Today I was watching a video on YouTube and it had an ad for a browser based MMO on the side of the page. The ad showed a computer generated elf in a skimpy bikini and along with that had the tag “Beautiful worlds, beautiful girls”. Hardly an original advertising concept, but it got me wondering why games use sex as a sales device?
I understand why the basic device works for other media, you give people someone to lust over and draw their attention at a primordial level at the very least. It’s cheap, and it’s lazy but you can’t deny that it works well. I will admit that I probably fall for the trick all the time, at some level we all do. I won’t want something just because it has someone good looking on it if it’s truly terrible, but it probably at least makes me pay attention to average content.
Of course you can only use sex to sell to a certain extent. The perfect example of this is Megan Fox in the second Transformers film. The film wasn’t exactly a masterpiece by any means, but it was a fun and slightly silly action movie that at least sort of amused for a few hours. However there were two scenes with Megan Fox that seemed completely and utterly pointless, and were just included to sell the film based entirely on breasts.
Now I might not like this in films or TV shows, but I do understand the principles behind it. What I can’t understand is the use in games. At least with the Megan Fox example they were using a real, very attractive woman. In games the characters are entirely computer generated, there’s no physical presence to lust after. At the low, primordial level our brains probably can’t tell the difference between created and real people but we can certainly tell at the conscious level. It seems frankly bizarre that people drool over these characters, or spend hours on naked Lara Craft cheats.
Games aren’t the only medium that uses overly sexualised character designs to sell, comics are equally culpable of creating women in overly skimpy or tight costumes. This is changing to some extent now but it’s a long held critique of comic books, and one that is now equally applied to games, that female characters are just there for eye candy. I find it hard to argue against that, but if you look at how male characters are created it’s obvious that they’re not exactly presented conservatively either.
The main issue I have with the use of overly sexualised characters, particularly in games, is that they’re certainly one of the things holding them back from receiving the recognition they so richly deserve. In fact after the current popularity of violent games I think the use of overly-sexualised characters is the thing most holding back games from being taken seriously as a medium.
Games as a medium are often described as being in their infancy, but perhaps adolescence would be a better term. Until games can manage to shake this image of sexy games characters we’ll never truly advance. Personally I’d rather have a deep and meaningful story or complex and fun puzzles than a beautiful virtual character, but I don’t know if that will ever become the prevailing opinion.
cc_star
The omni-presence of sexualised imagery is a sign of the times, by the very fact is entrenched in every aspect of our lives means it’s impossible to get away from and also probably irreversible.
In other mediums the overly sexual images are usually part of an under-belly or niche, but for some reason in gaming it is pushed to the fore with almost all games having cartoon tits.
Why is this?
I believe its because games designers and artists don’t have as wide a field of inspiration as other forms of media… It seems that their field of inspiration is over the top Hollywood blockbuster & comics, both feature overtly sexual characters and use that as a selling point rather than anything else.
Rarely does a game feel as if it was inspired by anything else.
Uncharted 2 is still probably the pinnacle of story-telling, there was no cartoon tits, no nakedness and like a good mature story it was as much about what wasn’t said, as what was said. Sure it had attractive people, but that puts it on a par with film & TV.
I hope other games designers & artists take note, and the sort of imagery seen in Uncharted becomes the norm, and the overly sexualised imagery falls to a kind of ‘underside’ like it has in other mediums.
grimm
It doesn’t bother me at all in most games. It doesn’t feel out of place most of the time because many of the games that include it are already full of gratuitous violence/language so some sex thrown in fits the bill really.
This has already been said but the public gets what the public wants when it comes to sexiness in games, and if people didn’t buy it then it wouldn’t be there. There is obviously a massive market for it.
stueeeee
It is true that a lot of games use of sexiness and easy on the eye woman is just fluff to get people hooked, or make the media go a bit crazy so everyone will get it for ‘that’ scene. But it’s those games that then tarnish the industry as a whole. Even when sex is put in for an ‘adult story’ (Heavy Rain) its mostly not handled as well as it could be. But up until this generation it was always a bit silly because the graphics just made a mess of it.
Although I did enjoy Eva in MGS3 under the waterfall. And meryl in MGS1…. :-)