The human female Follow

I cannot say from their perspective. I can only give mine as a straight male. It would be nice to get their perspective on the subject.



I agree, the female pandaren is more attractive than worgen, forsaken and tauren. The internet would disagree though (well up to the tauren) if you look at fan art.

The only reason I say the male gnomes have a greater power fantasy is due to the defined pecs. I suppose you are correct though considering gnomes tend to be the joke race.

Can't say I've heard of a lot of Forsaken r34 (nor would I want to!), but Worgen? .... oh yes. A lot of it.

Tauren? There's some out there.

Pandaren are fairly new, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people were hot over Taoshi or something.

Edited, Jan 27th 2014 7:25pm by Lyrailis

There's **** out there of every race in WoW. Yes, gnomes, tauren, pandaren, etc. It all exists, because they all cater to niches that were unfilled before the race was introduced.

Anyways Digg, females in WoW have some very modest sets these days. Check out the current tier DK gear, current tier Rogue gear, etc. Seems like boobplate is mostly a thing of the past.

I agree with you on the whole no options for females thing. For example, Guild Wars 2 either has gear that exposes the breasts for all to see or just looks horrible. When I'm trying to find something a little classier for my female Mesmer (a duelist/illusionist archetype that I feel would wear something a little more fine) my options are slim to none. As someone on GW2's forums posted, all the female cloth sets look like "strippers in a tent."

Matching boots exist, all the boots that drop from the same raid level as the tier is going to match that tier. Same with belts, cloaks, etc. They just aren't showing up in my link because I linked the tier set itself, and they're technically non-set pieces. They do still design and implement the gear as a full set, including non-set pieces, but for gameplay purposes only the main pieces (helm, shoulders, pants, chest, gloves) are part of the "tier set" itself.

You summed it up rather nicely Idiggory.

@digg:

Mmm you make some good points.

Games are slowly getting better (again, Mass Effect and Saints Row depending on how you build your character in the latter). But yet as you said, there's many that are still hanging behind.

I love WoW's pandaren females. Worgen are... well, they're "meh" and "good" at the same time. They've got that dangerous feral thing going with how they move and their snarled snouts, but yet they also have obvious feminine sexuality going on too with what looks like eyeliner (colored fur) underneath their eyes and such. And they're a bit thin IMO; they should have a little more muscle than that.

EDIT: My Saints Row build? I give her just slightly above average bust, long black hair, a decent muscle tone (not body builder but quite fit), and I dress her with tennis shoes, black slacks, a black jacket with a red button shirt underneath.

She looks absolutely badass and classy at the same time. I should screenshot her sometime.

Edited, Jan 27th 2014 10:50pm by Lyrailis

I've seen pics of some crazy builds in SR3. I like to go practical. lol.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3278920192963214494/F863464F3B0C752479CA9C2A8036D16CB498CBC2/

Not that I normally shop there (closest store to a gateway), but that's basically what I mean.

Edited, Jan 27th 2014 10:58pm by Lyrailis

I think you guys have a pretty weird perspective on what is thin and what is thick.

None of the females in any game I've played has reminded me of starved, weak supermodels (maybe the female Forsaken, but yeah...). Supermodels, sure, but starved and weak? Hardly. The models are designed after an ideal, of course, but WoW in particular does a good job of creating diversity, despite the identical models within each race. Take a female Orc, for instance. Hardly a starved, weak supermodel. If female Blood Elves are starved and weak then so is a lot of women I come across on a daily basis. Night Elves and Blood Elves are very lean, yes, but nothing abnormal around these parts.

It's worth noting that CDC statistics from 2010 marks 38% of the adult US population as obese. Not overweight. Obese. I guess a 120 lbs Blood Elf looks skinny if the norm is 200+ lbs.



The models are based on ideals. To most people of most cultures, the ideal man is muscular while the ideal woman is lean and busty. Whether those physical traits empower you or not depends entirely on the individual. I doubt any game developer out there would have the money to design a model for each individual player based on their preferences, though, so we get what we get: muscular men and lean, busty women.

But yes, the gear seems to favor a male perspective, assuming female gamers don't feel empowered by looking like a million dollars.

Edited, Jan 28th 2014 1:32pm by Mazra

If TERA gets credit for anything, it's for indulging both fantasies for both sexes. Aman and Bakara appear powerful, Castanics are slutty, High Elves are "pretty" sexualized (in that both sexes are beautiful and also flaunt it kind of thing), Humans fit the traditional gamer stereotypes for male and female characters, and Popori and Elin fill the cutesy and slightly disturbing role which is a must for any Asian MMO.

One design issue with female bodies is that they generally vary far more than male body types do. Males typically end up stocky or lanky, or somewhere in between, but our bodies are typically more square. Sure, we have different natural waists, and some of us have broad shoulders, etc. But because we don't naturally have curves, the overall effect tends to be rather rectangular. So most games just design a male model that's right in the middle, and excepting for muscle/fat %s, it's close enough to the body most males have.

Female bodies vary far more wildly. Where their body tends to carry fat (bust, hips, rear), how broad their shoulders are, how thick their neck is, whether or not they have a natural hourglass or are more sturdy, etc. And then you take the same body type and add height and it changes quite a bit, where it doesn't for males, because female body fat percentages are naturally higher.

That said, most female gamers I know fully accept that this is not a super realistic goal for designers. At least for normal, single-player games (because there's something to be said for development time when you're expected to drop MANY days of your life, and a subscription, into a game to play that character).

So what I think is important is that female models are designed according to female perspectives. If guys want idealized models for male characters, fine. If females want idealized models for female characters, fine. But what's not okay is when female models are idealized relative to the male gaze.

What that means, specifically, I can't say. At the end of the day, I still have a male perspective. I can sympathize with the female position, but I don't know what it's like to be interacting with a female model relative to female body image.

What I can deliver via testimony from the female gamers I know is that most of them want characters who are suited to the task at hand. Which IS an idealized version of a body. Fem!Shep had a stocky frame and muscles in her arms and solid thighs AND she had curves and some delicate features. But then when you applied the male gaze, she turned into pornstar!Shepard... The female gamers I knew were livid. Not because blond, long-haired Shepard was an option, but because it was clear that fem!Shep had just been taken away from them. Turned into a sex icon, instead of a strong, confident soldier (who, sure, could get some if she wanted it).

And I think that's the big point. They may want beauty in their models, but they want them to look capable first and beautiful second.

And they typically seem to want everyday beautiful, not red carpet beautiful.

One last thing I want to really stress is that capability is relative to what you're doing. Showing a little bit more skin when you're wearing a robe is WAY more acceptable than a teardrop in your plate armor for a tank. You're a caster? Immaculate make-up, red lipstick, careful bob. You make it look good. Warrior? No or light make-up, short hair, etc.

Women are used to evaluating their looks by situation, and MANY female gamers actively do that with their characters. It's an aspect of male privilege that we, generally, don't have to do that by societal standards. We wear the same haircut on the red carpet as we do to go get coffee in the morning (and both look remarkably like bedhead). We go from flip flops and shorts to wearing tuxes with relative ease.

Women are forced to evaluate their looks by situation just because of the way our society is structured. And that has a BIG impact on the way they evaluate the appearance of female models in games. And it's one that is usually completely lost on male designers.

The fact that the ones making the lines and cuts of clothing/gear in the game are all male compounds that problem further.

[EDIT]

I bolded the part I think is one of the most important parts missing in this discussion so far.

Male ideals of women are one-size-fits-all.

Female ideals of women are all relative to the situations women find themselves in. Women DON'T want to look like a red carpet actress at work. But they may want to look like what that actress looked like at work in the movie she's getting an award for.

And that's important.

Edited, Jan 28th 2014 11:29am by idiggory

'k, so, I'm a female gamer, and I have three things to say:

1. I hate panty armor. It's ridiculous and I resent being forced to wear it purely for the amusement of developers and fourteen-year-old boys. Luckily I have transmog, so I'm not forced to wear it. Its very existence is not offensive to me. If you think it's a good idea run into a sword fight with nothing on but a string over your nipples, have at it.

2. I like thin and pretty character models. This is pretty hypocritical given my position on panty armor, but it's not so much that I'm a slave to the patriarchy as it is that if I want to see a muffin top, I don't need to play a fantasy game to do it. So I guess I'm fine with objectified women if they're objectified in ways I prescribe for myself? Yes, a slider would be nice so we could all have whatever body type we want. No, I do not expect that from WoW at this stage.

3. I don't know WTF Maz is on about. My female worgen are HAWT.

At first I thought you had morphed into Smash on me.

Ironically though, that's something that had caught my attention just the other day. I've been engrossed in Sims3 lately, and one of the options in character creation was different hairstyles to go with different outfits. Just something that stood out to me as an option that's missing from even many of the more detailed character creation screens in many games. I assumed it was because that's certainly one of the few games out there where the female audience is a major driving force.

Then came here this morning, read your post, and had a "lightbulb" moment.

Edited, Jan 28th 2014 8:46am by someproteinguy