Starblade, the upcoming sci-fi motion RPG from Korean studio Shift Up, has been thrust into the center of video game culture wars that appear as old as the games themselves. This struggle has been most recently seen in the high-profile backlash against narrative consulting firm Sweet Baby Inc. for its insistence on having more (gasp!) various female characters. A select few Steam and Twitter users are shocked. Now these few singers praise the exuberant and energetic hero Starblade. They say Eve brings back a time they miss, when women in games were exciting and attractive. It responds to the so-called male gaze.
An academic term coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1973. The male gaze is often portrayed as “the scantily clad woman on screen” [being] incorrect,” says Dr Matt Denny, lecturer in film and television studies at the University of Warwick. Denny adds that the focus is on the “presumably heterosexual viewer.”
Developer Shift Up seems to lean heavily on the male gaze. He pays special attention to this on his Twitter account and in interviews Eve’s body was retrieved from the scans Korean model Shin Jae-eun’s. Game director Kim Hyung-Tae justified the alternative of body model with the statement“We wanted to create the most attractive-looking case for the user.” PlayStation promotional material backed it up – posting teasers on Instagram specializing in the revealing outfits players can dress Eve in. Shift Up didn’t return a request for comment.
Denny emphasizes that this is the textbook male gaze. “Attractive to whom?” he asked Denny. “To what gender? What sexuality? What nationality? Much of this choice is based on assuming a lot of things about who [the developers] I think that’s what the player will be like.
Although Eve’s body was created from Shin’s scan, her face was made “in-house” and Shin was not used for motion capture. “They didn’t choose an athlete, a martial artist or even an actor,” Denny said. “You do not want [Shin] as a performer you just want her from the neck down. It seems very much a compilation of the parts of this woman that are valuable.”
Dr Poppy Wilde, senior lecturer in media and communications at Birmingham School of Media, explains that the male gaze is not so easy in video games. “If we think of looking as creating a subject position, it is not the same as looking at an object, because the avatar is also a kind of active subject in this case.” Judging by the trailers, Eve gave the impression to be quite an lively participant, but the recently released demo paints a different picture; although Eve can display combat mastery outside of battle, her absent personality makes her more of a doll than an motion figure.
The inefficiency related to Eve’s body was already there noted web culture author Gita Jackson: “[Eve] “doesn’t seem to have any reaction to her own sex appeal.” There are no expressive facial expressions or a long ponytail – which players can shorten in the options menu. There is no idle animation – except when he’s on a ladder – she just stands there. She’s sexy, but she doesn’t know it; she is athletic and acrobatic, but completely controllable. If she knew, if she could move on her own, it would dispel the illusion that many players supported her, because she would have the strength to be able to push them away instead of simply allowing herself to be controlled by them.
“It’s not about making games less sexy,” Denny says. “The idea is to make gaming sexier for more people.”
The way we glance changes in video games since it is often influenced by the differences between gameplay and cutscenes. “Most of the time we’re not actually looking at the avatar, we’re looking through the avatar and with the avatar,” Wilde says. This is most noticeable during Starbladefight. All eyes are on enemies, waiting for a possibility to counterattack or dodge. Eve is blurred and defies any gaze that will try and isolate one part of her body from the devastatingly effective whole.
During cutscenes, the perspective and look change. “There is something about showing the physical potential of that body type combined with fighting and athleticism,” notes Denny, “[it’s] not only nice to look at. Then there are cutscenes and each of these narrative sequences starts with the camera focused on her butt. It’s doing something different.” There is also a robot that follows Eve as she explores, shining a light that usually illuminates her behind. Eve’s body is each a site of empowerment and objectification, depending on how we’re invited to look at or through it.
You can think of Eve as the culmination of a long line of characters constructed through the male gaze – explicitly or not. From Lara Croft to Kratos’ various concubines in the original God of War erotic mini-games in the trilogy, many of the women in the video games were designed to be viewed. This is very true in the previous game Shift Up, Child of destinywhich featured many anime women who could cosplay.
That’s why you’ll be able to see NSFW Eve’s almost naked skin as a highlight of such characters. This makes the game tougher excluding Eve’s shield, nevertheless Wilde believes this will act as more of an incentive than a deterrent. She enjoys the subversion of the stereotype of female armor in games being a metallic bikini while male armor is full chain mail. “I like to see where form and content fit together. I really like it as a game mechanic,” he says. However, “there’s this attitude that you have to play on the hardest mode, which shows you’re a real gamer,” so he doesn’t think it’ll be seen as a thoughtful play on the trail, but just one other badge of honor to gather with the added bonus of looking on Eve in fewer clothes.
There is also a specific kind of orientalism around Starblade. Some people stick around Starblade How an antidote to the awakening of Western gamingAND many individuals commented they’d buy the Japanese version Starblade to secure access to the region-exclusive Japanese dub, regardless that it is a Korean game with Korean dubbing.
“Is it because it’s hard to get, so you’re a bigger gamer or fan if you can show that you went to great lengths to get that version?” Denny asks. “Is it because there is special respect for the Japanese voice cast? This could be part of those generous readings. Or is it because Korean femininity does not have the same connotations for the Western colonial imagination as Japanese femininity? It’s almost like fulfilling the fantasy of puppeteering this attractive woman, dressing her in certain outfits and positioning the camera just right, she has to be Japanese.”
Based on social media reactions to reports about Ewa’s body and outfits, clips of the way her buttocks and thighs move as she climbs ladders – that is all amid opposition to games featuring diverse characters and bodies — many heterosexual men appear to think of themselves as the legitimate target market, and more Starbladebut video games typically.
Statistics show that this is simply not true. From 2023 approx 50 percent of individuals who play games are women. Shift Up’s assumption of an all-male audience and its explicit concentrate on the male gaze is actually a marketing move that intentionally attracts a huge number of potential players.
“If manufacturers want to make video games exclusively for a male audience, it’s really unwise because they’re discouraging a huge demographic,” Wilde says. “With GamerGate, it was this idea of, ‘You’re taking away our culture.’ It’s not your culture, it’s everyone’s culture. Female gamers are nothing new, women have always played games. [There’s] a fight for dominance where there was never really any dominance.”
The truth is that many individuals – men, women, non-binary, straight and queer – find Eve attractive. However, the way Starblade is advertised, attracts new GamerGate 2 fans, and Eve is used as a cudgel to bash other heroines and even journalists, like Alyssa Mercante from Kotaku.
Ultimately, we cannot make certain whether Eve will or is not going to cross the line of male fantasy and feminine empowerment until the game is over. Characters like Lara Croft, Bayonetta, 2B, and Tifa have received criticism for his or her appearance, but while you mix them with a well-written personality and story, exciting gameplay, and interesting side characters or villains, they turn out to be greater than the sum of their parts.
That’s why Wilde reserves judgment. I would like to see how Starblade formulates Eve’s relationship with NPCs in the game and thinks that “it’s not just about whether your hero is beautiful, physically fit and so on. Also question: Is your villain scarred, disabled and overweight? Where do you look in other areas to avoid these stereotypes and look for other elements of inclusive play and representation?”
Denny thinks game companies could broaden their horizons when it comes to appeal. Instead of simply catering to the male gaze and creating hourglass figures and jiggly bits, why not consider muscular mommies, daddy bodies, and disabled people? More representation of body types does not necessarily mean less attractive.
“It’s not about making games less sexy,” he says. “The idea is to make gaming sexier for more people.”
Credit : www.inverse.com
