We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

It reminds me somewhat of BlazBlue (pretty graphics + technical focus)! I'll have to check it out, eventually. When I have better internet and thus, Xbox Live.
Not that I'm necessarily very good at fighting games, I just like 'em.

You and me both pally. We could totally play together! Have matches in being the last to figure out the block button etc.

Man, i'd still love to give it a try even if i dislike the fact that all the characters are boob monsters.

Heh. If you think about it though, most fighting games' female casts are pretty ridiculous. The ladies of Mortal Kombat could only afford about seven square feet of fabric between them, Ivy from Soul Calibur always looks like she's smuggling water balloons (and somehow manages to run, jump, and fight whilst wearing stiletto heels), Cammy from Street Fighter couldn't find a pair of pants in her size, etc.

It's kind of depressing now that I actually stop to think about it.

You and me both pally. We could totally play together! Have matches in being the last to figure out the block button etc.

B-block? (Warning: TVtropes)

That's the part i don't like about fighting games.

I can think of plenty non-sexist female characters though.

Nevermind, a handful is not plenty.

i can think of a formerly non-sexist female character!

( played out other m joke goes here )

Wait, is sexual sexist? I mean I thought it was but then there was a lot of references to overtly sexual but very empowered female characters and now I'm just confused.

Also I hated fighting games after my siblings learned tripplekick-tripplekick combos in tekken 2 and all those turned into real fights and triplekicks are way harder to pull of in real life.

I think i said something about it before in that other forum, lemme dig it up...

I have nothing against voluptuous chicks in videogames, if they're like that for a reason, if you know me you've probably heard me love and praise the darkstalkers series, they're full of that shit, but they're like that for a reason. They're magic succubi, monster feral cat womans, not just some 16 year old schoolgirl with a gigantic rack in a micro skirt and magic hair. I mean, i can't even begin to take this character seriously and it only gets worse when you see her 'in action' (gratuitous panty shots in every single move).

And you know what, i kind of liked the idea of having a traditional 2d fighting game full of sexy spy chicks and all kinds of crazy stuff trying to take down a big bad bitch, complete with a jazz-noir setting and music. But there's a difference between sexy and just plain impracticality.

So yeah, sexy does not equal sexist.

The problem isn't that sexy is sexist; lots of things can be sexy without being sexist! It's when needless sexualization gets drizzled over everything just because of the character's sex. The fact that it's difficult to think of not-lovingly-gainaxed fighting game characters is a pretty good example of the sexism pretty pervasive in the genre: having an Ivy in a game isn't a crime against women; being "the sexy one" is a fine enough gimmick for a character in a type of game that traditionally limits character development and personality to maybe a few lines between fights in story mode. It's when they all look like they stepped out of a ryona fetishist's wettest dream that eyebrows start to raise. The problem isn't sexiness: it's that they all HAVE to be sexy, and in nearly-identical ways. Sexism arises when it's an expectation that they will be that way, because of the tacit implication that they should be that way.

I'm not going to argue for realism in fighting games; it's an inherently unrealistic genre, and crazy outfits and weapons are way more awesome than practical, padded, loose-fitting clothes and NOT trying to use a ten-foot scythe in close quarters. But when the games men run the gamut from "crazy ripped bronze god of bare-knuckle boxing" to "skinny assassin type with a dagger" to "hulking monster with the aforementioned ten-foor scythe" to "crazy lizardman" and beyond – many of them sexy, many decidedly not, and all with different body types and features (and very few with costumes specifically going for "masturbation fodder" rather than "total badass") – and the women are basically variations on the theme of "slender, athletic, tits that could smother a horse, not much clothes", the issue becomes one of simply enforcing a standard on what a woman is or should be.

It's that same issue that arises with "overtly sexual but very empowered female characters"; the Strong Female Character is just this generation's barefoot housewife, this hemisphere's Yamato Nadeshiko. She's what every woman should be and should aspire to be. Not because that's what she wants to be, of course, but because that's what we want her to be. Even if your T&A du jour is an astrophysicist who trained herself to be a world-class sniper in her spare time and is sexually liberated but not a skank-ho and don't take no guff from nobody... She was still written that way because mostly men wanted her to be. Which is the whole problem with sexism (in this form; obviously there's still discrimination and hatred and so forth but that's a whole different ball of wax under the blanket of general sexism): regardless of the nature of the stereotype we want is, it's the fact that our media so overwhelmingly confirms to it that is sexism.

It's been a twenty hour day after a long week with not much sleep. I'm sure this post is a jumble of circles and repetition and not-actually-making-my-point but wevs. I ain't looking over it.

No, it makes sense and i wholeheartedly agree with your points.

Also, please nobody mention the "men are just as equally sexualized!" argument 'cause i'll flip my shit.

great
now im thinking of terrible things
terrible terrible terrible things that should not be thought
why have you done this to me supes
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

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Spoileri will only say that this does not involve any female superfreq/norivia characters :X

i am sorry

I think the sexism in Skullgirls specifically is played for laughs though! Every character page has the character's measurements and one of them is Evil Hello Nurse.

The thing about playing things for laughs (or being ironically shitty or whatever to tie this topic into other things that are relevant to the forum's interests) is that if you just make something sexist and say "Haha isn't this sexist!!!!! We sure are enlightened and beyond this unlike every other fighting game!!!!!!!!" then... You just straight-up made something sexist. Not only will large portions of your audience miss the joke if you go the over-the-top-but-played-straight-for-laughs route, thus essentially just perpetuating the things you set out to mock, but that still doesn't negate the fact that unless you actually go into parody or making statements beyond "Heh this so dumb" your game is exactly the same as the decades of jiggling eye-candy that preceded it.

There are two bodies (and Peacock) in skullgirls to go between seven characters (and Peacock). Even the nunmonster's ass is stacked, tits like a hurricane (Double, my love). What difference does it make if they look like that because some developer with a hardon said "Our aesthetic is birthin' hips and breasts individually wider than waists, get on it" or because some developer with a sense of humor said "Our aesthetic is birthin' hips and breasts individually wider than waists because we're better than that, get on it"?

I would much prefer the first guy

He's at least honest

Unless he's being honest ironically

I didn't say it wasn't sexist though. But all the characters in Skullgirls (including Peacock for once!) are pretty much flat as a board (personalitywise, not boobwise) and really are just people who carry one trait they thought would look cool in a fighting game (magichair, army of mooks, shapeshifter, cartoon character) so at least in my opinion the fact that they don't have any characters who aren't totally ridiculous, along with the game not really being based on too much characterisation and not really needing that either, AND along with the fact that the sexism is so obviously platonic to include schoolgirl, empowered woman, nurse and the whole shebang to follow in DLC, with bra size...

The asian character is stereotypically asian, the catgirl is steriotypically punny, the girls of age are stereotypically sexist, and peacock is stereotypically peacock. I would definitely vote trousers if the artist decides to put Parasoul's legwear to a poll, but it doesn't specifically annoy me because I know that these characters just have no personality whatsoever. The characters are just one trait and then a backstory to show how they got that, so I don't mind it as much if they aren't done right. I would buy Skullguys if it played as Skullgirls plays.

It's hard to talk about this without falling into the gaping maw of discussion that is gender issues (can of worms I would really just like to avoid) but as far as character design goes in video games sexism really doesn't strike me as that big of an offense if you aren't making the characters act normally beside that. Seeing a Final Fantasy brand chosen one wear nothing but a thong and then talk about feelings and subdue an evil ruler or whatever they do in those games, that gets me worked up because if you're gonna make a reasonable character give them something a reasonable person would wear but if you fight by removing your body parts or by throwing twenty scalpels in the air then I just ain't that criticisive(?) of it.

More flimsy the personality, the lesser the ability to accept the character as having any sort of personhood

I.E. you would have to be extremely stupid to believe that the bimbo character whose entire character is being a bimbo is in anyway a realistic portrayal of any kind of person

I would think it far more offensive to take the time to actually characterize the character, then have it so that 80% of her clothes are thigh-high boots

Guys we need a list of the least sexist characters so I know what's okay to buy.

Chibi Robo is a tiny boy robot who spends the entire game doing housework, so he's probably safe

Did not enjoy Journey.

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SpoilerLack of story, lack of stakes and lack of gameplay bored me.

It has nice graphics but I could not care less about graphics.

People say it's emotional, maybe I am completely heartless but I was not moved one jot. Even at the end where I felt I was probably supposed to be feeling like I'd overcome impossible odds to reach this point.

I knew I had not because I knew there was never actually a lose condition to this game. I could mess up and fail and flail around and I would still if i held down forwards long enough reach the end of the game.

It probably would have made a nice film I guess.

So if someone created a character who was the most one-dimensional uncle tom blackface caricature ever, it wouldn't be racist because they're not well developed?

The more dehumanizing something is, the less dehumanizing it is?

Not really following the logic on this.

That's not even remotely what I said.

The problem you are having here is that you fail to realize that other people do have the capacity to equate both things as "offensive". I never said the one-dimensional character wasn't offensive. Just that the multi-dimensional one given the same sexist aspects would be far worse.

And yeah, a black character who's given character and then found to voraciously gobble down watermelons and say "massa" and not have the ability to swim would be ten times worse than that, because there gives an implication that REAL people do those things. Both things are bad, but the one who is written to be a human being is infinitely more jarring.

I do get what you're saying but i don't understand what kind of point you're trying to make.

It's like saying you burnt down an orphanage but cranked the fire alarm immediately so everyone could have a chance to escape, it's obviously better than if you just set fire to the building and ran away, but both things are terribly bad things to do. The way developers, authors and artists alike use the played for laughs tactic strikes me as an obnoxiously cheap way to claim moral superiority over whatever source material they're parodying, (turning stereotypes into slightly better stereotypes). I mean why not just, you know, actually make better characters instead of letting us know oh how enlightened you are because you acknowledge terribleness in popular media?

I'm really guilty of this too and legitimately felt bad when SCRUB (a dumb sburb "parody" i did in that other forum) got mildly popular, but hey i don't have a large audience in my things so i don't get to be criticized! Hah! (No, but really, i'm terribly sorry).

I don't think this is the case with Skullgirls though (we were talking about this game, right) as supes said, the guy's just making the game his private kink realization and that's kinda annoying for someone who's not looking for masturbatory material in their videogames, even if it's just 'played for laughs'.

I would play a scrub-based fighting game where all the characters had oversized breasts.


Just say'n.

Personally, what I find most offensive is how rarely video games/comic books/whathaveyou even give enough of a shit to buck the system. And when they do it just ends up getting executive ordered to sexytimes in the stupid universe reboot nobody asked for.

( Why yes I am referring ESPECIALLY TO ONE COMPANY IN PARTICULAR WHO IS PROBABLY OLD NEWS BY NOW BUT WHO I HAVE NOT LET GO DUE TO THEIR CLUMSY ATTEMPTS AT SEXUALIZING CHARACTERS WHICH, IN ADDITION TO BEING HORRIBLY SEXIST, BACKFIRED ENTIRELY IN MY OPINION. But I digress. )

I guess there's this attitude that these things won't sell if all the women aren't super sexy, which... honestly, I think is offensive to men and women. Women for the obvious reasons, and men because apparently we can only buy something if we have a boner while looking at it? PROTIP GAME AND COMIC COMPANIES: I know that the nerds I am familiar with buy things because they like, I don't know, the story and in video games' case the gameplay! I am pretty sure that if we wanted porn we would just straight-up get porn! This is a dumb attitude and it has been pointed out many times!

The sad thing is I'm not breaking any new ground here. I've seen this opinion expressed many, many times and yet apparently nobody gives enough of a shit to try not doing it.

It says right there on the case not to use alcohol

I bet you unleashed like a thousand NES demons

Floating around, cycling through 3 sprites, making chiptune noises

For a special limited time only!

1 copy of Torchlight Via Steam is up for grabs

first come first served

mmkay, done