I may be wrong. But I think what s/he's trying to say is that earlier it was something different. When I found out Samus was a girl, it was huge . Lara croft was the first female adventure star I can think of. It was new. It was different. Now theres strong female leads all over the place.

"It's about boobs and ass and forced sexual equality. It's manipulative, in fact. She might be 'one of the boys' but she's still eye-candy and catwalk-perfect.

I don't care if they're male or female. Why do the women always gotta be drop dead gorgeous? It seems like they are made from a cookie cutter to me. Again I may be wrong but that's what I see alot. Bad-ass gorgeous women. And I don't think that noticing that ='s a boy's club mentality.

Cutting through the articles amateurish bullshit, his basic point is valid. That no matter how many quirks are tacked on to Female leads, no matter how much their character is 'developed', they are still defined by (stealing a line from Seinfeld here) being incredibly well endowed with the varioius traits prized by superficial gamers. Female leads are predominantly cast as such simply to serve as eye-candy for gamers. Very few games with female leads employ them for legitimate purposes. When creating Lighting, Nomura was told to 'create a female cloud'. If Sheva was really written into RE 5 just to be Chris's female counterpart, why is she perfectly preportioned and clad in a scanty tank top?

SOME (Final Fantasy 6) games cast their leads as women for good reasons--for narrative purpose, etc. But by-and-large, female protaganists exist just becaue it's more fun to stare at a hot girl than an overmuscled guy for twenty plus hours. It is this problem that the author legitimately addresses.

EDIT: Word, kabhold. You beat me to my point while I was typing this up.

In the first place, if you're going to be the protagonist of a video game you are going to kick ass. Let's throw that shit right out the window, because that is not a part of the "cookie cutter" that isn't in the mold for every single cookie cutter in the business. If you are in a game, and you are the lead character, nine times out of ten you will have to kick someone's ass.

A large amount of strong female leads is not bad. The fact that it is not longer novel is one of the most positive signs for gender equality in the industry.

There is no standard of beauty applied to video game women that isn't applied to video game men. The best games have equal treatment of the genders within the context of the worlds in which they take place.

You want a female character who isn't "drop dead gorgeous" but still kicks ass? Fine. We'll look at two of the characters that they cited as being part of the problem.

Alyx Vance is the heroine of the Half-Life 2 game(s), whose general consciousness and real femininity does not impede the fact that she is able to shoot aliens in the face. She's built like a boy, has short-cropped hair, and in general is in no way portrayed sexually. She's as real as it gets.

The Boss is the most realistic character ever devised for the Metal Gear Solid series, jarring simply because she abandons all pretexts of cartoonishness to look almost gritty in the realism of her facial and bodily proportions. She's a symbol of motherhood, but she is by no means sexualized.

These two women, generally treated as two of the best characters in the medium from either gender, are two of those in particular that are cited as being problematic by the above article. I don't know if you've played Half-Life 2 or Metal Gear Solid 3 or Mirror's Edge or Prince of Persia, but that section of the article is appalling.

I believe I predicated my original statement by saying that while I DISAGREED with his examples, his point was valid. So citing Alyx Vance and The Boss doesn't really do anything for your argument. I also, several times, noted that it was a PREDOMINANT trend, not unanimous.

As for you excusing this trend by characterizing it as something that HAS to happen because main characters HAVE to KICK ASS...that's erroneous too. Not every genre of game revolves around ass-kicking main characters, but regardless of their roles, the central female characters always show up with rockin' bods. Yes, this particular trend is apparent in male leads, too (though not to such a crushing extent). The difference being, of course, that having hyper-masculine leads allows for a vicariously delicioius experience for under-muscled or over-blubbered nerds, while the girls are just there to ogle. It also makes (sometimes) more sense for guys: Sure, an incredible figher like Ryu might need to be super muscled. Yeah. Makes sense. But does Chung Li need tits the size of small asteroids to augment her fighting abilities?

Chun Li doesn't have oversized breasts, she has thighs the size of the anchor on a battleship so she can kick people in the face. She's radically overmuscled in the exact same way Ryu is, just in keeping with her fighting style.

If you're going to make the argument that it's somehow worse for women than it is for men as a predominant trend, you're goign to need to cite a few examples, and pray to God I can't come up with equivalent male examples in the same space, or prove that the most forefront female characters have abandoned their "sex symbol" designation.

Come on. Try me.

This article got IGN banned from neogaf.

makingmusic476 said: This article got IGN banned from neogaf.

.....Are you serious?

Link it.

Hey have any of you guys played Nude Raider? I hear it's just like Tomb Raider but you can totally see her boobs.

You're thinking of "Panty Raider". That game was on the news a few years back.

My argument: Women in gaming are, quite often, radically sex-charged excuses for developers to throw in well-proportioned eye-candy. This trend has many notable exceptions, but is still rampantly apparent, lending itself to gaming's image as the realm of nerds, losers, and geeks.

You: NOT TRUE NOT TRUE CITE EXAMPLES, PRESENT SOPHISTIC COUNTERARGUMENT!!

Going for the jugular of what is, in my eyes, such an inarguable thesis hardly seems like the most effective way to argue your disagreement. This is not a scholarly article; I don't need to cite a half-dozen articles to make a general, widely observed point. (Check out the tagline under the article title.). Why are you arguing against what I'm saying? I'm not attacking gaming, women in gaming, or you. I'm lamenting the how inescapably juvenile so many aspects of gaming are, in particular the design and implementation of female gaming. The author of the article was (albeit inarticulately) too.

Oh, and as far as your closing ultimatum goes...Leisure Suit Larry, Playboy the Mansion, BMX XXX.....how many games are there where you're a girl going around getting guys to strip, flash their penises, and bless you with sexual favours? Um....good luck with your counter-example.