I am glad someone is taking a stand for the rights of fictional female digital characters. They don't have a voice but we do! /sOriginally Posted by PreZZ
I am glad someone is taking a stand for the rights of fictional female digital characters. They don't have a voice but we do! /s
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It's a lighthearted sexy volleyball series about girls in tiny bathing suits playing volleyball. It's a fetish - not sexism.
I'm thinking the people offended by softcore porn games weren't going to buy it in the first place.
I'll say it - what's wrong with rape games? Think about it. It's the digital, totally safe, and ultimately consensual exploration of particular sexual fetish shared by men and women. Just because something is abhorrent to one sub-group of people doesn't make it inherently wrong. Real rape is disgusting, and evil. Fantasy rape is just an expression of individual sexuality. Once you start cherry picking concepts as being taboo you open up the argument to be applied to other thoughts, beliefs, and cultures that differ from what's socially acceptable. "Social Justice Warriors" don't promote equality, they just shift the intolerance around.
So yeah, I know I was on the "fuck censorship" band wagon previously, so he's an interesting fucking idea for you.
It's a form of bullying. "Share my interests and my repulsions or I'll shame you into silence or submission." The blurring the line between real and fiction is one part of that. By failing to acknowledge the difference, everything gets to become a moral battle. It's also myopic as hell. That's why a lot of people have to backpedal when Jack Thompson comes up. If they're right and certain fictional content shouldn't exist then what's not to say other fictional content shouldn't exist? You could theoretically extend the logic far enough to target any content you want.
I've found this whole news story bizarre from the beginning. I didn't even find it very clear if the Facebook page where the comments were made was official or not, and the person making the comments spoke so casually and used such broken English that I found it hard to believe that they are an actual company representative. I guess my suspicion was somewhat founded, since if you check the news link now, it's been updated saying that an official company statement was made to say that the previous comments do not represent the company (though apparently the person is indeed an employee). The whole situation screams of shoddy journalism to me, with sites pouncing on the comments because it's a story that will stir the pot. Honestly, I see far more outcry AGAINST so-called "social justice warriors" these days than backlash against fanservice-y games like these.
Anyway, I can't claim to be super experienced with the series, but I don't find DOA (or the DOAX spin-off series) offensive or sexist. I don't have a problem with eye candy games existing. I only have a problem with hypocrites who have no problem with female eye candy but lose their shit if a male character is offered to female/gay gamers as eye candy. Now THAT mentality is sexist to me (and usually delves into homophobic territory too). The only thing about DOA that I've found tasteless were those awful commercials for them back in the day.
I don't think it's necessarily hypocritical. You can't really strike a "balance" with fanservice like that in a single product without alienating somebody. Fanservice has as many narrative "rules" as any other component of a product. It all has to have a point and a goal. The shotgun effect, trying to appeal to multiple audiences, doesn't usually work, especially when something that appeals to one camp will repel the other, as is usually the case with sex appeal. A game (or anything for that matter) can't be something to everyone. Straight dudes looking to play a game filled with pretty girls are likely going to be put off if there's also a significant focus on handsome guys because they're straight and that's not what they want to see. There aren't any sinister motives there. No different than, say, a person who likes RPGs might be put off if there's a bunch of DDR style minigames peppered throughout. If you don't like DDR then suddenly that package loses value to you even if you enjoy the surrounding game.
Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 12-06-2015 at 12:06 PM.
Oh, I don't mean balance is a necessity in all individual games. Every game has its own demographic, and it doesn't have to aim to appeal to everyone. What I mean are gamers who drool over sexy female characters, but whenever a game is clearly acting as eye candy for a group other than straight male gamers, all they can do is flip out and criticize and basically talk as if it shouldn't even be allowed to exist. That's the part that's hypocritical. I fully understand if that isn't appealing to straight male gamers and if they aren't interested in buying that kind of product, but if you welcome fanservice that targets your taste, then you sure as hell better accept the existence of fanservice-y games that targets other genders/sexualities. In other words, look at how straight male gamers react to otome, BL, and bara games.
But if a game/series has a broad demographic, balance should be pursued. Look at how over a decade later people still whine to high heaven about pretty boy Final Fantasy characters, despite that female gamers make up a sizable portion of the Final Fantasy fan base, and if the games include fanservice-y female characters (Tifa, Lulu, Fran, etc.), it's only fair and logical that the games would also include male characters who would be attractive to the female players.
Or look at Harvest Moon. It's a series that started off only offering a male playable character and female love interests, but it was popular among female gamers (who tend to be a hell of a lot more open-minded about controlling protagonists who don't represent them or their sexuality). So in time they offered alternate versions of the games where you can play as a female protagonist wooing bachelors, and eventually they incorporated both options into all releases. If they could just someday offer the option to woo either sex regardless of which gender you pick, they'd have all their bases covered. But overall the series has done a great job paying attention to its demographic and evolving to try to make everybody happy and treated equally.
A lot of people say men act poorly to uber-masculinized/characters designed to appeal to women, but I've generally not seen that it's the case. I don't give a shit that looking like Kratos is impossible and I don't give a shit about the infamous Raiden level in MGS2 like a bunch of these people point out. I need to find the comic about this. It was a male character getting all upset at a female artist drawing female oriented sexualized male superheroes to "counteract" sexualization of female ones. Someone edited it to both him not caring because it's not designed to appeal to him (the reaction that people SHOULD be having to DOAX) or that she actually ends up drawing JoJo.
They're goddamned polygons, people. If polygons really have to exist to justify your personal identity, I'm pretty sure you're the one that has the issue, not the game or the people who make it. I worry with the advent of VR that every game is just going to slowly become a self-insert power fantasy and games will exist for no other reason than to bolster self esteem or something.
Uh, but the uber-masculinized characters are virtually never designed to appeal to women. They're designed for male gamers, as power fantasies. They're supposed to be the badass that every guy supposedly wishes he could be. Same with comic book superheroes. Good luck finding a woman who finds Kratos hot because I've never come across one. You'd be more likely to find someone in the bara scene who finds him attractive. But I could point you towards countless women who swoon over the pretty boys in otome games.
Male characters in video games who are intended to be eye candy to women are virtually always pretty boys. This is all the more so for the fact that it's usually only Japanese games that offer fanservice-y male characters for female players, and what is considered attractive by the sexes in Japan is different from the Western norm. They're more likely to interpret a big muscular guy as gay than as eye candy for women.
Poor Jack Thompson if he would have only picked sexism instead of violence.
I replayed DOA 2 recently and it forced me to lose all respect for women everywhere. Stupid sexy polygons. DOA EQUALS MISOGYNY!! /s
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Was it this?
What's funny about this comic, though, is that the rebuttal on the bottom isn't even required. The comic's principal argument falls apart by it's own hypocrisy. She just replaced one idealized standard with another. I'm not sure what the comic's point is if it thinks that just applying an offset to the process "wins" the argument of objectification. Personally, I think the reason it's so sloppy is because it's arguing from a false premise. It's fiction. There are no victims to be objectified in the first place. It's all just a matter of people writing/drawing shit they think would be cool. The entire argument is nonsensical from the start.
Which could be the same for, say, Wonder Woman to girls, right? Or even the skinny Edward Cullen type heroes of anime who manage to take down bodybuilders in a single punch? Presumably those could be equally interpreted as power fantasies for skinny dudes? A lot of girls seem to dig Cloud Strife but isn't he oddly strong for a skinny kid? Seems like "power fantasy" material to me. Or, ya know, maybe it's none of those things and characters are just characters.
This is why I think this is a false dichotomy. Isolating character design into "sex appeal" or "power fantasy" is oversimplifying what the audience gets out of good characters in fiction. Plus it's easy to corrupt the argument to gain license to criticize one type of design while shielding another, hence my point above about the Batman design supposedly being "ok" compared to the traditional one. All one would have to do is posit that the design they dislike is sexist while dismissing the opposite gender equivalent as a "power fantasy." It lets people play a game of "heads I win, tails you lose."
All people, regardless of gender, like to look at pretty things. The specifics of the appeal might differ but nobody likes to look at shit that's ugly. You can see this everywhere. I don't know anybody who wants to have sex with Pikachu but the appeal of his design is obvious. Even "ugly" characters like Street Fighter's Blanka are still aesthetically pleasing. The idea that most men and women in fiction would be designed to accent human physiology and musculature is way too basic to attribute a "meaning."
Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 12-06-2015 at 07:44 PM.
Characters don't just magically spring into existence. Every character has its purpose on the part of the creator. Some characters are supposed to be someone you wish you could be, some are supposed to be someone you wish you could bang, some are supposed to be comedic relief, some you're supposed to feel sympathy for, some you're supposed to hate, so on and so on.
The bottom line is that it's usually not hard to tell at all when a character is designed to titillate. Maybe because there are SOOOOO many female characters who are to act as eye candy, but women generally seem to be pretty adept at recognizing a sexualized character. But men often demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what is designed to be attractive to women. Not what IS attractive to women, as women don't share a hive mind and tastes run the gamut, but what's DESIGNED to be. You can't simplify it down to just physical attributes but rather take in the whole picture. I mean, is Peach a cute, pretty character? Yes. But is she designed as eye candy for male gamers? Not really. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to see that there's a world of difference between Kratos or a comic book superhero and the covers of romance novels (and, by the way, traditional romance novels are most popular among women who are like 30+, whereas female gamers are mostly in their teens and 20s. Just look at boy bands if you don't understand the difference between what young women and older women typically find attractive. If you want muscular male characters who are designed as eye candy for young women, check out the anime Free! Then compare that to Kratos as well.) If you can't see things any more nuanced then "muscular chest = eye candy for women", then you really don't understand the concept of fanservice at all. Then you may as well say that Barbie games are eye candy for men.
Anyway, none of this matter much in terms of the topic. It doesn't make a character sexist just because they're designed as eye candy.
It's silly to expect male creators to have a thorough grasp of what a female audience wants and vice versa. It's like if you were to ask a white dude to make a film that speaks to a black audience. At some point you just have to let people make the shit they want to make and if someone sees a market that is relatively untapped then they can get in on it and create shit themselves. Again, people are just making shit they think is cool.
Frankly, DOA is actually incredibly clever with how it approaches its material. It's not overt about it. They're just girls engaging in whatever the game's premise is (fighting, volleyball). For the most part, their outfits are regular clothes. It's surprisingly subtle which is probably what makes it work so well. I'd argue that they're actually not just about eye candy. There's a complete narrative there. It's kind of like Mortal Kombat with it's fatalities. The game is violent but the narrative is not specifically about the violence. It's more like world building. The DOA girls looking the way they do, or the MK fatalities being what they are, exist to establish the reality under which the games are operating. The audience has to believe in the world they're observing.
So then, am I the only one who always thought that the DOA girls looked sort of like animated blow up dolls?
A lot of people must have thought so since Tecmo decided to redesign everybody for DOA5. It's a huge improvement. That being said, DOA is really in a bind. It's like a magnet for the negative but no longer has exclusive dominion over the positives. Tekken got into the swimsuit thing recently but nobody really complains about it. All the stuff DOA does that used to set it apart is actually pretty mundane these days. But, at the same time, DOA still gets all the bad press whenever these issues arise. The series has watched other franchises take bites out of its playbook over the years while also being left to fend off the sharks whenever some charlatan chums the waters. I'm not really sure how to fix that.
Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 12-07-2015 at 11:37 AM.
I guess I should expand what I said to include all forms of actual pornography, including animated or drawn hentai. This is what I meant, but I didn't make it clear enough with what I wrote. If the main appeal of something is to ogle attractive women or portrayals of women, there's little reason to stop short of viewing actual pornography(real or animated/drawn) now as it's easily available.
As for sales of Dead or Alive Paradise for the PSP, they sucked hard. And it got terrible reviews, the gameplay was lousy. I doubt they would be eager to try releasing something again in the west. Of course there would still be people interested in the game, but that's a small niche market. This is created from a developer that expects big near blockbuster sales, a niche market is pretty much only appealing to smaller indie studios. It's completely understandable why this game wouldn't get a release in the west.
One thing I firmly believe is that plot actually does matter in pornography. It's just that "plot" has a much wider definition than most people realize. If this weren't true then every nude photo would be the girl just standing there naked. The fancy poses and exotic environments all serve a purpose. Strippers dance and gradually remove clothing. They don't just walk out on stage naked and stand there like a statue. This is actually all a kind of storyline.
I think that any piece of entertainment, even super simple video games like Breakout, needs to have a narrative. The audience has to understand something about what's presented to them. Breakout doesn't have a story but it does have a narrative in that it communicates something to the player. The reason it's such a good game is because it communicates extremely well what it's all about. It's engaging. Porn works in much the same way. It has to engage the audience. I think a game like DOA does that for people just like many other games do. It performs that magic where the audience believes to some extent in the world that they're observing. DOA is actually really good at its narrative. It's coherent and consistent in its design philosophy. The characters mesh with their environments. The activities they engage in (fighting/volleyball) are believable within the context of the games. The tone is consistent throughout. Ultimately a player can play it and lose him or herself in the fantasy world. So if some of that audience chooses to lose themselves in that world for the purpose of masturbation then that's the narrative they're looking for at that moment. In fact, I'd argue that the fact that DOA is popular enough masturbation material to get a reputation as such despite not being pornography demonstrates how good a job it actually does at its narrative. That's some powerful world-building if people can fap to a game that doesn't even have any nudity.
But even with actual porn, people have specific tastes. Much in the same way you can't satisfy a person wanting to play Street Fighter by making them play Mortal Kombat even though they both fall under the umbrella of fighting games, you also can't just arbitrarily replace a particular pornographic narrative with another and expect the audience to be equally satisfied. Whatever it is about DOA that turns people on, that particular turn on is exclusive to DOA. So it does actually make sense to me that some people would specifically seek it out despite the amount of free porn available. Porn isn't a special class of entertainment. It plays by the same rules as any other medium.
This actually adds to my suspicion that maybe this is all a preemptive defense against backlash from the die hard fans. If they have a scapegoat they can look like the victims despite never planning to localize the game to begin with.
Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 12-10-2015 at 01:46 AM.
Just clarifying things further, I was just talking about the Dead or Alive Xtreme games. Not the main fighting games. People like playing fighting games, that would generally be the main focus for those buying it, the style would make it more appealing than just a generic one like so many others are made. What I was talking about were the volleyball simulators which also included some other beach minigames. Is there a large demand for volleyball simulators as a genre? I don't think so. It was mostly an excuse to show off breast and ass jiggle physics. By making it adult oriented aimed towards men, they've also eliminated large sections of a potential audience like children and most women. From the info I can find online Dead or Alive Paradise for the PSP sold about 60,000 copies in North America. It doesn't help that it was on the PSP but that's still pretty low.
As for masturbation material, plenty of fan made porn exists for the Sonic games, Mario games, Street Fighter games, Final Fantasy games, Starfox games, etc. Basically every game ever made featuring a character, has some people obsessing over it in a sexual way. It could be extended to every medium, not just games. Most of these weren't intended to be viewed that way, but people still ended up fantasizing this stuff into existence. To say that Dead or Alive managed to achieve the same thing by having a well done narrative is a bit of a stretch.
Keep in mind, this is what got a lot of people to buy the original Tomb Raider game. Back when a lot of teens didn't have easy access to the internet, or their own computers to access it in private. It's a game that was pushed for the graphics more so than the gameplay. Now that the graphics don't hold up well, few people would still want to play it as the controls are awful. At least there's an actual game behind it, but not one I want to bother with. I'm really not big on 3D games as it is.
That all said, I don't buy games because of the sexual attractiveness of the characters in them. It's the same with TV shows or anime, anything that's meant to be taken more seriously. Look at most of the dramas on TV today. There's no average or ugly people in them, at least not with the women. I just can't get into them because they're not realistic enough for me, I doubt most police departments have a "you must be at least this good looking to work here" policy. I notice most modern british shows don't seem have this problem, they seem to focus on quality writing and realistic acting. With anime, most modern stuff doesn't interest me because it seems it's mostly aimed at Otakus. Why is the camera focusing in on her ass or chest? Or why so often or for so long? For a lot of shows it doesn't seem to be for a quick one-off joke, so how is this related to the plot or character development? I want them to make me like or care about the character for who they are as a whole, not make me want to bang them. No matter what it is it's all a crutch to sell their creation more easily and it's lazy as hell. I feel a lot of people feel the same way, more people are cancelling their TV subscription service than ever before and anime is once again becoming a niche market compared to how mainstream it was in the early 2000's. It used to be everywhere in almost every retailer, now if you can find a retailer carrying it it's just a small section.
I think a lot of people are just moving on from the desire to own hard copies of shows/movies, just as they've largely done with music. Especially among the anime fan base, which has a pretty young demographic on the whole who are more accepting of going digital-only, which also has the significant advantage of being available practically as soon as Japan sees it. Lots of people are satisfied well enough just with streaming services like Crunchyroll.
Anyway, getting back on topic, I do have to give DOAX some credit for actually being fairly logical about its fanservice given the setting and activities involved. That's far, far better than fanservice and sexualized characters just shoehorned in awkwardly.
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