Y'know what's odd?

I'm pretty sure MK9 Mileena is the most frequently cosplayed MK character right now. I see way more pictures of chicks dressed as her on the web than anyone else except maybe guys as Scorpion and Sub-Zero.

I know cosplay is a way different thing from how people dress in their daily lives, I just find it interesting that that's the character all the costume making gamer girls want to be, with all the skin showing and everything.

So do you think the gaming industry has a responsibility to dress the women in a more appropriate way? If it does affect even a small amount of women and influence them, or even the men, should the video game be held responsible, or is it down to a persons mental well-being?

but even old art from eons ago show women and men often naked. so if this is an art form (which i believe it is) how is it considered worse than art in museums which often depict extreme violence, sexual content or adult themes. people look at that art and see it as wonderful and inspiring, but really, it's just a primitive version of what we have now (in a way - it can be seen as that)

Well there's a difference between a depiction of someone naked that looks classy and dignified, and a depiction of someone naked that looks cheap and trashy.

I could go into a big rant about this, but I'll try summarise it as best I can.

The women are not sexy, they're just sexualised. Even Mileena, the "sexbomb" character, has an almost forced sexuality to her that undermines the rest of who she is. Arguably in MK2 and MK3 she was depicted as just a jealous, spiteful bitch. The sex appeal aspect never came into fruition until Deception, years after her introduction.

In the new canon, which takes place during MK2-MK3, she's literally only born and yet she's quite a salacious creature despite her (for want of a better word) innocent mind. Not only have they brought in a trait which was introduced years after we became familiar with her character, they fudged up her origins solely to back that decision up. Her sexuality became her trademark, but in my eyes it was also her downfall, as she lost a whole lot of history, depth, character progression and personal qualities the moment her sexuality took centre stage.

Personally I don't see any need for it. I'm buying the game for a fantasy universe with interesting characters, magic, and epicly brutal fighting. I love the female characters and I always have, but I find that in some of the latest games they don't even look female anymore. Developers need to realise that boobs and a pert ass doesn't make a woman. They don't have hips, curves, or a natural woman's shape. They're just like blow up dolls in skimpy costumes, fighting anatomically correct (albeit muscular) men who don't have to rely on their sexuality to be noticed.

It's a fair point that's made about the girls battle damage. Conveniently, they all have the same thing in common: the cleavage, thigh and buttocks area all get exposed indiscriminately whilst the men manage to retain their modesty when they're hit. It's subtle little things like this which create the impression the women are just there to be viewed, not considered, and considering most people these days are as thick as shit I wouldn't be surprised if there were 14 year olds playing this game thinking "that's what a bitch should look like".

I think they're over sexualised and ridiculous in design. Sonya and Kitana used to be favorites of mine, but I stopped playing as them because I personally find them to look over the top and poorly designed. It takes me out of the game, and reminds me how much the Video game industry as a whole needs to shake the idea of using women solely for sex appeal.

Sonya is a strong female character, and while she sometimes acts the part, she looks atrocious. A revealing top, skin tight pants and high heels. Give her realistic combat gear, something similar to what Jax's alternate is so that they look like they are part of the same Military unit. I almost like her alternate costume, but the oversized breasts and low cut shirt ruin it. Same with her MKvsDC costume. Combat boots and a really cool beret, ruined by a low cut shirt and giant breasts.

Kitana, Mileena and Jade are Ninja, but they're dressed like strippers. Same with Sindel. She's supposed to be a queen, but she looks like something out of a fan fiction porno. Kitana's costume from Legacy season 2 is a step in the right direction, and I think it's crazy that it's a better look than we've seen in any of the games.

With so many characters dead after MK2011, It would be a shame if NRS didn't use this opportunity to make Sonya a serious, strong female character. One that isn't half naked, doing back flips in Militry grade high heels.

Looking at Injustice, it feels like they may be learning some lessons in that department. Catwoman looks attractive, and they managed to do it without making her half naked. More importantly, she's still the confident, strong character she is in most of the comics.

EDIT: My stupid phone fucked up on me; please disregard.

If the question fundamentally boils down to: does making the women sexy have negative implications on gamers? I'd have to say that yes, it does.

You'd need to be very, very naive to assume that in today's world most people have a degree of cop on. We live in a world where most things are dumbed down for us or made convenient for us, where the mind isn't challenged, and I personally believe that's played a large part in how we mature as we grow up. Fact of the matter is, kids growing up these days don't have the maturity as kids growing up in my day did (and I know every generation says that, but boy I can see the difference and that's only within 10 years).

At 14, I knew a girl was a girl. Confusing as they were, they were somebody's sister, somebody's daughter, a human being with their own emotions and social issues to face that I'd probably never get my head fully around. But none the less, I understood they were human. As the years have gone on I feel that a lot of young men don't recognise this: there are a growing number who believe women are to sit down, shut up, do as they are told and cater to the demands and expectations of what a man consider's attractive. They've to be walking sexual fountains just waiting for the man to tap into and claim as his own, constantly beautiful, able to earn their own wages but to never outshine or upstage the men around them, to let "the man" be in charge. I'm not meaning to generalise but it's something I witness a lot in young men these days, they see women as objects and not people. You do have to wonder how objectification in media plays a part in that.

And I mean that last sentence in regards to both sexes. Years ago you could pick up MK2 and pick Mileena and she'd be a leotard wearing ninja with ambitions to overthrow her sister, an interesting back story and origins, and moves that could shut most of the male roster down. She was accessible to female gamers and a step in the right direction of female portrayal in media.

Now? She's a thong/suspender/stiletto/fishnet wearing newborn with no motivations, no ambitions, and not the slightest sign of the calculating, strategic mind she showed before (during the exact same era). She's still a beast to fight with, but she loses every fight she's in during the Story (after being introduced basically wearing toilet paper), and the only things that really make her distinctive is the fact she groans sexually and touches herself as she fights. The character's been stripped away, both figuratively and literally, of everything which made her iconic. And for what? Titillation. No longer can girls (or even long time MK fans like myself) pick up Mortal Kombat and see a respectable character in her (you know, like Stryker, Jax, Kabal, Smoke, Sub-Zero, Kung Lao, Liu Kang, Raiden...seeing a pattern here?).

There are most likely girls out there looking at her going "I'll never have that perfect body, and that's what boys want", which feeds into the already strenuous social pressure of having to look stunning and beautiful to fit in. Likewise, there's plenty of young men (trying my best not to use the word "boys") out there who look at the way Mileena behaves and dresses and thinks "every girl that gets me hard needs to behave and look this way". It feeds the impression subconsciously that women are just there to be looked at, to be eye candy, that to be taken in any way seriously or be memorable that it's a stone cold necessity that these female characters need to be "sexy".

Taking Mileena aside, you've got two characters of Royalty and political power who's costumes just about barely cover their modesty, an Assassin renowned for her stealth who wears chains around her hips and stiletto heels, and a soldier from a high ranking position in the military who wears a vest covering her breasts, tight leather pants and stiletto boots into combat. Any woman of a serious position in this game is immediately belittled of her position due to what she wears. There's a reason we have the saying "It's the suit that makes the man". The only female character who legitimately has a reason to wear less is Skarlet and that's since her exposed skin can absorb the blood needed to strengthen her, yet that hasn't stopped their design process.

Whilst people may say "well yeah but it's just fantasy" you need to ask yourself why this same logic which was applied to her (and the rest of the female roster) was never applied to any of the males in the game. You don't see Jax rub his groin and dry hump the camera when he wins a match, nor does Rain's underwear just about barely manage to stay on over his penis as his entire left ass cheek hangs out for the world to see. You don't see any of the men make their debut in the story wearing bandages that cover their balls, nor do you see any of their costumes take on a remotely sexual nature (in fact most of the men actually have practical costumes in comparison to the female cast). Simply put, it's a one sided depiction of what this "fantasy" is, and in the cold light of day it's incredibly sexist.

It's unnecessary and in my opinion it undermines the credibility of the female characters in the game. Besides, who asked for this "fantasy"? I sure as hell didn't, and I've been playing Mortal Kombat since I was 4. I don't want anatomically incorrect women flaunting their oversized breasts and completely flat bodies in barely there costumes whilst trying to establish themselves as serious characters within the story shoved down my throat. I want what I've always wanted: action, fighting, magic, deadly arena's, new worlds, gore, and a story with such a richness you could almost forget it was a fighting game.

And as for "sex sells", arguably the most iconic Mortal Kombat games were MK2 and MK3, long before the characters were given individualised costumes, and long before the girls began to ditch their palette swaps for skimpy bikinis. It's those MK's that people remember and still to this day play, sex had nothing to do with Mortal Kombat back then and they've stood the tests of time as classics.

Well you have to consider, the reason Deception and Shaolin Monks were the first games to give Mileena that "darkly ironic flirting and acting sexy" attitude is because Deception was the first game to give Mileena ANY personality at all.

Remember, before MK4, the only characters who had personalities were the ones who got them from the movies and TV, because there was no dialogue or acting in the games. We only know what Johnny Cage or Kitana talks and acts like because of Linden Ashby and Talisa Soto. Mileena, on the other hand, never had a genuine role in the movies or ever even appeared the cartoon. (Although it is worth noting, she totally sluts it up in MK: Conquest and seduces Great Kung Lao, lol. I think she fucked Kahn too...eugh.)

And for the record, MK4, not Deception, was the first game where she starts wearing outfits that show off a ton of sideboob/underboob. And that was the first game where the ninjas had unique outfits of their own instead of palette swapping, so...what we got when Mileena's identity revealed itself for the first time is the same identity we have now...except for the shitty "born during MK2, acts childlike" retcon, of course. I get the impression they only did that to ape popular "childlike psycho girl" characters in other media like Tira and Harley Quinn.

Good points raised there, but I still believe that the other traits of her character were completely overshadowed by her sex appeal. True, we only ever heard Mileena speak or seen her interact from Mk4 onwards, but a sense of character was established by her story from the games previous. Similar in a way to the fact people knew Reptile was a submissive figure but dangerous in his desperation prior to ever hearing him speak in Mk4, likewise we knew of Jade's personality just from her story in MK3 long before we seen her come to life in Deception.

These are traits that didn't really die off with those characters, I don't see why the more calculating and intelligent aspects of Mileena's personality had to be butchered and dropped in favour of her being simple minded and childish, the irony being that as a child you've no concept of sexuality anyway (at least not to the point where Mileena is, who actually seems to find erotic pleasure in killing, it's not a childish joy) so it's actually completely illogical that they force her sexuality with that mind set.

I think Mileena is more of a case of a butchered character rather than an example of treating female characters poorly. I think it happened to a lot of other characters, especially the "bad" ones (the ones that didn't get a chapter dedicated to them). Again, I think that they did a pretty good job representing most of the female characters in story mode.

I agree with most of the above posts except the part that assumes people are "brainwashed" by the media, so to speak. Maybe I'm naive, but I kind of trust people to know that this game isn't telling you that people (women especially) aren't supposed to look (or dress) the way the characters do in Mortal Kombat.

Then again, I am making the huge assumption that the people who are playing this game are actually in the target age group (i.e mid-late teens and up). Younger kids, I will admit, are easier to influence, Maybe they are more likely to think that the women in MK are what "sexy" looks like. Although I never though the earlier (and albeit less revealing) costumes were sexy. I actually thought it was kind of gross. But I'm not assuming I was like most kids.

Still, my main gripe with the women in MK is that their designs are bad for the characters. The whole presumption that men might think women should look like them, or that women might think that men think that women should look like them is a secondary issue (to me), and I think it's more of a widespread issue that touches other video games and other forms of media in general.

I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't think what we got in MK3 and Deception constitutes anything more than one to two-dimensional and I'm willing to argue that Jade still is one of the least fleshed out members of the cast and even that her personality in MK9 is somewhat contradictory to what it should be given her environment...and relevant to the topic, her alt costume and poledance winpose are somewhat a part of that contradiction.
I do agree though that MK9 wrongly sacrificed the deepest parts of Mileena's character. But that's not actually the sex appeal's fault. That's the fault of her butchered origin story. Mileena's whole backstory was supposed to be predicated on an inferiority complex because as a FAILED clone, Kahn favored Kitana over her. Now that she's his favorite, that's entirely gone...and in fact it actually makes the slutty costumes make less sense because now that she has no reason to be ashamed of her looks, why would she want to do the whole "don't look at my face, look at my sexy body" thing? It changes her motivation from "slutty because of low self-esteem" to "slutty because bimbo".

Jade's a weird one. The only thing we really knew about her in the original timeline at that current point of the story was the fact she was torn between her loyalties to her emporer or her best friend. The "torn" aspect is something we kinda get to see in MK9 but immediately after she witnesses Kitana being escorted away she goes full out with the "I'm saving my friend" mentality and you can see in her determination that she's sarcastic and confident towards her former allies in standing up against them. Admittedly though, after her chapter there's not much else progression in terms of character, she lingers around in a few scenes and is then killed. Her victory animation though, is ridiculous. It's not "fun", or "cheeky", it's just out of place and is most likely just included so there's more of an element of sex appeal to her character than before.

I agree with what you're saying about Mileena's costumes, in the 3D games her body was to draw attention away from her face and that was understandable given the history between herself, Kitana and Shao Kahn. Now though, with Mileena I think the reason her origins were butchered to begin with was solely to feed the sex appeal of the character. I mean really, what did the retcon in the story actually accomplish for her? She doesn't develop at all as a character. Her most significant moment in the story was when Kitana finds her near buck naked in the Flesh Pits, and that's about it. The change done nothing positive for her. She's just been reduced to being eye candy.

That's what I'm getting at here. Impractical costumes, Oversized breasts, undersized hips and completely unnatural shoulders. An emphasis on sex appeal that the men never have to rely on or suggest (name one male character who behaves in any way sexual or purposely dresses provocatively). The question asked is if the women are being too sexy, and the answer is yes. Unnecessarily so, to the point where the first villainess in the story has completely lost the edge that made her so popular in the first place.

The thing that bugs me most about Jade is they CLEARLY put no thought into her personality when they wrote her, they just slapped on something cliched, almost as if they went "well she's black, right? Well what are black chicks like?" "Sassy?" "Yes! Let's make her sassy!"

Dig this: her bio says her own parents sold her to Shao Kahn, right?

So she's, y'know, a slave. Real, honest-to-god, living in servitude. And not to an easy dude to work for either. To the most violent, angry motherfucker in the realms. She's not a particularly special or pampered person, and bodyguarding the daughter of a guy like Kahn is probably a real demanding job.

So why the hell does she walk around acting cocky and calling everything "too easy" like those're the only two words she knows some times? What the fuck is so easy about living THAT life?

Maybe she's just a smug bitch. She probably thinks to herself "I'm clearly one of the best warriors in his command if I'm responsible for protecting the princess, these other fools are below me".

That or else it's just "lets make the sexy black one sassy so she's got that strong confident woman vibe going on"

Then she's fucking delusional.

She doesn't even protect Kitana, she's more of a babysitter, her job largely consists of making sure the kid gets her homework done and doesn't look in the closet and see her hideous clone christmas presents. And then sometimes she guards a few unimportant rooms like the Armory. Jade's jobs are all shitty grunt jobs and she's not special or gifted as a fighter either, Kahn has like half a dozen people who would be billed as his "best assassin" before her name even came up.
Naw, the real reason she's cocky is her one-note personality was assigned to her either at random or even worse, because of her skin color, which is just plain stereotyping. It doesn't fit and they didn't put any thought into it. The least they could have done is given her more than one catchphrase to friggin' repeat over and over though...
But I digress, this doesn't really have anything to do with skimpy costumes or gender equality...unless you consider the fact that the least developed characters in the game are all female to be sexist, like the writers give less of a shit about the girl characters or something...

You know, I would actually consider how underdeveloped the female characters are in this game (with both their costumes and their character progression) a fairly obvious form of sexism, but then when you step back and look at the overall cast, pretty much all of them were given shitty treatment in terms of design and character progression. Even a lot of the men were handled poorly.

Is there really any such thing as too sexy? Especially for a franchise that's all about dialing things up to eleven?

Ansolutely

& for Christ's sake when are they going to give Kitana, Mileena, & Jade a more conservative, less revealing costume?

I remember posting something in another thread of this that got closed, but I might as well say something again, despite I probably have a different opinion now rather than the one I had before.

To me, I don't understand why the women need to continue wearing less and less, as well as not having outfits that matches their actual character.

I'm going to take apart each female character bit by bit and explain what I mean:

Kitana - Throughout the last few games, she has worn outfits that didn't cry "princess" or "assassin" to me whatsoever. I mean, you can pop a mask on your face and cry "ninja" to me, but you're not a ninja. Same with plopping a tiara on your head. I wore one for my prom, and I didn't feel like a princess that day. She doesn't dress like one, nor does she even act like a princess. (But personalities aren't going to be discussed in this) I would prefer that they take Kitana's outfits a bit more seriously when it comes to portraying her as a princess. I mean at times I literally do forget that she is a princess, I have to read her biographies at times to be reminded that she is a princess.

Jade - I guess if we're going to talk about how Jade is a slave in Kahn's hands, you might as well say that Kahn has a thing for dressing females in seductive outfits. However, if she's supposed to be also a bodyguard for the princess, she could have, at least, some sort of dignity to be dressed in an outfit that cries "body guard." Nothing really says that she's a protector in the way that she dresses. And I'm not really digging the whole skimpy outfits that she had in Deception. If I was to be one of two people going up after this giant dragon monster that's trying to take over the realms, do I really want to be dressed in a one-piece with hardly any kind of armor on, as well as being exposed in many ways where if I take a sword through the torso, I'd be dead in a heart beat? It wouldn't hurt to see some metal on her if she's supposed to be represented as a guard.

Tanya - As a person that constantly deceives other people, you'd think that she would be more of an evil character, but neither times that I've seen her, she's dressed that way. Sure, it was cool to believe that she was a good character in the fourth game until you played her in arcade mode and won it. However, after knowing that she's an evil character, you'd think she would look more of an evil bitch in Deception. I did not get that. I saw it more in a way where they wanted to keep her original look, to make her look more of a good character again, but she isn't, and we know that by reading her biography in Deception as well as remembering what she did to Liu Kang in her ending in the fourth. I'm not necessarily trying to say that if you're evil, you have to look like an evil character, but I feel as if they're trying to still portray that she's got a good thing rather than being evil.

Frost - As my favorite character, she's the only character that actually looks decent... up until you choose her secondary costume. Not every single character needs to have a skimpier outfit, and for a character that she was, it didn't make sense whatsoever. She's a student, I have no idea where you'd go to find students dressed in an outfit that reveals so much of you. (Well, maybe if you're down by me at an art school, then you see a bit more than revealing) But it's not who she is, and I don't understand why they needed to do that to her.

Ashrah - Same thing with Frost, this character is supposed to represent purity and good, however, when it comes to her secondary outfit, she ditches her pants, her hat, and opens her chest a bit more to reveal her breasts. Why? Why does a demon slayer need to dress like that? I have no problems with her primary outfit, but when it comes to her secondary, I was just like, "the fuck am I looking at?" I don't get why they needed to make her look more skimpy in her secondary... I guess if sex sells, it sells all right...

Sheeva - I never understood why they have her dressed like she does in the games that she has been in. I really don't understand. If she's supposed to be a guard for the queen, don't you think you should look more like a guard rather than... what strippers look like if they had an additional two arms? I mean, even for an unattractive looking character, they had to find some way to sexualize her up, and I don't get why they needed to do that. She's not pretty, and to be honest, I wish there were more female characters that actually looked like her, unattractive and unappealing to the eye.

Sonya - She's something I need to rant off about because I am truly disappointed about how this character always looks in the games. She's supposed to be someone from the military in a way and yet she's got nothing on her that speaks to me that she is. Throughout each game that she's been in, she's always looking like she's some karate chick. The only appearance that I enjoyed her in was the original game becuase she didn't look too flattering whatsoever in that game. But as the series progressed, you saw that she kept getting skimpier and skimpier, by the time it got up to now, she's dressed in a very over sexualized manner that I really forget that she's supposed to be some tough, military chick. There's no need for her to wear no bra underneath her shirt, there's no reason why she can't be in a one-piece that covers everything on her. I mean really, what is so hard to look like what she did in her secondary outfit in Deadly Alliance (despite that we ditch those heels)? Is it really hard to allow a female character be dressed in a one piece and still look sexy enough for the male gamers?

You certainly don't see me crying to the creators, begging that they make one of the male characters look like a hunk.

Sindel - Banshees are one thing, but also have a way to make me realize that you're a queen. Neither Deception outfits made me realize that she's a queen, I still had the feeling that she was a banshee who needed to look like she's undead still. I didn't like any of those outfits becuase they didn't make me understand what kind of character she's supposed to be. She's trying to save the realms from Onaga, who also enslaved her daughter under his spell, if I'm supposed to be a mother to this girl as well as be a person that's out to save the world, shouldn't I be in an outfit that seems more respectable rather than something that you'd see in a strip club? I certainly don't see how this character, who's supposed to be powerful and ruler-worthy actually be powerful and ruler-worthy if she's dressed in a one-piece leotard that exposes her rear end and makes her boobs look incredibly large.

Mileena - To be honest, she's the only character that I actually except the skimpy clothing, but in the same manner, I don't really understand WHY she has to be this slut. If she's supposed to be Kitana's clone, there's no need for her to dress like that, unless the emperor himself wants his adoptive daughter to be dressed in an undignified manner. That's just wrong and creepy as fuck. Out of all of the times that she's supposed to pretend to be Kitana, why does she need to be dressed in a way that doesn't even make me realize that she's a clone?

I get that every character is represented with a color, but how come we can't actually have her be dressed in blue as well? Alter things on her outfit to make us truly believe that she is the actual clone of Kitana. I'm actually creating a comic on my spare time (I've mentioned this before in other threads) that features the events AFTER 2011's story, but I also am doing something that goes more into depth about certain characters. I have these two being created in a way that talks about their lives before Mortal Kombat and I have them being dressed in similar outfits, it's just that the colors are altered to make it look like they're the same people. So if you have Kitana's outfit being mostly blue with a little bit of black here and there, I'm swapping the colors to where Mileena's is mainly black with a little bit of blue here and there. (Get what I mean?)

Scarlet - If this character is supposed to be this powerful weapon that thrives on living on blood to make her powerful, I'd be expecting her to wear an outfit that means business. I don't see her as a slave, I really don't, but then why is she dressed like one? She dresses similar to all of the females that are slaves to Kahn, and if she's supposed to be this awesome tracker, this deadly prowler that thirsts on blood, does she honestly need to look like what she does?

Nitara - I thought she was a disappointing character in Deadly Alliance because I expected a lot of out her. Her outfits, both primary and secondary were just horrible. I thought that they could have designed her better, but they chose not to. They decided that less is better. I really wouldn't mind her being all covered up, and making her look like she has even less in her secondary outfit was horrible. They could have done a better job designing her, to make me believe that this vampire was awesome.

Kira - Her primary was actually decent, she wasn't that exposed, but of course her secondary had to be. It looked nothing like her, and I thought that her secondary costume was the shittiest thing I ever saw out of all of the dreadful secondary outfits I saw previously. Hers is the one I hated most because it was stupid, it truly was. It was between hers, Frost's, and Ashrah's that I hated, but hers I hated the most.

Li Mei - A villager I saw in her primary costume in Deadly Alliance, but did they really needed to give her what they did for her secondary? Even with her outfits in Deception, her primary was awesome, but then when it came to her secondary, what the hell was that? Were they trying to portray what she looked like in the previous game? What was wrong in giving her more clothing? But they gave her less! Less isn't always better unless there's a specific reason to make them dress like that.

My thing is, there's no need to make all of these characters skimpy. I understand that they do this for the male fans, but you know, costumes are costumes, and most of the time I don't really bother with them. However, it wouldn't be that big of a problem if they could just give these characters a decent appeal rather than making them look like something that doesn't make sense. I really don't have a problem that they designers decided to over sexualize all of the female characters, I really don't, it's just that, not all of them needs to be like that.