So, looking at the promotions one would be forgiven for believing the remastered Grand Theft Auto trilogy is either a low budget dating/sex game or one where you play a female carjacker who operates literally in a bikini.
This is, sadly, almost pretty standard but actually slightly worse than usual for the serious in terms of marketing.
The exception being Grand Theft Auto IV, which was essentially the tittle in the series that deconstructed the rest of the series, and featured female characters less like Candy Suxxx, and more like:
These are little old now, but I can’t help but notice there’s something… different about the ways that PUBG loading screens depict male and female characters. This goes for their marketing too:
Now, what bothers me with these is not the lack of practicality - the very nature of PUBG means that two thirds of any game will be populated with players who have worked hard to make the most absurd outfit they could in the name of self-expression and individuality.
What bothers me is that they tend to go to impressive lengths to think of a variety of archetypes and looks for the men.
the angry-as-fuck biker girl who wears a jacket over a cincher with a threatening t-shirt and flame chaps
The music nerd girl wearing three circus tents of fabric in pastel colours with headphones
The sports girl with her chest protector, knee brace, elbow brace and band-aids across her nose
Or countless other iterations that have more story than “I’m a model”, and I mean… while some of them are kind of cool, none of these gentlemen are truly empowered.
Working on this blog a real cost to my sanity and personal shopping experience, particularly in regards to comic books.
Though I do want to point out that these kind of recommendations do come in waves, and usually my recommendations are more like this:
Because the titles that rely on fairly small groups of reactionaries who fund their projects to get started less for the product itself and more for the political stance that the market should cater to them. And even then, not particularly well.
They fall off recommendations quickly because they don’t have any wider appeal and because most of the people who were interested in them already pre-ordered their special nine variant covers to own the libs.
The ones that show up more frequently like Princeless are ones that definitely have political messages, are stories all sorts of people can enjoy and find lasting appeal in.
And this is why media industries both need to drop the myth of sex sells, and everyone should read Princeless.
Remember how we discussed lackluster depictions of Batman’s sidekicks? Well, these aren’t their uniforms (but they could be) and it’s safe to say that every artist involved understood the assignment.
The Dark Mistress was, in all other ways, a fairly standard unit in the Dungeon Keeper games who certain people, for certain reasons, decided really needed to become the focus of all marketing and large parts of the imagery Dungeon Keeper 2 onward,. by which I mean Dungeon Keeper 2 and the Dungeon Keepr mobile game. The character is a fascinating case study in the myth of sex sells.
Horny (that’s… that’s actually his name) got t appear as an extra in the promotion for his own game (in which he’s an apex unit)
Now, since it took 15 years between Dungeon Keeper 2 and Dungeon Keeper mobile/online, you can probably guess that support for the game was not super remarkable - particularly given they spent so much time on graphics updates, hiring models to dress up as dominatrixes, etc and sold only about 61% of the previous title which used advertising like this:
Now, we could put this down to there being a terrible misunderstanding about what the “fantasy genre” is commonly meant to understand - but more likely there as an over belief that now they could render enough polygons to render Dark Mistresses as cartoon babes, that would do the marketing for itself.
The real absurdity is that the original game is leaned heavily into the idea that you get to play as an avatar of evil, destroying those pesky adventurers as you conquer the world. The second game… seems to like pitch you, that guy but he gave up and decided to set up a fetish club instead (which honestly could have been an interesting premise in itself).
Honestly it seems like it’d be awful awkward if someone just came across that strategy guide lying about… it’s about tactics and strategy, I promise!
As for the mobile game like… all I can say is good work making it look like every piece of shovelware that gets advertised on Instagram.
Julianna Blake, is the primary antagonist of Arkane’s latest video game Deathloop, and it’s hard to say more than that without providing spoilers but I’ll do my best.
As the fierce and furious defender of a bohemian resort for the one percent, Julianna’s default outfit is a pretty solid collection of items one would select if you had to put together a practical outfit from designer clothing.
Her bonus costumes are designer outfits that you can imagine actual rich people wearing to show off without discomfort or hypersexualizing yourself, they’re designs intended to showcase the wearer is someone attractive, wealthy and dignified.
It also particularly makes sense since the game is not one with bullet sponges or heavily armored enemies - its mostly filled with people doing other stuff who happen to be carrying guns, not showing in paramitlitary gear.
It’s a very nice example of how you can let your material guide your design when you’re not setting commercial horniness as your #1 priority.
So, despite having made no grand claims of being for everyone, it seems King of Fighters XV is going to have a playable black woman before Overwatch does.
Her costume is clearly a trainwreck which can be summarized best as “As fashion: Yes. For combat: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?” As such, while I would love to rant about every aspect of this costume… I feel there’s some more important bullshit that needs to be called out here.
So baffling amount of exotification and a bafflingly impractical outfit who seems much more inspired by Bayonetta than anything relating to black culture - making attacks mostly through dance moves and summoning mud instead of magical hair… even though her hair does seem… magical.
All of which is to say… this is all rather secondary to what’s going on in the background…
Gotham Knights is the latest in Batmanvideo games, which takes the bold step of being a Batman game without Batman - instead focusing on Batgirl, Red Hood, Nightwing and Robin.
The premier trailer seems to take a confusing approach to the “gaze” where it initially presents all the heroes as unsexualized, then has a panning shot of the line up to assure you Batgirl will be skinny, and have her tiddy on a shelf, and
she’s the only one who’s not visibly armoured with anything more impressive than batkevlar.
Then give each of the characters a bombastic intro, with hers being the most passive and the only one that ends on a chest shot.
It also seems to try to have it’s cake and eat it too (oh god can I say that in this context?) with butt shots.
For most of the trailer Batgirl has her butt covered by her cape, like she’s inherited a special power from Batman.
Then there seems to be some sort of attempt to play into the tradition of always presenting Nightwing the way female characters are, and expand it into some butt shots of the boys… but…well look at these:
With all the light and other nonsense going on, you can barely see the goods.
Where is the delightful curvature? Where is the juiciness? Why are those straps sitting flat rather than loving pushing his buttocks up and together? If Batgirl’s chest armour is curve flaunting, seems only fair the boys’ pants are too!
And then, in the last part of the clip… they rush to use the premise of riding (bat)motorcycles to remind you that Batgirl 🙏🏽🍑
Honestly, with all this trend towards comic characters moving away from spandex and into modern racing/sports gear, it’d be nice if we could just move all of it to focus on the action rather than having this weird fan service crap.
And well, if there must be fan service - do not do a disservice to Nightwing, he is an icon of male empowerment.
(Yes, FYI, these images are paintings on the walls of buildings, in an MMORPG)
You’ll note though, that the people who are unimpressed by Blizzard trying to distract from their ongoing lawsuits don’t want the decision reversed, they’re just upset that:
Blizzard is using trivial changes like this to distract from real harm they do to real women on an ongoing basis.
Blizzard could actually have approved these and many meaningful changes at any time - but didn’t do so because they didn’t care about anything but feminist cookies.
The ones who are raging and want the changes reverted on the other hand, well they are worried about two other things.
The sanctity of the sexuality of fictional women who just happen to be appealing to their sexuality as self-absorbed cishet men.
Their validation as the only people in the world who matter, and that their whims are more important than anyone’s needs or interests.
(Not the lack of concern for people who’s sexuality is empowered men, or who prefer to play their fantasy adventure games without tits and ass in their face)
My main thoughts on this were already summarized very succinctly by Jack Saint in a single, evergreen tweet:
So, my recommended guideline for distinguishing between to two types - since the shitty ones will always claim to be the well meaning ones when called out is:
Are they disappointed that Blizzard has not yet done anything meaningful to help real people who have been suffering due to their obscene behaviour, or are they concerned the imaginary people are no longer interested in helping them fap?
Because trust me, the latter were going to have this reaction regardless.
