The Sexiffication on gaming?

Now for the first load I'm talking about, there isn't a specific game, or even genre of gaming. There's just something that burns my ass a little bit ... the oversexualization in the gaming industry.

Lets get this out of the way right now, I'm not a conservative, I'm a firm believer in the games can be art club and I love naked women. That being said, there are certain parts of gaming that yes, can handle a little bit of smut in them. It accentuates the story, allows for development or something to that effect.

However, there are other game devs, who will put it in seemingly to see if they can get away with it, or because they think it'll sell. The latter enters such games as Tomb Raider, Heavenly Sword or X-blades, whereas the former is more closesly tied to the GTA series, BMX XXX, etc.

The Tomb Raider series is one that I'll hit particularily hard here, because what they'd done was take a barely functional platforming game in which they took out the "functional" part and replaced it with a "sexy" polygonal character named Lara Croft. Anyone who has played this series at all, can attest to the fact that its a heaping pile of shit and they only reason they did so at age 13 was to zoom the camera in on the main character's rack. Thats all it had going for it. End of discussion there, you've reached the pinnacle of your game developing careers there folks. Wait what's that? Oh you've made 8 more games and two movies involving the exact same bullshit. And they're going to sell 35 million copies worldwide to a group of teenagers with holes in their pockets, thus beginning the destructive oversexualization of the modern mind. Alot of women see Croft as a feminist icon, which as a start makes me chuckle. I know myself as an adolescent had many fantasies involving other feminist symbols like Donna Haraway or even Judith Butler. Bullshit. Core tried to pass it off this way so they didn't get gassed by those same nazi's. No harm, no foul. Can't fault folks for wanting to make money I suppose.

Now the Heavenly Sword/X-Blades grouping is a blatant combat rip off of the God of War series, you know the game of rampant destruction that brought quick time events back to the fore of gaming, Anyways, both characters, being female, are required by the majority of the gaming community to apparently be wearing as little as possible so as to display all the game dev's work on the tiny, perfect, glistening bodies. Thats it. Its again, all marketing. A large percentage of gamers who bought either of those games did so because of the prospect of nakedness or near nakedness.

Now the GTA series, and that being all of them since three, have featured something to do with nudity or sexuality. This is more of a slight surprise inside rather than an integral part of gameplay itself. Its not needed, though its caught some heat for it, and still doesn't take away from the fact that the games (except for 4) were all about the fun of stealing cars, shooting people, shooting people from stolen cars, seeing how many people you can squish while powersliding, how high of a roof can you jump off of while shooting rockets at your persuers with a five star wanted level without dying and etc. That game was about the fun, the 18 sided breasts weren't essential, just an annoying addition.
P.S. - I also appreciated the zoomed in thong, clearly unable to follow the real geometry instead blocking into 30 odd angles rather than a smooth cut. Next time you want to add something like that, for fuck sakes make it clean enough for me to actually consider it an ass worth playing a game for. Thanks

This subject can even touch on the God of War franchise. I recall my first time playing through after beating that bastard hydra and going down to the lower decks of the ship and lo an behold, two naked women sitting there giggling. After a moment of watching how far along computer graphics had come along in the last few years with breast jiggle physics, I decided to walk in for a closer look which instigated a quick time event where Kratos made a lunging grab and the screen changed to a vase on a stand that you apparently knock over by nailing the floosies hard enough, pushing buttons and rotating the analog stick. Novel, yes. Totally pointless, without a doubt.

And I think a brief mention should be made to the DoA "saga": there it was.

All of the above examples really do beg the question, "What is the point of it all?" Being a 25 year old male, ie the target gaming audience, its almost insulting to have games geared at me because of absurd violence and more importantly glistening flawless breasts/ass. Whatever happened to the simpler times of insert game, play until your eyes bled just for the sake of having fun, rather than be sidetracked by supple bodies rendered down to the last bead of sweat. And here's what I've come up with:
Being the target, most males around the 18-35 year mark are still relatively amused by nudity, to the point where after it being blatantly put into a game early on, it hooks them. A large percentage will spend the rest of the play time, hunting in every nook and cranny in an effort to find more of the boobage, thus being an extremely lazy way for devs to extend play time.

For those of you who kept reading beyond the first line of this tripe, you've earned a cookie and be sure to rub it in the faces
of those smarmy bitches that didn't.
The whole point of this article was still to say, I love naked women. I mean ... video games. And any nudity is just a shameful plug to draw said games out further.

So until next time,

Game Safely (tube socks and doors locked)

Major Trevor Martin