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So another blogger posted an interesting survey recently, although the sample size is small enough that I suspect there is some definite self-selecting bias in there. To me, that means we really can’t make broad extrapolations from the data. I still find the issues raised to be interesting – how does our gender identify with our toon? How does our gender affect our play? How does our relationship status interact with our gameplay?
However, the biggest “reveal” seemed to be the “issue” of female toons being hypersexualized.
I, personally, don’t understand the drama and “issues” that come up regarding costumes, especially those of female toons. Part of what attracted me to Tera (though I never truly played, their free-to-play launcher has serious design flaws with the download) was the highly sexualized costumes. On the same note, I love to transmog my blood elf in WoW to wear pantypants and crop tops.
See, I’m a female gamer, and I’m straight. I just like seeing my avatar as sexy – I don’t have the sexiest body IRL, and I like the escapist fantasy of running around as a badass damn sexy lady. I even play my characters in MUDs (text-based games) or freaking D&D as wearing skimpy gear. So do the other RL females in my D&D group. Think about that for a moment – there are no visuals attached to these last 2 genres, but we still make a conscious choice to pick “sexy” outfits.
Perhaps that hints at an underlying issue with society. Perhaps, however, it hints at a deeper issue with the portrayal of females in games.
These surveys always seem to insinuate that there is some underlying motive, usually by men, for wearing sexy gear, but why is it so bad to want to play a super sexy version of yourself as a female gamer? The overly muscled avatar isn’t nearly as criticized, but that is the male equivalent. To be frank, we like playing our idealization of ourselves – and I see nothing wrong with that.
My visualization of my MUD thief. Skintight leather, aye!
I got into a rather big fight at work once with a handful of other gamers about female avatars and how they are portrayed. They were indignant and upset that female characters were portrayed as sex symbols, rather than as legitimate characters. My response to this, however, is that ACTIONS are what define the character, not her clothing – and that fact that the focus is on her clothing, even if it’s to protest what she’s wearing, is focusing on the wrong thing.
If a female character is marginalized in a game, there is a lot more than her outfit as the culprit (unless it’s something incredibly asinine and nearly-porn-like such as Bayonetta, where the devs seemed to think that her outfit constituted half the gameplay). Often there is a flat story or lack of real character development or motivation.
Consider WoW. Let’s name some strong female roles: Jaina, Garona, Anveena, Sylvanas, Sindragosa, Lana’thel, Vereesa Windrunner, Alexstraza, Tyrande, Onyxia, Magatha Grimtotem. That’s a good number of chicks; tweleve. Now, let’s remove all the one who have a big chuck of their story intertwined with a love story. This leave us with….Sylvanas and Lana’thel. Wait, out of 12, only two have stories that stand independent of their relationships to males? And those two got screwed over and corrupted?
Applying the Bechdel Test to video games yields a depressing result:
In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:
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It includes at least two women,
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who have at least one conversation,
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about something other than a man or men.
That, in my opinion, is what makes a female character marginalized. Tyrande could walk around 24/7 without clothing and still be an entirely powerful character if her focus was on freaking leading the night elves, instead of making her get caught up in (and her actions subservient to) a random love triangle. There are dozens of male characters who have storylines – or even ambient roleplay – that have nothing to do with romances. It is often the exception when their romantic lives are involved. Why doesn’t the same apply to the females?
Interestingly enough, touchedthesky’s survey shows that both male and female gamers, on average, got the same amount of insults about their ability – something which suggests that gamers, on the whole, are egalitarian with their dickish and trolling behavior. We all know that there is the random weirdo and creep, but it seems like today, perhaps, there isn’t actually a huge stigma associated with gender and gameplay. So, I think it’s fair to say that there isn’t some huge bias against female gamers on the part of the devs.
Another self-portrait of my sexy Thief lady!
My theory? I think it’s unintentional and merely a result of the industry. Video game companies hire far more males than they do females (again, due to self-selection bias, but this time with the job applications). The gap is lessening over time, but it is still a largely male dominated industry. I’m not trying to suggest that male devs are sexist – I am merely stating that they may have stumbling blocks when characterizing females. Hell, I know I’ve had issues trying to RP a male character and have resorted to stereotypes.
However, until a conscious effort is made to make a solid gender equality in games, or we get enough of both gender hired that it becomes irrelevant, I worry that this is something we’ll be stuck with. And it doesn’t matter how many sexy hotpants you give me in game, if the female characters are badly written, I will be turned off.
Kaliy's Corner 
Some thoughts:
You and many other players find the idea of running around killing things in sexy armor to be an escapist fantasy that’s fulfilling, and that’s cool. But since we are of course dealing with a game that has bazillions of players, we should recognize that there are many folks out there who DO find the platekini-type outfit to be hypersexualized and demeaning, and they aren’t wrong, either. It seems a little unfair to simply toss aside their argument just because you and others you know are comfortable and indeed enjoy the sexy attire.
In saying that, I must also note that I DO find platekini and the like to be highly sexualized, though NOT necessarily demeaning. Intent matters – awareness of the viewer matters – willingness of the wearer matters – the presence of alternatives should I want them (see my fantasy type, below) matters.
My characters rarely wear “sexy” outfits, but that’s more because my type of fantasy trends towards “wearing ninety pounds of amazingly shiny armor in the desert, reflecting the rays of the sun in a gloriously dramatic fashion while slaying an enormous dragon and simultaneously somehow NOT dying of heat stroke, BECAUSE I AM AWESOME.” My suspension of disbelief works in certain ways (the way my character never gets exhausted by anything) but not in others (when I look at characters in platekini and remember that Org is in a desert, thoughts pop into my mind like, “Sheeyit, can you imagine the sunburn!?”) in ways that aren’t logical whatsoever.
I’ll consider platekini 100% kosher and issue-free the day male characters can wear the same exact type of stuff, are regularly depicted wearing it, AND men actually want to wear it. (Right now, when I mention a man in platekini equivalent to my male guildmates, the resulting response is usually something like horror – they don’t want to see a MAN in that.) In Warcraft, there are SOME skimpier outfits for guys, but they do not come near to the total skin exposure of the platekini sets on a female character. Guys should be able to go 300esque just as any platekini wearer can – Speedo, shield, sword and a cape. One of the nice things about Tera was that many of the male outfits were skimpier than the usual fare and highlighted features typically considered attractive by those in Western society.
The devs may not be intentionally sexist* – but they’re steeped in Western culture, which still has sexist trends despite advances made since the 1960s. You can’t deny that platekini is, essentially, women’s underwear brought into the public view. Underwear had and still has connotations of intimacy, privacy and yes, sexuality. (C’mon Blizz: WHERE ARE MY MEN IN BOXER BRIEFS!?) Your character drawings, while certainly containing elements associated with sexuality, aren’t held on by miracles or double stick tape (and cover more real estate), so they still seem modest compared to platekini, Tera, or many other depictions of women in games.
All that said, yes, character intentions and actions matter too. Whether they have agency and participate in activities that do not involve the men in their lives is important, for the reasons you have stated.
*I’m also leaning towards arguing that there’s something worse brewing – and that is a sexism that denies its own existence. The depiction of women in Warcraft (or, just as importantly, the lack thereof) is problematic, for reasons you note in your post. However, whenever I’ve tried to speak about this with male gamers in my social circle, the majority think that 1.) this sheeyit is in my head and I’m seeing things where there are no problems, 2.) CLEARLY what I want is a Mary Sue, and that would be boring, 3.) I love my wife/mother/sister/daughter/whomever, so I have no sexist bias whatsoever, and lastly 4.) I’M OBJECTIFIED TOO MY ARMS WILL NEVER BE THAT BIG OR MY STOMACH SO FLAT SO YOU CAN’T COMPLAIN. Yeah, I can. You got men steering the story – you got male Tol’virs, Ogres, Taunka, Yuangol, Grummies, etc. etc. etc. and no females – not a man in sight wearing platekini – yeah, I can complain.
Thanks for the comment. I totally understand your goal – I have a tank set for my paladin that is all black armour, very bulky, very looming. I love being able to play that feeling of a TANK in every sense of the word, and a lot of the female armour choices negate that option.
I absolutely understand that some females find the armor choices demeaning – I’ve never seen much response past that, however, so I’m going to ask you a question. Do the armour choices of other female toons come across as demeaning, or is it the range of choices themselves which strike a note? I have always wondered which it is, because I really do hope I am not offending other female gamers by my outfit choices – I am entirely genuine here and mean no insult. I don’t want to offend others, but on the other hand I feel like there are enough choices in games for people to find what they like individually, without it being crazy skimpy…but I read surveys like this and hear that there are still issues. So, I think, maybe the issue is with other players and their outfit choices – and I just wanted to make it clear that it’s not just teenage boys being pervy, but also sometimes females themselves enacting a fantasy role.
The male toons remark is a great one – like you said, Tera lets us play skimpy guys if we want, and I loved playing with character creation for that. I rolled a blood elf male a while back in WoW (at some point I will post about that experience), and I ended up just taking all of his clothing off because that is the only way I could get him looking the way I wanted him to be. I wanted him to be fabulous – not in a parody of being gay, or in a mimicry of being female, but in an unabashed love for his sexy blood elf male body, and there were few options, due to the differences in gender designs for armor templates. This is problematic. I honestly wanted to play a guy wearing just as little as I play my girls wearing, and I couldn’t, and we should be able to. 300 is a perfect analogy – that is really the look I wanted for him.
Your final postscript – killer. “That is a sexism that denies its own existence” – I think that’s the biggest struggle we, as female gamers (and particularly female gamers who THINK about what being a female gamer means) face. We don’t want to be (or deserve to be) labelled as a rabid man-hater just because we are asking for gender equality in games. You’d think that would be a given, but asking for it, especially vocally, puts us in a different category of players – and it’s a weird issue, because many women feel a sort of guilt or apologetic shame in asking for that equality. We don’t want to make waves, even though all we’re asking for is the same experience that male gamers have had for decades. Men (and certain women) chiming in with anecdotal claims about the issue only make us feel worse for even raising the issue. Maybe my own post, about the armour, even fits into this category…
“I don’t want to offend others, but on the other hand I feel like there are enough choices in games for people to find what they like individually, without it being crazy skimpy…but I read surveys like this and hear that there are still issues. So, I think, maybe the issue is with other players and their outfit choices – and I just wanted to make it clear that it’s not just teenage boys being pervy, but also sometimes females themselves enacting a fantasy role.”
Of course it isn’t just teenage boys being pervy – as a facet of a larger culture, the situation is more complex than that. You will have varying levels of buy-in and participation by both genders, and even the same person won’t feel the same way about the current state of affairs all the time.
While I’d agree that WoW has enough choices – I’d disagree that the game industry as a whole has achieved equality when it comes to dressing male and female characters up “sexy.” The overall trend is still “women are sexy, men are tough.” When the hell will they come out with a Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball sequel where I get to make friends with the hot male cast, who happen to be wearing as little as possible, for example? My female friends and I, interestingly, found the first installation of that series quite fun – but I’d still rather see Ryu Hayabusa in a bejeweled, sparkly thong. (What?)
The game industry is still oriented to Western male sexual standards. It’s neither wrong nor awful for us all, but as a woman, I have fewer choices if I want to look at scantily clad beefcake. (Simultaneously, I also have to be okay with looking at cheesecake and with women regularly portrayed in outfits that highlight their sexual characteristics, because otherwise I’m a prude, a man-hating feminist, or an asexual fatty Mcbutterface who hates Lara Croft because I wish I looked like that.)
“Do the armour choices of other female toons come across as demeaning, or is it the range of choices themselves which strike a note?”
The individual platekini transmog choices I see every day in the wild world of Azeroth are not demeaning. Somebody wearing platekini does not instantaneously make me think things like, “Gawd, she’s so shallow,” or “she’s asking for trouble” or anything like that. In fact, because I transmog obsessively, chances are good my brain will only register something like, “Oh, I think that’s the Jade set,” and then move on to inspect the next person I see over there who has a really shiny set of shoulders. (Now, folks who transmog armor into sets that deliberately don’t match make my eyeballs feel icky, but that’s a different story.) Your character wears what you want your character to wear, and that’s fine.
I think the issue with platekini (and women’s outfits in games, generally speaking) involves two major factors: the range of choices that are available, as well as whether or not the same types of choices are available to men (i.e., the skimpiness is not gender specific). While WoW is great at the former, it doesn’t do so hot on the latter. This indicates the quality “skin is sexy” remains highly gender specific in WoW. Indeed, games across all genres find a woman showing skin to be sexy, empowering or whatnot, but a male showing the same amount of flesh would not be presumed to possess the same traits.
I keep on saying that cheesecake is fine. I just want my beefcake too, and it’s comparatively harder to find.
Sometimes I think the struggle that female gamers face is but a part of a larger picture where women as a whole are trying to reconcile themselves with reality, social expectations and feminism. How many women do you know who, when asked, will say they aren’t feminists? They don’t need to be, they say – we’re equal now. They don’t want to be labeled as a rabid man-hater, a lesbian, or someone who’s asking for more when we’ve already achieved so much.
First of all, I find it awesome that you pick up this controversial topic and write such a nice and good piece about it. Kudos!
Now, let me get to the point: I think that this is a typical case of a whole lotta fuzz about nothing. Sure, sexualizing characters isn’t the highest form of visual expression in video games and does not have any intellectual / cultural value in most cases, but really…it’s a video game. Come on.
Of course, media have a duty in the way that they should be aware of how they shape the view and visual ideals of other people, but instead of pointing fingers at games that give us chainmail bikinis and metrosexual semi-Asians wielding huge swords, why not focus on the fact that those are clearly no representations of reality and were never meant to be? Just as much as Peter Paul Ruben’s depictions of overweight women were just his artistic expression of love for them, skimpy avatars are just that to gamers.
Really, I think most people like to turn this topic into more than it is. Though I like Prinnie Dood’s remark of “a sexism that denies itself” (that should be the title of a book, go write it!), I feel that there is no sexism to begin with. Games are art, and art has many ways to express itself. Sometimes, it happens to be in the form of a shotgun-wielding skimpy-dressed cheerleader with big boobs slaying zombies.
My excuses if this might go beyond the point of the article, but this read gave me the need to vent it 🙂
Hey, thanks for the link love. I appreciate your point of view, and in no way is my definitely self-selecting sample anywhere near large enough to make any conclusive statements.
For context, my wife and I composed and posted the original survey in the wake of several fairly high-profile incidents over the summer of 2012: allegations of sexism and even harassment at E3, a Gearbox faux pas I mention in my post, the threats against various women for expressing opinions about games (gender realted or not). Like you, I think the desire for choice is the biggest message to come out of my survey, and the comments I’ve gotten. They can have the platekini, if there is a full armor option. I haven’t heard much in the way of suggesting 300-style outfits for male characters. But I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with it, assuming again that it is one of many options.
I’m all for strong female characters, NPC and PC. I think one of the worst things Blizzard did to Jaina Proudmoore was to turn her from the strong leader of a city state into a lovelorn damsel pining for Arthas during WotLK.
Amazingly perceptually correct as usual. The issue in situe will reflect life, as was said in previous posts like football represents fluid art to many. The age of the playing populus of WoW will go someway to explaining why the armour of the male and female counterparts is of in its current status quo. The pre seventeen age group and some kinda freudian fallicness could result in some lord of he flies type issues which could potentially effect the popularity of WoW.There as we know have been many iterations of tier armour which would be most reflected upon in the halls of Blizzard and these seem farely run of the mill to me.The matter of male protaganists explicitly allowing hypersexualised portraits of both sexes including the platekini is one of perceptual fact and soon to be of lexicographal interest I imagine.
Given that we live in an age of overconsumtion of shite I wouldnt underestimate the autonomy and alteristic values of many of the game makers to make us feel fuzzy inside!!
p.s. typos gallore im sorry new to this
Coldo
had to change my name to coldo2011 because something wierd happened to my account. bome