Part Time Gamers

2 Responses

• QuickSnap

  I’d like to take this opportunity to expand a little bit on what I feel is the over sexualization of female game characters in recent years.

  The old advertising adage is that Sex sells and this is a blanket statement for any medium that you’re working on. Be it movies or TV or music or comics or even video games, sex can be used as a selling point. My problem is putting that selling point in places where it doesn’t belong.

  Now I generally don’t have a problem with sex in video games provide there is some sort of context for it. In the first God of War, there’s the little sex mini-game where you can bang the two chicks we see on his bed. This works because we’re told that Kratos has some repressed memory issues and no amount of shagging will fix that. In GTA, a mob guy will sometimes have women paraded around in little to no clothing. Again, that’s fine because there’s context for that. The bigger issue is where that contextualization is gone and you have ass and titties solely for the sake of having ass and titties.

  A few weeks ago, Graham Stark(LoadingReadyRun.com, Unskippable) made a small guest appearance at the front if the Halo Wars review on Zero Punctuation reviewing X-Blades (http://tinyurl.com/dfuxzl). And in his review he addresses some of the rather over the top and unnecessary lengths developers go to for the sake of a selling point.One instance of over sexualizing that hits with me happens to do with my favorite character of all time: Samus Aran.

  Now Samus being a female was the big shocker for dedicated game fans once upon a time. The Metroid series has since been elevated to legendary status among Nintendo’s top tier games, such as the Mario and Zelda Franchises. And while her looks have changed bit by bit over the years from green hair and a red two piece jump suit to a busty, blue suited blond on the current generation.

  For those that finished the game in a quick enough time, you were treated to a picture of Samus out of her armor. This used to be a treat in and of itself but in the last few years the way samus looks has slowly but surely made its way into the forefront of our vision of who Samus is.

  If that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I’ll put it this way: The way Samus looked outside of her suit was something that gamers never really cared about (to any major degree) until they were consciously made aware of this suddenly beautiful woman hiding behind the power suit. Looks were always secondary to gameplay and atmosphere. Metroid wasn’t about hot chicks kicking ass in small outfits. It was a solitary action experience where the fact that you where playing as a girl wasn’t even known until you beat the game fast enough.

  Now you look at the ZeroSuit design for Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Samus is suddenly this dainty, boob jiggling blond chick wearing a skin tight blue suit. The contextualization doesn’t exist because the large breasts and sex appeal where never meant for her character. She’s this ice cold bounty hunter who probably would beat the shit out of you for staring too long. Other female game characters try to do this ala Laura Croft or Chun Li and while they have their own respective fan bases, they’re entirely missing the point.

  Just because sex can sell, doesn’t mean it should.

• Paul Evans

  Thanks for http://scarygirl.com/ - def will take a look at that. Good cast.

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