According to a developer who absolutely has no love for the people or ideologies who regularly raise the issue, the Western video game industry does in fact hold a very, very real bias against “beautiful” female characters.
Confirmation to this fact was provided by Del Walker, an industry character artist whose credits include such notable titles as Batman: Arkham Knight, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Retweeting a picture of English footballer Bukayo Saka’s girlfriend Tolami Benson wearing a jacket emblazoned with the Arsenal right-winger’s original jersey number on June 18th, Walker recalled, “There’s been a handful of times I’ve pitched black women characters that look like this, then after 10 iterations the concept or model comes back without a speck of the original beauty I pitched.”
Proceeding to compare another photo of Benson against an official promotional image of Commander Wright from SEGA’s cancelled hero-shooter Hyenas, Walker then elaborated, “I’m not taking about mild changes. I’m talking about pose, aura, style, softness, age, flair.”
“I hate giving gamergate men fuel,” he added, “but it’s very difficult to pitch beautiful or vain black women in games without them coming back like grocery store aunties. There is room for both.”
Met with the anecdote from indie developer Richmond Lee, “Dude, a friend of mine, an Asian woman, was just telling me about how this happens to her when she designs Asian women for Western games! They always have her work redesigned by a Western artist to look more stereotypical then pat themselves on the back for good representation!”, Walker further opined, “Yes. They also assume adding stereotypical ethno-features with a blunt force is some sort of hail mary, when a range of diversity exists inside diversity.”
Further, as to what he considered an ‘attractive black female’, Walker would agree with Rocksteady Games character artist Lois Starkey that Alan Wake 2‘s Saga Anderson was “both beautiful and soft in a way I hadn’t seen for a while in games.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed in turn. “A successful translation for sure.”
So, there you have it, players.
The next time someone attempts to belittle you or write you off for noticing that your favorite female video game characters – at least in the West – are starting to look more and more ‘rough’, you can rest easy knowing that even industry insiders are aware of and fed-up with this insulting trend.
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