April 28th, 2010

Game Covers Women Want to See Meme

Yudhishthira’s Dice asks:

Ladies, what RPG covers (or interiors) have you seen that involve a woman in the art that make you say, “I want to play that” or, just as good “I want to play her.” Or that make you feel like it is a game you could like, or be included in by a group of guys you’d never met and whose maturity you didn’t necessarily know?

Rules of the meme, by tekanji:

  1. Copy the text of the original challenge from Yudhishthira’s Dice and give a proper link attribution.
  2. Copy these rules exactly (including any links).
  3. Find images of game covers (interiors are okay, too) that make you want to play the game. Any kind of game — video game, card game, tabletop RPG, etc — is fine. Post them and include a short (or long) explanation on why the image makes/made you want to play the game.
  4. The original challenge is about finding out what women think about how game art is marketed and therefore it is targeted at women. I’d like to keep it that way, please.
  5. You can tag as many or as few people as you want. You do not need to be tagged to participate in the meme.
  6. When you make your post, please post the link on this thread so we can all see what others have said.

Particpating Posts

Woman on horse looking to her right with sword. Click for full image.
Woman on horse looking to her right with sword

I saw this art in a copy of Gameinformer and was struck by all of the things it doesn’t have. Most art in gaming magazines and in online advertisements for games will always have some sort of revealing clothes for women, and most of these ads WILL include a woman in them if for nothing more than to just sell the product. (Evony is a good example of using women to sell a product that doesn’t even include them in any playable way.)
I had to look twice as the character read as female to me, however there were no breasts being put out on display, nor were there any indication that this is female such as garish lipstick or tons of make-up, high heels or a frilly pink skirt. I can see a tiny hint of a breast under the armor being suggested, but nothing I can point at and say “lol bewbs” like other pieces of “art”.
I wanted to play this game because they had caught my attention and were treating the subject on the cover with respect, she was dressed for battle and the armor was behaving as armor and not as some leather spandex. I was interested in seeing if the rest of the game treated the other women with as much respect as the cover.
The cover also in clothing her, basically described the game to me. A game where the characters will ride horses and do battle, and by the background it with be a multi-unit army style battle, maybe and RTS, maybe not real time. When I see a cover with a woman on the cover baring her breasts I really wonder what the content is about, is it an RPG, RTS,FPS, a porn game, what is it? I get very turned off and put it back on the shelf as the cover also tells me if I play the game my character if female will be wearing the chain/plate bikini as well. In those game I usual will play as male so I can have more covering clothes, and if it’s online definitely I will play as a male character as most all women (and men too) that play MMOs will know, the female character will be degraded by being insulted, have obscene comments made to, be groped in text chat or emotes will be made use of to basically indicate that the character is being raped by the other male character(s) around, solicited for sex, ask to strip and basically made to feel VERY uncomfortable in the game, with very little recourse from the admins of the game.

This cover art was definitely a change for the better. it got my attention in a positive way and I can only hope there will be more covers of this high quality.

PCSexism

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