WaterAstro
Member
Yeah, they couldn't even add all of the DoA female characters available. That's why they did massive polling for their target audience.
Why would they suddenly add males if it makes a better business sense to just add more females?
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Vice: "Why the Dead or Alive Games Need More [Male Sexualization]"
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Yeah, they couldn't even add all of the DoA female characters available. That's why they did massive polling for their target audience.
Why would they suddenly add males if it makes a better business sense to just add more females?
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
You might be right. If this is their way of incorporating it into the game, I think they've done a good job -- feels like they incorporated it all pretty naturally into the absurdity of DOA.
SolidSnakex
Member
I'd say that's probably a direct result of them not really taking into account doing any outfits like that early on. It wouldn't surprise me if DoA6 changes that.
But they've already sexualized the men with some of the outfits they've released. They've opened the door so they might as well walk through it.
BudokaiMR2
Member
I really wish that people who wrote these articles like this stopped taking such a narrow view of the market.
Sure, there is an argument that they should include it in this specific game. It's a weak argument in my opinion as I have no problem with one specific game catering to a certain audience.
These criticisms just seem so shallow, and actually tend to ignore the fact that Japan for example actually makes quite a bit of similar content for female audiences. Anytime I scroll through the top apps on my phone, I see just as many dating games and such aimed at women as men.
Sure, there is an argument that they should include it in this specific game. It's a weak argument in my opinion as I have no problem with one specific game catering to a certain audience.
These criticisms just seem so shallow, and actually tend to ignore the fact that Japan for example actually makes quite a bit of similar content for female audiences. Anytime I scroll through the top apps on my phone, I see just as many dating games and such aimed at women as men.
Pai Pai Master
Banned
Male fanservice is hard to do because I want bulges. Big ol' dick bulges. Dont see a lot of devs making that happen.
This does strike me as kind of an entitled mindset. Recognising a peripheral demographic with a few costumes in the main games doesn't mean they have an obligation to shift their primary focus.
Game models rarely do justice to the attributes that makes guys look sexy-- especially Dead or Alive. They're so focused on the hard over-built body that I'm not sure most women would even find desirable. It's a power fantasy, not a sexual one. I would be all for a sexualized man candy game with a bunch of studs, but frankly none of the men in the Dead or Alive franchise are worth oogling.
I see his point about seeing some junk though. There's no bulge in the game world. Why are we always a sexless GI Joe? A bulge doesn't have to be a sexualization. It's realistic anatomically.
I see his point about seeing some junk though. There's no bulge in the game world. Why are we always a sexless GI Joe? A bulge doesn't have to be a sexualization. It's realistic anatomically.
DOA5 vanilla tried less fan service and the promo was I'm a Fighter but eventually they went crazy on DLC because the fans were complaining that the game didnt do much fan service and they also upped the boob physics by fan demand. When DOA has been fan service from the start its pretty much impossible to change the image because the game automatically linked to the fan service.
The best situation is giving people filter outfits options and provide fan service to everyone who want via DLC
deadscreensky
Member
Team Ninja didn't add Eliot in DOA4 because of male fans. It's been focused on sexualized characters of both genders since at least the second game...
SliceSabre
Banned
I tend to be of mind that every game doesn't have to appeal to everyone and that in some games cases attempting to do that results in a game that appeals to very few.
There's nothing actually wrong with a cheesecake game like DoA extreme saying it is very clearly appealing to a specific audience and I don't understand why this article seems to view that as a 'bad' thing.
There's nothing actually wrong with a cheesecake game like DoA extreme saying it is very clearly appealing to a specific audience and I don't understand why this article seems to view that as a 'bad' thing.
OnimaruXLR
Member
I think if there was a market for sexy men fighting games, there'd be sexy men fighting games.
Japan does have sexy men games, after all. They're not a completely alien concept the way they are over here. And you have manservice in a lot of RPGs and such.
Japan does have sexy men games, after all. They're not a completely alien concept the way they are over here. And you have manservice in a lot of RPGs and such.
Bara fans don't even want to support artists from the amount of piracy I see. They brought it on themselves.
BTW, arent the DOAX games barely profittable as it is?
TatteredHat
Member
I'm not convinced there's a market for it at all, there's barely a market for DOAX to begin with and comparatively female sexuality sells a lot better than male sexuality. (At least the kind of sexuality being discussed here)
Lights and Waves
Member
Gay male here.
While I do love DOA (fighting game, not the volleyball ones), I've become really sensitive as to of how exploitative it is of the female fighters bodies and it makes me uncomfortable. Some of these characters have really interesting backstories, but those are always sidelined so that we can just focus on their tits and asses.
Playing the game also makes me hyper-aware of how being gay is not the norm and that video games and anime are a straight male dominated industry and that things probably aren't going to change any time soon.
While I do love DOA (fighting game, not the volleyball ones), I've become really sensitive as to of how exploitative it is of the female fighters bodies and it makes me uncomfortable. Some of these characters have really interesting backstories, but those are always sidelined so that we can just focus on their tits and asses.
Playing the game also makes me hyper-aware of how being gay is not the norm and that video games and anime are a straight male dominated industry and that things probably aren't going to change any time soon.
Vlaphor
Member
They actually do quite well. 1 and 2 have combined sales of around 900k and the third has sold above expectations.
There is an audience but doing so might alienate others depending how far the outfits go. I remember some people complaining about male swimsuits before even when the characters have nothing down there.
MHWilliams
Member
"Hot Ryu" says hi. The ladies and gay men seemed to love that.
And that's before you even get to the fact that the DOA males aren't really all that built. They lean heavily towards the direction you speak of, with leaner body types.
I don't think DOAX3 needs it, but I'm also not sure it's as far out there or hard as some are making it.
Vlaphor
Member
Other games were more profitable. I'm guessing the impetus with 3 was how much DLC DOA5 was selling. DOAX3 hasn't had too much DLC that you have to pay money for though, and it's all been timed DLC.
Hot Ryu is a meme. Look at BL vs Bara for a better idea of what sells to which demographic.
DOA5 was what, 7 years after DOAX2? Anyway, ill take your word for it as I have no idea.
You're not taking production realities into account - it's already been brought up in this thread, but this isn't a scenario where they'd have the resources to appease all possible groups at the same time, even if they had wanted to. "Adding a few men" to DOAX3 or giving fanservicey costumes gender parity in DOA6 isn't something that could be done without redistribution of time and resources, directly compromising the game(s) for their current audience; which are already being stretched thin - it bears repeating that DOAX3 only launched with a fraction of the female cast. Is it wrong for people to care about something that'd negatively impact their experience with a series they enjoy?
Maybe. I think there is a limit ratings-wise as far as they can go and I think that would probably keep it to the point where most would not have an issue with it. Really hard to say how everyone will respond though.
Iirc when Tekken Tag 2 gave swimsuits as a bonus everyone got them regardless of gender and no one had an issue.
Personally, I think it would be awesome if DOAX had male characters. Even better would be a male only version. But I have no doubt it would bomb.
Its mostly only wanted by people who think it should exist because 'parity', but have no intention of buying it, or a small group of gay men and women who haven't done much to support efforts to rrlease this kind of content.
Its mostly only wanted by people who think it should exist because 'parity', but have no intention of buying it, or a small group of gay men and women who haven't done much to support efforts to rrlease this kind of content.
YianGaruga
Banned
You don't see how a game that's 100% about looking at female bodies would be made worse for the audience if they added men, which many would probably say are less attractive?
It's like trying to expand the audience of straight porn by adding gay scenes. It makes no sense. "It's not that bad, it's just a few dudes!"
Make a game for that audience, don't try to shoehorn it into other people's entertainment.
It's prefectly fine in fighting games like SF and DOA, because it's just one aspect of those games. For DOAX it's nonsense. They could easily sell a DOAX3M version of the game with only dudes. No one would mind and everybody could only have the jiggling body parts they are looking for.
Yup. You can do it incidentally in a general audience title w/ no issues. Hot Ryu, Chris Redfield, FF 7/8/10- it goes under the radar where they won't notice it. This is the underlying issue with SFV's female designs that's made people uncomfortable - while in previous games, the camera was pretty neutral when it came to the female characters (w/ the exception of Poison, where it's her shtick), in SFV it's clearly tailored to the male gaze in a way that is actively off-putting to some. You can have attractive character designs that appeal to a specific gender/sexuality, but if you don't keep the gaze neutral, you end up with dissonance that leads to people feeling unwelcome.
The issue with DOA is that the series is explicitly pandering to the straight male gaze. It's designed to pander to them. If you suddenly have bouncing bulges on all the characters and are giving them the same sort of hyper-sexualized treatment, it's actively going against the straight male gaze that the series is actively trying to sell.
/thread.
RealityCheque
Banned
Gonna have to wait till next gen for this. Human wang physics are much harder to model than the human boob.
It's science.
It's science.
Fox Mulder
Member
It would be a fitting and funny addition to have swinging dick physics like in Mount Your Friends.
Would make the game seem less like creep town really.
Would make the game seem less like creep town really.
I don"t think it would be negative, considering the entire point of DOAX is pandering to fans, why not expand that and hope to expand sales? Spend 10% of the boob physics budget to make a few dudes.
I am sure the fans would survive the occasional glimpse of muscle dudes.
So many reasons why this is a bad idea:
1) They're struggling to hit their market anyway - The game only came out in Asia. Presumably they didn't think they could make money off the straight male audience in USA and the EU, and that's the most reliable and biggest (by far) market for fanservice there is. When that's the case, how much are they truly going to gain by spending a ton of money expanding to a much smaller target market?
2) They're struggling to get enough content for their target market out there as is - They were only able to do 9 of the girls for DoAX3. This implies that every character added is a big deal in development - apparently because they need to test all of the 200+ swimsuits against each one. If that's the case, how much sense does it make to dedicate all that time to a male character (and all the brand-new swimsuits on top of that) when you could be creating more content for the audience you already have, whom you know will buy it from your experience with female DLC for DoA5/LR.
3) The game is a softcore porn game - You realise there's a reason why porn sites are split between gay and straight, right? Sexuality goes far beyond mere 'taste' - it's an inbuilt sense we all have. If I was to boot up DoAX3 and have half of it be gay, or enter DoAX3 threads and have half the pictures be half-naked men - I'd stop interfacing with the game immediately. I have no interest in seeing half-naked men and there are plenty of places I can go to get fanservice that properly shield me from that so that's the choice I'm going to make. Catering to two wildly demographics with the same game, in this example, actually has a large chance of driving the larger, more established demographic away.
4) The devs might not want to - It's entirely possible that the devs of DoAX3 are straight, and enjoy modelling women's bodies, and it's a kind of a passion project for a lot of their artists. If they don't, as a group, want to focus on some hardcore homosexual shit like 'bulge physics' then more power to them - they're free to choose not to do so.
and a bonus point:
5) Whether they add men or not, the game would not have the aforementioned 'bulge physics'. Male genetalia are in no way analogous to female breasts. Breasts are secondary sex characteristics, but not genetalia. People are used to seeing semi-exposed breasts in entertainment, but not dangling bulges. The real comparison is to the same region in females - and DoAX3 and almost all other mainstream games ignore cameltoe and pretend their female characters are barbies. They would undoubtably (still) do the same thing for men. There's just a world of difference there.
1) They're struggling to hit their market anyway - The game only came out in Asia. Presumably they didn't think they could make money off the straight male audience in USA and the EU, and that's the most reliable and biggest (by far) market for fanservice there is. When that's the case, how much are they truly going to gain by spending a ton of money expanding to a much smaller target market?
2) They're struggling to get enough content for their target market out there as is - They were only able to do 9 of the girls for DoAX3. This implies that every character added is a big deal in development - apparently because they need to test all of the 200+ swimsuits against each one. If that's the case, how much sense does it make to dedicate all that time to a male character (and all the brand-new swimsuits on top of that) when you could be creating more content for the audience you already have, whom you know will buy it from your experience with female DLC for DoA5/LR.
3) The game is a softcore porn game - You realise there's a reason why porn sites are split between gay and straight, right? Sexuality goes far beyond mere 'taste' - it's an inbuilt sense we all have. If I was to boot up DoAX3 and have half of it be gay, or enter DoAX3 threads and have half the pictures be half-naked men - I'd stop interfacing with the game immediately. I have no interest in seeing half-naked men and there are plenty of places I can go to get fanservice that properly shield me from that so that's the choice I'm going to make. Catering to two wildly demographics with the same game, in this example, actually has a large chance of driving the larger, more established demographic away.
4) The devs might not want to - It's entirely possible that the devs of DoAX3 are straight, and enjoy modelling women's bodies, and it's a kind of a passion project for a lot of their artists. If they don't, as a group, want to focus on some hardcore homosexual shit like 'bulge physics' then more power to them - they're free to choose not to do so.
and a bonus point:
5) Whether they add men or not, the game would not have the aforementioned 'bulge physics'. Male genetalia are in no way analogous to female breasts. Breasts are secondary sex characteristics, but not genetalia. People are used to seeing semi-exposed breasts in entertainment, but not dangling bulges. The real comparison is to the same region in females - and DoAX3 and almost all other mainstream games ignore cameltoe and pretend their female characters are barbies. They would undoubtably (still) do the same thing for men. There's just a world of difference there.
YianGaruga
Banned
Sure, but that really has nothing to do with what I posted.
And I GUARANTEE you that plenty of people would not play the game if it included men. I don't think you understand the point of DOAX. It's softcore porn. It's gravure. There's a reason why porn is heavily categorized.
When people open up a gravure video, most of them don't want to see a dude swinging his dick around.
The tragedy of how DoA5 started out in a healthy direction and degenerated over time... Marie Rose was the worse turning point...
At least Mila and (surprisingly) Tina were kept out of DoAX3...
Maybe if complaining on the internet about the girls costed more than buying DLC for the guys the game could have retained its early balance, but not enough people put their money where their mind was to prevent the series' reputation from catching up with DoA5 and its updates...
Defending Dead or Alive against too much pandering. I have now seen it all.
Body shaming in 2016
I don't know if you have recently visited Straight porn websites, but there is an incredible amount of naked men and penises.
Big dick was in the top 3 categories on Pornhub last year.
And I would make up for one of those sales.
But I do realize these devs are aiming the hardcore "If I even see one dick I will throw up I am NOT gay so men are gross" demo.
Enter The 36 Chambers
Member
I don't see why they can't make games aimed at women or gay guys. Everyone should be allowed some eye candy.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel some way when I play tekken online and people pick the near naked costumes for the guys. Not to the point I'd complain or want to deny anyone else the freedom to use whatever costumes they want.
I mean if I like using Heihachi in his black Tiger gi, who am I to say people shouldn't use Heihachi wearing a diaper or a thong or whatever.
I do feel slightly uncomfortable but it's whatever, really no big deal.
Also to lesser degree people using near naked costumes for women seems weird to me. I don't know, personally I don't find any game characters attractive or arousing. Getting the impression that someone I'm playing does, is just, weird to me.
Those Bayoneta 2 gifs that were floating around at launch, the overly sexual stuff was just cringey and embarrassing. I'd be ashamed if my girl walked in on me playing that, thinking I'm actually turned on by this shit.
I'm obviously the minority though.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel some way when I play tekken online and people pick the near naked costumes for the guys. Not to the point I'd complain or want to deny anyone else the freedom to use whatever costumes they want.
I mean if I like using Heihachi in his black Tiger gi, who am I to say people shouldn't use Heihachi wearing a diaper or a thong or whatever.
I do feel slightly uncomfortable but it's whatever, really no big deal.
Also to lesser degree people using near naked costumes for women seems weird to me. I don't know, personally I don't find any game characters attractive or arousing. Getting the impression that someone I'm playing does, is just, weird to me.
Those Bayoneta 2 gifs that were floating around at launch, the overly sexual stuff was just cringey and embarrassing. I'd be ashamed if my girl walked in on me playing that, thinking I'm actually turned on by this shit.
I'm obviously the minority though.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
How about we just move away from the sexualisation of both Male and females and make a fighting game about....I dunno? Fighting?
One the biggest tragedies about DOA is it's an amazing fighting game full of this creepy ass shit. I don't see why all that stuff can't be spun off into games like DOA extreme and keep the fighting game about the combat, not costumes.
One the biggest tragedies about DOA is it's an amazing fighting game full of this creepy ass shit. I don't see why all that stuff can't be spun off into games like DOA extreme and keep the fighting game about the combat, not costumes.
That reminds me- there was a story/thread a little while back about how some women preferred to watch gay porn over straight porn. Even though straight porn features both genders, it's very heavily tailored to the straight male gaze- the focus of the camera is always aimed at the woman involved, and the male performer marginalized. With gay porn, that's not the case, and it also removes many male-female power undercurrents that make them uncomfortable as well.
The sexy costumes are what sell the best for them, per interviews. This is a cheesecake game. It's always been one - it's clearly designed to sell to a specific niche.
YianGaruga
Banned
Straight hardcore porn is kind of hard to do without naked men and penises.
You must be trolling or being highly facetious here. 'Big dick' is a highly searched term in straight porn because the way straight porn is shot mostly hides the male and allows men to 'self-insert' as the dude fucking the woman. As such, having a big dick is part of that power fantasy - but only because there is a naked woman on screen getting ploughed.
Ask any of those same people searching for that to just watch images of naked guys and none of them will get off, and many will be grossed out.
This is basic sexuality, it isn't rocket science.
Yeah, and people survive that trip to the jerkoff store just fine, a few buff dudes in DOAX wouldn't be the end of the world.
Lights and Waves
Member
The straight men in here losing their marbles over the idea of women and gay men being included. Incredible.
Tecmo does fanservice games for women actually. Just not with the DOA name. And they obviously don't get published in the west - just like DOAX3
It's soft core porn, it doesn't need to be inclusive, it needs to do what its audience wants.
They are asking for a niche game to mix two audiences who want two different things altogether. What you should ask for, it's not for males in DOAX, but a new different product exclusively targeted to the other audience.
They are asking for a niche game to mix two audiences who want two different things altogether. What you should ask for, it's not for males in DOAX, but a new different product exclusively targeted to the other audience.