I doubt this is an improvement on her personality or think the teens are really engaged at the great personalities they have, and if they happen to have great personality, it's hidden behind her body, not unlike the lore of some female characters.
No, see, her showing of her body is an extension of her personaly, it's about her own motivations, her own desires, her own choices. Her her her.
With the characters in question, it's an extension of someone else's personality. Someone else's motivation, someone else's desires, someone else's choices. Someone else someone else someone else. One has agency one doesn't. One is a subject one is an object. You have to be very careful when comparing the two.
Teenage girls don't like their bouncing boobs specificaly but I believe that many look at those celebrities with the mindset of "I wish I was like her / had her body/ could do what she does" and in a way game gives this possibility and isn't hard to imagine a male or female design coming to this conclusion (this goes for both men and women)
It's not quite so simple because of what I said above. Also, women have been historically judged more oh physical appearance than on any sort of capability. But
in addition to that, the judgement of how women looked was in terms of desirability to men. So there are two things at play here. Women owning their own bodies, and women getting credit for capabilities over simply their attractiveness. That is why agency is important and has to be taken into consideration. And this is why fictional sexualized bodies created by another Won't help with the first, as she can't by default have ownership of her own body, and it just perpetuates the second.
Being sexual and being sexualized isn't the same but when people criticize they don't make this distinction. Lara Croft is bundled together as if she wasn't any different than that "alien with human vagina" the other user posted.
I was going to respond to this seriously, but you mentioned the "alien with human vagina". That was posted as a joke, also it's part of a completely different issue separate from this one and has nothing to do with Lara.
Also, yes... Most people criticising the sexualized characters do understand the distinction between sexualized and sexual.
Videogame is a visual medium, very few games really focus on the narrative and the ones that do, don't sell as much, this means the majority of the design end up being focuseds on what is most appealing to the general audience = Perfect guys (Tall, strong, V shape) and Perfect girls (Beatiful, big bust, Athletic).
OK... Soooo taking you at your word. You honestly believe it's neutral between the genders and there's no explicit pandering on the side of women's bodies over men's bodies?
Look. The situations are not the same. There are different things at play. the 'perfect guys' aren't that way for sexual reasons. It's an expression of strength... And that's geared towards men more than women. Men being strong and capable and powerful. Does that encourage unrealistic expectations? Sure it does. And should you totally campaign to change it? If you want to, go right ahead. I'll be supportive. But when you use it as a means of saying"we all got problems so shut up," then it's just a silencing tactic more than anything you actually think is bad.
(I already listed the factors at play on the women's side above)
1)I doubt this and and 2)I doubt the majority of men gets an erection because they are playing as Cammy or Morrigan.
1)You doubt what exactly?
2) That was hyperboly... As in they were designed first to be attractive to male players. What about Cammy's backstory implies wearing a thong leotard to an international fighting competition?
This same example could be said about Chun-li and still she is bundled with the worst kind of sexualized characters.
Hmmm the karate guys wear Gis. The russian wrestler wears wrestling shorts, and chun-li the chinese martial artist wears (or wore) an altered qipao with sides that stop at the hips and pantyhose.
Fighting games usually have a diverse cast of both men and women. It's true women are less diverse but there are quite a few games that depict women with different body shapes and for some reason the female gamers don't embrace them, why? I cpuld also argue that fighting games for a long time were "male only" because arcades were seen as some shade place that a girl shouldn't be freuqenting.
Hmmm are you now claiming that the men aren't sexualized for the women just as much as the men? And that historically women were pushed out of gaming, and that possibly this resulted in men getting more and more pandered to, thus exacerbating the issue? Sounds about right.
When I was younger my favorite characters in Samurai Shodown were Charlotte and Nakoruru none of them are sexualized and I didn't think twice about it and I also don't remember any male friend complaining about the lack of bouncing tits.
So what you're saying here is that it
is quite possible to have non sexualized female characters in games and the world won't end? Well congratulations, welcome to our side.
And the diversity of male characters ends when we start looking at solo protagonists, them we go back at the tall, strong, attractive, V-shape archetype.
See above about the differences in being capable and being a sexual object. There is still more diversity among solo characters that are men than women.
lol kkkk the labia to me is the equivalent of the bulge.
I have a couple of friends that think woman breasts shouldn't be sexulized, they want to be able to walk freely without a shirt like some men do.
But at the same time there is this criticism that a woman showing their breast is sexualizing and objectfying them. I know that men don't think of their own chest as some sexual thing, shouldn't the women that want to show their breast stop thinking of their breasts as something sexual too?
You're so close... yes, women should be able to show their own breasts. They totally should. And the criticism you're saying does happen, but that is not what we in this thread are criticising. The gaming characters are not showing their breasts, or showing skin.
Game designers are. They are perpetuating the
reason women can't just walk around topless like men can. Because
they are the ones sexualizing women's bodies, and making it about the viewer or the targeted male player. Because so many images of women's bodies are depicted in sexual ways, it sends the message that women's bodies are only about sex, and it's not even about her own sexuality, it's about the viewer's sexuality. This carries over into real life, where people are taught that women's bodies are to be looked at. That's why it's important to encourage more depictions of women being of value for their capabilities
over how sexy they are. At the same time, people seeing real life women owning their sexuality and their own on their own terms is also important.
