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[Graknorke]

hebephilia

Learned a new word today.

[freeformschooler]

hebephilia

Learned a new word today.

I thought I would never have to see that word outside reddit.

[Quartz_Mace]

Not cool, dude.

What's not cool? That I don't find it attractive or that I pointed out that (literally, and I mean literally) drooling over them is actually what babies do?

Belittling people for what they find attractive is kind of a mean thing to do. If I insinuated that your attraction to smaller breasts (I'm guessing here) is due to pedophilia or hebephilia then you would probably find that not cool.

I'm not attracted to smaller breasts, I'm just not attracted to large ones. I just don't see the point in it and don't like the people who obsess over it like creeps. I have no problem with people who do find it attractive as long as they aren't obsessive and creepy about it(like, if a man finds a woman with large breasts attractive, okay. If he follows her home and tries to rape her, not okay.). I just don't get it, was all that I was saying. Sorry for not being clear about that.

Also, I'm not implying who men who like boobs are creeps, I just don't like the creeps that creep over the boobs, or anything else, for that matter.

[Caz]

. If he follows her home and tries to rape her, not okay.)

...Indeed. O_o

[Cheeetar]

There's better ways to say it than "I hate those feet creeps who creep about feets with their disgusting feet creepiness." It makes it less about a type of behaviour (being a creep) and more about a type of attraction.

[Arcvasti]

In other, completely unrelated to OP news... *ahem*

Recently I read something that reminded me of this thread. I'll try to pull up the article/quote when I get off work. A game designer was criticized for a lack of female characters. His rebuttal was based in a belief that even conservatively portrayed female characters would be sexualized by the predominately garage-dwelling teenage male demographic. The designer said that equal female representation was a "Nice Concept" but he didn't think it would any social impact, period.

That's an interesting take on it, and to certain demographics, it might hold some water. To a feminist, having a female protaganist might be seen as a symbol of empowerment, but to your average COD and WoW nerd, she'd be reduced to comic porn before the game's even released.

I think the difference here is the INTENT of the thing. If you put oversexualized female characters into a game, then you're TRYING to objectify/whatever them to pander to your audience. If you don't, and they are objectified/whatevered anyways, then that's THEIR fault, not yours. You did your part. They didn't do theirs.

Furthermore: why do men find women with big breasts so attractive? I'm a dude and I never got it. Those things are for feeding children, not feeding some creep's sexual intents. When there are full-grown men literally drooling over those, they are literally acting just like babies.

I bet saucy psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud has something insightful to say about that. Or something really stupid. Possibly both. In any case, biological sexual attraction is really all about the babies, either way. The qualities found attractive in females are USUALLY those that mean that they would be[at least physically] good parents of children, since biologically, that's what life is all about. Babies. Large hips for easier births, large breasts for better^{Citation needed} feeding of babies are all desirable qualities. Most things the average person is attracted to can be traced back to that, relics of a simpler[But infinitely less desirable] time.

Furthermore: why do men find women with big breasts so attractive? I'm a dude and I never got it. Those things are for feeding children, not feeding some creep's sexual intents. When there are full-grown men literally drooling over those, they are literally acting just like babies.

I think it's something to do with the taboo nature of breasts. In Europe it's pretty common for people to sit on the beach topless, while in USA it isn't really a thing. A couple of hundred years ago a woman's legs were far more sexualised than they are today, simply because it was the norm to wear long skirts. In certain countries, a female ankle is considered alluring. It just depends on the cultural norms of the day. In some parts of Africa, the women go topless day to day, but the males have no sexual reaction to seeing breasts. Again, cultural.

In that case, the obvious solution is just to make all the women in video games nude by default to oversensitize the male community to the female body so there's really nothing so special about it.

^While the above sentence should by no means be taken seriously, the point I'm making should be. Rather then trying to exacerbate the problem by covering up, wouldn't the best course of action be to remove the "specialness" of the female form? Although that has some practical considerations[EG: Canadia{And elsewhere~!} is/are cold], I'm curious as to what Smee[And others] think of that approach. I'm not necessarily endorsing it, but its something to keep in mind.

EDIT: And the post machine gun begins to fire.

Warning - while you were typing 12 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

[Quartz_Mace]

Okay, you're right. I'll try to be clear:

I hate creeps, including creeps with that attraction. Still hate all creeps, though.

I don't understand the attraction, not opposed to it I just don't get it.

NOTE: Also, I can kind of see the raising children aspect working on the subconscious now.

[Neonivek]

Not cool, dude.

What's not cool? That I don't find it attractive or that I pointed out that (literally, and I mean literally) drooling over them is actually what babies do?

Belittling people for what they find attractive is kind of a mean thing to do. If I insinuated that your attraction to smaller breasts (I'm guessing here) is due to pedophilia or hebephilia then you would probably find that not cool.

I'm not attracted to smaller breasts, I'm just not attracted to large ones. I just don't see the point in it and don't like the people who obsess over it like creeps. I have no problem with people who do find it attractive as long as they aren't obsessive and creepy about it(like, if a man finds a woman with large breasts attractive, okay. If he follows her home and tries to rape her, not okay.). I just don't get it, was all that I was saying. Sorry for not being clear about that.

Also, I'm not implying who men who like boobs are creeps, I just don't like the creeps that creep over the boobs, or anything else, for that matter.

It is kind of... beyond the scope of this discussion to talk about what makes large breasts attractive to some people.

Though to my knowledge it isn't just a guy thing and it is as old as Dirt!

[Toady One]

I've received a few reports on this thread, which isn't exactly a surprise, since the other many threads did not survive.  In any case, people should try to be respectful and they shouldn't go out of their way to troll or post other such things that are going to cause trouble.  I'm not going to have much patience with failures on this score, especially with people that have been warned in the past.  Many of you should know better by now.

[Graknorke]

Right.
Let's all of us try to not get anyone b&.

[Kingbodz]

Imma stop following this thread in fear of bannu.

[Reelya]

As far as protagonists in games go, first up we do have some good recent data from the EEDAR 2012 study: on a "per game" basis, and only looking at published commercial console games, the breakdown is 4% female, 45% female/male choice, 50% male: from 669 last generation console games which had a discernable gender. So picking purely at random, you do at least have a 50/50 chance of getting a game with the option of a female protagonist. Hard data doesn't support the idea that you'd have to wade through 100 titles to find one playable woman.

It's pretty likely that many "gender choice" games started life as a female-only game concept, and they added the male choice afterwards to increase their funding and sales potential. This is actually much more logical than the idea that they added a female choice as an afterthought, since the EEDAR also reported budget and sales data for the different games: male-only games get the most marketing budget and sell the most, followed by male/female games, with female-only games getting the least budget and selling the least. This means adding a male choice as an afterthought would likely get you more funding if your original concept had a female character, but adding a female choice to a male-only game would be likely to lose you funding. So even though "male choice as an afterthought" sounds less intuitive it's actually far more likely given the basic goal of making more money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/arts/international/women-get-in-on-the-action-in-video-games.html?_r=0

While video game developers see their worldwide market approaching a kind of gender parity, there are some significant differences in the types of games preferred by each gender. Men favor immersive, narratively complex games laced with violence that have a steep learning curve, according to Peter Warman, the chief executive of Newzoo. The most popular video game franchise among male players in France, Britain, the United States and Germany is “Max Payne,” a noirish third-person shooter game about a fugitive NYPD detective. The game includes a “kill cam,” which, according to GameSpot, shows the player’s ammunition “soaring through the air and striking its target in grisly detail.”

Women, on the other hand, prefer so-called “casual” games that are easy to learn but complex to master, Mr. Warman said. The most popular franchise among women is the rhythm game “Just Dance,” designed for Nintendo’s Wii platform, in which players mimic dance moves set to popular songs by artists like Katy Perry and Kylie Minogue. The runner-up among women is the Candy Crush Saga, a puzzle game that has become ubiquitous on Facebook and smartphones. The game, which is played by around 90 million people worldwide each day and was just released last month in China, makes an estimated $1 million per day from the sale of 99-cent credits that allow players to keep playing.

Women make up very close to 50% of gamers, but they're over-represented in some genres, and conversely, underrepresented in others. Basically unless women and men play the exact same types of games in identical numbers, some genres will have a surplus of one gender or the other. Women play more of open-ended games (The Sims, Candy Crush, RPGs, puzzles etc) whereas men play more of single-player story-driven action games. These story-driven games are more likely to have single protagonists, and also be shorter in play time. Hence the target audience tend to burn through more individual titles. I think gender of the protagonist will be skewed by the play base's gender (everyone has the right to play characters they can related to) but it will be more pronounced, e.g. if 1/3 of a genre's players are female, this won't automatically mean the optimal market strategy is 33% female protagonists. Maybe it's "proportional" in the same way elections are: a 33% voter base, means you might win 10% of the seats, not 33%.

[Xantalos]

This has been an interesting read. I'll be watching, though I'll probably regret this.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Also checking in to complain about Other M. It's perhaps the only thing that I can say I actually believe has achieved the prestigious status of Fractally Wrong, in which it is the same amount of wrong at every possible resolution.

I just hate Metroid Other M so very much.  It's like some otaku wrote a fanfiction where they, as Adam Malkovich, got to order Samus around and save her from Ridley and paralyze her (what) then save her life again through heroic self sacrifice.  And she goes along with it all because he can't write female characters so she's a 1-dimensional waifu with a baby fixation who needs a firm heroic man to face enemies she's already killed by this point in canon.

Let's not forget, she hasn't just killed Ripley by then, she killed him twice by then. They can't even fall back on her reaction stemming from discovering Ripley's impossibly robust resurrection tendencies.

I understand that Ripley slaughtered everybody she ever loved and all, and that was what they were going for, but Samus Aran is a bloodthirsty killer. They could have actually done that scene correctly, had that been the reaction instead of crippling fear.

It's totally canon (and possibly the last one)

I genuinely fear there will indeed never be another Metroid game due to the sheer magnitude of failure that Other M managed. Retro has the contract if one is ordered, but that order has to come in the first place...

And her power armor keeps disappearing mid-fight somehow even though that's never happened before.

This also has another element of Wrong to it: The Varia Suit isn't a traditional suit of armor and gets stored in hyperspace when not used (which they somehow did get right), but it also isn't maintained by Samus' consciousness, just summoned by it. This is why in the opening of Fusion (the game Other M was SUPPOSED to compliment, no less) the Federation is forced to surgically remove it to prevent Samus from dying of X infection: it's stuck on her and she's not conscious enough to turn it off.

Oh, and the Prime Series?  Declared noncanon.  Even though it was far better gameplay and story wise, but I guess he didn't like an actually competent team having anything to do with his deadly-yet-subservient waifu.

This part is actually a misconception. Prime is still canon, Sakamoto said he didn't take it into consideration while making Other M (as is obvious). Some people translated this as "Prime is now non-canon", but that isn't the case.

While with Metroid we find out that we only *thought* Samus was a strong role model because the NES/SNES didn't let this dumbass write much.

Eh, forget him. There are other people involved in Metroid, and it's also kind of a long-runner. His viewpoint on Samus may be more recent then he's letting on.

My big pet peeve with Other M is kind of a strange one, and that's Samus' height. Those of you with lots of Metroid experience may note an interesting fact: Samus Aran is fucking gigantic. Her height was once officially listed as 6'3'' normally and 7'3'' inside the Varia Suit. And indeed, in just about every game Samus has a considerable physical presence....except for Other M, where she is shorter than everybody else for no reason, even inside the Varia Suit.

Why do a bunch of Federation schmucks have armor that dwarfs a creation of the Chozo, a species that effectively reached the end of technological development? Why is Samus depicted as paper-thin waifu compared to an average group of humans when she is canonically made of Hulkamaina? All these questions and more can be yours to ponder if you play Other M! Why Nintendo? Just why?

Other M is also mechanically flawed (where's my Scan Visor, what is this weak flavorless shit that replaces it), but I could forgive that if not for the total character assassination.

If we're very, very lucky, then Retro will get to make their promised game in the style of Prime and Sakamoto will be distracted with some kind of compelling optical illusion while they're making it.

[Rolan7]

Oh, and the Prime Series?  Declared noncanon.  Even though it was far better gameplay and story wise, but I guess he didn't like an actually competent team having anything to do with his deadly-yet-subservient waifu.

This part is actually a misconception. Prime is still canon, Sakamoto said he didn't take it into consideration while making Other M (as is obvious). Some people translated this as "Prime is now non-canon", but that isn't the case.

Woohoo!  I'm so glad to be wrong 

While with Metroid we find out that we only *thought* Samus was a strong role model because the NES/SNES didn't let this dumbass write much.

Eh, forget him. There are other people involved in Metroid, and it's also kind of a long-runner. His viewpoint on Samus may be more recent then he's letting on.

I'm now free to stop complaining and get back to enjoying the series!  My day has been made.  I think I'll start with Prime 2, I replayed Prime 1 enough times already.

My big pet peeve with Other M is kind of a strange one, and that's Samus' height. Those of you with lots of Metroid experience may note an interesting fact: Samus Aran is fucking gigantic. Her height was once officially listed as 6'3'' normally and 7'3'' inside the Varia Suit. And indeed, in just about every game Samus has a considerable physical presence....except for Other M, where she is shorter than everybody else for no reason, even inside the Varia Suit.

Why do a bunch of Federation schmucks have armor that dwarfs a creation of the Chozo, a species that effectively reached the end of technological development? Why is Samus depicted as paper-thin waifu compared to an average group of humans when she is canonically made of Hulkamaina? All these questions and more can be yours to ponder if you play Other M! Why Nintendo? Just why?

Wow, yeah!  Probably easiest to notice in Prime 3, where there are federation marines (who aren't corpses).  Or the intro to Super Metroid.

Other M is also mechanically flawed (where's my Scan Visor, what is this weak flavorless shit that replaces it), but I could forgive that if not for the total character assassination.

If we're very, very lucky, then Retro will get to make their promised game in the style of Prime and Sakamoto will be distracted with some kind of compelling optical illusion while they're making it.

Fingers crossed so hard...  I heard Sakamoto was relegated to filing duty or an equivalent for the (financial) disgrace of Other M.

Fortunately I never had to own a copy, I watched the Retsupurae "LP" of cinema mode.  I think they called Character Assassination: Authorized.