Stellar Blade's character looks causing controversy! Which do you prefer?

Just because you have no clothes on vs someone with clothes has nothing to do with the level of sexualization. Ive been to art galleries with fully naked pieces, yet it didn't feel like a strip club with hookers giving lap dances. These people making fun of Kotaku are really just showing their stupidity and lack of understanding. These clowns need to get back in school and further educate themselves on life.

Hades 2 character looks like a hooker who gives lap dances at a strip club.

Stellar Blade character looks like a Korean model who kicks ass.

If Kotaku thinks the latter is more "sexualized" than the former, then they're a bunch of dumb clowns. They deserve to get roasted by the Internet.

@Jag85: Again your falling for "looks like". That has nothing to do with sexualization. Gotta be one of the dumbest arguments Ive ever heard.

Controversy surrounding characters in media, especially in the realm of entertainment such as video games, movies, or literature, is not uncommon. It often stems from various factors such as character design, personality traits, actions within the story, or the portrayal of sensitive topics. When it comes to Stellar Blade's character, it's essential to consider the different aspects that might contribute to controversy and then analyze which aspects one might prefer.

I hope smart developers are watching this game, and how much free marketing it has garnered over the last six or so months. Now imagine creating an actual good game like DMC, but with this kind of booba (give her a proper face, tho. this 17y teenager shit needs to stay in Korea) for marketing purposes lol. I mean shit, here's an idea. You don't just have one overly sexualized chick but two, and they're full on lesbo. But not the manly kind of lesbian, but the ones every guy likes😏That would bait every nerd on the globe.

@Jag85: That's what happens to y'all clueless debaters. Zero context, just pure assumptions. Kotaku laughing at y'all Clowns. Stella Blade character looks like a crack dealer. We can all play that game.

@mesome713: But "looks like" has nothing to do with "sexualization"... You said it, not me! Thank you for debunking Kotaku.

The mental gymnastics in pretending that Eve in this game isn't sexualize is beyond stupid.😂

lol

First off that's Aphrodite, goddess of sex and love whose powerset is about charms and crowd control, so her being sexual is relevant to her character. In Stellar Blade she's wearing skin armor with jiggle physics because the dev likes tiddies, not because it adds value to her character concept.

Also, Aphrodite has one single sprite in the entire game and is up on screen for about 15 seconds per hour of running the game, and that's assuming she even shows up on any given run. She is a side-character at best who doesn't have more than an extremely small part in the game.

This is a blatant false equivalence you are drawing by taking tweets out of context.

"Sexualization is the emphasis of the sexual nature of a behavior or person."

In Stellar Blade she's wearing skin armor

Just like Alita, Bayonetta, Black Widow, Zero Suit Samus, female X-Men characters, etc.

Also, Aphrodite has one single sprite in the entire game and is up on screen for about 15 seconds per hour of running the game, and that's assuming she even shows up on any given run. She is a side-character at best who doesn't have more than an extremely small part in the game.

Already addressed:

Eve is a soldier/mercenary that looks like this but she is not sexualized.😂

It doesn't seem like you understand the point I was making. Sexualization on it's own is not the issue. Valueless sexualization that exists without justifiying itself is the issue.

Alita is literally a body of metal that doesn't show any actual curves beyond a vaguely feminine outline, and the whole manga/movie uses body augmentation as a display of body horror, so that's a horrendous counter argument. Bayonetta's entire premise is that she fights naked with hair armor and stripper moves, you aren't meant to be taking Bayonetta seriously by any stretch. The other two are also mostly valueless sexualization so they don't help your argument, but at least with x-men they are following common superhero design tropes of using skin-tight costumes to display fitness.

Except the main character of Hades 2, Melinoe, is attractive without being sexualized so the premise falls apart before it even begins.

And there have been plenty of Western games with attractive female characters as leads or central focuses. Literally last year's unanimous GOTY has a bunch of hot females as main characters who can run around naked the entire game if you want.

If you can't see that maybe your perception of what's attractive is warped.

Hades 2 has a darker skinned character, named Selene:

Which is why a lot of the alt-right peeps hate the game btw... And the alt-right are the LAST people to accuse anyone or racism, because they freak out and get triggered at the sight of black or darker than tan POC characters.

Also... Xenophobia against Asian countries is a thing, with the assumed sexism. Though I personally think that Stellar Blade is just boring and uninspired. Nintendo has more fanservice with the Gerudo woman having a skimpy top and showing their mid drift. Mario Tennis has more fanservice than Stellar Blade with Peach and Daisy tennis outfits:

They gave no sleeves, relatively form fitting, and they're very short pants/dress. No one threw a fit about these. Even in fighting games. They have Ivy in Soul Caliber, of all characters, and other fighting games have skimpy outfits too.

We all know about Arms as well. We all know about Twintelle:

As a matter of fact, Japanese fighting games and Nintendo gets away with a lot from both sides. Both have fan service, but the leftists never complain about them. Both have POC that are darker than tan, yet the anti-woke brigade never complains about them. It's the weirdest thing ever.

Though to be fair... Hirez and Friday the 13th also escaped criticism. Friday the 13th had girls in lingerie and bikinis, but no one complained about the sexism. Both games also had Latino and black characters, and no one cried woke. Same with Smite and Paladins. Both had fanservice, Mayan, black, etc, in both games. Ironically enough, the only complaint about Paladins was about a woman's thighs being shown, which I talked about how ironic and funny that situation was in this post:

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/what-are-your-contentious-gaming-opinions-33618566/#js-message-357736027

Not what Kotaku said. Not to mention the game hasn't released, yet that hasn't stopped culture warriors from making wild ignorant assumptions about a game that hasn't even released.

Alita is literally a body of metal that doesn't show any actual curves beyond a vaguely feminine outline, and the whole manga/movie uses body augmentation as a display of body horror

Thanks for proving my point...

Stellar Blade Was Inspired by a Taxi Driver Strike, Along With Alita: Battle Angel and '80s, '90s Sci-Fi

Eve from Stellar Blade is based on Alita. Whatever you said about Alita applies to Eve as well.

The other two are also mostly valueless sexualization so they don't help your argument, but at least with x-men they are following common superhero design tropes of using skin-tight costumes to display fitness.

Which is exactly what Stellar Blade is doing.

Except the main character of Hades 2, Melinoe, is attractive without being sexualized so the premise falls apart before it even begins.

Read what I said again: "But then again, it's rare to see attractive female protagonists in Western AAA games nowadays"

Hades 2 is not AAA.

Literally last year's unanimous GOTY has a bunch of hot females as main characters who can run around naked the entire game if you want.

Then that would just mean double-standards between Western and East Asian devs... Kotaku not beating the xenophobia accusations.

Honestly, I don't know much about Hades 2. But I don't think anyone was accusing the Hades 2 devs of racism/xenophobia... Those accusations are directed towards Western game journalists.

I'm more than familiar with alt-right racism. But the issue here is liberal racism/xenophobia. That's not something the alt-right want to discuss, because that would just be pot calling the kettle black. The racism/xenophobia accusations against Western game journalists is mainly coming from Asians, not the alt-right... But these Western journalists are too tone-deaf and lack the self-awareness to realize this. To them, anyone who disagrees with them must be alt-right.

I'd never even heard of Stellar Blade before this controversy. And I'm still not interested in buying the game, to be honest. But I'm sure it will sell a lot of copies thanks to this stupid controversy.

I wouldn't really consider those Nintendo examples to be sexualization... But it's a fair point that Japanese fighting games have frequently got away with sexualization/fanservice, which makes the backlash against Stellar Blade even more puzzling.

You seem like a big fan of this Paladins game... Is that like Overwatch or something?

Yeah, fighting games skirt by criticism. I do think that a lot of people assume that Japanese companies are backwards, and that's from both sides. Alt-right worship them as a beacon of white supremacy, which is actually so fucking ironic that it hurts. The leftists assume that they're automatically sexist and backwards. Both sides are obviously wrong. Something that a lot of leftists don't talk about is how in mainstream Shoujo, Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon, the WEST censored the queer relationships. The US dub censored the lesbian relationship between Neptune and Uranus on Sailor Moon, and they censored the gay relationship between Sakura's brother, Touya, and Yukito. There was also drama about the Nintendo's Girl Club that journalists blamed on Japanese sexism, but it was actually the UK branch that was responsible for it. And it once again goes both ways, because alt-right people are so shocked that Japan is LGBT friendly, even though they're literally the creators of Futa, BL, and GL... And they're also saddened when they find out that every Japanese person isn't racist. It's actually weird...

Paladins is like Overwatch and Smite is like League of Legends and Dota. I simply use them as an example of Western games with fanservice, because it's true. They have a lot of fanservice, even with their Asian characters. Ying, Io, and Lian in Paladins. Da Ji, Amaterasu, Nu Wa, etc in Smite. Though tbh, they're both games that piss off leftists and the alt-right. Gender Bending, cross dressing, POC characters (that aren't East Asian), and queer characters that will make the alt-right angry. Though race swapping and fanservice that'll make the leftists mad.

Controversy aside, they're genuinely good games. I like Paladins much better than Overwatch, due to the item shop (even if it's a bit flawed right now), and I like Smite a lot due to it being a fun MOBA with a unique view. They both also have really good looking skins.

@Jag85: @luxuryheart: I think fighting games generally don't get criticism for sexualization because they tend to have a wide variety of characters, and are usually built around absurd premises to explain why all these characters are fighting each other. Plus, you already have to suspend disbelief about tiny chicks and dudes fighting Zangief and E-Honda, or you wont have any fun.

As for Stellar Blade, no one was paying much attention to it until someone on Twitter claiming to be a former developer said they were fired for suggesting they tone down the sexuality. Shitstorm built from there. Honestly, I don't know why the devs though, "We digitized just the body but not the face of a real woman to make this chick", would calm that storm, but maybe they were just stirring the pot.

Culture war needs to calm the hell down. Between this, the BS about Aloy's "beard", that chick's haircut in Star Wars: Outlaws, and everything else, folks need to spend less time on the internet searching for things to be grumpy about.

Found the root cause of the controversy:

Former Stellar Blade Dev Calls For Boycott, Dev Linked To Misandric Group GAMING Former Stellar Blade Dev Calls For Boycott, Dev Linked To Misandric Group (September 2022)

A former developer at SHIFT-UP has claimed that she was forced out of the studio due to her being a feminist and has taken to Twitter to ask for people to boycott Stellar Blade. The developer claims that she was harassed and that there was another female employee that was dismissed due to her being a feminist.

Looking into the matter, which is sadly not something many on Twitter do, reveals that the shirt she wore is linked to the Megalia group. Megalia, or Daughters of Megalia, is a radical feminist group that has gotten a lot of flak due to its misandric viewpoints. The group believes women to be superior to men and actively plots crimes against men.

Megalia, which claims to be fighting for equality, often uses derogatory terms for men and has even called for those who criticise the group to be “beaten for every breath” they take. Various Megalia websites also post and promote pictures of men that have had their genitalia cut off. One of the most popular posts from Megalia requests women to get an abortion if their child is a boy.

The group has justified these actions by saying that it is a countermeasure to misogyny and any criticism of their actions from the general public has been met with threats. Megalia has also begun targeting homosexuals by outing their sexual orientation. A new site called WOMAD has been opened specifically for this purpose.

These actions have led to boycotts from the Korean public when censorship is brought into question and as such companies avoid unnecessary censorship and any association with the Megalia group. Nexon previous fired an actress for associating with Megalia due to protests from fans, the move was widely supported by the majority of Korea but received widespread criticism from Western media.

The controversy initially had nothing to do with Eve's character design. It was because two female employees were part of Megalia, a Korean radical feminist group known for making violent threats against men, boys and gays (they sound like female incels or TERFs). Due to Megalia being extremely unpopular in South Korea, Shift-Up fired the two women, who then called for a boycott. And then Western culture warriors jumped on the bandwagon and shifted the focus to Eve's character design, which was never the original point of the controversy in Korea.

@Jag85: Ha! And this is why I don't do Twitter.

@judaspete: Best to stay away from Twitter, mate... Ever since Elon Musk took over, that place has turned into 4chan.

Actually, I think this is it. I do notice that in games, that skate criticism, they have something for everyone. Friday, Paladins, Smite, The Witcher, Fortnite, Soul Caliber, Street Fighter, Tekken, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy, etc.

Yikes... Megalia sounds fucking awful...

https://www.eurogamer.net/stellar-blade-review

Eurogamer addressed the controversy, by having the reviewer comment her thoughts about it, rather than ignoring the game, as it happened with howarts legacy.

I liked her views on it. They seem more mature than what I expected form Eurogamer.

Some excerpts:

"""

Look, I don't completely believe that Eve was designed solely to cater for men. Developer Shift Up's ongoing mobile game, Goddess of Victory: Nikke (AKA Butts, The Game), makes a huge amount of money by selling characters in costumes that make Eve's outfits look like churchwear, and Nikke has a large female fanbase, at least in its Japanese and South Korean markets. This clearly works for Shift Up, so I get why in Stellar Blade they've included plenty of sketchy costumes - and made possibly the worst implementation of 'jiggle' physics I've ever laughed at.

"""

"""

At best, this all amounts to an embarrassing look for video games - the exact type of conversation that makes them seem just as juvenile and shallow as some outside of the industry still believe. Of course the gamers are debating boobs, what else would they be doing? At worst, however, it's incredibly toxic 'discourse' that's turned Stellar Blade into a lightning rod for harassment. You can like Stellar Blade's sexualisation without going on a hate campaign against all other types of women in games, and women working in the games space, but then admitting that would make too much sense.

"""

The bold rings so true.

This is actually the problem video games have. They are more concerned about how they are perceived, what they project to society, how they impact it, rather than a simple "is this fun, am I enjoying it?", it's a problem proliferated with game journalism as well over and above everything else.

Not just gameplay, but business practices. If a games fucking absolutely riddled with microtransactions or broken at launch (100% related), whatever. Who cares. It's only your £70 being dropped.

Some rando generic anime girl? Most people likely won't give a **** about, and men, actually, in reality, will enjoy?

Mwaking wus wook bad. Pweeze take le gwaming sewously. It's ouwr socwial rewponsbility as le game journo to edumuadake the masses, sweer them in the wight dwiwection away fwom swuper incel land 3: Legend Of The Gobbos

No, it's your job to tell me if the game is good and if it's worth my money. Including basic bitch stuff like "will this shit not be broken when I launch it up on my pc", try doing that.

@gifford38:

Sorry dude but making women hideous and ugly doesn't make a woman strong.

@uninspiredcup: Folks talk about the microtransactions in DD2 yet miss the most important element, they have no effect on players who paid for the core experience.🤷🏽‍♂️

It's great they add these optional paid for cheats, where they try to stop modders for giving for them free, looking to manipulate people in a £70 game that was sold broken and poorly optimized.

Wuddadaproblem? Chill Outttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

9.5 amazing

Neither of your claims has been my experience (PC and Console) but don't let me stop you.🤷🏽‍♂️

I never said that. I stand up for woman they hire then making them ugly. if I was a model I would sue that company for falsely giving me a mens jaw line.

@gifford38: If you were a model is the most accurate thing you have stated.

No way people here are actually defending Kotaku lol.

@Pedro: actually I would be a badass character in a video game lol.