RE: Jim Sterling - You become what you pretend to be. It happened to Quinlan Vos when he went undercover with the Sith, and I'm pretty sure that Jim Sterling doesn't have the restraint of a Jedi Master. All Star Wars references aside, there's a line between acting and speaking ironically and espousing viewpoints seriously, and I think sometimes it gets blurred, especially with internet personalities such as JS.

I find it pretty interesting that out of the four examples you use of female characters that are more than just T&A - Chun-Li from Street Fighter 2, Portal's Chell, Faith in Mirror's Edge, and Samus Aran of Metroid - two of them are silent protagonists. What does that say about the state of female characters in video games?

"we're gaming through far more mature approaches to sex, sexuality, and equality, as seen in Heavy Rain (which also gives equal time to male nudity)"

I don't think this is true. You can see Madison's breasts up to three times (I think, are there more?) while playing Heavy Rain. I don't remember any scenes with male nudity.

Conversations like this are always tricky, and they're coming up more and more often. I agree with a huge number of your points - I'd much rather take an Alyx Vance or a Jade over most of these trashy jaunts through adolescent fantasy any day. It's nothing to do with ethics or equality, it's because those games are better for having genuine, wonderful characters. 

But I have reservations about the tone of discussion: it feels like you're saying that showing cleavage is innately equivilant to objectifying women, and that's something that I just can't get behind. As an example, while I'll agree that 90% of the titles you've listed are high on the inexcusable sleaze scale, I actually adored Bayonetta, over-the-top and somewhat childish sexuality and all. Lots of near-nudity? Yes, certainly, but that isn't necessarily equivilant to exploitative. I'm sure that by now Leigh Alexander's famous take on Bayonetta has made it's rounds, but I fully buy into her argument that the game is more uplifting than it is exploitative.

Thus my nervousness: do we need better, more realistic representation of women and sexuality in games: yes, absolutely, and we need it badly. Is the answer then to decry the slightest sign of leg or breast in a game as inherently harmful? I don't think so. In Leigh's words: "Bayonetta takes the video game sexy woman stereotype from object to subject." There is a world of difference between a game with sex appeal, and a game of outright pornographic design a la DOA:Beach Vollyball. 

P.S. In case anyone hasn't read it, Leigh's Bayonetta writeup can be found here: http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/213466/bayonetta-empowering-or-exploitative/

@David After reading this, I was wondering if someone was going to bring up Leigh's take on Bayonetta. While I totally agree with her in theory, I don't know if I can in regard to that game, specifically. I think intent is everything, and I'd be genuinely shocked if the essence of her argument -- that Bayonetta's femininity is exaggerated in the same way as male game characters' masculinity -- was the intent of her creators. I say this with full awareness of how ethnocentric it is, but when I see a character like Bayonetta in a Japanese game, I'm extremely reluctant to give the designers the benefit of doubt.

Of course, I have no way of knowing what their intent actually was, so I could be completely wrong. I hope I am. . . .

@James I don't think there was an *equal* amount of male nudity in Heavy Rain, there is the beginning with the guy (jason's dad, forget his name) in the shower.

@Christian 

I don't fully agree with Leigh's article either, but I think it's a very important point to be made. 

As for Bayonetta's creator: Hideki Kamiya. You really don't belive that he's going for pure exageration in the game? This is the same creator as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, one of the Phoenix Wrights, and Mad World? The guy's got some pretty diverse and respected titles under their belt, and every single one of them stars a video game character that is a caricature in one way or another. Oh, don't get me wrong: the work is absolutely personally fetishistic to the creator. Kamiya came right out and said that Bayonetta was an idealization of what he'd like in a woman, and the dev team spent more hours 'perfecting' Bayonetta's hindquarters than almost any other part of the visual design. But I honestly don't have a problem with that - we should never say that that someone shouldn't be allowed to craft something of their own tastes into a medium, even if those tastes are overtly sexual.

But I outright reject the claim that Bayonetta was designed to sell on sex appeal. If that was the case, it wouldn't be arguably the most polished action game of 2010, and it would have a DOA-style camera feature. Oh, there were probably a number of sales that came from guys going 'ooh, clothes come off, imma buy this!' But I would be shocked if that was anything but a ludicrously small percentage of the consumers who took up the game.

Furthermore, the sexuality of Bayonetta isn't actually that marketable: the Sexy-Librarian S&M thing just won't move units - it's too niche. And, at the risk of sounding a bit bigoted, a game with a sexually dominant female protagonist will definitely not move units with the larger otaku croud over in Japan. If they had been going for that, they would have needed to set the game in a high school, and, renamed Bayonetta to Bayo-chan, given her tiny hands, a pleated miniskirt, and had her play in a band with her small, flat-chested female classmate and her clumsy, curvaceous, glasses-wearing female classmate while they engaged in nonsensical but annoyingly cute small talk. To support my argument: I just risked my own personal sanity to do a google image search of 'Bayontta body pillow' - only two valid results, one of which seemed to be hand-made, and the other of which was Bayonetta in her little girl form, where she is cute and relatively demure rather than audacious and bold. The majority of Otaku japan has a very identifiable fetishistic profile, and if it doesn't have the word 'onii-chan' in it, they're not biting. 

In short, just like sexual doesn't necessarily equal objectifying, neither does fetishistic equal pandering. There's not enough of an audience for Bayonetta to pander to and still be successful. 

@Rus, I agree with the spirit of your article.  Enough is enough.

Wayback machine time.  I remember playing through the original Metroid on the NES, and I projected back a feeliing of awe at the kickassery Samus displayed throughout (what I found to be a) her brave campaign against Mother Brain.

If we are looking for strong heroines, things have gone downhill from there.

Sure -- just as in movies -- there is a place for games flashing skin and sexual appeal.  But ALL of them??  These past five years, game devs have shown they have an awesome capacity to tell responsible stories with artistic direction and (sometimes) smart dialogue.  Now... do better.

@David Like I said, I was ignroant of the creators and their intentions, so fair enough. :)

I never meant to imply that her sexualization was pandering, just that it wasn't necessarily empowering, based on the intent of her creators. If her creation was purely fetishistic then I still stand by that.

As a larger issue, the fetishistic aspect  is a whole other element that I think factors as much into DOA and Bloodrayne as it does in Bayonetta. So does the exclusion of pandering make it better? I need to think on that some before I decide; it's not something I'd considered before. :-\

I think the author is overexaggerating this matter. It's such an immature argument between two people caught in the social network, the most inappropriate place for this type of conversation. If anything, I think the gaming community is full of a wider variety of characters than misogynistic pricks.

He makes a good point though. The gaming community has to watch its back in the wild world of Internet commenting. If we don't watch ourselves, then Joe Lieberman might end up kicking our @$$es.

Today's game characters are showing more skin than usual. I always wonder if games will become more politically correct in the future, because a lot of the ones on Xbox and PS3 still tend to cater to young men rather than a broader audience. I mean, Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball is the epitome of fan service and you wouldn't see that type of game on the Nintendo Wii.

@Jonathan I don't think "politically correct" is the best term to use in this case. The word implies coercion as though games should naturally be for young men. If future games acknowledged that more people are playing and designed them so that they don't feel like the games weren't meant for them, isn't that a good thing?

@Chris: It is a good thing. And yeah, I sort of used the wrong term. I don't want to think of myself as Lieberman's tool. :P

I honestly hope we don't get any more games that keep pandering toward this narrow age group. I'm not saying that fan service in Metal Gear Solid and Dead or Alive is a bad thing, but it isn't a good thing either. I think in the whole process of having fun with these jokes, adults started to get sucked into this perception that all these games were merely meant for young men.

But they're not just for young men. Within some games, I'm really seeing some surprising changes in how the storyline is represented in an interactive game format. With games like Ico, the medium is literally turning into art in itself.

I guess I'm just worried that developers will get stuck in this mindset that they need to pander us with fetish-filled jokes just to sell units.That's the main reason why I haven't bought more of the Dead or Alive games, even though the fighting system is much more user-friendly than the Virtua Fighter games. Heck, I wanted to buy another Soul Caliber game, but after experiencing the rich storyline of Blazblue, I realized that I need more than just those girls with the skimpy clothing.

@Jonathan I'm not sure Ico is the best game to bring up in a discussion concerning sexism given how pathetic and fragile Yorda is designed to be, but I digress.

As much as I'd truly love to claim this is a problem within the video game sphere and no other, I feel that really our deep-rooted cultural sexism is just hidden far less in the games press than in other places. Female television presenters are still pretty before they're intelligent, and everyone was 'surprised' when Susan Boyle could sing (talented ugly people? Never!).  I'm not really sure we can sort out our own problems before wider society sorts them out for itself.

At any rate I'm so glad to see comments like the above, people actually taking the issue seriously. I get the feeling on any other gaming site this discussion would have deteriorated into an ungodly mess by now.

Great article!

@Jon: I give up on trying to make a point about girls and artistic merit and whatnot. Lol. Oh well.

I'd really like to see more games that featured women who are beautiful and sexy without pandering to an exaggerated idea of what men want. When gigantic breasts bounce in overly-revealing clothing, it makes non-gamers take the game less seriously.There are so many ways to make women sexy, including making them smart, funny, or skilled.

On a different subject, I feel stupider after reading the tweets between Daphny David and Jim Sterling. David did something mean and humiliating in public, and then continued to needle Sterling, who in turn responded with immature and sexist comments. David then retweeted the worst thing she goaded Sterling into saying. With crap like this, I hope that neither of them expects people to take them seriously as writers. I have no tolerence for gaming commentators behaving like internet trolls.

@ Sean: I agree. 

Any sort of credibility (the lack thereof) Sterling had, was lost to me. It was incredibly childish and stupid. 

With regards to women in games. It's time for things to change. I'm personally getting sick of seeing the new trend, "young and naive" (coming soon to Tomb Raider, ugh). In the Metroid Other M story I did soooooooooo long ago, I think I touched on that.

Keenan: I don't really see the problem with the "young and naive" angle in the new Tomb Raider. It's a reboot and it's starting at act one. It's where the character of Lara goes and how she develops as the series grows that will be more important. She has to start somewhere, so why not the beginning? I wouldn't expect more or less from a male character. What made Samus' depiction in Other M so ridiculous was that we weren't seeing her in act one. She was already a traveller who'd seen it all. Her *ahem* "personality adjustment" courtesy of Team Ninja came off as disingenuous and insulting because it was a radical and arbitrary interpretation of the character.