'Empathy feminism' is ruining the video game industry with patronising efforts to desexualise characters in the name of gender empowerment
Back in the day, when video game Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, fans accused game developer Bioware of making all the female characters"ugly", while male characters looked just as appealing as their real-life models.After undergoing a digital transformation, the character in the game looked peculiarly plain.The character of Aloy is based upon the likeness of Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra.
There’s post-modern feminism, all about claiming female sexuality, which might, for example, see pole dancing as affirming ownership. But fear not, because, Microsoft are to the rescue, doing their part by releasing a “Product Inclusion Guide” for video game developers which suggests that creators refrain from depicting sexualized or"unrealistic" female characters within their works.
However, they are the ignorant ones, because they have a muddled conception of what attraction is – that it isn’t malleable and able to be regulated, or conditioned to abide by some notions you have in your head about how men ought to innately feel in terms of their attraction to women. The developers behind the upcoming video game Stellar Blade used a real-life South Korean model in order to create the game's action heroine, Eve.