Beauty in western games is dying out

[Vasitheas]

A lot of you are probably aware of this sometime ago through reddit posts. This vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgqXFeborQ8 (0:44s) sums it up nicely.

I noticed this years ago, back when I was playing [R6:Siege]. When Siege first came out, we had attractive female characters like IQ. Years after, Ubisoft started blog posts about women taking up positions in their company and suddenly we got operators like Gridlock. There was a lot of drama concerning her appearance.

For the last few years, there's a trend of downgraded female appearances, including many upcoming games. [Perfect Dark] just to name one of them.

A lot of old games still have a lasting impression today such as [BloodRayne] and [Tomb Raider]. The reason is quite simple. Beauty sells. Sex also, but that's a different topic.

Some of my friends and countless forum users are concerned. I told them I think it's a phase and more than a decade is needed for this to change. The West has always been very slow.

A long time ago, video games in the West were a man's club, like sports. Men knew what men wanted and we were happy. But when women started coming in, around the last 2 decades, there were a lot of problems. Namely, they weren't skilled, only a distraction. Men didn't mind it at the time because it was a new. But if you sucked and you weren't a woman, that's a different story. A decade or more after, women finally got good at what we do.

Now in the West we've got women coming into the decision-making and designing roles. They've got a simple message: 'We don't like pretty women because it makes us look bad. We're secretly jealous, resentful and spiteful.'

Fortunately, the East didn't go backwards like us in the West. So they're still rolling out awesome games. Not long ago, [Nier Automata]. Recently, [Stellar Blade]. Now, [First Descendant]. Soon, [Chrono Odyssey].

[apathy]

Beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HJMil6Hmvx4?feature=share

[atomicgirl]

Haruspex님이 먼저 게시:

MancSoulja님이 먼저 게시:

That's not true, though, is it?

https://www.statista.com/forecasts/494867/distribution-of-gamers-by-gender-usa#:~:text=As%20of%20December%202023%2C%2048,video%20gaming%20audiences%20were%20male.

Look to the right of that page under "Special Properties". It reads, "Including smartphone gamers".

Female gamers were responsible for the popularity of The Sims franchise, which is still one of the best selling PC games of all time. They were also why Lara Croft's character was changed, starting with Angel of Darkness.

https://www.cbr.com/tomb-raider-lara-croft-transformation-women-gamers/

All your ramblings about female gamers being smartphone gamers are just that...ramblings.

[Bagel]

Haruspex님이 먼저 게시:

Donut님이 먼저 게시:

Back in time people didn’t care about how characters im games looked like. It’s just more nonsense trumpster election campaign propaganda. The early Tomb Raider games were fun and immersive, that’s what made them special. Lara Croft was the main character but only made up of a few polygons and I don’t think anyone was playing the game just because of her physical appearance but rather because of her personality and story.

Same goes for many other games where most characters were made out of a few pixels.

Right wingers are getting desperate and need something new to campaign on, so now it’s ‘woke’. Tomorrow they’ll make up new problems to split the society for their own gains of power.

Nobody plays a game just because they find a character attractive. (Well, maybe a few do, but they're anomalous.)

Attractive characters though are a factor. A good game is still a good game if the characters aren't attractive, but a good game with attractive characters is better than one without.

And perhaps you've forgotten the craze behind Lara Croft. She was only made up of a few polygons, yes, but she was attractive, or at least as attractive as PS1 graphics could make her.

Then in all the official art, they created her with a certain amount of sex appeal. They advertised her with sex appeal. There was a whole ad campaign for TR2 suggesting "the boys" weren't at their usual spots at the bar, or the ball game, or the strip clubs because they were all at home playing Tomb Raider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxG3henG1KA

She was the first virtual character to be featured as a centerfold in Playboy magazine, August 1999.

In the movie, they cast Angelina Jolie, a very attractive woman, for the role of Lara. They did this for a reason.

So I agree. Nobody really plays games only because they find a character attractive. But it is a factor.

Well TR Angel of Darkness flopped not because of her absence, but because the game was poorly made, which the entire franchise suffered under for a long time.


Question to OP:
Btw, if japan game industry is so awesome, why aren’t any new TR games coming? Square Enix has killed the franchise. And where is the outrage?

[Tommy Salami]

Apparently more women play games now and we don't want them to feel bad about forcing them to play a female character that is more attractive than them.

It's the same reason we see unattractive fatties plastered all over ads now too.

Women demand to be coddled

[Tommy Salami]

KaibaCorp님이 먼저 게시:

Games are made to appease the trans gaze

The incel to trans pipeline is real and a huge problem in gaming.

[Merci]

Talia Lebowitz님이 먼저 게시:

KaibaCorp님이 먼저 게시:

Games are made to appease the trans gaze

The incel to trans pipeline is real and a huge problem in gaming.

youd know since your obsession with trans people is likely internalized self-hate xD

[Not Big Surprise]

beauty isn't dying lmfao, pretty much every "example" of this is a character that still looks good

anyway play signalis

[Caldari Ghost]

apathy님이 먼저 게시:

Beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HJMil6Hmvx4?feature=share

Asians still know this isn't true thankfully.

[Dracoco OwO]

Calamari Toast님이 먼저 게시:

apathy님이 먼저 게시:

Beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HJMil6Hmvx4?feature=share

Asians still know this isn't true thankfully.

There are definitely some cases where this applies.

[Haruspex]

atomicgirl님이 먼저 게시:

Haruspex님이 먼저 게시:

Look to the right of that page under "Special Properties". It reads, "Including smartphone gamers".

Female gamers were responsible for the popularity of The Sims franchise, which is still one of the best selling PC games of all time. They were also why Lara Croft's character was changed, starting with Angel of Darkness.

https://www.cbr.com/tomb-raider-lara-croft-transformation-women-gamers/

All your ramblings about female gamers being smartphone gamers are just that...ramblings.

You're not entirely wrong about there being female gamers out there. It's true that "The Sims" has been hugely successful, largely driven by women. There's no denying that.

There's a whole new genre of "cozy games" largely played by women that the existence of "Stardew Valley" seems to have kicked off.

So while more women are playing games, this doesn't mean that there are less men. In fact, there are more men playing games than ever before, and men like to see attractive characters in games.

If a game is largely played by men, has historically been targeted towards male players, has a fanbase of mostly men, and has been very successful, why suddenly change it in an effort to appeal more to women?

It's like, how successful a move would it be if "The Sims" changed their formula to try and appeal to men more? Change the female characters to appeal to the "male gaze". Add guns, killing, and football. Not only do I think this move would fail to expand the audience so more men would play, but it would be wildly unpopular with the female playerbase.

So why do some developers keep doing this to the historically male-targeted games?

As for Tomb Raider, the article you linked cites "Tomb Raider 2013" as the turning point for Lara, not Angel of Darkness. I like the new games personally, but remember when Square said the sales of Tomb Raider were "disappointing"? Square sold off Eidos and Crystal Dynamic to Embracer Group in 2022, and now Embracer has been hemorrhaging money and killing off studios. The article you posted cites Alicia Vikander's role in the new Tomb Raider movie[www.cbr.com] as part of Lara's new more realistic, more female friendly, less sexy image, but their own link goes directly to another article saying that movie has been delayed indefinitely.

Per your article;

Thanks to an increase in women gamers, the Lara Croft players know today is vastly different from the 1996 adventurer.

Tomb Raider 2013's eventually got over it's "disappointing" sales, and the other two games in the series have been successes in their own rights, but before them Tomb Raider was a cultural phenomenon. It seems to me like the less sexy, "more realistic" Lara actually took a pretty big step down from her previous, much more male audience.

[Not Big Surprise]

Calamari Toast님이 먼저 게시:

apathy님이 먼저 게시:

Beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HJMil6Hmvx4?feature=share

Asians still know this isn't true thankfully.

yes it is lol

[Caldari Ghost]

Not Big Surprise님이 먼저 게시:

Calamari Toast님이 먼저 게시:

Asians still know this isn't true thankfully.

yes it is lol

no it isn't lol

[Rebel the Murderbrat]

At least there are still plenty of hot guys

[Yavin Shikanoko]

Coomer take

[miakisfan]

Vasitheas님이 먼저 게시:

A lot of you are probably aware of this sometime ago through reddit posts. This vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgqXFeborQ8 (0:44s) sums it up nicely.

I noticed this years ago, back when I was playing [R6:Siege]. When Siege first came out, we had attractive female characters like IQ. Years after, Ubisoft started blog posts about women taking up positions in their company and suddenly we got operators like Gridlock. There was a lot of drama concerning her appearance.

For the last few years, there's a trend of downgraded female appearances, including many upcoming games. [Perfect Dark] just to name one of them.

A lot of old games still have a lasting impression today such as [BloodRayne] and [Tomb Raider]. The reason is quite simple. Beauty sells. Sex also, but that's a different topic.

Some of my friends and countless forum users are concerned. I told them I think it's a phase and more than a decade is needed for this to change. The West has always been very slow.

A long time ago, video games in the West were a man's club, like sports. Men knew what men wanted and we were happy. But when women started coming in, around the last 2 decades, there were a lot of problems. Namely, they weren't skilled, only a distraction. Men didn't mind it at the time because it was a new. But if you sucked and you weren't a woman, that's a different story. A decade or more after, women finally got good at what we do.

Now in the West we've got women coming into the decision-making and designing roles. They've got a simple message: 'We don't like pretty women because it makes us look bad. We're secretly jealous, resentful and spiteful.'

Fortunately, the East didn't go backwards like us in the West. So they're still rolling out awesome games. Not long ago, [Nier Automata]. Recently, [Stellar Blade]. Now, [First Descendant]. Soon, [Chrono Odyssey].

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Anyone saying anything else hasn't looked up the definition of the word *subjective*.