Men are also sixualized in fantasy games, with their massive bulky muscles that they have to show off all the time. It's almost just as bad. I can't stop loving Diablo 3 for what they did with the female barbarians. That's what a fighting female is supposed to look like. They may have been slightly oversized, but you get my point. Still, their armors were kinda open with holes, but their bodies were right.

We have already seen more and less revealing female armors in ESO, just like in Skyrim. It's going to be fine, really.

What does this have to do with clothes and armor?

Your definition of 'tacky' is unique to you. The level of tackiness that annoys you is unique to you. The only way to do aesthetic is to try to cater to everyone (fair enough - MMOs are shared spaces. But where do you draw the line on variety? Dev-sanctioned furry cosplayers fighting for the Aldmeri Dominion?) or to follow the game's fiction. In TES, people die when swords cut them up. Therefore, warriors in TES who anticipate getting hit in battle should wear sufficiently protective armour. The end.

Just because you are female does not mean that you view femininity without cultural bias. You're entitled to your opinion, but don't believe yourself above subjectivity.

I don't know anything about TERA, but I quite clearly stated that I'm not taking issue with the game, but with the concept art direction, which speaks of the game's direction as a whole. This is actually a very sensible time to be loudly worrying about the game's direction, because this is the time in which we might make an iota of difference by taking offence when our intelligence is insulted.


That's actually a very good question. There should be more, because games are not the sole province of shallow teenage males.

I think it ties in with how women are always pictured as beautiful, gaunt sixy lasses.

Have you heard of male power fantasies? Because if not then a google search could probably inform you quite a lot on what makes Batman so popular... with men. This issue is so not gender equal.

Men are not modelled after sixual fantasies, but power fantasies. Believe me, most people aren't into the Hulkmuscle McGrimfaces and the alternative, the 30-something stubble-haired (American) soldier is just bland.

Men are modelled to be what generation CoD wants to be like (and explicitly no homo, so certainly nothing that anyone would find sixually attractive), women are modelled to be what generation CoD wants to get into bed.

This isn't sixualization. Massive muscles aren't attractive. They serve as a visualization of power - they show that males are strong and dominant. They're a sign of a leader.
Skimpy armors and unnaturally big cleavages, on the other hand, serve an entirely different purpose - they attract males. Women are therefore reduced to an object - portable boobs.

Both things are supposed to appeal to men. They fulfill their power fantasies by playing as bulky males, and their sixual desires by looking at half nakes females.

What does it not have to do with cloths and armor? Large women need armor too. How can they sqeeze into those skimpy outfits.

Yes, I'm sorry- sixualized may not have been the correct word, but I hope you got what I meant.

This sounds much like a real life political debate. Are we going to have congress pass a law for game developers to force them to create armour for female characters that is not revealing?

I say we put it to a vote and be done with it. Let the majority speak and the minority has to live with the decision.

Men are certainly stereotyped in video games, as well as woman. The difference is that men get the role of power, stoicism and grimd etermination, while women are degraded to objects of lust and fan-service. The field needs evening out, badly. And a little switch of stereotypes now and then

yes its very hard or impossible to mack ugly female character without mack them lock [censored]. Same whit making an old women, can only do a 20 y old character. But for men you have the ops to do whatever.

You seem to be blind on one gender-eye.

It is the right word.

Thank you, that was exactly what I meant. Had I been less tired from work I might've been able to put it down in words as well as you did.

It's not hat easy, though. Gaming is very backwards in terms of gender equality. The stereotypical portrayal of characters influences gamers' minds who then get catered to by even more stereotyping. Women are thought of as eye candy and submissive servants (see all the sandwich / [censored] or gtfo / kitchen remarks) while men expressing feminine qualities (gays, etc) are seen as failed men and treated as such. This is a midnset still ingrained into western society. While the women#s movement and similar actions have changed quite a lot, it is still there and in gaming it is very pronounced.

The majority of gamers are those games cater to. (Wannabe) manly men who are certainly not gay and see women as providers of six and sandwiches. Holding a majority vote would be useless.

If you define sixualization as gender stereotyping in general, then yes, it's sixualization. But it's clear that men, as opposed to women, aren't portrayed as sixual objects. There is no eroticism in unnaturally muscled men, there's highly stereotyped power.

Women aren't portrayed as "objects", either. Physical attractiveness (in all its sometimes stereotypical and often subjective forms) is the common denominator of male fantasies, not the be all end all characteristic. The tough amazone is as much a male fantasy as the obedient school girl.
One keyword you used is "unnaturally" muscled, by the way. There is indeed eroticism in especially, but naturally muscular men. However, comparing males and females in this manner completely ignores that men and women put different emphasis on physical traits when discerning attractiveness - power or status, what you only see as a means for men to fulfil their own desires, is in fact cross-culturally the most imporant factor women look for in a man.

Point is there is intrasixual competition within both sixes, and women strife to be beautiful just as much as men want to be powerful. Which is why young girls are, sadly, so easily influenced and harmed by false and unattainable beauty standards. So I could see a viable argument against skimpy clothing from that angle.

There.

Ppremature panic all the time, this happens when no further info is released and people get bored. That wallpaper has been around for ages and its just concept art. Its not guildwars or some korean mmo, relax. I like boobs anyway

That doesn't mean video games have to portray 95% of all men as Hulkmuscles Supermanly McGrimface in their 40s and 95% of all women youthful, scantly clad, big-briasted and full-lipped. I enjoy a grizzled, muscular warrior woman or a effeminate, graceful boy mage. But most games dare not include such characters even as one-time NPCs, let alone me play as such.

The problem isn't the depictions themselves, it is the enormous amout of them.


Prevention is better than remorse. Lets whine now, not when the damage is done.

Nobody's taking offence at the idea of people - women especially, in this case - wanting to be attractive. What doesn't make any sense and insults our intelligence is the idea that anybody sane gives a crap about looking attractive in the heat of battle. Bloody, burny, stabby, magicka-y battle.

We subconsciously infer from skimpy armours that the character wearing the armour is a moron. There is the issue.

I wholeheartedly agree. I wish I could finally play a skinny-as-carcass and old-as-time woodsman, so I'm curious how variable the character creator for ESO turns out, and how out outfit adapts to body size and shape.

I think in roleplaying games, we have a whole other dimension to this issue, because to actually portray the character we would like to have or be, we often exaggerate its features. If I want to stick out as a thick, bulky warrior amongst a sea of warriors, I have to go extreme or go home. But in general, players give a lot of crap about their appearance in MMOs.

And therein lies the issue as I outlined earlier. Do the dev team cater to as wide a range of player preferences as possible, or do they take their cues from the game's fiction and believability?

From an RP point of view, at least.

I'm all for maximum freedom in RPGs, and that includes raiding/PvPing/questing with your belly exposed (you should see my warrior in GW2 ) and I won't oppose skimpy armor ingame, rather I wat it, too. But not on fighting NPCs. Have vendors selling a few sets of skimpy armor, have NPCs in strip clubs or similiar ingame establishments wear them, but don't put them on promotional screenshots and artworks. Like SWTOR did it with the (female only *grumble*) slave dancer outfit. Only the dancing slaves wore it, not random NPCs in battle areas.

And, of course, I don't want to see armor making my man a heavily armored tank while only retexturing my woman's underwear, like in SWTOR

My character will be black, 7 feet tall, and I want an armor with a bulge to fit my junk. Enough said!