“Well handsome, what are we waiting for?”
If you want to get to know a character, learn about their interests, goals, or
desires, their butt is probably not going to give you that information.
It won’t tell you much about who they are, or what they’re thinking or feeling
at any given time.
But video game designers often choose to put tremendous focus on the butts of
certain characters, while going to almost absurd lengths to avoid calling attention
to the butts of others.
These carefully crafted choices developers make about camera angles and clothing
significantly impact how players think about and relate to these characters.
Third-person games with female protagonists typically display those
characters in a way that gives players a full-body view.
A classic example of this is the original Tomb Raider games, which are presented
from a third-person perspective wherein protagonist Lara Croft's entire body is
visible.
In these early Tomb Raider games, Lara's butt is typically right in the center of
the screen, a camera orientation which, along with sexualized clothing the
designers chose to outfit her in, places a tremendous amount of emphasis on that part
of her body.
In dozens of third-person games with playable female characters, the
character’s butt is brought to the forefront and that's where the player's
focus is directed.
In Batman: Arkham City for instance, the player’s gaze is drawn to Catwoman’s
behind, which is emphasized by her costume and exaggerated hip sway.
“The ceremony! The sisterhood will never forgive me if I am late.”
Golden Axe: Beast Rider makes extremely sure that we notice the protagonist’s butt
just before we take control and start playing.
And here in Tomb Raider: Underworld, to say that Lara’s butt is being emphasized
would be putting it mildly.
“Incredible. The carvings are clearly similar to early Germanic design, but this
is far older than the fifth century.”
And this happens all too often.
(“You can’t miss it.”)
Let’s contrast the way that women’s butts are emphasized with the sometimes absurd
lengths taken to cover up or hide men’s butts.
If some of this footage looks jerky, that's because in some games, trying to
get a glimpse of male character's butts can feel a bit like wrestling
with the camera.
Common ways men’s butts are hidden are by preventing the player from seeing below
the character’s waistline, or employing a more over-the-shoulder camera angle,
which has the added benefit of keeping the character's butt safely out of the frame.
The most amusing solution is to simply include a cape,
tunic,
long coat,
or very conveniently positioned piece of tattered fabric which actively prevents
the player from getting a clear or sustained look at the protagonist's butt.
For the purposes of this video I tried to get a glimpse of Batman’s rear end, but
it’s as if his cape is a high-tech piece of Wayne Industries equipment designed to
cover up his butt at all costs. I like to jokingly refer to this aspect of a male
character’s costume as the strategic butt covering.
Of course, not all games with male protagonists keep the character’s butt
obscured or out of frame like these games do.
The real issue is one of emphasis and definition.
A significant portion of third-person games with female protagonists call
attention to those characters’ butts in a way that’s meant to be sexually appealing
to the presumed straight male player.
In this regard, the way that women's bodies are depicted
is significantly different from the way that men's bodies are depicted.
There are a few examples of male protagonists who are wearing clothing that
calls attention to their butts, but for the most part, men’s butts,
even when visible in the frame, are deemphasized.
Plenty of male heroes wear baggy pants or jeans.
Uncharted’s Nathan Drake among them, but nothing about his visual design or the
jeans he's wearing encourages you to focus on his butt as some sort of
defining aspect of his character.
By contrast, this emphasis on the butts of female characters communicates to
players that this is what’s important, this is what you should be
paying attention to.
It communicates that the character is a sexual object designed for players
to look at and enjoy.
And by explicitly encouraging you to ogle and objectify the character,
the game is implicitly discouraging you from identifying directly with her.
Strategic butt coverings and camera angles that obscure characters' rear ends are not
an accident. They are a conscious decision made with great care, and the flipside of
this is that designers often do the opposite when the protagonist is female.
This difference in how male and female characters are framed often extends into
the advertisements and box covers.
Women’s butts are front and center, and it’s even become a depressing joke that
their bodies are twisted and contorted in uncomfortable or unnatural ways
so that their breasts and butt can be visible in the same shot.
In contrast, when men are depicted from behind, there is great effort taken to
cover up their rear end, often with other images or shadows.
Of course, female characters can also be framed in ways that aren’t objectifying.
A good example of this is the episodic adventure game Life Is Strange, in which
the protagonist’s butt isn’t emphasized or centralized.
The camera angles work in conjunction with the story to encourage us to identify with
her as a human being.
Sadly, the box art for the third-person action-adventure game Beyond Good & Evil
emphasizes and sexualizes Jade’s butt.
The game itself, however, demonstrates that the Nathan Drake approach of
outfitting a character in clothing that doesn’t emphasize their butt and not
having the camera center it or focus on it can work just as well to humanize female
characters as it does for male characters.
So to be clear, the solution here is not to simply show more butts of
male characters. Equal opportunity butt display is definitely not the answer.
Rather, the solution is to deemphasize the rear ends of female characters, so that
players are encouraged not to ogle and objectify these women, but to identify and
empathize with them as people.
This is not an impossible task given that game designers do this all the time with
their male characters.
It’s time they started consistently doing it with their female characters, too.