A Kotaku writer wants Japanese game studio Tecmo to stop producing sexy “fanservice” characters in their video games due an embarrassing encounter he had with a waitress many years ago.
In the publication, Mike Fahey admitted his love for Tecmo’s Dead or Alive fighting games, which he enjoyed since the late ‘90s. The titles feature a wide assortment of fighters, many of whom are female characters in sexy outfits. The males are equally as attractive. The series, he says, is on par with other top-tier fighting games—and it was the action that engaged him.
Some, like Fahey, were immersed in the gameplay it offered, but other gamers were drawn to it for its sexually appealing characters. Game designer Tomonobu Itagaki famously applied physics to the bosoms of the characters, creating their signature bounce. Other games, like Mortal Kombat, offered less fluid gameplay, but established fanbases who enjoyed a spectacle of blood and gore—something Dead or Alive shied away from as it continued to promote sexy characters.
Fahey recalls his purchase of Dead or Alive 3 for the Xbox, when he stepped into a diner on his way home. He wrote:
The day I bought my original Xbox, I stopped at a local diner on the way home for a celebratory burger. As I ate, I cracked open the two games I purchased with the system — Halo (of course) and Dead or Alive 3 — to thumb through the manuals. The waitress serving me saw the DOA box, gave me a thumbs up and said, “She kicks high.” It was the only time I’d ever felt embarrassed to have purchased a video game, and I bought the collector’s edition of Record of Agarest War, complete with sexy pillow case and boob-bearing mouse pad.
I do not embarrass easily.
The writer goes on to lament the series’ descent into deplorability through its depiction of female sexuality. “To outsiders looking in, it was further proof of the imagined depravity of Dead or Alive’s fanbase,” writes Fahey.
“Tecmo Koei seems content to milk the series’ breasts for all they are worth,” he continues, adding that even though the games are still enjoyable fighting games, he’s concerned over what others might think about its players.
In many ways, Fahey’s concerns over the game’s sexualized content mirrors that of another complaint from Jason Schreier, who complained about the presence of a large-breasted character in a game called Dragon’s Crown. In the piece, he accused its creator George Kamitani of being a horny teenager. When Kamitani responded with a picture of three burly dwarves hugging, Schreier insinuated that the artist was homophobic while delivering a sermon on women’s struggles in the game industry. He also accused Kamitani of catering to pedophiles despite nothing in the character’s artwork to indicate that she was in any way underage.
More recently, VICE writers Mike Diver and Patrick Klepek expressed their dismay with Final Fantasy XV character’s sexuality. Diver called her a “a single loose thread away from indignity.”
Klepek says he felt ashamed to play the game whenever anyone was in the house, and that he was purposefully avoiding the character in case anyone noticed.
“It’s embarrassing,” he said. “My mom was supposed to stop by this weekend, so I was purposely refueling my car at places Cindy was not, for fear the game would once again trigger the erotically-tinged sequence where she fills up the Regalia.”
The reality isn’t that these video games are innately embarrassing—the same could be said of once-shameful hobbies like listening to heavy metal and playing Dungeons & Dragons decades ago. The men complaining of embarrassment just need to grow up.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
