WARNING THE FOLLOWING VIDEO
MAY CONTAIN SCENES OF ANCIENT ARTISTIC NUDITY THAT WILL BE PURELY FACTUAL IN NATURE
and decidedly not arousing in any way shape or form
If you expect to be tantalised titillated or otherwise thrilled
you will not be
unless you have a strange affinity for thought provoking discussion on classical antiquity
in which case go WILD!
Anyway viewer discretion is advised
[Music]
hello internet
welcome to game theory the show that likes to keep you on your toes
by saying we'll do part 2 on the wii u but then decide to push that off til next week
maybe it's a strategic decision or maybe I just get distracted easily like a
squirrel chasing nuts
this is already shaping up to be a fun one now I don't know about you guys but
recently I've been smitten with smite it's a free-to-play multiplayer online
battle arena game mo ba for short
and if the acronym MOBA also brings to mind more letters like LOL and dota
you'd be R IG HT but smite is different than the rest of the alphabet soup
oh sure there are still the requisite three lanes and central jungle area that
I as an admitted noob to the genre still have no clue what to do with but the key
design feature that makes SMITE stand out from the MOBA crowd is that it's set
in the third person rather than from a top-down perspective that simple camera
change makes the game feel much faster and incredibly more action-packed like a
satisfying mix of God of War lemmings and bloons tower defense
so a free game with unique and satisfying action
definitely the reason I started playing but what really sold me was the concept
hi-rez Studios the developer and publisher of the game made a ballsy
decision to have their versions of Heroes champions mega evolutions be
God's from various religions and mythologies ranging from chinese and
Egyptian to norris Hindu and even mayan
it's like a super smash brothers crusade edition
now as someone who appreciates a smart game this was certainly something that I
instantly latched on to seeing both visual and behavioral references to the
character source material was something i really liked and being exposed to
God's I never heard of like the Mayan a shack
cha hack hack shawk shawk
AKA Thor with a lightning axe was pretty darn awesome
but not everyone was as appreciative as i was in 2012 the game started to come
under fire from some members of the Hindu community upset that their deities
were included as playable characters the goddess Kali became the central figure
in this debate as news blogs chidded smite for her over-sexualization calling
her a victim of pornification for the sake of attracting a young male
demographic
hi res stayed firm at first but eventually had to change a few of the
character designs in response to the outcry my question though is this
were they actually wrong is the design of Kali the other shapely females of the
smite universe merely slices of video game cheesesteak
sorry uh cheesecake two very different things there or was this a case of a
Miss informed media looking for a hot story and ignoring all the facts
let's start with kali since she's the focal point of the controversy
looking at her original character design she's um she's a huh
what was I saying oh uh yeah let's just say the under boob is strong with this
one
so at first glance i could see why people were in a titty over
whoo okay uh so at first glance i can see why people were in a tizzy about
this design but then look at this this is a classic representation of
kali
so is this
and this one to notice anything about the way she's portrayed or rather don't
notice anything like clothes for example in most depictions kali is clad with
just a skirt and a well-placed necklace of skulls in fact she's quite beautiful
for a multi-armed blue skin to snake tongue God adorned and severed heads and
limbs but hey maybe you're into that sort of thing
you see it all goes back to Kali's lore in Hinduism Kali is Sanskrit for she
who is black and is commonly associated with death violence sexuality and
motherly love
huh one of these things is not like the other anyway she first appears in
Sanskrit culture during a battle between the goddess Durga and the demon
she's um rock Toby ah
Rack rack to be aja rock rock me amadeus broke the beach
whatever they just said AKA blood seed much cooler
every time dergah struck the demon drops of blood would fall to the ground and a
clone of the rock would form can i just say what an awesome boss battle this
sounds like by the way anyway
it moves straight out of final fantasy dergah used angry brow and her furrowed
forehead some and kali kali literally used lick to catch the drops of blood
which prevented any more of the clones from forming allowing Durga and Kali to
win the battle gain 3,000 XP and ten gold with this being Collies most famous
story the original moveset hi res gave her and smite mirror this lure
specifically the move siphon blood
see she captured blood the story to defeat our enemies and she siphons blood
in the game
to also defeat our enemies. Historical references at work
so the moveset coupled with the severed heads, the blue-skinned multiple
arms, curved blades, all in all smites characterization of Kali closely
resembles the historical inspiration, accusing the game of pornifying her
when the source material is already topless--seems a bit extreme--but Kali
isn't the only goddess here with the design that leaves little to the
imagination
so maybe there's more evidence of pornifying at work trying uh huh
alright ancient cultures man i love them but the names just kill me a net
it's it's got to be neth right no NEITH Jesus
Oh man he should totally be in this game as a healer! No? All right, give it time
anyway, Neith is one of my favorite characters in the game and is labeled as
the Egyptian weaver of fate if Kali's alt was under boob are Egyptian Archer
here is spamming the side but again
is this just fanservice for the frequenters of deviantart
to hi res credit it isn't check out the way she was portrayed throughout ancient
Egyptian art
Oh yeah! Look at that *who...* Like playboy, 2600 BC seriously though
Again, we see a beautiful, well-figured goddess, who just so happens to be
topless and this is perfectly normal for the time
Ancient Egyptian women often wore simple sheath dresses called "kalasiris." The
dresses were held up by one or two straps and were worn down to the ankle
while the upper edge could be more and above, or in this case, below the breasts
beading was often used for embellishment of course a game can't have topless
women and tight sheath dresses shimmying being from lane to lane
so high res did the tasteful thing and covered Neith with something fitting for
her origins draping her in a light linen cloth which was a common material
throughout ancient Egypt then embellishing her with beads and adding
strap-like detailing to hearken back to those old dresses
the thing on her head, well, Neith was the goddess of war and of hunting
as such, he had as their symbol two arrows crossed over a shield in ancient
Egyptian art she's often wearing that emblem on her head
see the two arrows and a shield? ok so maybe there's a bit of artistic license there
but still
hi res recreated that exact emblem right there and the similarities are more than
just pixels deep
true to her origin as goddess of hunting Neith is an archer in the game that why
do you ask if she called the Weaver of eight
well apparently we're not the only one to have a difficult time telling what
that thing on her head is
I mean an oval and two curvy lines doesn't scream to be shielded two arrows
anyway later generations of Egyptians had a hard time telling what that was -
because her symbol looked a bit like a weaving loom when you squinted at it the
right light and because her name spelled out in hieroglyphics included a
character that looked very similar to a device used for weaving later
generations of Egyptians just assume that she was also a goddess of weaving
in fact this resulted in a complete class change
she went from being a water-based daddy representative of the waters of creation
to the goddess responsible for weaving the entire world into existence on her
loom with smite took this whole backstory and ran with it giving her
powers to represent both of her forms spirit arrow to represent the Huntress
and world Weaver unravel and broken we've to represent the seamstress of the
world overall and accurate and all-encompassing portrayal it seems like
the only thing they didn't include a reference to is that she's sometimes
picture
nursing a baby crocodile why they didn't include any reference to that is beyond
me
so the game is batting 2 for 2, sports reference, gamer reference, G.G., smite,
GG, but surely smites rendering of Aphrodite must be pure cheese cake right
i mean she's got like frilly hooker boots and sexy blonde hair all tied up, a
clear case of porn ification right let's see how she normally look a whole whole
way okay
stop it hey this is admittedly artistic mastery ok but still we live in a
puritanical age
this stuff is not fit for the eyes of the YouTube audience all rights
seriously who do you think we are Arabic boobs TV all false modesty aside though
hopefully we've proven
. here female figures in religion and mythology whether you're talking kali
aphrodite or even the Virgin Mary represent femininity fertility and
motherhood
because let's face it women are different than men
their bodies do different things and they should be celebrated for its these
figures represent idealized females for their respective societies and
oftentimes the exaggeration of their sexual attributes were meant to reflect
their roles as beautiful women
Aphrodite Greek goddess of love beauty pleasure and procreation of course she's
gonna be pictured in the nude with voluptuous curves just like she is in
the game
well except for the whole new part the flowing blond hair tied up like that
it's erotic because it's meant to be it's a reference to Botticelli's
painting the birth of venus and the frilly hooker boots a clear reference to
her being born from the sea
see how they look like pins happily there is no reference to the back story
there where Cronus cuts off Uranus is little space rocket meteorites throwing
them all into the sea which results in Aphrodite arising from the sea foam that
would require a much different character skin
speaking of i prefer afro d myself
so overall quite contrary to the claims of this being shameless pandering to a
male audience the way smite designed and equipped its characters was well in line
with both the goddesses lore and historical depictions in an industry
filled with cup sizes larger than the national debt
smite took the high road and made female characters that had powers beyond jiggle
physics reading through the website is a prime example of tangential learning at
its finest it's clear the designers took great care to consider every aspect of
the Gods floor when creating these pages that said look at the new design for
Kali
she looks like a female Valkyrie feeling much more north than Hindu her attacks
are fine but nothing feels uniquely her own time back to that origin story we
talked about the tragic irony of this whole controversy is that before she was
Kali goddess of destruction
fueled by blood and war now she's a melee assassin
with high single target damage by demanding the character change because
they were afraid of her being a stereotype they turn the character and
what the most feared a stereotype
so what have we learned today hopefully a lot but if there's one moral to the
story I think it's this from here on out video game industry
you should strive to treat every female character like a goddess
but hey that's just a theory a game theory
thanks for watching
welcome back to the super amazing and card tournament after a long hiatus last
time if you can remember that far back
you overwhelmingly chose to have your leg ripped off and get beaten to death
with it rather than getting an explosive punch to the groin
all i can say that result is huh this week we're playing the 8-bit dating game
who would you rather take out on a date: Kali, Neith, or Aphrodite?
I don't know they're all pretty intimidating if you ask me or if you
prefer males: Shock: he makes it rain he makes it rain Thunder axe or Thor second
fiddle to Loki thunder hammer
click on one to choose and next week the thrilling conclusion to the virtual boy
wii-u episode. Talk to you again in a few days