The new revealing dress also makes me uneasy. Lietgardis on Lum's the Mad site, says it best, that,

 
"...if Asheron's Call was advertised with an image like that new dress, I would not have started to play."

 

I suspect I wouldn't have either. Why? Because it would look like EVERY OTHER GAME.  This dress is not a sign of originality, or of creativity, far from it. Since you can see examples of female exposure everywhere, in real life, and in most games, was it lacking from everyone's AC experience to not have this?

This was an absence I enjoyed, now no more, and even if they pulled the dress now (ha ha), you would hear cries of "Feminazi", or that there the overreactions from a few dictated the pleasures of the majority.  So what to do, what to do? If it were up to me I would keep these dresses in, and never make anything like that again.  Ever.  I would also implement some sexier clothing for men.  A codpiece with a noticeable bulge maybe?? lol

 

What I really like about this game is its creativity.  Asheron's Call was doing a daring thing, actually having female "adventurers", as oppose to female sexpots.  The first is a dignified warrior, and the latter...

 

I would always try to get my sister to play this game, citing the great storylines, social qualities, and the general beat-down of all monsters in Dereth, but...    I'd be a little bit ashamed to do that now, and maybe a little less vocal about my allegiance to this game.  Which is sad, but I'll still play, and hope this trend doesn't continue.  Please, please don't let it continue.

 

Now, I know it is just one dress, and doesn't mean that in the Nov. patch, all female adventurers will now have mandatory g-strings, or crap like that.  Or that the programmers will implement code that will make all the girl's breasts bounce (a.k.a Dead or Alive).  I played that game, which had great graphics and good fight animation, but left me wincing, like many other games I have played that starred female sexpots.  It's what I fear with AC.  That I will be playing the game, and trying to ignore what the female characters are wearing.  And for those who say that it's an option to wear a sexy dress or not, it was an option in Dead or Alive - to bounce or not to bounce.  Ridiculous enough?

 

Children do play this game, I have met 7 yr old and 13 yr olds in AC, and the adults are probably ruining their fun, with all this weird "old people" stuff.  Not to mention the disservice Turbine is doing for them, sexualizing the game. Their parents could see someone in that dress on the screen and the comments generated, and then not let their child play the game.  Which would be sad.  So let's just quit it, and get back to content-driven gameplay.

So here's hoping we don't all slide down the slippery slope and fall face-down into gaming mediocrity.

 

Haste/Sykath Darkwood of Frostfell

 

btw, amazing freaking site, keep up the good work

 

---

 

I'm sorry I missed the discussion about the dress and about gender issues on the Dev board.  I've got some things to say about these issues, but I don't know that the Dev board is where I'd want to do it.  It takes some maturity to even discuss these matters, and message boards tend to have some immature and insensitive people on them.

I've got about sixteen years of experience with role-playing games - the real ones, with pencils, paper, coke, chips, and friends.  Most of the people I've played with were male, but many were female.  Many of these people, including myself, played cross-gender characters sometimes.  The person running the game who had to take on the role of all the NPCs had to play characters of both sexes regularly.  For the most part, everyone's been okay with this.  It's never been a big issue.

I've also played several single-player computer/video games and read several good books where the protagonist was female.  Many men have played Tomb Raider and read books from a female's perspective.  Lots of people have preferences about this kind of thing, but few have serious problems with it.

Putting yourself in the place of someone of the opposite gender can be difficult sometimes.  It requires maturity and concentration.  If you're serious about it, it can be very rewarding.  It can give new insight into the way people of the opposite sex may feel about things.  Psychologists use role-playing to help people learn more about others and themselves.  The author of the "Men are from Mars" books encourages us to consider how our spouse would feel about things before we speak.  The Bible says to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  That old saying about "walk a mile in somebody else's shoes" comes to mind and...  uhhh.. I'm rambling now...

Asheron's Call is a game though.  It's also a community - a large community made up of people of different maturity levels with different ideas about how the game should be.  These people are also mostly anonymous, and some see that as a license to be jerks. 

Now when I played D&D, if there were any issues about how women should be treated, or any issues about people being jerks, they could be addressed right there at the table (and they often were!).  That's not so easy in Asheron's Call.

The anonymity, the lack of accountability of one player to another, and the sense of community makes courtesy extremely important.  The game developers cannot enforce courtesy, but they do have some influence over the way we interact with one another since they created the interface.

It's hard to have courtesy if you don't have dignity.  I think Asheron's Call has done a marvelous job of preserving the dignity of its female characters.  They are tastefully rendered, and are given nice clothes and armor to wear.  They're not sex objects.  They do have nice figures, but so do the men, and such is the stuff of fantasy - everybody wants to be attractive.

AC's respectful treatment of women was actually one of the things that attracted me and a friend to this game instead of EverQuest.  EverQuest uses sex to sell the game, and often when a company has to resort to that, their product is found lacking.  My friend has since tried EverQuest for a month and confirmed this.  :)

As for the attention that female characters have been getting lately, I like it.  I like the curtsey.  I was surprised it wasn't in there in the first place actually.  I like the new dresses.  The unisex clothing and unisex emotes promoted sexual equality in the most literal sense, but "sameness" is not always the best "equality".  I think that's what you were saying when you said that Turbine should do something to make the male characters sexier too, to even things out now.  That's kind of difficult though.  As in the real world, men don't have as much help to make us visually attractive as the women do.  Where women have cosmetics, endless styles of clothing (even men's clothing is not off-limits to women today), jewelry, lots of different hairstyles, polished nails, skin treatments, and probably more things that just aren't coming to mind right now, men mostly have to rely on clean clothes, a bath, and our natural wit and charm.  :)  

I'd like to see some masculine formalwear, though I don't know what would be appropriate for the setting of Asheron's Call.  I'd like for everybody to have something nice to wear to a wedding.  I think the devs may have accidentally opened up a whole new balance issue this month... 

As for what I think about the "boobie" dress in particular...  I think it's good.  It's new content, new options, new ways to customize your character, and it doesn't hurt anybody any more than you wearing a dress like that in the real world would hurt somebody.  Giving people new options for their characters in the game, even options that we don't find appealing, is a good thing.  It adds diversity to the world.  Diversity is good! 

What's my personal opinion about the way at looks?; At the risk of jeopardizing the credibility of everything else I say in this letter, but in the spirit of complete honesty, I must say that I think they're sexy on the characters I've seen them on.  Your friend Nandesu Ka does not look the least bit "trashy" in that picture on your page.; She looks every bit as regal and mysterious in that dress as she does in her Faran robe in her Runway picture.  This may not be true of every character.

Would my female character wear one?  I don't think so.  Not unless there were a good occasion for it where it was appropriate.  I think that wearing that dress around all the time for no good reason would be inviting the kind of attention that makes me sorry I have a female character.  In-game flirting is just good role-playing and I have no trouble with that.  It's just like in-game arguments or in-game talking.  It's not "real" and it doesn't touch "me" any more than a banderling's club.  When people start asking if I'm female in real life, however, I know that they're not interested in role-playing though, and I'm not interested in that kind of attention at all.  Most people aren't.

As for your concern that Turbine may continue to make women sexier while ignoring the men... I don't think that will happen.  Turbine has been very careful with their treatment of women in the game so far:  There's no scantily-clad woman on the front of the box.  Female characters can do everything male characters can do, and vice-versa.  Women have played a major role in every aspect of the history of Dereth.  The gaming industry
has a hard time reaching women, and I think that Turbine's got the right idea here.  They've made female characters "equal" with male characters, and they've gone one step beyond that by developing new content specifically for female characters at the prompting of female players.

I'm glad there are women like yourself in the AC community.  Communities with no women are incomplete.  It's just not right.  :)

Name withheld by request

Added in a separate letter:

For what it's worth, my wife disagrees with me.  :)

We talked about the new dresses.  She says that if Asheron's Call is a game where everyone is supposed to be a warrior of some sort, then making a point of showing off femininity (like dresses) only makes the women seem weaker and taken less seriously by the men. She thinks that if you just want to stand around and look pretty, that you should hang up the modem and go to the mall.  :)  She'd make a pretty tough monarch I think.

---

I originally thought the dresses were a hoax; everyone was being tight-lipped about it. Then, I saw a spoiler.

Suddenly, I had a choice. I didn't have to go get one. But, then I looked in my RL closet. I have attractive clothes there. I wear dresses that are low-cut on formal occasions. I have RL boobs, and, when it's appropriate, I let people know that. And when I wear my RL dresses, I enjoy the compliments I receive. So, I went and got one. And then another, and dyed it green.

I have worn my dresses around town, because it is the new thing to do. Yes, I have gotten lewd comments, which were reported. I have gotten compliments, which were appreciated and acknowledged, as is the polite thing to do. I have not "used" the dresses because I am not a prostitute.

I now have a red dress and a green dress, along with all the others completing my wardrobe. When I return from fighting, and I have enough loot to freely spend pyreals, I will be found in one of my dresses, giving food (which I cook) and drink freely to all that want some. I will also sell some of the uber-foods, as my tradeskills are a source of income. When I'm in town, I'm going to be in a dress. When I am at a formal gathering, I will either wear a "normal" dress, or if I want to be "seen", I'll be in one of the low-cut ones.

Pretty close to real life.

Now, if women become bimbo-ized in game, I'm leaving. When I change my clothes, I go into a private room, or behind some cover somewhere. I do not run through town in my underwear. If the game changes to armors that are merely lingerie in disguise, I'm gone. I would suggest that if the environment starts to deteriorate because of the dresses, that the only police force in the game be contacted...it's a code of conduct violation to make lewd comments to me. Screen capture, and report the offense. If women are proactive early on when this occurs, the prepubescent among the players will get the message - "Keep your one-handed fun to yourself."

Go ahead and tell me I'm bringing all the cat-calls upon myself, and what a hypocrite I am to turn-in those that make them. The code of conduct allows the dress; the code of conduct doesn't allow lewd language.

Pretty close to real life.

Ladonna
The Free Beer Lady of Eastham
Member of the Cooking Federation of Dereth
and the Children of Ispar

 

---

I'd like to protest a bit about everyone claiming men are un-sexyized...I'd like to point that the male upper body w/o clothes and armor is a bit more explicit than the female's. I mean, I'm ripped underneath all that armor. ;-p
Also, I bet very few people will wear them, and I personally trust the female audience of AC to make their own decisions as to whether or not they want their "ta-tas" shown. I think people should take this as a joke, which is pointed out by the fact that there are more guys wearing the dresses than girls. ;-p

~Littisimo~

---

• I do not like the red dress.
• I am disappointed that it went in to the game, it feels very unnecessarily sexual in light of the very feminine Kireth gowns. Yes folks, showing half your breasts is generally considered sexual.
• I do not want the dress removed, since it would be unfair to those who already got one.
• I do wish it had not gone in originally, but such is life.
• I firmly believe that Turbine will not add such racy things in the future, because the people asking for them (a small minority or a large minority, it depends on who you ask) got what they wanted, and no longer need to be pleased.
• I am not mad at Turbine. At all. I appreciate their efforts, even if I consider it a poor choice of things to add.

---

Within one day of starting to play AC, I had male characters sending me such enchanting requests as:

"cybersex me I will give u C note"

I was just standing around shopping, wearing the normal non-provocative AC sorts of armor.  I was targeted for no other reason than that I was playing a female character.

I don't object to sexual content.  Any social medium tends to have at least some; it's in the nature of humanity.  What I object to is game-coded asymmetry in sexual content.

A game that provides sexualized content only for the female characters and not the males is asymmetrical.  It would have been nice for Turbine to provide new formal wear for males as well as females.  The dresses in general are wonderful, but where are Sho, Aluvian, and Gharu'ndim formal wear for males?  This would have been a wonderful opportunity to extend the culture and lore for the Isparian races, and I think they missed out on it.

If they *must* provide a "wonder dress", then can they please provide an equal and opposite "wonder cup" for male characters?  This would go a long way toward preserving the equality they have always been fairly scrupulous about showing.  Note that the simple fact that someone spent time and attention designing this thing emphasizes its presence.... and the absence of its counterpart.

I don't really want AC to turn into the kind of place where I could say "Oh, adult women can have fun here, because they know how to deal with sexual harassment, but it might be too harsh for your twelve year old daughter."  There is something wrong with a gaming circle which is friendly to twelve year old boys and is unpleasant for twelve year old girls.

Asymmetrical amounts of sexual content in the game will foster a differing experience along gender lines, even as asymmetric sexual standards in real life tend to lead to girls getting shut out of gaming in general: why spend time and effort at something when the boys are picking on you for no other reason than being a girl?  When the game designers emphasize sexuality over every other feminine characteristic, which simply supports this attitude?

Asheron's Call has been refreshingly free of asymmetrical sexual content, up to this point.  One dress does not necessarily hurt in itself, but it does if it's a significator of future trends.  EverQuest is often brought up as an example in these discussions, and one of the reasons I chose AC over EQ, *despite* having many friends there who would have given me a built-in support structure, was because I spoke with a female friend who plays there and found out how constantly she was harassed there while she was getting established.  It is not nonexistent in AC, but it's well within my patience limits.

Check out: http://www.womengamers.com/revprev/strat/strat-settlers3.html,
a review of a game where it says the marketing efforts towards women are:  "Fairly neutral as there were no women in the game at all."

Think about that.  This is a game about settling cities.  I find it deeply, deeply, sad when invisibility of women's efforts in settling cities (what were they doing?  Did they just show up later and move in to all that hard work only the men did?) is considered "fairly neutral".  This is because most other computer games portray women as passive victims in scanty clothing, and any change from that is
refreshing.

I don't want invisibility.  I don't want asexuality.  I just want equality; is that so much to ask?

Gretchen Shanrock-Solberg
Ivory Rose, Master of Scouts of the Red and Gold, Solclaim

---

Hey Girlfriend,

I'm going to do something rather difficult and try to be serious for a
moment.  I think this whole issue of 'Boobie Dresses' deserves that.

First and foremost - kudos to you again, Maggie.  I can see from your
comments that you and others have genuine feelings on this topic and that
those feelings are not all in agreement.  "Love it or hate it" you say. 
There are people who seem to do both.  You have presented both sides of the issue fairly and with equal respect.  That's admirable.  Not everyone would be so egalitarian.  One more reason why your site is truly 'kick ass' quality.

Now, as to my own feelings . . .

When I first saw that dress (and that would be when I first put it on in
Davis' shop) I burst out laughing.  As I've said, it was just so terribly
'obvious' - both literally and figuratively - that, at the time, I decided
the boobie dress had to be a bit of a practical joke by the guys at Turbine.  You know - sort of a Derethian version of an Elvira costume and therefore in keeping with the Halloween season that currently reigns in-game.

But then I got to reading the 'comments against' on your site and I began to think again.

Here's what I've decided.

I hear what you and especially Lum are saying and now that I think about it, I agree with and share your concerns.  On deeper reflection - if the boobie dress was a practical joke - maybe the punchline wasn't all that funny.  

However, I don't think that the cause of women's rights and women's dignity will be much damaged by the introduction of boobie dresses into Asheron's Call.   I believe Sean when he says that this is not the first step down a slippery slope.

I don't think we'll be seeing chain mail bikinis as a *mandatory - all or nothing* replacement for our cherished mattie coats any time soon.   If we do, you can believe that I'll be one of the first ones out the door.

Like you and others, I've always admired the way AC lets women succeed or fail on their own merits.  "Strap on a shield, get a good sword, practice those trade and magic skills diligently and you can get just as far as the boys can, just as fast."  I admire the fact that the world of Dereth has its fair share of strong, female heroes -and yes, some despicable female villains as well.

So, what impact does the introduction of boobie dresses have on this world?  As Lum asks, 'What kind of character would wear that kind of dress?'

Does the introduction of boobie dresses relegate all women of Dereth to the role of "characters cloyingly feminine with extremely feminine names and clothing"?  Scheming little tramps who use gender as tool to get their way instead of exerting any genuine effort?

Do Wonder Bras and Ally McBeal microskirts relegate all real-world women to that same role?  What kind of woman wears them?  Heck, what kind of woman wears a bikini to the beach instead of a plain, high-neck maillot?  A scheming little tramp? 

Sometimes. 

And sometimes she's just a woman who enjoys being a woman and showing that fact off.

Though I'm mindful of and, for the most part, share the *genuine*, *valid* concerns raised by you and Lum and others - I'm going to keep my boobie dress.  (Stashed at the bottom of my mule's backpack, probably.  I do like that dress.  But as I say, it's not an every day wear item.)

The guys at Turbine have allowed me to be a woman in Dereth, if I so choose.  More to the point, with the introduction of the boobie dress, they've given me the right to be a politically incorrect woman, if I so choose.

Some people are going to abuse that right.  There are going to be "cloying little tramps with overly feminine names" running around, flaunting boobs instead of using brains and honest effort to get along in the world.  Just like in the real world, that's the price you pay for having rights - people will abuse them.

Does that kind of right, and the attendant issues it creates, belong in a fantasy game like AC?  I suggest that's the real issue here.  Sean and the rest of the gang at Turbine have (perhaps unintentionally - who knows?) chosen to introduce that right and those issues into their creation.  It's their right to do so, and to remove them if, upon reflection, they choose to do so.  If they choose to keep 'boobie dresses' in AC, it's then up to each player to decide if he or she wants to continue to participate in the newly created society of Dereth.

I've decided that I'm willing to pay the price of having that right - the right to be a decidedly feminine and yes, perhaps even a bit 'obvious' female.  If for that payment I can occasionally set down my sword and my shield, curl up beside a fire in some cozy little inn with that special someone and enjoy a fantasy that doesn't revolve around my mattie hide armor coat.

Love me or hate me for it - that's *my* choice.

Nan