kratos is a terrible example to bring into this.. Hes the god of war, He has to be a big muscular guy.

Try using Nathan Drake.

Blackface was done to ENTERTAIN white people by degrading black people.  It was appealing to a white demographic to make them feel superior.  It wasn't done out of spite.  It wasn't done specifically to degrade black people.    

White people didn't think enough about black people back then to intentionally.   If it didn't make white people laugh it wouldn't of existed.

The MSG5 character was done to appeal to men, by objectifying women.  If that woman was dressed like a regular soldier, in a soldier outfit, people wouldn't find it offensive, and the woman would still be attractive as hell and appeal to the male demographic.

I mean

Works just as well as

With the added benefit of not looking stupid. (or offensive.)

Did you actually watch the video.. because it gave way different definitions of idealization and objectification then that.

As for waiting for MGS5... I mean i think we can make some guesses based on MGS general writing of female characters in the past and in general, the juvenile undertones of the series. (In dealing with sex.)

if anyone says sexy chicks cant be in the military, google IDF girls

No, no it is not the same at all.

To quote Nigel Toughnell from Spinal Tap.. "What's wrong with being sexy?" ;)

But anyway, I just think it's laughable that anyone can find anything even remotely threatening/degrading about a digitized attractive women that is scantily dressed. Seriously, where are our priorities? I just don't see any issue with having some attractive females showing some skin in a video game.. I mean, they're not even real for god's sake! Any man that would somehow think less of women or degrade them because of a digital image obviously has some issues in the first place, and is going to end up being a chauvinist  with or without the existance of said game.. It's the same arguement I use for people attacking video games for their violence. Anyone who gets influenced by a violent video game to carry out real life violence already has mental problems anyway, and is an accident waiting to happen regardless of the supposed influence of the game they play. Same thing applies to supposed "sexism" in gaming.

Not nessisairly.

While captialism is extremely efficent at refining products to mass marketability.  Things that don't matter can persist, just because they don't matter and used to matter at some point.

A sexy character might not cause anyone to buy a game anymore, or at least not a large amount of people, but it wont turn anyone off from a game either.  Or at least not many, because even with the gigantic amount of female gamers around now a days they sort of grew up with this, in this culture, so while it annoys them and they roll their eyes, they still buy it because they want to play a videogame.

Good point. It is strange to think these redundant elements will stay in the games indefinately; however I would think in this particular case it may happen less frequently given the reaction to the MGS character. Something like that happened for Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite I think.

Fistly, I obviously meant that they were going a subsection of the male demographic, the one's who appreciate sexual appeal in their games. Not all games appeal to everyone and some choose to go for a smaller demographic in exchange for a higher percentage of said demographic.

And yes some men do sometimes want different things from female characters then they do from male characters. I can honestly say a women in a bikini appeals to me more than a man in a pair of swimming trunks, and many men would say the same. Do I always want sexy female characters? No I don't.

If a game company said that they wanted to appeal to the Korean demographic by releasing a new MMORPG over their, would you then say "not all Koreans like MMORPG therefore you are descriminating against Koreans? I guessing you would not start talking in absolutes like you did before.

And the reason why the sexy cosplay sells is not because some women (NOT ALL) want to look scantily clad, but want attention from men who like how they look, or identify with a character that happens to be sexy.

Having spoken to quite a few female gamers back before all this blew up on the internet. The overwhelming majority of them actually liked the physical assets of characters such as Lara Croft.

They wanted to play as "attractive" strong female characters as much as teenage boys did.

That was the reason Tomb Raider had such a wide appeal back when it originally came out.

I do wonder if the sexism row is actually a very vocal minority rather than a general consensus.

Just my 2p and throwing another POV out there but keep up the debate. Overall this has been one of the better threads I've seen on here.

The former. Not so much in isolation, but in comparison to your description of Kratos as having an ideal body. You view the ideal male body as strength and muscle, who gives a crap about the visuals. You view the ideal female body as sex appeal, entirely about the visuals.