As a guy, I’m always a little disgusted when designers stick in big-breasted, scantily clad, flirty women for players to ogle at. Of course it’s demeaning to women, but it’s demeaning to men too, to think that all we care about is shooting shit and starting at 3D models with big tits.

Seriously. Thank you.

Also, thanks pretty much everyone else for being so interesting and mature in these here comments.

If you mean Faith#2 by ‘childlike’, I think you’re viewing that from a western or perhaps caucasian perspective.

Would disagree with that, considering facial characteristics of a child are something that’s pretty universal around the globe and simply part of growing up process. There’s a rather interesting study of it, that lists these factors.

Now, there might be cultural differences which leads to stronger and/or more open endorsement of these factors in some locations, but that doesn’t really make these attributes themselves any less ‘childlike’. To use slightly absurd example, if the standard of beauty included the person being as short as possible, it wouldn’t make being short any less of characteristic that’s normally (and universally) observed in kids, no matter the child’s race. It works the same for less obvious features like large eyes, small chin etc.

There is definitely some interesting territory to explore in how different cultures abstract characters to appear beautiful. As random examples, the stylization of Akira Toriyama’s women differs from Rob Liefeld’s significantly, due to the way manga and Western comics are produced and how those differences have been magnified over the lifetime of the medium.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that cultural relativism is all well and good, but sometimes your culture, or sub-culture, or fundamentalist looney wingnut culture, is wrong and stupid, and shouldn’t be tolerated or pandered to. Just to be clear, I’m talking about things like insisting on adult women being portrayed as childlike sex objects, rather than everyone having their own standards of hotness.

If you mean Faith#2 by ‘childlike’, I think you’re viewing that from a western or perhaps caucasian perspective. I should probably point out (because she won’t read this and give me into trouble for revealing personal info… hopefully) Mrs Aldo was born and brought up (mostly) in a south-east asian country, and lived with a few people from Korea etc at uni in the states, so I’d wager she’s had a pretty good experience of what’s considered attractive. And her first reaction was something along the lines of ’she’d be considered very attractive’ rather than ’she looks like a kid’.

I think it’s a question of cultural/physical norms. Features like bigger eyes et al are apparently rated pretty highly, to the extent of Japanese girls having eye surgery, simply because the general physical architecture of the asian body is slightly different (which includes tits, frankly). Pretty sure most ‘ideal’ women for any race are like that – notably different from the norm.

That said, Mrs. Aldo also commented that Faith#1 (i.e. the proper DICE one) was a far more realistic looking woman – just not one who’d stand out in a crowd. Which to me is pretty much what DICE wanted (and, of course, the whole argument could be negated if the original artist was asian).

At any rate, the whole “Eastern standards of beauty” thing is missing the point. It’s not that Faith #1 was considered more beautiful, it’s that the people who designed her realized that you’re twice as effective as an artist if both of your hands are free when you’re working. Or maybe they’re trying to evoke the qualities above, generally reserved by males for males. I’m pretty sure that #2 is more attractive in -every- market, despite the disturbingly exaggerated paedomorphic facial features (but to be fair, neotenic facial features in women are generally considered more attractive by men everywhere — just ask Wikipedia).

I haven’t bothered to comment about the “East / West divide” aspect of the debate purely because A. I had my fill of that dualistic hogwash at SOAS and it’s just not interesting any more (and while we’re at it, there is no such thing as “The East” or “The West”) and B. it was based on the picture submitted by that guy insisting that he knew what all Asian men liked and that Faith’s character design was therefore a failure. That guy is clearly an outright moron, and his point is therefore not actually worth serious discussion.

Now, I myself am a sometime artist and I have been particularly interested of late in the whole area of idealisation and its role in the way people see, interpret and represent/reproduce the human form. Of course sexual politics is pertinent to the debate, and of course I, being a man, am entitled to be concerned about male representation every bit as much as the other way around.

If you are going to insist on being some kind of arbiter of relevance and argumentative integrity in this comments thread, you might want to start paying attention to who said what, when, and with what intentions before dismissing someone as a petty neanderthal “Anti-Feminist”, which is, as near as I can fathom and to my complete incredulity, what you appear to be trying to paint me as.

As far as the models debate goes, I’ve been unfortunate enough to see a fair bit of America’s Next Top Model, and trust me, the girls who got to the top tended to not be the hottest. Apparently it’s much worse with male models, certainly very few male models look like guys you’d see walking down the street, and most look like the vanguard of an alien invasion. But I’d argue that the remixed Faith is just a pretty girl with big tits, and if you got roughly 20 female first year college students together, there’d probably be at least one girl with similar enough looks.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that cultural relativism is all well and good, but sometimes your culture, or sub-culture, or fundamentalist looney wingnut culture, is wrong and stupid, and shouldn’t be tolerated or pandered to. Just to be clear, I’m talking about things like insisting on adult women being portrayed as childlike sex objects, rather than everyone having their own standards of hotness.

On an interesting side-note… any black guys out there with comments on beauty culture in games? Because I suspect many white guys would tend to rate black women according to how caucasian their features are.

Quater: Sorry if I offended, but I was only reacting out of offense to you. You don’t italicise “you” in text without meaning to offend someone, it’s like pointing a finger in public. But, honestly, the question of whether or not men should feel offended by the unrealistic depictions of men in media is both an old “derailing” method of discussion whenever the issue of female depiction comes up (so much so that it’s entered the Anti-Comics-Feminist Bingo, albeit in a much more specialized form) and a bit moot. Because, honestly, there are far fewer offended men out there than offended women. And when you look at the messages portrayed by these unrealistic depictions it’s not hard to see why. But that’s a whole ‘nother issue entirely.

KG: On the bit on anti-evidence, you’re absolutely right. I still hold to the idea that the “East” is just more willing to pander. This is not a phenomenon unique to the male demographic either (see: Any popular Japanese or Korean media involving unreasonably attractive guys, real or stylized–there’s a stereotype about Dramas floating around there somewhere). That’s not a comment on the gender politics side of the discussion as much as it is on the geopolitics one because there’s a real divide between popular Western and Eastern media with regards to “skin deep beauty marketability.” The editing artist has probably gotten too used to the standards of media from over there and, in a manner that’s easy to do, tied up his personal reaction to Faith’s design with her apparent stereotypical appearance (Asian with a flat haircut being a factor, probably) with the presumption that she was the West’s idea of what makes an attractive Asian. There’s the Male Gaze there behind his intentions, and behind his reference material he’s using in contrast, and he didn’t notice it.

At least take comfort in the fact that Western popular media’s a bit less cynical in that regard. A bit, anyway.

I’m still a bit bugged that it was, of all characters, Faith was the one to be at the center of it. C’mon, Torokun, you’re letting the otaku side down.

As an aside, to Malagate and Klaus: Hah! Yes. Japan and Korea’s popular culture is a lot more similar than some folks would like to give them credit for. China’s a bit different, but mostly on material made for the male demographic–their comics look positively Western-non-continental-European at first glance. For the female demographic, things skew cuter and closer to what we’d imagine from Japan, though.

I’m honestly not that surprised at the idea that an Asian dude has photoshopped Faith for his own sensibilities, I mean have you seen what most women look like in Asian games? Have none of you seen a Korean MMO? MMOs which are invariably the many lands of giant muscly blokes and tiny women with huge…lower-back problems in later life, and a nation wide shortage of adequate clothing.
Which incidentally sheds light on Andy F’s point about whether Koreans want the same thing as Japanese in their games, compare say the Dead or Alive women to any woman in Granado Espada. Hmmmm, draw any parallels there?