Skullgirl-Gate: my take

In case it is too long and you falied to read.

I know this is overly late, but this being Fighting Female July, I want to write about the controversy regarding weirdo fighter Skullgirls.



See, apparently, someone accused the maker of the female centric head-to-head fighting game of making a sexist game. What, on account of all the cleavage, and pantyshots, and how none of the alumni look like Jaime Lee Curtis at all. And his attempts at sort of defending his design aesthetic, which include that a woman designed them and that no women have shown disapproval, have earned him no amount of credit.



My first thought is that I guess it's true that the rope always breaks through the thinnest part. Think of all the fighting game series that have any importance today. Are they equally sexist, more sexist, or less sexist? Is any of them free of thongs, bikinis, panty shots, bouncy mammary globes, etc? I think if any (popular, mainstream) series today can block against the accusation of exploiting the female form it's maybe Virtua Fighter.



I mean, it's easy to come in now, after the millions of pages dedicated to naked Cammy we've made, millions of Ryona Seung Mina videos, after we've made the Dead or Alive series thrive on mostly sex appeal to the point where they made a game that was just girls lounging on the beach, now that fighting games are building on other fighting games that are built on other fighitng games, to try and decide that women in fighting games should be fully dressed and tactful just for this one new game/potential franchise. What! Panty-shots? The (out)RAGE!







Compare these two characters' popularity as relative to the importance of the games they where in.


But I guess nobody wants to show up to Project Soul and be the guy who says maybe Ivy and Taki's breasts should stop growing at some point. Nobody wants to go to Ono-San and say that they are bothered by a nymphomaniac fighter. Nobody wants to say that a woman taking off her top after a fight is pandering. Suddenly, when it's an independent title whose creator speaks English, we care. Will somebody think of the children?



Thing is, nobody fucking cares. Nobody gives any props to Virtual Fighter for not having panty-shots, bouncing breasts and exaggerated cleavage or things like that. Nobody cared when Mortal Kombat or Soul Calibur added fully clothed women after many years of skimpiness(and in SCs case, after 3 lolis. 3!). When someone finally steps in and asks if one game is sexist, we all jump in and try to decide if that game is sexist, and we don't stop to think if we've let the whole industry become sexist. We become bothered by what we have been supporting.



Though the Soul series gets no props for having a naked man in all of it's games, either.






And yes, that is "we" as in "us". The games-buying crowd "us".



If you get asked if making a product with scantily clad women is sexist, I guess there isn't a right answer. If you say that nobody's complained, they say you should have thought about it. If you say women worked on it, they get even more offended. If you say you just want to make some money, they say you are exploiting women for profit. What do you fuckers want to hear? "Oh, I'm sorry that my game could be perceived as sexist. I'll cancel it right away, good sir!"



The truth is, creative design doesn't happen in a vacuum and Skullgirl's influences are as obvious as anything. Skullgirls could be that game where old angry lesbians and morbidly obese working women fight. And while that wouldn't be bad for the industry, that wouldn't negate that someone made another game in which sexy caricatures of women fight each other. Some of us do enjoy the female form. Maybe if I call it a sexual preference, you have to tolerate it, huh?

Make it look like this.

You aren't gonna get a fighting game that's not sexist by berating games that are sexist. You are gonna have to make it. That's just the truth. Not to prove anything, though. If you can even get it halfway done , you're already better than me. If you can get it to sell in today's crowded market, you're some kind of deity. Get the funding and get it made. Then come back here so I can tell you that it's racist. Ha.