Makes me frustrated and hopeless, Its quite clear that they do this for the male gaze and whatever its called, but that doesnt justify it and makes me very sick.
Not saying that beautiful characters are bad, but semi naked characters with unrealistic beauty which both have nothing to do with the game at all is terrible, very terriole.
Why ruin a good game for the so called" male gaze" or “sex sells” thing? why?
I feel like a hypocrite and a loser.
Not sure if indie games are any better, itch io is very good, it has great (hidden) gems.
But its also filled with dating games and whatnot, I didnt check the nsfw games, but I wouldnt be surprised if they filled the entire front page.
Anyway, Its a deep issue for me, wanted to vent, thanks for reading.
In a lot of games the men are not exactly realisticly sized either. They aren’t often as sexualized as the women, but most are max 15% body fat and shredded to the point that they’d need steroids in real life.
Dummy thicc Solid Snakes clapping cheeks come to mind.
That Marvel wannabe Overwatch video game puts women in tons of skimpy outfits but those men’s asses and chests are on display as well in skintight outfits.
“It’s like I’m wearing nothing at all.”
…stupid sexy Flanders.
i miss 70s and 80s male sexualization
the difference is that the bodybuilder aesthetic isn’t usually what women are into. Nothing inherently wrong with it of course but it’s still built for the male gaze. If you ask a gym buff IRL about it they’ll tell you most people who notice their physique are men. The shredded video game dude can instead be thought of as a signifier of masculinity and sometimes as a fantasy for men to project themselves into while playing.
I don’t think the washboard abs and boulder shoulders would disappear entirely if male characters were designed more for the female gaze, but we’d probably see some more dad bods and smaller dudes too. Hades comes to mind as an example.
Hades characters are not what i would consider “dad bods” or “smaller dudes”. They almost all have V tapers, visible abs, and a low body fat percentage. The biggest thing in hades for the female gaze IMO is more attention to costume/outfit design.
There are possibly more relevant examples than Hades, it was just the first that came to mind. It is not a complete departure from typical male character design, don’t get me wrong, but I do think there’s a greater variety than most games - Hypnos, Sisyphus, Orpheus, Icarus, Apollo, Hephaestus, and Narcissus are who I’m thinking of more specifically. The general character style does still lean on muscular definition (and they’re generally still pretty unrealistic bodies for irl humans) but there’s more room for a variety of builds and not everyone is portrayed as particularly strong or lean. You are correct that a lot of it comes down to outfit design, but that is still part of the overall character design and it does still feel like a step outside the norm.
I always hate looking at pictures of dudes who are roided to the eyes and almost dangerously dehydrated; it just looks painful like I could poke them and they’d bruise.