Wait...What?

That robot designation is Arbalest. You got the joke if you saw Full Metal Panic. Great show.

What pisses me off here is not the existence o Ivy Valentine as a busty, scantily clad character. We have plenty of them, even in other Medias like cartoons, movies, comics and TV shows. What pisses me off here is how the game is being sold.

I bet there is boobies in this game.

See, Soul Calibur is not an unproven franchise by an untested developer to need to resort to cheap marketing tactics to sell the game. If it was, maybe I would accept them trying to sell the sex so people would buy it for the boobies and maybe discover a good game under the hood.

No, they are going straight for the sex appeal marketing. If it was Ivy fighting an adversary from the game I would accept it. Games are fantasy, and Soul Calibur never tried to be historical accurate in their depiction or to be realistic. They can go wild in female design, in my opinion.

What doesn’t sit right with me is their need to use the cleavage to sell their game. Damn, even Tecmo Koei in their DOA series is trying to tone down the sex in their games. And we are talking about the guys who made DOA Extreme Volleyball here!

This one says women can be beautiful AND badass too. And it come from Team Ninja. The end is nigh.

It is possible to be sexy and tasteful, I believe. Namco is not doing it in their poster.

Now another point. I said that I have no problem with Ivy looks. Why? She is not in a realistic game. If she was in a game trying to go for realism, like say Assassin’s Creed or Uncharted and dressed like that, it would be ridiculous. Elena, one of my favorite characters in Uncharted, is a news reporter and she dress in very practical, realistic attire.

Team Ninja toned down the sex in DOA. Why Namco felt the need to up theirs? Even Ayane is sensible dressed.

If she was using revealing clothes all the times I would be a little pissed, like that CIA agent in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Why? Because it is not how those professions dress in the real world! While Ninja Gaiden still can pull it off by being over the top, if Uncharted tried it, it would be not only stupid, but tasteless.

I said before that the videogame industry is more sexist than other media. But the main problem is that while other media have plenty of variety in the depiction of women, the predominant portrayal is the over sexy vixen. Alyx Vance from Half-Life, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil and Elena from Uncharted being rare exceptions.

What the industry needs is more variety in the portrayal of women. Not the juvenile depiction that we have today.


PS: Finnaly bought my own digital camera. It is a Sony DSC-W560. Pretty good, 14,1 M, 3 inch LCD Screen. Nice quality on the pics too. :)