Sexy Dead or Alive: Paradise Girls Are Not Degrading, Claims Game’s Maker
Dead or Alive: Paradise is a game with women it. They wear skimpy clothes, look suggestively at you and seemingly spend their entire day jumping slowly in front of you. The PSP title has the tag line “Paradise in the palm of your hand”, and features lush beaches, sports and oh yeah, women in bikinis. Women that you can take pictures of in various poses and flirt with, with the ultimate reward being a video of them half naked giggling. Just like in real life, right?
Yoshinori Ueda, the director of Dead Or Alive: Paradise has said that this game is not degrading towards women and in fact is about ‘œthe beauty of their bodies’.
Ueda said: “We’re certainly not trying to degrade women. They have beautiful bodies. We’re trying to show off the beauty of their bodies but we’re not trying to be degrading about it – we’re trying to show that they are beautiful characters.” It’s against Negative Gamer policy to use internet clichés as header images, but I think you’ll agree a facepalm is well deserved here.
The figurehead of modern feminism continued to say that it was never their intention to make a ‘œsoftcore porn’ game and the goal was to give the sad lonely people who play this ‘œa little bit of paradise’. ‘œ[The women in the game] look the way they do [because we're] trying to bring out the beauty of women’.
Is this the beauty of women, or is it a male-oriented perception of what we wish all women looked like, all half naked and ready for us do what we please with. He says he doesn’t degrade women, but then says that beauty comes from their bodies. Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve not got a size four waist, blonde hair and DD breasts? Yeah, you’re not beautiful. Yeah, you’re funny and intelligent and actually want to spend time with me, but you haven’t starved yourself thin? Next.
And let’s face it, this game is going to be shit. Never mind the blatant degradation of women for a second, what does this say about gamers, or at least what he thinks about gamers? It says we’re all idiots, who will play a collection of mini-games just to see a flash of virtual flesh or suggestive dialogue. To them, we’re just fapping teenagers who want something to masturbate over. Is the stereotype that entrenched? We are, in all intents and purposes, all just NUTS readers: ‘œJust a sec boyz, let me just finish playing DOA, this bitch is about get her tits out for me!’
I’m not saying looking at women is wrong, I’m saying that the suggestion that this game is designed to ‘œbring out the beauty of women’ is absolutely insane. It’s this pathetic little man’s fantasy of being on an island with a handful of unrealistically designed sex toys. Yeah we can laugh and say ‘œhaha tits how funny’s that’ but this is what they think we want to spend money on.
This game is not about the beauty of women, it’s about the treating them like bits of meat; plonking them on stage for us all to ogle at and telling us this is what beauty is. And they want you to pay for it.
“We’re trying to show off the beauty of their bodies but we’re not trying to be degrading about it”
Sure thing.
people are forgetting that videogames are fantasy. yes the woman are designed to look “perfect” but it’s only for a game. we see real life everyday, all day. games/movie are ment to take you away to a place….kinda like a vacation from everyday life lol you dont see sites with articles like “videogames/movies degrading men”. even though the majority of males aren’t “cut” or super tall with muscles on muscles lol. point is they just videogames. besides most people who complain are the ones not comfortable with themselves. thanks.
@Nemesis: You make a valid point in that there is a line between reality and fantasy. I agree with you there. Where the complaint is is that Yoshinori Ueda had the gall to say that this game empowers women, which is a flat out lie. Thats what Sam is talking about.
The first DOAX (don’t judge me, it was £3 in the bargain bin and I thought it’d be a cheap laugh) turned out to have something which vaguely resembled gameplay that was actually somewhat fun (the volleyball was only two thirds shit); back then if they had claimed they weren’t degrading women I could have just about believed them. This is what, the third game though? And from what I understand this one has half the ”games” taken out and the only thing they’ve added in is some camera mode where you specifically just watch the characters stand around. No DOA-making-peoples, you can no longer claim you are not degrading women.