Hmm, I think there’s a difference between “ugly” and “badly made model” though, any character that looks as dead behind the eyes as the new Catwoman model I’d class in the latter category, personally.
While I’m here, shout outs to Maya, Shin/Hisako, Ulala from Space Channel 5, Kula Diamond from KOF, Helga from Loadout, Xiaoyu from Tekken, Painwheel from Skull Girls, Chell from Portal and Zoey from Left 4 Dead serving as a smattering of female characters I like the designs of, as a female myself. 
The worst offender in terms of sex appeal across the board for me would have to be Dead or Alive, but not for the reasons you may be expecting - every character in that game has the exact same body type and a good portion of them pretty much have the exact same face, (hmm, I’m also thinking about KI2 as I’m typing this…) the sex appeal doesn’t bother me in the slightest, it appeals to a certain demographic of gamers and that’s fine.
They just have very, very dull taste in their identical clone women. (Oh and also that one time when their creator said he viewed them as his daughters, that was more than a little bit creepy. 
If you’re going to be quite an obvious pervert, at the very least be honest about it!)
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The DOA girls all seem to have the same face because they are featureless. There faces deliberately have no character because any actual defining characteristics might not be beautiful to everyone. Even if you look within the same game at the male characters just look at how much individuality the male faces have. So it’s not a limitation of the designers, it’s a deliberate choice.
None of that bothers me. DOA is going for a specific thing and it’s their choice to do it. What bothers me is when people hold up the DOA girls as what women in fighting games should look like.
Everyone will draw different lines, and that’s fine. For example I find Skullgirls to be a little pervy. But at least the designs are interesting and have some character.
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This sentence defines everything that matters in a good design, male or female. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Mai Shiranui is a well designed character that screams sex appeal, she has a cheery, engaging personality and an interesting moveset, she just happens to have bewbs for days, and that’s fine, I’ve always thought she was cool. Tiffany Lords from Rival Schools is also one of my personal favourite sex-ed up designs, because her hair defies any physics, she’s essentially wearing a butchered American flag as a cheerleader costume and her moveset again, is a tonne of fun, with a cheery can-do personality ingrained into her.
On the flip side Chell from Portal looks like she’s been through some crap, looks tired as hell and more than a little rough around the edges, grubby and dressed practically for the situation that she’s in. She never even speaks through the duration of the game and we can only ascertain what her character is like from GLaDOS’ dialogue and her actions throughout the game, yet she’s still a character I have a lot of love for, partially because I filled in the gaps myself, partially because Valve has proven themselves more than capable of making really likeable characters, even the silent ones.
For me, it’s not about sex appeal, it’s about how interesting a character is, through design and personality, which is what developers should really be concentrating on, not fine-tuning bewb physics, or how many freckles you need to put on your “relateble” character’s face to make them relatable. If the design doesn’t follow through all the way, it won’t matter cause it won’t work anyway.
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Now while we’re still on the subject/topic of beauty, what about the main male characters of the Final Fantasy series particularly in the MUCH NEWER FF games? From what I gathered as well as understand the male characters are often described as having “effeminate” features (including their faces) and are often called overall the “pretty boys” of Final Fantasy, am I correct?
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not sure about the older FF but im positive that in ff 15 the main protaganists looks/fashion takes alot of inspiration from this popular musician/actor in japan Gackt.
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In fighting games, most of the inspiration is taken from real life martial arts or martial arts movies, even if most also are clearly more fictional than realistic. I think the reason you don’t see fat women in fighting games is because you DON’T see that happen period. I imagine it would be hard to come up with ideas for fat women in fighting games with little inspiration to be taken from. Even with characters like Bob and Rufus there’s a source of inspiration that can be used (Sammy Hung). The worst thing that I think can happen is that they change female characters completely to make them sexualized, kind of like a 180. DOA did this with Tengu.
Speaking of DOA though, I actually don’t think the girls’ faces are quite as bad as some people make it out to be, or at least not now. While they clearly have similar body shapes, similar but not identical, I do think some of their faces have unique qualities that differentiate themselves. Mostly the eyes is what I notice. Not only that, each character is very unique when it comes to design, personality, and gameplay so there are plenty of reasons to like them rather than sex appeal. I only say that it’s better now because there was still that period where they were all of the characters looked like dolls and had a shine to them like plastic. The game honestly looks really good in it’s current state and I was really impressed with the upgrade.
Of course, that still doesn’t excuse the argument of realistic > beautiful going in here, but I will agree that if you’re using a model, it better look like that model. MGSV did a really good with that when they made Quiet.
At this point, I honestly don’t know what I’m getting at lol. I’m just laying out my thoughts. I guess another thing with me is that clearly there is a difference with being sexy and being sexualized. A character can be sexy without having to show her ■■■■ across the screen all the time. I think Tifa is a good example of this. She was designed to be sexy, but they don’t throw this in your face in FFVII, KH, Advent Children or most of the other officialstuff she was in. Also considering when FFVII first came out, you kinda had to use your imagination with all of those polygons lol. I don’t think I can recall if Square ever blatantly used sex as a gimmick or feature rather than a design (maybe Lightning Returns lol). It’s not like they’re making waifu simulators or anything (Fire Emblem)
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I wouldn’t doubt it. Something I find hilarious is all the attention and controversy that is drummed up over the connection between videogame babes and make sexism (misogyny I believe is the buzz words) but no one seems to care about the objectivism of men. The FF games sound like a good example of just such a thing. The argument that it doesn’t happen is not only a lie but hypocritical as well. I believe that such objectivication will always exist. Beauty is subjective in nature and used as a unit of measure. Every person you meet either male or female is measured on the grounds of looks, but may not always be relivance to the interaction to be done. But this measurement will always exist.
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Please don’t make me teach gender psychology 101 again. The effeminate male characters in Final Fantasy are not the equivalent of hypersexual depictions of women in games in any way. Men and women respond to visual imagery very differently so the idea that showing sexy men “balances out” showing sexy women is just wrong. It doesn’t work that way.
Objectification and misogyny are also very different things. I know that there’s a lot of noise and bs coming from angry feminists and making gamers angry. But that doesn’t mean that these phenomena aren’t real and that there isn’t a worthwhile discussion to be had about the way women are depicted in games - which as an adult male and the father of a daughter often makes me cringe.
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I’d love to see how these discussions go on at the corporate exec tables for Victoria’s Secret and Sports Illustrated Annual Swimsuit Issue
In the end, money does not lie- and the industry has a standard. Yes Alice Homemaker in Utah with 5 kids is every bit of a woman
But she won’t grace a billboard on Times Square.
I would have to agree. A reason isn’t required to play the things you like, it’s just a game not a political arena. Now if you as a father want to impart wisdom to your daughters about this matter, the easiest answer is don’t buy or play the games and instruct your daughters to do the same.
But I would like to cut the BS here for five seconds and state the truth. This will always be a problem won’t it? Even if the gaming industry waves the white flag and gives into full compliance, removing and changing anything and everything that is overly sexual. How long will it be before the standard changes, that the female presence in games is still overtly sexual? Then the problem comes back. Then the men complain of the same thing. Until we are left with video games about cute puppies with no story.
This will always be a problem, because people just can’t accept a happy medium, or not be so easily butt hurt.
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Video games about cute puppies with no story will never happen. There’s always an artist out there that will delve into any medium he pleases.
…did you miss out on nintendogs? Pity those were some cute dogs
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My point is that with continued complaining even with compliance at some point human would be removed from games all together which would severely limited what can and can’t be in games.
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I dread threads with subject matter like this because normally it only goes in circles and accomplishes nothing except having us turn on each other. Let’s all just be happy that we are at least only complaining about stuff in games rather than stuff that affects us on a personal level in a negative way.
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If I were to be honest, I think a game (especially one where you can pic to what degree of characters) should have characters that all hit every area. Some attractive female characters, some female characters that are more toned down, same for guys.
It’s about hitting the mark on everything. I wouldn’t want to alienate parts of the audience they may like the attractive depictions of characters, but I don’t want to alienate the folks who want a more toned version of the character visually.
Long story short: I don’t think all women have to look like ■■■■ stars in video games, but I also think that artists should have fun with creating whatever they choose, regardless of people’s opinions. This applies both to anyone who just wants sexually attractive characters in their games and folks who want more realistic depictions.
However the one thing I feel more people seem to undermine is that it doesn’t matter how a character looks, they look as realistic and toned up/down as possible, the problem is, if that character isn’t fun in personality or to play as their apperance is pretty much moot.
So while people can complain about how a character looks, it’s even sillier that they don’t consider how these fictional characters may really look.
If I could shape myself to grow into a 100 footal kaiju that can wreck cities…I ■■■■■■■ would! lul 
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Very well put. I’d have to agree with you whole heatedly
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While I can understand how folks wnat to be, I view games and the roles I play all fantasy based I dream of being a giant mutha-■■■■■■’ monster destorying cities and I’m sure there’s people out there who want to think of themselves as “sexy” just as their’s folks who want to be “bad-■■■” or folks who just “wanna be themselves in the game world”
Also @anon39655210 aside from her eyes looking really off, she looks alright if you ask me.
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Why complain about something so small?*I have seen some amazing female characters in video games some of them did have big watermelons and butts however they had a story and where real funny or badass characters people don’t play the game fully and when they see a female they make a rant about it heck look at overwatch and a little bit of Orchid.
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