I saw TERA for the first time on the Playstation Network. Though originally released in 2011 the MMORPG was ported to North American consoles this March. The game is developed by Bluehole Studio based in South Korea, which is important to note for several reasons. The first is that, though the US and Canada was a prime focus for the 2014 GamerGate scandal and developing a more conscious uprising of how female players, characters, and developers were treated, it was still a global event. It was an event that hit South Korea hard despite less media coverage. The second is that, like the US, South Korea is presently dealing with repercussions of this event and the historical establishment of a patriarchal society; where female developers are continually attacked and any mention of women rights ensues threats and allegations. South Korea’s gaming landscape still hosts a masculine culture that is toxic to women and something I found to be particularly reflective within a certain aspect of the aforementioned game.
I should mention that I am not going to analyze TERA from a world building, environment, story, or gameplay perspective. I know that, with any game, countless hours went into making this experience come to life. My aim here is not to state if the game is an overall “good’ or “bad” game. This is not a review. However, I am going to talk about something that is a pervasive issue, so much so that even as a non-player I still quickly recognized, both in watching other people play this game when when looking at the game’s website when I was first interested in playing. That issue is sexualized female armor. Yes, it is STILL an issue, and in this game it is VERY much an issue.
Much like any RPG, TERA hosts a variety of different races and character classes. Players can choose from the Aman, Baraka, Castanic, Elin, High Elf, Human, or Popori races. From there you can choose a character specialty: archer, berserker, lancer, mystic, valkyrie, priest, slayer, sorcerer, warrior, reaper, gunner, brawler, or ninja. You then custom
ize your characters appearance and sex. There are three races that have only one sex – the Baraka, Popori, and Elin where the former two are expressly masculine and the other is feminine in nature.
Upon looking at the character customization screen I immediately noticed the sexualized armor the female characters are inherently given. Unfortunately I was not surprised and though irked, did not think much about it. Then as I looked through the different races with a binary choice for sex (and in this case also gender) I noticed all of the women had sexualized armor. I was more irked, but again, unfortunately not overtly surprised.
Despite being slightly disgruntled I was interested in the game so I looked at TERA website. Once again, all the females were wearing sexualized armor and many of the “outfits” I had seen up to this point were extremely sexual. I am used to seeing sexualized armor with low cut v necks, under boob cuts, bare midriffs, booty shorts, occasional thongs and bathing suits. The armor in TERA seems to reach a new level, not only due to its design but the sheer consistency of these designs.The game had now really caught my attention, but not for the right reasons. So I did some more digging.
TERA consists of three armor types – light armor, heavy armor, and robe armor, also known as leather armor, metal armor, and cloth armor respectively. While looking through Wikia pages, TERA’s website pages describing different races, and looking on YouTube for videos showing the different armor types I found that sexualized female armor is almost all there is.
I found a YouTube series that shows the light, heavy and robe armor of the Human, High Elf, and Castanic races. These videos came out in 2011 shortly after the PC release of the game, so the videos do not include any add-on or DLC costumes and outfits. It also does not contain any outfits for the Aman race. I thought these videos were sufficient for garnering a base understanding in the armor representations for the game.
Before watching these videos I classified armor into three types: hypersexualized, sexualized, and not sexualized. I considered armor sexualized if it followed 1-2 of the following criteria and hypersexualized if it fell into 3+ categories:
- Low neck cut
- Low v cut
- Underboob and/or side boob
- Side body cut
- Bottom of butt visible or most of butt visible
- How well does it match the class? (Heavy armor should have more armor coverage not less. “Robe” armor is given more leeway since it is considered cloth armor. Therefore, short dresses were considered acceptable but were still analyzed based on appearance criteria mentioned above. This is also an attempt for more conservative values)
I categorized the outfits this way because there were some outfits that I thought were okay. Compared to some of the more egregious outfits, yes, they were much better, but this did not take away from the fact that they were sexualized. So I opted for a “segue” category. After watching the videos I had analyzed 154 outfits. Of these 115 were hypersexualized, 38 were sexualized, and 1 was not sexualized. Looking at basic percentages and ratios that means 74.68% were hypersexualized, 24.68% were sexualized, and .65% were not sexualized. If the categories were to be condensed down to two categories, or if someone simply asked ‘is the costume sexualized or not?’, 99.35% would be sexualized and .65% would not be sexualized. That is a true shame because some of the larger ideas exhibited within many of the armor designs I think are cool, but then they went and ruined it with overt sexual overtones.
Some people seem to think that sexualized female armor is an RPG past-time or at the very least do not realize what a pervasive and common issue it is. Others do not understand why it is an
issue. Well, all of those sentiments are also part of the issue. I am ok with a “sexy” female character. What I am not okay with is the unnecessary, common place, ill-characterized, and perverted objectification of female characters and their bodies.
I see sexualized female armor almost everywhere I go both as a player and as a developer. Many times this sexualized armor does not match the personalities of the characters nor the situations they are involved in. I mean, it is armor, so most of the armor is meant for, well, fighting. Furthermore, characters in many MMORPG’s are usually only able to garner any idea of personality traits from their race, class, and costume type. If almost all that is offered for females is sexualized armor the developers are alluding to the idea that a female character is only worth existing in the world if she is sexualized.
Earlier, I mentioned a single sex race called the Popori that exhibit more masculine traits. This includes the way they walk and the deep voices available to them. The Popori race look like genetically modified dogs, foxes, ferrets, raccoons, cats, etc… They are 
an animalistic race given traits based off of commonly known animal characteristics. I love the Popori, and this is probably due to their general “cute” nature. However, the reason I bring this up is because the Popori present an interesting if not alarming contrast in the game. Meaning, I have a serious issue when animals have better armor than the female characters in the game. That is a critical statement the game is making about how to perceive its female characters and females in general.
Based on other MMO’s and RPG’s that I have played and seen, TERA seems to present a slightly more extreme case. However, it still does not seem to be an outlier by any means. It is unfortunate this is such a staple issue throughout the game because the environments, art style, and gameplay really do look intriguing.
