Now, let me make it clear that this topic isn't discussing things such as how men or women are dressed in gaming and how they're 'exploited' -no, that topic has been as overdone here as the Wii U/Vita d00med threads. Then again, maybe this issue has also been dealt with a lot here as well.
This is just over observations I've made over the past 2 or 3 years. And that is the problem with age and sexualization. Should games portray younger characters in games with any sexual appeal at all or is it borderline pedophilia as some claim?
I believe the issue itself is very touchy because the age of consent in many places varies A LOT. In Japan the legal age of consent is 13 years old, so some games that come from Japan show younger characters more sexual-looking in nature than let's say, a western dev might. However, while the general consensus for the west states 18+ is when looking sexy is 'ok', you have to consider that even in the United States the age of consent varies greatly.
For example in Washington is 16 years old (at which point they can consent with any adult), while in my state, Oregon, the minimum age of consent is 12 (with restrictions). Now, whether or not these laws are good or bad aren't for me to say, but they do show that the age of consent even in a large country like the US isn't set in stone. And I'm sure a lot of other countries have varied ages of consent too. But I do believe people should think outside of terms of where they're from and consider the culture and values the game comes from and understand that those may differ from the country the potential consumer may be from.
So should gaming have some sort of set age where a character is 'ok' to be sexualized? Because it is absolutely impossible to please everyone except by changing the age in different regions (ex. Bravery Default setting the character age higher in NA than in Japan) or should the devs be able to express their art however they want but also face potential consequences involved by not slightly altering the age per region? Or perhaps the system in place is best where we just up the age to 18+ in the west to cause less of a problem?
NOTE: Some may argue that games don't need ANY sexualization and I won't argue that they're wrong as I believe their opinion is also valid, but people will make games with sexualized characters regardless of what others think. But this discussion probably shouldn't devolve into that sort of debate as that is not the topic at hand, no, it is about whether or not their should be a set age, keep it the same, or just continue doing things as we always have with ages being changed in different regions.
