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Is There Any Fanservice In Western Games For Straight Men Anymore?

Nickolaidas

Member
(Reads thread's title)

Four words: Ride to Hell Retribution.

A game where you basically murder a rapist and then immediately fuck the girl he was about to rape, with his brains splattered all over the floor as you get it on.

If that doesn't make you feel like you're freakin' Elvis, I don't know what does.
 

Saber

Gold Member
Kratos being a power fantasy (I never said male fantasy) was explicitly stated by Jaffe. I don't know why you think it's an excuse.

I would say teen girl magazines probably do sexualise guys because that is there intent,

My original point was that a lot of players wouldn't like it if Kratos was heavily sexualised in the next game. Would you agree with that or disagree with that?

And how do you know the games intent of male sexualization, hm?

Thats the problem with you and some here. What denotes a male character being sexualizated? Is it the looks? The body?

Until you describe to me what constitues a sexualization of male, I shouldn't answer to you.

Because in the end, there will be no male sexual character, just like Reera firmly believes. All sexy males are nothing but male fantasies or whatever the fantasy they want to excuse.
 

Woopah

Member
And how do you know the games intent of male sexualization, hm?

Thats the problem with you and some here. What denotes a male character being sexualizated? Is it the looks? The body?

Until you describe to me what constitues a sexualization of male, I shouldn't answer to you.

Because in the end, there will be no male sexual character, just like Reera firmly believes. All sexy males are nothing but male fantasies or whatever the fantasy they want to excuse.

I know the intent behind Kratos was a power fantasy because that's what David Jaffe said it was.

As for examples of sexualisation of men. I would say Magic Mike or Boyfriend Dungeon would count.
 
S

SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
Don't see the receipts I asked for but I'm glad you admit they don't exist. As always Jon Neu truly doe's neu nothing. Literally, he knows nothing about anything.

This thread, all of these "woke" threads are nerd crusades. But you're right. I said you guys are well into your cancel culture -and you are- but I never said you were actually successful. See, you come in these threads for your little circle jerks, wanting to get some of that sweet sweet echo chamber return about the latest game dev that commited a thought crime as you virtue signal to one another how much you hate the "SJWs" and "wokeness" but you're the fringe. No game dev is going to listen to you guys. A complaint about how a minority group with an actual, real history of persecution is shown in a game will always grab the ears of devs more than "D'ahhh WhY LaRa BoObZ No BiG?!" lol You think any devs are going to give you the time of day for dumb shit like that?

You guys would love nothing more than to fire devs, cancel games, makes games fail and shut down studios -that embarrassment of a thread about TLOU2 is a perfect example of that- but you have no power to do so. you guys would be laughed off Twitter or any mainstream social network, just like flat Earthers.

There are games with fanservice, there are games without. Learn to accept the vision devs have for their games and live with it without starting to cry about conspiracies because they aren't pandering to your sensibilities all the time. And if you think (and you're wrong) all games are pandering to some other group and no longer to you, then maybe it's time you leave gaming because game devs can pander to whoever they want, it's their choice.

Anyway, it's been real, guys. I'm done here, your arguments are repetitive, weak and I grow bored of the dogpile . I'mma leave this thread so you to can jack each other raw over who hates SJWs the most. See you in TLOU2 OT, when the wokest of the woke game by the SJW masterminds is out but you guys have so little self control and principles that you give those nasty SJWs your money anyway so they can make even more terrible lefty propaganda games (say what you want about those Twitter woke scolds, at least they stick to their guns).

I'll respond if Jon Neu can drop those receipts, but I know he can't because he's full of shit.
Mods please give him a custom title/taag

recap NEOGAF does NOT go on witch hunts and only posts NEOGAF's opinions within this forum despite you calling us cancel culture and comparing us to the WOKE people you so eagerly defend. You then proceeded to say we wouldn't do so because nobody would take us seriously unlike your WOKE friends. Interesting.
 
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Woopah

Member
I didn't want examples. I want you to explain what denotes sexual male character.

Sure. I'd say sexualisation is where a or the primary intent behind the design of the character and the way they are portrayed is to arouse the player. This covers not just the design of the character but also the personality, animations, place in the story and other aspects. This description could apply to any character.

Sexualisation can be good or bad and a lot of that will come down to context and player preference.
 
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Saber

Gold Member
Sure. I'd say sexualisation is where a or the primary intent behind the design of the character and the way they are portrayed is to arouse the player. This covers not just the design of the character but also the personality, animations, place in the story and other aspects. This description could apply to any character.

Lets clash with the description we have. According to some feelas here, this is the concept of female sexualization: big boobs, big butt and showing skin.

As you can see theres no description of personality, animations or place in story. The simple fact that a female has any of this traits regardless of how the character is presented is already considered a sexualization by some.

So explain to me, what does really constitutes male sexualization?

Let me tell you what people pretends to ignore: abs, butts, good looking face(or cute anime face) or manly face.

But you know why people don't want to consider this as traits? Simple, they want use sexualization as an excuse to make one side argument. Look at the whole discussion we have here. The only argument one side has is accusing people who prefers sexy females of being some sort of jankers, as if a sexy character equals to porn.

Meanwhile, no mention of male sexualization. Lol, you can even look at those Resetera threads about a hot movie actors. They put tons and tons of pictures of guy either showing abs or only in underwear while screaming "hot hot".
 

GymWolf

Member
i think kratos being half naked is just to demonstrate how powerfull he is just with his muscles and without the need of a an armour to protect him, i honestly never thought of him like some blatant male sexualization.

having your muscles on show is a male power fantasy too, it show pure unadultered physical strenght.
i would probably be more scared seeing kratos half naked and mad at me than that dude with that overdesigned ridicolous armour who probably hide a small penis and a beardless face 😆
 

Renozokii

Member
oh you play games for reality? me, i play games to experience something unreal. fantasy.

when i die, it isn't like real life, where i stay dead forever. i can come back. i can take a million gunshots. i can heal myself by eating a bag of potato chips in 1 second. i can swing a 7 foot long sword with no issue. i can double jump. i can throw fire balls. i can fall to my death and then magically reappear on the cliff that i just fell from. i can explore fantastic landscapes that have never existed and never will exist. there are like a zillion things i can do in fantasy that i can't do in real life. seems weird to suddenly draw a line at looking at hot women. something i do every day in real life is now off limits? hmm...

This is such a 2 dimensional and dumbed down argument that people use endlessly. First of all, a lot of the examples being thrown around are in games that are trying to deliver a cinematic, deep world to get immersed in. A lot of the situations you used are from games like fallout, elder scrolls. jrpgs, and games of that sort where in fact the females are still overwhelmingly "hot". Beyond that, there is a difference between core gameplay mechanics that allow games to be fun, and aesthetic/overall visual design. As a matter of fact, this website made my own argument for Battlefield 5. People here, on this very site, endlessly made threads and arguments that including women and crazy clothing in a game that otherwise goes for a visually realistic recreation of WW2 was immersion breaking and stupid. Yet in BFV you regain health, respawn, and can dive off endless heights and just pull a as many times as you want. No one wants a hyper realistic game where every detail of life is painstakingly recreated. But enough care can be given to make it feel like a world you could find yourself in, to help players get immersed. One of the examples I saw was Control, where people find the female lead ugly. Ignoring the game is going for an X-Files feel and there isn't mean to be any sex appeal found in the main character.
 

Woopah

Member
Lets clash with the description we have. According to some feelas here, this is the concept of female sexualization: big boobs, big butt and showing skin.

As you can see theres no description of personality, animations or place in story. The simple fact that a female has any of this traits regardless of how the character is presented is already considered a sexualization by some.

So explain to me, what does really constitutes male sexualization?

Let me tell you what people pretends to ignore: abs, butts, good looking face(or cute anime face) or manly face.

But you know why people don't want to consider this as traits? Simple, they want use sexualization as an excuse to make one side argument. Look at the whole discussion we have here. The only argument one side has is accusing people who prefers sexy females of being some sort of jankers, as if a sexy character equals to porn.

Meanwhile, no mention of male sexualization. Lol, you can even look at those Resetera threads about a hot movie actors. They put tons and tons of pictures of guy either showing abs or only in underwear while screaming "hot hot".

Would you agree with my definition then? And would you agree that sexualisation of Aloy in Horizon is something they could have put off a lot of players if the developers had gone down that route?
 

Renozokii

Member
That sucks it's an awkward situation for you. Back in the day, my girlfriend bought me Resident Evil Code: Veronica for my birthday. She used to enjoy watching me play it.

hqdefault.jpg

Is that what you feel is fan service? There are characters being discussion as examples of the problem here that wear skimpier clothes than that lmao. 0 cleavage, a sold 2 inches of midriff, and generic jeans? Shit, even sleeves?
 

Woopah

Member
Why would emphasizing sexual dimorphism be off-putting?

I'm not sure what you mean here. You can have sexual dimorphism without designing characters in skimpy outfits. My point is that there would have been a lot of players out off Horizon if Aloy was treated as a sex object instead of as a character.
 
I'm not sure what you mean here. You can have sexual dimorphism without designing characters in skimpy outfits. My point is that there would have been a lot of players out off Horizon if Aloy was treated as a sex object instead of as a character.
That is in the eye of the beholder.
 

GreenAlien

Member
My point is that there would have been a lot of players out off Horizon if Aloy was treated as a sex object instead of as a character.
Woke characters fail when they are only treated as vehicles for woke politics instead of "characters".

Plain characters aren't "good characters" by default, just because there is no "sexualization" going on. It's entirely possible to make good sexy characters and to make good plain characters.

Aloy has outfits (Carja Blazon) that show a little more skin in the game and I don't see how it impacts her "character" negatively.

The trick is this, generally, a sexy/good looking character can survive on sexiness alone, a plain character can't, thus, there is almost never a downside to making your main character good looking...
 
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Woopah

Member
A lot of woke characters fail because they are only treated as vehicles for woke politics instead of "characters".

It's entirely possible to make good sexy characters and to make good plain characters.

Aloy has outfits (Carja Blazon) that show a little more skin in the game and I don't see how it impacts her "character" negatively.

The trick is this, generally, a sexy character can survive on sexiness alone, a plain character can't, thus, there is almost never a downside to making your main character good looking...

Does Aloy count as a woke character?

I think attractive characters are fine and sexy characters are fine. And all of the costumes for Aloy were fine. I have no complaints about Horizon: Zero Dawn.

I just disagree with the OP that the developers should have given her more revealing clothes and that we should complain about them not doing so. I don't think skimpy clothes are a feature we should expect all games to have.

I really like Aloy how she is and I think lots of other players like her how she is too.
 

GreenAlien

Member
Does Aloy count as a woke character?
Not to me. I was trying to make a point about the design not having a lot to do with whether a character is a "good character" or not. It's mostly the writing that makes the character good, not the design.
But if the design is nice to look at, at least it has that going for it, even if the writing fails (or there is none). The same can't be said the other way around.
 

Woopah

Member
Not to me. I was trying to make a point about the design not having a lot to do with whether a character is a "good character" or not. It's mostly the writing that makes the character good, not the design.
But if the design is nice to look at, at least it has that going for it, even if the writing fails (or there is none). The same can't be said the other way around.

Sure I can agree with all of that. With Aloy I liked the design and the writing so we got the best of both worlds!
 

Saber

Gold Member
Would you agree with my definition then?


You said a male character is sexy because of personality or place in story. Who the heck ever define personality of fictional character as sexy?
No dude. You may want to experiment this talking to real girl and wait for an answer.

And would you agree that sexualisation of Aloy in Horizon is something they could have put off a lot of players if the developers had gone down that route?

I don't remember talking about Aloy. But if you want my imput, her attire is something I don't mind although I consider her very bland. But its not like I have anything against who dislikes. Each one with their own. And its not like if she appears half naked, along other characters would put me off either. I dunno if you ever watch movies or series, but those kind of things are pretty normal and people finds it normal.
 
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DryPancakes

Banned
I don't think skimpy clothes are a feature we should expect all games to have.

Same goes in the opposite direction, we shouldn't expect all games to have plain and boring female characters either, and we know there are groups out there who want exctly that.

More importantty tho, in the case of Aloy, it's a matter of aesthetics, when a game decides to go with a grounded/realistic style, outfits are going to be more conservative, and that should be respected, when a korean MMO is crazy fantasy nonsesne, expect characters and outfit designs to be crazy nonsense too, perfect fodder for sexy designs without much explanation needed, and that should be respected too. There's also the mix of both and that's when you start seeing more "understandable" conflict, like Quiet for example, it's still not justifiable to demand anythinng, but you can see how at least there's some semblance of sense in the backlash.

All that being said, I don't remember as much outrage demanding sexy designs than the opposite, the loudest are the pro-censorship anti-sexy crowd, I don't think that can be denied, not only that, we have no power, meanwhile they have journalists and tons of publishers and devs on their side.
 
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Yes. She does. We know how she looked like in all the concept art.
None of these went into production. I.e. it was not an artistic vision, but politics that designed the end result.
I would also like to add that the way Aloy was characterized in the game reminded me of Rey in The Last Jedi.
 

Woopah

Member
Yes. She does. We know how she looked like in all the concept art.
None of these went into production. I.e. it was not an artistic vision, but politics that designed the end result.
But there's lots of concept art with her wearing her current outfits too. So those artistic visions did make it into the game.
You said a male character is sexy because of personality or place in story. Who the heck ever define personality of fictional character as sexy?
No dude. You may want to experiment this talking to real girl and wait for an answer.

I don't remember talking about Aloy. But if you want my imput, her attire is something I don't mind although I consider her very bland. But its not like I have anything against who dislikes. Each one with their own. And its not like if she appears half naked, along other characters would put me off either. I dunno if you ever watch movies or series, but those kind of things are pretty normal and people finds it normal.
But you didn't ask me for a definition of a sexy male character. You asked me for a definition of what made a sexualised male character, so that's what I gave you. What is your definition of that?

The word "sexualised" and the word "sexy" are not the same.

I was talking about Aloy because that is the character mentioned in the OP.

Same goes in the opposite direction, we shouldn't expect all games to have plain and boring female characters either, and we know there are groups out there who want exctly that.

More importantty tho, in the case of Aloy, it's a matter of aesthetics, when a game decides to go with a grounded/realistic style, outfits are going to be more conservative, and that should be respected, when a korean MMO is crazy fantasy nonsesne, expect characters and outfit designs to be crazy nonsense too, perfect fodder for sexy designs without much explanation needed, and that should be respected too. There's also the mix of both and that's when you start seeing more "understandable" conflict, like Quiet for example, it's still not justifiable to demand anythinng, but you can see how at least there's some semblance of sense in the backlash.

All that being said, I don't remember as much outrage demanding sexy designs than the opposite, the loudest are the pro-censorship anti-sexy crowd, I don't think that can be denied, not only that, we have no power, meanwhile they have journalists and tons of publishers and devs on their side.

There's definitely some balance to be found. You can have characters that are plain without being boring.

Different games are going to go with different styles which is fine and as I said earlier not all sexualisation is bad. My main point was that skimpy outfits in games isn't something we should "expect" to see in all games, not that skimpy outfits shouldn't appear at all.

There are people out there who think that, but I'm not one of them.
 
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psorcerer

Banned
But there's lots of concept art with her wearing her current outfits too. So those artistic visions did make it into the game.

It's not about outfit. It's about how she looks like in these outfits. The fact is I have seen no concept art (art, not offline renders) that looks like what we got in the game.
 
Ofc, Kratos is a male power fantasy (,too).

Here's the twist: Sexy female characters are a female power fantasy, too!

I'm far from Kratos, the opposite, really (sadlol). But it's cool to play as this strong guy with a perfect body that I'd certainly love to have myself. The same goes for women: They get to enjoy playing as a sexy girl with a body they'd love to have, but don't.

It's wrong to put equal what a power fantasy is for each of the 2 genders: Men love to be powerful, strong, intimidating. Women love to be beautiful, desired, in command.
OF COURSE, there's exceptions, I myself am one, I prefer weak, whimsy male heroes. And if you're a woman who prefers the rude butch lesbian-type, that's ok, too. But let's stop with the whole 'men and women like the same thing' - that's generally not true. And that's ok.

(this posting is about the aesthetics of game characters mainly)
 

raduque

Member
And yet people love to call out these "SJW activists" working on games with the intent that they leave. Neil Druckmann is also often called to leave gaming. Also plenty of people who can't be fired have been victims of cancel culture. Contrapoints is a Youtuber, she can't be fired yet people still tried to cancel her by... You guessed it, calling a boycott on her content.

You're just trying to redefine yourself out of a term.

Just a small clarification here. Cancel culture doesn't involve boycotts, such as with your Contrapoints example. Cancel culture involves doxing, outing people, de-platforming, removing sources of income (getting them fired, advertisers pulled, patreons closed, etc) and dragging past "problematic" behaviors into the public light in order to silence, remove or destroy somebody.

Big difference in that and a boycott.
 
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