By omission, you are potentially implying that while the male depiction is absurd in proportion, the woman isn’t, which she rather clearly is, even moreso in the source art for the game referenced.
Perhaps you weren’t discussing the entirety of the comic.
Umm…It’s WHERE the absurd proportion is taking place…There are women, and ALOT of them and you know it, that have implants trying to mimic the anime girl presented in that illustration. They pay big money for it too…
Now, show me examples of costly testicular surgeries performed to mimic the “proportions” of that male in the illustration. Lol.
This was fun, but now you’re just being goofy.
Hm. While I understand what you’re saying, I politely disagree. Larger breasts are usually found to be very sexually appealing to men. To women, a very sexually appealing man would be a large, muscly, handsome or rugged tall man.
Millions of women have large breasts, no man should have cancer riddled giant testicles.
So I agree that fighting games are not exceptional in this respect.
But the second part I don’t agree with. This is actually a sore point with me so forgive me if I sound a bit overzealous here. First, there is no equivalence in depictions of male and female characters. Shirtless Ryu is NOT equivalent to R. Mika. Dudes don’t look at Zangief the same way women look at C. Viper. You can’t balance some imaginary gender scoreboard by throwing in a nearly naked male to somehow “balance” every super-sexed female. It simply doesn’t work that way.
Second - and you are the second poster to mention this in this thread - the fact that some women use their sexuality for personal gain has zero relevance to this discussion. The way female twitch streamers do or don’t use their cleavage to lure in viewers is not somehow the collective responsibility of all female gamers. And even if it was, we aren’t “evening the score” by objectifying any woman who shows up on a tournament stream. It’s apples and oranges.
Basically, what I said with my post too.
No harm done 
!
I don’t mean to “even the score”, but just used it as an example. Why is it different when a male character is almost naked and men do not mind, but when women show large cleavage, it is a travesty? Why is shirtless Ryu not equivalent to R. Mika? What makes the nudity of a male different than a female? Why can females not have “super-sexed” outfits like R. Mika, when in the game, it’s just a costume. It’s a show. Like WWE, does that mean it is not acceptable for the males to be shirtless when it is just a show costume?
Then shouldn’t that mean that the “hound, whistle-tootin’” males on twitch should not be the collective responsibillity of all MALE gamers? Of course this world is full of awful people, that doesn’t mean it’s right to not generalize one group over another. (sorry if this is coming off strongly) could you please explain why it’s not the same when a male is over sexualized opposed to a female?
Yeah, posted mine right as yours was posted >_<
I think this comic from shortpacked might to a better job of explaining the objectification differences. Men often seem to assume that what they consider powerful is the same thing women would lust after, so they might assume that because, say, Urien is mostly naked, that everything’s an even playing field, regardless of how many women actually find that design attractive.
Yeah but you’re both missing the point. First of all, no woman wants breasts like the sorceress from Dragon’s crown. If they even come close they will develop terrible back strain from lugging them around. The pressure on women that leads them to get breast augmentation is because of the way men perceive them.
The point of the cartoon is that we accept ridiculous caricatures of biologically impossible women because we find it appealing and men simply are not depicted the same way. Big muscles on warrior characters are an exaggerated characteristic that is USEFUL to the characters ability to fight. In this sense the barbarian female is roughly equivalent to a muscly male warrior. But the sorceress is just a gratuitous insanity.
And we will continue to see this nonsense as long as men pretend that this is not the case or try to pretend that the giant breasts on the sorceress are just like the giant muscles on the warrior. They aren’t. It isn’t equivalent.
This is easily proven to be false though…Not a good foundation for your opening.
Not all women are necessarily giving into “pressure” if they get breast augmentation…Some just like the look and are Ok with others liking that look. You’re making alot of sweeping assumptions and trying to paint women as victims a whole lot here, and I’m not sure why.
I think there’s an issue in that your argument seems to go back and forth between “some women aren’t like that” and “women in general are like this”. Some women do indeed want to augment their breasts for purely personal reasons, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But we can make an effort to try to decrease pressure felt by women who might feel the need to get surgery done that they wouldn’t actually want.
Does that mean men are lead to try and be a “Big tough, emotionless, workers”? No two people are the same. I think we are straying too much from the topic, personally. The best example I can think of sexualizing men is in pornographic media. Am I allowed to post that word? The standard for men in America is to have a 7-9 inch penis when on average most have 5-5.5! So there is a HUGE pressure on men for not living up to the “standard” of pleasuring women when scoffed at!
I feel as if we’re not looking at the bigger picture of sexual inequalities…
Actually, @MrQuaDriller’s comic pretty much sums this up. But men and women respond to images differently and internalize external perception differently. And they respond very differently to media. If you show boys a billion pictures of macho muscle men it does not impact their self esteem the way bombarding girls with images of airbrushed anorexic women with breast implants does. And despite a lot of pretending, what MOST women find sexy is not bulging muscles. Most women I know look at Zangief and think he’s gross not sexy.
I’m not going to engage any further in this discussion with you. No woman anywhere just “likes the way it looks” to have breasts like the sorceress from Dragon’s Crown. No such breasts have ever existed and you know it. You’re just being obtuse.
This is all a very difficult topic that could go on for a very long time, but instead of continuing our debate, I think i’m done with the discussion. We all made very good and different points that will hopefully broaden all of our horizons, but this is still a very strong and difficult subject to fully agree on. I appreciate all of our opinions and hope everybody has a wonderful afternoon.
Rock on, fellas.
Actually this is closer to relevant because a lot of men do worry about the size of their penis and feel bad about it because of media depictions (i.e. Porn). I’m going to refrain from my biologists digression on human sexual selection. But the relevant bit is that none of the SF characters have enormous crotch bulges to appeal to women. And no one realistically thinks that a SF game where the characters DID have huge and obvious crotch bulges would appeal to women. Which is more evidence that men and women look at images very differently.
If you want you can ask me =D . I get the daily quote “I can’t get beat by a woman” all the time, ppl harras me too in Xbox live. Even the AI treats me like an idiot guess breaker!!! =O if you don’t believe check this!: at minute 00:43 I’m shadow countered and the AI took the chance to troll me with a guess break! https://www.twitch.tv/killerqueen94/v/80114114
Translation of what I said “ahhhh, what you wanted me to break??! Get out of here!! you dumb machine!” (in argentine Spanish)
Ok, now talking seriously, I just wanted to state I’m a grown up woman (most of the time!) I needed to state this because ppl on chats or twitch or while playing refer to me as a man and I’m not telling otherwise because I got used to it and it doesn’t matter that much in a chat. In Spanish is easy because we have a better way to indentify verbs related to femenine while in English it’s the same. So in Spanish I don’t need to tell “I’m a Sis and not a Bro”. Of course at the arcades was easier, they could see me and hear me.
I was writing too much about how I got to KI, my arcade experiences and all but I’m going to try to stick to the thread and not make this too long.
I just wanted to say, talking about my whole experience and nowadays: the players from the fighting games community had been the most respectful I’ve ever met. And they also like the idea of women joining.
But the question is: are we , the women , eager to encourage another female players join in if they want it? My personal answer is yes. I hope the others share the same.
I’ve already wrote my thoughts about women in gaming. But I wouldn’t mind to write more.
As a final note I will highlight what happened in the last chat stream I was into: I saw a guy I played against and told him to play one day. He figured I was a woman and asked me which was my main. I told him Sabrewulf… He was surprised I dind’t use the female characters. And I must add: lets cut that out. It means that guys should play Jago and girls should play Orchid?? It’s a fighting game!! I’ll play the character I’ll feel more comfortable with because of their story, gamestyle, looks, whatever,
BTW, and this goes to RARE, I don’t like the way Orchid showed herself. I avoided playing with her because I disliked her attitude (she even showed her breasts to her brother! D=. But when I grew up I tried her out and loved her gamestyle XD. I currently like the new Orchid design overall.
BONUS notes.
The common things I’ve been told at the arcades were “I can’t be beaten by a girl!” or “you just get the special moves by luck and win”…(of course comming from the defeated players and spectators who didn’t want to play vs)
But I was also said A LOT: “Wow, I’ve never seen a girl playing this game before, that’s great!”.
The funniest one I have memory of was a guy that just came close to tell me “I want to shake your hand, I thought you would play horrible because you are a girl but you proved me wrong, congratulations”. (What on Earth!! O.o lol)
See, this is the proper way to design a character. This is what separates representation from tokenism. A character’s personality, background, abilities, and purpose should hold far greater precedent in their conception than their gender, race, orientation or whatever. A character’s archetype is a much more powerful defining feature than whether they’re a man or a woman.
Incidentally this is part of why I prefer the character designs in Killer Instinct over a lot of other fighting games. The character designs in KI fit their character background, and even with the artistic license that comes with making bombastic, flashy fighting game characters their role is still easily identifiable AND believable.
Let’s look at an example of two characters with very similar archetypes -in this case Orchid and Cammy- and see how their execution differs.
Both of them are conventionally attractive young women with shapely, athletic figures. More importantly, though, both of these characters are either current or former special forces agents with history in organizations similar to and/or involved with the military. Orchid is wearing kevlar plating and combat boots, with a bandolier to carry her grenades, a GPS on her wrist, and night-vision goggles for low-light conditions. Cammy is wearing a green leotard and a ceremonial beret, with boots and gloves.
Orchid is prepared for combat. Cammy is not.
Now, both of these characters have elements of their design that are obviously more for style than substance, like Orchid’s exposed cleavage and short-shorts, and Cammy’s atomic wedgy (and the universal omission of helmets. Seriously gals, that’s kinda important). However, even taking her somewhat lewd stylizations into account, Orchid still looks like a character who would be at home in a combat situation.
Maybe its a difference of motivation. Cammy is trying to stop Bison from taking over the world, Orchid is trying to stop a eugenicist AI and a demonic overlord from destroying life on earth. Perhaps Cammy doesn’t take Bison very seriously. After all, “It was Tuesday” 
Oh wait, this is a thread about being inclusive to women joining the KI community.
Invite them to play the game, show them some cool characters and compelling gameplay, don’t be a butthead. That should be a good start.
Completely unrelated but another argentine player woo!
That is all.
First off for the male part of the comic to be right it needs the following. A male that looks liked Tusk with a wallet that has 100’s sticking out and a caption that says “I have a job”.
Now that is just a joke, so please no hatemail
I would love to see more women play console games in general, but there are a few problems that need solved first. As a adult male, I get a lot of grief and funny looks for saying I play video games. So until the stigma of video games are nerdy goes away women will not start playing in masses.
There is also the way guys talk to female gamers. I know this from playing ESO. The minute a female’s voice is heard, then 10-15 guys rush over and start pestering them. I have played with people on ESO for over 6 months and no one ever asked my name or where I am from. A women will get asked that question by a guy every 5 min while she is playing.
Some guys need to understand that if you would not ask a male gamer a certain type of question, then don’t ask a female gamer. Other males need to let go of the idea that just because a female plays video games, does not mean she likes, or wants to talk to you.
Now, so everyone does not think I am just male bashing, here are so problems that some women cause. You have a few women that go on twitch just to show off what they look like, and flirt with guys. Their only goal is getting strangers to give them money. For example, I seen a stream of 2 women playing KI. After 10 min they played 1 match, but did mange to bend down in front of the camera every 30 sec or so. I was not against them playing KI, but the constant wining and flirting for money. Seeing this I get why some women don’t want to play games. The good female gamers don’t want to be associated with those money grubbers.
I did report them to twitch, and feel good that I possibly save some guys money.
Until some of this changes, I don’t think the female gamers will grow as fast as they should.
Girls just play less videogames, at least they did. No one told my sister not to play she was just a lot busier with the several dudes fawning over her, doing her every bidding while like most men we have to work at it (at least to some extent) and end up with more time to play video games and have something crazy like a hobby! My girlfriend and her two sisters do not play games at all, and i get home from work and ask her do you have like a hobby or something so i can do my thing instead of having to sit there giving you attention or watching friggin movies and passing out on the couch? In fact they look at me like a weirdo for wanting to play all day and that going out just doesn’t seem as fun as hopping on ranked or farming some cotton in starbound. I’m glad more and more women are into it these days but it is what it is. It was a mostly male dominated thing and the art reflects that. I love what ki is doing, but seriously change doesn’t come easy or fast. You know where i saw the most women? MMO’s. No shock there as it’s one big chat room. Hell even my sister plays WoW and she doesn’t play anything! So it’s no surprise she met her husband on it lolol.