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Let us continue the discussion started here.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

and for some reason chinese gods do not get Asian eyes for some reason.

Do you see this look? This is what the Chinese players and Chinese Company Tencent asked for, oddly enough the Chinese Gods are being redesigned as asked by their player base.

Looks even more like Aphrodite now.

I am sorry, I fail to see your point here. Am I supposed to, for some reason, want the same design as Tencent?
I mean, what you describe certainly goes hand to hand with this phenomenon. Do you really consider this something positive that you wish to encourage? Especially when it means removing Asian eyes from character design, even though (in my personal opinion) they look incredibly good?
We are definitely not on the same page here.

 Soladrin wrote:
What's wrong with over sexualized female gods?

Let me give you two reasons:
- First, it leads to very uniform, boring, bland designs. What is the point of having tons of different characters, if they are all small variations on the same design idea? What about variety? That is the reason we have very different body builds among male character, by the way.
- Then, and that one is straight in front of your eyes but you cannot see it, It perpetuates some bad stereotypes and false ideas. For instance, the idea that “female gods […] have always been symbols of sexuality, fertility and the like.”. That is false, and have… unfortunate implications too. Let me give two examples from the game rooster. Unlike what the guy from that stupid video, full of this false stereotype, believes without even having taken the time to check out, Kali is not associated with sex. She is associated with violence, death and motherly love, though. Not much fertility there. It should be obvious from every piece of art featuring her that she is always depicted as fearsome, monstrous, frightening, not attractive. But so strong is his prejudice than he presents the evidences without actually seeing them… The other obvious example is Nemesis. In case you are not aware, “I am your Nemesis” does not exactly mean “I love you and want to have tons of children with you”. Nemesis is a goddess of vengeance and retribution. Her whole craft is of destruction. How in hell do you associate that with “sexuality, fertility and the like” is a complete mystery to me.

 Soladrin wrote:
Besides, I don't hear you complaining about how all men in videogames are buff stereotypical machomen.

That is because it is not true. Some are, but it is far, far from all of them.
Let us take the most famous video game character ever, for instance: Mario. Despite his mustache, he is not much of a macho man, with his big belly…
Do you want a list of LoL characters that are not macho men, for instance?
And that is not even mentioning the obvious. The obvious being that most characters in video games are going to be fighter, therefore it makes sense for them to be pretty muscled and though. Being fighters does NOT make them more likely to be sexualized, though.

 LordofHats wrote:
True, but most traditional depictions of Kali depict her naked, or at least with bare breasts.

Yeah, no issue with that. Non-sexual nudity is a thing, and I am going to quote once again the same cartoon as an example: Kirikou. If Smite had that, I would be much happier than the current non-nude sexuality .

 LordofHats wrote:
And that's ignoring that in modern times, ancient goddesses' have been reinvented by our popular culture as sex symbols, so that guy isn't completely off base.

He is. He did not take the time to do any researched and based himself on his prejudice to support an argument. You do not base good arguments on prejudice, you base them on facts. Because of course your prejudice will support themselves…

 LordofHats wrote:
Gods and goddesses, especially the Greek/Roman ones have always had a degree of associating with sex in their history

Yeah, but in that game, by some strange and unexpected turn of event, only goddess are sexualized. Let us compare Zeus and Nemesis. One has literally dozen of stories about him having sex with tons of different partners. The other has absolutely zero sexual relations that I know of. Or even, let us compare Zeus with his wife Hera. Who had more sex?



Oh, and before someone tells me that the male god are sexualized because they are muscled, that is not true.
This is not what a sexualized male character looks like:

This is what a sexualized male character looks like:


See also this:



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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Or maybe you've just looked for a meaning I wasn't intending at all. I was pointing out that the lack of Asian design was coming from their own player base. I have no honest clue how you've managed to twist my words so hard to find that meaning.

Oh. Sorry. Maybe I jumped to my guns a bit too easily. I apologize.

That is why I also mentionned Hera . I am pretty sure that if she had cheated on her husband anywhere nearly as much as he did on her, we would have stories about it.

 LordofHats wrote:
The problem here is that it assumes women are the only ones a male character might be sexualized for.

Is Hulk a gay sex symbol?
Really, I may be wrong, but I would be very surprised if gay people were attracted to these kinds of builds rather than leaner ones. But I am not sure that gay people is what you meant when you spoke about a male character sexualized for men. Still, I think for most men, being as muscled as Batman/Superman is sexy, being as muscled as Bane or Hulk is being freakish.

I do not understand. Every guy on your links looks closer to the Batman on the comic, or the guy on my first message, than to the Hulk in term of muscle.
For real-life example, they do not look like that:

or that:

do they?
The point is not to say that attractive men have no muscle. Just that huge muscles does not make a man attractive by themselves, and that the bigger the better is a fallacy.

 LordofHats wrote:
A man can't have an idea about what is sexually appealing about themselves without being gay?

Sure they can. But I somehow expect gay people to be the most concerned and vocal about what they find sexually appealing in a man.

 LordofHats wrote:
I mean, heaven forbid I look in the mirror and think "damn I've gotten a little chubby" without that thought immediately being followed by the overwhelming realization that I must be gay because I'm concerned how a man looks.

.
No, that ever happened to me. And I do not mean because I am not chubby, I mean because I have considered myself too skinny without having in any way the impression that this made me gay.
But really, I would not care at all if men were sexy or not in a comic or other media (apart from some very abstract gender-equality point of view, I guess). I could tell if they seemed sexy or not, I just would not care about there being sexy characters. I can see how gay people would care. That is why when talking about sexy male character in comic books, I think primarily about catering to the tastes of heterosexual women and gay men.


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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I have no clue how they look like the comic, feminine lips and biggish anime eyes while having a more feminine physique?

Well, you have to compare comics characters with comics characters. Of course if you compare that fem-Batman with covers from novels featuring pictures rather than drawings, it is going to be very different. Because in a comics, people are stylized.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Generally from what I've seen is that most of the gods don't exactly wear much at all regardless, being pretty nude and showing off most of what they have and all.

Yeah, but for make gods it really feel like non-sexual nudity. For female gods, on the other hand, the clothing is usually here to actually make them more sexy than if they were just naked.

 LordofHats wrote:
Think of all the times in film you've seen a girl turn to her friend and ask "does this make my butt look big?"

That would be very, very rare, but it is mostly linked to my taste in movies, I guess. But yeah, I understand what you mean. You are right. It is true. But still, I am not sure it is relevant to this discussion because I do not think straight male players look for sexy male characters in games or comics. They do care about whether or not they are sexy because, well, they want to be attractive, but for characters in media? I do not think so.


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 Slarg232 wrote:
Wasn't Leona Champ number 118 in LoL, while the Female Tank (Athena) of Smite was God # 47?


Also, you can use Lulu to point out that LoL is Diverse, but I hardly call 3 Yordles, 1 child, and the rest with Boobs bigger than their heads. Where is the Fat Chick? The Ugly Chick? All were criticisms you used against Smite, but League, a MUCH more popular game with a LARGER fanbase, has the same issues.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Oh, I see you misunderstood my statement as “League of Legend is the nirvana of positive and equal representation for female characters, while Smite is an horrible mess of sexualized horrors”, when really, it was “League of Legend is an horrible mess of sexualized horrors but somehow Smite manage to be even worse”.
[…]
(I am not listing the bad examples because that would mean basically all of them, but if you are frustrated by that, just help yourself. Also this.)

In which language do I need to say that League of Legend is very, very bad for you to understand you do not need to convince me it is?

Anyhow, you do not see any problem with every female champion/goddess having the same body type, while male champions/gods enjoy a huge variety of body types?

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I'm really not sure why League would ever be held up as a positive example of representation of women.

That is a strawman from Slarg232, because I said Smite was even worse. Really, nobody said so.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Anyway, Smite always struck me as about as interesting as paint drying (especially when I got spam about it immediately after being burned by Tribes: Ascend) so I feel like the takeaway note here is that we need more hot guys in games. I've been playing FF14 lately and it's refreshing how the guys are allowed to have physiques other than "Roid Rage." They can even have makeup! Playing a game where men are allowed to look good instead of chasing some silly power fantasy is fun.

So, I guess your anecdotal example support what the comic I posted said about redesigning Batman for female gaze ?

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I suppose its in the eye of the beholder, I can see the males as sexualized in a manner that would be attractive to those who enjoy such views.

They have no nipples. Barechested man, no nipples, dead giveaway !
More seriously, sexy clothing is all about pretending to hide to put more focus on. It is why the stereotypical chippendale will wear a shirt collar but not the rest of the shirt :

it puts the emphasis on the fact he is naked and that is not just his normal state.
Also we see way less of the male gods thigh or upper legs than for female goddess, for instance.
I guess we could try to analyze them one by one and then vote for the sexiest Smite god .

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Except all you are doing is changing one cultural power fantasy for another.

It is not a power fantasy here, just a sexual/romantic one .

 Slarg232 wrote:
You claim that Smite has Mayan/Egyptian Gods without having any of them being people of color, but there are "Blue People". I show you Chaac, Xbalanque, and Ra, two Mayan and on Egyptian Gods, all of whom have darker/black skin.

I agree for Mayan god, but for Ra? He has a bloody damn eagle head, and his skin does not look like Egyptian. You could as well have mentioned Fenrir. My point was that almost all humans where very much made to look like white Europeans rather than being representative of where they came from. Same for the Chinese gods not having Asian eyes. But yeah, I was wrong about those two Mayan gods.

 Slarg232 wrote:
You claim that Vanama and Khumbakharna are Hindu gods and not well represented in the game, when I then show you that they were made pretty dang close to what Hindu Culture shows them as.

Why are you even trying again to bring that “They must look like how their respective culture shows them”? It is completely hypocritical, because hardly any of them does. Just look at Nemesis, she is wearing PANTYHOSE and HIGH HEELS! Those are NOT from Ancient Greece.

 Slarg232 wrote:
You claimed that LoL had Lulu and other Yordles to keep "the females diverse"

I said, explicitly, in the very post you are talking about, that “League of Legend is an horrible mess of sexualized horrors” (does that sound like “League of Legend has diverse female characters” to you), and that “I am not listing the bad examples because that would mean basically all of them”, i.e. that all the other characters are “the typical Big Bust Females”. I just, for the fun of it (and I explicitly said it was for the fun of it!) said I would try to dig the few female champions that did not follow the trend.
If I quote passage of my first message that directly contradict what you pretend I said, it is a pretty good proof that you are using a strawman.

 LordofHats wrote:
It has nothing to do with men wanting to bang Kirk it's about men wanting to be Kirk because Kirk is our sexual ideal.

People want to be Kirk because they want to bang the hot green chick you are talking about. They care about being sexy because they want to convince that hot green chick to sleep with them. Therefore, they do not ask themselves if they find themselves sexy, they ask themselves whether they are what this hot green chick would find sexy. I guess that is what HiveFleetPlastic meant to say anyway. The ideal is not “looking like that”, that is just a mean to the end, the actual ideal of “banging that hot green chick”. And it is the same the other way around.


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@ZebioLizard2

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
My point was that almost all humans where very much made to look like white Europeans rather than being representative of where they came from.

Yeah, I should have said human-looking, because they are gods. I stand by my point. That guy's skin is no more “natural” and evocative of the actual inhabitants of Egypts than the blue skin is evocative of the actual inhabitants of India…

ZebioLizard2, do you feel like the Gods from Smite, by their types (not their clothes, not their tatoos, not their supernatural attributes, just the color of their skins, the shape of their eyes, …) evokes the area they are supposed to have originated from? I do not.

 LordofHats wrote:
Just watch an action movie and a chick flick back to back

Ahow, that would hurt!

 LordofHats wrote:
and watch the differences in how the male and female leads interact with one another in both films.

Not familiar enough with chick flicks. Action movie will likely have the “women as a reward” stuff, I guess. There was that in the Lego movie, and in Edge of Tomorrow.
Movies I would like to watch would likely have the weirdest stuff happening, if they even have any kind of love interest going on .


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 Slarg232 wrote:
Kali is blue, so that's wrong.

Kali is not having a collar of severed heads, a belt of severed arms, and sticking out her tongue, so that is wrong. Because she is in both pictures you are linking to. But you are not interested in having any kind of discussion.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Let me ask this, if those where they originated from had different thoughts on what deities look like or should look like, is it really your place to tell them that "They should look more like what I feel they should look like."

I do not understand why you are asking this question. I am not talking to Chinese or Mayans or Ancient Greeks or Indian people and asking them to change their traditional representations of their Gods, I am talking about one video game by developers that are none of those things, and what I would to have in this video game. Those developers are in majority western people. The game is marketed mostly toward western people.
I know what you are referring to: Chinese people supposedly wanting Chinese goddess having sexy cloths, no Asian eyes and very pale skin. I do not agree with the idea that this would be representative of Chinese people, because it is change supposedly requested by some Chinese company. Even considering that this company know its market well enough, I highly doubt Chinese MOBA players are representative of the Chinese people as a whole. I also see how that is part of a bigger phenomenon happening in Asia that I already described in this thread and that I think is not a good thing.
You seem oblivious of how apparently quite a bunch of Indians were VERY unhappy with the way the Indian gods were portrayed, though.

I assume the answer to my question was “No, the gods' physical type in Smite does not match with the type of actual people originating from those areas”.

Eumerin wrote:
If by "generic" you mean showing lots of skin, then Kayle completely subverts it.

Oh, I forgot that one on my list!

 Desubot wrote:
This reminds me of that whole game theory vid on the same subject.

It was listed very early, when the original thread was derailed. That video is so full of logical and/or factual errors that it is painful!

 LordofHats wrote:
I give you Sejuani, not as a positive example per se, but who remembers what she looked like when she released

Posted about it already. In that message that Slarg232 refused to read.
If that part about the artist willing to give to give her armor, and Riot actually telling him or her that no, they wanted her in a bikini is true, it is pretty sad…

The part where the player get the bikini changed for an armor is happy, but the part where the company say no to the artist when he wants to add armor is sad.

They have balls of steel. I mean, if steel was blue, their balls would look like steel!


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 Lynata wrote:
sexboobs sell.

So much that the player base insisted enough to have her in armor. So, maybe it is just a legend that video game makers are unable to get over?
Well, I do not know about other, but boobs really do not sell to me.

On the other hand, we have stuff like this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2144975/Age-of-Conan-Gamer-fury-as-breasts-reduced.html

So, I guess that original jape was directed toward Tryndamere, and maybe Braum, but it reminded me of that:
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20140808


I guess you can be excused for not wearing a lot in winter if part of your body is made of ice.

 Lynata wrote:
It could certainly fit into David Gaider's claims about accepted industry wisdom. I'm not surprised that some studios, and even more publishers, may simply be out of touch with their own playerbase, operating largely on tradition and false assumptions.

Yeah, it is a theory that is also displayed on bikiniarmorbattledamage.
But I have suggested on Path of Exile's forum that they should remove the naked chained women from the HuD because they have absolutely no thematic link with the universe of the game, and the reactions were pretty extreme in term of negativity. Really. Never again. See here: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/654572 .

 Lynata wrote:
Age of Conan on the other hand explicitly advertised with naked virtual boobs

Did they really use that in official advertisement?


Also, apart from those chained ladies on the HUD and one or two NPC, Path of Exile is very well in that regard, so you could be surprised by which audience cares about having their share of sexualization.

Ezreal is a he, not a she.

Eumerin wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Ezreal is a he, not a she.

Yup.

Maybe the anti-Samus?

I did not say that to imply he was not like Samus. I said that because Melissia used the wrong pronoun .

 Melissia wrote:
OH you kidder, that's clearly not true. I mean have you looked at her?

She's one of the prettiest ladies in League.

No really, the bio says so!
Oh, wait, you were kidding, right? Then let me present you the totally male Prince Ne Zha :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncGeBYyt-Vc
At first I thought Smite had a non-sexualized goddess .

 Melissia wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Oh, wait, you were kidding, right?

IT's good that you figured it out

Are you implying I am dense ?

Eumerin wrote:
On the other hand, I read a short bit of an article about a recent Chinese game trade show, and the minimum number of booth babes in any given booth was 25. Most of the booths had significantly more. That's apparently the norm for the game trade shows in that country.

When I was in South Korea, so about 4 years ago, I was invited to some big tech fair where on the lower level you have small companies and research teams like the one I was doing an internship on, and on top you had big companies. There were some booth babe to advertise some car. I must still have pictures of that somewhere. That felt really weird.

 Lynata wrote:
But I also pretty much consider breasts a silly, hypocritical non-issue in general ("oh my god, it's the exact same bodypart a male has, just inflated! quick you must hide it this instant! ... but please keep teasing us you slut"), so it may depend on one's perspective.

If breast are perfectly suitable for children movies (and they are - usual warning: this is the trailer for a movie for young children. If you are offended by children's movie that feature barechested women, do not click) then they must be suitable for grown men and women movies too.

 Seaward wrote:
Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's going to be right up your alley, with its intentionally unattractive females.

Okay, just read the whole discussion, and you will see he does not care. All he cares about is proving me that Smite is awesome and so much better than LoL.

 Seaward wrote:
I think people massively overestimate the number of female gamers who have an issue with playing cheesecake.

Well, they massively underestimate the number of male gamer that have an issue with playing cheesecake too.
But really, from what I have seen among female members of Dakka, non-sexualized female characters are really missed.

 Seaward wrote:
I'm still waiting for someone to do a study on giving women the choice between choosing a pretty, sexy avatar and a plain one. I think it would probably pretty closely mirror the results of giving men a choice between a hulked-out ass-kicker avatar and Joe Average.

That is a very, very biased comparison. People do not want plain avatar. They want omfgawesome avatars that are not sexualized. Do you really think the only way a female avatar could stand out is by being sexualized?

 Sigvatr wrote:
Oh, so you got exact field data on this?

Same source as Seaward .

 Seaward wrote:
My experience with women in MMOs and computer RPGs where you can customize your character's look is that most tend to go for "as pretty as possible." Where sexy outfits are an option, many go for sexy outfits.

My experience with women in MMO is they do character like that:

(There is a female blood elf dark knight somewhere is that armor, it is Dakka's own Ashiraya character)
Granted, that is just one person, but apparently every female member of Dakka that I know of has express an interest in more non-sexualized character, so I am going to ask: from which women did you get that experience?

 Seaward wrote:
Are women offended or put off by awesome female avatars that are sexy? Not the ones I've gamed with.

I feel compelled to note the potential for confirmation bias here: if you are playing only games with only sexualized female avatar, of course the women that you are going to find while playing the game will be way more likely not to be put off by sexualized female avatar. Those that are put off will likely not play the game.

 Sigvatr wrote:
It all boils down to credibility - in a game that's all about fantasy and magicks, I don't mind having a female character with very generous clothing.

For me, it is more a question of tastes. They very rarely involve showing a lot of skin. I tend to like heavily armored women, but for instance my character in DC universe online, a MMORPG which is VERY good in term of character's look customization (you can get/win styles, and you just choose your style regardless of what gear you are wearing. And there is a huge variety, even among the very easily accessible styles), where it is very easy to get a female character as either a walking tank with a huge suit of exoarmor or wearing extremely skimpy outfit, I just went with this:

Neither armor at any rate, nor sexy, pretty casual actually, but really freaking cool imo. And I would take cool over sexy every goddamn time!


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 Ashiraya wrote:
and WoW as a game favours chainmail bikinis due to the 2D armour design. This shifts the data.

Yeah, I am afraid there might be a bit of bias confirmation here.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, a lot of times devs are going for "sexy" and just get "stupid" instead.

It's even worse with modders.

#notallmods .

Also going to leave this silly comic here:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Layout mistake and poor concept makes for a pretty darn low quality comic.

And to add injury to insult: her dress would be unwearable as she got zero training and could hardly walk in it and against a dragon, she'd be better off wearing barely any armor. Metal armor is absolutely terrible against high temperatures. Like, really.

Silly comic is silly.

OM NOM NOM!

Storywise, or in regard to the drawings?
Both were pretty silly in my opinion. It is great and quite funny by itself, hence why I posted it, but I would not want to see this kind of stuff every day or every week. For that, there is UVoD or Wonderella or SMBC.

I would advise Wonderella, then. Well, it is not at all the same content (first because then it would be the same strip with a different drawing, second because it is about some kind of Wonderman-like superhero), but I still think she would enjoy it.
And it has strip that are terrible handy to link in internet debates, like http://nonadventures.com/2014/05/31/the-strawman-cometh/ .
I need to join in the Kickstarter to get the physical books .
Also the very best Twitter header ever!
https://twitter.com/wonderella

Somehow vaguely relevant to the discussion, especially since it is a split-off from my Strife thread: why the hell did they totally inflate the boobs of Claudessa in her presentation trailer?
I mean, look for yourself.
In-game, model AND art:

Presentation trailer:

.

Too bad, because that character is really cool, and the whole backstory of “That goddamn dragon took my hand? I am going to take its hand in return. * start hitting people with a claw on a stick* " is damn awesome!

I think we really need you to say a few more time how much you dislike that comics. I mean, maybe someone reading the messages without looking at who wrote them might think there are several people disliking it in the discussion .