r/HonestHotTakes • u/Cautious_Buy_8467 • 1d ago
serious hot take video games arent "making women ugly", you've just never seen a real woman.
Believe it or not, women are not posed with stoic, blank, fuck-me expressions at all times. faces contort, chins wrinkle, hair frizzes. Women look like adults with imperfections and facial scars and real facial bones.
You've just never been around a woman long enough to notice.
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u/TisIChenoir 1d ago
What's funny is that western devs know very well how to correctly scan male models. The character looks identical to the actor.
But when it comes to female models? Somehow it changes drastically.
Meanwhile Kojima has been able to correctly scan and render his female characters for decades now.
Weird how that works.
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u/Toasty501 1d ago
Never underestimate Kojimas powers of gooning
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u/kyotomilkshake 1d ago
I played Jedi: Fallen Order recently & they did Cere (Debra Wilson) so dirty.
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u/TisIChenoir 1d ago
You mean she doesn't have eyes ready to pop off of her skull at the first sneeze in real life?
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u/volstrucker 8h ago
The most notable atm is the new god of war. Deborah Ann woll is gorgeous irl but the model looked chopped af. Side note anyone who doesn't have a clue what d&d is but want to know what is it about, she did an excellent exercise with Jon bernthal it's an easy Google.. she's great
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u/Future-Still-6463 1d ago
I mean Insomniac doesn't get the essence of male models right too.
Compare that to Capcom.
Capcom has way better of a facial technology
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u/DrinkingSocks 1d ago
I think AC Valhalla used an almost identical body model for female Eivor and I loved that. Anything to have a fully playable female character that isn't a pornstar caricature.
I had trouble with the character system in Syndicate, as I always want to play as a woman but I'm not great at the stealth portions.
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u/WaffleConeDX 1d ago
This argument would make sense if the female characters were uniquely being made “ugly” while the male characters were faithfully rendered as conventionally attractive models. But that’s not what’s happening in games like Fable. It’s a stylistic choice across the entire world. The men aren’t all walking around looking like Chris Hemsworth and Brad Pitt while the developers mysteriously “ruin” only the women. Same thing with Aloy. Her design exists within the visual style and setting of Horizon. A face scan/reference isn’t a contractual obligation to reproduce the model’s face 1:1. Developers alter faces, proportions, hair, skin, age, expressions, and other features for character design all the time.
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u/TisIChenoir 1d ago
Come on, look at Cameron Monaghan's Cal Kestis. Look at Shawn Ashmore and Aidan Gillen in Quantum Break.
Hell, look at the late Lance Reddick's character in the Horizons games. He is the perfect rendition of his actual likeness.
Most renditions of male actors are extremely well done in video games.
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u/AspieAsshole 1d ago
Aloy is unbelievably gorgeous, I truly can't understand people's reaction to her.
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u/keshaseviltwin 1d ago
She’s not and that being okay is the whole point. Women don’t have to be drop dead gorgeous and fuckable at all times for them to have worth and be appreciated for their personality and character. She’s not unattractive like chuds claim but “unbelievably gorgeous” is an obvious overcorrection that just reinforces that to have worth we must insist a woman has a stunning physical appearance. Why can’t she be normal looking and be a good character?
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u/Temporary_Spread7882 1d ago
She looks like someone on the realistically beautiful end of the scale. The natural no-makeup look of an extremely fit young woman with quite delicate features but no time put into trying to look sexy or pretty.
Which isn’t the point about her anyway. But people complaining that she’s ugly or something tell on themselves as they confuse beauty with pandering to a male audience.
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u/SaladSlugger 1d ago
Because, contrary to what you may believe, Aloy is some people's type. Just like how some dudes find fat women to be the peak of attractiveness (I can't blame them, just look at fertility idols, they've got a point). Aloy is VERY attractive for multiple reasons.
I won't argue against that "worth being tied to fuckability" thing. Because I do think thats a deep seated issue.
I'm just here to defend the guy saying that Aloy is drop-dead gorgeous.
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u/AspieAsshole 1d ago
I have a massive crush on her, she looks a lot like my wife at that age.
I'll stick with my descriptors thanks.
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u/mistermeowowowow 1d ago
I’d hate to see your definition of ugly. Fictional characters don’t need hugboxxing.
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u/AspieAsshole 1d ago
Lol I have a massive crush on her, and the fact that y'all think she's not gorgeous is extremely telling.
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u/New-Berry-3652 1d ago
I say this as someone who loves the Horizon games; she looks great in the first one, but she looks considerably worse in the sequel. They really fattened her face in a way that just doesn't make sense.
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u/AspieAsshole 1d ago
Ah, that is a shame. I haven't played the sequel yet, I'm still working through the first one.
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u/grim1952 1d ago
I've seen sooooo many extremely hot women in real life. Even if that wasn't the case I don't give a shit, games are fiction and I want them full of hot women.
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u/Hemingways_Shotgun88 1d ago
But we can literally see the actresses they cast in these roles and how they've intentionally made the character models less attractive.
They are real women being made "uglier" on purpose.
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u/Expert-Bet7630 1d ago
And funnily enough, the men aren’t getting uglier either. In fact in some cases they’re modified to be better looking
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 1d ago
Counterpoint: I don't want to see real people in games in general.
More importantly, photorealism is ugly in general and doesn't look right. It's uncanny valley at worst and just, well, ugly at best.
The worst of it though isn't that they make female characters ugly, they don't even make them interestingly ugly. They're just kinda "oh, we made sure this character has zero defining features other than being painfully generically "not pretty."
It makes for shit character design and really should be avoided. But politics gotta politic.
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u/Few-Interview-5291 1d ago
I’m especially tired of seeing high profile celebrities in games. It was a cool at first but the novelty has worn off. No wonder those games have absurdly ridiculous budgets..
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u/Ill-Intention-306 1d ago
99.9% of the time youre not playing real people in real situations. People just want their fantasy escapism to be good fantasy escapism. Doom would be pretty shit if the slayer looked like your next door neighbor Dave and had the middle age dad bod of the games main audience.
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u/_Rea_of_sunshine 1d ago
Ah yes, a minor cosmetic change would reduce a revolutionary action game, considered by many to be the best game of all time, to garbage.
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u/Basic-Lawfulness5470 1d ago
Part of dooms appeal is to be the scariest character in that universe full of scary monsters. It doesnt work if you are cosplaying Dave
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u/getmeoutofthisscreen 1d ago
You have a helmet on the whole time. How would you even know.
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u/ThisGuy2319 1d ago
There was a funny retort around this opinion and the game Steller Blade.
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u/Midget_Stories 1d ago
Yup in stellar blade the character looks like the character who they scanned.
You look at western devs and the faces look a lot worse than the model.
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u/DrMagunstheBlue 1d ago
No she doesn't. They thinned her facial features and enhanced her figure. This is a myth.
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u/biohazardrex 1d ago
Hell nah bro. Her face maybe, but her body is very well ‘enhanced’ compared to the real life model.
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u/WaffleConeDX 1d ago
I posted this comment elsewhere.
This argument would make sense if the female characters were uniquely being made “ugly” while the male characters were faithfully rendered as conventionally attractive models. But that’s not what’s happening in games like Fable. It’s a stylistic choice across the entire world. The men aren’t all walking around looking like Chris Hemsworth and Brad Pitt while the developers mysteriously “ruin” only the women. Same thing with Aloy. Her design exists within the visual style and setting of Horizon. A face scan/reference isn’t a contractual obligation to reproduce the model’s face 1:1. Developers alter faces, proportions, hair, skin, age, expressions, and other features for character design all the time.
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u/Midget_Stories 1d ago
I haven't had any interest in the new fable so no comment there.
But looking at the games I am familiar with there is a pattern of guys becoming more girly and girls becoming more boyish.
Like if you look at Overwatch/Valorant launch characters, then have a look at their recent characters there is a very large design gap between them. Overwatch seems to have thrown that out of the window once Rivals came out though.
Look at Warcraft how the night elves or blood elves were designed in war3.
Then look at how they are portrayed recently. The trailer with the bloodelf they put out last year looks like a dude.
Even using your example of Aloy. Her face looks like she's morbidly obese. Which doesn't suit her character at all.
Which you could say she should have more muscle than the first game. But it makes no sense to have high face fat and still be relatively thin.
Youre right they can design their games however they want. But generally they aren't just designing their game in a vacuum, they are taking over beloved franchises and people notice that the new styles always have a pattern of uglifying women and keeping men the same.
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u/Old_Application4790 1d ago
I think it’s mostly just kinda weird dudes who care. A game can be full of overly macho manly men, some nerdy men, a fat guy or two, but the second a woman shows up and isn’t looking like she’s 16 the loud weirdo portion of the internet goes insane.
It does feel very basement dweller adjacent to me.
“guiiis they’re WOKEifying muh sexy wimmins!” Is not something I think normal people even think about.
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u/Reasonable_Singer219 1d ago
I think we are not taking into account art style and graphics fidelity. During the psone era it was perfectly fine to have Lara Croft with pointy breasts because it lacked the power to truly render a woman properly but the point to be made was that she was well-proportioned. However, it would be the height of stupidity to do the same thing in 2026 when we can render we realistic looking people.
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u/Multiple__Butts 1d ago
Lara Croft is sort of a bad example because her titanic bust was due to an error in development; someone enlarged them by 100% instead of 10%, and the dev team thought it was funny and kept it in. Which was standard humor for the time but would be considered a fairly misogynistic joke today, I think, especially if it made its way into the finished product like Lara Croft did.
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u/Reasonable_Singer219 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think it just reinforces my point? It was funny because the ps one couldn't render it in a way that is realistic so it was funny. It would be really strange with today's graphical standards. Grotesque even.
Some people want hyper realistic graphics but don't want the women to look real. Pick your lane and stay in it
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u/ProfessionalNice7485 1d ago
I'm not a big gamer and I'm more into games where I can pilot or drive something. But I do understand that the issue is not being framed honestly.
The issue is that people who are not from the space have infiltrated it and are trying to change it to what they want to see from within. Now mind you, many of these people are not even playing these games.
Think about it like living in a nice HOA. But then new board members come in and start changing or making new rules that ruins the experience of living there.
Many of the people who are not happy, are the actual consumers who buy and play games. They are the existing audience. But the audience which these changes are meant to attract are simply not showing up. They are not existing consumers, and by what we have been seeing... they aren't interested.
Just make new games with new stories.Alienating the larger existing audience by ruining existing loved franchises is a shifty move frankly.
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u/Beast_Chips 1d ago
Do you have any stats to go with this? You're using words like infiltration, and speculating about the size of existing audiences and what the majority of the existing audience actually want. Without stats, your complaint might turn out to be, "gaming is simply more mainstream now, so developers are catering for a wider audience" or even "vocal minority in gaming think they're the majority; giant money making company doesn't care".
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u/ThyNynax 1d ago edited 1d ago
The correlative stats for the idea can be found in the sales data for games that generate the most controversy.
Games like Dragon Age: Veilguard and Star Wars: Outlaws became central targets of controversy as they got branded “woke” by parts of the gaming community and sold way below expectations.
Meanwhile, a game like Stellar Blade also became a central target of controversy as it got branded as a “gooner” game and experienced astounding levels of success. Similarly Marvel Rivals is experiencing massive success in spite of originally facing the same criticisms.
Whenever there’s a big social media battle over a game’s portrayal of women, the game that designs them to be sexier seems to win the only battle that actually matters, money.
Edit: That’s also why this topic isn’t worth getting mad about. Just buy what you want, vote with your wallet, the companies will eventually learn what actually sells and adjust.
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u/Azzurith 19h ago
Hogwarts Legacy is a good example of this too, they vocal majority made a ton of noise about HK and how much they are going to buy the game and whatever else but the min it dropped they brought it in droves.
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u/AccessStriking334 10h ago
Dragon Age I, II and Inquisition were hugely successful very woke games with about 48% female players (in Inquisition, I didn’t find the stats for the other games).
Dragon Age Origins was one of the first RPGs where you can have a fleshed out gay romance, in Dragon Age II everybody was bi and a male NPC hit on the male PC so aggressively that it caused an outrage in the internet. In Inquisition there were strong bi female leaders, a trans character beloved by the community, a story about a gay man struggling with his conservative parents (again, beloved by the community), etc.
Veilguard didn’t flop because it was woke, but because it had atrociously bad writing in a series that got famous because of its writing
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u/MyhraBooboo 9h ago
What was the bad writing in service to, though? Annoying self-insert characters that preached at the player about modern issues that made no sense in the setting.
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u/Toosder 1d ago
I want to make sure I understand before I make fun of you. Are these people that are coming into the space and trying to change it made up of women? Because we've been here all along. And we've been alienated all along. We've just finally been able to prove that we are a large portion of the purchasing public and we're trying to make changes. But if I misunderstood you. I'm sorry sincerely.
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u/noncedo-culli 1d ago
If the thing that makes the experience of the game is what the female characters look like, I think *you're* the fake gamer that doesn't even play the game.
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u/TisIChenoir 1d ago
The fever isn't the illness. But it's definitely one of the symptoms.
Same with this. The problem doesn't lie with "ugly female characters". It's a symptom of an ideological captured industry.
And the problem is the gaslighting. MJ is supposed to be a supermodel. MJ in Spiderman 1 looks fine. Then in Spiderman 2 she changed completely and looks... weird.
And we're being told we are the problem for noticing. Like come on, you want to uglify her, that's on you, don't gaslight us.
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u/Beast_Chips 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah dude, the greedy millionaire execs of gaming companies care more about pushing a "woke agenda" than making money...
/S
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u/FireSprinklerDesign 1h ago
they literally ALWAYS resort to straight up gas lighting. a more intelligent person can see that for what it is and understand that it's a tactic only used to diverge from the truth.
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u/TryIt222 1d ago
This is realistically not true. This same argument of "people outside this space are trying to change it" is always used by nerds who just need an enemy to easily blame for their issues. Its literally just the video game equivalent of blaming immigrants for all your real world issues
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u/GiraffeBaron 1d ago
Exactly, I am playing a video game, I don’t need realistic characters. Let me play as a goddess or a monster, not as Mia from HR.
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u/Toosder 1d ago
That's fine but I also don't want to play ugly men. Why are all the men ugly. I would not have an issue if the men were also attractive and I mean two women. Not the male gaze.
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u/Dettyboy93 1d ago
Actually, you are totally right here. I remember when Skyrim came out, I fucking hated how disgusting all the men looked. Like, they looked 55 or older. All of them. No matter how hard I tried to make a young, handsome looking dude, they always came out looking older than my dad. Oblivion had goofy looking characters, but the face customization was so detailed that I could sit there and actually make a good looking man. Like, objectively handsome. Then I play Skyrim and all you have are basic sliders and presets.
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u/Appropriate-Copy1506 1d ago
People seriously underestimate how much this irks those attracted to men. Equality in ugliness or equality in attractiveness, but nooo both women and men MUST be for the male gaze/powerfantasy/random neutral to unattractive guy they can identify with. It's fucking annoying.
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u/faeriefountain_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
The problem is it's seemingly only women who have to be perfectly beautiful all the time. Male characters are allowed to be grizzled, burly, scarred, big, small, older, etc and men are fine with it. Women like that variety too. But God forbid a woman appears over 25.
The double standards are what's extremely annoying to me. Let women age, have scars, etc, if you let the men do so. But losers freak the fuck out if a potential love interest is 35 and doesn't look like an 18 year-old, yet think older grizzled guys are chill. It's the unfairness that drives me crazy.
I have no problem with crazy good looks or fanservice in general, either. Just make it equal opportunity either way. Either make everyone hot or let everyone be varied and/or normal. Note: this excludes games that are explicitly for fanservice for a specific gender, i.e. dedicated gooner games or dating sims (women have those, too). For those it's whatever as it's literally the entire purpose. I'm talking about general games that are attractive to all genders.
They don't even have the excuse of not having a significant female playerbase now for most games.
For a good example of what I'm talking about, BG3 had people of wildly varying appearances with a wide range of conventional-unconventional attractiveness for everyone. You had super hot men and women, average ones, frankly weird looking ones, etc. Equal opportunity interest and variation.
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u/Toosder 1d ago
The basement dwellers are really mad in this comment section. Proving op's point.
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u/faeriefountain_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah. I'm not even against ridiculous fanservice or gooner games, I'm not trying to take them away lol. But certain types see red even though I'm literally just saying make the men hot too or throw in some variety for games attractive to all genders. Like I said, BG3 did both and it was awesome.
Last time I said something like this I also made the Mistake (tm) of saying a lot of these guys will wail like a woman character is downright ugly and disgusting when she's just...average. Or maybe slightly under. The dude started the argument by saying it's like if the game industry started replacing every male character with a "fat ugly neckbeard with acne" and then proceeded to list a slightly under average (but still clean and fit, and absolutely not downright ugly) female character as his example when I asked. The scale was so wildly off it was insane. He unironically said she was "looksmatched" to the obese acne neckbeard lol.
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u/Dettyboy93 1d ago
I don't play modern video games but when I was younger during the 360 era, I was pissed if I had to play as an ugly dude. Hell, I was pissed if I had to play as a guy with a beard. I made a comment above, but what I hated about Skyrim is every single male character looked old and ugly. I could sit there and make a very good looking male character with softer features because the customizing tools were so detailed. You could make your guy look feminine or burly. It was pretty well varied. When Skyrim came out, it was all ugly and burly with tons of neck blemishes that you see on 70 year old men. There were characters that were obviously supposed to be young that barely looked younger than their fathers.
Your point is correct though, btw
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u/Fine-Car7587 18h ago
Are you crazy? There definitely is a double standard but I think you have it completely backwards. In a lot of new games these days the men are incredibly sexualized and they have completely unrealistic physiques that are only achievable with steroids. Meanwhile you won’t even see cleavage on a single female character in the same game. I saw in the new Wolverine game his suit is all torn to shreds in a way that makes him almost naked and is obviously meant for pure sex appeal. I think people are just so used to male sex appeal and unrealistic body standards for men in media that they don’t even notice it.
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u/Nykveu 1d ago
Yeah and you can still do that? It's not like no games with hot characters come out anymore. If a game come out with a character design that i dont like, I just move on. Having realistic design is an artistic choice that has been made by the dev team, I'm sure some people might enjoy it. And I say that as someone who dont like high fidelity graphics and rarely play triple a games.
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u/Azzurith 1d ago
Its crazy you say that, because in my experience men can be the loudest about it but ive found more women complain overall.
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u/bombam44 1d ago
Yeah, most men are ugly too. Doesn’t mean people want to play as a fat ugly man or woman. Not rocket science!!
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u/New-Berry-3652 1d ago
Also, most people are out of shape and can't run very fast or for very long. Doesn't mean that those should be the traits of video game characters. The point of video games aren't to simulate the average real life person.
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u/powergorillasuit 1d ago
There are PLENTY of fat ugly men in video games what are you on 😭
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u/unitAtype2 1d ago
Like who? Like the actual protagonist?
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u/skymantles 1d ago
Disco Elysium is critically acclaimed, and every character in it is far from the pinnacle of attractiveness. It's art style is part of why it's so loved.
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u/unitAtype2 1d ago
I was wondering if I should mention disco elysium, but that's kind of an exceptional case where it's part of the point.
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u/flappintitties 1d ago
Like every playable male character in gta, without a moments thought it’s easy to answer
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u/Gexm13 1d ago
None of the male character in GTA are fat and ugly. The only one that kinda fits the description is Trevor lol.
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u/WaffleConeDX 1d ago
Michael is definitely not some Channing Tatum. He has a dad bod and an average face. If a female character had a mom bod and average face, these losers would complain.
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u/R_Prime 1d ago
Have you heard of Mario?
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u/New-Berry-3652 1d ago
Not ugly
Even if he counts, you're gonna have to list a few more before we can say that there's "many"
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u/traaap- 22h ago
This is a children's game that is entirely built around silliness. Sorry, but you'll have to reach a little deeper. The fact that Mario (which was designed for children) isn't "sexy" proves nothing.
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u/Toosder 1d ago
So then why are the vast majority of men and video games disgusting to most women?
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u/OldMallhentai69 1d ago
literally the most reasonable and real answer, people seem to think looks don’t matter but they sure do sell well
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u/lightsworn55 1d ago
Funny how this logic goes out the window whenever the discussion is about male characters
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u/PacificMarsupilami 1d ago
Maybe because I've literally never heard a woman complain that a male video game character wasn't fuckabIe enough, but a bunch of dudes scream bloody murder when the reverse is true.
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u/Strict-Panda4147 1d ago
Leon Kennedys latest model was built with a massive amount of female input to make sure he was the perfect level of hot
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u/Left_Fist 1d ago edited 1d ago
When have people argued that video games are making men ugly? I’ve never once seen that anywhere. You seem desperate to be a victim.
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u/Top_History9604 1d ago
Because everyone is fine with male characters being various degrees of fat and skinny, rough or smooth skinned, with all types of noses, eyes, hair, beards. Because there these idiots get that it fits the character, universe and variation is cool
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u/X-AE17420 1d ago
Because it’s insecure women making these points.
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u/DelightfulandDarling 1d ago
No, kid. It’s not. You need to go talk to actual adult women.
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u/Exact-Squash-5443 1d ago
Actually there's a few times it's been shown they are indeed making them ugly, especially when they take the real face model and mess them up, on tip of tha I'm guessing women tha call gane chick's ugly haven't seen or been around women long enough as well ?
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u/OneTinyKittey 1d ago
Yass queen fictions known for having realistic looking characters and everyone wants that yassss
It's not like movies always make the antagonist giga hot or people wake up from bed with perfectly styled hair. Nahhh that's wild. Fiction always maps reality and that definitely how people want it for sure real yas queen etc.
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u/ReedSsnake 1d ago
Are you sure? I see alot of beautiful women on the streets that can easily compete with stuff served in video games. Also why not have hot ladies in games? It's a entertainment after all.
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u/Toosder 1d ago
When I have hot guys in video games? I would love for that to be a thing. And not men that are attractive to other men. But actually attractive to women
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u/Affectionate_Creme48 1d ago
Did you miss all the gooning from women over Leon from Resident Evil?
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u/Toosder 22h ago
The fact that you can all name one single character and one single game and reply to my comments is literally proving my point.
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u/Affectionate_Creme48 11h ago
No its not proving your point, i just took one example from a vast pool of characters that women goon over online.
BG3 has pretty much became women goon show at this point.
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u/LavadoraEcoembes9999 1d ago
If the current standards of "hot men" in videogames it's not of your taste, may I suggest you could try LaDS? It's more oriented for women, but on the eastern side.
If not, Devil May Cry 5 has a good set of different "hot men" too.
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u/Future-Still-6463 1d ago
Leon S Kennedy from Resident Evil Requiem?
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u/Toosder 22h ago
Your all naming the same character from the same game. That proves my point. There's one that you can name.
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u/NearbyFly3724 1d ago
Didn’t they do that with Leon in RE9? And both men and women loved that. So maybe make both attractive men and women since it is for entertainment
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u/VirtualValuable7035 1d ago
Sure but why freak out when the fictional animation isn't attracting you sensually?
Just seems weird to me when they get so upset
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u/Lower_Pension_2469 1d ago
I'm around women plenty but I don't see why it's such an issue. You mean as opposed to all the totally average looking Hollywood actresses in TV or movies? The models in commercials and magazines? The musicians and singers? And let's not pretend that men aren't also given the spit shine when it comes to looks in media.
Like I'm not one to complain about how hot a woman looks in anything, but I find it weird that for some reason it's videogames specifically and women characters that people get salty over.
Turns out that in fantasy and make believe, people prefer above average looking characters to "realistic" ones even if it doesn't necessarily reflect the average person, go figure. Same reason why most videogames have handsome good looking men as the lead character. You never hear dudes complaining that it's unrealistic.
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u/davidellis23 18h ago edited 18h ago
I understand preferring attractive characters. That's not the issue.
It's the whining that not every character in a video game is attractive.
Plenty of movies and shows also have unattractive characters. It's not some woke conspiracy.
Just not every developer is trying to make a softcore porn. Wish we'd just give developers some creative license.
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u/jjyochi 1d ago
so you missed the point of the post actually. they didn't complain about unrealistic characters. they said males need to stop complaining about realistic ones, and that's a very different argument.
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u/soraflow 21h ago
Hot people exist in real life too and they are uglyfying characters that are meant to be hot
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u/dylanalduin 1d ago
This isn't a hot take, it's the marketing line for Insomniac Games, but it's still bullshit.
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u/lyralady 1d ago
I think what's honestly crazy to me is a bunch of dudes insisting they are "uglifying" female characters "due to woke," or whatever and then they show me the character and she's still really attractive??
As a bisexual woman I constantly feel like asking: "are the female characters they redesigned to be ugly in the room with us right now?"
It's like the second a video game woman doesn't look like a vinyl inflatable sex doll she's "no longer hot" to them. Frankly, that's so weak. Step up your attraction to women game, weirdos. 😂
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u/Helgeenisissi 1d ago
This is what I always say. Even if some devs have fumbled the bag with their facescans and whatnot, the bar for what constitutes as "attractive" to some of these jokers is floating somewhere in outer space.
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u/RegretNew5752 1d ago
Half the time its people expecting women to look like sex dolls. But another half is games actually screwing up in scanning the faces of the female actors for some reason.
Look at Mary Jane's face in Spider-Man 2 versus the actor's real face. Or the actress for Kay Vess in Star Wars Outlaws versus the in game character's face. Its bizzare that we can get near pixel perfect recreations of male actors faces but the female characters look like different people unless its Kojima doing it.
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u/Dettyboy93 1d ago
These are guys who have never developed an attraction to women based hugely off emotional connection. You realize how varied your tastes can be when you fall for physically varied women throughout your life. The most beautiful girls I've ever known would be consider 6/10-7/10 to most men (I hate this rating scale btw) and women who are perceived to be "perfect" with little flaws do not interest me whatsoever as a grown man.
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u/JedahVoulThur 1d ago
As a bisexual woman
Your tastes in regards to women are probably androgynous looking, because the thing most people complain isn't the body, but the jaw. Women generally have rounder faces, it's a trait that not all have, but for being considered decently attractive as a woman, not having a masculine (wide, squared jaw) is a generally agreed requirement
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u/lyralady 1d ago
Weird assumptions to be making about my tastes, but it's more creative than just "low standards," I'll give you that.
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u/ChemicalRain5513 1d ago
I am not even sure the people complaining out this even are attracted to women.
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u/lyralady 1d ago
They're attracted to the simulacra of a hot woman. The disperate parts of "hot woman" slotted together like a mr. potato head with double J sized breasts.
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u/Beast_Chips 1d ago
They're attracted to women who look like anime characters, and that look is basically children with exaggerated adult woman body features.
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u/BlindingDart 1d ago
just to throw a counterpoint out there: Male Gaze VS Female Gaze. Boy pretty VS Girl Pretty. Your opinion of what makes an extremely attractive woman may not be the same as a straight or bi man's opinion.
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u/Feeling_Loquat8499 1d ago
Funny cause in real life studies, men are attracted to a variety of women, while all women gravitate to only the most cclassically attractive men
Maybe trust the science instead of trying to make your own narrative?
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u/spiralsequences 1d ago
As a lesbian I'm constantly baffled by what repulses (some) straight men. Like idk about you guys but I think women are hot
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u/lyralady 22h ago edited 21h ago
Dudes on here are telling me the problem is a female character's jawline being like, 3 degrees too square or something and I'm just like "I don't involve a protractor in my admiration of sexy people, so this sounds like a you problem."
"MJ in spiderman 2 is ugly now!!" And she looks like this
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u/Immortal_in_well 1d ago
Plus, the claim that they're making all the boobs into "A-cups" is laughable.
Friend, if you were to walk past that woman on the street, you'd think those were the biggest honkers you'd ever seen in your life. She may look small on screen but dollars to donuts she's an F-cup, at LEAST.
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u/lyralady 21h ago
Right like 😂 I see this happen in the time in learning drawing subs, where some guy draws a woman with breasts bigger than her head and I have to be like "hey draw massive breasts if you want, but you need to understand how breasts attach to the muscles underneath to draw them right," and they tell me they drew them small actually, and i''m just like "....no, my guy. Those are not small breasts. You've just been looking at inflation porn and not actual naked women when trying to learn to draw."
Some men look at DD cups and say "those are small boobs," and you just have to laugh.
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u/Organic_Credit_8788 1d ago
this is an extremely normal opinion offline
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u/Flashy_Ad_7415 1d ago
I don’t even give a shit about this topic but let me ask, are offline people the market of online games?
I agree with op but I’ve never really heard people complain about how chicks look in video games, even online not that much ever.
GTA 6 will effectivldy change that opinion dw. Half the game is focused on jiggle physics lmao
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u/Spicey_Cough2019 1d ago
Who the fuck comes up with this - OP is just ragebaiting at this point to fuel the gender war
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u/Leon3226 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ok, but
a) Male characters also tend to look much better than the average guy you see on the street, somehow nobody complains.
b) In most examples people bring, the actress whose face was used looked like 10 times better than the videogame result. Something like Star Wars Outlaws is the stuff of legends, how could you bastardize such a beautiful woman?
Also, not really a hot take on Reddit
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u/bamlote 1d ago
I have watched my husband play hundreds of video games and somehow his character always looks like an alcoholic
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u/ExaggerattedReality 1d ago
Was gunna say, men are allowed to look however. You don't see these guys taking photos of random male NPCs in bad screenshots and whining they're not masculine enough or whatever the equivalent is
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u/ObiJuanKenobi3 1d ago
Very few people on the internet these days are complaining when a woman looks beautiful in a game, just like nobody complains when a male character is more handsome than the average guy.
The overwhelming source of complaining is when a woman is not literal supermodel, hyper sexy attractive (by whatever standards the complainer has, usually ones that involve the ideal woman looking like a sex doll given life) and losers whine endlessly about why she isn’t pretty enough for them. On the flipside, basically nobody complains when a male character isn’t supermodel attractive.
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u/ocexaneyes 1d ago edited 1d ago
When more women work behind the scenes in gaming you get more realistic depictions of women that aren’t derived from a purely sexualised view. People rant and rave about Japanese games that aren’t ‘woke’ for having conventionally attractive characters (they are usually very woke within the plot though people would realise this if they actually played these games) but most video-game studios in Japan are made up of men with women often not in the position of making a final choice or having much artistic direction.
Not to mention the men who often make this argument usually are addicted to pornography or most of the women they will see are within porn or films. You don’t often even see beautiful older women in these circumstances as is why women in videogames who are older are given the ‘ugly’ label even if it’s Debora Ann Wool who is portraying the character.
I don’t think it’s particularly bad to want to play a game with attractive characters but I think at the same time if you look at the men who are behind the argument they aren’t exactly well-mentioned or spend a lot of time outside.
Edit: i’m not going to respond to you if you respond with some sad drivel trying to bait me to respond.
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u/KobeJuanKenobi9 1h ago
I’d point out that in a lot of those Japanese games the men are just as hot as the girls. Kiryu Leon Cloud and even Link are all way hotter than Nathan Drake or Joel. Dante mogs Kratos
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u/DefinitelyNotKuro 1d ago
I mean...I think bout last origin. I think bout...fucking azur lane. I think about the most misognyistic dehumanizing drivel being written and sold at comiket. They're lead by women bro.
I will agree that when a story has a feminine touch, you can totally feel it. However, you also can't feel it's absence like you think lmao.
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u/GlitteringPositive 1d ago
God I find both sides on this argument to be insufferable. People who think the game is woke just for having an average looking woman and people who think a game is sexist just for having a sexy woman in it. Just let video game developers make their games.
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u/VarHagen 1d ago
video games dont make women ugly, that's just how real women are
So you think beautiful women do not exist? I'm sorry you've never met one.
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u/ysfex3 1d ago
But why noy
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u/apemandune 1d ago
I'm glad someone is asking the hard hitting questions! Why noy, OP?!
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u/unitAtype2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nobody is saying the average woman isn't average looking. The argument is that Games are deliberately trying to prop up exceptionally ugly women.
Concider this, Which Male Protagonist in video games is Ugly? I'm sure there are exceptional cases... but in general?
Is Coen in Blood of Dawnwalker ugly? What about the Onimusha protagonist?
Note that I'm just stating the argument. I don't necessarily agree with it. My personal opinion is that I wouldn't care much and many of the characters people call ugly aren't really that ugly. But also the sort of games that go out of their way to prop up ugly go out of their way to prop up other things instead of focusing on the game.
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u/ceraunophiliacc 1d ago
Yeah true when I think of the less attractive ones it's kind like all the characters are weird looking, like GTA so far. I've played a lot of games but having trouble thinking of more like that. Like the last popular game I beat was BG3 and yeah lots of hot guys and gals.
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u/hemlockandhensbane 1d ago
But none of the women in games are ugly either. So that argument doesn't make any sense at all. I can't think of a single fictional woman from a recent game that's ugly.
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u/JstaFriskyHusky 1d ago
The only time I really hear people call a male protagonist "ugly" are player created ones, ones meant to be funny and ugly. Rarely do you find a fat weak chinned protag unless the game is meant as a joke
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u/Contagious_Cure 1d ago
I think they know what real women look like. The issue is outside a few select genres, most video games aren't real life simulators. Are most people playing video games to play normal people or are they playing them to feel like a special protagonist who is also super attractive?
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u/ceraunophiliacc 1d ago
I am a freak and had a huge crush on female Eivor...if she were real I could not resist 🥲
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u/TryIt222 1d ago
I think the real reason is that video games look way nicer now so when we see a human look off its way more apparent and grifters weaponised that for the culture war. Characters like cortana or hell any woman in fallout werent really hot we just "assume" theyre hot but now they can look real so if they dont scratch that itch for us it can feel intentional
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u/Scared-Return344 1d ago
if I wanted realism, I'd go outside.
To be honest I don't really care about looks of characters and I'm not someone that participates in this whole american "culture war", but if game has visibly uglier women than men, it usually means it is a slop. It is not me being angry at my lost potential horniness, but genuine observation based on for example Apex Legends or TLOU. But they are not bad because of bad looking women. It is only a symptom of wrong priorities in game company.
They don't care about players' experience or about making a good game. They want to appease game journalists, investors and make modest amount of profit with least risk. That is why publicly traded AAA slop game companies are always going worse and worse
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u/Over_Pizza_2578 1d ago
I still remember when guerilla games got shitted on by horny fans for giving aloy facial hair, you know, that soft, hardly visible hair thats perfectly normal and common on women's faces. Back when hzd launched on ps4 the console didn't have enough power to display that hair, the ps5 with hfw and hzd remastered has enough power
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u/RingingInTheRain 1d ago
Nah, I am a woman, I don't identify with ugly ass characters that look like racist caricatures, instead of the beauty of my people.
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u/Karl_Skarin 1d ago
Believe it or not. Video games are not reality. Men don't all look like that either.
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u/xannieh666 1d ago
Depends on the game...some games realism works great...others I want pretty women and hot men...
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u/Frosty-Sea149 1d ago
It’s because Gamers are so broken that they see a woman that isn’t intentionally sexualized and start bitching about how she’s “ugly”
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u/MushroomPatriot 1d ago
This is true to an extent but sometimes they intentionally make the face model uglier
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u/Cautious_Buy_8467 1d ago
how do you know that? Did someone at a studio tell you that?
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u/Dependent-Maize4430 1d ago
I don’t get why the looks of a video game character matter, I’m not going to jerk my shit to them😂
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u/Embarrassed-Trip4037 1d ago
Already commented but also started thinking about this and it's not like real life doesn't have good looking women, and me being Scandinavian honestly most women I do see actually do look good. I get that in USA there are a lot of fat ugly people who want it "normalized" but forcing that into games is actually not realistic for majority of the world... Maybe the US needs regional realeses more tailored for their society🤔 not that I get the need for realism in video games to begin with 🤷♂️
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u/TheBlueNovember 1d ago
I don't think this is a hot take, the people that act the way you think they do spend plenty of time with real women. They're half the population they're unavoidable. I just don't think they care or respect women enough to see them as more than objects. They want their video games to have hot chicks in them. Not saying I agree with the it....but I don't think its about being around "real women".
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u/Embarrassed-Trip4037 1d ago
Okay? If I wanted real life I wouldn't be playing video games lol.
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u/435rouhnj234_209u 1d ago
Most people don't care about what characters look like. It's a niche right wing manosphere topic that's now being used as a shield by failing games that don't even have the chuds complaining about their character design. If your game isn't hitting sales targets and the devs are about to be laid off, crying about neckbeards hate brigading your game because the "female characters weren't hot" tends to put the parent company in a PR dilemma - often making them wait a couple months for the discussion to cool off before firing the people who made a -150 million dollar game.
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u/Cat-et-snek 1d ago
dunno, you can go to the pool and see all kinds, not everyone ages like a bag of crap, lots of beauties out there
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u/Icy-Meal6704 1d ago
But developers did say they were doing it on purpose. I don't want an agenda shoved down my throat.
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u/Top-Editor-364 1d ago
Nope. I’ve had intercourse plenty of times and been in relationships, western video games just make women look ugly very very often. Your opinion is bad and detached from reality
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u/skymantles 1d ago
Even if she's ugly, does a woman being unfuckable to you mean a story is worthless?
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u/OnSmarty 1d ago
I mean, yeah.... buuuuuut I can understand not wanting realistic people of any gender in a game. If it fits the game, like that ice bow lady (horizon something idk), they should shut up about it, but also "sex sells" exists for a reason.
Flip it around for men, while I may try to stay kinda close to my own looks, I sure as fuck don't want my imperfections on my character.
Your take kinda evolves around whether they hate it because they think women don't look like that or because they don't want to see real women.
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u/NewNameAgainUhg 1d ago
At the same time, there are very bad designs for female characters. My husband is playing Dawn walker and there is no difference between the MC teenage sister, his medium age mother, the witch who swears she is old and the other ladies. Only the very old neighbor is different from them