You all are continuing my necro and I'm still trying to work out how it even happened in the first place o.o was this like the first "off-topic" thread? Then i could maybe put it down to accidently altering the order to "oldest > newest"
Serious mode: I don't think anyone here disagrees with you sylvester, but I think it'll never happen in mainstream gaming. Think about it, how often do you see ugly girls on TV or in mainstream movies? Edit: Hell, even in books, paintings and songs female characters are usually attractive. Women in popular art will always be.
No, because that's just a cheap way out. When it comes to aliens, we don't generally have preconceived notions about them. The narrative shows us what sort of attitude we should have towards the aliens portrayed. (Although lately, alien females tend to be portrayed as sexually attractive from a human perspective, like 90% of the female characters in the Mass Effect series, for example.) But with humans, we can instantly form these notions based entirely on the look of the character alone. From that point on, it becomes more interesting from a narrative standpoint to make or break those notions. An unattractive female character has a lot more potential to be memorable and have an impact on the player, especially if portrayed in a positive manner. And yes thebigpill, I realize that it's unlikely to happen in mainstream gaming, but at least we have indie games, don't we? I know I have a game to make all queued up where the main character is an unattractive female. (Inspired by Lady of the Trash, in fact . . .)
You also run the risk of having an unattractive female character just to say you aren't shallow, just to say you have a character in the game that isn't beautiful. That's also a stupid reason.
Yeah, like jbeetle said. There's a huge risk of just coming across as a whiteknight by saying, "hey, look, we made ugly girls too JUST LIKE REAL LIFE". I am, and have a lot of friends who are girl gamers, and don't know any who have complained about sexism in games unless its just blatant like Dead or Alive etc. Its the same as with men, honestly. People don't wanna play as a fat neckbeard with cheetos on his shirt, they wanna be the gruff badass.
That is a good point. I agree that games, or really any sort of fiction, should not create an unattractive characters just to make a point about character design. If that's the case, it's putting an incorrect focus on elements of the game that are purely aesthetic before focusing on elements that matter, such as actual gameplay. (Certain artistic indie games are notorious for this.) And along with that, there's also the fact that games tend to be escapist material. As a player, you want to experience something different from the everyday norm, and perhaps unattractive characters are not exactly a major change from reality. But then, perhaps seeing them in a more positive light is. Rufus, from Street Fighter IV is certainly an example of how an unattractive character can be portrayed in a positive manner. Why not do the same for a female character? And in a broader sense, it's not necessarily about political correctness, or equality, or anything like that. It's about variety. It's getting to the point where videogame characters seem to have a generic look and feel to them simply because they all follow the generic "attractive" genotype. Surely we can do better from a design perspective. As for coming across as a whiteknight, screw that entire concept. It's a term I associate with juvenile idiocy that gets thrown around far to indiscriminately, and most of the time ends up being an excuse to defend sexist remarks. Those that use it as a basis for critique just show themselves to be lazy and unwilling to participate in adult discussion.[/RANT]
I don't know about you guys, but most girls I meet are rather attractive. I'm not asian, so I know a fair number of women with above C cup sizes, and have had multiple friends who complain about their E+s hurting their backs. It's odd that I notice this despite not being a boob guy, but whatever. And I'll be honest, I hardly know any As. Again, not a boob guy so I don't care all that much, but it's an observation I've made. They may not be all be perfect, but they're no less attractive than the female characters in games than the guys I know are less attractive than the male ones. It's not like men normally have the sheer musclitude of manly men in manly games. Or the creepy perfect thinness that nobody ever gets to unless they're gay or malnourished. Yes, we have ugly guys in video games. But those ugly guys are usually ugly to accentuate their ugly innards as villains, or to surprise you in them not being villains. In media we like to have the outsides reflect the insides. When was the last movie you saw where you couldn't tell the creepy guy with the pencil mustache was evil?
Ye, legitimately ugly girls are hard to find IRL. But Sylvester's point about stale character design still stands.
A sad side effect of actors like Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price being too awesome at their jobs. More appropriately, what about a movie like Kung Fu Hustle, where the landlady was a grouchy, chubby, chain smoker with perpetual hair-curlers and a shrill voice. And yet by the end of the film we certainly came to admire her character. The character doesn't necessarily need to come out as sexy (the landlady certainly doesn't), just admirable.
When it comes to women characters in games, just base them off of real women when it comes to physical dimensions. Seriously if uber does something stupid like "soul calibur" all their characters I would have to slap the **** out of someone. Make the characters believable. All women need to be beutiful are 4 things. 1. a geniune smile 2. a camera 3. a friend that can use the camera because everyone hates a duck-faced selfie 4. a little makeup doesn't hurt, (just don't use "snooki" amounts of that crap)
I can't help but laugh at threads like these. The opinions and views on a subject like this easily show your age. Which isn't bad is just points out how naive or sheltered some are.
