TERA: competing with Bayonetta for the sluttiest women still wearing clothes?

Before I get into today's post, I just want to refer your attention to a very interesting feature by Jonathan Holmes on Destructoid. It's a very excellent look at female characters in video games and the over-used sexy badgirl/chaste goodgirl dichotomy that dominates all video game writing ever. Also, do yourself a favor and watch the video. It's kind of long, but worth it - it's very funny.

I never thought I'd tell people on this blog to go read something on Destructoid, but there you go. I guess anything is possible.

And now for something completely different

A while ago during one of my WTF roundups, I posted a screenshot of a character model wearing nothing but crotch floss:

I'd forgotten to include the name of the game in the file name, so at the time I just posted the screenshot as a bit of trivia. My helpful commenters informed me that this was a screen from the upcoming kMMO TERA Online which is being released soon. I filed that information away and promptly forgot it amidst doing research for other posts. That is until someone mentioned TERA to me again and I decided to take a look. Surely anything with character models that tasteless would be totally easy to mock, right?

My expectations were pretty low when I followed a link to the European site for TERA Online. Still, I was pretty shocked when this is what I saw on the main page:

Does that curvy spine remind anyone else of Bayonetta?

Holy crap! I mean. Wow. That's... um. That's a lot of crotch. Like. Right there. On the main page. On second thought, it might be a little silly being surprised about these things, but usually they don't bust out the crotch right on the main page. They save it for screens of the character models on the race and class pages, but it's usually not so... blatant.

I was a bit hesitant as I clicked on the race page to check out the different races and was pretty surprised when the first race page (Amani) featured this image:

Whoa! That's, um. That's some crotch! Some male crotch! A lot of male crotch! So, okay, maybe this TERA game is just all about crotch. And that wouldn't be so bad, really - as long as it was equal opportunity crotch. Really, that's been my beef all along. If you're going to have tasteless nudity, at least have EQUAL OPPORTUNITY tasteless nudity. But wait, no. It looks like TERA isn't equal opportunity after all:

At least she's not taking a dump.

So it looks like just another case of a monstrous male character being suggestively depicted to make some sort of statement about his "monstrousness". Certainly we don't see any of that from our human male, who is also allowed to stand up straight. Unlike the female mage who is sticking out her ass and waving her tits in our faces. Why, oh why, is it that there is not a single female mage in all of MMO-land who is capable of casting spells without gyrations worthy of a pole dancer?

And it gets worse:

Ladybits! Attack!

In this image, the clothing dichotomy is even greater! The male character is wearing about fifty pounds of plate mail and the female character is wearing... even less clothing than the last one. Not that this is really anything new. This is the sort of thing you see from pretty much every MMO ever - and not just the free ones. Guild Wars, EverQuest, WoW - they're all just as bad.

And of course, what MMO promo would be complete without...

Lesbians! ...okay, they're not actual lesbians, but they're two hot, almost completely naked chicks in blatantly sexual poses. It's very hard for me to think that there's NOT some kind of lesbian subtext intended. Of course, this might be cynicism on my part. Maybe the artist wants the intended male audience to think of banging these chicks in serial instead of in parallel. (Ha. I'm such a nerd.)

The real nail in the coffin is when you start lining up male models and female models. Here for comparison are male and female human models:

The most exposure we see from any of the human males is a very shallow v-neck. Otherwise they're completely covered with multiple layers of clothing and armor, while the ladies are left to shiver with all their bits hanging out. Let's hope they control the thermostat, otherwise they're going to be pretty cold.

The outfit on the far right is the most ridiculous in my book. First of all, the design is actually quite ugly and doesn't really do flattering things to the figure. Second, the other two female humans at least get proper panties while she gets something that barely qualifies as crotch floss. It's practically a crotch decoration. I hope she used some body glue, because I don't see how those are staying on...

And of course, it's not just the humans. The high elves are just as bad:

Okay, maybe not QUITE as bad. The woman on the far right is wearing the most clothing I've seen on a female TERA model so far, which puts her ahead of her counterparts I suppose. Still, I'm getting awful tired of the stripper boots. Is there some kind of stripper boot outlet in the TERA world that causes them to be the most economic form of footwear?

Oh, and let's not forget another important bit of promotion. WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE WITHOUT THEIR CLOTHES?? Come on, people. Let's remember the important questions.

Why is it that in their underwear, their breasts are still more covered than in some of the "armor" sets that I've seen? Ditto for their crotches. What gives? Why is THEIR UNDERWEAR more modest than their actual clothing? Do people not understand how absurd that is? How is anyone supposed to fight anything in clothing that you're about to pop out of at any moment? Seriously, check out these action shots:

So the woman on top... What the hell is she thinking? Did she seriously think that it was a good idea to go fight monsters dressed like that? "Well, I've taped sea shells to my tits, so I think I've got everything important covered here". Really? This is about as likely as giving a stripper a sword and telling her to go kill some monsters. I'm not terribly likely to believe that someone dressed like that is capable of wielding a sword that large. Plus - WHY IS SHE ALL MOIST? What purpose does that serve besides making her even more fap-worthy? "Well, I don't have any armor, so I'd better grease up before I tackle that monster over there!" Come on, people. Now you're not even trying.

And then from our mage on the bottom, we have more spell casting pole dancing gyrations. Does the magical energy she's summoning come from her ladybits? Because if it doesn't, why is she standing like this?

The sad thing is that all of these screens took me maybe twenty minutes to round up, which means I didn't even have to look all that hard. I'm a little scared of what's out there that I DIDN'T find. Now I'll admit that the graphics are pretty impressive, but you can put lipstick on a pig and it's... still a pig. Graphics do not a good game make. Neither do tits, but tell that to the people eagerly awaiting the North America release of TERA. I guess they disagree.

Clothing damage being exported to North America? (VERY NSFW)

[Note: It's been a shittastic week, hence the lack of posting. I'll get back to three posts for next week. Meanwhile, I'll try to hammer out a linkspam in addition to this post. Sorry, folks.]

While I wouldn't exactly call clothing damage a hallmark of Japanese/Asian games, it's something that is common enough that (for the most part) it doesn't raise any eyebrows. However, it's not exactly something that's been too common in North American games. Unfortunately, it looks as if that trend may be changing, thanks to games originally made by Asian companies and translated for North American players.

So here for your, um, edification are screens from Kabod Online, Soul Calibur IV: Broken Destiny, and Parasite Eve: the 3rd Birthday. I wanted to confine this post to titles that have gotten more hype than others - but there are certainly smaller titles featuring clothing damage as a key feature that are being translated as well: Ikki Tousen Xross and Queen's Blade: Spiral Chaos are just two that I've stumbled across recently. I'm sure there's more.

Kabod Online

Kabod Online is a translated Korean MMO from Kabod Entertainment. As far as fanservice-y models go, they seem to be pretty standard as far as free Asian MMOs go:

Fully armored dude? Check. Standing next to a chick in cheesecake armor? Check. Le sigh.

When you go to Kabod's website, there are apparently only three character classes to choose from, with only two specializations for each class - so it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of gameplay diversity. K-MMOs are pretty infamous for not even trying to disguise the treadmill, but this seems perhaps more egregious than most.

But Kabod Entertainment doesn't seem too worried about that. They've got a sure-fire plan. Sell their game with breasts! Only, since that's what ALL of the free Asian MMOs are doing, they had to take it to eleven - hence the introduction of clothing damage. In Kabod, both players and monsters take clothing damage as they engage in combat. There's a base level where clothing/armor is undamaged, a middle level where it's mostly off, and a bottom level where you're in your skivvies and, if the character is female, your gazongas are hanging out:

So Kabod has this neat combat simulation feature called clothing da... BOOBIES!!

Unsurprisingly, the clothing damage feature is what has gotten the most attention and what Kabod Entertainment has been advertising most heavily. Way to pander to the lowest common denominator guys. From what I read while searching for screenshots, it's pretty common to play a rogue (one of the least clothed classes) and let her get down to mostly naked just so you can ogle her while you play. I mean, check this out:

LEFT: One breast in, one breast out? That's gotta be uncomfortable. RIGHT: Oh god. They modeled ladybits, didn't they? That's just gross.

Will this be the game that launches a thousand faps?

So. Moving on. Shame on you, Kabod. Etc, etc, etc.

Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny

The studio behind Soul Calibur is apparently having a competition with Dead or Alive to see who can make the skeeviest game - it's the only explanation I can think of. Soul Calibur IV is getting a PSP release, with the addition of - you guessed it - clothing damage! Because, really, we weren't seeing ENOUGH of these ladies, amirite?

Also, there is a character creator that will not only let you create new characters, but will also let you customize existing characters, in case you're feeling like some of your wimminz are too covered up.

Anyway. I've ranted enough about Soul Calibur here, so here's some screens:

FLAWLESS... um... nudality?

Parasite Eve: the 3rd Birthday

So we have yet another entry in a series of female characters who used to be mildly positive strong characters and who have been turned into walking fapfests designed to please male gamers. Poor Aya. I'm not saying that Aya Brea was ever on the level of Samus, but she's a far cry from Princess Peach!

It should be noted that there was a fair amount of buzz about the fact that the beginning of 3rd Birthday features a shower scene. OMG! Color me excited!

So the shower scene is bad enough, but series creator Nomura decided from the outset that there would be clothing damage in this title, and that Aya would take more damage as her clothing got damaged further. This would make sense if Aya was walking around in plate mail, but since she's wearing just normal clothes, the only possible explanation is "sex sells". So here's the progression that Aya goes through:

LEFT: Very slightly damaged (jeans start out distressed) MIDDLE: Medium damage RIGHT: Max damage

Now, Aya can get changes of clothing to cover herself up again by going back to base - but it doesn't really seem like that's a feature that's being heavily encouraged, since Nomura has said in an interview (unfortunately, I can't find the link anymore) that you can get Aya to max clothing damage quickly by dropping a few grenades nearby. "Not that anyone should play that way" - he hastened to add.

Even worse is that the clothing damage is, again, pretty much how they're promoting the game. I mean, check out this promotional art.

Look at that! Half her ass is just hanging out there! Oh Squeenix. I know that you can be pretty sexist, but why do you have to do shit like this? You want to give me well written female characters with no pants and very little clothing? Fine. I'll roll my eyes and pony up. But this? This is not okay.

Perhaps the most depressing thing of all is that you can switch Aya's costumes. There's a loooong list of options, including a Lightning costume aaaaannnd...

Fetish wear! Because who doesn't want to watch a maid get her clothes torn off while fighting monsters and stuff?

/headdesk

Industry artist fail: Hyung Tae Kim (so VERY VERY nsfw!)

While looking for another entrant in my fanartist hall of shame, I happened to stumble across an artist whose work I had not been familiar with - Hyung Tae Kim. I initially found him when I stumbled across this image:

/sigh. Distorted anatomy? Check. I mean, even more so than usual. Improbably large breasts that defy physics? Check. Lovingly detailed ladybits? Cheeeeeck. This guy is a charmer all right.

When I did more research I discovered that HTK is actually a pretty influential artist in the Asian gaming industry. He's worked as lead character design on a huge number of roleplaying games, including the War of Genesis series (3 games), the Magna Carta series (2 games), and Blade and Soul online. And while normally, I wouldn't tackle an artist like HTK because of the fact that he does work primarily in the Asian games industry, the fact remains that he does have a HUGE following here in North America and does occasionally work over here. That blue crotch-floss with butterflies? The cover for an Exalted sourcebook. So I figure that makes him fair game.

Amusingly, one of the first articles that I found about HTK that tipped me off to what a following he had over here was this one. The headline image shows a totally cleavagey chick, but don't worry folks. She's just an exception!

WTF is up with her boobs, man?

If this is an exception, why go to the effort of picking out this one? Methinks thou doth protest too much, sir... Anyhow. Mr. Mahan is mostly correct in that yes, a lot of HTK's women don't display actual cleavage. No, instead they have impossibly large, impossibly pointy breasts that flop around like distended lemons. I mean, seriously. Look at these things:

LEMON BOOBS AHOY!

I never thought I'd have to invent a new category of boob mockery, but here it is. LEMON BOOBS. Methinks this guy can't be getting a whole lot of action because holy shit in what universe do women have breasts that are this large and this pointy? Those gazongas are practically WMD! Also, contrary to popular belief, jiggle physics does not exist in real life just because it's called "physics". I know that there has never been a situation in which I've had to dodge being hit in the face with my own breasts, so ease off with the anti-grav field!

Another pretty common feature of HTK's artwork is the OUTTHRUST LADYBITS. (Yes, capitals required). If you look at his art, a lot of the women seem to be thrusting their ladybits pretty much right at the camera:

NOOOOO! THE LADYBITS!

So, I'm guessing he would feel quite a bit of affinity with the WoW artist who did that infamous ladybit assassin picture I mocked a while ago... Another pose that's way too freaking common is the "please do me from behind" school of posing:

Come on. It doesn't get less subtle than this!

So, yeah. This guy clearly not winning a lot of awards for class. I realize that Asian culture is a lot more misogynistic in some regards, but the fact that there are plenty of North American dudes panting to get their hands on scans of this guys art books is just discouraging. This takes the garden-variety misogynistic character design we get over here and make it seem tame in comparison!

The thing that makes me really want to punch HTK in the nuts is his fetish for lovingly detailed ladybits:

Seriously? Talim is totally underage! That's just gross.

The thing that makes me most sad is that Blade and Soul seems to have adhered to HTK's designs pretty slavishly in the rendering of their character models. I mean check this out! We have actual modeled camel toe:

Yuck.

WTF: The tired Friday edition

Okay, folks. My schedule is kicking my ass this week, and my ass will be kicked even harder next week. So instead of giving you three real posts this week, you get two and a half. This might happen next week, depending on how much brainpower I have left after tech weekend for the show I'm in... But after that, I promise that I'll be returning to normal levels of snark.

Anyhow, I couldn't leave you empty-handed, so here's some miscellaneous pictures that I haven't found a home rant for yet.

I've forgotten what game this comes from, since I forgot to include the game's name in the file name when I saved it. I think that says a lot, don't you? I think I'm becoming a bit too blase about crotch floss as armor.

Okay, does anyone think it's a coincidence that "GROWING" is right over this poor woman's boobs? Neither did I. Though I'll admit the mental image of growing boobs made me think of DragonBall, which was an amusing mental non-sequiter. "AAAAAAAAAA!" "SHE'S REACHED BOOB LEVEL 9000!" "IMPOSSIBLE!"

...no? Just me then. Moving on... How about this?

WHAT. THE. FUCK. Seize power? Fine. Seize glory? Sure, if you think people really give a shit about your performance in a shitty knock-off browser-based game. Seize WOMEN? BECAUSE THEY'RE YOURS? AAARG. I know that the Chinese export a lot of translated games, Caesary being one of many, but I'd prefer that they didn't export their misogyny as well.

This is from an ad campaign in Europe - thank God not in North America. This fails on multiple levels.

Once again proving that the default of anything is male, and that female is always "special" or "distinct". Even, apparently, with puzzle games. I hope those of you with iPhones refrain from purchasing either version of what looks to be an uninspired Tetris clone.

I can't decide what I hate more. The cleavagey outfits, the interchangeable faces, the nauseating levels of pink, or the actual words. MISS BIMBO? There's a game out there called MISS BIMBO? Do they honestly think that making their ad pink will make the title any less revolting? Also, advertisers who perpetuate "bored of" should go die, like, right now. This makes my inner grammarian want to stab my eyes out.

BTO Online: Selling games with sexism, classism, AND racism!

BTO (or Business Tycoon Online) is yet another translated Chinese browser-based free online game. It's published by Dovogame, which also publishes a free online browser RTS called "WarFlow". (Which isn't the worst name I've heard for an RTS, but it sure as shit isn't the best by a long shot.)

Unsurprisingly, like pretty much all others of its ilk that I've encountered, it uses pretty women and big fake breasts in its ads, despite the game having pretty much nothing to do with sex - unless distribution and franchising is the sort of thing that gets you hot and bothered. If you stumble across one of their tamer ads, like this one, it might seem pretty indistinguishable from the legions of ads just like this one:

I am totally hot and fiscal for you!

Albeit one whose translations are not as good as some other Chinese-translated games out there:

Fix you typo!

Make money like a former Senate Republican? Woo! What fun!

All joking aside, the second banner about making your "frist" million pretty much sets the tone for the whole ad campaign. Boss = man = clothes. Subordinates = women = BOOBIEZ. And that makes sense, right? If there's one thing that I learned from the few years I worked for a multi-national corporation it's that only men get to be fully clothed. And let me tell you, showing the amount of skin mandated by corporate policy got pretty damned uncomfortable in the winter, what with being in Canada all. I had to resort to drinking margaritas at my desk to keep warm!

Boobz = profits is one of the biggest laws of economics.

I have to hand it to BTO. They actually have a pretty diverse range of ads in that they steal from pretty much every other online game's ad campaign ever. We have the Breast Now Button from games like Evony and Caesary:

I'm pretty sure the girl on top is naked behind that box. Whiskey tango foxtrot.

There's also the "half-naked woman with o-face with cars" from... just about every car ad ever:

Apparently cars give women orgasms, but only expensive ones.

I have to say, it's pretty surreal seeing all of this sex-based marketing applied to a game about building a business empire. I mean, sure I guess the sexist advertising matches up with the misogynist reality of corporate boardrooms, what with less than 4% of all Fortune 500 CEOs being women. But even so, there seems to be an even larger disconnect between the ads and the game than with other free mmos that use these advertising tactics. When I think "business empire", I usually don't associate it with women's crotches. But apparently, the BTO advertisers would like me to:

Not exactly subtle, are they? Amusingly, I think the advertisers may have fallen into their own trap. It seems like they were so busy staring at this poor woman's crotch to notice that they misspelled treasure - unless they're trying to invent new marketing slang. (Treat + treasure = punany?)

All of this is bad enough, but BTO really goes for the gold with this one:

...by becoming a white man, amirite? I haven't seen a single woman resembling an avatar in any of these ads. All of the women shown as presented as rewards, not as people or potential characters.

Also, look at the ads and really examine the skin tone. The first woman looks Asian, and a few of the others might be (it's hard to tell at such small resolution). But all of the ads feature only figures that share a certain paleness of skin tone. The woman in the first ad is even paler than the JFK-ish guy on the left in the "Power-Up" ad! I didn't find a single figure with a skin tone darker than light caucasian tan until I went hunting for screen shots and found this gem:

Because only women work as admins. (Fuck. Did I fall into a time warp to the 60's?)

So I guess the lesson is that it's okay to be non-white, as long as you're a hot chick willing to bone your boss, who will always be a white man and may also be ugly and/or old. Remember, it doesn't matter if men in corporate culture aren't young and attractive because we don't hold them to such shallow standards. As for the women, tits or gtfo, bitches.

What I really, REALLY love is that if you squint hard enough to make out the words, each portrait is captioned with not a name but a generic descriptor. Like "sociable", "sweet", "innocent" or "dutiful" - none of which really tell you a whole lot about what sort of assistants they would be. Then you have the even LESS helpful descriptors like "gorgeous" and "stylish" - which describes the highlighted secretary with her shirt open.

...stylish? I can think of a few adjectives to describe her, but "stylish" isn't the one that pops to mind. Generally, being stylish involves, um, wearing clothes.

And then there's the red circle... the type was really small; I initially thought the caption was "Oriental", which I just couldn't believe - hence the red circle. I went hunting for a larger screen and discovered that the caption is actually "Outstanding", which is still pretty ridiculous. Just what is she outstanding at? I think the implication is that it's not paperwork ifyouknowwhatimean.

The thing is, when I went looking for a larger screenshot just now, I happened to find this:

ORIENTAL? SERIOUSLY??

Okay, what gives? This is a game published by a Chinese company! Even if this is a mis-translation, it's one that should have been corrected. I mean, this is just awful. Really, unbelievably awful.

So, wow. Dovogame - you fail. A lot.

A bit of visual WTF to tide you over

Hey, folks. Thanks to a concerted campaign of vitamin C and lots of sleep, I'm getting my brain power back. It's still going to be a few days before I post anything substantial, but that's because I'm working on a series of posts about World of Warcraft that will probably be posted in three chunks. It's substantial enough that it's going to take me a non-trivial amount of time to put together, and since I'm busy all weekend I thought I'd put up some things for your, er, amusement in the mean time:

Hey look! Perfect world wants to get in on the act too! Lesbians!

GOD DAMMIT SONY. Just. Just. ARG.

To be fair, I don't believe that this is official art - I'm pretty sure it's fanart. But still. What the f*ck? Did Perfect World's Random Upskirt Tiger start some kind of "sex with tigers" trend?

This, too, I'm pretty sure is fanart. What makes me sad is that the artist who drew this has a pretty good grasp of anatomy. They're just choosing to ignore it.

d00d, what is it with sci-fi games and ass cleavage? Mass Effect 2 has Miranda and her ridiculously cavernous ass cleavage. Was Blizzard jealous? Srsly. Come on. Spandex just doesn't work that way, peeps.


Thanks for being patient, folks. I promise the new posts will be worth the wait.

Anatomy: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG (or: Body customization in Perfect World)o

Perfect World is yet another Asian free-to-play MMO with a freemium subscription model, published by a Chinese game publisher. And the advertising is pretty much what you'd expect from a freemium MMO:

Wow. Passively posed female spellcaster chick in cheesecakey outfit. Yawn. But then you have things like this promotional wallpaper:

Okay, so you have the mascot, who is practically a fetish checklist. Girls with wings, check. Short skirt, check. Boobage, check. Thigh high stockings, check. Whatever, that's pretty standard. What kind of blows my mind is the stuff they cram into the background. The catgirl with the "come hither" look is pretty standard until you consider the fact that right next to her is Chick With Random O-Face. I mean, what? Random cleavage is one thing, but random orgasms are something else entirely.

And then just to make things even more confusing there's Random Upskirt Tiger in the lower corner. Why is the tiger checking out Fetish Wing Girl's ass? Why??

Hey, look! Seasonally appropriate cheesecake! They obviously didn't spend a whole lot of effort on this, since the outfit is mainly just a color swap with some fur trim added, though I'm a bit distrubed by the reindeer antlers. I mean, catgirls are pretty standard, but reindeer girls? Brr.

The thing is, none of this really seems at all out of the ordinary. Random orgasms aside, it's pretty middle-of-the-road as far as cheesecake goes. No, Perfect World earns a special place on my shit list for its body customization options that can result in characters like this:

Holy shit! Not even ridiculous Ivy fanart can compete with those knockers! How is she even standing upright? Are those things full of helium? Surely this has to be some kind of disturbing hack...

Oh god! There's more of them! I mean, these are so horrific that the bunny girl looks almost normal in comparison, and she's really, really not. Even better if you click for the larger version you can see that the chick on the left is named "WhoreNi". Um. Wow. So, evidence points to these characters being played by men...

So what the hell is going on here?

Well, it appears that in Perfect World there are body customization sliders, including - obviously - for breast size and waist size. What's disturbing about this is that it results in characters that no longer even resemble humans:

The guy who created this character even posted on the official PW forums asking other users to rate his character for attractiveness. When called on the fact that she, uh, kind of looks like a freak show, he responded:

Good point, I think I got carried away with the boob bar. :D

Um. Yeah. Just a bit, dude.

Perhaps an even more disturbing feature is the ability to customize your characters based on a picture, utilized here to creepy effect:

This is all very disturbing and creepy on so many levels. Body customization is not necessarily an evil thing in and of itself. It has the potential to be quite a positive feature, if used to allow for non-idealized body types. The problem here is that Perfect World uses its powers for evil, allowing its users to take it to such extremes that you can generate offensively freakish parodies of humanity, waifish women who resemble nothing so much as poles with two zeppelins tied to them. How any of these women would function in daily life, much less kill things with swords, is beyond me. I mean, just tying your shoes would be a challenge with those titanic ta-tas.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting all of the onus on the publishers. Clearly the men creating these characters deserve a fair helping of blame. Any man who would create one of these characters just because they COULD clearly has some pretty skewed views of women. But the publishers of Perfect World are the ones programming the slider in the first place. They're the ones deciding where to code the limits on breast size, which has equally off-putting implications.