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What are controversial gaming opinions you have?

Jensaarai said:
Geralt of Rivia?
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Sorry this was a while ago

But like I think it is illustrative!

Geraldo Riviera is mostly a male power fantasy? He has lots of sex, powerful and attractive women from the world over talk about how much they wanna fuck him, in the games he fucks, like, a bunch of them? Even in the books he's got a pretty sizeable bodycount? The TV show he is a more settled character but he's still, like, primarily the agency-having protagonist who is cool and badass?

And I mean, there's nothing wrong with that - I like Geralt of Rivia! I like the Witcher books, I tolerate the Witcher games and I am aware of the Witcher TV show - but it is interesting that people think he's male fanservice? In any of these settings, Geralt of Rivia is an object of power fantasy, not sexual fantasy (this is not to say people don't want to fuck Geralt of Rivia, but it isn't the "main" appeal of the character.) but people - still, like, look at Geralt and assume he is fanservice just because he's cool and hot? He isn't framed or presented in a remotely similar "vibe" to, like, Jack from Mass Effect 2 or Quiet from Metal Gear Solid 5. It's just... a different thing entirely.

There's not a lot of media consumed by SV users which has male fanservice, people don't really instinctually understand what it is and isn't, I think.
 
Frumple said:
The cool part deffo is, I think. Her default outfit has pretty strong skank stripper vibes, more than anything. I don't really find it to be sexy, either, though. Like, the boob window and the spraypaint shorts are there, but it looks like she failed a scavenging roll in a thrift shop more than anything, and it just... doesn't appeal. I've seen folks rock that kind of look pretty hard, but Velvet don't. Ain't cool, either, just. Awkward? Something like that.

... it's honestly the major reason I keep just not playing Berseria. Initial reaction to the character design was a resounding meh, more or less, despite hearing decent things about it otherwise. Picked up it and Zestria in some kind of bundle a couple years back and I've played them all of 7 minutes since.

S'occasionally bugged me a bit, too, I've been wanting to try a non-handheld Tales game that's more recent than the PSX for a while now, but I keep installing the two, then just kind of looking at them and never actually pressing play...
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It's fine, not everyone can have as impeccable taste as me :V

(If it bothers you that much, I'm pretty sure you can just swap back to her initial appearance as soon as you get access to a menu after the prologue. What costume is set affects the cutscenes as well, though not the skits. It's not really my thing, but as shown by literally the post right after my first one, it's clear other people like it)
Morganite said:
So I got curious, and looked it up.

I think my impression is basically "okay, this is her so called 'battle damage' sprite, where's her original one? Wait, you mean this is it?"

-Morgan.
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ok but see that's what part of what makes it cool :V (though it's not, technically, but shut up)
 
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It'd actually bug me less if it looked like battle damage, tbh. Some notable scarring, more care with the patterning for it to look like intentional, antagonistic damage instead of... what we got. The vibe I got from the first time I saw it was either "tripped into a thornbush, now very uncomfortable" or "awkward person got lost in hot topic", and the vibe hasn't changed over the years.

There's some kind of dissonance that I can't quite put in words between the rest of the character design and the outfit they stick her in that just really doesn't sit right with me. You might be able to fix it just by... I'unno, actually tearing the shirt to make cleavage instead of doing the boob window thing? Top belt under the boobs to look like support instead of an accessory? Make the leg tearing more intentional looking? I'unno. Somethin'.

Not going to throw shade at folks that like it, mind, but the design really feels like it's missing a certain je ne sais quoi to me, and it's particularly jarring for some reason. Normally awkward character design is just a *shrug* for me, but this case hasn't been.
 
Wateryblue said:
Yes it did come off "dog-whistly" and I'm glad you apologized for that,
anyway I... Think I agree with the "make it" strategy, I don't think things are gonna change until us and talented creatives change it, definitely want society to be allot less prudish for everyone, contrary to the G.O.P Sex and nudity aren't "evil", the sooner we as a society fixes such things the happier people will be.

Edit: I don't mean to come off as "Woa unto us" but Capitalism and "Conservativism" rot and destroy creativity, so I try to find comfort in media and political discussion, I would rather not "throw the baby out with the bath water" so too speak when it comes to Fanservice
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I have an incredibly talent for just about anything I say to be taken as a "dog-whistle". I'm beginning to think i'm mildly autistic... I just don't understand "dog-whistle". I really, truly do not comprehend. Like, I know what the words mean, I understand the concept, but it just feels like literally anything can be and is a dog whistle for something.

But I do thank you for making the point of supporting more content creators for this type of work in a more eloquent way than I could.
 
Velvet's outfit is very fanservicey, yeah, and I can see how it might come off as very silly; it does at least (appropriately) evoke 'traditional JRPG Villain' vibes, though, at least for me (look, your characters have to have at least a dozen belts in the wrong places or they don't qualify as a JRPG main character, I'm sorry, I don't make the rules).
 
Squirtodyle said:
I'm talking about characters whose primary design function is fanservice, not just male characters who happen to be attractive.
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Just out of curiosity, when you said that last line, did you mean "characters whose primary role in the story is as fanservice?" Or did you mean "characters whose aesthetic design is mainly about fanservice?"

To take a female example, Jack from Mass Effect 2 clearly has a role to play in the plot; they didn't only, probably not even mainly, include her just to look sexy.* But at the same time, her aesthetic design blatantly is about looking sexy for the camera.
_______________________

*(There is valid room to disagree with me here, but you get what I'm saying)
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Just out of curiosity, when you said that last line, did you mean "characters whose primary role in the story is as fanservice?" Or did you mean "characters whose aesthetic design is mainly about fanservice?"
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Both, with the caveat that one often requires the other and the second one can very easily fall flat if someone is trying to design an attractive male character without really thinking about what makes them attractive.
 
granblue's slutty, slutty boys is the gold standard, absolutely S-tier presentation of attractive and fashionable men meant to please. The summer outfits alone raised my estrogen so hard I didn't need to refill for a year tru fax

Be more like Granblue
 
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Squirtodyle said:
Both, with the caveat that one often requires the other and the second one can very easily fall flat if someone is trying to design an attractive male character without really thinking about what makes them attractive.
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Hm. Well... oh. Oh, I see. You're imagining characters who were clearly put into the story with the main intention of being fanservice, but who fail at this because they're unappealing, and thus fall into the first category but not the second?

I was mostly asking the question in an attempt to conceptualize the first as a subset of the second, with any exceptions being rare.

That is to say, I can easily imagine a male character who's very intentionally designed, aesthetically speaking, as an attractive hunk, but who isn't primarily "a fanservice character" in that he has an actual significant role to play in the story and gets as much depth as any other character in his setting does. But I wasn't sure whether or not such characters qualified in your search for male fanservice characters.
 
Simon_Jester said:
You're imagining characters who were clearly put into the story with the main intention of being fanservice, but who fail at this because they're unappealing, and thus fall into the first category but not the second?
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That's correct, lemme grab an example.

This is Merlin's summer outfit from FGO. Now, FGO doesn't do summer men - it's criticized constantly for it, because the only thing it ever does is give costumes to three male characters in the game every year, while releasing anywhere between 7 and 9 swimsuit versions of existing female characters that are very clearly designed to be fanservicey. The intent of the male summer costumes is to provide something of the same experience—that is, existing characters in fanservicey, summery outfits, and that panned out for...about a year.

This, as you can see, is what we got after 2 years.

Obviously, Merlin is a hot guy. He's attractive! There's no denying it. But hardly anything about the image accentuates that. He's got a neutrally positive expression on his face that you could maybe swing as being an attempt at a smoulder if you were desperate, but other than that he's in a relatively shapeless looking outfit with a closed-off and distant pose even as he turns towards the camera, there's no real attempt to sell his beauty outside of the fact that his original design had him be a very pretty man. This is intentional fanservice, but it's just not...good?



Similarly, this is Arthur Pendragon's White Day costume. Every year, FGO has two events, Valentines' in February and White Day in March. The Valentine's event focuses on female Servants, always releasing a new female Servant and having women exclusive gachas - most of the time it's not quite as explicit on the fanservice aspect as summer, but that's not a complete given. White Day is the male counterpart to it - naturally, a smaller event that doesn't often introduce new Servants, but gives us a bunch of equippable art of male characters that's intended as fanservice, but fails quite badly most of the time because they just...take attractive characters and put them in suits.

Arthur here is a great example of it, because he once again is a very attractive man, and this is a costume designed to highlight that, but...he's in a suit. A nice suit, sure, but that's it. He's got a generic pose, a generic happy and mildly determined expression, he's just dressed a little more formally than usual. There's an attempt at commissioning a new costume for a popular male character specifically to give as a reward for an event that's designed to promote male characters for a celebration about men being love interests and giving chocolate to their lovers, and they put a hot guy in a suit and call it a day.

It's boring. It's failing at being fanservice for someone who likes men, because there's just no effort.

To compare once again to Granblue, here's the Valentine's Day art for Aglovale.


I don't even think I need to explain this one, the hand with a gauntlet on it is the player-insert character's hand and it specifically has two versions that do not change in any other way other than the gauntlet, just so the player knows that whether you're playing a guy or playing a girl, Aglovale is pinning you down and is ready to pound you silly. He's a hot guy in a suit and there's active effort to sell the fanservice of it, so even though in terms of look, there's not much different between him and that Arthur I put above, the framing is that he's ready, willing, and dedicated to taking the player insert to the bone zone, literally teasing his thumb with his tongue right in front of the camera while giving it, and therefore the player, the most outrageous set of "fuck-me" eyes I've seen in a while.

The core difference, to me, is effort and understanding. Anyone can put a hot guy in a suit, but it takes actual understanding and a willingness to depict men in a more sexual light than a lot of heterosexual men involved in things are comfortable with to really do a fanservicey guy right.
 
@Squirtodyle

I think a big issue with gacha games is at heart they are going to be aimed at being waifu collectors since the core fanbase hates the notion of competition. Whereas I see good male designs as a means to convey what a female character or fan may want in a man and as a creative prompt. A majority of the core fanbase see them as pandering at best and a threat to their place in the demographic at worst and do everything to reject it. I like Granblue's pansexuality in their approach to appealing to the fanbase since it uses inclusion to help make creative situations for both men and women rather than just sticking a guy in a nice designer suit and calling it a day or a woman in a swimsuit that pushes the ratings board.
 
Squirtodyle said:
White Day is the male counterpart to it - naturally, a smaller event that doesn't often introduce new Servants, but gives us a bunch of equippable art of male characters that's intended as fanservice, but fails quite badly most of the time because they just...take attractive characters and put them in suits.
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Now now, this isn't quite fair to FGO.

One year they gave the attractive characters suits and glasses.
 
For more examples of great male fanservice I direct you to Housamo/Lifewonders games in general.
I'd link to the images but I feel it's past borderline acceptable even though there's nothing explicit.
 
Mandemon said:
Must have been ages ago, because I don't remember it. And looking at the dates, it was a year ago. And doesn't really change anything, it is effectively same double standard. Which I do point out. How genre suddenly "changes" the focus.
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A Bisexual Man: A shirtless dude isn't inherently sexy, we literally just had this conversation and I, as a man who wants to look at sexy dudes, am telling you I don't find that attractive.
You: no your wrong

Never change, man. Yes, you've explained your view that it's a "double standard", and @Squirtodyle (and others, myself included the last time we had this discussion) has pretty clearly laid out why you're wrong, from the perspective of a man who wants to look at sexy men. Like, bro, you're wrong, full stop, and loudly insisting that you're not doesn't change that fact.
 
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you'd have to pay me to put on the clown makeup in public this consistently, but at least the fact that this topic always keeps coming up means we can always post more beefcake in here
 
The only pinups count as fanservice part seems weird, though it's a fine focus on its own and/or as diagnostic of the general imbalance.
 
Aineko said:
The only pinups count as fanservice part seems weird, though it's a fine focus on its own and/or as diagnostic of the general imbalance.
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I was using them more to illustrate the difference, but also kinda because it's frustratingly difficult to find a male character whose attractiveness isn't meant as more of an assumed thing or a way to feed into the inherent fantasy of the character. It's not that pinups are the only things that count, it's just that they're easy to use and easy to find comparatively.
 
It sounds a lot to me like "failed fanservice" is if anything more of a problem than "no fanservice" in regards to male characters, likely due to a lack of getting straight women/gay men input into the designs. As a straight man I'd have guessed a number of the examples given of "this is not fanservice" to be fanservice, but then I'm not attracted to men at all so I'd just be guessing.

Given the historic behavior of the video game industry I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't even running the character designs past female focus groups, especially not the American companies. They've generally looked at women as incomprehensible eldritch beings whose desires cannot be understood, not even by sticking their head out of the office door and yelling "Hey Carol, does this look good?"
 
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