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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5639 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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A new wave of outrage is circulating on Twitter. Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is being criticized for Rose Belmont being insufficiently attractive. Hades II was also dredged up as an example of a game with unattractive characters in the same style, prompting the lead artist of the latter to clarify she wasn't responsible for Castlevania.

I personally do not think every woman in a videogame has to be designed as goon fuel, like Aerith and Tifa in the remake, 2B or half the cast of Overwatch. What surprises me is the ferocity with which the supporters of Hades and BC defend the artwork and decry the label of "safe horny" (which, as I understand, means technically, but not viscerally, attractive).

Hypothesis 1: they sincerely prefer this style and cannot understand why anyone would not like it. Maybe it's a learned preference.

Hypothesis 2: it's a form of "every woman is a 10" defense. They cannot say they wanted to have more diverse levels of attractiveness in games, because they implicitly agree that attractiveness can be ranked by saying it, and agreeing to this is very chud-coded.

Hypothesis 3: because some of the hecklers said the women in both games look trans, they cannot backtrack without losing face, because this would mean agreeing that transwomen are less attractive.

The same reason why the chuds defend "their" games from woke hecklers who want more diversity. Even if they wouldn't mind a bit more diversity, surrender to the people who hate you and don't participate in your hobbies anyway (or participate in all the wrong ways) is a mistake.

From my perspective, more likely than not a partisan criticising a piece of media based on political aesthetics - from either side - is likely to be retarded and shouldn't be listened to if we are to enjoy good shit.

What is the benefit of games portraying human demographics as if they were set in New York of today? You could argue that a game might go overboard with sex appeal and just look sillly, but I can't think of a game that would be improved with more of human races that did not develop it, being represented in it. In fact, the opposite is true: games that have no internal reason why racial diversity must be present in every village of 5 NPCs, still having it, for purely ideological reasons.

What is the benefit of games portraying women as if they're all gorgeous bombshells? Is making every woman beautiful a non-ideological choice?

Fair point. Anime series of any genre are also known for basically not portraying any female characters that are frumpy/plain or obese etc.

Because people like looking at gorgeous women, the same way they like playing games that are fun. Is making games fun an ideological choice? You can argue such a case, and the more arty critics sometimes do, but it requires blinding yourself to a fundamental reality about what players want and how the world is.

The end point of this logic is that endless stream of Japanese media where all the characters are hot teenagers and everybody’s depressed their whole lives because media overfocuses on romanticizing like a 3 year period before adult life begins.

If games only feature hot young adults they miss out on telling stories about the middle aged, the old, the ugly, children, the disabled, and those are often some of the most interesting stories in any literary canon.

The end point of this logic is that endless stream of Japanese media where all the characters are hot teenagers and everybody’s depressed their whole lives because media overfocuses on romanticizing like a 3 year period before adult life begins.

If games only feature hot young adults they miss out on telling stories about the middle aged, the old, the ugly, children, the disabled, and those are often some of the most interesting stories in any literary canon.

If the goal were simply to tell interesting stories (with realistic characters), I wouldn't object. But from the circumstances, it seems reasonably clear that that's not what's been going on. So for example, suppose there is an existing and popular franchise and a new game comes out in that series and it contains a lot of "woke" elements. Perhaps the female characters are less attractive or less traditionally feminine (but a similar change is not necessarily made to the male characters). If the goal is simply to tell interesting stories, why insert this specific set of elements? For that matter, why do it in an existing franchise and not do something completely new?

As the old saying goes, please don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

The end point of that logic is modern literary fiction and it's so laser-focused on 'realism' that they deliberately deprive you of any aspirational figure. Every book is about foreigners, cripples, trans, peasants, adulterers and the depressed, and nobody gets a decent plot or anything to look up to.

Taking off my cheeky hat, though, I would say two things:

  1. What you are describing is, I believe, a taste profile. It's a common one, mostly female though only mostly, and is developing into what some call "Bookclub Lit". I believe that it's a very positive sign we now have something to call this genre because it allows us to be honest about the fact that this is a genre like 'seinen' rather than just 'great literature' and to be honest about the artificialities and tropes of said literature. (Corrolary: what I was describing is a taste profile too, but it's very widespread amongst young men who are basically the audience for PC and console games, and more universal because it's closer to base appetites).
  2. I am not actually arguing for nothing but hot teenagers. I am saying that when you start asking questions like "Is making every woman beautiful a non-ideological choice" it is like asking Do Games Have To Be Fun? It's a valid question but you are in danger of overlooking some pretty fundamental elements of what appeals to people. Doesn't mean you shouldn't, and if you're making your own private thing you can do what you like, but if you are making a sequel to a beloved franchise and you are deliberately reducing its appeal then you should ask yourself why you're doing that and you should IMO have some fairly compelling artistic answers.

For a non-sexy version of this question, I don't know if you've come across Hollow Knight: Silksong? The long-awaited sequel to beloved indie hit Hollow Knight. In this case they asked themselves "Should games be fun?" and came to the conclusion that their game is about a society that bleeds pilgrims dry pursuing a hopeless goal, and so their game should be really really hard and punishing and make you wonder why you're bothering. Unsurprisingly, most people really didn't like it. Fans of Hollow Knight like myself had waited a decade and got something miserable and unfun, and the very limited artistic merit of the scenario did not even slightly make up for the fact that the thing was viscerally frustrating in a not-good way.

Or:

Art: 3/10
Visceral fun: 8/10

is fine,

Art: 6/10
Visceral fun: 7/10

can be a fair tradeoff for the right audience,

Art: 8/10
Visceral fun: 3/10

is likely to go down badly. Especially as a sequel to something that was Art: 6/10 Visceral fun: 8/10.

Taking your game from being pretty & fun to less pretty & fun, without having a compelling (to your audience) artistic reason for doing so, is just shooting yourself in the face.

I don't really agree, sure there's some trolly moments in Bilewater and other places, but I think the devs mainly balanced the game for themselves and people who beat the optional content in Hollow Knight, which was also quite hard.

Personally I would explain Silksong's slight decrease in customer score to be entirely explainable by a few people being pushed away by the difficulty starting at a point of "let's keep going from the assumption that you've been able to beat the original Hollow Knight"

This is a frustrating comment, because your framework is entirely right but your example is precisely backwards. Hollow Knight leans more on its Art while Silksong is the more compelling and fun game. On the Art point, it's close/marginal enough that it can be different tastes and what we each picked up from the two, but for gameplay I am at something of a loss for the disparity. It was truly excellent and yes, on the hard side, but not nearly so much as to drag the score down that far; it's not as though the first was a particularly easy game, either. So I'm left with, unfortunately, nothing much I can say other than something like "git gud" because you really are missing out. I liked, but was not a devoted fan of, the first game, and the sequel blew me away with the increase in quality - some of which I specifically attributed to letting the game concentrate on being a great game first and letting Art take a backseat. 9, perhaps 9.5 out of 10.

I disagree, a lot of modern literary fiction is, as a lot of literary fiction has always been, about beautiful and/or wealthy people. To the limited extent that it is about cripples and uggos, well, it always was.

As regards taste, maybe. But you might not be completely correct, either. Like I said, a hugely disproportionate amount of Japanese media focuses on the adventures of very beautiful high school students, including games, and a lot of them did very poorly for many years until the collapse of the Yen (and to some extent Dark Souls, which doesn’t have that many attractive characters) made Japanese non-Nintendo AAA game development viable again. A lot of people played Persona, sure, but a lot of people also played the Grand Theft Auto games, which have never had particularly attractive characters, men or women. (Interestingly, this year’s GTA revolves around a couple in which the man is more attractive than the woman; we shall see how it sells).

I think the comparison you draw between hot characters and gameplay is limited. There are games without much gameplay, and some are even quite entertaining (I have enjoyed a few walking simulators), but in 99% of games, the gameplay is supposed to be entertaining. Meanwhile, many of the most important stories in all of literature, film and television that you and I could both agree are actually very good would make no sense if everybody was a hot 17 year old Japanese high school student, which seems like the bailey of the case you’re making.

I see it like the difference between British and American TV. The former has a certain charm, a certain patina, because it doesn’t just cast hot people. It could, there are enough beautiful underemployed actors even in England. But it gains something by not doing so, for in American television the impossible hotness of everybody in a small town grocery store or police department or family on TV contrasts with the reality of those who know it to be laughably impossible, laughably unrealistic to the point that one’s sense of disbelief is tested.

The former has a certain charm, a certain patina, because it doesn’t just cast hot people. It could, there are enough beautiful underemployed actors even in England. But it gains something by not doing so, for in American television the impossible hotness of everybody in a small town grocery store or police department or family on TV contrasts with the reality of those who know it to be laughably impossible, laughably unrealistic to the point that one’s sense of disbelief is tested.

FWIW I would definitely accept a "realism" deal when it comes to media (video games, television, movies, etc.). I find it really annoying when, for example,

(1) black people are inserted into a medieval European fantasy setting, or even an actual historical setting;

(2) with almost every husband and wife, the woman is always smart and wise while the man is a bumbling idiot;

(3) small villages in fantasy settings are presented as having the racial diversity of modern-day Los Angeles;

(4) street thugs are almost always portrayed as white men;

(5) women are portrayed as men's equals (or betters) when it comes to hand to hand combat;

I could go on, but I think you get the point. If I could get rid of all this woke nonsense at the price of losing hot women, I'd be pretty happy about it.

But I doubt the woke would go for it. Because I'm pretty sure that for them "realism" is an excuse not an actual motivation.

More comments

Unsurprisingly, most people really didn't like it.

Silksong is 89% positive on Steam compared to Hollow Knight's 96% positive. While a reduction, I would not call it "most people didn't like it".

In no particular order of importance-

  1. People like looking at gorgeous women, but people also like looking at a variety of designs. Presenting gorgeous (monoracial) women as the default and variations from that as being inherently ideologically driven doesn't seem correct to me.
  2. I disagree that people like looking at beautiful women and having fun equally, at least within the context of a video game. There are plenty of fun, popular games with ugly characters, e.g. Psychonauts. Having fun is typically much more central to the idea of a game than the specific character aesthetics. They aren't the same kind of "like."
  3. This is less a response to you and more a thought I have about general gaming discourse, but fun is another lever that creators use to determine the experience they want you to have. Game designers are happy to frustrate and annoy you if it'll add to their vision. I don't think Pathologic is designed to be a fun experience, but it's certainly a worthwhile one.

Briefly:

  1. Calling it ideological is also just historically accurate. Pre 2010 men generally just put hot women in their games because they liked to and their audience liked them to. There was no pre-gamergate movement I’m aware for making girls hotter in video games. There was a movement for making them diverse, less monoracial, and less attractive, to get gaming away from young men, even if they didn’t use those words.
  2. Yes, I’m flattening here for the sake of the metaphor, with inevitable distortions.
  3. Like I keep saying, “ fun is another lever that creators use to determine the experience they want you to have” isn’t strictly speaking wrong but it’s a very dangerous way of thinking. It signifies that you are losing your perspective on the fact that you are trying to make people enjoy themselves in a way they pay money for. It is, in its way, an extremely narcissistic impulse.

The professionalisation of specialised career paths, the proliferation of games designers and university courses and YouTube lectures, the idea that success or failure boils down to implementing your ‘vision’ instead of entertaining your customers is I believe the main reason why games have started to struggle. You see it in poetry, you see it in art. They slowly get strangled as they pander to the visions of increasingly segregated artistic communities over pleasing an audience/patron. Then they start needing subsidies from said community to survive because there isn’t enough of an audience left to fund it organically, and then it’s all over.

Because people like looking at gorgeous women, the same way they like playing games that are fun

I agree. I would add that making female characters plain or unattractive isn't necessarily or automatically an ideological choice. It depends on the motivations of the game designers. Which you can never know with certainty. Still, it's pretty clear that the decision to uglify female characters in recent games really is an ideological choice.

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