It's not necessary, but it certainly helps with the appeal of the game. I know I personally wouldn't want to play game with characters dressed in nun robes and business suits.

I don't think sexualized characters are necessary to sell games, but that doesn't matter because the people who are making them do.

I personally would love to see that- nuns and business people beating each other up.

I think revealing fantasy costumes are awesome. However, I don't like when they're so revealing and so fantastic (hmm, that doesn't seem like the right word I'm trying to use here) that they become parodies of themselves.

Zero issue. Next question.

Abslutely not.



I await the game that has an elderly woman protagonist who uses drunken boxing and is partially a cripple to fight crime.



Well, the elderly woman protagonist sorta happened in Dementia buth that game is fucked up even for me.

yeah you would... it would be funny as hell to see someone fight in a nuns robes

also, Johnny Cage from MK4 to at least now has a tuxedo as an alt, which is kind of like a business suit...

1. Morrigan's a succubus, I'm SUPPOSED to want to fuck her brains out.
2. Ivy, yes, it's kind of unnecessary. Yes the sadist personality works with the whip, but hey, if you don't want her to look like a skank, just use her alt, the one that has a little too MUCH clothing
3. Lee's my favorite Tekken character, not because I find him sexually appealing, just because of his apathetic attitude towards everything but Kazuya, he's what Bruce Wayne would be like if he wasn't batman. Plus his playstyle is really to my liking, so I've been using him since T2
4. Mileena's the shark in the water, literally. The sexuality is meant to make it even more shocking when you see her teeth.

And to answer your question, it's more needed than unneeded. If you get some stupid 12 year old boy, is he gonna want to play the game with ninjas and scantily clad girls, or the one with two shiny white robots solving puzzles? It draws in the extra sale and maybe another fan. Plus, if you're already a fan of the game, you're already used to it (unless you're a Sonya fan )

I think there's a place and an appeal of "sexy" video game characters, but when it comes down to it I prefer a character where "sex appeal" is just one part of who they are, not their ENTIRE selling point (e.g. most of the cast of Dead or Alive).

A character like Morrigan, or Bayonetta, or Mileena, or even Vega in Street Fighter are characters whose beauty and sexuality are key parts of their identity, but they have much more going on and their sexual persona is blunt and obvious, but it doesn't become their defining characteristic. Morrigan's a succubi, but that's what she is by nature and her own story has more meat to it than that. Bayonetta is a character who uses sexuality as a weapon (literally). Mileena is a flawed beauty with equal attraction and repulsion. Vega in Street Fighter is so pretty he wears a mask, and his vanity and ego come into play in his story and his gameplay.

On the other hand, sometimes sexuality in games goes too far and the characters cease to be "characters" and exist merely as big-breasted, bimbo dress-up dolls whose inner characterization is subverted and largely ignored.



Nobody really cares what these girls have to say or do. Their entire role has shifted to become gratuitous fan-service.

And I'm okay with that, do a degree, but too many companies feel that EVERY girl has to cater to "fan service" and it becomes borderline offensive and outright infuriating when this idea is applied to women or men in games whose sexual prowess was NEVER a priorities. But, especially in recent games, once respected characters are treated like walking meat dolls that cater to lecherous and creepy fans, at the expense of good character development.

Samus Aran and Aya Brea are two of the most recent victims of this, both strong, powerful, respectable, and practically dressed female protagonists in their earlier games. Their most recent games have Samus running around with a suit so tight you can see a mile deep into her butt crack with boobs five times bigger than before while tripping over herself in high heels and Aya having her clothes fall off every opportunity she has, spending most of the game with her left ass cheek visible to the player, while both are disrespected, leered at, and shown as far less confident, strong, and capable as earlier games have shown them to be.

At the same time, there are many games out there that are subverting this stigma and giving us characters that are outright sexy because they're just amazing characters, barely showing skin at all in many cases.

Some sexy characters that defy the tropes of blatant sexual imagery and presentation include:


There is not a NEED for overly sexual characters, and in my opinion they are the least interesting types of characters to me because their sex appeal becomes the thing yelled at me the loudest. "Hey, guys! Dead or Alive has breast physics! Ivy has huge boobs! Cammy's alternate outfit has her in a thong!" I'm much more interested in characters, male or female, who have a sexual identity and attraction of their own, but it is just one of many parts of their identity and it is hardly their most prominent characteristic.

Sex appeal sure isn't necessary to be top tier, suckas.
Edit: Also, you can still be sexy without being a raging whore, like so:

Well, you've got sluts with a purpose:






And you've got sluts with respect:






And then you've got sluts with no other value than being sluts:






The crappy sluts are the ones that need to go, except for Helena. She's cool.

I really don't understand the scrutiny that Dead or Alive comes under. It's like people in the real world have never seen breasts move as a girl did a physical exercise. Yes. They do move like that. And for some reason, depicting it honestly makes the game taboo.

Mortal Kombat in particular is one of the very worst offenders for oversexualizing the female cast members, defeated perhaps only by Rumble Roses.

And Battle Raper....

That is a game I had previously never heard of. Looks...very Japanese.

There is an old saying: Sex Sells.

Game companies are there to make themselves money and depending on who they are targeting the game to will determine how much sex and what type. It does not matter whether it is necessary or not.

Most fighting games such as Mortal Kombat are aimed towards the teen to whatever age straight males. Due to this you will have female characters with revealing clothing and figures that makes it almost funny to even think they can fight in that getup. But hey, that what's the majority of the guys like, according to the game makers. This same gaming industry seems to think that female and male gay gamers are a minority when it comes to purchasing fighting games, so only a token character or two are placed in the game to try to draw em in (ie shirtless Johnny Cage). They may or may not be right, I don't bother checking the stats.

I dunno, maybe if they put just as many nice half naked looking guys as they do gals, they may get more gal gamers to buy their games but that would most likely turn off and away they're cure core target group.

Absolutely correct.

Yes, there will always be oversexualized girls in fighting games, its the way it goes. Guys like watching hot girls in skimpy outfits beat each other up. Kit will only get worse as games get more adult, too. Not too far in the future well see the females in games like MK prancing around the screen with bare vaginas.

Is it necessary? Not really. Is it bad? No. Well, not necessarily. But I do think there is a line between sexy and titillating, and vulgarity or crassness. And some games do cross that line. Sadly, in some ways, the "MK" series has post "MK:DA."