Waifus Over Gameplay: Are Developers Spending Too Much Time on Attractive Characters?

Lisa Nguyen explores the idea of attractive characters versus gameplay

[chrisx]

Games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh, Uncharted 4 have attractive characters and great gameplay combined so its all about the devs. Top quality devs like NaughtyDog will always deliver on both fronts

[1908-PB]

Horizon Zero Dawn and attractive in the same sentence lol you must have hit your head and i notice you named all of sony's first party games, it's good to give credit to where it due but randomly calling out games just because makes no sense.

[Lord_Sloth]

I mean.... I don't know what women look like in your world but...

http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-...

...I'd hit it.

[ShockUltraslash]

Alloy is just hideous.

[Lynx0207]

Imo Alloy is one of the most beautiful women in video games.

[Relientk77]

Velvet from Tales of Berseria is a fantastic character and it has nothing to do her attractiveness. It's the things she says and does, and being motivated by revenge and vengeance. She actually does the right things for the wrong reasons and it shows that everyone has a good and evil side to them. Velvet might be the best new game character of 2017 so far.

[gangsta_red]

I am loving the new Tales game and I agree that Velvet is a bad ass character along with the rest of the cast. This is what the past few Tales games were missing, a cast of great characters that were serious but also had the humor to go along with it.

[ecchiless]

Yes you are right in this, zesteria for example is boring as hell for me, berseria in the other hand is a fresh start, Velvet~o is a great mc, the way she struggles with her decisions and how she try to alleviate her pain using "phi" is so darn good. Plus berseria have Magilou best flat chest waifu xD

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

Fire Emblem Awakening should be blamed for it.
The new fans are the one to blame. Fire Emblem had marriage system before. Only thing it didn't have was a great artist that could bring characters expression to life.

[Darkwatchman]

Fire emblem had good art and artists prior to the post-awakening era of fire emblem. It was just a different style. Just because it's not stereotypical weaboo anime art that doesn't mean it's not good art

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

Awakening didn't have weeaboo anime art so I have no idea what you're talking about. Plus Yusuke Kozaki work is nothing weeabo. Don't go throwing that term around.
https://www.google.com/sear...

Did the art for No More Heroes, several animes and other works.

[Darkwatchman]

Fire emblem awakening and fates definitely have that stereotypical weaboo look....

[DaigotheKing]

They're only spending too much time on them if they feel like they are.

[vegnadragon]

Lol, I got an idea. How about if they hire artists to do art, and programmers to create gameplay?

[AnotherProGamer]

thats what I was thinking

the people that make attractive characters aren't making the gameplay

[Pantz]

Non-attractive characters would take just as much time to make. The only way they could make them faster would be to cut corners and make them more generic with less detail. There are plenty of games with normal and ugly looking characters out there for sjw's to play if they can't handle sexy characters. These games are not yours to decide how they're made, too bad so sad.

[opinionated]

So bioware was ahead of their time when it came to andromeda? They made butt fugly characters before it was cool.

[gangsta_red]

Maybe it's just me but I just don't find anime characters 'attractive'.

[gangsta_red]

2 disagrees? I guess they think I am attracted to anime characters?

[remixx116]

I laughed at this so much.

[r2oB]

Perhaps the disagrees are because... they disagree with you. As in, they themselves find anime characters attractive. Just a thought.

[fromchildren]

Don't worry, I don't find American cartoon designs attractive either.
I also don't find attraction in American/European taste in creating ugly characters "realistic" characters #Andromeda

Speaking as a non-Westerner here.

[rainslacker]

They're stylish. Which is probably a more appropriate word for what the author is trying to express.

Attractive is kind of a hard word to use, because while they aren't ugly or anything, being attracted to a cartoon is not in everybody's mindset, so there is no way to qualify the attractiveness rating of something since there is no baseline like we'd have with say a regular person.

Personally, I wouldn't say I'm attracted to them, because they're just anime characters, and I prefer something a bit more real. But I can reasonably say if they'd be attractive or not. Typically though, I tend to look for style in my anime characters, and if that style fits into the individual work in which they reside.

[gangsta_red]

Well said and pretty much my thoughts exactly. Saying 'attractive' to a cartoon is not only weird but creepy at the same time. Especially ones drawn in anime form.

[rainslacker]

At best, I could qualify if the representation would be attractive. It's not that drawn pictures can't be representative, but the attraction is based on correlating that to what it represents. Same as if watching something suggestive is arousing. It's not that one may get their thrills from suggestive or sexy representations, just that what it represents illicits a response.

Dead or Alive is a good example. The SJW judgmental types use those who enjoy the artwork, and think it's sexy, and say those people have problems, when in fact, they're just normal.

Those that can only get aroused by these kinds of representations, and form too strong a perceived intimate connection do have other social issues though....and the judgey types tend to plop everyone into this group.

[SarcasticDuck]

does this guy actually know how much time developers are spending designing attractive characters or he's just full of sh*t? because I want an answer to that title!

[gamer7804]

no, they need to spend more time, just ask Bioware on Mass Effect Andromeda...

[senorfartcushion]

Welcome to gaming

[DVAcme]

Persona 5 is full of attractive female characters that fit into multiple anime archetypes (ditzy glamorous girl, super serious student council president, meganekko shut-in hacker, etc), and absolutely NONE of them is anything less that completely fun, interesting and fully realized as a character. Characters can be pretty and compelling. They're not mutually exclusive and it can actually add a lot to a character that they are visually appealing on top of appealing in terms of character.

[jznrpg]

Zzzz-zzzz

[quent]

It worked for Blizzard

[patterson]

As if it takes more effort to make an attractive character rather than an ugly one.

[bunfighterii]

The 'time' investment would be no more that any other character.

[TheOtherVitaOwner]

I'm not sure this idea holds water when you look at how game design works. The character designers have nothing to do with the actual gameplay for the game

[annoyedgamer]

And what about purposely ugly ones like *cough* Mass effect and Dragon Age*cough*. One would think the gameplay would be award winning...

[ShockUltraslash]

We need beautiful characters.
Not those goblins and ogres from Dragon age Inquisition and Mass Effect Adromeda.

[Technoir]

You can never have too many waifus, this article is bullshit.

[rainslacker]

Here's a truth about game development. Whether a character is attractive or ugly, it takes the same amount of time to design them, create their in game assets, create their character, create their actions in game, and program their actions in the game.

So no, too much time isn't spent on adding in attractive characters, just not enough time is spent making compelling characters....although I don't agree with the author on their choices, because it seems they have more of a problem with good looking characters than all the other things they talk about.

[CrimsonWing69]

Seriously? Like you have a problem with attractive character designs?