No Sexual Objectification of Female Characters ? (Dev) Replied

With the way the present female avatars look, I do not think you will have to worry about sexual objectification. One of them looks like my grandma, the other some kind of punk, and then there is my mom.

I am hoping they will make them less hard looking, and more attractive myself. It is still not done, so hopefully they find a more attractive and less harsh female.

 

Amen!

 

The thought of a chr coming at you, with almost nothing on wielding a weapon has proved it's self throughout history as being very effective, not to mention the dex it provides. When the Brits fought the Scotts, when the Brits fought the Zulu and as well many others, the effects of "Shock and Awe" have been around for a very long time in our world of the outrageous.

"Outrage" has some qualities to it no doubt about it, but how much is too much, or is there too much, until it begins to take over the setting scene surrounding it?

I would hate to limit anything, yet there seems a limit to be had. Suppose we all are new players that just bought the game and the game was going into it's 10th year of being available. Would that scene of our first encounter look like a place of pseudo medieval, or a circus? There seems to be a limit here because we all want a game that has longevity. But this is an Ultima of sorts, where limits don't seem to fit the name, but what's in a name brand, when there is no congenial style? The immersion into a fantasy who's stage sets the décor vs a limitless circus of individual variety.

This is an international appealing game (we hope), so, how many cultures can we comfortably accommodate and
"How much of Pandora's Box do we really want to see"?
~Time Lord~

 

It depends on whose history book you're reading. From Wikipedia:



They also wore hoplites, which gave them more maneuverability.



They may have gone without their chest plate in parades, but not at war.

 

Or, it shows more accurate body types throughout society, and would allow people to customize their character based on their roleplaying preference, as opposed to anyone else's. Secondly, while healthy lifestyles are important, the very -LAST- thing any community needs, especially one that is crowdfunded and catering to the general fantasy/MMO fandom, is to promote judgemental or otherwise negative karma and attitudes toward prospective clients.

I would also point out that quite often society, the media, and commercialized products tend to promote an even more unhealthy pressure towards both young men and women to conform to an idealized impossible standard. Eating disorders, self esteem issues, and sometimes severe health complications can arise due to someone feeling like they have no safe haven to be themselves, safe from bullying and/or criticism.

SotA appeals to a large number of potential players, from all aspects of life, age, sex, financial standing, employment, etc. Rather than finding ways to exclude others from a wonderful and welcoming community, I recommend stepping back and recognizing you have more in common than you may realize. If we happen to get SotA group meetings, you may find how little exterior appearance really matters to those who share your passions in life.

Short version: Life is short, embrace it in Virtue.

 

Body types amongst even healthy athletes vary enormously. It's just not something portrayed well in modern media.

But to simplify the objectification part. Lets say I visit the local armourer with a male friend and we both purchase a suit of plate armour. If he is clad head-to-toe in somewhat sensible metal while I am left with boob-shaped cups and an exposed midriff (or worse) - your game has screwed up or is marketed at a specific demographic which isn't me. That's an issue regardless of whether some of you want to accept it or not.

 

We do all realise that the existence of pregnant female avatars in a game with PvP will invariably end up in the textbooks of gender studies for decades to come as an example of encouraging violence against women don't we? Literally, if this was done, RG's wikpedia page would just be re-written to "that guy who promoted killing pregnant women in games".

Also, do we really want to be the first game that makes headlines for fat shaming overweight avatars? Yes, overweight avatars were in SWG but that was 10 years ago when "fat shaming" wasn't a hot topic. It is now.

Can we just check PC in at the door? Because once that can of worms gets open, it never ends. The more you do, the more everything you do gets gets picked apart and analysed. If you turn around and make all female avatars strong and hefty in male armour, then people will just claim that you are devaluing the feminine form in favour of the masculine form.. You just can't win, any attention is bad.

Just make sure your in the "middle of the road" when it comes to clothing to avoid as much attention as possible. Stay under the radar and do not try to break new gender ground in gaming unless you are 1) an all female dev team and 2) have an all female player base.

 

Comfort comes to mind, but not that it's unreasonable to assume a man or woman would fit into something. I have known many robust persons who could run all day while my skinny self (in that "Time") couldn't keep up.

Within this thread I see the core of the issue being "Variety & Style" and what would be most socially acceptable without damaging the quality of it's immersion or offend potential customers....
But most importantly, how much production cost would be to accommodate "what" and is it that big of an issue to our RP Style to having had it made or accommodated by SotA.

In it's RP value, "all the world's a stage" yet each part of our world stage has a particular style. I say such because differing styles could be made available only from particular areas. Thus if the latest style were made from a particular area, it would create an ebb to that particular places economy.
I'm a proponent of shaping many of out online effects and events in linking it to local economies as well as making available different styles, but the outrageous just seems as that, outrageous and unfitting to the scene set for which our SotA artists have worked and are working to achieve.

Marilyn Monroe should look great in armor while in a hunting dungeon, where Lee Marvin should not be wearing high heel shoes beside her...
Or am I getting too old now to relate with modern thinking?
~Time Lord~

 

Another thing is is I don't see this game as being a gear/level grind. It seems like the game itself is closer to a sandbox/interactive community with an adventure focus. I doubt you'll always be in your armor. I'm guessing it would be feasible to walk around town looking however you like (armor is tiring after all) without much consequence. I even assume the PVPers aren't going to be entirely made up of teabagging, numb nuts, berzerkers. Anyways the armor looks reasonable as it stands. I guess this is more or less a plea to take it away from the ridiculous fantasy aesthetics, with absurdly designed swords and armor that can't work in the real world. It's more immersion for me. I know it's more than just me but it really really bothers me. Also studded leather is not armor, just a cool looking long shirt. That was started by people who didn't understand what a coat of plates was.

 

If this were the case, RG would already have a reputation for promoting the murder of children.

 

Well you could have just punched them in the face.

 

I thought it was hilarious when RG mentioned that he made it a point to include it in all his games, and when the person responsible for adding it into Tabula Rasa refused to do it, RG was actually ticked off.

As he said, you didn't HAVE to kill them, it all depended on how you applied the Virtues.

 

He doesn't promote murdering children.

He promotes moral quandaries. If you opted as a player to kill the children, that's on you.

 

Ultima V has a dungeon room where you find children locked in cages. Pull a lever, and the children rush out and attack you. The game causes you to loose points in the virtue valor if you ever run from battle, so most would assume you have to kill them to prevent that from happening.
Ultima IX had one part where a child would pester you for money, and would throw a fireball at you if you refused, you would be forced to kill him.

I agree that RG is interested in the ethical choices, and not in the child slaying, which is why I never claimed that he promotes murdering children.

 

In Ultima V you could cast a sleep spell on the children, or take the hit to valor. Like in real life, sometimes two virtues oppose each other and you have to choose one at the expense of another. Do you really think the Valorous thing to do is to slaughter children? You could take a minor hit in Valor for fleeing once and easily regain that since there was combat all the time. Again, no one forced you to murder children. You chose to.

In Ultima IX, no one forced you to deny that child money. And again, there are sleep spells. You had choices at your disposal, and in both cases you apparently opted to kill children in game.

 

Hey man, context, some guy said that having things like fat people and pregnant women could wake up the "moral guardians" and Mordecai said by that logic they'd already be spit roasting RG. Mordecai wasn't accusing RG of anything, just replying to Uzume.

 

I think it is a very important distinction to make.

For example, I hear people ask from time to time "GTA, isn't the game where you are supposed to kill hookers?"

GTA is a sandbox game where you can do what you want. But I don't believe there is ever any instruction or quest objective to kill hookers. But people perceive that as the intention of the game. The game is encouraging you to have that behavior.

In the Ultima games, you have the freedom to do many things, but that doesn't mean the game is actively encouraging you to do them. If the game allows you to kill children, that is absolutely not the same thing as encouraging you to do that.

I just want to make sure censors and watch-dog groups don't go nuts with the wrong idea that RG's games (and SotA) promote child-killing, because they don't. But that is what Mordecai said, and I felt the need to clarify that is not the case.

 

I think the most defining difference between those examples, and particularly related to the Ultima titles, has always been the consequences that resulted from non-Virtue behavior, and the subsequent reactions of NPCs and the world around you. I remember in U7 especially where the AI was a little quirky, and your party could abandon and become quite murderous toward the Avatar for picking up a legitimate quest item.

That said, there's always the focus groups and censors who will find fault in anything. Honestly, I think RG actually likes the controversy (heck, he refused to back down to his Mom and family originally when this all first started , since it does make people think and consider the larger issues. We've also strayed a little from the original topic here.

 

U7 and U9 were are 17 and 15 years old respectively. Our society has changed markedly over that time - there wasn't this pall hanging over it resulting from the hordes of people walking around looking for things to offend them, so they can embark on a moral crusade. They were also single player games, where one person making a choice didn't exposed dozens of other people unwillingly to that choice. It was also the days before youtube, facebook and twitter, where only the press had the power to push certain buttons in the populace.

Times have changed.

 

"Ultima VII: The Black Gate" was released in 1992. That would make it ~22 years old.