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Guilty Gaming #1 “Breasts”
By Morrius | June 18, 2008
In this series of articles I will be talking about the things which most annoy me about gaming, conventions or components which I personally find inexcusable. If you have any ideas for future topics, please email Morrius@gamerdork.net!
Rarely has any part of the human anatomy been so disproportionately represented as the humble breast. From the jellylike mammaries of ‘Dead or Alive 4′ to the right-angled pyramid smuggling of the original ‘Tomb Raider’, we are endlessly strolling through the darkest recesses of the male mind. Please don’t get me wrong, there is nowt better on our little planet than a perfect pair. However, I feel it might be time to take a long, hard look at just how your average female is portrayed to us in videogames.
Far too often a game will squander any goodwill felt toward its character design by strapping a pair of embarrassingly giant, gravity-defying, uncomfortable looking breasts three inches below a characters chin. Our leading men come in all shapes and sizes, and yet our leading ladies appear to have spent their lives performing in some pneumatic hyper-porn troupe of the future. Plenty of people have objected to the portrayal of women in games before now, but I doubt their reasoning matches mine. I would argue that in presenting the player with overly sexualised, one dimensional women, the game suffers as a result. While most would object on the grounds of the gender being discriminated against, I’m far more worried about the effect the portrayal of women has on the game itself.
As a medium, games have the best possible opportunity to provide wish fulfillment for the player. In movies, Neo gets to fly and Leo gets the girl, but the viewer is left to experience the adventure vicariously. We might be excited or appalled by the decisions, actions and consequences of the characters onscreen, but we are never able to revel in them as our own experiences. In a game however, the onus is on the player to seek such reward. Every explosion is an interactive experience, every decision instigated by the player. Even during the lengthiest of cutscenes, we still feel a sense of reward. We took down the boss or traversed the environment which prompted the cutscene to play. Gaming offers us the opportunity to experience narrative in a way no other genre can, and as such it seems incongruous to limit ourselves to interacting with such basic, uninspiring women.
And so it comes to this; is the average depiction of the female form in gaming really what we want? Tomonobu Itakagi would no doubt argue it was, but I for one would love to see a more realistic type of woman. Having a more naturalistic, everyday leading lady (whether hero or damsel in distress) would surely provoke a more sympathetic emotional response from the player. Even in a game as charged and red-blooded as Ninja Gaiden, where the story ultimately means nothing, I find the inclusion of Rachel’s ludicrous breasts both embarrasses the player and detracts from the game.
Itagaki is by no means the sole offender here, but serves as a perfect case in point. Until gaming is genuinely photorealistic, only the strangest among us will find their female avatar genuinely physically attractive. So why do so many female characters sport massive, bouncing breasts? At best their design provides them with a degree of blunt sexuality. At worst it can turn a potentially compelling character into a caricature. It can alienate gamers, especially anyone outside of the male 13-30 bracket. For example, would you feel happy taking your family to see any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, if Keira Knightley was replaced by Lolo Ferrari in bondage gear? Movie characters can exude beauty and sexuality without the need for a grotesque figure. One look at the Dead or Alive movie (hint: don’t) tells you all you need to know about the dichotomy between real women and their gaming counterparts. Resolutely beautiful women such as Jaime Pressly, Devon Aoki and Holly Vallance look completely at odds with the vapid realdolls contained within Tecmo’s code.
There is some hope for those of us without the oedipal need for ginormous ladylumps around every corner. Take for example Uncharted’s Elena Fisher. Elena is a strong character with a mostly believable personality, and as such is all the more compelling. Half Life’s Alyx Vance is another equally expressive character, boasting an attractive personality which really compliments the emotional motivation felt by the player during key scenes.
Ultimately, as gaming stumbles through another generation of console, we can only hope to see characters that are able to engage us in more subtle ways than we are led to expect. I’m not under any false impressions as to how far gaming still needs to go in order to truly engage us emotionally, and yet every tiny step in the right direction brings a little joy to my shrivelled-up peanut of a heart. It’s something akin to being brought a terrible picture by your child. Ok, so it doesn’t look much like a house, but you still stick it on the fridge right? We need to be proud of every baby step gaming takes toward a more engaging and interesting future.
Of course, our female characters should quite rightly remain as downright foxy as possible. After all, no-one wants to play Amy Winehouse’s giant mouthed velociprator adventure, or slog through 60 hours of JRPG mayhem only to be rewarded with a marriage to Judy Finnegan. But, there must be more people out there that don’t find a pair of beachballs up a jumper sexy.
I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below, perhaps I’m just reading too much into it. I’m off to shake a Sixaxxis at Rosemary.
Topics: Blog |
June 19th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I personally don’t mind the caricatures. It’s harmless and somewhat fanciful indulgence. If you were looking for realism then in these days you’d be looking for fake tan, unkempt facial hair, stretch marks, unbleached roots and a pram full of shoplifter’s booty.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder and with a good side-order of tongue in cheek. Even the people you mention like Holly Vallance, once draped over the pages of a magazine, are as far-removed from realism as their pixellated counterparts.
As a side note, Lolo Ferrari wold not have fitted in any of the Pirates movies, Keira Knightley sure could use some tits and I heart NG’s Rachel with a love that would split the world into 3 parts if I were to even start describing.
And now I want to shake a Sixaxxis at a local council MILF, providing someone can babysit all of her 9 kids.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I suppose my point is that a ‘realistic’ fantasy figure can be more attractive than a sexdoll type.
You’re touching on my point when you mention Holly Valance, she’s as much a human fantasy figure (for some) as you can get, and still she doesn’t come anywhere close to the DoA character she’s portraying in terms of garish oversexualisation.
I doubt Lolo could fit in the Caribbean, nevermind a boat. I’m not much of Keira fan either, never really understood why people got so excited over her.
Shake that sixaxis Xibby, shake it good!