Saints Row the Third's surprisingly gender neutral marketing.

Yeah, their attractive ladies, but that don't mean they can't TCB.


So recently Jezebel posted an interesting article on the movie poster used for the Avengers movie.  You know, this one:

and they linked to a deviant art image that someone created that posed the male characters "butt first" to illustrate the ridiculous pose of blackwidow (although looking at this poster now, it occurs to me that Hulk is also butt first, so maybe they were being symetrical...but when you consider this post, the odds are that such an assumption on my part would be incorrect):So, as these types of things sometimes do , this got me thinking of how this phenomenon manifests itself in video game marketing.  Turns out that while there is a lot of sexualized imagery, the "butt first" pose does not seem to crop up as much.  Except of course for Street Fighter's Cammy, a notorious"butt poser": In fact there are several cases where the female characters are portrayed in poses that are similar to their male counter parts.  
One particularly surprising example of gender equality is Saints Row the Third.   Saint's Row is  interesting to me from an anthropological standpoint.  They have never shied away from the sort of pandering marketing that video games are famous for.  For Saints Row 2, the marketing department hired pornstar Tera Patrick as a "producer". 
 As someone who has aspired to become a producer myself, I found this honorarium to add a bit of insult to injury.  The relationship between Saints Row and sex worker spokesmodels continued with Saints Row the Third, when they hired Niki Benz and Justine Joli to introduce the initiation station: 






Additionally, at E3 2011, the marketing team for Saints Row the Third gave everyone free parking across from the convention center and offered bikini car washes branded by the in game auto shop "Rim Jobs":

Inside the convention, girls walked around with shirts saying "I Love Rim Jobs" and handing out "Strap it On" bumper stickers:

So when I played Saints Row the Third I was surprised to find that the issue of sexuality and gender equality was handled admirably.  Volition gives you the option to play as a male or female character and despite that fact that your running around with "hos" and talking about installing stripper poles, it doesn't really seem like the female avatar is out of place as a leader.  The voice over for the female avatar is strong, funny, and flirty but not any more so than her male counterpart.  This equality is also apparent in the marketing material for saints row the third.


And this sort of gender equality isn't new to the series.  Here's some promo art for the first Saints Row:



Let's take a look at this image for a minute.  First off, the most striking thing is the fact that the Saints embrace diversity.  You don't see the sort of white washed character design that you get in most gangs.  Especially when you consider that the leader and 2nd in command of the saints are a black man and an asian man.  The only (presumably) white individual in this image is off to the side not front and center.   The woman in this image is wearing less clothes than here male companions, but her stance is still as confrontational as her counterparts.  While slightly feminized her body position is not overtly sexualized.


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The official image of the rival gang the Vice Kings is more problematic.  The only woman in this gang is wearing an extremely sexualized outfit with huge heels, thigh highs, mini skirt and is posing with a ridiculous open mouth duck face.  It's not hard to imagine the Saint pictured above being able to fight in her sporty spice pants, but this girl would be hard pressed to hold her own without quickly losing her balance.



One of the central characters, Shaundi (pictured above) first showed up in Saints Row 2.  In that game she was a bit more of a stoner than she is in the third game where she seems to have grown up a bit, or maybe the school of hard knocks has toughened her up.  In Saints row she was portrayed as sexy,   bikini top, low rise jeans, etc, but even in the official wallpaper she's showed with the typically male gesture of crossed arms, facing the viewer, making eye contact and basically being as tough as the male saints she rolls with:





In Saint's Row the Third, Shaundi's character is fairly complex, she's dealing with loss and anger and pain in a way that is surprisingly heart felt for such a wacky action game.  In Saints Row the Thrid's marketing, Shaundi is often portrayed in action shots alongside her male companions and in most cases the poses, while fanciful are not the sort of hyper sexualized "pin up" pose seen on most movie posters.  Her are some examples of Shandi (sadly minus her dread locks) front and center:














 Now, Shaundi is obviously wearing an outfit that conforms to a certain awareness of the male gaze.  But given the outrageous nature of her fellow saints her get up not as out of place as something like this: 

or this:
But shandi isn't the only female character in saints row that is allowed to be as bad ass as their male counter parts.  Here are some other examples:





The way that Viola is holding the machine gun in that first image is leering a bit towards the phallic object pin up, but in the second images she and her sister are seen blasting away white the demure Phillipe stands in the background occupying the typically feminine role of bemused onlooker.  The last image is pretty great as well, the female in this scene is snarling and there doesn't seem to be anything overtly sexy about her, despite the fetishized cheerleader outfit.  But the person showing the most skin in this image is the oiled up luchador so it's kind of a toss up.
I suspect it's this egalitarian portrayal of hte heroines of Saints Row the Third that inspired cosplayers like deviant artist youronlydoll to choose Shaundi for her latest project.  As you peruse  a few shots of her in character ask yourself if any other video games let women have as much fun as Saints Row the Third.






Update:  Yeah, so the next DLC was just announced, I'll post the trailer here without comment, but ahem.

What's makes a game truly great chainsaws or chainmail bikinis?

Over on the Girls Entertainment Network, good old Aktrez has posted an interesting editorial on sex in games. While I suspect that it's as much about driving traffic to her site as it is about her interest in the subject, I was still compelled to leave a comment. It turned into such an epic that I decided to repost it here:

First off, I wouldn't say that there isn't also a lot of blowback about sexualized music and television pop culture.

Having worked at both a record store and a video rental store I can say that I heard a lot of vitriol and concern from parents when it came to sexual content. I can defiantly tell you that most parents at the video store could care less about graphic violence...but god forbid you recommend a move for the family that has even the remotest sexual content.

The same can be said for the sort of virgin slut pop starlets of the late 90s. I remember several parents trying to return britney and christina albums that heir daughters had purchased because they didn't approve of the message (such as it was).

having said that. I agree that the same attitude is present when it comes to the general publics view of video games.

but I think it's amplified for three reasons:

1. The average member of "the public" may not be as familiar with video games as they are with other forms of media (hence the popular "What ever happened to Pac Man?" mantra)

2. The perception by the average member of "the public" that video games are "for kids". I don't need to belabor this...you all know the reality is that much like other media Games are enjoyed by all sorts of people old and young, and like other media there are games for kids and there are games that are obviously only for adults.

3. This is the big one, interactivity. I think that the general public is most uncomfortable with the idea that games let you "act out" some of these acts. Take the Mass Effect flap. It seemed like much of the criticism was phrased to emphasize the fact that the player could "choose" to do all this crazy sex. And that the player "takes part" in rape etc.
There is something about interactivity that makes people uncomfortable.

like it's somehow less harmful for people to watch violent movies than it is for them to play violent games, because the interaction somehow trains or conditions them. The same goes for sex. I mean even I have to say that it'd be one thing to watch a movie about a sexually aggressive deviant than it would to actually play a game where I was behaving like a sexually aggressive deviant. Even if I know that I can tell the difference between right and wrong. the "free will" or "choice" aspect is a very powerful element of gaming that can not be underestimated.

In the end though it is basically our right to enjoy media that we pay for. If I want to play a bunch of deviant sex sims...or even if I just want to play a game that has mature themes of romance and love...then I have a right to do so without being legislated and persecuted for doing so.

The Emulator effect.

So Nine Inch Nails released an album over the weekend.

As usual you can download it or remix it.

Basically Trent is doing everything right with his recent releases. He's giving us the choice of several high quality digital formats. He's giving us the choice of a simple CD or an elaborate special editions like those he released for Ghosts which Bractune describes as "The greatest special edition box set I've seen. Ever." Trent's allowing us to remix his entire album (not just the single) using huge libraries of high quality digital audio.

So why is it that I feel a little underwhelmed by the whole thing? Why is it that I couldn't even be bothered to listen to the whole album that I downloaded for free?

It could be a number of things. It could be that I'm 31 years old now and don't have the teen angst and anguish over unrequited love that I had back in high school. Hell, Trent even seems to be singing about the loss of angsty intensity in my so far "favorite after a half listen to the new album" song "Discipline".

It could be that I've bought ever single Nine Inch Nails CD since the beginning of time and I'm seriously starting to get a sense of diminishing returns. I mean. If you loved Nine Inch Nails in 95. All that stuff is still there to love now. They haven't pulled a Gwen Stefani and basically butchered and killed everything you liked about the band in an effort to reinvent themselves for the 21st century. Unlike, let's say, Radiohead for the sake of argument, Nine Inch Nails also hasn't really explored to much new with their music in the last 10 years. I mean Ghosts was a "departure", but it was still recognizable as Nine Inch Nails. It wasn't like the difference between Kid A and Pablo Honey.

I think ultimately what's killing my enjoyment of Nine Inch Nails is the same thing that's killing the record industry as a whole. And that is basically the "something for nothing" blues. I understand this first hand working as I do in the software industry. We are facing the same sort of problems. With games moving largely to the Console due to piracy.

But it isn't just piracy. I think it's the fact that the internet has also given us as consumers the ability to plug in and listen on demand to whatever we want, when we want. I sit at work all day and listen to shout cast feeds. These feeds are all divided by genre's so specific I wonder that anyone would take the time to set them up. But rest assured there is a radio station that plays all Commodore 64 SID Chip music. We no longer have to listen all day to the radio to hear the one song we like. We no longer have to buy a whole 15 dollar album for ONE song. If we like it we can buy it for 99c. We can make discs of nothing but random songs that we really like.

And this means the end of herding listeners into genre gettos. Becca listens to all kinds of crazy stuff. From hip hop to metal to Jazz to techno, I mean she's all over the place. And I think increasingly everyone is.

And the slap back effect is that it's hard to devote ones self to being a fan of one band and it's albums because our tendency now is to mash it all up and super consume it all.

I can't remember the last time I had a CD in my car player for longer than a couple of days. It's like I just dont' need to be that dedicated to one CD because the investment for me now is TIME not Money. And practically all I listen to is radio streams at work and podcasts in my car.

It's what I call the emulator effect. Back in the late 90s when emulators started to appear that were finally capable of playing NES games on computers everyone who was into that sort of thing went through the emulator effect. "Shit" you'd think "All these games are only 4k I can download the ENTIRE NES catalog on my Zip Disc". And then you did that. And then you played them all. For about five minutes each. maybe. The thing is, when you are a kid and you buy a 50 dollar game. You play the shit out of that game. YOu love that game. When I was a kid I had Renegade, a game which just came out for Wii's Virtual Console to universally bad reviews. But I remember loving that game. Because I HAD to love that game. I had no choice. I wasn't going to get another game till my birthday so I better play that game till my hands blistered.

But when you have these games for free on an emulator you start to get really picky real fast. Even the greatest games like Mega man and Super Mario Bros don't hold up forever. I think I got about half way through both before I fired up Star Craft again. It's like...what's the point? And I say that being one of the biggest Retro Game fans there is. I can't explain it. But I'd rather pay for a virtual console game than emulate it for free. When I bough Super Mario Bros on Wii Virtual Console I did so knowing that I had the real NES cart in my back room and that I had the rom somewhere that I could have played for free. But I didn't care. For one thing I wanted to give Nintendo the money the deserve, but there's something about playing a game you paid hard earned money for that just makes it more enjoyable...for me at least. That's the emulator effect. When I have Nine Inch Nails album for free in 15 minutes I just don't listen to it as hard as I listened to the With Teeth album that I liked less, but paid for. go figure.

Now don't get me wrong. I still buy CDs. I think the CD is the best format to get music in for the time being (maybe DVD in 5.1).

With a CD I get lossless audio, the ability to port it to whatever platform I choose, and I don't have to worry about data lost or corruption or DRM that switches off my ability to listen to music in a month.

But having said that, the only CDs I buy are mostly of bands I liked before 2000.

Depeche Mode, Portishead, Nine Inch Nails, etc. I do still buy albums for industrial bands I like...but good luck finding even combichrist or VNV at best buy. I've been forced to buy all this crap from the UK since even Amazon is starting to slip. And I will NOT buy mp3s from iTunes or some other low quality DRM filled shit service.

Forget it.

Reznor gets it. he sells his CDs on his site. he gives me formats I want. I'm happy to give him my money. I wish all artists did this.

Now I just need to force myself to not switch win amp back over to Space Station Soma.