FGD Lounge: for general fighting game discussions that aren't thread worthy

These games are sick to watch but fuuuuck playing them.
The illusion of tiers would be a blessing, haha.

Hey I want to get into the Soul Cal series. Any recommendation on which game I should start with?

SCV is the only one with a decent amount of players in the US. I think there may be specific events where SC2HD gets players, but overall V gets more people.

While each SC game is pretty different from the last(Project Soul experiments a lot more than some people realize), they are all really easy to get into and theres only a few difficult characters in either of them.

Edit: If you’re mostly playing online, then go with SCV for sure. It has the best online play of any SC (or probably 3D fighter in general).

I want to experience the whole series. But I’ll start out with SCV since it’s most active. But I hear a lot of fans trashing that game, calling it the worst in the series.

Those haters usually are just the people still pissed that their favorite characters got cut or that the story mode wasn’t very long. Casual players. Most of the players who actually participate at events like the game. I think its a great game myself.

Hey wanted ya opinion on something. I was talking with someone and we got into discussion on the over sexualization of female fighting game characters. He said he wished there were more cute and attractive characters like Karin and less hyper sexualized ones. I responded that despite what gaming media says, there are actually a lot of modestly dressed and not so revealing female fighters. And I named a couple. He responded that there’s an imbalance and that there’s way more scantidly clad ones than more clothed ones and began to name examples. And he just wants there to be a balance of both. But isn’t there already is? My fighting game knowledge ins’t that vast so maybe ya can tell me.

Are you asking me or everyone lol?

well I did say ya, so everyone.

The thing is, as a designer, you want characters to ā€œpopā€. Sure, you could make a game out of nothing but boring, mundane looking people. But where is the fun in that? People like characters that stand out to them. It’s the difference between the games we play and a random splattering of hitboxes and frame data. But what people want in a character varies. Some types look for the tough/badass characters, like Akuma/Sagat/Zangief. Others seek out ā€œcuteā€ characters like Ibuki/Sakura/Karin. Then you have ā€œsexyā€ characters (Cammy, Mika, Poison), ā€œserious/heroā€ types (Ryu, Remy, Abel), and even characters that stand out in goofiness or strangeness. It all comes down to what makes you look at a character and say "I wanna see THAT in action!"
Sorry for using all SF characters, but I figured it was the broadest example I could properly use.

Some fighting games have tons of extreme visual designs(DOA) others don’t really do it at all (Virtua Fighter). Its a case by case thing. Depends on the designers.

Any way, it looks like thats it for fg’s at TGS. Oh well… Ill try kof xiv once it’s out

capcom

cammy - yes
mika - yes (although i think it fits the chracter i mean she’s a wrestler and they do what they do, but i will say yes as im gonna be strict)
karin - no
sakura - no ( i mean on foward mk is a gratuitous pantie shot but really outside of that there’s nothing else to suggest she is oversexualized)
chun li - no
rose - no
ingrid - no
pullum - no
juri - i’d say no
poison - yes
decpre - no
juli and juni - no
ibuki - no
makoto - no
elena - i would say yes, some might disagree
viper - this is hard, i would say no i mean she has nothing outside of her comedy cleavage which is so bad i want her to cover up
sharon - no
blair - possibly i mean it’s slightly skimpy but the character nothing suggestive at all, lets say yes for arguments sake
maki - no
nanase - no
hokuto - no
area - no
morrigan - yes
lillth - ??? probably not

Snk

Mai - yes, mature - no, vice - no, athena - no, kula - no, leona - no, king - no, yuri - no, mary - no, shermie - yes, chizuru - no,
vanessa - no, nakoruru - no, b jenet - no, whip - no, momoko - no, liene neville - yes, hotaru - no, shiki - no, mizuki - no, hinako - no,
xioa lon - no, luise - no, charlotte - no, rera - no, kasumi - no, cham cham - no, mina - no, mignon- no, may lee - no, chae lim - no,
kisarah - no, irohah - yes, nagase - no, malin - no, ryoko - no, hibiki - no, foxy - no, ninon - no, pupa - no, xiang fei - no,
rimururu - no, shaia (voltage fighter) yes, karin (voltage fighter) yes, akari - no, kaori - no, yuki - no, lenny creston - no, cassandra - yes,
alice - no, carol - no, yungmie - no, fei lin - no, annie - no, ai -no, tessa - no, angel - lets say yes, clara - no, hikuru - no,
arina - no, princess sissy - no, lynn - no, natsume - no, ume - no, tane - no, sonia - no, roomi ??? lets say yes, sinclair - no

I did start doing other games but i got really bored but i’ve been as conservative as possible
but even in a game like doa which most would deem as just tits and arse there’s still normal female characters without ridiculous tits or whoreish mannerisms like helena koroko and so on, so i dont know where that bloke is getting his ideas from

If you roughly calculate it it works out to 12% of female characters what i listed could be deemed as oversexualized, not as many as he thinks and that’s me being as prudish as possible you probably could knock it down to 8%, of course there are other series like doa tekken and so on but i doubt it would even make 20% so he’s talking out of his arse really

Yeah after I got some advice on how to discuss this with him from others here. And I presented the idea that we list prominent fighting series and list which females are sexualized vs non sexualized and compare the numbers. After we got the results he felt quite foolish. Then admitted that due to the more sexualized characters receiving the most attention, he figured that’s pretty much how the fighter genre was and said he’ll do more research on the genre before trying to label it like that. ā€œBut that gamers and developers should make more of an effort to promote these non sexualized characters to change the image of fighters.ā€

But I think characters like Ryu and Scorpion being the faces of their respective series already does that.

1st ask him why does it bother him so much that a character is ā€œsexualizedā€ when is a primal part of human nature.
2nd tell him that only ignorant people think that fg’s are sexualized, since as he found out, he made a sweep generalization without knowing shit, like only an idiot does.

I hate getting into this discussion too much. But you can’t really pretend that everything is ā€˜just peachy’ with representation of women in fighting games. It’s not just about whether all the characters are oversexualized (which clearly, they’re not) but the amount of character types that is represented by women in fighting games is pretty limited.

Sexy: Sure, plenty.
Cutesy: This list is basically endless.
Weirdo/semi-monstrous chars like Blanka/Dhalsim/Voldo: None that I can think of
Tough/badass: Limited, but there are some: Makoto, Baiken, Blue Mary.
Fat chars like Chang, Rufus: None that I can think of.

There’s a pretty clear divide between what kind of stereotypes belong to women and what kind of stereotypes belong to men. The variety of characters types that is available to men is also quite obviously bigger than that which is deemed appropriate for women. And it’s of course not only the ā€˜sexy’ characters that are sexualized. Considering the massive fandom around the cutesy characters, makes it pretty obvious that those are definitely squarely in the ā€˜fan service’ category of women. How many female characters can you think of that aren’t clearly pandering to someone’s sexual desires.

And think of stuff like Samurai Shodown’s Tam-Tam vs Cham-Cham. Both are like ā€˜jungle savage’ stereotypes. But clearly the girl is the ā€˜sexy jungle savage’, while the guy is just a weirdo. Can you imagine those roles ever being reversed in a fighting game?

How many male characters in Fighting games exist that are just plain ugly? Quite a lot right?
Now think of ugly female characters… I honestly can’t think of any. (O! I know! The Granny’s from Power Instinct (SJW’s go: ā€œAGISM!ā€)! But having to bring up such an obscure series is indicative I think)

All this being said, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Sexy/Cutesy female characters. And all the bullshit about about those characters enforcing negative stereotypes is a pretty retarded discussion. For years we’ve been arguing that violent games don’t make players violent; but then sexist games would make you sexist? Get out of here (Not to mention the fact that games that are as blatantly misogynist/sexist games as violent games are violent obviously don’t exist). But I do know the lack of variety in female characters in fighting games puts people off the genre.

I would like to see a little bit more variety in the types of female characters that can exist.

Some points:

Things are made for an audience. Competitive games are a thing that by nature will probably always be male-dominated. So you make a game to appeal to a male audience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. What people want and what pleases the actual customer is what gets made. You cannot please everybody, ever. It’s a common mistake people make, but your product will inevitably put someone off. There’s no avoiding it.

As far as I know out of traditional fighting games Soul Calibur and DoA - ie. T&A Fighter extraordinaires - have the most female players on average. Actual women apparently like playing as sexy women.

Related to this, this doesn’t mean animu games. Moeblobs are squarely aimed at men. (Again, nothing wrong with this per se even if I personally want to erase the modern animu aesthetic from the face of the Earth). Not going to happen because the actual customers are in the arcades in Japan.

The real question is why games and/or game companies should bother with ā€œrepresentationā€ of x or y.

Since when is their responsability to make a character that pleases Land whales and insecure omega males.

GTFO with that shit, if they really want that shit then they should go and make their own content instead of forcing others to Please their stupidity.

As for question 1. Everyone’s entitled to their own preference. So I’m not gonna drill him on why he doesn’t like sexualized characters. Some people are more modest and prefer character’s to be more modest and that’s fine. Now the 2nd point is probably what I’ll get at him about because spreading misinformation like that by forming uninformed opinions and spouting it as fact is what pisses me off. But he did own up and acknowledged he jumped the gun.

Yeah I don’t like this discussion either because most people can’t be civil about it on both sides. You either have the SJW/feminist crowd crying sexism and muh soggy knees over every lil thing, or those in favor of it acting like they can’t handle any sort of criticism, or just trying to justify or are in denial of clear cut examples of sexualization I.E Quiet in MGS5. Now I don’t mind the latter. I’m just saying lets just be real and call a spade a spade. But it seems like you guys can be civil.

Now as for variety of females. Well their are some ugly/ monstrous, fat, weird or badass ones. I.E PainWheel, Ms.Fortune, Double, Sheeva, Mileena. That Boar chick from the original bloody roar, that chick from Saturday Night slam masters I think. Shina the leopard, and the ones you named. But yeah not a lot. Which makes sense because the majority don’t wanna see such female characters. I mean maybe some more badass ones would be welcomed but I don’t see most being into a fighter where the majority of the female cast looked like PainWheel.

As for which female characters aren’t designed to pander to ones sexual desire. In all honestly I don’t think it’s possible to make a female character that isn’t sexualized in someway. Why? Because most people sexualize the female form in their heads regardless of what a chick is wearing. Perfect example, rule 34. It doesn’t matter how conservatively dressed or modest a female character is. People will find a way to sexualize her because most Men find the female form sexy and desirable. Think you can walk around in a Burka and avoid the ā€œmale gazeā€? Nope because those guys are probably thinking. That ain’t hiding dat ass! She got some pretty eyes. I wanna see what she got going on under all that". Hell leaving more to the imagination makes some guys desire a chick and fantasize about her even more.

As for Tam Tam and Cham Cham roles being reversed. Hmm good point. I don’t recall ever seeing any female fighters that are mentally unstable or insane

Don’t really want to get involved in the conversation because, well, don’t care, but . . .

A.B.A and Justice perhaps.

Samsho mizuki is pretty nuts

My main thing with this representation crap is they believe that a character design will draw people to the game. Say if Capcom made the most PC character possible in SF5 and the people who into that shit loves it won’t mean anything if they won’t play the game. SF is a fighting game. If you ain’t into fighters a character design ain’t gonna overcome that.