot, etc etc.).
I know games like Nikke aren't for me, because i'm clearly not their target demographic and that's okay. I just don't play, simple. I have gacha games targeted towards straight women that I throw my money at instead, like Twisted Wonderland and Ensemble Stars. Or games for both genders, like Granblue Fantasy or FF Brave Exvius.
I think Japan has mastered the art of beauty for both genders.
But beauty is in the eye of thr beholder blah blah blah.
same, I'm a straight man, but when I see a guy blush cutely, idk man I question myself sometimes, I NEED MORE AHASHSHFDWAHFFH
we need more ong
@@henrysmith3775 Are you SURE youre a straight man?
@@henrysmith3775me when anime Femboys.
@@harrisbrown6800what does that comment add to the conversation?
I think personally where sexualization in character design becomes a problem is when it becomes the default design choice. Anyone can be pretty, but If a character is wearing sexy clothes it should communicate something about the character. An example of what I mean is Ivy and Taki from Soul Calibur, both are famously characters shamelessly based on sex appeal, but I feel like Ivy is the better design because her clothes communicate that she's a dangerous femme fatale who uses both sexuality and violence as a means of controlling others, whereas Taki is a no nonsense exorcist ninja, who travels around in the most brightly coloured vacuum sealed spandex imaginable, so much so that it clearly highlights her lack of a bra to support her large chest while doing her acrobatic and strenous job. None of Taki's clothes communicate or even make sense with her character whereas Ivy's design tells you most of what you need to know about her at a glance.
That is why I think he missed the point on why people like Bayonetta's handling of fanservice. OF COURSE Bayonetta's sexualization is made to sell, to appeal to our male monkey brain that makes us horny, but the fact that her sexuality is contextualized and that she's aware of her own beauty and flaunts it with confidence is what adds a layer of characterization and fun to it all. The problem is that when that contextualization is absent, and the character's design and treatment is aimed to be sexy without rhyme or reason (like SC's Taki, as you mentioned, Quiet from MGSV or Pyra from XC2, a LOT of female characters in XC2). Because that is when the whole thing becomes pointless, distracting and gross. Because that's when you can't play a game without being scared of your mother, your sister or your partner waking in the room because they're gonna see a character blatantly made so that some people can jack off to it. It's not even a matter of "damaging society", I don't think that sexualization has the power to strengthen misogyny. I think it's just an symptom of the misogyny that is already in the social fabric, and when it's on full display without being contextualized it just becomes gross, sad and immersion-breaking.
fighters can't be fat unless they specifically use heavy bodyweight style
ninja does better job in a bodysuit than tracksuit
Damn bro sexiness needs logic now? Can we just have good looking girls in video games just because? 😢
Wow, I guess kunoichi just don't exist anymore. You know, the femme Fatale style characters who use their bodies for seduction and violence...?
This is a common pitfall in character design as a whole; making sexy characters as revealing/provocative as possible regardless of what would actually make sense for the character. Giving someone an outfit that clashes with their actual character is just bad design driven by hormones.
An engaging video essay on a subject I dont see often, and I left feeling better about myself. Thanks!
I'm mostly annoyed by the jiggle physics in some games or of some characters. I can laugh about it, but it tends to break the immersion for me more often when the melons jiggle at moments, they probably wont in real life. As a woman with a bigger bust size myself its just extreme to me - when, where and how bodyparts jiggle on woman in games. But over all i'm more annoyed about seeing so few female characters that are less sexualised and close to no sexualised male characters. I am so excited for Arlecchino in Genshin, because its the first female character since launch that wears proper pants.
Yes i dont like the sexualisation if its senseless, and i dont like the objetification, but I also do like Bayonetta. I guess its not the question if but rather how. Nikke is a game i will never touch and i always cringe to the point of physical discomfort when i see ads of that game. But i can see the appeal in it for some people - also it probably makes good money xD
even dudes feel weird seeing it like that tbh
@@user-unknown1705nah
Bro same! I have a big bust and over-the-top jiggle physics is one of the banes of my existence. The main reason I can’t stand Dead or Alive
Especially when these women with massive breasts wear clothes that have NO CONSIDERATION for support when they live very active lifestyles
Ive never felt represented in a video game. I dont want to be represented, im trying to escape. Why do we gotta bring it full circle
FUKKEN EXACTLY!! dude you my friend, have a functional brain.
i like how these pendejos these days, want everything to be "like real life" now .. . i didnt know video games were supposed to be like real life. lol
I know I'm not represented when I'm screaming at the game "I could have made that jump"
Cause not everyone uses video games for escapism. Still valid that that is what you use it for, more power to ya! But as an artform, video games can do a lot more things than only escapism (catharsis, inspiration, etc.)
Because not everybody plays video games for such alarmingly negative reasons. Many play just to have fun. Some play for a job.
this is like protesting against nasty images on smoking packs because you don't want to think about consiquenses.
Like, I enjoy the idealized feminine form and would never claim that just having very pretty and sexualized women characters is a bad thing...
The issue is that the default for women is extraordinary... And that's just not the case for male characters, who get to have all sorts of body shapes and levels of physical attractiveness and styles and levels of sexualization.
I just want to see more range in female characters and characterization.
its cause you gotta make the mc stand out from the cannon fodder lol
@@ladaleenglish6756there's a difference between giving the protagonist a cool design and giving the protagonist DDD tits lmfao
yep, it's not the fact that sexualised female characters exist. It's the fact that 95% of female characters are sexualised.
yea, more than anything i want more variety
@gandalfthegay. That has to do with how men and women differ in terms of dating and attractiveness.
A women is more critical of how a man looks, but that's not the biggest factor in whether he is compatible. Women are more likely to look at stuff such as career, income, housing, familial relationships, and personality, so the ideal Man for a woman has a good Career, is paid well, has a nice house, loves him mom, and is romantic, and if he's tall that's just a plus.
A man is more likely to care about looks above all else, with personality coming second. This seems messed up, but it makes sense with the man as the provider in the relationship being the norm for 1000s of years. A man's ideal women works at mcdonald's, and is hot and nice. Her career doesn't matter, cause it's not a long-term thing. What does matter is does she have good genes to pass on, is she diseased, can she properly raise a child (hips big enough to birth, and breasts to feed the child).
See a man looks for a women who can raise young, and a woman looks for a man that can help raise and provide for the young. Studies show that women are actually harsher to men on their looks, but men care more about looks. So it makes sense that men of all shapes exist, as men of all shapes can provide, but only women of certain shapes are biologically predisposed to be great mothers. I'm not saying whether this is right or wrong, just providing a reason why. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
"Boobs are great." ...."Give this man an award...now!" - All Men of Culture 😎👍
You are making an effort to understand the problem, I'll recognize that, but this is a really complex problem and I think you know more about body building than what you demonstrate you know about social issues. I think sexualisation is more a symptom, an indicador, than the problem itself, and yes I think there is a problem that make half the population (woman) suffer, not just a minor inconvenience, but real discrimination, although some times it might be subtle is significant and I think we all should do something about it, talk is a first good step.
The whole video is interesting, thanks for that, but yes you are self serving. Calling the ideas and studies you don't like "fake science" and "bullshit" is just the tip of the iceberg here. One example, you mention the problem of female game developers, but the way you look at the problem is already biassed, the angle you take already carries the conclusion you want to get, there are few female game developers, in fact there are few female developers in general, in fact there are few woman in science and engineering in general, why? because that's the way thing are period? our tastes and our interest come from some unknown place? or they have something to do with the way we grow and the way we are nurtured by society? what do you think? Also only-fans is not a prove that woman are fine with the way thinks are or something similar, on the contrary, is just another manifestation and indicator of the same problem. Some woman decided to exploit this situation in their economic benefit, some enjoy it, some put up with it. Even if some people put up with a bad situation doesn't meen that this situation is fine, I'm sure you can think of a lot of examples.
Like you, I love boobs and hot female characters in all kinds of media, and porn, and ... well that's all it is, but I know that this isn't just about me, this social problems touch the way we all relate to each other, the way we see the world, our expectations and our goals and interests, who we talk to, and who is left behind, who is cared for and who isn't. I think that if you have some female relative that you really cared for maybe you should see this problem from their perspective a bit. You mention your wife, this is not just a minor problem that "she doesn't have any games to play" and that maybe she should read a magazine instead to kill time, this is a problem that has to do in the way your wife is treated in every interaction of her life and how she choose to dress etc. The games sure are not the driving factor in misogyny or discrimination against woman, but they are part of the culture, they are part of the echo. I don't think you have to worry about anyone taking chun-li away from you, as long as sex keeps moving money she won't go away, and my beloved mangas and comics won't either. But maybe we can make room for other players and other possibilities maybe if we experiment with other ideas we could end up liking it, maybe other endings to our games are possible. I have experience liking things that at first look I didn't like, it happened to me with metal, with beer, with some stupid korean dramas that when I'm watching some onion chopping ninjas want to boycott, etc.
Different than you I don't have an easy solution like "woman developers should be better at making better games for woman" but I have faith in humanity and have the idea that a better society is possible one in which we men wouldn't be seen as just sex consumers, but as more interesting complex human and even more happy and satisfied than watching virtual wifus. I also happen to know from experience that only boobs don't cut it. Having just a cast of female hotties in a game, doesn't make a game great, in your video I can see that you could at least partially agree with me on this. Maybe in the future our tastes could be different. Maybe our children will judge better.
Thanks for making an interesting video that sparked this long and poorly written comment.
I really appreciate this comment. The whole video felt very dismissive to how women might feel about playing an otherwise fun game where they have to be scantily clad in order to play as a female charcter.
I think you forgot to make a point. "Life is a great wide river."
@@NitetimeMoon it is dismissive and hes right, because thats a subjective reason not to play the game. It doesnt affect anything
Listen you can make a whole essay on this topic and say it causes X or impacts Y to justify it as being bad, but until you have actual evidence it's just you falling into cognitive bias traps, your whole comment is just you going on multiple tangents, a wall of text to say nothing of substance. Reminder the studies that HAVE been done on this subject show 0 increase of misogyny in men/women and no increase of body image issues in women.
@@andreismith9696 just like it doesn't affect anything for women in games to wear outfits that cover more skin, right? This whole topic is subjective, I think my point stands
man is an absolute legend for tackling a subject like this and actually being honest about his own opinions.
As a guy, I don't usually take issue with male protagonists when they're a predefined character. I do, however, get annoyed when I'm given a character creator that limits me to making classically handsome or hulked out guys. When I'm unable to make a variety of male characters, I usually end up making a female character simply because designers seem to give females more options for character creation and I suppose since I'm not a female there's less of a desire to make a self-insert or pattern the character after aspects of myself. Character creation in anime-styled games is less of a bother to me since it's inherently cartoonish, although in such games I do get tired of seeing a billion swinging titties if the character designers tend towards that style for their female characters. Just give me variety, both in the physical characteristics as well as personality of your characters.
I think the worst part of the sexualisation and objectification debate is the tendency for either side to make it out as though they are being oppressed by the opposition. I've seen tons of complaints about how all men want their women in games to be sex objects as well as tons on the opposite side saying that games are being ruined because none of the women are sexy anymore. I think the reality is that most people don't really care and games aren't being ruined by either side. IMO just let artists make the art they want. If that includes enormous swinging tits then so be it. If that means women you think are ugly then so be it. The only thing we should rally against is those who would seek to dictate what art can and cannot be created, whether that's dictating women in games have to be sexy or that women in games must be representative of reality. I think it's fine to be uncomfortable or offended by art and to talk about the reasons why but attempting to police it is no bueno.
I do understand that women have it harder since in real life they are faced by unwanted sexual attention so they may want to escape from that in their games, though. But my advice is to stay away from live service type games that rely on selling you shit, since they are inevitably products before art and are more likely to tend towards objectification. There are many games where the sexualisation is immersion breaking or cringe-inducing to me, so I just avoid those games/developers.
To me the main issue is when ppl make sexy women by just not having her wear much clothes. It’s such a lazy character design choice and is supremely unappealing to me. Men get to wear clothes and women are just half naked. Some games where there’s character selection between female and male you’ll see the attractive man character covered in armor but the woman is wearing nothing but a bikini. When there’s such an obvious discrepancy it just grosses me out so much. I just want equality.
Ruin is hyperbole, but I have to see ugly people every day. I just want to escape from that in my games, and yet so many photorealistic games from the West these days are bombarding me with walking eyesores like Solas and Sera. Even if he had hair he'd be fucking ugly.
It's pure violence. I'm sick of it. Yes, they start to become kind of cute once you get to know them, but that applies to ugly people irl too. Why do I have to work in a video game to find my companions acceptable to look at?
@@acudaican It's all just personal preference. I dislike anime art styles so I generally avoid games that go with that. A lot of them shove in so much fan service that it feels like soft porn. But I don't demand that developers stop making games with loads of tit and ass.
You can do that with photorealistic or ugly games too. For example I will never bother playing through Cruelty Squad because I find it hideous, even though the game mechanics are interesting.
The current landscape of games is huge, you can afford to filter out the things you don't like. There's like a million games out there with attractive women in them (and that's not a bad thing!)
@@acudaican I would ask what mindset you exist with that genuinely makes you think "I need to escape from seeing ugly people". Like I have genuinely never thought anything within miles of that. And you even admit "ugly" characters get more appealing with time, but are completely against softening on them.
@marinesenchou is it that's serious? you have that much of a visceral reaction from seeing unattractive people? like is it really something you have to "escape" from? dont you think youre overreacting a bit there?
Take porn as an exemple. Generally, porn aiming toward man will be about the control over the women body. Porn aiming toward women will be about the control over one-self. Male porn is about "domination", women porn is about "reappropriation". And, this kinda makes sens from an historical perspective of sexism. In history, and still today in a lot of place, women are dominated by a form of men soft-power. The fear of simply being raped when walking during night is an exemple of that. Versus, the "strenght" of being able to walk at night in a city without being scared or on your guard.
So, the "stereotypical" fantasm for men, is about the women herself. In a way, depending of the type of sexism, men need women, be it as an sexual object like some studies you cited said, or be it as a relationship (which explains a looooot of feminicide, where a man can't except that a women can be an independent being). This let to objectification. It is a type of validation of one existence.
On the other side, women are tired of all this bullshit. So the fantasm is about being out of this shit, not needing men. Yeah, of course, a lot of the "stereotypical" fantasm for women are an equivalent of men, which is about the sexualisation of the male body or the relationship, which otome game is a good exemple of. Buuuuuut, a lot of it is also being able to gain a total control over your own body, which is not something we see as much for men. And a lot of people criticize otome game for putting the female protagonist in a dominated position. One exemple would be in the japanese sub-culture of cosplay for the women otaku. It was created by women, and it is about "transforming" one body, one identity. While the men otaku are more about the fantasm of the women body. And, you also need to consider that feminism change depending of the culture and that most time, when people are talking about women in video game, they are using exemple from Japan without even trying to understand how this is working there. And, slowly, this transforms those discussion into xenophobia.
Sooo what you said about Bayonetta being a bullshit intellectual gymnastic for feminist is kinda wrong... It is indeed an intellectual gymnastic, but not bullshit, precisely because, as I said, male and women are in fact kinda sexualising the same object : the women body (in fact, men and women can also sexualize the male body, but people doesn't talk about this as much. In the end, sexualisation is done by everybody toward every gender for different reasons, not only toward the gender that you want to fuck). What is appealing about Bayonetta and makes her a good exemple is that she will attract men and women at the same time, but not for the same reasons. The intellectual gymnastic that you see, is simply being a different focus about sexualisation that you wouldn't see by considering sexualisation about the fantasm of having sex with an attractive body, while this would be different for other people. Aslo, japanese feminism is different from western countries. A lot of it is about the exageration of the female body as a mean to take control over it, which is kinda what the gyaru and lolita movement are all about (also see the anime The Woman Called Fujiko Mine). Same for the cosplay. All those video about sexualisation are wrong every damn time at the same fucking place by forgetting that video game is a global industry made by a whole bunch of people from different cultures.
The problem in all that is considering that one is good, the other is wrong in its sexualisation. That's bullshit. And shaming men that get joy jerking on over the top women body will help nobody. Those fantasm from both side are different, complexe and act as a reaction towards how your society construct its gender and sexual identity. Those have consequences, and we need to understand why is that, and how can this take a form that will not harm other people. If a fantasm got negetive repercussion over the life of someone, then it can be called a problem, which is kinda already shown by studies about porn addiction and by extension, how women are sexualized for men (there is not much study about this in video game indeed, as you said, but they already exist for other media such as studies about pornography....). Those feminist essayists that you say said bullshit, like Sarkeesian, were more about criticizing sexism in our society, using video game as a symptopm, than saying that video game couldn't sexualize or objectify its characters as a whole. It was about putting in perspective that video game got a particular male history (being also born directly from the army) and that it was visible in the content of those games. But, because the industry is growing, and more and more women are playing, some statu wuo about what video game are and should be are callenged. Which is what she did, even if not perfectly (everything she said was kinda self-evident, but she couldn't relly do more seeing the context). Also, there is a lot of women inside the industry. Probably not a lot of lonely devs are women because you need to be a programmer for that. And most programmer are men. Also, I think there is less unemployed women in genereal. Many solo devs are unemployed male. Why is that ? Don't know. But you can't deny the importance of women in the industry because there is not a lot of them being a solo devs in their garage. This is what sexism is about. I know way more people in the industry that are women than men, but most "known" face are men, why the fuck ? At the same time, most "vocal" person from the industry that I know of are men, not women. Hmmmm.
All in all, nice video, and I appreciate our effort to play the devil advocate here. It is important. But a lot of your arguments could easily be used as a way to say that there is no sexism in the industry. This is not what you said, but, people could easily make you said that.
I only clicked on this video because I had recently pulled that character on your thumbnail in nikke, but I'm glad I stuck around to the end - this great to watch!
Man, I gotta say- I did not expect this level of elaboration when I saw the thumbnail and clicked on it...fully ready to only watch 5 min, scoff, then close the tab. To my utmost delight, I was wrong. For a whole 46 minutes and 31 seconds, you had me fully engaged and I feel you touched on a lot of points that men aren't really vocal about (and quite frankly, don't really care to, but nonetheless relatable).
Great job sir, and thanks for the vid! I'll be checking out Part 2 right away.
Thanks boss
I just wanted to say that your video was very well-narrated, fair and researched on the matter, with a bit of analysis into both perspectives.
Really good work and worth watching.
I have some issues with the video althogh some parts felt a little.....ick
It gloessed over balders gate 3 and genshin inpact both atracted a large female playerbase due to the sexualization of men, sure they are exceptions to the rule, but they should have bin mentioned and the fact that game companies are pushing forward making everyone hot.
Also also suprized you didnt mention Celeste as its a legendery game created by a single woman. Or oneshot, it wasnt made by a single person, but most of the cerators where women.
At the end of the video it felt very patrionizing likeee the part where studies didnt find a link between games and their effect on misogyny and body image problems. Its like a study coming out saying that getting punched in the stomach has little to no affect on the body, yeah scientifically your correct, doesnt make it any less anoying and painfull.
same with the streamer part, as it was very glosed over and not fully explained, especially when it felt like this video painted AALLLL streamers as corn stars that only play games to make money, as that is the exact problem. Men viewing women as sexual in nature and not actual full human beings that enjoy games.
All in all great video, just wanted to add my critisism
Hey, thanks for the comment and concerns. I can address some of these.
So two birds with one stone here, Baldurs gate and the streamer/onlyfans take are a viewer comprehension problem and I see this a lot. Basically viewers falsely attribute the amount of time I spend explaining something to be the weight of the thing. This is simply untrue. Some concepts are easy to explain and some are not. It's extremely apparent in the streamer example if you go back and listen to the words, I don't say what you think I said.
Baldurs gate I don't have stats for, but I go into that tyoe of game more in part 2. Genshin impact is a great example (45 %) that I missed but it's more the anomoly than the norm. I'm fine with it being the way forward though. The section is more about marketing than how people feel so I don't have good stats on how people spend by gender but you're right a lot of women, at the very least, have made an account.
Let's talk about the study being patronising because it's an interesting double standard. So is it just ok that we have been shaming gamers (men or women) for something that doesn't have strong evidence? We've just been mislabeling people as bigots and misogynists and you feel gut punched because it turned out not to be true? While I can sympathise with peoples feelings, even if they come from a poor point of view I am far more concerned with the unfounded persecution.
Celeste was not a solo developer, that's why it wasn't mentioned.
There you go, that's all of them I think. I do realise that your criticisms come from a good place and I do appreciate that.
@@livaveragegamer
Thanks for the reply!
Though about the studdies id like to give a example of the gut punch
Imagine you love playing a game, it has a lot of charecters, but you like this specific one, they are cute, your style and very relatable. You watch and play as this charecter you love them.
And then this relatable charecter gets a "summer outfit" then sexual sprays, then other merch that shows off their body. Slowly that charecter you loved and related to is reduced to nothing but their body, an object.
But the studdies said its aaaalll good, so stop whining :>
Gamers can enjoy the sexual content and there can absolutely be sexual games simply to sell sex, but it should be a companies duty to seperate between when is a woman sexual and when just normal.
Also CELEST ISNT SOLO DEVELOPED?? I thought it was untill looking it up just now :x
I see your point. I agree, I think that sucks. Allow me to expand on this because I never touched on the reverse in the video. Any time an established character that is well liked and has a fan base is changed in either direction it's a bad decision that is consumer unfriendly. Now, Tifas breast reduction in the FF7 remake is sort of a dumb thing to get upset about, she looks great and I think it's fine personally. I mean the really egregious ones and I do believe that having it happen the opposite way is equally bad. It has nothing to do with the study saying that sexualisation in video games doesn't cause misogyny though. That is a very important distinction and what I said is still true. Using that argument is wrong and damaging to people that never deserved that label.
One thing that always stands out to me about female sexualization for mens sake is the porn addiction aspect to it, we're basically constantly shown soft porn while playing games and i think that will have disturbing consequences
oh and also to say that women haven't been nurtured away from gaming is flat out wrong, it's very proveable as are alot of different gender specific differences, really the differences are almost always purely cultural and socially constructed, not to say women cant choose for themselves, but to say that the choices we make are influenced by our envoirement and gaming has never been an envoirement for women even tho it makes no sense and it makes bank off of female characters all the time
and the solo development point is kinda odd? like are you arguing for it being decided by gender or socially constructed yet also saying no gatekeeping is found? if males outweigh women by that much in solo development and women (for obviously no biological reason) that would be pretty clear evidence of gatekeeping no? i think women don't touch the medium as much because it goes too far against the societal norms that have been set for them because we live by ancient and useless traditions, then the ones that do are met by constant harassment from horny porn addicts, incels or sexists so that removes even more, then the last ones that decide to stick with it and work with it experience even more gatekeeping in the work envoirement through harassment of sexual and mental kinds on damn near every workplace that is gaming related.
Gatekeeping is DEFINETELY happening
It’s not that deep
@@acidity2k486 sadly it is, you not thinking so just means you've got a bit of the issue going on in there
Hi, this is a little on a woman who plays video games perspective so please take the time to read!
In all honesty as a WOMAN, who has been playing video games her entire life; I quite like seeing attractive girls in games. A pretty girl with a cute face, and in most instances a skinny body, or even curvy is not what we have a problem with. The problem, is that when we see the camera angles, the clothes and (in some cases) the plots revolve around the woman's body (usually her large breasts or butt). This reminds me that(and I'm sure other women too); and makes us feel that; all people see us women as is just a body. Growing up everyone said video games were for boys, so it only made sense that these women with large breasts and butts were for boys too. Which made the struggle to understand it any other way than; my body was constantly being assessed by the boys and men around me to if it fits into this sexualise-able standard, that all the popular female characters fit into.
We are shaped by what media we consume and as a gamer, seeing the over sexualisation of female characters in general has lead me down a toxic path of thinking that my experience as a woman involved being an object of sexual desire, obviously I am older now and know not to conflate real life with video games, but as a young kid trying to make sense of the world, video games helped me do just that.
I want to add that the attractiveness of women characters can be used to her strength, but usually only when she also has deep character development does it not feel like a cheap cop-out for an excuse to have a sexual character.
And personally, it is very rare that I find male characters in games all that attractive. I doubt most of the big strong macho men in video games are for the sake of women to get their socks off too, in my circle of gamer friends, I usually see the men like these type of characters more, as they see them as cool dudes. I am not saying men do not have complications with representation in video games, I am just stating that from my point of view, it appears that men in video games are not subject to sexualisation from women, as much as women in video games are from men.
I do not feel misrepresented by these women most of the time. I personally would probably like to do my hair nice and have clear skin even if my job was a high combat job like a lot of these women. In a way it is the over-representation that scares me, every woman I see with a body similar to mine, has close ups of her chest, suggestive poses and a shallow flirtatious personality. To see so many women like me represented in one way; as an object, convinced me for so many years that's all men saw me as.
Quiet frankly the older I get the sicker it makes me feel.
Thank you if you have read it this far, I hope this helps shed some light on how it feels!
this comment is what this video need 👍
That's fine, but it's not like your opinion is somehow more valid. My mom and others I know, WILL NOT play a game if they can't be hot enough. She played Lineage 2 and went out of the way to sexualize her character, talked with her female guildmates about how great "her boobs" looked in this or that outfit and how she loved the way they moved or how "her butt" looked when the "she" ran even though she didn't think it was realistic. (Actually her and one of her friends spent some time trying to recreate the weird "ninja run" they do to see if perhaps their own boobs really would move like that when running without moving their arms, but they couldin't manage it.)
Just because you were deluded enough to conflate games with reality, doesn't mean people in general shouldn't be allowed to enjoy what they like.
And you're right, most of the men in Triple A games aren't made to appeal to women, but the male players. Know where you can find men sexualized almost exclusively for the "female gaze" in gaming? Yaoi. Shall men seek to ban the lewding of men for women's enjoyment? How about we butt in and demand the end of the production of things like Twilight or Fifty Shades where the perfect/rich/immortal guy(s) are absolutely obsessed with the painfully regular girl? By your own words, you think women are more likely to conflate media with reality, so this is creating impossible standards in their minds and setting them up for misery when those expectations unsurprisingly aren't met.
Oh, no I'm sure it's "different when you do it" right?
@@Nevir202this is such a braindead take lmao. First off she never stated anywhere in her comment that sexualization should not be in games at all, she merely shared her experience growing up playing games, and how the sexualization had averse affects. Moving past that though, you try to make it seem like it's some sort of double standard on women's part because there is a sub genre that panders more towards women. The main problem with this point is that the majority of the gaming industry as a whole use women as sexual objects, it isn't just a niche sub genre. Pretty much any triple a game you're playing these days contains some form of female sexualization/objectification. Whereas if women want to find the same sort of enjoyment they have to play a specific set of games in a specific genre. Your reply is incredibly tone deaf, and also incredibly rude to someone who just wanted to share their experience with the medium in an attempt to help others understand a female viewpoint.
@@jacebergeron6932 She said, paraphrasing of course, Media shapes us and I was harmed by this. She further said "The problem, is..." the depiction.
There is no world in which you call something a problem and claim to have been harmed by it where you are NOT arguing against its existence.
And hilariously, you then go on to ALSO say it's a problem, which of course means that you ALSO think it needs to be stopped, so WTF kind of point do you think you are making?
She: It's a problem
Me: Plenty of women actually like it, what gives you the authority to demand that their desires not be fulfilled because you don't like it?
You: STFU, nobody is saying it needs to be ended, but IT'S A PROBLEM!
Calling me "tone-deaf" while you literally don't apparently even understand the implication of the words you are using is hilarious. You don't call something a problem unless you want to ELIMINATE the problem. Because a "problem" you don't want ended, is not CALLED a problem, just a fact.
@@Nevir202 the way you are choosing to view what we say is incredibly black and white and does not at all recognize the nuisance of the issue. It is by and large a personal preference, and things that some view as a problem is not for others. The reason I am not advocating for removing it as a whole is because there are people who enjoy it. Tha still does not justify you attacking people who feel the other way which is what you've done. If you had politely disagreed and made any valid points I wouldn't have relied. However you fail to make any sort of defense or justification for what you said and merely result to character assassination, and nitpicking very small parts of the argument that are not nearly as important as the paint point at hand.
Saying women are less attracted to video games creation than men, as it is now, is completely missing the point of why society discourages girls to get interested in STEMs and yes computer science...
The other point is not that it should be illegal to use oversized boobs and whatnot, but the fact that the market is utterly skewed toward an unhealthy body instead. This is also going to be part of the answer for the question that was not raised in this video, but that I mentioned above...
It's like saying access to porn or dating apps didn't change how people present themselves or what affects your self confidence, body image or how you put yourself forward.
Of course it did, now some things are great and some are not with this new reality, trying to argue that everything is better is either wearing blindfold voluntarily (aka: intellectual dishonesty) or lacking intellectual curiosity to open yourself to field that don't match your preconceived notion you tried to prove while researching instead of looking for a lot objective answer to begin with.
The same goes for cherry picking examples to justify a sociological issue, no one and everyone is responsible, but your video argues this allows you to not care about it, but the only point this supports is your lack of understanding and empathy for girls and women growing and living in this society that could be improved without having to censor anything...
Part 2
Shoutout to Hoyoverse for mastering the art of fan service for both genders
They are defs the best in the game atm. It's impressive that they almost have a 50/50 split
not only are they amazing at making fanservice targetted for both genders, they do it in a way that a single character is appealing to both genders at once. i dont know how to put it into words but i'll use Yelan as an example. Males love her because she's visually appealing and her personality fits a certain uhhhh "hidden desire" so to speak, but women lover her too because shes a badass girlboss !
you mean with genshin cuz with hi3 they basically have almost only female and yuri. and no they haven't mastered anything. their selling did and clinginess of sponsorship make it seem this way. you're incorrect.
Go to any public place and proclaim loudly how much you like sexualization in videogames, see how people look at you. Exactly, it is not what most people enjoy and a few dislike, it is what the majority dislike, and with good reason, and a small minority enjoy, but in a small corner of the internet where they band together in a circlejerk of self validation, feels like a majority, a majority inside their bubble, that is.
What? This arguement is so incredibly flawed, but I’ll be succinct. You say that if you go out in public and yell about how much you like obscenity that people are going to look at you weirdly. Of course they are. It’s a public environment in which there are likely children. Sex is a natural function, but it, on a cultural basis is reserved for special spaces. Pornography is one such space. The bridging of the public sector and the space in which sexuality is accepted is something that we are raised to avoid. Limited PDA, laws against sex in public, etc. these are human cultural norms and expectations. It does not speak to whether or not sexuality is bad or good, but that it has a time and place. A public environment in broad daylight is not that time or place.
@@miscellanysreprieve5464 exactly what kinda of argument is were they trying to make? made no sense
To me personally one of the differences is that yeah, looking at jacked up male characters can give me to boost to want to hit the gym as something to be inspired by, where as that sort of feeling is a lot harder when you can't control your boob growth and especially back in the day (pre-youtube workout videos), the main way to get thinner for women was to stop eating, which clashes with wanting to strive to be a badass fighter woman like in them games. Doubled that most male characters get normal clothes, where as females get clothes that would never stay on long term and look designed for porn already.
Overall to me the issue isn't that the bodies are unrealistic, but that it's really easy to find ALMOST all types of male characters, main and otherwise, that fit almost every bodytype, that just aren't available with female characters. In SWTOR you can make yourself a fat male character. Can't have a fat female character.
However there's a clear imbalance with sexy, scantily female characters compared to similarly sexy and undressed male characters. Wearing a thong to a battle isn't conventional, but if girls do it, why can't there be men doing the same? Its not that abnormal to wear thongs or swimwear in real life, after all.
In a lot of pre-2000 action series (and possible after, if they weren't rewritten for kids), men did in fact wear form-fitting suits to show off their musculature, with older ones like He-Man where the hero basically fights in a bikini bottom.
Thank you!!! Thats what I thought too
I agree realism is good and helps with immersion but some things don't require realism to be popular and fun. It's just not profitable enough for them to consider. What you ask for requires more work lol.
@@dudejo Yeah, there *have* been cases like that, but overall I'd say that especially these days it strongly skews the other way. Still happy to find the occasional guy character with cleavage tho! bit in the same manner as tops that reveal your midriff used to be worn by men back in the 80's (due rules of not allowed to be shirtless in gyms but wanting to still show abs).
@@Mythriaz In what way? Giving male characters less clothes or female characters more? It literally is more work to make more revealing versions of same set of armor for female characters when they could just slightly adjust the set's fit. Like I said, I don't care about realism, I care that I can't have similarly fun female characters as I can have male characters.
Edit: And if it's about the SWTOR one, if you already have a fat model and rig and such for males, it's less work to adjust it to make a female version of it. Least amount of work would have been to not make fat male version at all, so it was a conscious decision to to cut the availability to have a fat female character.
I came here expecting something else, and now I am leaving with a new perspective on a topic I never truly delved into before. Thanks for the video, man. You've gained a subscriber today.
this is not how I saw this video going. but Im pleasantly suprised
Man, you almost made a good point with the whole "don't replace overly feminine characters with gender neutral ones to avoid backlash" point, but then you had to just imply that androgynous characters are part of some "political" ideology. I personally just like them because I prefer gender neutral/gender nonconforming characters, since I myself am trans and like to feel some representation in a world that really lacks it. I also think the backlash towards female characters mentioned is mainly about overly sexualized characters that don't allow women to feel represented. I know you said that you can just seek out different media if one thing makes you uncomfortable (which I think a lot of people need to take to heart), but women don't have as many options for games as men tend to.
While I don't overall agree with most points here it is was a neat point to mention how there's not a ton of acknowledgement of the unrealistic standards male characters have. Definitely a good conversation there.
I think that most dudes can just look at a unrealistic character and play as that character.
Most male characters in games look attractive with great looks, handsome, muscles, super tall, etc, not relatable to the majority, however I don’t think male gamers look to see themselves in that character, or if they do, it’s not necessarily because of their looks, and I think more people need to realize that your not suppose to physically relate to fictional characters in fictional media, or feel represented by that character, otherwise every character you see will just eat you up inside due to just their looks or something else.
Basically, you won’t have any options for fictional games if you always try to see yourself in video games, even as a dude you won’t have many.
Overall I agree having a gender neutral character isn’t always some political thing, sometimes the character is just there.
@@anotherrandomguy8871 A large amount of male gamers don't even notice it or care when they do because they aren't attracted to it so they don't view it in a sexual way.
you said “i think that there are no solo female devs making games because they don’t want to” and i think that is true-the why of that is complicated, but here’s my theory. video games are often a safe space for community, passion, and excitement in young people who love them, which inspires a lifelong love that can lead to career passion. women do experience this too, but the feeling of safety, acceptance, and community is SEVERELY limited. ive never played any video game with voice chat because of the things my female friends have told me about how it makes them feel towards a game. my best friend graduated with a comp sci degree, and has told me about the validation she felt when her trans female boss confirmed that no, it’s not in your head; i felt much more respected and encouraged in this field as a man than i ever have even remote working as a woman. and thats not even getting INTO the way i, as a lesbian woman who Also Likes Hot Women, can feel so icky and gross to try and play certain games and see that the options are Male Power Fantasy character or Female Sexual Object character. like oh i can’t escape being sexualized by men even in my fun leisure activity? alright i will find another activity.
this is not an argument or counterpoint or anything, i just wanted to share some context as to why i feel like a lot of female gamers lean towards individualistic gameplay or games with a reputation for having communities that feel safe (stardew, sims, animal crossing). it can be hard to allow that passion to develop professionally when you’re having to constantly examine and justify it.
As a lesbian myself, i agree. I hate when i see overly sexualised women while men are portrayed as cool or strong.
I'd like to add one point at why there are less women developing games, which is how we are discouraged to get into IT education ( about 10% of IT graduates are women... ), especially because of family but also society as a whole. Not only because there's the idea that women are not fit for tech, but also because of the knowledge of all the sexual harrassment towards women in the IT field, especially videogame development, i can see how most women would be discouraged to get into game development if they know they will get harrassed.
I don't quite understand what you mean. You like hot women, but you don't want to choose the example female character because it would mean men sexualize you. How is that, and why would having men find your character hot be so bad?
Is it a multiplayer game and do you not want the male players you meet online to see your hot player character?
You juxtaposed the male power fantasy character with the female sexual object character. Does this mean you want to play as a female power fantasy character?
What does a female character need to be like for you to consider her a female power fantasy?
@@Azarilh Do you mean to say that sexy female characters can't be cool and strong like the male characters and you therefore don't want to play as these women?
@@MrSchnorkel They aren't. It looks way more like they just don't like when "being sexy" and "being strong" are framed as two mutually exclusive things.
@@MrSchnorkel Let me put it this way for you. Being strong and cool IS sexy. It almost completely doesn't matter what they look like, but the character is the most important thing if you're engaging with the game at ANY level beyond "unga bunga me likey booba", and if 60%+ of the character's...CHARACTER, is just their 3 sizes, I think people are forgiven for not finding it compelling??? There's having hot characters at all, and then having bland artist bait (that even the artists are uninspired by lmao).
Also, EXTREMELY weird to not understand the difference between the fictional boobs girl character and the actual person playing them who gets sexually harassed for it. That much should be abundantly clear. How often do you find yourself mistreated online for playing male characters? Because you know damn well people are finding them attractive...but they don't let that seep into how they treat you, because, y'know, you're a person...
This was... far more that what I expected to find by title and thumbnail. I'm legitimately impressed at the presentation quality! Well done, sir! You have my follow!
Thanks boss, I appreciate it
As a further point of critique, you could also say, that by the same logic used to criticise the existence of sexual elements in video games, you should also ban and remove porn from the internet completely because by the same logic, since porn sexualises women and puts them in all kinds of unrealistic scenarios and gives them all kinds of unrealistic behaviours, it must also be causing sexism and sexual harassment in real life, which is an argument I've personally never heard anyone say ever
Well there are men who try to imitete what they see in porn.
@@Alexandraadftxr7052 It's a they problem, then.
Absolute gigachad, speaking only the truth.
I've always wondered what's wrong with appealing to male fantasies.
Ask the misogynistic feminists
because females feel inferior to such fantasies and then they hate them
then they want it removed because they hate them for making them feel insecure, lol
My guess is that, when a women in the industry builds her IP with less sexualization in mind, less men want to approve or promote it because of the lack of sex appeal but not for the actual game mechanics or story, then proceed to labor it as "woke" or something.
i mean, its woker than it would be without those things.@@bigblack8181
@@bigblack8181 More like when a woman in the industry tears down what was recently someone else's IP in favor of her own personal fanfiction, which often sexualizes men anyway and everyone just pretends not to notice.
The only problem I have with people who want politically "correct" things in video games and characters is, they can't even make their own game. It always comes down to either "this popular game is bad" or stick something in that messes with the rest of the story and get a pat on the head for "promoting diversity".
And who decides what are seemingly underage characters? Look up average height and body measurements in Japan, for example. Age of consent law was put in place to protect human children. If one believes sexualizing artworks lead to IRL crimes, then it leads me to believe that one also supports the (debunked) idea that FPS games breeds mass shooters.
Pretty much spot on about making games. It's not easy, but a lot of the teaching and tools are very accessible for anyone who wants to jump in and do whatever they want.
The "is this character underage" thing is such a can of worms that I can't really get into the nuance of it in a comment. I absolutely agree with you on a lot of what you're saying about it (and sexualisation) though.
Crazy that there are still people who think fake violence leads to real violence
@@michaelclifton9498 It's a common prop for deflecting attention away from the real problems and causes. Politician specialty.
I thought Age of Consent is there so that children get their mandatory "indoctrination" from the government.
Your last sentence is also what I really don't understand about politically correct things. Why the hell is it okay to put murder in the media, but not sexualization? I understand if they either think both are okay or both are not okay, but not just one of them.
I disagree with the conclusion that "it's fiction, so nobody will be effected by it!" We hold movies, books, and literally EVERY kind of media to the standard that they have themes, and that it can encourage looking at things a certain way, for better or for worse. If it can't change how you view the world, are games not art? And yes, obviously not everyone who plays games with sexualized characters is going to sexually assault a woman immediately after, but it can effect people in ways that aren't so obvious. Like implying that all women like being sexualized and objectified, which is obviously a harmful belief. Of course, good representation can also be positive of sex, without objectifying the character, which is what seperates the representation in games like Bayonetta from other games. For an example, look at Call of Duty, a game that very obviously glorifies War and US Soldiers. Yes the players aren't encouraged to actually go out and join the military, or to kill people. But if the games weren't effective at spreading that message, the US military wouldn't spend money and work with the CoD devs to put their message into the game. I think the same goes for any message. A game can encourage kindess and positivity the same way it can encourage at the very least support for violence.
Look i gotta admit you have some points but i jist have to add some takes that i think you overlooked.
A lot of the solo dev indie games were made by people that grew up playing video games. But only very recently has it been socially acceptable for women to play video games. So i think that those games created in the last decade or so had their roots in ghe developers childhoods, back 20-30 years ago. So right now we wre getting thr fruits that were planted all those years ago.
Since only right NOW we have had women start playing games young, id imagine its 10-15 more years before we start seeing a larger wave of women making great indie games.
I'm not sure what extent is considered 'socially acceptable', but if you're really looking at the permission of those who can stop you from playing games, boys have never been socially acceptable. However, the boys just ignored them, somehow avoided them, and played games while hiding. The standard has never been applied differently. Rather, more pressure was placed on the men. Of course, it wasn't sexism, it was because the boys kept trying to play the game despite all the oppression.
I am tired of the simplification of labeling everything as sexist. The world is not simple enough to be distinguished in simple black and white terms.
The fun part about this is that usually, especially on twitter/X, you can see these terminally online "puritans" cry out against sexualization of female characters in games, anime or against fan service in general only to do the exact opposite and horny post about male characters or share and like pics and fan art sexualizing male characters.
Besides that, IMHO people should be able to sexualize as much as they want and whoever they want, I don't care and if I care I will just not play that game/watch that show but won't be an asshole about it.
At the end of the day it's all fiction and people being so invested into fighting this kinda stuff really are just self-reporting that they need to grow the fuck up or go out, touch grass and interact with real people, for a change.
32:16 Hormones are not directly involved in murdering people in gta and then not thinking about murder when walking an old lady across the street. Hormones are directly involved when sexually objectifying a character in game and they are directly involved when sexually objectifying a person in real life. It's not the same thing. Hormonal urges are something that is outside of the person's control, no amount of reasoning or rationality is going to change the physical and mental affect that hormones have on the body whereas not murdering people does not have a direct instinctual tie to survival of the species and can be rationalized simply by weighing the pros and cons of whether or not to do it, there is not a naturally prevalent ulterior motivation that is being forced upon the person due to preexisting bodily functions.
that's moronic, hormones aren't involved in the former but neurotransmitters are. You have 0 evidence objectification in fiction is bad
@@andreismith9696 "You're wrong and dumb." not really much for me to respond to there. I guess get back to me when you aren't being internet belligerent and actually have a point to make.
I just want to point out that... saying "if the studie comes out of feminism it is bs" won't solve the problem, and i personally think is one of the biggest problems we have today. Feminism is not "All woman at the top, men are trash", it's about shaping society as close to a perfect power balance beetween men and woman as possible.
I don't agree making sexualized woman in video games is the problem, but, i can say that i've suffered sexism and a lot of problems in my professional career, seemingly because im a woman, for example: Being passed for promotions even tho they were promised to me, having my ideas and changes denied when i suggested them, and being accepted when a fellow male colleague suggested these same ideas. I think this is a pretty big deal, having most of the devs being mans is not a problem to me, the problem is ignoring all the extra difficulties and barriers many of us (woman) have to cross before having a chance in the industry,
"Sure but in a solo dev scenario that wouldn't be a problem right", well, that is a good question, my answer to that is simple: older generations did not have the oppotunity to join this industry because of societal problems we're only now beggining to fix, i've found an article of the USBLS (US burial of labour statistics, link in the response comment) that sasy that in 2003 only 32.2% of woman in america had a Bachelor's degree and higher in education, 29,9% of them had 1-3 years in college, while another study i found says there was a disparity of almost 30% of earnings in comparison with men. That means woman had less opportunity in education to learn how to program (these studies aren't specific to this but i hope you get the point) and had less incentive working in places where they could get experience to then being a solo dev, since being a solo dev is really, really, really difficult, especially without any prior experience in the area.
To sum it up, i think blaming feminism instead of checking facts on how society discourages woman from working at all, the path foward is for us to unite for a better society, not point fingers at each other and saying any movement who tries to change anything is bad.
Well that was a bit of a rant, im not hating on the video tho, i found it to be very entertaning and genuinely funny! Loved the jokes and yea, im happy someone is shedding light on this, there are more important issues then having hot girls on video games.
Links for both studies i mentioned:
www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2004/oct/wk4/art05.htm
www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/a-look-at-womens-education-and-earnings-since-the-1970s.htm
if someone pulled up the "you're a woman, opnion invalidated" would be so funny ngl lol
I do wonder why he explicitly avoided any discussion on the violence, hate and attitudes women and companies face due to NOT sexualising women or for having attractive male characters. Women have had to resign in Korea and China over this, hate mail and death threats has been sent, and it's a very common attitude online. It's extremely relevant in today's video gaming industry, and very relevant to this discussion. But instead he focused on the relatively irrelevant androgynisation of women for "political reasons" (which is a big assumption) even though that literally causes no harm and the community of women wanting female sexualisation to be reduced is both small and entirely irrelevant and insignificant in today's climate.
Sexualisation is divisive because some lunatics are literally harassing women and men for not sexualising women and sexualising men. It's volatile because people are bullied, harassed and fired for being feminists or for drawing hot men. People received death threats over Abby's character design! It was considered extremely offensive by a significant group of people to have a women who looks unrealistically masculine. Why ignore this?
@@baonguyenxuanthai711 i completely agree! South korea just had a national scandal because of a gacha game and a SWIMSUIT.
The only company who did not fall for the thirsty incel mob was mihoyo with Genshin, but still.
I sincerely don't think this guy was looking into the real problem, he just dipped into "is female sexualization a problem?" And ignored all the problems attached to that.
I'm glad this video was open minded and wasn't defending a side. Instead it was exploring different perspectives and reasons as to why these things exist.
With a topic like this, the context can sway in a few ways and I was worried that when I clicked this video that it was a video meant to inspire controversy. I'm glad that it wasn't and instead was a genuine interest in the issue.
Good video my man, you have earned yourself a sub.
Thanks boss, appreciate it
Im so glad that someone is speaking about this.
I actually struggle a lot with body image because of video games. and as a girl, I fucking love rpgs. I dont mind games with romance but I love hack n slashes, I love beating up characters. But I hate when breast physics and tight clothes and just sexualization is there. I would rather just beat up chracters and make progress then to see such things.
my bf also loves rpgs, he plays them way more than I do (i have strict parents so they refuse to let me have more games, misogyny amirite?) but he does like the female characters in them a lot, for their bodies and stuff. Now, I dont have the most satisfactory body out there, everythings just average. i dont have the dream body men want, my stomach isnt flat, my butt isnt big, and well my chest, i feel its always a plank of wood. Doesnt matter that its not flat, but it feels like that when you see all these women in videogames with their junk. I tend to (THIS IS A WARNING BTW IT MIGHT TRIGGER PEOPLE BUT IM LEAVING IT HERE OTHERWISE) starve myself to try to lose the fat in my stomach. I tend to look at my own body and just compare it so often to the girls on nikke. The worst part is that there is barely any darker skin characters in videogames. So im often comparing my own skiN color and my race (im asian, but its south asian to be specific) to these characters as well. I cant just tell someone, "hey I know you like this game but i feel uncomfortable and it feels like i can never satisfy you. so please stop playing it." ive had a talk with him about it before, he does tell me he loves me body and all but that just isnt enough. I guess you can say im jealolus that i dont see myself to be as attractive as the characters in video games.
We sadly live in a world where sexualization of characters is needed for marketing. and I hate that so much. Why cant i value a character because theyre cool and not cause they have this body and that helps them make them cool? Im also not a fan of fan service, i dont care what gender its catered too but I find it so unnecessary in games, especially if theres ones with minors in them (loooking at you persona.)
I do want to say, all of the stuff you have said with videogames can be tied so well with anime as well! I found this video to be so insightful and made me understand more of my frustration with games
Hey thanks for sharing this and for being candid. (I'm by no means a professional in this field) I think it's important for people to have personal filters. I also think that if you're in a relationship that protecting the health of your relationship is also important. On a personal level, I actually show my wife all the games I play and ask her opinion on them. If there was something that was really bothering her I probably wouldn't play it even if I don't necessarily agree. (though this has never really come up).
I still stand by what I say, I just also think that if you are going to be with someone you need to come to some sort of middle ground and that will look different for different people.
Please watch the follow up video that's on my channel page because it has some information that might be somewhat relevant to your situation. My heart breaks for women that starve themselves because it's ultimately a negative feedback loop that ends up making things worse. Also, it's perfectly fine to be average. It's even in my name. Don't let yourself or anyone else tell you otherwise. It's great to aspire to something but it's far more important to celebrate your personal wins. I wish you and your partner all the best moving forward.
*Why* do you feel the need to
compare yourself to… everything apparently?
i dont compare myself to everything, its more towards things that are heavy fan service. please dont make assumptions to struggles that i decided to open up to the comments section.@@klove5974
@@klove5974i saw a video about this made by Thinking-ape if you want me to link it to answer your question.
@@EmmettBrown9 Please do and thank you.
I think a large part of this is that it affects what we look for in partners. I don't realize how unrealistic my expectations have become until I can't find anyone who meets those expectations.
Also, for an example of men sexualized for women in video games, I think Boyfriend Dungeon is a great example.
Great video. Nuanced take on the subject and not at all what I was expecting.
The only real issue I have with fanservice in typical creative media is when media pretends like it's not doing fanservice. If you want to make a profound story with a lot of titties and ass, at least be honest about it and don't try to pretend like they're not there.
I guess it depends also on how masturbatory the fanservice is. Something like Shinobu in Patlabor II being very pretty is still congruent with the work IMO. Upskirts and skirts blowing in the wind would be strange, at least in that work. In Monogatari it's the norm. It's all about framing of the context.
i will say that one part of the body image argument i always found confusing is that people complained about a majority characters in rpg or fighting games being fit. it feels weird to me because i'm looking at the actions they are doing in game and that unrealistic body work with the usually unrealistic actions they are doing
IE: swinging a sword almost constantly, running constantly, lifting massive objects, taking hits that would usually kill or down your average person and preforming some pretty advance acrobatics.
I always felt people who push back against these body types usually ignore that, what i think is a, very key piece of context when making their arguments. that most of these video game characters are preforming some pretty extreme feats in game that just would not be possible unless they had those unrealistically fit bodies (Chris' boulder punching in RE 5 as an example)
Muscles and atlethics never come comes into question people complaining
...but that's not really reality. That's more-so our expectations because of what media promotes.
When you look at actual athletes who don't use steroids and people who spend their days doing back breaking labor, people often don't end up with these idealized bodies.
Idealized bodies are often a result of working towards these results, rather than working towards performance.
Personally, I ran track for three years and did a ton of weight lifting for even longer. People trying to show off to each other would lift what I'd lift casually.
Despite this, I remained fat and untoned despite the muscle mass I put on.
--
That said, I much prefer seeing someone cool over someone realistic.
I honestly think it's fine for the characters to be fit. Though, i do think that they don't *always* have to be super fit to be doing those actions.
And by that i mean i just think it'd be funny/interesting to see a twig or a boulder of a person being absolutely overpowered. Not for any political or "representation" reasons, i just think it's funny when some fictional worlds stablish that a character is more capable than they look. Just because they can.
There is an aesthestic difference between Eastern RPGs with their super model female characters swinging around giant weapons vs Western RPGs and their more natural and realistic body types swinging around giant weapons.
I think most people when making the argument tend to reference eastern RPGs ala Final Fantasy as opposed to something like Witcher 3 or Baldur's Gate 3 or w/e. Another point is that Eastern RPGs more or less paved the way (Final Fantasy 7 8 9 and 10) for an entire generation in terms of depicting female characters in full 3d -- the OG Baldur's Gate and other Western RPGs at the time were still isometric 2d games with portraits at the time.
Although now games are all trending towards a more natural and realistic body types while the hyper sexualized body types are left to the more, uh.. fan service-type games.
For the average hater they don't care much beyond making a soap-box statement so they can brag about farming updoots for virtues or something.
Where am I going with this? lol.
@@Zombie1Boy I wouldn't say it has anything to do with eastern vs western games...
Take Mortal Kombat for instance. Or X-Blades...
Its just been the norm to make both males and females attractive.
Many male action heroes in games are even based off of sex icons. Likewise, compare the men on the cover art of games to men on romance novels directed at women.
There is gatekeeping in solo development because there's societal gatekeeping from an early age. We're told we can't be programmers, that's a boy's interest. We can't like robots or videos games or computers, those are boy interests. The amount of pushback I received from childhood because I was interested in robots and programming was actually kind of stupid. We're told from childhood that we can't program and that we should choose another interest, and many girls are swayed by this.
Men seeing Goku: I want to train so I can look as close as I can to him.
Women seeing average waifu: No one should be allowed to see this.
Women are insecure and needy
women are like that
or the the new anime called, Undead Unluck, show the male protagonist nude almost all the time and I haven't seen controversy in twitter, meanwhile try to do the same with a woman and oh boy
Because most women are thinking of their bodies to be unobtainable and them being lazy. The only ones who don't care or strive for unrealistic body types are usually fit to a extent. Its a mindset some male bodybuilders look up to heman and Arnold as a body to strive for. Women are usually the ones to wait.
Women hate women