At least she's not a "Damsel In Distress"

Flipping through PLAY Magazine's "Girls of Gaming" with my friends a little bit ago, and helium balloon snowboarding girl is back, with both runaway breasts and a boobs and butt pose.  But also, I think the commentary that accompanies this section is interesting too.

First, as my friend pointed out when we were reading it, it's odd to brag that your sports game's women athletes aren't "damsels in distress" given that it's a sports game and those usually don't have like women in distress? (hopefully)

Second, it's also interesting that for female characters, the designer stresses that it's important that they be hot and attractive while also having other characteristics, but when it comes to the male characters, their appearance isn't the focus, and in fact it's even pointed out how important it is for some male characters to be UNATTRACTIVE in order to be more relatable.

Thinking emoji, etc...

(Page from Girls of Gaming vol. 1, PLAY Magazine)

Transcription of article:

Elisa
SSX 3
Incept Date: October 2003
Famous For: Snowboarding while laying the back down on anyone within an arm's length and looking California-cool in the process. She also talks a mean game.

The game: The quintessential snowboarding game for the ages - fast, loaded with attitude, crazy detail and a wicked soundtrack. Screw laundry lists and race to your heart's content.

System: PS2, Xbox, GC, PC; Developer: EA; Publisher: EA

Three Questions: Ian Lloyd, Associate Art Director/Character Supervisors SSX3

What do you feel is the single most important aspect of character design?

Storytelling - a character tells a story about themselves through their appearance, their performance and their voice. We tend to be pretty straightforward in designing characters that you can get an immediate read on. Once you have this defined, you can start to mess with these perceptions to get the character to perform certain roles within the cast of characters. It's almost impossible to design these characters in a vacuum as they all play a specific role within the cast of characters in the game and ultimately appeal to a broad range of users. It's abundantly clear that you can never please everyone, but I'm pretty satisfied when I hear people strongly promoting their favorite characters from the SSX series and nobody can agree on who those characters are!

We've tried to design the characters of SSX to appeal to everyone, and to achieve the goal you need to put enough specifics in there to make the character unique, but you also need to leave some room for a broad spectrum of users of all ages, genders, nationalities, and backgrounds to project their own ideas and specifications on to.  I think too often character designers get all the stereotypes covered but never go beyond that point.

It's a tough balance with lots of external pressures on the designers, but I really feel strongly that if you give a character a place to come from, in the form of a history, experiences, preferences and dislikes, the user will pick up on it and more readily engage in the interactive process of bringing that character to life in their mind. These things don't need to be explicitly stated to the audience, which is the temptation; rather, the designer just needs to have the information in mind when designing the character and it will find its own voice through all the decisions that are made along the way.

What are you most proud of regarding the girls of SSX?

I'm glad that many people seem to react to them in a positive way. We've always strived to make sure we have a good balance between overly appealing female characters and cool characters that happen to be girls. Obviously all the characters are competitive athletes, full of confidence and very much dictating how they move through life. You won't find any damsels in distress in SSX. 

Again, each character has a role to play so rather than pump them all full of silicone and take the easy way out with a crew of Barbie-esque clones, we've tried to make sure we present a range of female athletes that will appeal to a broad audience for reasons beyond their good looks. The other aspect of presenting a range of character types is that polarities and rivalries naturally emerge and our AI systems help the user engage in and invest in these relationships.

Your favourite character from any game?

I'd have to say Abe from Oddworld series is the frontrunner, with Jin Kazama from the Tekken series and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series. All of these characters have been designed to tell a clear story about themselves and their designs engage the user in a way that I find very satisfying. Abe is great because he is the complete package. His voice, motion and appearance work in concert to make him a fully realized character. He's ugly as hell but endearing in a way that so few sexy characters could ever hope to be. The fact that he's an underdog who is capable of greatness is always a satisfying angle with a character but often a tough sell from a marketing perspective. Abe just wouldn't work if he looked like Justin Timberlake. Jin kicks some serious butt.

There is an underlying storyline in Tekken that is played out through the cinematics that I think have (sic) a good balance between spelling out just enough of a story and leaving the rest open to the user to speculate on. It's a great way to engage the user and sometimes we get too wrapped up in clubbing them over the head with this stuff. Jin plays well, has tons of attitude and has a dynamic feel to his design. His hair alone gives him a built-in perception of speed and his wardrobe is flashy but primary and powerful. The fighting in Tekken is the most satisfying as the characters really feel like they have weight, speed and generate forces capable of doing some serious damage. Too many fighting games float the characters around all over the place, totally killing the believability.

Note the term believability vs. realism. I can accept a completely stylized characters as being believable if the conventions by which he is governed are properly laid out. Realism is usually pretty boring in most video games. This is a medium of pushing reality to something more satisfying. Snake is effectively, from a visual standpoint, a stranded soldier, allowing the user to project their own associations onto him, but there's just enough there to make him distinctive and give him that gritty, world-worn attitude. His voice is gravelly and brooding, his posing and motion heroic and he plays his role perfectly. You become Snake when you play the game and adopt his persona. They might have gone a bit overboard with the cinematics on Sons of Liberty, but having said that, there were a lot of very satisfying and entertaining moments too. It's all about balance.