Dead or Alive 6!

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I’ll only speak for myself, but I don’t play a God of War or DMC as any kind of escapist body fantasy. It’s cool because what they’re doing and the way they fight are cool, not because Kratos runs around shirtless or because Dante is a pretty boy. Ryu Hayabusa is physically as generic a ninja as has ever been conceived and has the personality of a particularly unassuming piece of driftwood, but the modern Ninja Gaidens are phenomenal action titles that deserve to be considered among the greats of gaming.

It’s fine if you want to play for the sexy/badass thing, but it’s also true that others may not want to (or even care about that at all). More to the point, I will maintain that DOA and Ivy-style fanservice isn’t even that sexy. Some DOA clip I was watching has a character’s ■■■■■ bouncing like half-filled balloons during her idle animation. Breasts don’t bounce energetically because someone is breathing, and if I saw someone with that condition I would suggest she go see someone about it. Sexy doesn’t have to mean stripper or fetish wear, and it doesn’t mean breasts heaving like they’re possessed.

On a whole other note, the whole loli and little sister thing is creepy and weird. I’m pretty open and tolerant of cultural differences, but that ■■■■ is just not ok. I wasn’t planning on picking up DOA6 because of its apparently dodgy netcode, but even if that weren’t the case the sexualization of characters who are clearly supposed to look super young is a massive red flag for me. You want to make your sexy game, whatever - but I’m sure as hell not trying to explain Marie Rose to my girlfriend or the homies. “Nah, she’s really 18…” is a ■■■■■■ way to have to start a sentence😒

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For me it’s just that this has become DoA’s MO so much I can’t take it seriously anymore from a creative standpoint. I ultimately don’t care about dumb outfits that much, and I’m all for a bit of fanservice, but when a series is overwhelmingly portrayed as some bouncy waifu dress-up parade constantly trying to be titillating or cute I just lose interest. The sense of variety and coolness just stops being there.

The jury is still out on DoA6 but I’m getting more and more skeptical as time goes on. I’ll always like the expressive animations and fighting styles, and I do like most of the core legacy characters, but that’s becoming about it for DoA’s stylistic appeal to me.

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The shame of it (to me) is that DOA is actually the most mechanically/visually interesting to me of all the 3D fighters. The series is fast and fluid and impactful in a way that is literally unmatched in the genre, and instead of selling that, they sell bouncing ■■■■■ and sexy nurse cosplay.

I guess ultimately it’s consumers’ fault…that model apparently sells more games than focusing on the core gameplay would. :sweat:

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Yeah, this to me is the problem. I’m not in a thread about “gungal 2” because I have nothing to say about that game. If people want to play a game about tickling schoolgirls woth a lightgun to see panty shots that’s their business.

But DOA is a pretty great fighter and I think it shares a lot with KI. It’s easy to get into the “mind games” and reading your opponent because of the counter system but there’s still a lot of depth to the game.

People are allowed to like what they like. But for me DOA is across the line into cringey with its adult female characters, which makes me enjoy it less, and into the realm of “yikes! Get me the hell out of here!” with the pedo characters. Personally, I think there are better ways to depict sexy, empowered female characters.

I don’t really want to bring all this up again. But it is the sole reason I am not buying DoA6. I could deal with the online and I love the way they have embraced the environment interactions and the counters.

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Just for the record, the age of consent in Japan is 13. That doesn’t make it any less weird, but it’s an explanation.

Why can’t they do both. Sexuality isn’t wrong. Being sexy isn’t wrong. You may not like it, but other people do. Why can’t it have the great gameplay AND sexy costumes.

Also, if this isn’t actually “sexy” according to you, then what is sexy and how would you translate it into a character design. I agree that there is more than one way to be sexy, but the “scintillating personality and sense of dominance as you converse by candlelight” vibe can’t really translate into a fighting game.

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It is not. While the national law has this age as a minimum that cannot be undercut, every prefecture (Japanese states, essentially) has its own consent laws which puts legal age of consent at 18 years old. Many prefectures are considerably more strict than this, and do not even have provisions for two underage individuals engaging in sexual activity or for “Romeo and Juliet” type laws (where people begin dating younger and then someone has a birthday and becomes an “adult”). The 13 years old thing is a common trope, but it does not functionally exist in the country.

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Sex is not wrong. But we don’t let paid performers have sex in front of pre-schoolers. So while we may not always agree on where the line should be drawn we generally agree that there is a line. The actual legal definition of obscenity in the US is “would a reasonable person find this offensive.” That’s a terrible standard but it’s the best we’ve come up with.

The other thing is there are many things that are “not wrong” that I don’t want to see in video games. Everybody poops. It’s a perfectly natural thing with a fantastic role to play in the nutrient cycle. As a biologist, ■■■■ is a beautiful and complex thing worthy of appreciation. Now, raise your hand if you want more video games showing people defecating. Anyone? Yeah, thought so.

But pretend I challenged you and said “why can’t we have more pooping? What’s wrong with it? It’s natural and everybody does it? Why can’t I get more pooping in games? “ Put together a rationale for why you don’t want to see more pooping and then just find and replace ■■■■ with “gratuitous nudity and out of context sexually suggestive attire” and that’s your answer.

It’s gross. It’s unnecessary and it is hindering my ability to enjoy the game. It is FAR outside what I consider acceptable.

You asked, so I will answer. I won’t bore you with a definition of “sexy” but here is a list of female characters that I think are attractive and that I wouldn’t be ashamed to have on my screen front of witnesses:

Orchid or Maya from KI 2013
Lara Croft from the last three TR games
Lilith from Borderlands
Elise from AC Unity
Many other characters who are wearing clothes that would not get them arrested in most places.

Many of the outfits in DOA are fine with me. The Lei Fang tribute to Bruce Lee looks great. But many others are not. I don’t know why women would dress for bed and then go to a street fight.

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Except we don’t have a national stigma that pooping is a gross and wrong thing to do unless you’ve found the one toilet you’re going to use for the rest of your life, and only if you do it in this specific way. And men can do it all the time and ■■■■ as much as they want and throw their ■■■■ everywhere and it’s fine; but a woman can’t do it at all before she finds that toilet, lest her intestines be called dirty and used.

You see how fast the metaphor falls apart. I want to dismantle the stigma against women having sex and being sexy, a stigma that men live their lives completely free of.

Plus, one if the glorious beauty of the human body, and the other is literal ■■■■. The thing we have deemed as a society has the least value and we use as an insult to people and things we especially hate.

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You’re kinda mixing your double standards here. Yes, it sucks that a lot of men who ascribe to more toxic aspects of masculinity give and get high fives for “scoring” with chicks while women tend to get shamed for doing the exact same thing. That’s relatively indisputable in our society, even if views on toxic masculinity and feminine freedom are sloooowly changing.

But that doesn’t really have much to do with how men and women are depicted in this particular video game. Some men have their shirts off, sure, but would most people consider that titillating? Not really. If anything, its showing off their masculinity and their toughness.

The women on the other hand, by and large, are boiled down to sexual fetishes; objects. Giant, bouncing chests, BDSM gear, panty shots, etc and they do that through avatars that are often depicted as exceedingly young, even childish in their behavior at times.

It’s not a one to one comparison. Objectification isn’t empowerment. They’re not people who are owning their sexuality. They’re code created, largely by men, for the express purpose of titillating other men. That’s what’s so skeevy about it and that’s why some people are put off by it. It’s not because of some prudish attitude toward the female body.

Some people just find it distasteful, off-putting or just flat out wrong to depict women as little more than blow up dolls in a video game, much less one that’s supposed to be about fighting. It’s made all the more frustrating by the fact that the game itself, with it’s graphics and gameplay, is actually a really fun, well-made game.

Personally, I’d rather see the stigma of the female body addressed in video games by making them fit the context of the game they’re in more and being examples of female agency. Lara Croft in the last three Tomb Raider games is a perfect example. She’s still attractive, of course, but she’s strong, she’s tenacious, and her beauty comes from both her appearance and who she is throughout the story. She’s not just a scantily clad object bouncing around the screen for the amusement of men.

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I think Sadira has a pretty sexy character design. Behind the ripped stockings she’s got really nice legs (kind of a common thing in KI), she’s shapely, and her posing and dialogue (her instinct activation literally means “do you like it?”) is suggestive without being explicit. More than that, she’s attractive in a unique way, and not just a pretty face with triple D’s stuffed into a bikini or skimpy cosplay. The mask, the burning eyes, and the hood tell you something about the character, and even if she’s not exactly armored up the blades on her arms and feet tell you that yes, Sadira is coming to fight. Even if she does look ■■■■ good while doing it.

Maya is another good example of how to do a functionally sexy female FG character. She’s a literal Amazon, taller and more muscular than every other female in the cast, but still quite attractive and well proportioned. They show her confidence in who she is and what she can do through her intro dialogue, and while her armor is very elegant and streamlined, it also makes sense. It’s reminiscent of Greek or Roman armor with the jointed shoulders, feathered skirts, and greaves. It looks darn good, but it also makes sense within the context of the character - a monster hunter probably should be wearing armor, but given her very acrobatic style and the fact she’s based in the rain forest a lighter and more open style of armor makes sense. And hey, because her legs aren’t fully armored she’s even got a nasty scar on one of her thighs! Again, the character is attractive, shapely and toned, but what she’s wearing is unique, and makes sense within the context of who Maya is as a character and her gameplay.

The point isn’t that female character can’t be attractive or sexy. It’s that slapping someone destined to have lower back pain into a metal bikini or fetishwear or lingerie is a cheap and lazy way to make a character attractive that also makes absolutely no sense in the context of what these characters are doing. There are ways to make characters sexy that have nothing to do with running around half-naked. Nier does it by making the combat actions elegant and graceful and decking the super androids out in goth chic and some serious heels. It has fanservice to be sure, but B2 is an appealing character even if you never do the self-destruct thing. A2 may have lost her “skin” in a pattern suspiciously resembling a halter top and short shorts, but even with that trope they did interesting things with showing her joints and the segments of her construction. The character is unique, and even thrown amongst the legion of halter-top-and-short-shorts heroines out there you would be able to quickly identify her.

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I think the difference is how we choose to look at it. You see it as just a video game. A toy to be played with. I video games, really any media, as a window into another world. I don’t see designers making decisions, I see characters choosing how they want to act and express themselves. I don’t see a developer making the decision to titillate his buddy with a leather suit. I see Kasumi, making the choice to wear that suit to a fight because she likes the way it looks and how it makes her feel, and to show that she can still kick ■■■ regardless of whatever lame preconceived notions the people around her have.

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I can see why you’d choose to see it that way in terms of the world itself and how these characters might act or the choices they might make. But yeah, the reality is what it is and I’m sure you know what that reality is since a few of us have been kinda hammering on it for a while now.

I don’t think that the way the women dress in DOA is empowering or doing anything in terms of reducing the stigma for female sexuality. If anything, I think it adds to the massive amount of marketing in society that tell women of all shapes and sizes that this is what is beautiful, this is what men find attractive, and if you don’t look like this, then you’re somehow less than and you need to buy our stuff or escape to this to do better or feel better.

This is the type of stuff that detracts from a lot of women’s confidence, as opposed to giving them enjoyment over the escapism in to something more powerful. You see it as a helpful and fun escape and I respect your opinion on that. I’m just saying that from a societal standpoint, stuff like this does more harm than good for a multitude of reasons.

Plus, from a personal perspective, playing a game where women are depicted as looking / acting so young, yet so sexualized, just turns me away not only because of how gross it feels, but because of how outdated it feels in a video game landscape that’s making more and more strides toward female empowerment; of showing women can be attractive, but in different, more subtle ways, more practical ways, and making them look strong and badass while doing it.

I think the sexy male fantasy view of women in games is a bit outdated, a bit 90’s, and I notice it more and more when I see how certain games depict women, such as Street Fighter V, DOA, Soul Calibur VI, etc. I look at MK11 and Killer Instinct and I see some awesome designs, some unique designs that make these women look like warriors, which is how they should look (to me) given where they are in these games and what they’re doing.

It’s a bit harder for me to escape in to a world like this when certain aspects don’t make sense, such as female ninja warriors fighting in bikinis against fully clothed male warriors. I get that you’re escaping to the character while I’m maybe escaping to the world they’re in, but either way… I feel like I’ve seen the new way of doing things and find it kinda disappointing when I see something, especially in a game or series that I like, still doing things the old way. Again, that’s just me though.

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Then explain how I feel empowered by the way some of these “problematic” characters dress when I look like Jabba the Hut in a dress.

I’ll agree with you on the age/maturity thing. That’s kind of skeevy. I’m more so defending characters like Kasumi, Ivy Valentine, and Bayonetta… Especially Bayonetta…

Don’t take away my Bayonetta! Let her be free and express herself and don’t force her into suits of armor! Let me be sexy and show off and tease! At least in video games sense I’ll never have that kind of power in real life.

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I’m not saying everyone feels one way or the other. Of course there are people that feel empowered by these types of characters and prefer to play as them. I totally get that. I just don’t think the group you fall in to tends to be in the majority. I think most people don’t particularly love the idea of being hit over the had with a massive amount of marketing every day telling them that they’re not up to societal standards for beauty as a means of selling them stuff.

Honestly, I only played the first Baynetta a little bit. I don’t really have an opinion on her one way or the other. I’m not big in to Kasumi dressed as a school girl, as she has several of those outfits in most DOA games. I’m also not big in to Ivy dressing in steam punk BDSM gear, but again, that’s just me.

To be clear, I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t like what you like and I’m not trying to shame you for having the taste that you have. I totally get why you feel the way you do. You’ve articulated that reasoning very well IMHO.

I’m just telling you what I personally see when I look at women being depicted this way and giving my own reasoning for why I’m not a fan of it. No problems. :slight_smile:

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Really? Cause from my point of view it sounds like you are trying to take it away. “Oh, go ahead and like it. But we’re going to take it out of the series in favor off baggy gi’s and knight’s armor. We just want to be more realistic, you see. It’s not wrong that you like it, but we don’t and we’re going to make sure it’s never in another video game ever again.”

Look. I understand you’re just stating your opinions. But when you say you would rather have something else, that means that the people who like what they’re already getting are no longer getting what THEY want. And they will probably choose to fight you on it to make sure they can still get what they like.

And now I feel like an ■■■ because I continued to fight after you extended the olive branch… god I hate my life.

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WTF? Can I not express my opinion or are you only allowed to do that here? I’m not trying to take anything away from you. I don’t have that authority. I don’t work for Team Ninja or Project Soul or any other gaming company.

All I said was like what you like and you’re entitled to your opinion, but apparently I somehow managed to insult you in saying that. My bad, I guess.

No, it literally does not meant that at all. I’m not lobbying the developers. I’m not joining some massive chorus of people that they would see and possibly react to. I’m just stating my opinion on a board that has zero to do with DOA.

Don’t worry about it. It’s all good, really. We’re just having a conversation here. I’m sorry that I got riled up. Again, I’m not trying to take anything away from you. I don’t even have the power to if I wanted to. We just see this differently, that’s all. No worries.

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If you don’t think there is a stigma about pooping, why is there no pooping on TV? Also, please go ■■■■ on your neighbors lawn or in any public place and see what happens.

Look, it’s an analogy. Obviously it’s not identical in every way. But what it has in common is that everyone agrees it’s great - but only at the appropriate time and place. You ■■■■ in a bathroom. You have sex outside of public view.

And you’re doing what you often do, which is heaping a lot of baggage into the conversation that isn’t relevant and we weren’t talking about. No one is discussing who the DOA characters are allowed to have sex with, whether or not they should be monogamous, their sexual orientation, gender identity, whether they are ■■■■■ etc.

The discussion is about whether scantily clad female fighters is good, bad, necessary, unnecessary for a fighting game. I’m saying that the outrageously oversexed DOA characters are the sole reason I’m not buying the game, with oversexed, underaged female characters being the gross icing on the cake.

Not one single person on this forum has told you you are wrong for liking it. You, however, have told every single person they are wrong for not liking it. Insinuating that sex is normal and we should therefore be okay with it. I think that’s a bad argument. Pooping is normal and I’m fine with it. I’m not fine with you doing it in fromt of me, or in my car or on my video game screen.

If you are unable or unwilling to see the difference between “I hate oversexed depictions of women in games” and “I hate sex,” then I don’t know what else to say to you.

I understand that you have your own particular hang ups and that’s fine. You and I are clearly very different and I am okay with that. I am not trying to tell you how to live your life and what to like and I haven’t said there’s something wrong with you for wanting to play fighting games as barely clad dominatrix characters. But I don’t. I feel like you should at least offer me the same courtesy in return.

When I look at the world around me, I see all kinds of problems. I don’t think it’s a binary choice between Puritanism and ubiquitous sex. But if you want to show me depictions of women in media, particularly young women (the oldest DOA character is what? 26?) and teenage girls and pose the question “is it a bigger problem that these depictions are oversexualized or that we are too repressed about sex” I’m going to go with oversexed every time.

The DOA characters are context free, consequence free, heterosexual male fantasy driven depictions of women. I don’t think they are contributing towards a more open society or more mature dialogue about human sexuality. I do think they are contributing to continued unrealistic expectations for women, their bodies, their clothing and their behavior.

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I shouldn’t have to sit here and let a bunch of MEN tell me what is and isn’t okay for female characters to wear in a video game. And i would argue that we are way to repressed about sex and our own bodies.But fine, I’ll humor you. Tell me, how would you fix Dead or Alive so that it fixed the way they are dressed and characterized no longer perpetuates the problem, but still gives me what I want to get from these characters (women who take being sexy and use it to empower themselves, weaponizing the stigma against the closed minded).

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C’mon, really? We’re all just stating our opinions here. Can’t Andy state his without you telling him he’s forcing you to think his way?

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Is there a difference between “you’re wrong for liking that” and “your liking something wrong”?

Besides, his post was deliberately written to call me out and tell me how wrong my statement was. He’s comparing my breasts to literal shit!