Transcript

CLIP: Batman: Arkham Knight
“Well handsome, what are we waiting for?”

If you want to get to know a character, learn about their interests, goals, or desires, their butt is probably not going to give you that information. It won’t tell you much about who they are, or what they’re thinking or feeling at any given time. But video game designers often choose to put tremendous focus on the butts of certain characters, while going to almost absurd lengths to avoid calling attention to the butts of others. These carefully crafted choices developers make about camera angles and clothing significantly impact how players think about and relate to these characters.

Third-person games with female protagonists typically display those characters in a way that gives players a full-body view. A classic example of this is the original Tomb Raider games, which are presented from a third-person perspective wherein protagonist Lara Croft’s entire body is visible. In these early Tomb Raider games, Lara’s butt is typically right in the center of the screen, a camera orientation which, along with the sexualized clothing the designers chose to outfit her in, places a tremendous amount of emphasis on that part of her body.

In dozens of third-person games with playable female characters, the character’s butt is brought to the forefront and that’s where the player’s focus is directed. In Batman: Arkham City for instance, the player’s gaze is drawn to Catwoman’s behind, which is emphasized by her costume and exaggerated hip sway.

CLIP: Golden Axe: Beast Rider
“The ceremony! The sisterhood will never forgive me if I am late.”

Golden Axe: Beast Rider makes extremely sure that we notice the protagonist’s butt just before we take control and start playing. And here in Tomb Raider: Underworld, to say that Lara’s butt is being emphasized would be putting it mildly.

CLIP: Tomb Raider: Underworld
“Incredible. The carvings are clearly similar to early Germanic design, but this is far older than the fifth century.”

And this happens all too often.

CLIP: Remember Me
“You can’t miss it.”

Let’s contrast the way that women’s butts are emphasized with the sometimes absurd lengths taken to cover up or hide men’s butts. If some of this footage looks jerky, that’s because in some games, trying to get a glimpse of male characters’ butts can feel a bit like wrestling with the camera.

Common ways men’s butts are hidden are by preventing the player from seeing below the character’s waistline, or employing a more over-the-shoulder camera angle, which has the added benefit of keeping the character’s butt safely out of the frame. The most amusing solution is to simply include a cape, tunic, long coat or very conveniently positioned piece of tattered fabric which actively prevents the player from getting a clear or sustained look at the protagonist’s butt. For the purposes of this video I tried to get a glimpse of Batman’s rear end, but it’s as if his cape is a high-tech piece of Wayne Industries equipment designed to cover up his butt at all costs. I like to jokingly refer to this aspect of a male character’s costume as the strategic butt covering.

Of course, not all games with male protagonists keep the character’s butt obscured or out of frame like these games do. The real issue is one of emphasis and definition; a significant portion of third-person games with female protagonists call attention to those characters’ butts in a way that’s meant to be sexually appealing to the presumed straight male player. In this regard, the way that women’s bodies are depicted is significantly different from the way that men’s bodies are depicted. There are a few examples of male protagonists who are wearing clothing that calls attention to their butts but for the most part, men’s butts, even when visible in the frame, are deemphasized. Plenty of male heroes wear baggy pants or jeans, Uncharted’s Nathan Drake among them, but nothing about his visual design or the jeans he’s wearing encourages you to focus on his butt as some sort of defining aspect of his character.

By contrast, the emphasis placed on the butts of female characters communicates to players that this is what’s important, this is what you should be paying attention to. It communicates that the character is a sexual object designed for players to look at and enjoy. And by explicitly encouraging you to ogle and objectify the character, the game is implicitly discouraging you from identifying directly with her. Strategic butt coverings and camera angles that obscure or de-emphasize male characters’ rear ends are not an accident; they are a conscious decision made with great care, and the flipside of this is that designers often do the opposite when the protagonist is female.

This difference in how male and female characters are framed often extends into the advertisements and box covers. Women’s butts are front and center, and it’s even become a depressing joke that their bodies are twisted and contorted in uncomfortable or unnatural ways so that their breasts and butt can be visible in the same shot. In contrast, when men are depicted from behind, there is great effort taken to cover up their rear end, often with other images or shadows.

Of course, female characters can also be framed in ways that aren’t objectifying. A good example of this is the episodic adventure game Life Is Strange, in which the protagonist’s butt isn’t emphasized or centralized; the camera angles work in conjunction with the story to encourage us to identify with her as a human being. Sadly, the box art for the third-person action-adventure game Beyond Good & Evil emphasizes and sexualizes Jade’s butt. The game itself, however, demonstrates that the Nathan Drake approach of outfitting a character in clothing that doesn’t emphasize their butt and not having the camera center it or focus on it can work just as well to humanize female characters as it does for male characters.

So to be clear, the solution here is not to simply show more butts of male characters. Equal opportunity butt display is definitely not the answer. Rather, the solution is to deemphasize the rear ends of female characters, so that players are encouraged not to ogle and objectify these women, but to identify and empathize with them as people. This is not an impossible task given that game designers do this all the time with their male characters. It’s time they started consistently doing it with their female characters, too.

I never got the less armour = better stats thing some games seem to have. All less armour would do is make you more mobile, not give you better damage protection.

I never really got Skyrim's female model for the Steel Plate armour, either.

These carefully crafted choices developers make about camera angles and clothing significantly impact how players think about and relate to these characters.

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:34:22 PM

I never got the less armour = better stats thing some games seem to have. All less armour would do is make you more mobile, not give you better damage protection.

I never really got Skyrim's female model for the Steel Plate armour, either.

at least the daedric armor made sense



i think the standard steel armor (and the iron/banded armors) looked pretty normal too

Quote from: Azumarill on January 19, 2016, 01:42:44 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:34:22 PM

I never got the less armour = better stats thing some games seem to have. All less armour would do is make you more mobile, not give you better damage protection.

I never really got Skyrim's female model for the Steel Plate armour, either.

at least the daedric armor made sense



i think the standard steel armor (and the iron/banded armors) looked pretty normal too

Spikes never did it for me. It looks like something a 12 year old draws in the back of a schoolbook to me. Utterly impractical, but that's where the whole suspension of disbelief thing cones in.

I was very much a plain armour guy, guve me hide, leather, steel and iron any day over over-designed stuff. Well, the elven stuff looked cool, too. A focus on aesthetics but wasn't over-the-top ridiculous.

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 01:43:39 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:41:12 PM

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 01:36:24 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:34:22 PM

I never got the less armour = better stats thing some games seem to have. All less armour would do is make you more mobile, not give you better damage protection.

I never really got Skyrim's female model for the Steel Plate armour, either.

Boob armour is the shittiest thing. Armor doesn't have to be realistic to a T, but damn at least try to make me believe that it makes sense.

Well there's suspension of disbelief for something that looks cool like other high-tier armours on skyrim,then there's just total bullshit

Kind of like how some Halo 3 and Reach spartan armours weren't the most practical but there was a suspension of disbelief, but Halo 4 and 5 are utterly ridiculous in their designs.

Even then, I'm a bit ehhh about it. If I'm a warrior in TES and wearing demonic armour, I want to be a badass knight of D A R K N E S S, not a discarded playboy photoshoot.

That's what I meant with suspension of disbelief. Spikes on armour is worse than useless, but I can generally suspend that because evil demons and setting.

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 02:00:25 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:54:43 PM

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 01:43:39 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:41:12 PM

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 01:36:24 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:34:22 PM

I never got the less armour = better stats thing some games seem to have. All less armour would do is make you more mobile, not give you better damage protection.

I never really got Skyrim's female model for the Steel Plate armour, either.

Boob armour is the shittiest thing. Armor doesn't have to be realistic to a T, but damn at least try to make me believe that it makes sense.

Well there's suspension of disbelief for something that looks cool like other high-tier armours on skyrim,then there's just total bullshit

Kind of like how some Halo 3 and Reach spartan armours weren't the most practical but there was a suspension of disbelief, but Halo 4 and 5 are utterly ridiculous in their designs.

Even then, I'm a bit ehhh about it. If I'm a warrior in TES and wearing demonic armour, I want to be a badass knight of D A R K N E S S, not a discarded playboy photoshoot.

That's what I meant with suspension of disbelief. Spikes on armour is worse than useless, but I can generally suspend that because evil demons and setting.

Ah, I thought you were talking about like "+5 mystical bra of protection" kinds of high-leveled items. There's a definite line between fantastical and fap-bait.

this cloth robe in wow is pretty much exactly that

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 02:03:46 PM

Quote from: Azumarill on January 19, 2016, 02:02:16 PM

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 02:00:25 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:54:43 PM

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 01:43:39 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:41:12 PM

Quote from: Prime Megaten on January 19, 2016, 01:36:24 PM

Quote from: TR8Rshelf on January 19, 2016, 01:34:22 PM

I never got the less armour = better stats thing some games seem to have. All less armour would do is make you more mobile, not give you better damage protection.

I never really got Skyrim's female model for the Steel Plate armour, either.

Boob armour is the shittiest thing. Armor doesn't have to be realistic to a T, but damn at least try to make me believe that it makes sense.

Well there's suspension of disbelief for something that looks cool like other high-tier armours on skyrim,then there's just total bullshit

Kind of like how some Halo 3 and Reach spartan armours weren't the most practical but there was a suspension of disbelief, but Halo 4 and 5 are utterly ridiculous in their designs.

Even then, I'm a bit ehhh about it. If I'm a warrior in TES and wearing demonic armour, I want to be a badass knight of D A R K N E S S, not a discarded playboy photoshoot.

That's what I meant with suspension of disbelief. Spikes on armour is worse than useless, but I can generally suspend that because evil demons and setting.

Ah, I thought you were talking about like "+5 mystical bra of protection" kinds of high-leveled items. There's a definite line between fantastical and fap-bait.

this cloth robe in wow is pretty much exactly that

Yeah, fuck that. I can deal with the "armour hinders magic" mentality, but fuck sexstats.

if it makes you feel any better it looks fucking hilarious on male models

Quote from: eggsalad on January 19, 2016, 01:49:52 PM

Quote

These carefully crafted choices developers make about camera angles and clothing significantly impact how players think about and relate to these characters.

I don't get this. What about sexulaization disables the player from being able to identify with a character? And how does it alter the way they think about the character? Seems a prerequisite for this to apply is for the player to be misogynistic already.

She never said it "disables" the player from doing anything--merely that it significantly impacts the player's perception of the character. Whether you want to believe that's true is up for debate, but I don't consider it a horribly controversial assertion.

Either way--it's difficult to argue the fact that they deliberately designed the game to be that way, and that's where the real issue lies, in my opinion.