Tom of Gameland: have game characters become so butch they’re cartoonish?
Mariel Hurd on how 'there are entire game worlds populated by grunting proto-humans' and 'exaggerated masculinity in games has reached the point where it’s borderline fetishistic'.
If, like me, you’ve been gazing at that picture of Max Payne in faint bemusement (possibly wondering where his suit went and what asshole slipped him those steroids), you might’ve been too busy to notice similar imagery in other games. To sum it up: butch is big, and so are the male character designs.
Max’s transformation from a whiny angstbucket in cheap polyester to Interchangeable Gritty Mercenary 375 is disappointing, but hardly comes as a surprise. Games design has been heading down this track for a long time. If they’ve got muscles, put muscles on top of those and if they don’t, re-write the character until they do. Gamers are, apparently, incapable of enjoying a character who couldn’t moonlight as a bungalow.
This is bullshit.
Older games prove we’re brighter than that. Uber-macho characters have always existed – series like Quake and Doom are an integral part of games history – but the art and writing style didn’t always dominate the big titles. Halo: Combat Evolved’s dialogue co-existed with No One Lives Forever, and Serious Sam’s jaw line was contrasted by Morrowind’s everyday proportions, but over recent years the testosterone levels have been creeping up. Using Elder Scrolls to illustrate, you can see how the basic male body design has ballooned in recent years:
Morrowind, 2002. Oblivion, 2006. Skyrim, 2011 (bulkiest male build).
Bethesda hadn’t yet jumped on the bandwagon when they released Fallout 3 in 2008, but when Skyrim rolled around it took a hairpin turn onto Beefcake Highway. The female bodies are tiny by comparison; like a Shetland Pony beside a Shire Horse. Huge hulking dudes combined with waify women isn’t new, but it’s intriguing how one seems to beget the other. Bulking up the men often goes hand in hand with shrinking the women, like there’s a finite amount of body mass in the world and Marcus Fenix needs to fill out his 52W, 44L jeans.
The scrawniest dude in Skyrim is an average Wastelander, but the most muscular woman...
The bulging musculature is a heinous crime against anatomy, but the real atrocity is how ugly it is. I’m all for stylisation in character design, but when you’re starting to look like some of Games Workshop’s more unfortunate artwork this is a fashion that’s gone too far. Steroids McManly should be able to put his arms at his sides without them clipping into his body (even fictional characters are entitled to some basic self respect).
To get the full affect, picture this guy naked. Now stop clawing at your face.
I’m tempted to call the style Tom of Finland-esque, but that would be insulting to a good artist. He produced classic gay iconography; the games industry’s aspiration seems to be ‘Rob Liefeld, but without the pouches’. Right now, Tom of Finland is across the room, sipping a martini and shooting you distrustful glances out of the corner of his eye.
Sorry, Cable. You were too damn tall for this picture.
The art style isn’t to my tastes, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. Unfortunately it often is, but where it gets truly painful is the writing. Action clichés get substituted for dialogue and ‘he’s a stoic sarcastic cynic’ is used to patch over the gap where a developed character should be. It’s an excuse for writers to churn out stale one-liners, and dramatic raaaaaage is easier to animate than genuine grief.
Settings don’t get off lightly either. There are entire game worlds populated by grunting proto-humans1 who’ve never seen colourful clothing and would probably pronounce it gay if they did. Whether a pre-existing universe fits the new style is irrelevant; it can (and often will) simply be retconned or ignored, with varying degrees of brutality. Hence Max Payne inexplicably becoming a mercenary in Brazil, or the mythology-based political intrigue of Morrowind being replaced by the gritty dragon-fighting of Skyrim. (Which is great if you happen to like those flavours of grimdark, but the destruction of old properties to produce them seems a terrible waste of a world.)
The trend’s laid down some pretty deep roots, but to be honest I’m not interested in how we got here so much as why we’re staying. It’s a writing style which favours the lazy, but I can’t believe that’s the motive of every game designer doing it.
(Admittedly, this is probably self-delusional. Never attribute to malice what you can to stupidity.)
One reason might be that it’s a power fantasy seen in everything from comics to rock bands. Being unstoppably badass is an idea we can all get behind, and popular culture often links that with heavy musculature. Unless it’s a female character, in which case physical strength is symbolised by wedge heels.
Another is game companies massively underestimating the intelligence of their consumer base. Not to say that liking macho characters makes you thick, but developers often aim for what they consider to be the lowest common denominator and ‘guns, gore and none of that writing shit’ about sums it up. I don’t think gamers are sissyphobic dickwads who need to be placated with action film clichés, but how many companies do?
The last is that this is really, truly the most popular character type in gaming. If this is the case we might as well end it all now, but I don’t believe it for a second. The vocal fanbase for Thief’s Garrett, Half Life 2’s entire cast, Portal’s GlaDOS and Wheatley, Broken Sword’s George Stobbart, Monkey Island’s Guybrush Threepwood, and approximately eight million more which I won’t keep listing says otherwise.
My theory for the visual style is simple: many sins can be laid at the door of too little outside influence on games. When you spend day after day looking at these images your sense of reality quietly shifts until Solid Snake becomes your pattern for a standard male body type, so when you want to make a character look strong and imposing you make him a little bigger than the ‘norm’. Over time, the baseline standards creep up and up like an arms race; each competitor inflating his biceps a little more each round.
As for the writing? I don’t know. I’m hoping you can tell me, friendly readers, because my best guess is a mixture of a common enough power-fantasy that developers can coast by on it, how easy it is to write, and an inexplicable worship of brainless power tops.
Whatever the cause, exaggerated masculinity in games has reached the point where it’s borderline fetishistic. Characters force War Is Hell platitudes out between their gritted teeth, redshirts die, and ‘aw shit’ is used as both the punchline and its build-up. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so goddamn bland.
1 This was ‘Neanderthals’, but my pre-history archaeologist flatmate informed me2 that they were actually remarkably intelligent.
2 Bleated at me all day.
Mariel Hurd is a console-shunning queer feminist with too much time on her hands. She likes to fill it with wargaming, RPGs and forming unpopular opinions.
Got a theory on masculinity in games? Do the current fashions in game design tantalise or torment you? Just want to tell the writer she’s an idot/brilliant/made a typo? Come one, come all.
7:52 pm 15th December, 2011
“Just want to tell the writer she’s an idot/brilliant/made a typo?”
…’Idot’ should be ‘idiot’. Nice job typo-ing it, hero.
4:47 pm 15th December, 2011
Interesting read. I agree with all of it except for the commentary on GamesWorkshop. I understand what you were tryingto say, but that universe has been around for over 20 years and has always been an extremely stylized world of over-the-top violence. The space marine pictured isn’t even human, they are intended to be disproportionate superhumans.
As for comments on the current state of writing in video games, I think it has suffered because good writing requires the ability to create a mood and atmosphere, both of hich are difficult to create effectively in a game.
5:57 pm 15th December, 2011
Your an idiot. I work out myself and I am eaily more muscluer then at least skyrim characters maybe not on full bullkness but still I’ve seen plenty of men at the gym that blow those characters out of the water. I don’t know maybe your jelous that your to lazy to work out and not strong yourself, but it’s easily realistic to have bodies like that just with a little hard work
6:25 pm 15th December, 2011
They’re NORDS…. Nordic people are supposed to be beefcake! lol The funny thing is seeing bulky Elves… the Orcs make sense… but yeah BEEFCAKE!!
6:36 pm 15th December, 2011
Very interesting article. In general, I’m in agreement. I’ve always preferred my characters – male or female – to be on the compact and wiry side, especially since my playstyle is generally somewhere between the Mage and Thief spheres or their equivalents. Now that I think about it, that might be a subconscious reason why I have yet to create a male character in Skyrim – it’s impossible to go below a certain level of bulk. On the flip side, they have those ridiculous breast-cups on female armors. Not much of a choice there. (Although, that said, I rather like the game, and I think there’s more depth to the story than bashing dragons on the snout if you know where to look.)
To be honest, I detest this trend almost as much as the oversexualization of female characters. For females, it’s usually skimpy or impractical ‘clothing’ and ridiculous balloon chests; for males, it’s… occasionally skimpy clothing, but more prominently, well, this. I envision my characters (female OR male) to be streamlined, slender, and every bit as tough as they should be – but with none of that extraneous mass getting in the way.
A lot of these things seem to be designed primarily to cater to overly hormonal teenagers. It’s tough to stomach sometimes – I’m of the opinion that the popular concepts of masculinity and femininity are mostly (particularly distasteful) social constructs anyway.
To me, badass is being a dozen times faster and smarter than everyone else – not being built like two oxen stacked on top of each other. Knowing half a dozen ways to reduce people to a fine powder without laying a single hand on them helps, too. Shame the industry doesn’t seem to think that way.
7:45 pm 15th December, 2011
None of those pictures are overly muscular…have you taken the time to look at the real world? Men have muscles even those buff fat ones, even the skinny nothing but bone guys have abs. His arm isn’t even buff or near steroid level…it’s more toned or ripped like he has a high repetition of low to medium weights in his work out. Take a look at John Cena or Batista to compare what a steroid arm looks like lol.
7:46 pm 15th December, 2011
My God.
There is literally NOTHING left to complain about in video games.
Get a new hobby for heavens sake.
9:39 pm 15th December, 2011
Personally, I’m glad for the shift from the david and goliath stereotype. Granted I don’t like max payne’s sudden transformation to bruce willis from, what was it, die hard 2? lol but I’m happy. I’ve always been big. I was large for my age and suffered a lot of abuse for it in school, and always through the years wondering, why is the only character in this game I can physically relate to the freaking bad guy?! My current complaint in games at the moment is why have they taken all our design control?! We could all be happy with the addition of 3 slide bars in character creation. One for fat, one for muscle and one for hight. All the oblivion system needed was this and for me at least it would have been perfect. For the npcs of skyrim I have to agree with a previous comment. The nord people are supposed to be the primary competition for the orcs in size and strength. And you don’t have to be ripped in this game if you don’t want to.
I don’t have anything negative to say about this post. It was well written and an enjoyable read for a rant. I was just as frustrated when circumstances were reversed. It’s all personal preference and I’m still hoping we get those 3 slide bars cause I’m itching to play a character that looks like a dwarf, where one shouldn’t be!
9:40 pm 15th December, 2011
Stylistic designs while always an overt concern of videogame artists are sometimes shackled to the constraints of the technology. Whilst I agree that the woman are often depicted as waif like (albeit with enormous boobies!) the fact the men , particularly in the case of Skyrim, are beefed up can be linked to the amount of pixels that modern devs have to throw at their character models. Doesn’t excuse the fact that devs still think in terms of stereotypes but gotta do something with those extra polygons (like the original Lara Croft- crazy amount of polygons the Playstation had to throw about compared to previous generations so they had to go somewhere-cue stereotypical gamer demographic of sweaty palmed teenager) Oh and if any of your grunting, testosterone addled semi-literate negative commentators want to disagree my 300 pound bench press PB and a swift back hand will soon sort ‘em out ( oh and of course I’ll speak nice to them afterwards about keeping their comments civil)
8:51 pm 15th December, 2011
You bring up some interesting points here. Of course there are a number of games that are outside of this argument (Mario and the like) however there are a lot of games that I think this is something that should be looked at. There are a number of characters that use brains over brawn, and that should be reflected in their build.
6:23 pm 15th December, 2011
The main problem I see with this article is that the thesis has promise, but her supporting arguments are absurd. Yes, we have seen games recently move from a fat plumber, to a grizzled detective, to hyper-muscled killing machines… but the main complaint is that the author finds lots of muscles unattractive.
You could make the case that the popularity of video games has made male youth much more sedentary and apathetic to the real world, so the young male lives out their masculine hegemonic fantasies through digital entertainment instead of sports, etc. Also, the increasing gender-neutrality of society could be causing a subconscious movement back to more traditionally masculine ideals. But then again, how do you explain Angry Birds? Deep inside, do we all strive to commit swineicide via corpulent chickens?
The truth is hegemonic masculinity in fiction, regardless of medium, has existed for not a few decades, but THOUSANDS OF YEARS. The original angsty Max Payne was a glitch in the Matrix, not an example of it. Remember Arnold Swarzenegger in the 80′s? John Wayne before him? Horatio Hornblower? King Arthur? FUCKING HERCULES, SON OF ZEUS? Even Mario murdered thousands of enemies, bashed stone to cinders WITH HIS HEAD, and saved the poor helpless damsel is distress. All of these are exaggerated depictions of masculine fantasy, and all predate the modern trend back towards masculine fiction.
6:26 pm 15th December, 2011
Was this article poorly written and very incoherent or am I crazy?
Also, this author is clearly a bitchy cunt with no sense of direction. There is no clear thesis, she is a rambling loon, and her links are to Amazon. Thanks for including a hyperlink to the Amazon sales page of Max Payne, you plebeian.
Sorry…this article is worse than feminism pop trash. And a lot of feminism trash is predicated on fancy linguistics and incoherent ramblings that could be summed up in a single paragraph using common language. This article could be summed up in one sentence, but is one long winded fart. Err…I mean queef.
Not only do I think she has no point, but she writes like a bitch. Double whammy.
You could make a legit argument that gaming portrays a falsely masculine archetype…and I bet there are great articles out there on the topic. If she has a journal degree…she should consider a career change.
6:30 pm 15th December, 2011
The main problem I see with her article is that the thesis has promise, but her supporting arguments are absurd. Yes, we have seen games recently move from a fat plumber, to a grizzled detective, to hyper-muscled killing machines… but her main complaint is that she finds lots of muscles unattractive.
You could make the case that the popularity of video games has made male youth much more sedentary and apathetic to the real world, so the young male lives out their masculine hegemonic fantasies through digital entertainment instead of sports, etc. Also, the increasing gender-neutrality of society could be causing a subconscious movement back to more traditionally masculine ideals. But then again, how do you explain Angry Birds? Deep inside, do we all strive to commit swineicide via corpulent chickens?
The truth is hegemonic masculinity in fiction, regardless of medium, has existed for not a few decades, but THOUSANDS OF YEARS. The original angsty Max Payne was a glitch in the Matrix, not an example of it. Remember Arnold Swarzenegger in the 80′s? John Wayne before him? Horatio Hornblower? King Arthur? FUCKING HERCULES, SON OF ZEUS? All of these are exaggerated depictions of masculine fantasy, and all predate the modern trend back towards masculine fiction.
Then again, she would have to pick up a book or pay attention in 6th grade English to understand any of this.
6:36 pm 15th December, 2011
I think your ability to play semantics isn’t quite as graceful as you think it is. “Becoming increasing ubiquitous” implies modernity, because they are increasing in modern times. As for confusing “heroic” and “hypermasculine”, every legendary myth I posted was both heroic and hypermasuline. Paul Bunyan was a giant to chopped down entire forests with a single blow from his axe. Doesn’t get much more hypermasculine than that, unless he picked up a few ladies at the bar afterwards. Also, traditionally heroic figures ARE hypermasculine simply because female heroic figures were few and far between (patriarchal, but true). The idea of male masculinity is built on these tales of heroism.
I’m not saying that the grunting ogre doesn’t exist in gaming, but I think you are taking few notable modern examples and trying to create a ubiquity that simply doesn’t exist while ignoring the history of the grunting ogre in masculine media content. After all, Conan the Barbarian was invented in the first half of the century.
Is it a stereotype or even a genre? Perhaps, but the explosion of social and casual gaming as well as modern intelligent heroes like Drake and even Master Chief prevent the ubiquity you claim. Let’s not even mention the Japanese RPG androgynous ladyboys or Link who is still very popular and runs around in tights and a pixie cap.
5:42 am 15th December, 2011
NORDS ARE SUPPOSE TO BE BEEFCAKES DERP.
11:30 pm 15th December, 2011
Lol highlight of the comments reel, yes it’s a reel, because it’s full of bloopers.
“Also, this author is clearly a bitchy cunt with no sense of direction”
11:33 pm 15th December, 2011
In other news, the author asks a valid question about the state of video game characters.
https://p.twimg.com/AicHM4_CQAMjAFU.jpg:large