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[Faust06]

You're venturing into very subjective territory.

[gimymblert]

It's well documented, I don't know, I can navigate it, I guess other can too.

There is plenty of site that spend time analyzing those design and giving you key, I don't even think it's hard.

[gimymblert]

Obligatory

[Canned Turkey]

Good point, but objectification doesn't have a lot to do with sexual preference.
No matter how "sexy" they are, the classical male heroes in comic books have character and feelings,
while the female characters and 'damsels in distress' do not.
That's why they are objectified. Because they are reduced to an object.
Over sexulization and objectification are two related but different issues.

[Dacke]

You're venturing into very subjective territory.

There are by necessity a big element of subjectivity in this. Much of it has to do with representation and how it makes different people feel. Which means you have to listen to the experiences of others and try to understand their perspective. Which is difficult, it's all too easy to get defensive.

[gimymblert]

Good point, but objectification doesn't have a lot to do with sexual preference.
No matter how "sexy" they are, the classical male heroes in comic books have character and feelings,
while the female characters and 'damsels in distress' do not.
That's why they are objectified. Because they are reduced to an object.
Over sexulization and objectification are two related but different issues.

The issue is multi faceted though, here it doesn't address all the aspects. But this "background radiation" is significant enough too. Look at how men react to twilight's male, they have character (maybe more than the woman in the story) yet male are immediately put off by their portrayal before even going into the story.

The gaze matter




@faust
There is big general principal that make it a bit more objective (like agency, gaze, diversity and character) the subjectivity is really some wiggle room around the line.

[siskavard]

boobs

[Faust06]

There are by necessity a big element of subjectivity in this. Much of it has to do with representation and how it makes different people feel. Which means you have to listen to the experiences of others and try to understand their perspective. Which is difficult, it's all too easy to get defensive.

Yeah. So you might agree that whether Bayonetta's depiction is creepy or not at the individual level may vary wildly.

The phrase "agency over her sexuality" is pretty meaningless to me as characters are written/dictated to behave the way they do. You'd be hard pressed to argue for a fact that other voluptuous meant-to-be-sexualized characters don't have equal "agency" over their sexuality. RE the above comic: I'm not sure that muscle-bound men are exclusively a male fantasy, but anyway Bayonetta can just as easily be argued to be a mere male fantasy if we're not even citing facts. Lets assume she was created to appeal to males. Does it not then have nothing to do with what females find attractive in females? I'm not seeing how that helps your argument, Jim. We're issuing a blanket statement, and not even considering sexual orientation and gender. Half of comic-book readers are female so I would argue the comic's argument is, if not erroneous, way too much of a generalization.

There is big general principal that make it a bit more objective (like agency, gaze, diversity and character) the subjectivity is really some wiggle room around the line.

None of that makes it (the question of appropriateness vs creepyiness) more objective as I understand it because those factors in themselves can be subjective.

[JWK5]

Bayonetta is basically a stripper without a pole, so the crotch shots, fall-apart clothing, and whatnot are almost to be expected. She was designed to appeal to the male libido, not to be some sort of positive personification of female sexuality. Also, she's not a whole lot different than Ivy from Soul Calibur who also has the dominatrix personality and sexually-charged attacks (and sexually exaggerated body again catering to male libido). Or Sofia from Battle Arena Toshinden for that matter. Actually, just take your pick from just about any dominatrix-themed female video game or comic book character and you've pretty much got the building blocks of Bayonetta.

[Dacke]

Yeah. So you might agree that whether Bayonetta's depiction is creepy or not at the individual level may vary wildly.

Yup.

But just because it's partly subjective doesn't mean we can't say meaningful things about such characterizations and their effect on real people. People seem to confuse subjectivity/objectivity with meaningless/meaningful or unknowable/knowable.

Ethics is almost all about considering the subjective feelings of others.

The phrase "agency over her sexuality" is pretty meaningless to me as characters are written/dictated to behave the way they do.

This idea has surfaced several times in this thread. The idea that portrayal of agency is irrelevant since it isn't actual agency. But that's kind of missing the point. That line of arguing seems to assume that we care about what the character feels, which is absurd. What's relevant is the impact different portrayals has on real people.

[gimymblert]

Bayonetta is basically a stripper without a pole, so the crotch shots, fall-apart clothing, and whatnot are almost to be expected. She was designed to appeal to the male libido, not to be some sort of positive personification of female sexuality. Also, she's not a whole lot different than Ivy from Soul Calibur who also has the dominatrix personality and sexually-charged attacks (and sexually exaggerated body again catering to male libido). Or Sofia from Battle Arena Toshinden for that matter. Actually, just take your pick from just about any dominatrix-themed female video game or comic book character and you've pretty much got the building blocks of Bayonetta.

You miss the part where the proportion of the character are more in line with fashion illustration and is generally off putting to male. The main designer is a women and she said she ignore the most outrageous demand of the male producer (Kamiya). So what you end up is a character that is balanced in her sexuality. She is also not written in a way that empower male or as a "slut" but as a way that display power for herself. BTW I hope invoking stripper is not slut shaming here.

But what you describe is the problematic shot that are about the male gaze on the character.


"Agency over her sexuality" is rather direct to me, she is the initiator and the one who control, who call the shot in her own term rather than a male term, she is not directed. In fact the male character that is the "love interest" is put into almost a submissive role as he don't control the attention she have on him (shewshew), in fact she barely acknowledge him and do her stuff, he is reduce to the usual supporting cast women have in general, in the end she don't fall for him either, she is the star of the show.

@faust
The thing is you try to get a mental shortcut of something that must be studied, thinks makes more sense if you actually put effort into it. I linked many stuff it's obvious you didn't read. You are basically a art noob who want to get good just by conceptualizing drawing it instead of doing research and being exposed to real object through observation. It's not as subjective as you want to make it.

[Pfotegeist]

So I'm mostly thinking about real world prejudice towards sexuality, and how artists must walk the line. In my case I hop the line.

The last bit of consideration is an oldie. Games are rife with dissonance.  Audience need cues to understand what the character feels, and why supporting characters are there. The games aren't necessarily doing it right. Telltale games tries by making face expressions and moments of silence, and popping out text. I lack positive examples for this. The result of dissonance is mostly an eye-candy effect in a situation that would have made perfect sense in everyday life, like the tradition of cheerleaders at a football game.

Character development occurs in a story, sexuality could be part of the story.  What's important is helping the player connect with the character so they don't think, oh they're just there to carry my suitcases.

Sorry I haven't been keeping up since I was trying to write this as short as possible.

[gimymblert]

IMHO one problem with typical game value is that game are about asserting dominance over others and being rewarded for it. That's a problem, for example replace any typical game hero with a "muslim" and try to see if that's not awkward, it a great way (in a bias and prejudiced western society) to reveal the underlying problem. This translate not only in dominance over opponent but also support character, hence why the damsel in distress, the love interest, etc ... it's about to cater to a base level egotism. This translate in the way sexuality is portrayed, as consumption, reward and performance.

But if you are from a minority, this idea of "freedom" through dominance became more a game of "permission", in which agency can be robbed from you anytime by the script and design of the game.

If you want to see games that don't abide to these value and allow it to express a different way to express even the most salacious sexuality, look no further at what Christine Love, Nina Freeman, Meritt Kopa and Anna Anthropy do (among many other), even when these game express idea of "dominance" they do it in a significant different way that making it the central value to uphold, it also open sexuality to a realm often ignored "intimacy".

I think a lot of people don't get why their depiction of sexuality is problematic is that they tend to ignore the idea of intimacy from sexuality for some reason, although that's not all to it.

[Torchkas]

In a world where sexism didn't exist, sexuality wouldn't be an issue.
When you're being completely subjective and telling people what's "problematic" and what's not, then you're not actually solving anything. When you're being completely rational and not taking feelings into account, you're not solving anything.

So my stance on the matter is to not take issue with it on an artistic level, even in account of someone else.
However, when sexuality stops being about the celebration of the human body, but starts diminishing it, you should take issue with it. This is of course subjective.
As someone who's attracted to both males and females I might be a bit more nuanced, since I do notice the sexualization of men when they're not just power fantasies. My tastes are however, subjective.

I believe the minority of women in tech isn't the fault of the game industry. I don't have statistics on this but my gut tells me that there tend to be more women in gaming (especially indie) than other tech divisions. There is countless of research on this type of stuff. Something about the early 70s and the alienation of women from tech. There's a lot of interesting stuff there.

Just don't try to feel responsible for making a change in games by being progressive. Do whatever you want, as long as you don't ostracize anybody with what you're doing (which is again, subjective).

Calling out people on the sexuality of a pixel woman isn't a bad thing because it sparks debate. Debate is good because it makes people second guess their decisions like Jimmy was talking about.
You just don't want to diminish sexuality completely. Doing so is outright limiting artistic freedom.
We don't want everything to be the same do we?

[gimymblert]

Notice that the main complain is how reductive representation of sexuality really is and the lack of diversity.

Saying that people want to diminish sexuality is not accurate.

[ProgramGamer]

So is the moral that if you're gonna include sexuality in your game it should be enjoyable for (mostly) everyone?

[gimymblert]

The moral is that it takes efforts to know what you are doing, even for sexuality.

A lot of people argue out of their ass to AVOID DOING ACTUAL RESEARCH as if they can magically know what they don't.

[Diabetes Forecast]

Most of Bayonnetta's runway style lankiness comes from making her look better in motion. It gives her better S and C curves when she moves.

[Mittens]

Wow, what I originally said about Bayonetta is that the game, titled Bayonetta, is not an "erotic game" it's put into one of two categories, it's either a hack-n-slash game or it's an action game. If someone on the street tried to sell you an erotic game, they would be selling you interactive porn, I never said the character named Bayonetta doesn't behave in a ways that are decidedly erotic in nature.

[gimymblert]

Most of Bayonnetta's runway style lankiness comes from making her look better in motion. It gives her better S and C curves when she moves.

Yep like fashion illustration, it allow to emphasize clothes movement, also a style a man is likely to not choose.