The original source of this has tasteful nudity in it, so I'm copying the text here for people who are offended by that. I want some honest feedback about the way forward. After waxing poetic about sexualized heroines in games, and extolling the virtues of courage in storytelling, I find myself backed into a corner. Whatever I do, I will be an asshole. Here's the story: I wanted to create a good female character. Someone who was respectable, strong, competent, yet feminine. I endowed my creation with a strong trunk, breasts of normal size and shape, strong legs, feminine hips. Well, first it turns out that athletic women are pretty skinny, especially from the side, which happens to the primary angle of this game: (Rendered Side view of Kō, my main character, nude) So she may be skinny, but the activity of the game requires that she be really athletic, so I give myself a pass. She may be young, but the storyline requires that she be on the cusp of marriage so it's out of my hands. Still, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable about having a young, attractive female lead.

The Straw

Now here's the "courage" part--the last straw that really makes me look like an asshole. The pre-European Māori had very different nudity taboos than we do. They had essentially two articles of clothing: a pui pui skirt, which is sort of like one of those Hawaiian grass skirts, and a rectangular shawl that they would drape over their shoulders. They had other things like feather cloaks for special occasions and high ranking people, but those weren't common. Generally speaking, they didn't wear clothes if it was at all inconvenient, and in fact had a cultural belief that clothing spread disease (which was often true in those days). Often warriors would go to war in the nude. Swimming was done in the nude. Lots of athletic activities which a skirt would interfere with would require nudity. Raining? Go naked! Also, the concept of female breasts being covered differently than males' is purely European. Often the small shoulder wrap would cover only one breast because of the way it was worn, over one shoulder. The reality is that if she were on a quest requiring running, climbing, jumping, etc., Kōtiro would most probably go naked or nearly naked. The courageous thing to do would be to own that, and to show a nude female main character. Because of my audience, however, that would also be sexualizing her in a way I specifically wanted to avoid. Not to mention the practical implications of getting people to distribute and play a game with nudity that is not also about nudity. So, I'm either a coward or a pervert, and either way I'm a hypocrite. I think what I'm going to do for the sake of my audience is cover her with a skirt and shawl and just ignore the fact that they aren't terribly realistic in context. On the other hand, that clothing is still skimpy at best, so maybe by trying to compromise I'm being a cowardly hypocrite perv. What would you do?

Quote: Original post by Pete Michaud
Still, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable about having a young, attractive female lead.

Games can manage to have young, attractive female characters without overly objectifying and sexualizing them. See, for instance, Left 4 Dead, Halflife 2, Fahrenheit, The Longest Journey (and Dreamfall), Syberia... I could go on. None of them were in the buff (well, except for Fahrenheit), but neither were they dressed up in big form-hiding fur coats (well, except for Fahrenheit). As I see it, the degree of sexualization comes down mostly to context.

Now, for your situation: Nudity sets up contextual associations from the POV of our ambient culture that are already well on their way to being fully sexualized, so you'll already have two strikes against you, but if you really are making a fiercely historically accurate game, as it sounds like you are, this may not be an unmasterable association. Are other characters naked? Is nakedness presented as an unremarkable status quo? What are the characters doing -- really just running and climbing and jumping, or additionally fighting, talking, dancing, ...? Is sexuality present in the game, and if so, how is it broken out artistically and thematically?

Quote: Original post by Pete Michaud
I think what I'm going to do for the sake of my audience is cover her with a skirt and shawl and just ignore the fact that they aren't terribly realistic in context. On the other hand, that clothing is still skimpy at best, so maybe by trying to compromise I'm being a cowardly hypocrite perv.

What would you do?

How many games are terribly realistic in context? The fact remains that nudity in games is difficult to sell, especially if you're considering distribution through big name retailers.

There's quite a bit of difference between courage in storytellling and deciding to forego complete realism for the sake of the way our society works.

Quote: Original post by Pete Michaud
Well, first it turns out that athletic women are pretty skinny, especially from the side

That's not universally true. There are a lot of athletic women that are shapely:

www.maxim.com/girls/todays-girl/77664/gina-carano.html

Making your game better includes more than just the content. You may have a game with great content that is a business failure.

What is the goal of your game? Who is your target market? Is this an indie/art piece that will never see the real world, or are you trying to make a commercial product?



A nude character (male or female) would severely limit your available market. It makes word-of-mouth advertising less likely. It will marginalize your work regardless of any other virtues it may have.

The game will not be played openly on the family computer, or during lunch at work, or by students in the dorm lounge. Those who play it will be reluctant to mention it because of the social backlash. ("My spouse/parents would kill me if I was caught!" or "I'm not playing a porn game!") Don't expect a youtube clip of the game to last more than a day without getting flagged. You are losing one of your best marketing avenues.

If you are going through traditional distribution routes you will need a game rating. Nudity will automatically land you in the 17+ bin and block you from many retailers.

If you are distributing online, nudity in the game will get your site filtered by many web systems, possibly including the major search engines. If your target market would be impacted by this kind of filtering, you should take it in to account.




Even mainstream sources like National Geographic and PBS face opposition when presenting accurate nudity.

Doing business today means you must face the social norms of today. The norms are that people wear clothing. Will dressing your character, if it is just a simple bikini-style outfit, really harm your game? Does the nudity really make your game significantly better?


If the goal is for historical accuracy and you don't care about your sales or advertising, then feel free to keep her nude. That choice is always available to you. If your goal is to sell games, then give her some clothes.

Yeah, I basically agree with you which is why I wanted to go with a female lead -- before I knew anything about her or the story, I had an idea that I wanted to present a credible woman as the lead. Feminine, but not sexualized.

Normally, I think the setting wouldn't give any trouble. Alyx was free to wear fashionable yet understated blue jeans, and build giant killer robots in her spare time.

That's sort of how I envisioned Kō being at first, until I started understanding what she'd ACTUALLY have to look like. I sort of assumed that I'd have lots of leeway with her presentation. Looking through a google image search for māori women will make you think they all wore thick, wooly or feathery cloaks of various colors over their whole body all the time. It's not until you dig into some historical records and start talking to their children's children's children, who are still alive and active in their tribes today, that you realize how different daily life was.

So, to get back to your points, if I were to present her fully nude, then yes, pretty much everyone else would also be nude. During ceremonies people wore clothes. Chiefly people wore clothes.

One thing I just thought of that could cause trouble is kids. I know that in the Bay of Plenty on the North Island (where Kō is from), kids didn't wear clothes at all until they were around 10 -- so if there were any kids in the game, and I were being brutally accurate, they would all be 100% naked. Artistic nudity is well and good until a congressman with an axe to grind strings me up as a kiddie pornographer.


I don't know enough of the story yet to say for sure whether there will be "sexual" parts in the story, but I suspect strongly that Kō is actually in love with a female friend of hers. She's also betrothed to a man, but right now I don't foresee anything sexual happening visually. On the other hand, it was fully expected that Māori teenagers would have a series of sexual relationships before they were married, and homosexuality was also accepted during this time period. So I guess it's possible she could end up in a sexual situation.

The central theme of the game is the tension between isolation and love, so any sex would be in the context of love, and not in any sense gratuitous. How I would present it is very much up in the air, but I know for sure it wouldn't be pornographic.

Machaira:

One of the main goals for this project is to teach about Māori culture, history, and mythology in a transparent way. I've always thought that if games harnassed their teaching potential for real-world subject, it could be powerful. On the other hand, I don't care for "educational" games, because they tend to just dress up quizzes with pretty pictures. I want to present things much like any game would present its setting and backstory. Maybe afterward people could say, "oh wait, this is a real thing? Cool!"

I watched in amazement as my kids failed to remember facts about European history from school, but could rattle off the stats of any given pokemon, and knew all the hundreds of cards in their MTG deck.

The issue with harnessing the power of games to convey information is that anything that you include must be accurate, or it'll imply the wrong information. Think of it like my game is the last in a long and venerable line of games, and I have to stick to canon or risk pissing off the super geeks. Except for instead of geeks, it's real people with real ancestors.

Frob:

If it were all or nothing, I'd say this is an art project, not a commercial project. I have no ambition to make money, although my hope is that it's good enough to be well-known in the scene. But you're right, it'll really hurt distribution if the characters are nude.

[Edited by - Pete Michaud on September 24, 2009 1:04:36 PM]

It really sounds, then, like the only real reason to go with the nudity would be absolute historical accuracy, and you don't seem to be all fired up about that. I'd skip it; not worth the peripheral trouble.

Your female character reminds me of the standard c4d female model with a few jabs of the deformation brush aplied, sketches look like Sketch&Toon.

At any rate, she looks a little bit out of proportion.

Her thighs and her glutes look like they belong on a man, like a fullback in the NFL. Her head seems oversized too, although I suppose some hair would resolve that.

I sympathize with your predicament, but you'll probably need to clothe her in some kind of bikini. Do Maori women today go topless when participating in cultural festivals and the like? Since you're representing a Maori woman, maybe you should ask some Maori women what they think about this?

I think sitting on or barely pushing the line of what's considered decent in our society may be enough to get the point across. The take away will be that she's wearing less than we would generally consider appropriate. As far as being educational is concerned, this is what I see as the important part. I think understanding these sorts of relative relations between cultures is more important than knowing the specific facts of a given culture. Here, the only "lie" is one of omission: just how much less she would be wearing. However, the player will now "know what they don't know" and can look up that detail if it's ever relevant.

If you want, include a discussion of these sorts of decisions in the documentation. In some of Arthur C. Clarke's books he'd have a section at the end that discussed how some of the advanced technology in the story is plausible given what we understood of physics at the time he wrote it.