(05-06-2014, 09:26 PM)Ashren Snow Wrote: Group A is offended by the lack of "androgynous female character models" so the developers add them into the game to try to appeal to a wider demographic, however they've now aliented Group B because the idea of a non-standard female body is disgusting, or at least foreign, to their sensibilities so they find the addition offensive and are now in the same situation Group A was in before the addition.Wut.
This is too weird. Since when has a game ever suffered for being more inclusive? I want examples. This whole hypothetical scenario just sounds incredibly, incredibly silly.
The only thing that I have actually seen being offensive to people is the inclusion of a race like Elin, who are basically weird sexualized child hybrids and the issue with those isn't even their bodies, it's just that a bunch of folks have a difficult time divorcing their appearance from the idea that someone's trying to sexualize children. And even that is only a problem because it's so overt - you don't see anyone tossing a shitfit over the inclusion of Lalafell in FFXIV, do you?
Meanwhile, allowing people the option to create feminine males and masculine females doesn't disgust anyone except for maybe the most extreme individuals (who you likely aren't aiming for anyway) because they don't have any of those connotations. FFXIV, in fact, is pretty much proof positive of this - it's very easy to create a very androgynous female Roegadyn (as noted previously), female bodies in general have subdued assets, and some of the males easily cross the line into bishounen, and the game doesn't suffer for it at all. That's because, unless you do the Elin thing, being inclusive only helps you: it doesn't suddenly preclude a bunch of customers who are suddenly SO OFFENDED that you DARED to cater to those individuals who now have options to represent themselves in-game. Who even are these people? What proof do you have that they exist? Even WoW itself flies in the face of such an assertion considering female Tauren, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Goblins all exist.
Also, your statistic is patently wrong. Female gamers make up a considerably larger portion of the MMORPG market than you might think. Also of interest, among male players in general their preferences vary enormously. By shooting for what you THINK is the primary demographic you can very easily exclude a number of players who are unaccounted for. Just aiming for "the WoW demographic" is incredibly silly and self-defeating considering that not one MMORPG has managed to catch up to its numbers; it is essentially a social phenomenon. Excluding players, intentionally or not, can only serve to shoot yourself in the foot over the long run. And, dare I say it, even WoW itself may have had higher numbers had it a greater variety of character models than what's currently available. Since it doesn't, we just don't know.
And come on, really. There's cynicism out there, I know, but to think that there is honestly a contingent of people who are absolutely disgusted by any depiction of a female that isn't completely, cartoonishly sexualized? Furthermore, that this contingent of people could somehow equal or cancel out all the people who are interested in such characters? Come on, man. There's a limit to how much you can stretch my suspension of disbelief.
