***Editors’ Note**: This article first appeared in [The Loop Magazine](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-loop-magazine/id641340497?mt=8) Issue 16. You can find out more about Brianna Wu from her [Web site](http://www.revolution60.com), read [more articles on Medium](https://medium.com/the-magazine/1b56d8c8a1fb) and [follow her on Twitter](https://twitter.com/giantspacekat).*
The scruffy twenty-something, wandered by our Pax East booth, looking up at the banner for our game. Ten feet tall, rising above the Pax floor, three tall, skinny women look jauntily at the camera. Two wear form-fitting combat suits. Another wears a ’60s Checkerboard dress.
“It’s pretty clear what audience you’re going for,” he sneered at Maria, my lead engineer.
She looked at him, puzzled for a beat, figuring out he meant he found the characters sexy.
“Oh. Well, actually, the dev team is entirely made of women,” she responded. “These are our character designs.”
“Yeah. OK. Whatever,” he said, smirking to himself and wandering off.
It’s not a reaction I always get, but it happens often enough that I’m not surprised by it any more. I never set out to design videogame characters that were sexy. Like creating a character in an MMO, I simply tried to create the prettiest 3D characters I could. In retrospect, learning to draw from Sailor Moon manga, models in fashion spreads, and Image comics affected my artistic perceptions.
In [Revolution 60](http://www.revolution60.com), our characters are all women, our voice actresses are all women. We pass the [Bechdel feminism test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test) with an A+. We have 100 pages of animated script where you get to know our characters as people. They are soldiers trying to survive the situation they’ve been thrown into.
And yet, my team prepares itself for the double and triple standards we know are inevitable.
### It Has Begun
We live in a hyper-politicized environment regarding women in video games, where no matter what choices you make, they will undergo scrutiny. No one signifies this political friction more than Anita Sarkeesian, host of the excellent YouTube Channel “Feminist Frequency.” Sarkeesian vaulted into the public consciousness while trying to raise money to do a documentary about women in games.
Male gamers were immensely threatened, following up with rape threats, a volcano of anger, and even games that welcomed the player to deform Sarkeesian’s face by punching it. All the obloquy rocketed Sarkeesian to feminist superstardom, and a series of excellent videos examining videogame tropes about women followed.
Sarkeesian has been called the Rosa Parks of video game feminism, a description I find apt. It seems like I can’t be a guest at a convention these days without being assigned to several panels about sexism in video games. I’ve probably done 20 hours of panels on the subject in the last two years.
It’s a great thing. The tide is turning, consciousness is being raised. But, as I speak at conventions, interacting with audiences, it feels like a common, misguided theme dominates these discussions.
### The Wrong Question
This erroneous question is aptly demonstrated by the conversation over the last decade about Tomb Raider. Here’s how it typically goes:
“Are Lara Croft’s breasts too large? Definitely—that’s a cheap ploy to market to men! Maybe they should be smaller. Actually, if they were a little smaller, more teardrop shaped and proportional to her butt, they’d look great. Oh, and if you can relate to her as a human being, wow. That would make her even sexier!” (Footnote: This last sentence was an actual statement by a Tomb Raider developer.)
This is not a conversation that advances the mission of gender equality. I call it “male gaze” feminism. It dovetails neatly with body image feminism, which is naturally hostile to the unrealistic proportions popular with many 3D models.
A male friend of mine was loudly complaining about the female clerk at Gamestop. She was showing a little cleavage which he felt illustrated a manipulation attempt from her to get him to preorder. He was upset about the sexual power she had over him. The heart of the Tomb Raider discussion, I realized, isn’t really about protecting women as much as protecting men.
It strikes me that the most prevalent standard in videogame feminism is literally about judging women by their looks. Not asking if we can relate to them as people, not asking if they are based on flimsy stereotypes, not asking if women had a role in the development process, but looking at their body and judging if the sexiness level is acceptable.
Equally troubling to me is the common solution: throw enough armor on a woman, desexualize her and that makes her equal. While I’ve played enough Soul Caliber 5 and Dead or Alive to strongly appreciate the attempt to make female character design less blatantly pornographic, I can’t help but be skeptical of the motivations.
To be clear, oversexualized female images are commonplace in games, and it’s a serious problem. Game development is an industry that is funded by men, developed by men, with characters that are modeled by men, animated by men and ultimately evaluated by male journalists. And the results speak for themselves. But even in admitting that’s a serious problem, I don’t think female sexuality in itself is something we should try to stamp out in games.
### Playing It Safe
If you are going to dare put a female in your videogame, the politically safest course of action is to create a character similar to Lili, the excellent self-titled iOS title of 2013, made with Unreal. Lili is the kind of protagonist any parent would find safe enough for their daughter. Lili is cute, but in a non-sexual way. Lili avoids any stereotype besides cheery spunk. Lili is pleasant and only shows strong opinions on subjects we can all agree on, such as “Bullies are bad.”
Lili plays it safe. Lili is a child created for children. In a world where the most common advice for women in tech isn’t to fight for our own equality, but rather to get our daughters more interested in computers and punt for the next generation, Lili is the poster child for that message.
I love Lili as a game—it’s a masterpiece, and I would recommend it to anyone with a child. But, as a game developer creating content for adults, I’m not content to tell stories with only the safest, most non-offensive female characters imaginable.
### Destructive Conflict
Ultimately, I fear we’re creating a world in which we demand that video-game women be created in our political image—a standard men in games are not held to.
There’s nothing innately wrong with preferring that women’s armor in games be comparable with men. There is nothing wrong with preferring cute, child-like characters like Lili. But, if those are the only images of femininity you’re comfortable with, I would argue that’s not a reasonable position. I’d argue that even pornographic characters like Soul Caliber’s Ivy have their place. Ultimately, this is an issue of choice.
As more women move into game development, taking their place as modelers, programers, animators, CEOs, and even journalists, we’re going to continue to see a wider range of female archetypes come forth. And some of those archetypes are not going to look like what the Anita Sarkeesian’s of the world are most comfortable with. Yes, there is a politically safest image for a woman in a video game, but it’s not necessarily the correct one. And we’ll know we’ve made progress when it doesn’t have to be the only one.
Jim Lee had a legendary run on the X-Men comics in the early ’90s, comics that massively affected the arc of my creative development. I remember seeing his iconic images of Psylocke, machine gun in hand, teeth gritted in steely determination as she fights Cameron Hodge—drawn so perfectly, they will transcend the ages as masterpieces.
Hair wildly akimbo, muscles taut—one could certainly find these images of Psylocke sexual, but I find them powerfully inspirational. I find them to perfectly capture the beauty of the female form. And yet, these are the same images I’m attempting to convey in my own video game. To me, this is my artistic ideal of femininity.
I don’t need you to like it. I don’t need it to be your ideal. But I do need you to respect that my ideal might not be your ideal.
Characters in entertainment products can fulfil different needs and expectations of the audience, including being decorative.
The importance of this is reflected in the fact that pretty much all heavy hitters in acting and singing are very beautiful/handsome.
Eye candy for both sexes sells films and music, so it can well sell games.
The fact that gaming is male dominated is not a “serious problem” for anyone. It may make it a bit weird or hard for you to reconcile how and what you would prefer to express with what the market will pay for, but I believe that’s why it’s called “work”.
The biggest breakthrough in this whole feminism bullshit will come when women finally stop taking themselves so seriously.
So please, stop losing sleep about how men design Lara Croft and go design fifty shady male characters that will capture the hearts, imaginations and wallets of female gamers.
This is how I read your post: “There’s no problem. Women just need to stop pretending there is one and lighten up.”
In other words, you believe women should change their viewpoint to accommodate your line of thinking. Your idea of “the market” doesn’t include women. But in reality, it does. And these women want to be better represented in games. They want to create games that appeal more to them without being dismissed as militant feminists or getting rape threats. Instead of actually thinking about that a little bit, instead you are redefining the market as men who think like you, and anyone who thinks differently (specifically women) is an “outsider” to be ignored or dismissed. That’s below childish. My own children would be grounded if they spewed misogynistic BS.
I think you’re completely missing the point of the article. It’s not about eye candy (the opposite). It’s not about losing sleep. It’s not even really about feminism. It’s about a woman who makes videogames and talks about her experience, and her goals, and her motivation.
Your comment is quite instructive, though. It’s a pretty good representation of the kind of bs women have to put up with. You’re telling women what they’re allowed to care for, what they’re allowed to see as a problem, and what they’re allowed to take seriously. You’re explicitly saying that having equal political, economic, and social rights for women (i.e. feminism) is bullshit.
You’re saying there’s no problem. I’m saying you are the problem.
Being a woman is not by itself some magical immunity from sexism. Women are equal to men in their capacity to be sexist, just like women are equal to men in all the other ways. You have to be proactively anti-sexist during your development process whether you are a woman or a man. The user will see your characters, not the gender of the dev team.
Similarly, a dev team made up entirely of people with dark skin does not immunize you against racism. You could create a set of characters who all have dark skin, and if you’re not proactively anti-racist you could still do something racist like make the darkest-skinned character the janitor and your lightest-skinned character the main hero(ine) and no amount of excuses about what the dev team looks like will make that right either.
“The fact that gaming is male dominated is not a ‘serious problem’ for anyone.”
I love the narcissism here. Speaking for the entire population, are you?
I regularly choose female avatars in my games, from Quake 3 Arena to Eve Online.
No, I don’t know what this has to do with anything in the article…
Care to explain how a vast preponderance of males – rather than as the article actually points out, a minority of complete assholes – is a serious problem for anyone, now?
“Are Lara Croft’s breasts too large? Definitely—that’s a cheap ploy to market to men! Maybe they should be smaller. Actually, if they were a little smaller, more teardrop shaped and proportional to her butt, they’d look great. Oh, and if you can relate to her as a human being, wow. That would make her even sexier!”
This reminds of the “real” models that were tossed around as examples of progressive thought in fashion design in the 90s, where wisp thin preternaturally tall women were replaced with wisp thin preternaturally tall women with enormous breasts, marketing attempts almost certainly driven by men.
Nobody said women can’t be sexist.
Thanks for providing examples of the real world dipsticks that routinely dismiss these issues as fabrications.
Any creative endeavor whose products I might be interested in would probably be better served if its creator population was more diverse. Better stories can be told if most of the storytellers aren’t living inside a bubble of their own making.
I’d like to think I’m not the only person who feels this way. Unless you know for a fact that I am.
It actually does have something to do with it. It sends a message that people want gaming to include avatars of various sexes and types.
What i got from this (and most other articles you’ll read on something like Jezebel):
Men – you are too tiny-minded and over-sexualized to have rational thoughts on this. Sit there and be told how to think, even if it goes against all of the DNA in your body – that is, our DNA makes us sexualized, so we’re bad.
Wait… now i’m confused because i had it beaten into my head that if we were “born that way” – that “that way” was okay?
Except for normal, heterosexual (and i would assume, white) men. Your natural thoughts are awful, even if you can be and act professionally and controllably in all situations.
For example: cleavage Gamestop person.
Non-man: “You looked!? Evil man! You noticed!? Evil man! That cleavage is not there for you to look at, its for her to express herself. Get your mind out of the gutter and look at her eyes.”
Man: “Muhammed Tapdancing Allah. Just kill me because i have no idea what to do or think or say any longer.”
Women can only be sexist if they are being sexist in a way that would align with the sexism of men.
Otherwise, no, women can’t be sexist (legally), just as JohnDoey’s example that people with dark skin can’t be racist. They can’t. No amount of white people complaining about something could ever (legally) make something that one or many dark skinned people say or do racist.
I keep saying “legally” because in the end, it what can get you fired from your job that matters – you can’t even construct a giggle-free scenario where a woman could sexually harass a man at a job to the point where she would be fired. So even if you wanted to call something she did “sexist” – what’s the point if there is no useable, viable reality to saying it?
This is a different argument than what the article is about. As I said, nobody here said women can’t be sexist until you responded. I disagree with your argument, but I’m not going to derail the discussion by talking about it further.
So if men make video games with female characters in skimpy clothing with oversize breasts and tiny waists, that’s sexualizing women. If women do it, it’s creating powerful, inspiring characters.
If men make video games with female characters in non-sexual clothing with normally proportioned bodies, it’s because they’re too intimidated by powerful, sexy women and need to be protected. If women do it, they’re taking a common, easy way out.
Confusing. I wonder what Anita Sarkeesian thinks of the Revolution 60 characters.
It seems to me that except at video game conferences, people buying Revolution 60 won’t know that the development team is all female – all they’ll have to go on are the promo images / videos. And they look like the stereotypical female video game characters from any other developer, so what’s that done for women’s causes?
Maybe we should just stop worrying about what video game characters look like…
What you should get from this: women in the game industry are treated poorly. People who do this and those who agree with this behaviour should smarten up. Women just want some games that appeal to them, and they want to talk about them without being threatened or treated badly.
As for the cleavage situation, here’s how it works: Some women like to show cleavage. You can even look at and enjoy looking at the cleavage she chose to bear. You are not evil for it. But what you should not do is treat her as if all she has to offer is cleavage. Treat her in the context in which you are meeting: e.g. if she is a store clerk, ask her any product related questions you may have (don’t go looking for a male employee), and treat her with common courtesy when buying something from her.
Is that so difficult? And I’m a normal, heterosexual man. So where does that put me?
It’s not that confusing. The point is about designing realistic female characters act like realistic women. The point is not about designing female characters that act like they exist fulfill the sexual desires and egos of men. (Assuming the game’s purpose is not pornographic in nature.)
I’m pretty sure Jim Lee isn’t a woman.
I don’t know…I think there are several things going on
here that should be picked apart. First, it’s a little simplistic to say that people judge female characters entirely on looks without looking at the character behind it. IE, that if the character has a Barbie-style figure they judge her for it without looking at the way the character is portrayed. I mean
yes, we as a society are way too wrapped up with how women look, imposing a double standard on them such that they are damned if they are deemed ‘hot’ and damned if they are ‘not hot.’
The problem is that when it comes to the design of a character there’s a tremendous amount of historical baggage that goes with it. You can argue that a character shouldn’t be judged on appearances, but when those appearances have historically been used to objectify women, that argument runs in to difficulty. For example, what if a game had rich, fully realized female characters that had the proportions of the characters in Dragon’s Crown? Could we honestly see past the character design?
I’m not even saying that there should be no ‘sexy’ women in
a game- if it makes sense for the character and their personality, then sure. But when the entire female cast of a game is designed with beach ball boobs, I find myself as a female player turning away.
Comfort is insular. Without dissenting opinions, alternate perspectives, it’s easy to lull yourself into believing all is well. The fundamental activity of playing video games does not play to the physiognomy of either gender; why, then, such a disparity in participation?
The facile argument is disinterest. Actual conversation with the ostensibly disinterested reveals hostile, violent exclusion. All is NOT well in paradise.
It’s a serious problem because it masks a host of more serious problems. Male gamers treat women either with outright violence (rape threats, death threats) or with objectifying discomfort, requiring that they conform to limited notions of female acceptability. And because the majority up and down the game development stack—platform vendors, designers, developers, publishers, marketers, distributors, journalists—are male, they don’t interact enough with female perspectives (there isn’t only one) to recognize how toxic this all is.
Your assessment that its okay to enjoy looking is faulty. Not only is it wrong to enjoy looking, its wrong to even look! Years of sensitivity training (for men) at my jobs has made this bloody damn clear. Your assertion is just simply wrong. Take them into any job or training situation, and you’ll be corrected and reproached.
Here is my issue – the “issue” literally has nothing to do with any woman alive. Even if you treat women with respect and courtesy – which real men should and do – the issue is not women – the issue is men.
Mens thoughts and simple existence are sexist by default. Any built-in desires you may have are the problem.
I heard a woman in a bar complain to her friend something along the lines of “No…but the whole time, i could tell all he wanted to do was ogle my tits. Pervert.”
Pervert? For not doing what she “knew” were his thoughts.
That the whoever-he-was chose not to ogle her bits that were, apparently, exposed wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough that he controlled his innate, “born this way” urge, and treated her (apparently) with respect and courtesy in whatever the situation was…
And that was not enough.
He needed to change who he was. He needed to surrender his thoughts and individuality to her in order for her to not be offended.
Honestly, you’re criminally insane if you other than robotically approach a woman in the workplace on issues related to the job.
I don’t code large breasted computer generated charters for a living.
how are Rev60’s female chars remotely realistic, visually?
Yes, I am the problem for feminists.
I am also the majority and all the power and money that comes with it.
Militant feminists should be dismissed and made fun of.
The market defines itself by the purchase decisions of all of us. Feminists try to bully and shame people into buying their propaganda and I’m supporting all who resist them.
Absolutely. For the entire population that has not been sheltered enough to have actually experienced a “serious problem” in their lifetime at least once.
Violence should be dealt according to the law.
Everything else is the usual feminine whining, in this case about being excluded or unwelcome.
Being included or welcome is not a right.
They are not fabrications. They are very real in the hearts and minds of those experiencing them.
That doesn’t mean we should acknowledge them as “our problems” instead of dismissing them as the entitled whining that they are.
Women are now equal so it’s high time they man up.
There are many kinds of violence. Some are practiced from behind the safety of a keyboard. Too many others are waved off with “boys will be boys” and a light sentence.
Your “not a serious problem” is the usual pre-masculine whining.
And if a game’s manufacturer hasn’t specifically excluded anyone, inclusion is indeed a right for anyone who can pay. That they’re unwelcome is due to a game community’s easily-threatened, territorial immaturity. Which is a point you continue to make with almost everything you post here.
You also state that “women are now equal.”
I can only hope you’re too lazy to vote and too self-centered to raise children.
Bullying and shaming is hardly unique to angry feminists.
“Usual feminine whining.”
“Being included or welcome is not a right.”
Ah, the words of someone blind to the luck that has occasioned their status in life. The luck of being male. Most likely the luck of being white.
Nobody is asking to “be included.” The ask is that you stop attempting to forcibly exclude, particularly by resorting to threats of violence. Everyone has the same right to participation and speech.
They’re not, but their look doesn’t define them. The presumption is that they act realistically, that they are fully realized characters with interior lives and narratives and motivations, and don’t exist purely to serve as props for the player’s visual gratification.
Not at all, I am well aware of my fortune and privileges, but I’m not daft enough to feel guilty about them.
Everyone has the right to speak but not the right to be listened by anyone.
If don’t agree with the laws, change them. See if the rest of your countrymen agree with your ridiculously expanded definition of “violence”.
We all have to pick our battles because we only have so much time in the day and on this planet.
Hope is not a plan.
Wow, dude. Your evidence is “a women in the bar.” There are men and women who have varying degrees of social skills, and you choose “a woman in a bar” as your example of all women. This is why there’s a problem. Too many men view all women the same, and they base it on their worst experience socializing with women.
Actually, some us choose to listen and try to understand instead of “picking a battle.” There doesn’t need to be a battle.
You should be asking yourself is why you feel threatened by them and why you should be “against” them? If you don’t think you are, your posts here certainly make it seem so.
These so-called “militant feminists” are part of the market that you claim is defining itself. Markets exist because of input from both sides. If people want more rounded female characters, then there’s a market opportunity for vendors to provide. Why do you want to fight the display of a need in the market that you claim “defines itself?”
Redlethe, I’m the author, and I think that’s well said. Personally, I had an all but impossible time holding my nose and playing Dragon’s Crown this year. But, I did, and there was an excellent game underneath all of that. It’s sad they picked such an exploitative art style.
I will tell you this. This game was funded as a startup, and we recycled the body types across our main characters. For Rev62, one of our goals is increased diversity. That means having men, different body types, and people of other races in the cast.
I never set out to make my company as a political statement. But, three years later, I see we have a leadership role to play on this issue. Stay tuned.
I understand quite well, both people like yourself and the militant feminists. It is you who doesn’t understand me and presume that my position comes from ignorance and hate.
I oppose what I don’t like and I don’t need to give anybody any explanation about it.
The author of the piece is free to create whatever video games characters she desires. That’s fine by me. What’s not fine is the attempt to bully and shame people into accepting them and even praising them as social progress.
I don’t think you should feel guilty, but I don’t think you should use your privilege to try to silence the speech of others, either. Your privilege is not under assault—others gaining in privilege does not decrease yours—and your hostility serves only to preserve it’s relative (rather than absolute) value.
You’re clearly smart. Add empathy to your intellect.
My wife and I looked at this game a while back, and decided it wasn’t appropriate for our pre-teen and teenage kids. We had no idea it was designed by women. The body images just aren’t realistic. “Too hoochy” was what my wife said. I agree.
This quote from the article sums it up: “In retrospect, learning to draw from Sailor Moon manga, models in fashion spreads, and Image comics affected my artistic perceptions.”
We’ll certainly take another look at a future version of the game if it uses normal/diverse body types.
I have plenty of empathy.
I empathise with both the girls having a hard time in gaming and those giving them a hard time. Personally I spend no time encouraging or discouraging anyone to participate.
Teasing and other sorts of immature and silly trash talk is considered fine in almost all other contexts. That is why I believe the whole fuss is bullshit feminist whining.
I do not demonise my opponents, but I still fight them.
Women are now equal
Yes. I remember just the other day when a male reviewer gave a game a bad review and was inundated for days with rape and death threats and people posting his home address on line.
I don’t know if your head is in the sand or up your own ass.
My studio’s mission not to cater content to your pre-teens and teens. If you are looking for kid-safe censored content, Revolution 60 is not the droid you’re looking for. There are a million titles better suited for that world, generally in gorgeous, sugary pastel colors.
PG-13 is the studio’s internal rule.
This is a serious game. People die. Your choices have serious consequences.
When I was a teenager, I was utterly engrossed in the maturity of Final Fantasy 6. Kefka literally killed everyone on the planet. And you got to see the consequences of that up close. It was very powerful for me.
I appreciate what you’re saying as a parent. But my creative decisions are not about your children, with all respect.
My kids are 13 (almost), 14, 14, and 15. I have no problem with a serious narrative, death, sexuality, hard choices, etc. I’m not looking for a hyper-kiddie world, please don’t put words in my mouth, they taste awful.
My problem is the portrayal of women (body type), it is not realistic. As you’ve said, in your next version you plan to introduce more diverse body types. So that will solve my only problem with the game. Basically we agree. Thanks.
So what’s unequal about all of that? People get doxed and threatened.
It’s equal opportunity abuse, but still severely imbalanced female whining.
Half of the human population is not a bubble.
Many people claim they value diversity just to feel more progressive and enlightened but in reality meet any different ideas with the same primitive howls of disapproval.
Ahem.
Can I just say, Oluseyi, that I created a Disqus account only to tell you how incredibly succinct and incredible this singular comment is? That is all. Keep up the good work.
Thanks! I really needed that pick up; hostilities elsewhere have caused me to withdraw from these sorts of conversations.
Cheers 🙂