SC and sexism

[Xelxiuz]

Duh, look at TOR trying to one up WoW in that department. Why does anyone care again?

[IskatuMesk]

I think people make too much out of something that is insignificant and will never change. Would you walk up to Browder and ask him to empty his wallet on the road? No, he'd just laugh at you. That's exactly what you're implying developers should do here.

Not that I consider any of the examples provided slutty in the least, but I know of more extreme examples out there and I know that many free games and MMO's hinge exclusively on such imagery to net their fanbase.

Women aren't just portrayed as objects by media they are portrayed as objects by people.

[AA7Dragoon]

Years ago, this issue came up with World of WarCraft.  There were a lot of community members who criticized how the armor looked on the female players vs. the male ones.  Blizzard actually came up with a very interesting answer so I'll share it with you.

Basically, the reason why Blizzard exaggerates the female dimensions of their waist, boobs, and booty is to distinguish them from the male ones.  When you are looking at characters from a distance, their body shape becomes difficult to distinguish by gender.  Throw the same armor design on a male and female character, and the gender exceptions blur.  This is exactly why the male characters are overblown with their muscles.  If you are going to have male and female characters within the game, you need to make them distinguishable from each other.  Otherwise, everyone is going to look the same unless you zoom into their faces or onto their chest to see her B-cup.  


Bulging, over exaggerated muscles on male characters can be just as sexist.  It creates a hyper-masculinity image that boys have a hard time emulating.  They see these well built characters and wish their bodies looked that way.  Gaming companies have also increasingly made their male characters handsome looking.  Male players have gravitated towards these images, and you will continue to see a progression of beautifying the male image in the gaming industry.  Final Fantasy, for example, is becoming more and more like this.  Compare the protagonists of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII Versus with previous titles, and you'll notice the difference.

[Hercanic]

Why is drawing attention to an attractive shape always conflated with being slutty? The first image and some of the voice clips are deliberately suggestive, but the rest... is there no room for any other response? Is this kind of imagery always to provoke disrespect of the subject?

Unlike real life, artists have a choice as to whether their characters have aesthetic appeal or not (though it may end up being one-dimensional as Desler described). There may also be double standards for some fictional races. However, other than the possibility of people erroneously carrying unrealistic standards and "beauty == good, ugly == evil" correlations over into real life, I don't see why attractive characters in and of themselves are degrading.

I can only speak for the way I see things, and in that way I'm biased, but to me the image of an attractive female promotes emotional connection, which can be an important element in a story or other forms of expression.

For example, in this image her non-suggestive smile makes me feel happiness (at least it looks like a smile to me)
And this image pokes my protection instinct. (may need to reload to show up)

...but that's just the way I like to see things. I only think of one as "slutty" for their actions, for getting their sense of self-worth exclusively from flaunting sexuality. I feel sorry for them. Therefore, I think that if you find a character with sexuality as their only noteworthy characteristic with no trace of personality to care about, you have a legitimate argument for objectification.

I tend to be more frustrated with women being used as expendable plot devices, though again I may be biased because it's the equivalent of punching my protection instinct in the face. 


As for Kerrigan: the new Kerrigan design just screams "mixed messages". (i.e., both aspects that are physically attractive as well as pointy things that yell "don't touch!") The title Heart of the Swarm also has a possible double meaning (maybe triple if you count the acronym). I suspect that the campaign will focus on her internal conflict, as reflected by her design.

I also suspect that her face looks "fat" because it was designed to look symbolically mask-like, but I don't know if Blizzard is capable of that type of subtlety.


(Also note the don't touch sign under the Nova statue, ha ha)

I totally agree. For such an excellent post, have some pie!

[Aiursrage2k]

Who is there target audience. 18-24 year olds and why not get them younger and keep them longer so go for the teenies.

[Magic]

The Oracle:

I find your definition of 'slut' and other words strange. You are older than most of us here, but I feel I should resist putting it down to age. There's pretty, then there's degrading and objectified - sexploitation and all.

I once had a discussion with a guy in marketing about why we needed so much tits and ass to advertise a driving game of ours ... it's the only (or perhaps just the easiest) way of getting noticed, apparently. And I'm a fine young bachelor who likes women.

Regarding Dr Hanson, I don't see anything overtly sexy - just a bit of sly innuendo. We've certainly seen far worse, including from Blizz.

In the original StarCraft: Broodwar, the medic's 'irritated' voice samples included "Where does it hurt?" but in a skanky way.

Really? 'Skanky'? It's a bit of innuendo, a silly, suggestive sexual joke that I'd expect from any young person. It's certainly more flirty than sheer dirty in my opinion.

As for Kerrigan and high heels - LOL. I never noticed that. I suppose the artist was thinking that the high heels represent (as in much media, I suppose) female power - the ability to stand tall and be assertive and independent. Or just that it looks much more appropiate than plain boots or so such.

Maybe Kerrigan looted them from a shoe shop on the Omega platform.

So here's my question to you guys (and gals if there are gals floating around the forum); do you agree with me that women are portrayed as 'objects' in StarCraft?  And if so, do you like it?

In StarCraft, not at all. Kerrigan is one of the most powerful beings in the universe, we see all of her noble virtue as a human and all of her malevolent powermongering as an infested wretch of the zerg. Not all of the females make dirty jokes such as the dropship and the valkyrie pilots - excluding the latter's "You're being a very naughty boy!" which borders S&M methinks). Sex is part of human nature, it fascinates many people so it's good to include it. Some people may be offended by it, but I think most people appreciate that we're long past the Victorian age's stance of never even mentioning it (FYI the Victorians, feeling themselves as leaders of the world, were aghast when they discovered carved Roman images of pornography).

Meanwhile, if we're including Raszagal, she's incredibly wise and a respected member of her species.

For WarCraft ... wow, where do I begin? I'll avoid repeating the earlier discussion of the thread, suffice to say Blizzard love to show off all women in the game as hot and with cleavage you can ski down. They're all pretty much like Red Sonja - warriors with completely inconceivable and impractical armour that is there for looks, not remotely realistic. That it's to distinguish genders is one argument I don't completely buy, but I can understand it. Otherwise, it just seems to be Blizzard exaggerating everything, a bit like in comics and many other forms of media.

Historically, there have been very few actual warrior women. Joan of Arc and several others existed, but were far from the norm. That doesn't mean there haven't been very strong women, however (Queen Gorgo springs to mind, though I know of her more from the movie 300 than real life) and that these days there are many women serving in the military of many countries.

Those are stilettos on Kerrigan's feet. Stilettos might as well be knives. You could stab a guy in the kidney pretty easily with one good kick from those things. My mouse pad is, in fact, a picutre of Kerrigan trying to stab Zeratul with one of those very stilettos.

That's where the name comes from - the heels look like the small daggers of olden times and so were named after them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiletto

This picture, actually:
[imgwh 640x480]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... 2_Art1.jpg[/imgwh] Consider it another weapon in her arsenal, not a fashion statement. Zerg don't do fashion.

You ever tried wearing them and actually walked around? It's a world of difference.

(How do I know?

Spoiler

I was drunk and briefly swapped my shoes with a girl who said her stiletto's made her feet hurt. Don't ask.

)

Bulging, over exaggerated muscles on male characters can be just as sexist.  It creates a hyper-masculinity image that boys have a hard time emulating.  They see these well built characters and wish their bodies looked that way.  Gaming companies have also increasingly made their male characters handsome looking.  Male players have gravitated towards these images, and you will continue to see a progression of beautifying the male image in the gaming industry.  Final Fantasy, for example, is becoming more and more like this.  Compare the protagonists of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII Versus with previous titles, and you'll notice the difference.

I think there's a difference between being fit and healthy and the size of sexual organs. Put simply, you can determine the former, while you can't really determine the latter (excluding surgery). Muscles mean someone is fit, plus women like men who can take care of themselves, health-wise.

The Red Dwarf episode "Parallel Universe" is good for an amusing take on this - the crew end up in such a universe and find that gender roles have been reversed, complete with social attitudes and noticing that there is porn of ridiculously 'endowed' men.

I'll leave this post at that, I could go on at great length but my time is limited as it is.

[IskatuMesk]

Nah, WoW's armor isn't really that bad at all (try Requiem: Bloodymare, I'm having a very hard time finding something that suffices as full plate for 2042). Besides, it's called Fantasy for a reason, right?

[Theia_Loki]

Wait. Since there's people complaining about the portrayals of men and women in gaming, why not switch both genders' wardrobes around?

Probably something like this:
[imgwh 640x273]http://slimythief.com/comics/2009-11-17 ... ip_011.jpg[/imgwh]
Better take cover, since it'll start raining wigs and eyebrows.

[Thalraxal]

I'm just going to use this a moment to go on the record that I don't like Kerrigan's new design.  While I like that she's become more monsterous than she was in SC1 which reflects the ongoing loss of her humanity etc, etc, etc, the whole design is ruined because of those rediculous stiletto heels.  Sorry Browncloud, I'm not buying your argument.  They're fashion, and like you said Zerg don't do fashion.

[thebrowncloud]

You make me sad, Thal..... 

But I didn't think of it the way you did, Magic (the heels being confidence and assertiveness). I guess that could work, too. I dunno. I just don't see it as a sexual article. Maybe it's just because I don't find high heels sexy, or maybe because I don't believe anything about Kerrigan is intended for sex-appeal. The "boot" that forms the heel does appear to be a form of armor, so it does have more than aesthetic purposes for sure. But to each his own. Just because I see it this way doesn't mean you guys do.

[Taeradun]

It's not just StarCraft; sexist stuff like that is common throughout the media, and it's even more prevalent in the video games industry. It's all too common for military games to be a macho sausagefest, and even when there are strong female roles there's often a lot of sexual objectification. Sometimes objectification can even be the main reason for having female characters. It's true that there's also a lot of rippling muscles on shirtless dudes, but even that is usually done to suit a macho ideal targeted at men instead of to be sexually appealing to heterosexual women like the female characters are to men. Not surprising considering "serious" videogames like StarCraft are mostly played by and targeted at dudes, but it all seems to be done without any interest in increasing the female market share.

So while it's reasonable to wish Blizzard would buck the trend, and criticise them if they don't, at the end of the day you really shouldn't be surprised when they don't.

lol @ exaggerating body shape so people can tell characters apart though, if they're worried about everyone looking the same how about increasing the options to customise player appearance in other ways. I don't really think being able to tell what sex someone is from far off in the distance is important.

here's some article I saw a week or so ago that looked kinda cool but was a bit tl;dr and I haven't got around to reading it properly yet lol

(also I saw something a while back (I forget where) trying to justify that picture of Nova saying that her Ghost suit needs to be close to the skin to make cloaking work properly... yeah right... reminds me of that thread years ago with AA7 and Codebreaker debating the pros and cons of g-strings or whatever)

[Lavarinth]

The doctor in question from StarCraft II actually spares any sense of sexual tendencies or flirtations from what I've played of the campaign so far. She's a straight up nerd bent on saving humanity. So one artist depicted her sexually, so what? Her actual character is portrayed nothing to what you've seen in that image aside being a doctor.

As for Kerrigan, you reap what you sow. All of you went on for years as to how Kerrigan was hot, she was sexy, she was everything you wanted in a bad-ass girl. And she was developed to clearly continue that trend. The amazing curves, the proper proportions, the tall stilettos, and long.. bony hair. If you took away everything Zerg on her, you'd crawl on your knees to touch her. Well, granted some of you would already as is. But this is simply Blizzard giving you what you asked for. Blizzard's previous renditions of Kerrigan were nothing near of her final depicted form. Mainly, no stilettos, but you guys wanted more and more and more.

And as for Nova, I wont even touch that, considering as much as anyone can argue the functional requirement for her suit to be skin tight, half the armor protrudes out and let's face it, no one blind enough to miss that LEDs running alongside her suit.

[IskatuMesk]

Sorry, what was that Lav? I was too busy investigating the gravitic impacts of Nova's cheeks - I mean the LED's. Yes. The LED's. The same thing Protoss have on their buildings that just go WEE LIGHTS.

I fucking love lights.

[UntamedLoli]

So why isn't your house covered in neon LED's yet?

[IskatuMesk]

Are you kidding? The fucking coffee machine blows out the fuses half the time.