Unfortunately either S2 didn’t listen, or they completely missed the point that several people raised. So I’m going to say it again, in the hopes that perhaps it will get through to someone (fat chance, I know).
Dear S2, the problem is not just that most of your females characters are little more than male tittilation, the problem is that apparently for you concept designers, a female cannot be an interesting character unless she is sexually appealing to a horny teenage male audience. Whereas your male heroes are kickass in their own right, whether they are human-looking or disgusting monstrocities, the overwhelming majority of your female characters, are presented as sexual fantasies.
Creativity in female design does not start and end with how much suggestive skin you’re showing. Start being as creative in your female characters as you are with males. As much as you don’t feel the need to make all your male characters show bare chests and wear strip thongs, so you shouldn’t feel the need to make all your females wear chainmail bikinis, have a supermodel’s looks, or have porn-star boobs.
Privileged white boy whine is so annoying don’t you think?
Browsing the Assassin’s Creed fora, I happened upon this thread and my eyes almost fell out of their sockets because I was rolling them so much. Just check out the first post:
So… I’m not being sexist…. but why does everyone want a female main character? IMO, she would be way too vulnerable and hard to relate to. (What I am saying is,almost the whole market to the AC games are males, and the only ones who would relate would be women) This is mainly the reason why I don’t think Ubi would make a female character, because the game wouldn’t sell well… But what is you guys’ opinion?
Now you know that any comment starting with “I’m not sexist but,” is going to be cringe-worthy and this guy doesn’t disappoint. In the same breath he uses to claim that he’s not a sexist, he declares women “too vulnerable” to be assassins. But anyway, picking on this poor kids’ cootie-hating is easy. What really peeved me was the shameless privilege display in your face: You should make the protagonist male because I can’t relate to non-male characters. He then of course proceeds to explain that this isn’t about him (oh no). What he’s really thinking if Ubisoft’s bottom line. Yes, he’s that concerned with the wellbeing of a gaming company that he’s willing to use his male privilege for them.
But then again, what difference does it make that a teenage boy ((I want to believe that he’s a teenage boy to maintain my faith in humanity. If this is an adult, he deserves a serious slap upside the head)) wields his privilege like a weapon? Par for the course isn’t it? Well yes, and that’s the problem. That it’s so common that people let it slide, which of course ends up with one thread full of people agreeing with the OP that female assassins make no sense/are not a good business decision.
While this just looks like some privileged douchebags whining on the fora, it does draw attention to the wider effect of male privilege, how it affects everything around us and how males react when they perceive their privilege being taken away. In this case, we see how the male privilege is implicitly acknowledged as the normal state of things (“Males are the predominant audience”, “I’m used to always being able to identify with the main character”). This perspective is so widely accepted, that even female responders have internalized its effects.
Who says everyone? :O I’m a female, I’m all for female assassin’s in games, the sisterhood and all that, but I wouldn’t want a female main character. Why? Because it would be oversexed – like Lara Croft, Bloodrayne… Just walking and talking and assassinating bog boobs on long legs. No, thanks. I focus better if there a male on screen
But we also see how male privilege defends itself. It’s not like there has been an official announcement on the subject (none that I’ve heard of at least) but even the rumours of a possible female lead to a series which already has established that such female assassins exist, is enough to make males pre-emptively request that no such thing happen. In other words, a direct reaction to the reduction of privilege which is of course based on the existing privilege (eg gamers are predominantly males and they wouldn’t identify). In another thread, people were explicitly threatening to boycott the game, if the lead was a female. And that’s pretty reactionary, no matter which way you look at it.
Personally, I love the way that Ubisoft has included females in the single player cast (even if they’re predominantly prostitutes – read too much Frank Miller perhaps?) and in the multi-player (even if there’s one female for every 3 males) and I think they should expand on this trend, not retract from it. I’d also love see homosexuals represented (male or female) and even people from different “races”, even if that would require a change in setting. They had a chance in Assassin’s Creed 1 which was set in an area with historically a lot of PoC (in fact, iirc the original Assassins of old were not Caucasians) but of course they opted for the handsome white boy looks to allow all those white teenage boys to identify better.
But there’s no reason why Assassin’s Creed cannot explore other cultural histories. In fact, the way the sci-fi tech setting is set up (people reliving memories from their ancestor’s DNA), it has a unique opportunity to explore so many diverse issues. Imagine an reliving the memories of an Black African Assassin in Egypt (Don’t object, The Legend of the Burning Sands pulled it off brilliantly) and then his progeny starting off as Slaves in a USA plantation. How about a Female Lesbian assassin is Tsarist Russia during their Socialist revolution. From my perspective it would be an extremely cool setup to have her be an Anarchist (The Assassins as a group have some interesting anarchistic tendencies) during those times, exploring her sexuality in a the very traditional setting of Czarist Russia and later on fighting against the brutality of the Czar only to be overcome by the Templar Bolsheviks. It fits like a Glove. Or how about Japanese Assassins, who were named Ninja in that culture ((Historically, the order of the Assassins preceded Ninjas by a few centuries)).
Seriously, given how easily one can use the setting of Assassin’s Creed, there’s so many aspects, cultures and subjects to explore than it’s a damn shame to stick to the classic handsome white boy recipe. A damn shame, especially given how many females are already playing the game, by the crumbs of inclusion thrown their way. Personally, I hope that Ubisoft and other companies out there are smart enough to ignore the privilege whine of teenage boys and be bold enough to switch genders, sexual orientations and races.
So I’ve been playing quite a bit of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer yesterday, and yesterday’s match prompted me to create the following ragecomic.
To give some context: In Multiplayer, you can use a skill to silently poison your opponents. Once you do that, within 3 seconds your target dies and you get 300 extra experience points for pulling it off, plus the normal points for killing them silently, which usually is close to 800 in sum at least. However if the target is killed before those 3 seconds pass, you get only 50 points. In this case, the teammate killed the poisoned target (the teammates can clearly see poisoned targets) with the hidden gun, which usually gives only 100 points to the user. A pretty bad tradeoff as you can imagine since not only do you lose all the effort that went into poisoning, but the team gets less points for the match.
Fortunately in this scenario I was the target, so when it happened in the match I was laughing my ass off. It happened twice as well so I can only imagine the RAGE that the poisoner was feeling at that moment. Poor guy.
Since I’m on the subject, I want to inform that AC:B has a brilliant mutliplayer which is a completely novel way of doing it. It’s the first time (AFAIK) that a game rewards quality over quantity in such a well rounded way. I wholeheartedly suggest you grab a copy, for the multiplayer alone and if you’re on PS3, hit me up (my username is DByZer0) for some games on European times 😉
Check the following vid out to see AC:B multiplayer in action and also how Poison works. This is the vid that pretty much convinced me that I need to play this game 🙂
And no, false rape accusations are not an epidemic either.
[Trigger warning for rape on all links]
What the fuck is wrong with these people? I keep seeing the same argument again and again and again and again , the idea that being accused of rape is not simply as bad as being raped but often worse. I honestly can’t believe how people can be so fucking dense so as to think this is true.
Note that I am not saying that being falsely accused of rape is not bad and can utterly damage your life, but it just does not even compare to the experience of being raped. Yes, both are subjective damages but the overwhelming anecdotes we have of rape survivors show psychological damage of such extent that it can never be repaired or avoided. Being falsely accused of rape on the other hand is only as bad as being falsely accused of many other very socially unacceptable crimes such as drug dealing and murder. The effect reach only as to the extent of people who know about your crimes and consider them bad enough.
A person falsely accused of rape (and convicted of course) may, at the worst case scenario lose friend and family and have their career ruined, but given time they can find new friends who will believe them and repair their social circle, even while hindered by the state. Many times they even clear their names eventually (otherwise we wouldn’t have such a nice influx of False Rape Accusation news stories for the Men’s Right crowd to cheer around). But apparently for some, even the short term damage of a false rape accusation that a male was eventually cleared from, compares to being actually raped.
Here’s the difference though, a rape victim most likely will never escape the damage of the event. Once the deed has been done, the scar will stay forever, no matter if the perpetrator is punished. You cannot undo the rape. You cannot restore the lost trust. You cannot wipe the memory triggers. Any story from rape victims that I’ve heard is magnitudes worse than most false rape accusation stories. And while a the occasional rape victim might take it better than others and survive with less emotional scars, on average the damage is far more severe.
It truly shames me as a male that I have to even point this out to others of my gender.
Many use the excuse that because the aftereffects are subjective, no comparison can be done. Well I disagree vehemently. Due to empathy we can easily grasp the relevant magnitude of each event, much like we can easily see the difference in suffering between having your face slapped, having your tooth pulled out and having acid thrown in your face. These are not all equally bad just because the suffering they cause is subjective. But somehow this comparison fails when it comes to rape doesn’t it?
Much of it I believe comes from lack of empathy. For males, especially those active in the “Men’s Rights” movement which repeats stories of false rape accusations and child custody gone wrong stories, find it far easier to empathize with the male who has been falsely accused. As a male, this is an actual fear they face, even if they wildly blow it out of proportion. In fact I’d go as far as to say that the fear of being falsely accused in the closest thing some males will come to understanding what kind of fear our rape culture creates for females. It’s easy to intuitively empathize with the kind of emotional pain that losing your friends and family can have. It is not as easy to empathize with rape because most men do not fear it at all. There is no common experience, no horror stories told among friends and family, no victim blaming seen on mainstream media, to even give them an idea that comes even close to how damaging rape can be and on top of that, they have a wealth of rape jokes told by other males which will further trivialize any such empathy they may develop. Naturally then they feel that False Rape Accusations are far worse than actual rape. They just empathize more strongly with the former.
Doesn’t make it correct though.
The even more frustrating things is that the fear of false rape accusations is being used to perpetuate the rape culture. The idea is promoted that a false rape accusation is bad enough even if it falls through in a court of law, due to the psychological “lynching” by friends and family. The implicit idea then is that people should treat rape accusers with distrust because otherwise you unjustly harm the accused who might be innocent after all. This of course reinforces the culture of victim blaming where the search for justice for rape victims is itself so emotionally taxing and with such a high chance of failure, that most of them do not even bother to even try.
Then the Blackstone formulation will be conveniently trotted out to show that it’s better for 15 rapists to go free than for 1 innocent to be convicted which is so frustrating because it looks at the issue in isolation. A more accurate formulation would be to ask: Is it better for 1 in 200 males to be falsely convicted of rape ((About 8% of rape accusations are dismissed. This does not mean that 1 in 15 males is falsely accused, but from all the males that are accused, 8% are cleared. Iirc, the number in the full male population comes down to around 0.5%)) or for 1 in 6 females to be raped? Of course this is also flawed since those two statistics don’t have to be in competition ((It’s a sad fact of the flawed justice system we use that they are but challenging the adversarial justice system itself is even more unthinkable for most)). Unfortunately those who bring up the false rape accusations and paint them as an epidemic of some sort, will simply push for more stricter investigations completely ignoring what effects this has on women trying to report rape and find justice.
Fact of the matter is that compared to the frequency of actual rape, the number of false rape accusations is a drop in a bucket. To put weight into tackling those few false rape accusations without first tackling the actual epidemic of rape is a travesty, which becomes even worse when one considers that the way some males want to tackle the false rape accusations would actually reinforce the rape culture.
That does not mean I am opposed to reducing the false rape accusations while we’re at it but for crying out loud, get your priorities straight first and only then, look for ways to address it that don’t make the raped women even more marginalized. Unfortunately I think that the current court system and laws are inherently flawed and it’s a sad fact that the heavy handed statist response to the rape epidemic can’t address it without causing some harm elsewhere. One would hope this would make people rethink their premises, but unfortunately this doesn’t happen.
Finally, let me suggest an idea to make males who dismiss the idea of the rape culture while simulataneously railing against false rape accusations. It might give them an idea of how it feels to be a woman in a rape culture. Ask them, if 0.5% of males being falsely accused is a horribly large amount, how they would feel if the percentage was 18%. Would this scare them of having relationships? Ask them how they would feel if they could be easily falsely convicted without any court proceedings. Would this terrify them? Ask them how they would feel if they could be instantly falsely convicted of rape without court proceedings by their wife, their friends, or their aunts, while walking their dog, while sleeping over at a friend’s party, while drinking at a bar. Would this isolate them in horror? Ask them how they would feel if they could be easily falsely convicted of rape by many females who acted in coordination and backed up each other’s story. Ask them how they would feel if the state, their family, their friends all told them that the only way to avoid being falsely convicted of rape without a trial was to constantly use a voice recorder or a camera to record everything that happens around them. Would they think this is a sensible solution? Ask them to imagine that all of these were true at the same time and imagine how it would feel to live their whole life in such an environment.
And then remind them that this is how all women feel currently, only with worse psychological damage to boot.
PS: Bonus link (big big big rape trigger warning). Show them this gut-wrenching story and then remind them that this counts as part of the false rape accusations statistic.
A brilliant quote succintly explaining why rape jokes are harmful.
Via chickwithmonkey I have discovered this excellent comment from Time Machine explaining just how rape jokes are harmful. Quoted here in it’s entirety, for truth, justice and the ‘murican way FUCK YEAH and because the original thread is 1000+ comments deep and takes ages to load.
[Note: Many people on Reddit have expressed the sentiment that while they agree with the substance, they have a problem with the condescending tone. This is because the comment I’m reposting was on a blog post and was made in response to a guy who was actually arguing that it’s okay for him to make rape jokes with his friends. While it starts by addressing all men, it’s coloured by the reaction to that particular guy.]
To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.
I get it, you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.
And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?
So fine. If all those arguments aren’t going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and you don’t see the harm, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.
Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-
6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.
A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?
Rapists do.
They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.
Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.
If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.
But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.
And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?
That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.
You. The rapist’s comrade.
And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore…
Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.
This is a perfect example of how social norms are insidiously perpetuating acts you might not expect. Just from a seemingly harmless activity like laughing as a rape joke, a sexist joke, a racist joke and so on.
PS: Protip (for chickwithmonkey). You can find a permalink to a Disqus comment under the date of the comment (Where it says something like “1 day ago”.) Same with Intense Debate that I’m using here.
Should rape victims deserve to be accused of lying? Should males be praised for not dumping their girlfriends after they were raped? You tell me.
A woman made an IAmA/AMA ((For those not in the know yet, IAmA/AMA stands for “I Am A [insert trait, description, experience here], Ask Me Anything)) about her experience with being raped, keeping the child and her current boyfriend staying with her and marrying her eventually. The story of how it happened was quite interesting to read since for a change it does not come from a “Western Nation” but rather from a “Developing Country” which has still quite backward social norms. And one of those that immediately jumped out at me was the crass rape culture that exists.
The 5th day, I finally called the police. I live in an asian country. You have to understand that the culture is different here and that when a woman accuses a man, the police always assume that the woman was lying. Except in my case, I wasn’t. They came, I told them what happened and the police was less than helpful.
This whole part of the story is in fact quite interesting in a horrifying sort of way in giving us a glimpse into the post-rape mindframe of a rape victim. How she was feeling so guilty and unsure that it took her 5 days just to report it and by then, much of the evidence is gone and the rapist has enough time to secure an alibi. And then, the police will immediately assume you’re lying. This isn’t just “too much” for the victim of a type of assault that completely destroys you emotionally, It is overwhelming. Is it any wonder why so many rapes go unreported? If it takes a week, or even a month to get emotionally stable enough to even speak about the event, who wants the first reaction to it to be an accusation of lying and victim blaming?
As a privileged person (male and have not been raped), I can’t even begin to feel what it must be like but even the thought of having to deal with such a traumatizing event and then have the whole world distrust me because of it, downright horrifies me.
This is what a rape culture looks like and the immediate distrust of rape survivors coupled with victim blaming is why rape is still so widespread. And this particular point, the fostering of distrust of the experiences of victims of rape is why I especially despise those who align themselves with the “Men’s Rights” movement which continuously agitates on the platform that false rape accusations are frequent and that being falsely accused is just as bad as being the victim of rape (Yes, this was an actual position someone stood by).
The Men’s Rights crowd will of course claim that they only want the “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine be used, but in practice this boils down to treating anything the victim claims as lies until conclusive evidence is presented in court. When someone points out that treating rape survivors as liars at worst or dishonest at best is not exactly the best way to foster an attitude where rape victims can come forward, they strawman your argument as you are pushing for a “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine. A ridiculous strawman setup just to shut down any discussion by enraging their opponent and then derailing due to that.
That’s the first point, the second point I wanted to talk about can be seen by looking at the comments of the reddit post. Go look at them and tell me if you can see it. I’ll wait.
Done? Good. Did you see anything troubling?
Well, let me put it out clearly: Of the 15 best comments in the post ((“best comments” being the default sorting algorithm that reddit uses)), 10 are praising the male. Of the best 3 comments, all 3 are about praising the husband. To put this into context:
In a post about the personal story of a rape victim who ended up getting pregnant because of it and her husband decided to stay with her, 2/3rds of the responses are all about praising the male.
Does it seem just a bit odd to you that in a story about the rape of a woman who opens her heart and allows for some Q&A, a male who is not even there would be getting praises in large amounts, just for being a decent human being?
This is what male privilege looks like. The fact that so little is required of you due to your gender, that even basic human decency is grounds enough for gushing adulation. It’s the sheer mentality of “I could act like a dick if I wanted to, but if I don’t, then goddamnit you’d better recognise it and give me the appropriate praise“. And this permeates everything. Woman doing the housework all week? No big deal. Man cleaning the toilet over the weekend without being asked to explicitly? OMGWTFBBQ Best. Husband. Ev4r!
In this case it just really really irked me the wrong way. Here we have a woman who had one of the most traumatic experiences a human can go through and ended up in a life changing situation (being pregnant). She nevertheless had the courage to report it, even though she knew she would be treated with distrust by those who were tasked with “protecting her”. She went through hell and came out alive and the boyfriend deserves all the praise for not dumping her on top of it?! I’m sorry, I just can’t wrap my head around this mentality. The sheer fucking absurdity of it…
It could be in part due to how much the woman herself is promoting her husband as deserving the lion’s share of the praise for sticking with her during these bad time, but for fuck’s sake people, this is the time to point out that most of the credit belongs to her. For being courageous enough to report it. For managing to overcome crippling psychological damage enough. For not taking her own life! She is the strong , wonderful person in the story here and she doesn’t seem to know it, given on how she attributes her whole recovery on her husband. You shouldn’t be reinforcing this. You should be pointing out that she is putting herself down far too much.
Here is the thing, okay? Coming into a feminist conversation with, “Have you considered that sometimes women acquire free drinks at bars?” is like walking into graduate school during Philosophy finals and saying, “Have you considered that the color blue that I see may not be the color blue that you see?”
The quote above succintly describes the immediate frustration radicals of all stripes get when someone makes elementary observations and demands mad props, or even worse, makes elementary criticism which has been countered ad nauseum, and demands immediate and well sourced replies (eg “But what about human nature?”).
This is not the only good part of course, or even possibly the best of the whole post. So read the whole damn thing. Do eeet!
A collection of links, primarily about feminism and gaming.
I’ve been kinda lax in my blogging recently. I’ve been meaning to write on a few subjects but completely useless arguments on reddit keep sucking up on my energy. I’m working on that. That said, you might have noticed that I write more about feminism and satellite subjects lately and this is because I’ve started reading a couple of excellent blogs on the subject in its intersection with gaming and geek culture.
So given that I’m not in the mood to write much today, I thought I’d just post a bunch of interesting stuff instead. Hope y’all like it. Remember that an /r/ before something, means that I’m referring to a reddit section.
Mad Props to genderbitch for writing the Methods of Communication for Activists. This is one of the best and most insightful posts I’ve read in years and it gave a lot of insights into the reasons behind The Great /r/Anarchism ShitStorm of 2010. I’m already thinking of ways to combine these particular strengths each of us has rather than argue endlessly with each other.
And finally, check out this stupifying misogyny from Kanye West. I have only heard of this guy from the whole “Imma let you finish” meme but what I’ve heard of him since just shows that douchebaggery sells in the USA.
And that’s all for now children. If you have have any faith in humanity left after this post, feel free to tune in next time.
S2 Games, the creator of Heroes of Newerth, shows that they are not below objectifying of women in order to make a buck.
One of the things I liked in the MOBA game Heroes of Newerth is that it had some female heroes which were more than just cleavage and suggestive show of skin (even if those were never far away). The game was still as sexist as most others, what with a multitude of monstrous or fully clothed males and a minority of females, primarily fregile wizards and archers and overwhelmingly suggestive.
I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to that until now however, and the reason why I started was when their latest hero was revealed in a leaked newsletter and her concept art looks like this:
Now generally this is not something to get particularly worked up about. Just S2 Games caching on titillation for their primarily teenage/young adult audience. I was content to stay and perhaps argue a bit on the thread on reddit about how patently ridiculous this outfit and character is for the battlefield. However, others brought this issue up in the fora and against my better judgement, I felt compelled to leave a few comments and links there as well.
That went as well as one might expect, as the audience for which S2 is based on is rightly considered to make up the worst community of any game ever. And in one such community, sexism, homophobia and ableism are never below the surface but rather blaring in your face 24/7. So if you want to see the results and possible bash your heads against the keyboard as well ,because of the sheer stupidity and how much S2 will allow crass ableism and homophobia to shine in their official forums, go check them out.
Of course, all the classic derailment and logical fallacies that one might expect have been presented and supported, at times by S2 staff themselves.Here’s some of the most common samples
“But every other game is doing it!” – Frequently used fallacy. Actually repeated by a couple of S2 staff. Most people outgrow this in kindergarten.
“Don’t you have more important things to worry about?” – Classic Derailment
“The audience asked for more boobs, and we delivered” – FSM forbid that you might not indulge your audience’s sexism. Again, actually said by S2 staff.
“Sex Sells” – Yeah, for some reason I do not see an equal representation of “sex” for female and LGBT consumption…
“S2 is being sexist against males too!” – Repeated Ad Nauseum. Fortunately I only had to link here.
“U gay?” (In various expressions) – Not even worth a reply, but mentioned just for the sheer popularity of it.
“There’s not so many half-naked chicks and those that are, have a back story which explains why they need to be so.” – Against commonly used and I’m going to expand on this particular a bit more, with pictures, to show just how ridiculous it is.
Part of the last argument is to argue that compared to the overall cast (or other even more sexist games like League of Legends), the amount of “hot” female heroes are not a lot. This argument falls flat on its face when one does even a cursory look at the heroes cast.
There’s currently 74 heroes (including Empath)
Of these, only 13 (17%) are clearly females (There’s a bunch of characters that are not clear due to their form, but for most of those, their body type and voice pitch is also clearly male)
Of these 13, there is only 1 (7%) that is fully clothed (iirc it’s Wretched Hag for which I couldn’t find the concept art) which means showing no cleavage or trying to get some kind of sex appeal [EDIT: I might be wrong here, it may be the case that another hero is fully clothed, valkyrie, as a reddit commenter points out. I seem remember her model as not fully clothed however and I can’t find any official concept art]. All others, including the monstrous females, have a clearly feminine body displaying sexually appetizing forms. Yes, even the monstrous ones. Examples:
And these are the absolutely least sexy females one can find in the game mind you. There’s one more, Moon Queen, for which I don’t have a concept art but only the model, which seems even less suggestive than these, but I can’t tell if her human torso is naked or not.
Of the human-form females (in which I’m including “non-humans” who just have a pair of horns or wings to separate them), all of them are suggestive, by which I mean that cleavage and/or naked body/legs are shown. That’s 100%. And while some of them are acceptable (at least in concept, like Valkyrie), most others, by default are absurdly dressed, even for most other games’ standards. (Click for larger images)
Ophelia is supposed to be one with the beasts and therefore needs to go butt-naked. Of course that means a beach-bikini style cloth and a supermodel body.Fayde is supposed to be a shadow assassin, able to "fade out". I guess that means that anything other than mail bikini is faded out permanently.One can only assume that the Forsaken Archer needs to armor towards her front, as she is always running away. Zing!
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Mind you, I am not cherry picking my examples, these are literally the only concept art I could find for the human heroes, with the exception of Valkyrie, which looks like this, which unfortunately does not accurately represent the actual model.
If we consider the characters that received an alternative model (through the goblin shop), things become even more sexist. You see, various male and female character are getting alternative models people can buy with real world money or by grinding the game’s currency. When a male gets an alternative male model, it always is something cool. Gladiator (a whip wielding hero) becomes Indiana Jones. Magmus (A burning rock hero) becomes a giant fire scorpion. Kraken (a water-based hero) becomes a giant crustacean.
But when males become females, or females get an alternative female model, guess what it happens…They become sexier.You remember the spider woman before?
Well, she becomes like this.
And there’s also two male wizards, one of ice, and one of fire. Their transformation from male to female is kinda like this.
Normal for a wizard huh?Apparently females in Newerth by default can only choose bikini-styled robes.
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Because everyone knows that women can’t compete with men on skill alone. They need to show some cleavage and supermodel looks in order to be their equals. Sigh. Now compare the females with the wide array of looks and builds for the male heroes of which most are not even remotely suggestive, even if they are nominally bare skinned (Because of course the trolls of the forum were all to eager to point to Kraken and complain that he’s too naked as a sarcastic counter-point). You’ve got fat heroes, truly monstrous males, disgusting males, macho males, punk males, mad males, sneaky males and so on, and most of these don’t even need to be remotely suggestive to a female audience to be liked.
And finally of course, the last ditch argument is that all those females are wearing bikinis because their story demands it. Ophelia is “one with the nature”. Nymphora is a nymph (and we all know how those dressed). Valkyrie is a Valkyrie (and Norse concept art shows them as wearing veils and bare breasted) and so on. This argument of course ignores some very important parts. First of all, Valkyries and Nymphs and other historical archetypes were not generally going into battles. When humans do go into battles, they are generally well armoured.
Secondly if all the concepts for your female heroes somehow end up requiring them to wear (chain mail) bikinis in battle, perhaps one should reconsider those concepts because as sure as fuck one can think concepts for heroes which do not end up with them being a titillation product. The fact that S2 seems to be able to think or or choose concepts which require suggestive females shows that their sexism starts from very early on in the design process.
It’s unfortunate that S2 is going this way, when practically both of their competitors are just trying to outdo each other on who can objectify females the most in their games. But I guess one shouldn’t expect better from them anyway given how they treat other similar subjects.
On a last note, I’m going to leave you with an image which shows how the HoN concept artists think of the females in the game. This doesn’t say much but it does display the mentality behind the designers of the game.
Top right to bottom left: Succubus, Ophelia, Andromeda, Dark Lady, Nymphora
I’m going to give Tumblr the benefit of doubt here and not immediately jump on the accusation bandwagon, although given their previous willingness to hastily accept a half-arsed copyright claim, I don’t hold much hope. I only hope that if the site was indeed taken down by tumblr, the next PDD site learns from all this use something they can control more.
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