Apologetic linkspam: Have some WTF, and also some win

Okay, folks. As promised, here's a bit of extra WTF to carry you through the weekend. I resolve to fail less starting next week, but as I've discovered I need my weekends. Those two days to detox from all the icky shit I look at during the week in the name of research for this blog are important. Srsly. You don't even want to know some of the shit I stumbled across by accident while researching "clothing damage". Brr.

Anyway. Here's some WTF to console yourself with.

WTF the first: yet more creepy shit from Japan

So. There's this thing in Japan called a hostess club, where lonely young men go to spend time with women who are employed by the club, and by spend time I mean just that. Some of them will have board games, others will just have coffee... whatever. Anyhow, I stumbled across this article about a Japanese romance game centering around young women who work at a particular hostess club.

...yeah. Because stalking women home from work is totally romantic.

Anyway. No idea on if it's being translated - these screens are all in Japanese. But here's a taste:

If you want to see more, you can see the full article with lots, and lots, and LOTS of creeptastic screens here. Just don't say I didn't warn you. (And don't get caught reading it at work.)

WTF the second: dear Nukezilla, I heart you

Okay, this isn't so much WTF as an awesome repudiation of WTF. So remember the fail-tastic IGN Gamer Girl Christmas Gift Guide? If you haven't seen it, please do go glance through it. Don't bother reading the text if you're in a hurry - just check out the photos. Go ahead. I'll wait.

... yuck, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure anyone who would attach a photo like this to an article supposedly about gifts for "girl gamers"...

Okay, why is she making Seductive Face at SACKBOY? That's just creeping me out.

...has never really talked to a woman that games. (And yelling 'tits or GTFO' over XBox Live doesn't count, fellas. Neither does sending ASCII penises in chat.)

Anyway. John Kershaw over at NukeZilla wrote this amazing rant about how horrific that feature was. It starts off with "girls, meat, what's the difference?" and gets better from there.

John Kershaw, I don't know you, but you are my new hero.

WTF the third: The Bayonetta creator said something misogynist? NO! SAY IT ISN'T SO!

So everyone is familiar with Bayonetta, right? I have to say that she's hands down one of the best female characters to come out of the gaming industry in the last few years. She's strong, well rounded, not sexualized and... okay even I can't maintain the sarcasm.

Anyway. She's inspired a fair amount of controversy, which isn't too surprising since one of her main attacks involves spreading her impossibly long legs to kill things with her ladybits sword.

Bayonetta. Feminist icon and role model.

Anyway, Hideki Kamiya - the creator of Bayonetta - apparently thinks that all women view each other as enemies. Which begs the question... He designed a title with a female lead... why?

Oh right! The tits. I mean, sorry - the ass. Almost forgot. Kamiya is clearly an ass man.


...okay, that's enough fail. So here, have some win:

Troll data analysis

Blogger Kirbybits got involved in that whole Penny Arcade internets fiasco and got a lot of internet traffic to her blog. Interestingly, she decided to analyze comments to see what sort of trends troll comments display. The results are super-interesting! You can read the post here, but be warned there's lots of super-graphic language involving threats of rape.


And that's all I have time for today. I'll check in a few times this weekend just to make sure people aren't setting themselves (or each other) on fire in the comment threads, but otherwise I'll see you Monday!

Yuna: yes I liked X-2. Suck it up and deal. (possible spoiler warning)

I'm having a really shitty day, so I thought that I'd write about something that I liked rather than going off on another rant that I really don't have the mental energy for today. So today, here's a love letter (so to speak) to one of the greatest female characters ever, who - like Lightning - would have been perfect in every way if she'd been wearing pants:

There's a reason why I'm addicted to Square and BioWare games - both companies know how to write some fantastic female characters. And Yuna was the first character I ever encountered in my gaming life that made me sit back and say 'holy crap, she is such a fantastic female character!'.

Okay. So enough peaens to Yuna. Just what makes her so awesome? Let's start with the fact that she's a complete and total badass. The first time you meet Yuna, she's tired and sweaty from just having completed a huge ordeal - successfully summoning her first aeon:

Now that I'm a summoner, I could totally feed you your heart on a plate. Just sayin'.

So right off the bat, Yuna is established as a powerful character. She's no fragile little flower, waiting for a big, strong, manly hero to solve her problems. Aeons are entities of unbelievable power, so being able to call and control them confers with it a certain base level of badassery. I mean, when someone can call something like this to do their bidding:

(Oh, she can also walk on water, bee tee dubs.)

...it pretty much means you shouldn't mess with them.

What I liked even better about Yuna was that she didn't fall into the "powerful weakling" trap that's so common with many female characters in JRPGs. From the outset, Yuna was the leader of the party who had the skills and knowledge to get the job done. Really, Tidus - the protagonist - was just along for the ride. And how great is that? How many times in gaming do you see a female character really, truly in charge? Even the strongest male character, Auron, deferred to Yuna's judgement when they were at odds.

And let's face it, it's not like Yuna's job was all sunshine and puppies. Nope. She was walking a road that ended, as far as she knew, with certain death. What's more, she had to deal with the aftermath of disasters that left hundreds of people dead in their wake, and she was constantly being scrutinized as a public symbol of hope. But Yuna never whined or complained like you'd expect of a more strereotyped character. She did what she had to do.

One of the things that I loved most about Yuna was that she was either the saddest happy character or the happiest sad character I've encountered. Both roles are pretty stereotyped - pretty much any JRPG you play will have at least one genki girl. And many JRPGs and anime have stereotyped sad girls (often sad girls in snow). I love the fact that Yuna managed to turn both stereotypes on their head. When Yuna is sad, the player is sad because she's a genuinely endearing character. And when she's happy, it doesn't ring false like it would with a genki girl.

Furthermore, her sadness doesn't detract from her strength or otherwise make her seem like a weaker character. She has her moment of sadness, then she straps on her big girl boots and gets on with what she has to do. Her sadness, rather than being seen as a weakness of character, helps to define her strength because even when she is most sad she doesn't let that sadness control her life. That's powerful stuff.

Let's face it. If you found out the person you fell in love with wasn't real, you'd be pretty sad too.

The thing that makes me appreciate it all the more is that Yuna's sadness in X-2 mainly stems from not being able to be with Tidus. And that makes me appreciate her refusal to sit around and mope even more. She's moving forward with her life, not sitting around and being all weepy because of a man. Yuna's shenanigans in X-2 aren't all about saving the day, sometimes they're about having fun, pure and simple. And sure X-2 was full of fluffy "girl power" moments involving Rikku and Paine, but frankly I think that's the sort of thing that gaming needs more of - not less.

In the end, Yuna manages to be a strong, well-rounded character who never loses sight of herself or her ideals. And maybe best of all, she manages to save the day and rescue the prince instead of being the damsel in distress. At the end, Yuna's actions bring Tidus back - which wouldn't have happened if she'd sat around being a sad girl in snow (or in sand, considering that Besaid is pretty tropical.)

I'm not too proud to admit that I cried.

Now if only more women in games were written as well as Yuna, I'd have a lot less to complain about. ...and okay it would be nice if she was wearing shorts that didn't expose the lower half of her buttocks. Details...

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.

Some followup: Jim Sterling, Reddit, and DM's Roundtable

DM's Roundtable follow-up interview

Hey, folks. Before I get to the meat of my post, I just wanted to update you all that last night was the followup interview done with the folks on the DM's Roundtable podcast. After hearing the podcast that originally went up in which I got fairly lambasted, I was pretty wary of going on. But, happily, things went really well and we had a really positive conversation. Those of you who want to give it a listen can find it here. Fair warning, though, it's long. (A little over an hour, iirc)

Reddit response to yesterday's post (trigger warning! rape jokes...)

Why do I read the comments on reddit? Whhhhyyyy? After the backlash I got from reddit over my post about gaming not being sexist against men, you'd think that I'd have learned my lesson? But no, I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.

So, some dude over on reddit called me an "ignorant judgemental cunt". The fact that all the horrible shit Jim Sterling has said was meant as humor apparently puts me COMPLETELY in the wrong. Of course, given that in THE SAME COMMENT this dude joked that the difference between football and rape is that women don't like football.

...so, yeah. I guess I should feel vindicated rather than annoyed. But. Wow. Yuck, dude.

Jim Sterling. Sorry? Well....

Okay, so here's the thing that prompted me to write a followup post, rather than tackling one of the many other things that I've been working on entries about. Kaonashi forwarded me the email from Niero that was mentioned yesterday, and the summary was pretty accurate. "Sure Jim crossed a line and he knows it but he's a nice guy".

Which, you know, fine. As an apology it kind of sucks. I have yet to see anything resembling an apology that isn't full of defensive bullshit from either Destructoid or Sterling, but I'm not about to hold my breath since I honestly don't expect it to get better than that. An acknowledgment that a line was crossed and that it's not okay to call people feminazi cunts is about as much as I can reasonably expect since Jim Sterling has proved his worth to Destructoid by being able to get pageviews to Destructoid by saying inflammatory things. Is that out of the ordinary in the gaming world? No. Is Kotaku worse? Oh fuck yes.

Still.

I was skulking the Destructoid site yesterday looking to see if there were any editorials offering a more official apology for Jim's conduct (there weren't) when I spotted this post by Jim Sterling about a recent "news" segment on FOX in which the recent rise in reported rapes is blamed on sexy scenes in video games. As is to be expected from FOX, the segment offered no supporting evidence or really any reasoning beyond "be afraaaaaaaiiiiiiid! only FOX can saaaave yooooouuuuuu!".

Now, is this worthy of ridicule? Absolutely. Does this sort of thing deserve coverage on a major gaming site? Sure. Do the people at FOX deserve to be lambasted for making the same groundless accusations that no one has been able to prove for the last thirty years? Right on. As someone who had to promise her mother not to become a serial killer in order to be allowed to buy Mortal Kombat as a child, I get just as tired of the blame that video games get for just about every social ill that exists. So for once I was cheering Jim on, until I got to the last sentence:

Now if you'll excuse me, there are some vaginas that have not been raped yet, and Kirby told me I need to "get on dat sh*t!"

...really? Really, Jim? Wow. This doesn't make me all that confident that Jim has, in fact, grasped the nature of the line that was crossed. Calling people feminazi sluts? Not okay. But you know what else isn't okay? JOKINGLY SAYING THAT YOU'RE GOING TO GO RAPE A BUNCH OF WOMEN.

I've come to terms with the fact that hottest chick lists aren't going away any time soon. Will I mock them? Sure. Are they a staple of "game journalism"? Unfortunately, yes. Ditto with all of the stuff masquerading as "news" that boils down to "hey look! Boobies! We all like boobies, amirite?". It's crass, it's tasteless, and it carries with it an undertone of "tits or gtfo". But that is still something I can roll my eyes at and walk away from. Jokes about going out and raping a bunch of women? Not so much.

So I've just sent the following email to Niero, the editor-in-chief of Destructoid:

Dear, Niero

A commenter on my blog was kind enough to forward the email that you sent him in response to his complaints about Jim Sterling's comments in the twitter dust-up that occurred last week and I was very happy to see that in that email there was a clear acknowledgment that Jim's comments were entirely out of line. I want to make it clear that in no way do I support Daphny's actions - her comments were entirely disgusting and tasteless and I do agree with Jim that no one gets a free pass on discriminatory language just because they happen to be a member of said group.

That being said, I have grave concerns about the larger context of this twitter dust-up when viewed in light of a larger history of things that Jim has said as an official writer on your site. When the flare-up originally occurred, I refrained from taking sides on my blog, but I did put together a chronology of offensive comments that display a consistent trend of denigrating feminists, feminism, women, domestic abuse, and rape. So when I saw your email to Kaonashi, I was very pleased and had every hope that perhaps Jim would be a bit more thoughtful in his official commentary in the future.

Imagine, then, my dismay, when yesterday morning I saw a post by Jim about FOX news blaming Bullet Storm for the increase in reported rapes. Did FOX deserve to be thoroughly lampooned? Absolutely! But Jim ended by saying: Now if you'll excuse me, there are some vaginas that have not been raped yet, and Kirby told me I need to "get on dat sh*t!"

This makes me very concerned that perhaps there wasn't any sort of real lesson learned at all and that the apologies were just lip service to win back those publishers that Jim managed to offend with his comments.

Look. I don't like the boob-centric nature of your website, but I'm not about to start a crusade to take down Destructoid because you folks like boobs. Whatever. I just really hope that you can understand the difference between jokes about liking boobs and jokes about going out and RAPING A BUNCH OF WOMEN. I really do. I'm not trying to be a "humorless feminist here". I just really hope that you can make it clear to Jim that just as it is never okay to call a woman a feminazi cunt, it's also never okay to joke about engaging in rape. The fact that it's a joke does not obviate the fact that Jim is an influential guy within the gaming community who gets a lot of respect for the consistency of his gaming scores and, like it or not, there are people who look up to him.

I do hope that you will relay this message to Jim. And I do very much hope to see Destructoid clean up its act.

Thank you for your time and attention.


I'm not sure if I'll get a response, or if anything positive will come of it. I mean, I'm not a user on their site and I'm a woman, which already puts me at a disadvantage. But it's worth a shot, and I hope that those of you that agree with me that rape jokes ARE NOT OKAY in game journalism (or, you know, anywhere) will also send Niero an email and let him know where you stand on this.

That's all for now

In his words: why Jim Sterling is, in fact, very sexist

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WTF: The where the hell did my week go? edition

Holy shit, folks. This week kind of got away from me. I apologize for the radio silence - this week is a week of pure and utter madness. I've also been working on some things that require a bit more research to pull together. Next week, things return to normality, so I'll be returning to a more normal posting schedule.

Some of the stuff you can look forward to is a rant about why Jim Sterling of Destructoid is a despicable human being, a look at recent M:TG art, and, uh... this:

And worse, sadly.

Anyhow, I don't come completely empty-handed. I have some WTF for you, aside from the above.

WTF the first

David Jaffe, the director of the ever female-friendly God of War series, compared the new Sony handheld to a "fresh vagina". Unsurprisingly, game "journalists" have fallen all over themselves to repeat this in the name of "journalism", proving once again that game journalists really are incompetent fuckwits.

WTF the second

I've heard of several "virtual girlfriend" apps for the iPhone, which... okay. Whatever. A lot of them are based on the popular dating sim genre common in Japanese games. But what I really love is when North American men who don't even have a cultural excuse to fall back on wax enthusiastic about these games. Like this review of Virtual Girlfriend in which the title image is captioned:

The beauty is, when she starts getting bitchy, you just start over!

/facepalm

WTF the third

NOOOOOO!!! Samus! What have they done to you?? Curse you, internets! Curse yooooouuuuuu!!!

So. Okay. I want to point out that the file name of this picture is "waifu1". For those of you not familiar with Japanese, that's a Japanese rendering of "wife". There are many things that I can picture Samus doing. Being a housewife is not one of them.

For more housewife Samus fail, check out these photos here.