Roger Ebert once claimed that games are difficult to consider as “art” because they do not have specific authorship. This is partially because they are often a result of design by committee, but also because they only “exist” as a conversation between the game itself and its player. I bring this up not to malign Ebert, who was brilliant, and whose opinion was unfairly maligned often, but as a conversation-starter about the idea of games and authorship. Clint Hocking and I both disagree with Ebert; games are, indeed, authored works.
This is one reason why I like to engage with indie games, since their creators are often people we can finger by name. Even if I may not agree with the visions of a singular creator such as an Alexander Bruce it is wonderful that they exist, are visible, and have things to say through their artwork. Of course, some big-budget titles are also ascribed to their designers: it’s Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri; it’s American McGee’s Alice. Though gaming has its share of auteurs usually this singular credit is typically handed to a programmer, to a gameplay designer, or the rare “triple-threat” who does programming, design, and art or sound. Rarely is a game considered the singular vision of its visual artist.
Now we have this game, this artifact, this Dragon’s Crown. Though multiple artists worked on the title and contributed to its signature style, credit for the final results could be laid, without much argument, at the feet of its head artist, Vanillaware president George Kamitani. Kamitani is the vision-holder for Vanillaware and his work spans several titles, all which feature his particular look. Once upon a time, he was also behind much of the iconic art in Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara, which was re-released recently for Playstation Network and is as fun a romp now as it was in 90s arcades.
The re-release of Shadow Over Mystara was not without controversy, a controversy that was entirely a reaction to its visual art. I watched this happen in real-time on Dungeons & Dragons’ Facebook fan page, because of course I am a fan of Dungeons & Dragons on Facebook. Dungeons & Dragons dared to post Kamitani’s art of Moriah, the Thief character from Shadow Over Mystara. She happens to be a dark-skinned woman wearing a cloak and crop-top. She has powerful arm muscles and a confident stance.
Negative reaction was overwhelming. Moriah “Looks like a man.” Is “a bad direction for art.” But most crucially, she “needs to put some real clothes on,” a sentiment that was echoed ad nauseum until Dungeons & Dragons finally relented and took the picture down. For a while, there was still a link back to the Shadow Over Mystara page at least. Now most references to Mystara are gone from the page entirely. I don’t really blame D&D for this decision, though, considering just about any time they dare to post art of a woman, no matter what she’s doing, they’ll be shouted at for making her butt too big, or her face too pretty. They’ll be drowned in arguments over whether she is wearing too much clothing or not enough (and it’s almost always not enough). “I’m glad to see a reasonable female character who is not easily confused with a hooker,” says one commenter about a picture of a Tiefling that many others felt was still too objectifying. Lately, D&D has erred on the side of just not depicting any female characters. This is the worst possible solution, but since it is so terrible and shameful, they are called out on that, too. They just can’t win.
I am a fan of fantasy art, and I have written before about how, while discussion of “reasonable armor” is all well and good, the backlash against sexy women in the context of games is starting to feel increasingly puritanical. I consider it a problem that so many on the internet feel a need to “repair” the clothing of fictional women who are wearing too little for their taste. It often feels like slut-shaming, and alienates and demeans women who actually like these fantasy portrayals. Perhaps being seen as sexy or desirable while kicking ass is not a suitable fantasy for us.
The Dragon’s Crown art style is a high fantasy throwback style, executed with modern technology and techniques. It could be described as a combination of anime styling and Frank Frazetta paintings. It is well-informed, with artistic references to multiple classical works and created with full knowledge of a history of fantasy art that came before it. It’s lovely and it’s fresh, and it’s a joy to watch it in motion. It does not care one whit about “reasonable armor.”
The backlash against this game, which has been documented all over the internet, was totally predictable. The game’s art is called juvenile and puerile by many critics. These writers were reacting not only, but mostly, to two characters in the game; really one character design in particular, and, even more particular, two things about that one character design. Let’s call them Lefty and Righty.
Many reviews so far of Dragon’s Crown have scored the game qua game, while others scored the game by, mostly, scoring their reaction to its art style. Positive reviews of Dragon’s Crown seem to say it succeeds in spite of its art style, or, they barely discuss the art at all, trying in vain to avert their gaze and look Dragon’s Crown in the eyes. I frequently review games based more on their storytelling or mechanics, but really, it’s impossible to separate Dragon’s Crown from its visual art. I think we should go ahead and gaze into the cracks here; let’s stick our faces in and motorboat the hell out of this controversy.
Not only did I buy Dragon’s Crown, I got the art book. Haters, you are totally right: boobs don’t work this way.
The shadow at the top of the breast that separates it from the body is the culprit here. This only occurs with breast implants – which are generally harder and firmer than natural breasts – or with a push-up bra or corset that shoves the breasts into this position. It does seem like Sorceress is wearing a ribbed corset as part of her dress, but it’s an underbust corset that doesn’t provide much breast support. If you’ve ever seen a woman at the RenFaire wearing an underbust corset with no additional undergarments, she’ll flop over the top of the corset rather than be pushed up by it.
But wait, this is promotional art that was drawn by a secondary Vanillaware artist. Let’s look at Kamitani’s artwork:
Hey. Boobs kinda do work this way. No, they don’t typically take on such epic proportions on small-waisted women. This is obviously designed to be hypersexualized, especially with the way she’s positioned a skull’s head against one teat and her staff perched suggestively behind her equally-oversized rear end. But the way that the breasts are attached to the body and the way they are reacting to gravity is well-observed. It’s highly stylized, but it’s intentional, not ignorant.
The walk cycle on the Sorceress reminds me of a demonstration video series I used to show to student animators, The Animators’ Survival Kit. Richard Williams, the series author, was an animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and intimately familiar with the nuances of Jessica Rabbit’s signature swagger. He demonstrates in his series many different concepts, including that of “secondary action,” as demonstrated by the Jessica-look-alike fourth from the right in this animation loop. Every motion the Sorceress makes is like this, with well-timed secondary motion. And it’s hysterical. When she’s running, she holds on tightly to her hat, while her comedy bosom flaps around in the wind.
Boobs are great, so this isn’t the first time I’ve written about boobs. Steerpike also has previously discussed the problem with making women’s breasts all large in video games for no real reason. This is absolutely a fair criticism of, for example, the new Lightning Returns controversy where the game designers, faced with a female lead at the center of their next title… decided to make her breasts bigger (and more jiggly!) for, well, no real reason. That kind of thing is annoying and insulting. But so, to me, is the notion that only small breasts are “acceptable” on a character. It was annoying when so much marketing about early Lara Croft focused on her cup size, but, it’s also annoying that in order for her to be a “serious character” now her breasts must be smaller.
Breasts are a body part; they are present on about fifty percent of human beings (you don’t have to have breasts to be a woman or be a woman to have breasts, but that’s not the point I’m making). Yet they are so often treated as mysterious and mystical instead of ordinary parts of human anatomy. It’s this kind of thinking that inspired games writer Jenn Frank to propose a “Boob Jam” where new games are created around the idea of breasts as something other than sexualized objects that exist for the male gaze.
Some people are made very uncomfortable by the Sorceress’s large breasts. They are angry at them. I am obviously not in the head of all of the people who dislike it and there are myriad reasons. Some people are reasonable and rational in their disagreement about this art and with them I have no quarrel. But some of the people who feel truly enraged, I feel, should examine the root cause of their reaction. Maybe they sense they’re being picked fun of by this design. Women have been dealing with these sexualized depictions for years; they are the background radiation of our lives. Every weekday I drive home past a sexy woman lounging around enjoying a Pepsi on a billboard; she is Photoshopped to perfection. Kamitani came along and, deliberately, turned sexualization up to eleven. The Sorceress is a supernormal stimulus of a sexy game girl, a modern-day Venus of Willendorf. She holds a mirror up to things that have been in our culture all along. Frankly, she’s not bad. She’s just drawn that way.
The Sorceress might actually be proud of those big boobs. Perhaps she created them for herself with her magic. We don’t know. Of course, that is a ridiculous statement; she is a piece of artwork; she is a fictional character. Yet this argument is really only one step removed from the argument that it’s “not realistic” for a woman to go into combat this way, as “in the real world” she’d be stabbed in her exposed flesh.
Dragon’s Crown consists, in the real world, of hitboxes, with pictures on top of them representing characters. When a hitbox connects with another hitbox when the first hitbox is in an “attacking” formation, it chips some numbers off of a total amount of “health points” contained by the second hitbox. If a hitbox loses all of these points that hitbox goes away. At that time it matters not in the least what the hitbox is depicted as wearing.
There are some games that aspire to be realistic and in those games a realistic art style, along with realistic armor, is appropriate. But to say that the character art in Dragon’s Crown is not realistic is a silly argument, because the game is not trying to be realistic. Critique of fantasy art, both in the tabletop gaming and video gaming spheres, has moved into a place where its “realism” is in question too often, an argument which frankly makes for a pretty effective straw man.
It is better to argue about consistency of depiction. This is the realm in which people have leveled somewhat stronger criticism against Dragon’s Crown’s artwork. There is a double-standard in some games, MMORPGs in particular, when the female version of an armor set may only cover half of what the male armor covers. Some obviously disagree, but I find the art style in Dragon’s Crown very consistent. It is true that the Knight wears full armor, while his female equal, the Amazon, wears a chainmail bikini. When I rolled up an Amazon to give the class a try, the game provided me with a potential default name of “Sonia,” which is definitely appropriate. Wearing next-to-nothing on the male side is reserved instead for the stocky Dwarf. It’s hardly sexualized and could easily be regarded as humorous. But the Sorceress is also humorous; she’s just picking fun of something totally different. There is also a powerful witch NPC, who happens to be half-naked, and a powerful princess who is fully and elaborately clothed. There is a mermaid with butt-cheeks: the apex of silly, painted-on-your-van heavy-metal-tattoo exploitation. It’s all in fitting with the milieu.
I am not among those who say the Elf is somehow the best female character depiction because she is less sexualized. In fact I was more drawn to both of the other female characters. Dragon’s Crown has three playable female characters, and they have three different body types. Compare that to, just as an example, League of Legends, which has 39 female Champions and only two body types: “cute” and “sexy.” Sometimes “sexy” has room for monsterous bits thrown on, but it doesn’t have any room for anything like fat, big muscles, or wrinkles. Where it comes to female portrayal, I consider this a much bigger problem.
Having established my own point of view that the game is inseparable from its art, and the art is fantastic, how, you may ask, is the rest of the game?
Dragon’s Crown is one part loot-dropping dungeon crawler, one part 2D brawler. It has a satisfying, tight core loop with high appeal: kill things, take their stuff, get that stuff identified and sold, equip better stuff, use better stuff to kill bigger things, take their stuff, repeat and repeat. The level design is set up in short, tight corridors. These are never long segments, broken up with a variety of different level background art. The game’s grand reward for completing segments isn’t really getting new items, but in seeing new art. This is baked into the design of the game, which depicts a wide variety of level settings, and gives out unique gallery pictures as rewards for completing side-quests.
The story of the game is standard genre fare, with castles and dragons, court betrayals, and mystical McGuffins galore. It’s mostly an excuse to go to different exotic thing-killing locations, like an old-school D&D campaign. Game sequences are narrated by the sonorous voice of a patient Dungeon Master. The boss fights are the biggest spectacle in each level. Later boss fights get trickier, requiring some puzzle-solving and prioritizing targets rather than being straight-up brawls.
There’s a good variety of combat mechanics with enough variety among the six playable characters to suit about any playstyle. Even the “expert” characters really aren’t terribly difficult to pick up and play, but they do have different factors of risk and reward. Characters level up and upgrade as you go, with a series of customizable move sets that varies per class. The flashier, range-oriented classes have a bigger variety of available moves, which require some planning ahead, while melee classes have straightforward skills. They can sometimes be surprising, though; for example, the Amazon makes a very fun air-based character, floating high above battle in an axe whirlwind, Wizard can animate objects found in the dungeons to make helpful golem companions, and Dwarf can double as a bomb-toting demolitionist.
The game shines most in co-op, which can accommodate up to four players on the same adventure. But if none of your friends are interested, AI NPCs can accompany the player character to create a party for soloing the game. The NPC data is sometimes generated from other player characters who have fallen in the dungeons, leaving behind their “bones” in a mechanic that feels a bit like a shout-out to Demon’s Souls.
In addition to the fighting NPCs, there’s also two other AI characters, a thief and a fairy. The thief starts the game with the player, but the fairy is acquired slightly later. Between the two of them they can open locked doors and chests, and locate secret treasures, items, and magical runes. Revisiting old levels is part of the design of Dragon’s Crown, and there’s a variety of secrets to find on every map in the game.
Being a loot game, Dragon’s Crown requires a lot of bookkeeping, and any amount of playtime will be spent poring over menus and comparing sets of stats on a bunch of similar-looking gear. Systems like rune magic and cooking are introduced gradually enough that it never gets overwhelming, but it is there. The bookkeeping can be a little more contentious in co-op, and takes longer, because you have to argue over who gets what share of the – excuse me – booty. This is the one thing I will suggest as a flaw; if you, personally, hate sitting around comparing two similar-looking staves trying to figure out whether you want a 12 percent defense against Fire damage or +2 Dexterity instead then maybe Dragon’s Crown is not for you. Fortunately this loot-juggling is never really painful; identifying loot is straightforward and your bags are huge.
I mean the treasure bags. The stuff you store the loot in.
Jeez.
Dragon’s Crown is exactly the game we needed right now. Not merely because there is a grand nostalgia in this time period for 2d Beat ‘Em Ups, though there certainly is. Not merely because a well-done loot-drop game always provides a reliably good time to an invested fantasy lover. But Dragon’s Crown is more than those things; it is a cultural artifact. It is a nuclear salvo tossed into the conversation about games and sexism, whose fallout will scorch earth around it for years to come.
Developer: Vanillaware | Publisher: Atlus | Released: August 2013
Available on: PS3, Vita | Time Played: 13 hours
Email the author of this post at aj@tap-repeatedly.com.
“This only occurs with breast implants – which are generally harder and firmer than natural breasts – or with a push-up bra or corset that shoves the breasts into this position. It does seem like Sorceress is wearing a ribbed corset as part of her dress, but it’s an underbust corset that doesn’t provide much breast support. If you’ve ever seen a woman at the RenFaire wearing an underbust corset with no additional undergarments, she’ll flop over the top of the corset rather than be pushed up by it.”
Maybe it’s a magical push-up bra?
I dunno, Matt w, that sounds pretty unrealistic 😉
Well, you’ve outdone yourself AJ, despite us periodically trotting out the following line, you have indeed taken the – ahem – crown for the most excellent sentence written on Tap:
“let’s stick our faces in and motorboat the hell out of this controversy.”
Let’s!
You’re bang on in your breast assessments, so I wouldn’t add any more, except to say that you’ve written another fine article for all the rational grown-ups out there.
I picked up the Vita version and the fantastic art style comes through on the small screen as well I have to say. I’ve rolled a Dwarf and am only a few levels in so far but I agree that Dragon’s Crown is a title of high quality, and I can see myself spending much more time with it than I did the most recent Torchlight and Diablo games.
Only last night did Armand pick up the D&D: Chronicles of Mystara four-pack and shoot me a copy and here I am reading that the lead artist of this beautiful game worked on it!
A fantastic write-up Amanda and so many interesting links and great points. I think for me the key thing in all this is consistency, as you say. I think the artwork is absolutely gorgeous. I look at the booby witch (sorry, sorceress) and, obviously, see those huge breasts (that gif on your blog hypnotised me as much as it did HM), but I also see that they behave properly for their size. The game clearly isn’t realistic but oddly that single element of realism makes her both more humourous and sexy. Then you look at barbarian the Conan and his gigantic chest, the knight’s absurd armour and that Amazonian’s gloriously thunderous thighs and it all just clicks.
I’ve started playing Saints Row: The Third again, in a bid to finish it before the fourth game comes out, and on making my female character again I paused on the ‘Sex appeal’ (aka booby size) slider: how big do I go? Why am I pausing on this? It’s Saints Row and every other character around me is sexy and well chiselled so I ought to crank it up a bit. But that looks a bit daft now. Down a bit. Up a bit. Down a bit. Up a bit. Down a bit. Sod it, that’ll do. GET ON WITH IT.
As for what you said about the game: I was interested until you mentioned the looting. Over the last few years, between Borderlands, Torchlight and Dungeon Defenders, loot’em ups have really tired me out. Damn looking at menus longer than playing the game. I don’t mind loot, provided there’s not too much of it. Guild Wars 2 managed to strike a nice middle-ground while something like Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls is much more up my street with fewer drops but with higher value.
Anyway, thanks for review!
I’m not reading much this month and my queue is pretty long but I really wanted to read this piece. So I did! Really interesting, Amanda. I don’t know if I have much to add because, well, there’s a lot of material up there already.
I commented on your original “That Gorgeous Sorceress” piece that “Obviously more complex than this but occurs to me if we force all our female characters to cover up – that’s creepily close to saying it’s the woman’s fault for the way she dresses… y’know?” Were you thinking along those lines already at the time, as you didn’t comment back on that point? You’ve gone the full distance with those arguments here.
Going back to your Halo 4 piece, I think these kind of avatars are distressing for some of us because we’re trying to be so good now. Having an avatar with a pair of floppies bouncing around the screen demeans us, demeans our efforts to be good men. We are embarrassed to sit in front of a game which appears to be flaunting its assets at us, inviting us to gape. We don’t want this in our mainstream culture any more than a dollop of shit in our morning coffee. This guilt becomes so strong that we cannot distinguish between good sexy imagery and bad sexy imagery. If it makes us excited, if something perks up, then it’s probably wrong. It’s merely an image, someone with no actual personality: an objectified woman.
So we file the game under “sexist rubbish” and let rip with honest pr0n instead.
I AM RAMBLING AGAIN
Yeah, HM, I agreed with your point, and I guess I ran with it a little. I should’ve mentioned earlier that I did agree. That is how I am starting to feel! The tumblr about “fixing her armor” really drove it home for me. I really don’t like the idea that every character ever needs to cover up. For example they’re “fixing” Fire Emblem in that blog, where some ladies wear full and I dare say reasonable armor and some wear dresses and some wear little battle bikinis because they turn into animals to fight and it all seems pretty good to me.
And then I saw that backlash on the D&D Facebook and how they just aren’t showing any women anymore. It breaks my heart.
Aw man, Xtal, you stole my thunder! That motorboat line is one for the ages as they say. AJ, thanks for such an enjoyable and, as usual, adult (in the proper sense of the word) take on what looks to be a great game.
I’ve been admiring the artwork of this game all during the lead-up to release. And frankly I mean that in both the sense that it’s just gorgeous fantasy art, and in the sense of the highly stylized female PCs and their, erm, enhanced charms.
Unfortunately, I’m with Gregg on this one. I’m not really into the loot drop type of game anymore, and I cordially dislike brawlers. Still, it’s tempting just to see the wonderful artistry. I’m certainly glad that Vanillaware exists and is able to devote itself to such a thing of beauty.
Slight update – it was pointed out to me in an email that “Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri” was more of a branding thing as that particular game was designed by Brian Reynolds. So, maybe that wasn’t the best concrete example in that case… Not meaning to detract from the point.
Fantastic review, and great rundown on the controversy. I remember being struck by Jenn Frank’s original reaction to the issue was to bristle at the idea that big boobs were always unrealistic and pandering. As a man with many smart, funny and capable women in my family who happen to have very large breasts that idea that there is some kind of inverse relationship between breast size and character legitimacy personally offensive. It did remind me of how gross it felt when they were promoting the Tomb Raider reboot by talking about how her breast reduction was evidence of how seriously they were taking the character. You know, ’cause girls with big tits are a joke, right?
I also agree with the slut-shaming aspect you point out. I was really struck by the hypocrisy of some outlets who saw fit to shake their fingers at Vanillaware, meanwhile tittering about the gratuitous sex scenes in their weekly Game of Thrones recap.
It’s a bit weird, but I think the industry has a serious problem accepting itself as an artform. Gamers spent so long agitating to be taken seriously, but now that even the Supreme Court has recognized games as art it seems like it’s the gamers who are the problem. Especially over the last year I’ve found time and time again I will read a criticism of this game or that that seems to me to be the result of an incredibly shallow reading of a game’s themes, narrative or mechanics. If it’s not an arthouse indie, or from Naughty Dog or Irrational no one will even look for any depth and the result is incredibly dismissive critical reactions to games like Spec Ops: The Line, Far Cry 3, etc. I find it terribly ironic that it’s the gamers themselves who have so infantilized their own hobby that they can’t accept that games could have something going on beneath the surface or artistically sexualized characters.
Nice piece Amanda!
I have to say though, that even though your writing is convincing. I cannot reconcile it with my own feelings on the art style and message in Dragon’s Crown.
Frankly, I find it gross and utterly unappealing. You are right in saying that the art style cannot be extricated from the game itself and I just found it childish in the same way that I am unable to go back and read black and white Conan comics anymore.
Wish I had more time to write something more coherent and convincing.
Very interesting review. My experience with looking at the art style of this game was very opposite; while I realized they were going over the top and trying to be funny, I’ve been thinking about a line from one of the Sarkeesian videos where she said that ‘Ironic sexism is still sexism.’ (Paraphrasing.)
Her point seemed to be that making a joke about sexism while it remains a very serious problem doesn’t do anything to deconstruct the sexist nature of this industry while at the same time running the risk of reinforcing the sexual attitudes of people who actually do think women should be portrayed exclusively this way. (Read: jerks)
I don’t know whether that is true; after all, comedy and satire have done much to deconstruct the barriers of race in our culture. My gut reaction to this art style is it made me uncomfortable; I realized that it was over-the-top and I don’t have any problem with women with large breasts being in video games per se, but it seems like nearly every portrayal of women in video games is a woman with large breasts. Worse yet is the industry’s reaction to this fact, as they seem content to change the size of a character’s breasts between games as a means of characterization. It is as if to say, “We gave Lara Croft big breasts because we wanted our audience to objectify her. Instead of apologizing, we’ve simply reduced the size of her breasts.”
Great review, though. Tom Chick was right in saying that you are doing it right; I can get my run-through of game mechanics over at GameTrailers or whatever. I come to sites like these to read personal experiences with this wonderful (and sometimes not-so-wonderful) interactive medium.
Thank you so much, everyone.
Like I said, if you disagree with me that the art is appealing, that’s fine. I think reasonable people can disagree on what’s appealing, especially where art is concerned.
I am still trying to work through my exact feelings on the nature of indulging in sexism/violence as a critique of sexism/violence. But it seems like video games are also still trying to work through those feelings, so maybe we’ll figure it out together.
In a way I am glad the art has sort of forced some people to examine why it makes them uncomfortable. I think that’s an important conversation we need to have. Like why was this the last straw – have you seen the rest of games?
I think it’s disingenuous to conflate telling a real woman to cover up and criticizing a man for how he dresses up the fictional women he creates.
“The Sorceress might actually be proud of those big boobs.” The whole entire point is that we’re not talking about an actual woman’s decision about what to wear. We’re talking about a man’s fantasy about what he wishes a woman would “choose” to wear.
Kamitani is welcome to whatever sexual fantasies he enjoys and he’s free to make games that cater to such fantasies. But I’m also free to say I’m sick of games about some dude’s breast fetishes, that I’d like to see more games that aren’t about breast fetishes, and loudly complain when I see yet another game about breast fetishes. Just the same way that I complain about yet another game about space marines.
As a European, I don’t get to actually see Dragon’s Crown myself until October so my knowledge of the game is second-hand. But whilst the intentionally hyper-sexualised playable characters were no issue for me, I’ve seen footage of NPC characters that go beyond intentional hyper-sexualisation into some gross nether realm of spread-eagled pandering. The sort of thing that Evony was doing a while back with their “come play, my lord” adverts.
I great enjoyed your piece, Amanda, and wondered how you felt about those?
@Urthman – I don’t actually disagree with what you’ve said about a real-woman’s decision versus a drawing. I was showing how the “realism” people fall back on in these discussions makes for a good straw man if you deconstruct it.
Some women like the Sorceress design and choose to cosplay as her, so there are some women who would choose that (and also, some of us choose space marines). I would never make the argument “some women are not offended therefore no woman should be,” though. I am generally in favor of a greater variety of depiction of female personality, role, and artwork.
Basically I totally agree with your comment!
@Larsen B I don’t deny there’s a lot of sexualization in the designs of some of the female NPCs. What’s interesting about the warrior monk woman (the spread-eagled lady that you probably saw) is that she’s fully clothed. Turns out that doesn’t matter, and clothes are a red herring too. She’s wearing full armor and what looks like a chastity belt. Yet it is super male-gazey pandery. I guess my position is I’m just kind of fascinated by it. Nothing here was done thoughtlessly or on accident.
Actually, the sorceress is proud of them: http://erinfitzvo.com/are-bosoms-in-video-games-offending-you/
I wouldn’t complain about a woman’s choice of cosplay. But when I see games like this, I don’t see a woman making choices, I see a dude oversharing about what turns him on. Dude can jack off to whatever he wants, but I don’t want to see it while I’m trying to play a game.
Fundamentally my objection to Dragon’s Crown is that it features characters that were designed and conceived by men, that are intended to appeal primarily to the sexual sensibilities of straight men, and that are intended to help sell copies of a commercial product whose audience is mainly straight men. Those facts make the use of sexuality in Dragon’s Crown feel tacky, boring, and a little gross.
I don’t think that feeling this way about Dragon’s Crown or the characters in it constitutes “slut shaming”. Obviously women (and men, for that matter) should be able to wear whatever they like and be as sexy as they feel like being. But at the same time, I do object to people being required to be or to dress sexy. So for example I do think women should be able to wear cropped halter tops if they feel like it, but I also think making cropped halter tops a required uniform for Hooters’ waitresses is objectionable. The difference is that when a person chooses to dress in a sexy way, he or she does so out of agency; when a person dresses in a sexy way because he or she is ordered to dress that way, that person is being exploited (at least to a certain degree). So the fact that people can choose to be sexy in an empowering way does not mean all depictions of sexiness are empowering.
To return to Dragon’s Crown, obviously the characters have no agency in a real sense (they’re fictional). They have no agency in a mechanical sense, in that they are largely manipulated by the player (usually a male). I haven’t played the game, so I have no idea whether they have any agency within the narrative of the game itself; perhaps if the story explore why the characters dress the way they do, it would feel less exploitative to me. But in general it seems like the characters are designed the way that they are for one basic reason: to sell more copies of Dragon’s Crown.
(Incidentally, that’s the reason that artists like Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo reached broad popularity: their art was used as an appeal to men, who were the primary market for fantasy and science-fiction paperbacks. Obviously it’s fine if you like their work, but it should be recognized for what it is, which is deliberately juvenile commercial art used to sell a product to (often teenaged) boys.)
That’s not to say that game designers could never present sexy characters in a way that wouldn’t feel exploitative to me. But when a designer does make a deliberate decision to design characters as sexy, I think we should at least consider the reasons for that decision. If the basic reason is to sell more product, I do think that’s both tacky and a little gross, in exactly the same way that Hooters is tacky and gross.
I just want to point out a small error. You claim Wizards of the Coast (owners of D&D) have stopped portraying female characters, and show a banner of The Sundering. There is a female character in it, she’s second on the left, and is the focus of an upcoming novel. And WotC, whilst often showing women with clothing issues or boob-centric design, have never really *not* depicted women. There’s plenty of female characters in Magic cards or in official D&D art and novels. For all their flaws, they’re better than most Western game companies in terms of the sheer number of women they represent.
@Kathryn Wow, thanks. To be honest, I did not spot her at all. She’s pretty hidden from the forefront. I guess if her body is hidden no one can complain about it.
WotC generally does fine; the problem is that they can’t seem to make anyone happy anyway. The fact that they’re trying to do that is… well, it’s got to be maddening on the part of their community folks and I feel for them. Especially with the fact that D&D Next is trying to be all things to all people but that’s definitely a separate article.
@Aerosol Burns
Hey, I’m a gay man and I love the art work, with all the sex it displays.
I’ve always loved this kind of product, from sexploitation movies to heavy-metal artbooks.
So when you say it’s meant to appeal to heterosexual men, I think you are a bit wrong. Many gay men, straight women, lesbians and what-have-you enjoy this kind of art style.
And it seems I can’t edit my comment, but I have to say this is by far my favourite review of this game so far. Probably because I feel like the author and myself share the same taste for artworks, but also because it is very well written. 🙂
Urthman & Aerosol: you’re both applying a lot of motives to the creators when you have no way of knowing one way or the other.
@R I’m glad you like the art style, but the fact that you like it does not mean you are intended to like it or that you are it’s intended audience.
@Brad Sure, I’m inferring motive. I don’t know for a fact that the Hooters waitresses’s uniforms are intended to appeal to heterosexual men, either, but I’m certainly capable of drawing that inference.
@Aerosol: Your argument has some difficulty when it is applied to a commercial product; one could well argue that had they included deliberately diverse and modest portrayals of the female characters, or all characters, and avoided any matters of sexuality entirely… It would have still been done in order to sell copies of Dragon’s Crown.
@Aerosol
Actually I believe I’m right in the target demographic: That means someone with a love for all things exploitative, with no concern about my actual orientation. I believe that’s the intended audience. Those of us who read Heavy Metal comics, have interest in soft eroticism, have seen and read any and everything about Conan the Barbarian, Aria, Druuna etc. It’s not targeted at heterosexual men like you seem to believe, in fact it’s even more niche than that. And it’s great that there’s finally a game that’s not ashamed to target our crowd. I got tired pretty quick of sexualized underage girls and effeminate pretty boys in japanese games, and finally this one features mature women and men that are sexualized in a very classic fashion, without the disturbing contrast on a DD cup sized 10 years old in a mini skirt holding a panda print umbrella. What I just described, is, to me, much more perverse and vile than anything displayed in Dragon’s Crown.
Wow ! This article is a breath of fresh air. Great job Amanda!
@T I think you misunderstood my argument. My argument is not that any marketing of video games is necessarily problematic. My argument is that the use of sexualized female characters to sell video games to an audience made up mostly of men is problematic.
Brad, are you seriously claiming the art in this game is not pandering to some dude’s idiosyncratic sexual fetishes? Because it totally is.
@R, I would like to echo your sentiments:
“I got tired pretty quick of sexualized underage girls and effeminate pretty boys in japanese games, and finally this one features mature women and men that are sexualized in a very classic fashion, without the disturbing contrast on a DD cup sized 10 years old in a mini skirt holding a panda print umbrella. What I just described, is, to me, much more perverse and vile than anything displayed in Dragon’s Crown.”
This is a canny point which hadn’t even occurred to me.
The biggest compliment I can pay to Amanda’s work on this article is that it changed my mind. Originally – and knowing basically nothing about Dragon’s Crown except the controversy over the art – I’d taken a pretty standard “that’s not right” viewpoint. It’s possible that I’d have held a more nuanced opinion if I’d looked into it, but whether or not that’s so I definitely saw the boobs and got turned off, and a little offended, without bothering to think about the larger realities of what was going on here.
Certainly, to be offended by the art, or to find it wrongheadedly sexualized, or whatever, is each person’s prerogative and I respect them. But even if AJ’s article wasn’t fantastic, it’d get my applause simply because it opened my eyes and made me consider that maybe I’ve been jumping to conclusions on some issues, not just with this game but possibly elsewhere as well.
Amanda: gold star!
Everyone new who arrived at the site from RPS Sunday Papers or Quarter to Three: welcome! Stick around. We’re delightful.
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The art in this game is creepy as hell, if someone finds this stuff attractive I sure as hell don’t want to meet them in real life. I don’t get why this article is getting such acclaim.
Can’t edit sorry, wanted to add this point. Was going to get this to play with the girlfriend in coop, but the artstyle put her off completely so we won’t be playing it now.
This picture says more than the entire article imho.
https://tap-repeatedly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/amanda_sorceress1.jpg
To be fair, that particular picture is promotional art – it doesn’t appear in the game.
But appeal is relative. I promise I’m a pretty nice person and not at all a psychopath in real life, and there is at least more than one real woman who finds this appealing.
But I’m not going to criticize what you simply don’t find appealing; just that it’s different from saying the art is ignorant or should not be allowed.
Just wanted to thank you a ton for writing this very thoughtful and insightful review and discussion. Being somebody pre-ordered this game and has been playing it and loving it since NA release day, it is just a breath of fresh air to see somebody who isn’t (a) immediately just dismissing the game completely due to their distaste for the art style, or (b) praising the game, but feeling like they need to apologize for the art style, or (c) blindly defending the game with their head in the sand and trying to pretend that there is no possible way the art style could be controversial. And really the (c) case I find the most annoying as even though i really enjoy this game, and the art style, I agree with the author that there is clearly some deliberate boundary-challenging going on here – we should be celebrating this fact not trying to sweep the controversy under the rug (regardless of whether we support the game or decry it).
I take some umbrage to people who just blithely conclude that this game must only be pandering to heterosexual males base impulses – I showed the art book to my wife and she (after making some wisecracks about how she knew which characters I was going to be most interested to play) was really interested by the Wizard character design – something about the face just definitely spoke to her type in guys. Now, granted she is just one person, but I see so many arguments critical of the game structured in absolutist terms (only so-and-so would like this game, or this game is demeaning to all so-and-so), and thus it is formally valid to refute those arguments by giving counter-examples.
Obviously, the art style here is a very niche thing in terms of people who it will appeal to but mere popularity (or lack thereof) should not really be a factor in whether it is offensive or not. I have had a very difficult time to convince a friend who i often play multiplayer games with to take any interest in the game, he took one look at it and concluded that the art characters were grotesque and not anything he’d be in a rush to be playing (even though i surmise based on knowing what games he likes he would really enjoy the technical brawler aspects of the game). And he went into this with zero knowledge of the controversy and really not caring about sexism-in-gaming or gaming-as-art issues at all (or at least he says so every time I link him to a post on either of those subjects). He just immediately dismissed it as I was only liking it because its ‘just another one of those pervy Japanese games/animes/etc’ that I am into (an opinion which though wrong-focused, honestly has a basis in fact). Which is only to say that I think inductively (and I can only really support this by scattered examples therefore I admit I cannot prove it deductively) the actual landscape of discussion and response to this game is so much more varied and detailed than the rather few viewpoints that seem to be typically represented in popular discussion on the subject as elucidated in my first paragraph (and thank the author for widening the conversation).
Personally I think the broader lesson here is for people to realize that just because something is not interesting to you or offends you (or even you can construct a logic train for how it could have negative effects on society or whatever), is not really a reason to argue that such thing (if its art as games obviously are) should not exist, or should be shamed etc. Personally I find little or nothing in the standard mainstream fps games that speaks to me, i find their overt militarism and adrenaline pumping celebration of bro-culture to be off-putting and banal at best (though I do dip my toes in the space occasionally to test out the odd higher concept example of the genre such as Bioshock or Borderlands – with varying results), and I think the case can be equally made that the overt competitiveness and blatant pro-military drumbeating can have negative effects in shaping our culture (obviously people who claim or even imply direct links between game violence and real violence are full of it). But I would never argue for a second that thus these games are directly ‘harmful’ or should be stamped out. The correct thing to argue for is for people to increase the diversity of the games on offer (and w.r.t the dominance of fps shooters this is somewhat happening though it happens more on the indie rather than the AAA channels). If everybody who had a huge problem with the depiction of women in Dragon’s Crown would (in addition to complaining about DC, I don’t mean to imply that their concerns are invalid or even wrong) would take it as a call-to-arms to go out and make a game showing whatever depiction of women or women’s issues (or even just humans and humans issues) they felt like they could craft as lovingly and detailed as Vanillaware did their vision (or even if they can’t), then gaming would benefit greatly. I mean this in all seriousness: get those games made because i definitely want to play something that can break new ground on this front, and more diversity in what I can get a chance to play is great. The fact that an amazing game like Dragon’s Crown can then inspire something like Boob Jam (even if it is as a negative response to it) is the gift that keeps on giving and a total win-win in my book.
[…] of us like it, woman included. We like the art references, we like the way everything looks, and we especially like the consistency of design. This doesn’t have anything to do with the actual state of affairs, but it DOES show that […]
I’m a bit late here, so I’m not sure if you’ll see this comment, but thank you so much for writing this article. Despite all the discussion on Dragon’s Crown that has been going on, this is the first time I have seen someone post a detailed opinion that I really agree with… at times I found myself wondering if I was the only one who thought this way. I haven’t actually played Dragon’s Crown (for lack of money, not interest – I would have jumped on the game the day it was released if I could), but I’m all for the game and its art.
I understand why others might be bothered by it, and I would never tell anyone they’re wrong for feeling that way. But… when I see the sort of backlash you described in this article, that bothers me more than any portrayal of women in games ever has. I grew up in a rather overprotective and sexually repressive environment, but even more than that, one woman particularly close to me has been repeatedly insulted for being a sexual person, and… I know it isn’t quite the same thing, and I know the people arguing vehemently against Dragon’s Crown’s art mean well, but that doesn’t stop me from being bothered by it.
I would love to see more and stronger female protagonists in games, and variety is a wonderful thing that I hope to see more of. But I want that variety to include games like Dragon’s Crown and characters like its Sorceress, not exclude them, and I know plenty of women who feel the same way.
I’ve gotta say: this is the best review of Dragon’s Crown that I’ve read. Not just in terms of evaluating the game itself, but also in the context of all this sociological commentary going on around a few gaming blogs regarding games in general, especially with respect to gender. Amanda, you nailed this one. Kudos!
Oh, and don’t worry about the haters: just let ’em hate! You keep on doing you.
nothing more sad than an artist who feels compelled to make asinine proclamations about how breasts are supposed to look, and manages to get it wrong at the same time. it smacks of a deep seated jealousy.
[…] was fortunate enough to have a review that I wrote, the Dragon’s Crown review on Tap-Repeatedly, get high praise semi-recently on Quarter to Three from Tom Chick. I […]