Not disagreeing, but... have you seen male video game characters? They're less often half-naked, but usually similarly sexualized.

In fact, video edits about male characters' appearance are vastly more popular than the ones about female characters' appearance.

The male characters are also incredibly more unrealistic. At least from my experience. I have yet to meet a guy who looks like Leon Kennedy, Geralt or Adam Jensen. While having met many women who looked exactly like or better than various female game characters.

Some years ago, it may have been the case that female characters were much more sexualized than male characters, due to lack of female gamers. Nowadays though, I feel like it's nearly equal both ways. The difference is in how the characters are portrayed and received by men and women. Both have, on average, different preferences.

The issue isn't really with men, female characters or video games. All industries of our entire society are filled to the brim with porn and erotic material. And that's largely because of capitalism. Porn and anything containing porn sells well. So in a society built around selling and profits, all of that sooner or later becomes the most popular, and the norm.

Okay, but most of the male characters look like this:

Why ruin a good game for the so called" male gaze" or “sex sells” thing? why?

... because of the 'sells' part? Game publishers aren't in business to make good games, they're there to make money.

women and men are sexualized in all sorts of media, unrealistically. and folks love it and folks also hate it, often the same folks who hate their gender being sexualized but love it when it's done to the gender they are attracted to.

why do you care so much about this to the point it is causing you self-negativity? do you like enjoy it and think you shouldn't?

There are counter examples

BG3 is a fabulous one. Asterion is sultry and seductive. Raphael is sexy as hell, and so is his succubus. TBH there was a lot of male nudity and sexiness.

Meanwhile, Karlach and Laezel are just badasses. Never once did I feel that squick from them being overly sexualized.

In "Satisfactory" the main character (The Pioneer) is dressed head to toe in a sort of spacesuit/coveralls/work boots combo. You can sort of tell that there might be a woman inside the suit.

But... Quiet needs sunlight on her bare skin to live, so an almost naked sniper makes perfect sense! Think about women's health!!

/s

I have kinda realized that this stuff is everywhere, not just in games and the "female gaze" is just as unrealistic in portraying men, it just isn't (as much) sexual. Read any romance book aimed at women and you know what I mean. There are very few men who can live up to being a hot billionaire werewolf!

Jokes aside, even "reasonable" standards are still something only like 5-10% of men could live up to. Even in lesbian and gay romance books you will find strange and unrealistic standards.

Humans just love dreaming about having a hotty in bed... Probably better if we don't encourage it, but catering to people's appetite sells better than selling something healthy... Ask any food industry.

It is because people make stuff mostly to make money or to make their own fantasies come "true". Hardly anyone out there is making media for "educational" purpose and where everything is realistic and proportional.

Hell that's just real life, we consume media to escape "realistic and proportional" because that's just ordinary and boring!

For me the problem here is that the only characters that are sexualised are women. If the game is sexual, then just add the beautiful naked guys. I am sure that this move will double the audience (i am the audience).

It's interesting that people will find issue with sex appeal and unrealistic body proportions in fantasy media but are fine with everything else unrealistic about fantasy. I think the real issue is the unrealistic expectations people put on themselves and others because they can't separate fantasy from reality.

I will never be as buff and chiseled as batman.

Not sure why an "off the chest" post would get downvotes (perhaps they suspect virtue signalling) but glad you shared.

For-profit companies and even indie devs gravitate toward the demand. I don't play many games that have this trait but even wow has its share of female thongs and chainmail pushup bras. The fact that its widely accepted and very rarely frowned upon let's you know that they e nailed their target demographic.

Have you seen the incels? They have nervous breakdowns over peach fuzz.

One of my favorite games of all time is Neir Automata and I don't admit that to normies because it just makes me look like a fucking pervert because of how oversexualized 2B and A2 are.

It genuinely distracts from a beautiful story. It makes it less impactful.

I'm okay with it if the men are also sexualized. Like Hades. So many sexy men... 🤤

If it's third-person and I'm going to be staring at my character's ass for 30+ hours, might as well pick a nice one

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I super liked Horizon: Zero Dawn because they refused to sexualize Aloy. There is only one outfit that shows bare midrif, and it's not accessible until mid-game. Male characters would hit on her and she'd generally respond like she didn't understand what was going on.

But then I didn't like the "changes" for the sequel. It felt kinda cheap for them to suddenly be

spoiler

"Oh no, she is a lesbian actually"

instead of the

spoiler

aro/ace

that she was portrayed as in the first one.

Edit: apparently I can't spoiler. Sorry.