Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
3rd International Volunteer Brigade (Hexbear gaming discord)
Rules
Sure, every person wants to play a game filled with only half naked sexy women in it, it's not off-putting nor embarassing at all for anyone ever, because only lonely basement dwellers buy and play vidyagames, right?
For fuck sakes, I like the Witcher Saga games but it's so embarassing that every single non-evil woman shows off so much cleavage all the time, makes me feel like a fucking creep for playing it. Sure the politics of the game arent great either, etc
The second one had decent politics if you go with Elf Guevara instead of fantasy gestapo.
but it's so embarassing that every single non-evil woman shows off so much cleavage all the time
Especially insulting because one of the biggest offenders, Triss, was in the books. She had like 4 character traits. One of them was that she NEVER SHOWS CLEAVAGE. EVER. She has extreme trauma related to a time she was almost burned to death, and she was very self-conscious of the faint burn scars that were still visible on her chest from that experience.
So some dipshit at CDPR reads that and goes, "Ah, yes, I have just the outfit for her. How's this?" It's so fucking cringe goddamn it pisses me off
Huh? They've been pretty ok after the 1st one, which admittedly was very cringe.
Politics or booba?
Booba. Witcher 1 was baaad.
Haven't played it yet, but apparently you collect naked pics of the NPC you get laid with. The level of creepnes man
I played 2, didn't finish it, and started 3 some months ago
For fuck sakes, I like the Witcher Saga games but it's so embarassing that every single non-evil woman shows off so much cleavage all the time, makes me feel like a fucking creep for playing it. Sure the politics of the game arent great either, etc
Witcher 1 had Geralt collecting tradings cards of women he slept with in provocative poses. Like you sleep with them, it fades to black, then the trading card fills up the screen.
Real bad time to have your parents walk in the room.
Anyway, I'm glad they realized how cringe they were being and toned it down a bit.
I'm gonna be real with you: Bayonetta was created by a man, and don't give me that "designed by a woman" bs bc we all have a job to do and we all need to put bread on the table. Hideki's comments about women being "intimidating" and "competitive" especially put things into perspective with Bayonetta's design. It's just another form that the male gaze and heteronormative sex appeal can take (dominating and competent instead of the usual submissive and helpless woman). A better example of a dominating and competent female vg character would be Karlach. You can have a "sexy" character without making them sexist.
I say this as someone that played and loves the first 2 games (I'm not supporting a Zionist voice actress that hates the living fuck out of people like me, so I'm not playing 3).
I think this meme is mostly correct. Maybe a case can be made for 2B, but I personally stand by what I said about all of them. People have no reason to hate on Eve (or stellar blade for that matter), unless they also find Bayonetta and 2B's design problematic as well.
She's probably going to be just as "well written" as the other two characters, you don't know until you've played the game.
She really is no different than the other 2 characters in design philosophy as well, if we're being honest.
All 3 were developed and designed (or had to undergo design approval) by men, all 3 are sexualized on purpose to cater to a mostly male-hetero fan base, all 3 have had (and in Eve's case currently have) a toxic "gamer gate" crowd that's blaming feminists and feminism for "taking away their hot women" and replacing them with "ugly women"
so yeah
I strongly disagree with this comment.
Bayonetta is not a sexualized character, she is a sexual character. A female character being sexualized means that there is external emphasis on her sexuality when the character herself does not define herself by her sexuality in a major way. My go-to example for this is Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat 9, who is supposed to be a tough, no-nonsense military woman but who wears skimpy clothing for no reason other than 
, despite it making no sense for who she is as a character. Bayonetta does define herself by her sexuality, she's flirty and sexy because she wants to present herself that way. And sure, you could argue that that is still imposed on her by an outside entity because she is a fictional character, but you can guess where that line of reasoning would lead you.
There are plenty of women who enjoy being sexy and who define themselves by their sexuality as Bayonetta does. It only becomes a problem when women who don't want to be (primarily) perceived as sexy are forced to do so by outside entities to appeal to the male gaze. That is when someone who isn't "sexual" by themselves becomes sexualized. This is absolutely not the case for Bayonetta, she has full agency over her sexuality and expresses it out of her own volition.
Karlach is a completely different character archetype than Bayonetta is. Karlach's sexuality is not a primary aspect of her character the same way Bayonetta's is, a better comparison from BG3 would be Mizora. A competent, dominant character who presents herself as sexy. Mizora is not a sexualized character, but if you put Shadowheart in Mizora's outfit while making no changes to who she is as a character, that would be an example of sexualization. If there was a scene where Mizora gives the player a lapdance it wouldn't be much of an issue because it makes sense for her character to want to do that, if there was a lapdance scene for Shadowheart it would be a very different thing.
You can criticize Bayonetta for being a man's idea of a female power fantasy character, but you can't criticize her overt sexuality as an inherent flaw. Plenty of women do enjoy being perceived as sexual beings, they enjoy the idea of being a succubus or a seductress, and the idea of only women being allowed to create characters like that is ridiculous. Sexy, seductive female characters in games are not inherently misogynistic.
This is absolutely not the case for Bayonetta, she has full agency over her sexuality and expresses it out of her own volition.
Because the writers chose to write her that way. Dominatrix is a fetish, that's what Bayonetta is. A fetish. She is literally wearing a cat suit in the first game she has a whip that has a mask with thigh high belted heels and an enemy punish animation that solidifies all of this.
I can write a character, make her a middle eastern woman, and then write her to be utterly helpless and in need of a white man to save her from her "evil" culture.
I can do all of that, and if someone calls me out for reinforcing harmful and problematic stereotypes I can simply say:
Plenty of women do enjoy being perceived as submissive and weak beings, they enjoy the idea of being a damsel in distress. Helpless female characters in games are not inherently misogynistic.
Which is why I talked about who made Bayonetta, because that is what separates a character like Uncle Ruckus from being an actual Uncle Tom and a straight up minstrel show act.
And just to add:
My go-to example for this is Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat 9, who is supposed to be a tough, no-nonsense military woman but who wears skimpy clothing for no reason other than, despite it making no sense for who she is as a character.
This reminds me of the "no black elves" argument. In fiction you can write whatever you want. There are no rules that you have to follow aside from grammer and punctuation. Bayonetta could have been written to be able to do what she does without nudity being used a reward for executing a certain combo or beating a boss.
Such a "sexual" vs. "sexualized" character is just someone with a modicum of skill going "Nah, it's cool, she is into being hot."
I don't care, for the record. I think it's fine to make characters that are hot and enjoy that.
Im sorry but who designed the characters asside theres no way that SB is going to have anywhere near the narrative depth of Nier Automata or even Bayonetta. Its just not going to happen. Ive heard the gameplay is good and thats nice i suppose but this is about charachter depth.
And Nier and Bayo have not been championed by chuds to anywhere near the same extent SB has, and have huge queer fanbases. Its never been the same.
Personally I read Bayo's sexuality as being positive, nonobjectifying, and empowering but like your allowed not to. But ive met plenty of women who agree with my take so I stand by it. Seems subjective to me.
2B is not that, she's sexualized in an objectifying way, but I will reiterate the massive queer fanbase the game has, as well as there being much much more to 2B than a nice butt.
(Also i just fucking hate SB's visual presentiation/art style and like Bayo and Nier's so).
Also i dont think "designed by a woman" is entirly irrelevant unless she had no input and just followed directions?
I'm not supporting a Zionist voice actress that hates the living fuck out of people like me, so I'm not playing 3).
Wait i thought it was the orignal voice actor that was the terf reactionary, whats wrong with Jen Hale
Every single right winger that users Nier as some example of right wing politics either didn't play the game or stared at the screen drooling with their brain switched off for the entirety of the multiple playthroughs it takes to fully finish it.
the game isn't an example of shit about fuck, I literally feel gaslit like millions of gamers saw a couple of characters named after philosophers (which every anime has been doing forever) and were like "wauw so philosophical"
Every one of Yoko Taro's games has been anti violence and anti military but the entirety of right wing culture war appropriation boils down to "if it has tiddy it's good and anti-sjw" and "if it does not have tiddy it's woke". This is also how they completely misunderstand Kojima's games.
I really don't think the themes are that strong. There's like some "endless cycle of violence is bad" thing going on but they are not convincingly anti-military.
Youre not being gaslit you just have different taste and presumably didnt care for the metanarrative themes or something.
Kind of tired of "gaslit" being used for casual purposes like this really.
(Also i have my doubts all 14 of your upbears agreed with you lmao. I feel like Hexbear gets way to excited about contrarian takes about popular media because tbh most of y'all kind hate art lol)
Yeah, I don't get how Yoko's coombrained games get such praise from leftist. They're held up as some amazing experience, but imo everything about them (maybe aside from the music) was pretty mid.
I'm a big fan of color pop and extravagant designs (Bayonetta 2 is the definitive out of the 3 for the atmosphere and environment alone). Nier always looked so bland to me, and the sound track was very blah.
The track to the so-shi fight is pretty lit at least. And the overworld theme is nice.
Because chuds only deal in aesthetics, the game could be literally about october revolution where you play as Lenin and the game ends on the triumphant victory and the creation of Soviet Russia, with someone saying; "Communism will win." Staring at the camera. BUT if every female character was hot and skimpily dressed the chuds would 
all over themselves trying to claim the game for their brand of G*merism-Fascism
I never will understand why rightoids are allowed to be horny and not us.
Most of them are scared shitless that some supernatural entity is going to torture them forever for having a sex drive, and that's why call anything even remotely risque the funny d-word, yet it never seems to apply to them. Like they're allowed to be perverse as a "reward" for conforming so well.
I find it very strange that some leftists will defend sex work and pornography, with all the implications around human trafficking, consent, exploitation, etc., and then also condemn M rated games for having protagonists who are sexualized.
Are those the same people? I dont think those are usually the same people.
Sometimes they are. I knew one guy irl who was like that. Really weird.
Huh, that is a very strange combination of opinion that I havent personally encountered before. Ive run into basically every other combo of takes on sex work and sexualization but not that one lol.
Nier Automata and common gamer opinions remain some of the biggest examples of that one gundam “wow cool robot” meme but instead it’s “wow sexy wammen”
Tbf Yoko Taro does not shy away from being a horndog and posted THIS
But obviously Nier Automata is a very narratively deep game that is much more than a coomer game.
You could probably make some incredibly on-the-nose game about anti-colonial transgender communist prison abolitionists but as long as there were big pairs of yabbos and large butts on screen at all times gamers would probably not notice
I'm big dumb and which game is this?
It was just hypothetical, that game doesn't exist 
But what does sex appeal do for the game, if it's just going to give people a reason to not focus on the overall message?
Like if I'm writing a realistic fiction novel about anti-black racism, what actually is the purpose of using the n-word so liberally or even at all? It's just going to attract chuds who will completely miss the point of the book and put-off the audience I want.
From a narrative perspective, sexualization really should be used sparingly and with a direct purpose, so it doesn't veer into bad taste territory.
My point was just how incredibly shallow the gamer crowd's media analysis skills are
HOT LADY??? GUD GAME, NOT WOKE
To be fair that's not limited to the gamer community. You can definitely see that in other forms of art as well.
Chuds missing the point that a piece of media was explicitly making is a universal theme. See: The boondocks, joker, Rick and Morty, The Boys, etc.
I'm really disappointed in these tweets I've been seeing from Momiji on Hexbear lately. I cannot believe the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden character was this reactionary all along 
sis thinks she's on the team
Call of Daddy - Senior Editor Kotaku DAE
Spawn on Me 
