Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe it's just me, but I don't like the majority of female faces I see on models. The features of a female face that make it look female are so subtle and when you exaggerate them to be noticeable on a 28mm model the result to my eye is usually not great.

Faces are definitely a hard aspect for miniatures. It takes a good painter to really get the features of the face and to make it a noticeable difference between Face A and Face B. The only real difference between a male and female head tends to be very little. They are usually long hair for a female, for a male short hair, beard, stubble, helmet and/or smoking a cigar. Those are noticeable features that stick out...


You can however do them to where those aren't the noticeable differences like the above. The only real issue is once you put paint on the miniatures, if those features aren't painted and highlighted properly then they'll get lost.

I would assume that is why most miniatures tend to rely on obvious signs of male vs female (ie: short hair vs long hair, beard vs no beard) because it takes less reliance on a good painter to properly highlight. That is just my opinion though.

On the opposite spectrum my wife hates all the current male faces because they are all grizzled veterans. She would rather have something that was less wrestler and more bishounen. The issue however tends to be once those are shrunk down to miniatures size, they would be considered too 'girly' or would be mistaken for women.

 Buzzsaw wrote:


This, this right here is yet another reason why the complaint goes nowhere: here we have Mario holding up as ideal the exact thing that others are decrying as what they don't want. Korraz above mentions "organizing people into a single voice that's actually heard", the problem with this being that there is a group of people that all agree on step 1 ('there is something rotten in the state of female miniatures'), but when it actually comes to step 2, listenening to what people want... everyone has not just different opinions, but contradictory opinions.

I can't say how many times I've seen people lament the lack of plastic Adeptus Sororitas, and I also can't say how many times I've seen people lament that the 'female faction' in 40k is Space Nuns in Power Corsets. If GW wasn't so completely estranged from the internet, I would suspect they haven't done anything with Sororitas because they think the backlash against them would be more trouble then the line is worth. But GW seems to think the internet stopped in '97, so that's probably not it.

This is certainly a good point. It's not always easy to find lots of like-minded people to unite behind your cause and sometimes you have to face the truth that there simply aren't enough potential customers to get a company to listen to you. Still, If you really care about something it's always worth a try.

 Dark Severance wrote:
It isn't a matter of if it would benefit our sales, it is a matter of would it benefit sales enough to support the production or creation of said product.

Well, which product? Are you talking about making a specific “realistically armored women” kit that you would like to release and sell only for people that wat realistically armored women, with no other selling point? Yeah, if you are planning for big quantities, you are bound to fail.
However, there are plenty of reasonably armored units and models being released. Every time a company releases one, they can and should ask themselves “Would making some of them realistically armored female models be detrimental or a boost to how many of those we will sell”. Let me take an example: recently GW released some Tau with female bare heads. If they had already planned on including multiple variant of helmetless heads, how did including female heads impact their sales numbers compared to including only male heads variants? It was exactly the same cost to produce both, so it makes sense to just compare how both kits would have sold. And I don't know how many people decided to buy more Tau unites because they included female models, but I am pretty confident that literally no-one said “Damn, those Tau kits include female head variants instead of more male head variants, I am not going to buy the box”. So, a net positive.

 Kojiro wrote:
But I'd need tens of millions of dollars to make the movie I want to make.

Alright. Let's compare what you want, and what Ashiraya wants. Ashiraya wants to be able to enter a LGS, any LGS, and find multiple miniatures of realistically armored women available to buy, that can be used to play some game where she can reasonably expect to find opponents, tournaments, etc.
So basically, she not only needs to get a miniature line out there, she also needs for her miniature line to be big enough to reasonably compete against Games Workshop.
How about you re-evaluate your silly appreciation of how much that would cost?
What, you think she is asking for too much? You are literally asking for dozens of millions of dollars, because any movie with a smaller budget is unworthy of your attention!

 Kojiro wrote:
Me: I'd like to make a really expensive film that cost millions!
You: You can make a cheap film!
Me: I don't want to make a cheap film.
You: Clearly you don't want to make ANY films! AHA!

List of people that made a really expensive film that cost millions without making a cheaper film before:






(Yeah, it's empty)
You are just unwilling to invest anything, am I right?

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So for you witches are reasonably dressed and not sexualised?

Edit
because if that is the case KDM does a great job at it too.

Wyches are a great example of treating the male and female members of a unit similarly though. Just like Guardians, or Tau. KDM is a terrible example at this, with literally all the pin-up models being women…

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
You know what is a better example?

both are equally dressed, both are reasonably/ realistically dressed, both are equally sexualised and easy to tell apart.

Hum, the women are half the volume as male are. Doesn't sound reasonable to me…
All your other examples are better.


And sorry for digging back a bit, but

 Jayden63 wrote:
Somewhat related to points B and C is something that became very apparent during my RPGing days. I played with a lot of different people, a lot of them girls too. And in any sci-fi based RPG we played like Shadowrun, Paranoia, Gurps, etc. If you ask the girls to describe their character they will pretty much be an exact clone of 90% of the Infinity more sexualized character models. Probably not the girl in the tee shirt and mini skirt, but almost always tight form fitting body armor, tight leather pants, long coat, great hair, perky boobs, and tight butt. Never once has a girl said her fantasy character had sagging C cups and wore hospital scrubs. In fantasy based games like D&D its was always accenting leather corsets and/or fitted plate.

Girls liked their characters to be tough, skilled, deadly, and sexy. I think its why low model count skirmish type games have the models that they do have. Because we are playing in a fantasy world where we don't want to be ourselves. We want to be sexy, alluring, and feel empowered when our team is out kicking ass. And I think mini manufactures make their models to reflect this ideal.

I don't know you, and I don't know your RPG groups, so I cannot make any definitive statements, of course. However, here on Dakka, we have, as far as I know, literally no women that came here to say how she likes her female models to always be sexualized. We however had a bunch tell us that they don't like it. So, how do we explain the disparity?
1) Women playing RPG and women on Dakka are too different groups with different tastes. That one does not seem too likely to me.
2) Dakka is somehow a place that is pushing women who likes using sexualized models away. That one seems even more unlikely to me.
3) Your RPG groups were somehow pushing women who did not like to play sexualized characters away. I don't know them so I cannot comment on that.
4) Pure chance.
and possibly, given some after game chat after my last RPG session
5) You only saw their description as sexy because that's what you expect to see.
Yesterday I played a one-shot of Exalted. I played a female character. I had to get to some place where I could dig up some valuable artifacts, and I did not have money to pay for the trip upfront. So, I did a Charisma test to convince the people that could bring me there to let me in on credit and that I would pay them back with the artifacts I would dig up there. There is a completely different stat called Appearance, that I did NOT use in this test. Yet after the game, I found out some people thought I “used my boobs” to get a free ride. There was NOTHING in how I played it to suggest so, and there was NOTHING in the rule mechanics involved either. They still saw it this way, because that was what they expected to see. I am pretty sure noone would have thought I was using my sex appeal if my character had been male. So yeah, confirmation bias can be strong.
And, regardless of whether I play a male or female character, I very, very rarely want it to be sexy. Strong? Badass? Certainly. Sexy? Only for very quirky, specific characters, because playing weird, quirky stuff from time to time is fun. Do you care how sexy your male characters are?

 Buzzsaw wrote:
It's amazing, Mario's posts continues to illustrate exactly what's wrong, seemingly completely without meaning to.

You think you're doing something different, or that somehow your disdain for the other side of the argument is well-masked?

 Korraz wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:


This, this right here is yet another reason why the complaint goes nowhere: here we have Mario holding up as ideal the exact thing that others are decrying as what they don't want. Korraz above mentions "organizing people into a single voice that's actually heard", the problem with this being that there is a group of people that all agree on step 1 ('there is something rotten in the state of female miniatures'), but when it actually comes to step 2, listenening to what people want... everyone has not just different opinions, but contradictory opinions.

I can't say how many times I've seen people lament the lack of plastic Adeptus Sororitas, and I also can't say how many times I've seen people lament that the 'female faction' in 40k is Space Nuns in Power Corsets. If GW wasn't so completely estranged from the internet, I would suspect they haven't done anything with Sororitas because they think the backlash against them would be more trouble then the line is worth. But GW seems to think the internet stopped in '97, so that's probably not it.

This is certainly a good point. It's not always easy to find lots of like-minded people to unite behind your cause and sometimes you have to face the truth that there simply aren't enough potential customers to get a company to listen to you. Still, If you really care about something it's always worth a try.

Of course, the problem comes in because this tends to be, as you note, viewed as a "cause"; something that gives people moral satisfaction. I think that leads to the problems we've seen (and I've been commenting on) in this thread. But on a practical level, we're looking at the Underpants Gnome Plan;


Remember, I'm an advocate for diversity, so in a certain sense I'm also saying 'we want more female models'. When you look at it on only that level, well, then aren't I and Mario saying the same thing? If you only think of step 1, yes... but as soon as you get beyond that cursory step, we don't just want different things, we want opposite things. This is why I advocate a fundamentally market based solution: put your money where you mouth is.

Everyone has na idea of what they want, but no one really has a good grasp on what will sell well: the only moral solution seems to be that we encourage entrepreneurship and experimentation. Constructive not destructive: I think you said 'be the change you want'? It's the only solution, because everyone wants something different.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Wyches are a great example of treating the male and female members of a unit similarly though. Just like Guardians, or Tau. KDM is a terrible example at this, with literally all the pin-up models being women…

Didn't know GW included female tau heads, good on them, they could try and do that on cadians, that would work too I guess?

Of course they have not done it and if they did it with helmets it would be a wasted opportunity.

You are mistaken on KDM, the armour kits are more or less the same

You are thinking of the pinups which are well pinups, Poots true to his vision is looking for artists that love the male form to make male piunps too, that would be interesting to see.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Spoiler:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
You know what is a better example?

both are equally dressed, both are reasonably/ realistically dressed, both are equally sexualised and easy to tell apart.

Hum, the women are half the volume as male are. Doesn't sound reasonable to me…
All your other examples are better.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Alright. Let's compare what you want, and what Ashiraya wants. Ashiraya wants to be able to enter a LGS, any LGS, and find multiple miniatures of realistically armored women available to buy, that can be used to play some game where she can reasonably expect to find opponents, tournaments, etc. So basically, she not only needs to get a miniature line out there, she also needs for her miniature line to be big enough to reasonably compete against Games Workshop.

First up, let me say well done. You've certainly reinforced the perceptions of your intellectual honesty by again failing to address the question now quoted three times. At least you're consistent in living up to expectations. But I'll ask it again- just who is supposed to foot the bill for this GW sized line? Who is taking the financial risk, who is spending their resources on this endeavor instead of something more profitable?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
How about you re-evaluate your silly appreciation of how much that would cost?

So which is it? Is she supposed to make the smartphone movie version of her models, as you suggested I do? Or is she owed something greater? And again, I must commend your consistent level ofintellectual honesty in completely disregarding the advice of actual model creators in this thread regarding costs.

Now, to cut you off here's the difference between my expensive movie and her expensive model line- I'm not whining people aren't footing the bill for my interests. I can fully acknowledge and have no issues with my personal desires not being catered to.

What, you think she is asking for too much? You are literally asking for dozens of millions of dollars, because any movie with a smaller budget is unworthy of your attention!

Ah but you see I'm not actually asking for it. That's the difference- I have no expectation or any entitlement to it. Which is why I'm not whining about not getting it. But people are whining about not getting the, what was it, "miniature line to be big enough to reasonably compete against Games Workshop".

So nice flip flop. First up I should be content with what I can make myself, with my smart phone (but Ash should't be content with what she can make, no!). Now it's an attempt to say that what she wants and what I want are both prohibitively expensive? So what, she's owed her model range and I'm owed my movie grant? Or are we both owed nothing by anyone? Or is she somehow owed her too model range and I'm not owed my movie? Which is it?

List of people that made a really expensive film that cost millions without making a cheaper film before:

Nice completely irrelevant tangent. As I said, I wouldn't expect anyone to give me the kind of money I'd need. Fortunately I'm not arguing they should. In fact I'm arguing the exact opposite. Neither I not Ash is owed anything. Thanks for making my point for me.

At the end of the day HSoO, the people with the resources and abilities to make products we want don't owe us those products, and they certainly don't owe us creative control or even input on how they spend those resources. We can choose to buy or not buy what they make. We can offer feedback and make requests but if we really want to see certain things done or made, sometimes we have to get off our asses and actually do things ourselves.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
However, here on Dakka, we have, as far as I know, literally no women that came here to say how she likes her female models to always be sexualized. We however had a bunch tell us that they don't like it. So, how do we explain the disparity?

I think the easiest way to explain the disparity is that the women who like their sexualised models aren't on Dakka complaining about it because they're happily sitting at their painting desks and gaming tables painting and playing with their sexualised female miniatures.

Also, to be realistic here, how many females are here actually posting about how they don't like sexualised models? It's hard to say because I don't know who is and who isn't female, but from my observation it can't be more than a handful. It's hard to make any statistically significant observation from such a small sample size. As wargamers we should know that just because you happen to roll 5 D6 and they all come up as either 5's or 6's doesn't mean a dice can only roll a 5+, it just means you didn't roll it enough times to represent the actual statistical averages.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dark Severance wrote:

Spoiler:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe it's just me, but I don't like the majority of female faces I see on models. The features of a female face that make it look female are so subtle and when you exaggerate them to be noticeable on a 28mm model the result to my eye is usually not great.

Faces are definitely a hard aspect for miniatures. It takes a good painter to really get the features of the face and to make it a noticeable difference between Face A and Face B. The only real difference between a male and female head tends to be very little. They are usually long hair for a female, for a male short hair, beard, stubble, helmet and/or smoking a cigar. Those are noticeable features that stick out...


You can however do them to where those aren't the noticeable differences like the above. The only real issue is once you put paint on the miniatures, if those features aren't painted and highlighted properly then they'll get lost.

I would assume that is why most miniatures tend to rely on obvious signs of male vs female (ie: short hair vs long hair, beard vs no beard) because it takes less reliance on a good painter to properly highlight. That is just my opinion though.

On the opposite spectrum my wife hates all the current male faces because they are all grizzled veterans. She would rather have something that was less wrestler and more bishounen. The issue however tends to be once those are shrunk down to miniatures size, they would be considered too 'girly' or would be mistaken for women.
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

I think in general when it comes to scale models, especially very small scales like 28mm, it naturally favours gritty male faces. The way we exaggerate shadows and highlights will almost always make a face look rougher and craggier. When you get up to 54mm it becomes a bit easier to paint a female face because you tend not to exaggerate the shadows quite so much, but either way I find females much harder to paint well than males.

You can paint a male face roughly and quickly with a wash and some quick highlights maybe even a drybrush and it'll just make him look more grizzled and like he's spent too long in the field. Do the same to a female face (especially one of the ones which has hyper-exaggerated soft features and thick strands of hair that almost look like dreadlocks) and it just doesn't look.... good. It's part of the reason I personally am not pining for female Cadians. I'm happy enough with my rough and ready dudes that I can paint in 25 minutes and have them look half decent.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
they could try and do that on cadians, that would work too I guess?

Yep.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
You are thinking of the pinups which are well pinups, Poots true to his vision is looking for artists that love the male form to make male piunps too, that would be interesting to see.

Well, if it had male pinups, then it certainly would feel much, much more equal.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
if your dream of been represented on the battlefield is to be identical on a male figure and the difference be in your minds fantasy, we do not share the same ideas (obviously duh) but I frankly cannot see why you can identify with a male figure that in your mind is female because it has a helmet and not identify with any male figure.

You do realize I am a guy? It's right in my username!

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
In any case This does not count as representation of females in my books.

Women, not females. And it totally does for me.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the easiest way to explain the disparity is that the women who like their sexualised models aren't on Dakka complaining about it because they're happily sitting at their painting desks and gaming tables painting and playing with their sexualised female miniatures.

Well, why are they not posting on Dakka? Because out of the few members that I know are women on Dakka, most of them have voiced their distaste of oversexualization at one point or another.
Though it tends to be a quite negative experience, leading them to talk about it less and less…

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Also, to be realistic here, how many females are here actually posting about how they don't like sexualised models?

Women, not females. I have seen a bunch.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the easiest way to explain the disparity is that the women who like their sexualised models aren't on Dakka complaining about it because they're happily sitting at their painting desks and gaming tables painting and playing with their sexualised female miniatures.

Well, why are they not posting on Dakka? Because out of the few members that I know are women on Dakka, most of them have voiced their distaste of oversexualization at one point or another.
Though it tends to be a quite negative experience, leading them to talk about it less and less…

I will go ahead and quote myself from this thread pages ago:

 Blood Hawk wrote:
Can we please please stop pretending that women are unified block. That they all think the same. That "women" don't like x, or that "women" don't like y. Because it is total BS. Woman like any group don't agree on much of anything. Much like all the men arguing back in forth in this thread don't seem to agree on anything either.

What I have found, in this post sexual revolution world that we know live in, is that women who actually have opinion about this topic tend to be very divided. Some women, those that tend to dress conservatively and are very reserved about their sexuality in my experience, do tend to take issue with female sexuality in art or entertainment. These women get turned off by sexualized miniatures or characters in video games like bayonetta. Even some feminists think this way as well. From what I understand they are called sex negative feminists. These feminists call bayonetta a fighting feth toy and take issue with things like porn.

However there is a whole other group of women out there. These women don't dislike female sexuality being portrayed in media, in fact they often love it. From women who love the bayonetta games to all those female cossplayers I have seen over the years that dress up like those female characters that sex negative feminists think are off putting to women. In my experience these are sort of women who own their sexuality and don't always dress modestly. They have no moral qualms going out dancing with their friends in high heels and a mini skirt. Women who do sex work tend to be like this. These women are not turned off by guys playing with sexy miniatures. Feminists who are like this are called sex positive feminists (I mention them earlier). They organize things like slut walks and say that characters like bayonetta are a positive thing.

To use an example here take the new denny2 scuplt.


Someone women will take issue with this model that is true. However other women will look at the characters fluff and end up really loving the model. The fact is she is a femme fatal that owns her sexuality would be appealing to them.

Because the funny thing about this thread to me is, that all miniatures that people have been complaining about, from sisters of battle, to female models with things like boob window or high heels. I have seen real women, yes real women play with all of these models. The real women that I have actually seen play and played against in 40k played armies like dark eldar with wyches or sisters of battle. In warmachine/hordes I have seen real women play with kaya as their warlock. Who, lets say goes into battle with her heart exposed. These women didn't seem to have any issue with any these figs.

 Blood Hawk wrote:
Can we please please stop pretending that women are unified block.

Never said anything like this. I discussed proportion.

 Blood Hawk wrote:
Some women, those that tend to dress conservatively and are very reserved about their sexuality in my experience, do tend to take issue with female sexuality in art or entertainment. These women get turned off by sexualized miniatures or characters in video games like bayonetta. Even some feminists think this way as well. From what I understand they are called sex negative feminists. These feminists call bayonetta a fighting feth toy and take issue with things like porn.

However there is a whole other group of women out there. These women don't dislike female sexuality being portrayed in media, in fact they often love it. From women who love the bayonetta games to all those female cossplayers I have seen over the years that dress up like those female characters that sex negative feminists think are off putting to women. In my experience these are sort of women who own their sexuality and don't always dress modestly. They have no moral qualms going out dancing with their friends in high heels and a mini skirt. Women who do sex work tend to be like this. These women are not turned off by guys playing with sexy miniatures. Feminists who are like this are called sex positive feminists (I mention them earlier). They organize things like slut walks and say that characters like bayonetta are a positive thing.

That's a pretty huge over-simplification.
For instance, Ovidie, a French porn director (and ex-porn star) who identify as a sex-positive feminist did this documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZQ8GUDscOw
which attacks the oversexualization of female characters in video games.
Another example from DeviantArt:
http://comments.deviantart.com/1/380891149/3671797589
You also get almost pornographic webcomics like Oglaf making fun of how stupid the bikini armors are, and featuring much more practical armor for their female characters than the norm.
(Said armor might be removed later in the strips, though )

 Blood Hawk wrote:
Because the funny thing about this thread to me is, that all miniatures that people have been complaining about, from sisters of battle, to female models with things like boob window or high heels. I have seen real women, yes real women play with all of these models. The real women that I have actually seen play and played against in 40k played armies like dark eldar with wyches or sisters of battle. In warmachine/hordes I have seen real women play with kaya as their warlock. Who, lets say goes into battle with her heart exposed. These women didn't seem to have any issue with any these figs.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

You do realize I am a guy? It's right in my username!

Apologies you speak so much on behalf of Ashiraya I must have confused the two.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Women, not females. I have seen a bunch.

Some take offence on the word woman so for this thread I used the more response neutral term female, I would say seen a bunch of people of the opposite sex live is not a big achievement assuming one is willing to go out of his/ her house of course.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Some take offence on the word woman so for this thread I used the more response neutral term female

What? Who takes offense at this term?
Female as a adjective is perfectly fine but female as a noun to refer to women is considered pretty rude and dismissive in English, as far as I know.

And of course, I meant “I have seen a bunch of women actually posting in Dakka about how they don't like sexualised models”, not “I have seen a bunch of women in my life”…

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Wyches have pretty equal clothing regardless of gender, Sisters of Battle have full armor and Kaya is certainly nowhere near as sexualized as Deneghra. Your argument is pretty weak. But yeah, there are some women that like sexualized female models. Just not so much in proportion imo.

No offense but I have found quite the opposite. That the women angry over sexualized things in media are not the norm. Most women either don't care or enjoy them. Deneghra is used as an example of a femme fatale. Which are characters I have found very popular with women.

As far as the documentary goes, I don't speak french and haven't seen it so I can't comment.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Wyches have pretty equal clothing regardless of gender, Sisters of Battle have full armor and Kaya is certainly nowhere near as sexualized as Deneghra. Your argument is pretty weak. But yeah, there are some women that like sexualized female models. Just not so much in proportion imo.

I would start that the "imo" sums it up, your opinion,likewise whatever Ovidie says its her opinion which may or may not align with others.

in any case, Wyches have indeed pretty equal clothing that does not make them a better representation of females on the tabletop, Sisters may be armoured but are a fetish in miniature form, even the cuts in the robes, the mobile brigada above offer a much better representation.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Wyches have pretty equal clothing regardless of gender, Sisters of Battle have full armor and Kaya is certainly nowhere near as sexualized as Deneghra. Your argument is pretty weak. But yeah, there are some women that like sexualized female models. Just not so much in proportion imo.

I would start that the "imo" sums it up, your opinion,likewise whatever Ovidie says its her opinion which may or may not align with others.

in any case, Wyches have indeed pretty equal clothing that does not make them a better representation of females on the tabletop, Sisters may be armoured but are a fetish in miniature form, even the cuts in the robes, the mobile brigada above offer a much better representation.

Please explain how the Mobile Brigada are a better representation vs sisters of battle?

Both have accentuated female features.
Both have "boob-plate".
Both have fully and partial helmeted women.
And both have sexy accentuated poses.. oh wait the Sisters don't.

 Chapter Master Angelos wrote:
Please explain how the Mobile Brigada are a better representation vs sisters of battle?

Both have accentuated female features.
Both have "boob-plate".
Both have fully and partial helmeted women.
And both have sexy accentuated poses.. oh wait the Sisters don't.

Sisters of Battle are not just armored miniatures, Adepta Sororitas also includes Sisters Repentia while Mobile Brigada is just what you see, there isn't another group dressed like they came from a BDSM club.

Sure, for starters their armour does not consist of a corset element, their robes are non existent and not split-able in key sections ant the boob plate is not an armoured bra element.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the easiest way to explain the disparity is that the women who like their sexualised models aren't on Dakka complaining about it because they're happily sitting at their painting desks and gaming tables painting and playing with their sexualised female miniatures.

Well, why are they not posting on Dakka?

This may come as a horrible shocking surprise, but not everyone in the wargaming community voices their opinions online

While the Dakka community is quite large, I think it's a mistake to assume that it represents an accurate cross section of the wargaming community.

You also have to qualify what you mean when you said "always sexualised", does "always sexualised" mean "always in sexually suggestive poses/clothing" or simply "exaggerated sexuality to be identifiable on the table". Because even most males don't like the former, so it's not really meaningful, I thought you meant the latter as that was what we seemed to be discussing at the time. Even Victoria Miniatures female models are "sexualised" in that they have large breasts, long hair and exaggerated soft facial features which identify them as women rather than men.

If you only meant the former, as in, "always sexualised" = "always sexually suggestive" then my apologies I misunderstood what you meant, in which case my response is "who cares, most male gamers also don't like models that are always sexualised".

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Also, to be realistic here, how many females are here actually posting about how they don't like sexualised models?

I have seen a bunch.

I'm sorry but "a bunch" is not a meaningful measure of something.

How many are we talking here? I usually see the same few users who have identified themselves popping up in these sorts of threads so unless there is a large number who have identified themselves as female** to you but not to "the group" then I don't think it's statistically significant.

**I use the term "female" because to use "women" would imply I'm only talking about adults, since I don't know the age of potential Dakka posters "female" seems more accurate. I've heard people getting offended by both terms, so I just use the one that is felt more appropriate at the time based on it's actual definition rather than whether a subset of that group might find it offensive or not.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
However, here on Dakka, we have, as far as I know, literally no women that came here to say how she likes her female models to always be sexualized. We however had a bunch tell us that they don't like it. So, how do we explain the disparity?

I think the easiest way to explain the disparity is that the women who like their sexualised models aren't on Dakka complaining about it because they're happily sitting at their painting desks and gaming tables painting and playing with their sexualised female miniatures.

Also, to be realistic here, how many females are here actually posting about how they don't like sexualised models? It's hard to say because I don't know who is and who isn't female, but from my observation it can't be more than a handful. It's hard to make any statistically significant observation from such a small sample size. As wargamers we should know that just because you happen to roll 5 D6 and they all come up as either 5's or 6's doesn't mean a dice can only roll a 5+, it just means you didn't roll it enough times to represent the actual statistical averages.

For what it's worth, during the time I was closely watching the comments on KD:M, I saw a large number of comments from posters claiming to be both women and in love with the miniatures (one common element was a fondness for the more generous proportions of the hips). Now, we don't know how many of KD:M's 5,410 Kickstarter backers were women, but let's propose some possibilities;

-If 20% of the backers are female, that would be 1082 women. If the backing total was proportionate, they would represent approximately $400k. If 10% were female, that's 541 and $200k.

-By way of comparison, the total number of backers for Heroines in Sensible Shoes was 1,030 backers and approximately $50k.Let's be generous and set the proportion of female backers at 50%, so 515 backers contributing $25k. 20% would mean about 200 backers for $10k, 10% correspondingly 100 backers and $5k.

-Raging Heroes ran two campaigns, Toughest Girls of the Galaxy and TGG2, with 2,748 and 3,052 backers each, $698,548 and $801,057 pledges respectively. If we assume 20%, then Raging Heroes attracted between 550 and 610 female backers responsible for about $140k and $160k. At 10% 275-305 and $70-80k.

Before going any farther, yes, I am completely aware that these numbers are not solid. I'm aware that there are big problems with directly comparing these campaigns. While I am attempting to find something like solid numbers, here I am merely engaging in a thought experiment. But even with such limited numbers there are some things that seem to be clear and they go right to what people have been pointing out;

First, even assuming a very lopsided gender split of 80-90% male among the KD/TGG crowd and a very generous split otherwise, there are likely as many women pledging for KD/TGG miniatures as there are for the 'Sensible' female miniatures. This is, in no small part, owed to the much greater size of these campaigns.

Let's be clear though, I am not saying that the women pledging for KD/TGG figures are doing so out of some sort of support for the 'status quo': No. The women in the comments of these projects are saying things like 'finally, miniatures that are built like real women, with real hips and real thighs' (especially with regards to KD:M), that they are finally making female miniatures 'for me'. As I've been pointing out, these are women who object to the current state of miniatures, but the remedy they want is completely different from some of the suggestions in this thread.

Second, the amount of spending per backer. It's telling that even though Sensible Shoes had a very respectable number of backers (over 1000 backers total), there is a huge disparity between the per backer spending on that project versus KD/TGG projects. Sensible Shoes averaged about $50 per backer, in contrast KD averaged about $400 per backer, TGG about $250.

Again, we go back to what Dark Severance and I have been saying: it's not about being against diversity, we're both very much for it, but we also live in reality, and not everyone is willing to pay the same for what they want. If Sensible Shoes (and this is no critique of them) had made the kind of money either TGG or KD had made, they would have been well into the range where HIPS would be possible. But they didn't... because the market simply won't support it.

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Again, we go back to what Dark Severance and I have been saying: it's not about being against diversity, we're both very much for it, but we also live in reality, and not everyone is willing to pay the same for what they want. If Sensible Shoes (and this is no critique of them) had made the kind of money either TGG or KD had made, they would have been well into the range where HIPS would be possible. But they didn't... because the market simply won't support it.

Beyond reality, it is what the market wants, a personal project has totally different requirements from a commercial project, as you said above it illustrates what people want to buy.

I will again say that, while Heroines in Sensible Shoes are dressed quite sensibly, they are non the less sexualised to show they are female/ women and that is not a bad thing.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
....By way of comparison, the total number of backers for Heroines in Sensible Shoes was 1,030 backers and approximately $50k. Let's be generous and set the proportion of female backers at 50%, so 515 backers contributing $25k. 20% would mean about 200 backers for $10k, 10% correspondingly 100 backers and $5k......

First, even assuming a very lopsided gender split of 80-90% male among the KD/TGG crowd and a very generous split otherwise, there are likely as many women pledging for KD/TGG miniatures as there are for the 'Sensible' female miniatures. This is, in no small part, owed to the much greater size of these campaigns. .....

Second, the amount of spending per backer. It's telling that even though Sensible Shoes had a very respectable number of backers (over 1000 backers total), there is a huge disparity between the per backer spending on that project versus KD/TGG projects. Sensible Shoes averaged about $50 per backer, in contrast KD averaged about $400 per backer, TGG about $250.

Again, we go back to what Dark Severance and I have been saying: it's not about being against diversity, we're both very much for it, but we also live in reality, and not everyone is willing to pay the same for what they want. If Sensible Shoes (and this is no critique of them) had made the kind of money either TGG or KD had made, they would have been well into the range where HIPS would be possible. But they didn't... because the market simply won't support it.

I guess I ought to weigh in on this, seeing as I'm (the male) half of Oathsworn, so have the info on our Sensible Shoes campaign...
You assumed you were being generous setting the proportion of female backers at 50% - but actually you are on the low side. Based on the numbers of backers who have identified as female, or have explicitly said the minis are being bought for a wife/girlfriend/sister, we have around a 65% female demographic for this project.
Obviously I can't comment on KD/TGG male vs female backer numbers, because I have no info on them.
But in terms of amounts pledged, naturally there will be a disparity - KD was a large boxed game project, with lots of elements that you could pledge extra for. TGG was for armies of miniatures. We were only offering 11 minis. While as you pointed out, we averaged $50 per backer, our top pledge level was $50; so the fact that we averaged that is actually a good thing.

As for HIPS, regardless of how much funding we'd received, we wouldn't have gone that route. I just really like single piece metal minis!

In terms of the bigger discussion, I think the reason there are smaller numbers of women in wargaming is less due to the style of the miniatures, and more down to the head-to-head competitive nature of it. Two player games with a definite winner/loser suit the male psyche. Women tend to prefer team games, co-operative games, and more social games generally. The male to female ratios in boardgaming and RPGs are far more evenly split than for tabletop wargaming and two-players CCGs. Naturally this is a gross generalization, and we all know exceptions to it. But I personally think it is broadly correct.

cheers,
Michael

I am not sure how HIPS would help this product anyway?

I am highly interested on the perspective you are offering, do you think a co-op wargame would be attractive for female players?

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I am highly interested on the perspective you are offering, do you think a co-op wargame would be attractive for female players?

Honestly, it's difficult to say - it depends a huge amount on the game's theme and content... and the ladies in question! Predicting what will or won't be successful is just about impossible, unfortunately. If I had the answers, I'd have made the game already!
I do think a co-op wargame would appeal to a female demographic more than 2 player games; but the downside is if everyone needs to collect and paint their own miniatures, it becomes even harder to arrange a game needing multiple players. Certainly co-op boardgames have been successful lately; but they require a lot less time investment from the players...

Would you be interested in evolving such discussion on the game design subforum? I am quite intrigued on the possibilities but I don't want to go extremely off topic.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
in any case, Wyches have indeed pretty equal clothing that does not make them a better representation of females on the tabletop

Sure does when combined with Kabbalites.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Sisters may be armoured but are a fetish in miniature form

You misspelled Slaanesh .

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Second, the amount of spending per backer. It's telling that even though Sensible Shoes had a very respectable number of backers (over 1000 backers total), there is a huge disparity between the per backer spending on that project versus KD/TGG projects. Sensible Shoes averaged about $50 per backer, in contrast KD averaged about $400 per backer, TGG about $250.

I just cannot imagine this comparison was made in good faith. Just so preposterous…

GW should put some female cadians in their next cadian boxes.

Everyone in favor raises hand.
*raise hand*

Alternate female heads isn't an expensive cost, it is fairly low and easy to do providing there is room on the sprue for it. However a good portion of people in this thread weren't talking about female alternate heads, since those options already exist through other means.

Creating a completely alternate body, legs, arms is a different expense entirely. You could simply do a different chest, however a different chest because of the way GW figures are done isn't as easy as it wouldn't mesh well with the current legs/arms without alternations to those as well. At that point we're talking a completely cost for a new sculpt... which puts us back at 'alternate' vs 'new' sculpt and where should that money be utilized.

 Lovejoy wrote:
In terms of the bigger discussion, I think the reason there are smaller numbers of women in wargaming is less due to the style of the miniatures, and more down to the head-to-head competitive nature of it. Two player games with a definite winner/loser suit the male psyche. Women tend to prefer team games, co-operative games, and more social games generally. The male to female ratios in boardgaming and RPGs are far more evenly split than for tabletop wargaming and two-players CCGs. Naturally this is a gross generalization, and we all know exceptions to it. But I personally think it is broadly correct.

This would be fairly accurate to a degree. There are definitely more female RPG players in a recognized demographic compared to miniatures gaming. Walking through the local game store on average shows there is a fairly good distribution of female RPG players. There is also a fairly high amount of female gamers that like Co-op board games like Zombicide, SDE, Arcadia Quest because of the cooperative nature, ease of use of miniatures without painting and no assembly. Going to Origins Game Fair or GenCon, even the LGS you can see more female gamers playing those games than WH40K or WarmaHorde. That doesn't mean there aren't any that do play the latter, but it isn't in a large noticeable amount when you randomly walk into the LGS.

 Dark Severance wrote:
You could simply do a different chest, however a different chest because of the way GW figures are done isn't as easy as it wouldn't mesh well with the current legs/arms without alternations to those as well.

Don't they already have quite a bunch of alternative, interchangeable torso for space marines, without any problems linked to them?