“Laughing It Off” Does Not Fix the Problem

Suda51 is well known for games that take a certain interest in over-sexualizing it’s characters and gameplay. Take for example Shadows of the Damned, which was layered with references to male anatomy. As you all know, here at NYMG we took particular offense to Suda51’s game Lollipop Chainsaw; we finally got a female protagonist as our main character, but she was over-sexualized to boot, subjected to sexual harassment at every turn by other characters, and she was paired with some unfortunate game play that couldn’t hold our attention.

So, why bring them back up? Well Suda51 is back on our radar with a new game coming out called Killer is Dead, which features a “Gigolo Mode where players are tasked with chatting up girls while attempting to catch a sneak peak of their underwear with X-ray specs.” At this point, I’m not surprised to see this kind of element in their games, it’s become an unfortunate commonplace for the studio’s games and I would honestly expect no less coming from them. What really ticks me off? Is their reasoning for it. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry International, Goichi Suda admitted to knowing about the criticism his games receive because of their treatment of women and had this to say (through a translator):

“Any kind of artistic value, anything you create, there’s always some kind of criticism behind it. Which means we’re making an impression and an impact. So I think we’ll stay with what we’re thinking and just keep going with that way of thinking…And when I say that, sexuality is a touchy subject. We don’t want to make people offended, but we’re trying to create something that makes people laugh a bit because we’re [dealing with] that topic.”

I know Suda51’s games are listed as “Comedy” and that poking fun at something terrible is some people’s way of dealing with horrible things, but actually believing that these demoralizing portrayals of women is dealing with the issue is not okay. In fact, this is the kind of stuff that makes the issues more prevalent and harder to fight. While some people may see comedic value in these portrayals, the harm starts to come from the people who just view it as a depiction and start to think that those are the ways women should be treated or should act. There are a lot of young men and women who play these games and do not have the mental capacity to just see these games as “spoofs,” but instead start to develop hurtful views on women because it is presented as a norm within the video games they enjoy to play. And slightly off topic, why are parents letting their kids play these games anyways?

In past years at Comic Con I have seen little girls around the age of 9 or 10 dressed up as Juliette from Lollipop Chainsaw, which may I remind you looks like this:

To think that these girls actually look up to this character scares me because she is in no way a role model or a realistic beauty for girls to aspire to be or look like. I wonder if Suda51 thinks about that when saying things like “we’re just trying to make people laugh.” If not, he and the studios and developers need to seriously start thinking about it, because there are repercussions to these actions and if we are supposedly trying to battle the bad images of women in video games this would be a fantastic place to start.