That sickly smell

I use a software package called Poser 7 to make character portraits for the game I'm developing. I bought it about a year ago, having played around with the demo briefly.

I also have a copy of Poser 3 floating around, and in some respects, the program's quality is much improved: the monochrome-terracotta skin of the Poser 3 figure models has been replaced by a much more believable texture, and the rendering engine has been upgraded to a proper ray-tracer.

But there are certain issues. A lot of the newer systems integrate very badly into the program's core functionality. For example, while I can edit the shape and colour of a figure's face, the changed colour does not get applied to the rest of the body, making the feature semi-useless.


Adding clothes is hit-and-miss, with a lot of the pre-supplied clothes 3D models being impossible to fit onto the figures properly: the figure's flesh often extends further out than the cloth, leaving random patches of nakedness. In one case this is even visible in the thumbnail picture of that clothes model.


But the most distressing thing about the program is the amount of sexism that it manages to contain:

By default, Poser 7 comes with a male and a female figure (3D model) called "Simon" and "Sydney" respectively. Simon comes in two major variations: naked, and clothed in jeans and T-shirt. Sydney comes in one variation only: naked.





Let me repeat that: the male figure gets a version with clothes on by default. The female one doesn't. Of course, in both cases, the naked figures can then be clothed by adding clothes to them, but why this asymmetry? What if I just want a quick 3D render of a clothed woman? I can do it if it's a man.

This ridiculousness is compounded by some other things:

Simon comes without genitals by default. This is perhaps not so surprising. Sydney doesn't have nipples by default. The figure's breasts are just nipple-less flesh-coloured domes. You have to load in an alternate texture to get the nipples. So here we have sexism intermixing with a tiring shame about the human body.

The default set of clothes models supplied with the program is rather interesting as well. Simon's and Sydney's wardrobes are similar in some parts (tennis shoes, sandals, jeans) - but while Simon has a suit, Sydney has a form-fitting leather jacket and high-heeled leather boots. The two tops in Sydney's wardrobe are an incredibly tight fit as well. In short, Simon can dress casual or business, Sydney can dress casual-sexy or leather-sexy.

Then there's the websites you can buy more figure models at, which heavily feature scantily clad women along with invitations to, er, buy them...

I don't think I will.

To be frank, I don't have any suggestions for you here beyond boycotting software that has that sickly smell of sexism about it - but I am badgering the distributors of Poser, trying to get some sort of statement out of them. If that happens, I will post it here.

Women, men, games, cleavage

Beyond my friends' journals, the two kinds of blogs I mostly read are ones about programming and ones about politics. Typically, their content does not overlap, but the other day there was a rare exception: Both Coding Horror and Sociological Images pointed out the hilarious-yet-depressing evolution of the ads for a browser-based game called "Evony".

Starting out with a fairly generic man-in-armor-with-sword, the ad switched to showing a series of women with increasingly more cleavage - until the final ad, which is literally just cleavage. Any mention of what kind of game this is supposed to advertise has long fallen by the wayside. If I had to take a guess from the way the ad looks, I would go for strip poker, not a "Civilization"-esque empire building game.



The makers of the ads probably noticed a correlation between the amount of cleavage and the proportion of viewers who clicked on the ad - but in the process, they have outed themselves as troglodytes.

(In case you would like to see confirmation that these ads are indeed out on the web, as of the time of this writing, going to livejournal.com is likely to do the trick.)

Sadly, they are hardly alone. Large chunks of the video game industry understand themselves as a hetero-men-only club. The line between game mags and lad mags is frequently quite blurred, for example at IGN.com, who have a "Babe of the day" section. Then there are the ubiquitous "Booth Babes" found at trade shows, a tradition of scantily clad women to be ogled by the (assumedly) all-male crowds. The few games which actually feature female main characters often treat them as mostly eye candy. And on the rare occasions where this isn't the case, certain people complain and wield photoshop.

Still, there are games developers out there who remember that women are people, not eye candy. Spiderweb Games is pretty good on that score. And then there's PopCap Games' Plants vs Zombies, who decided to have their own special take on the Evony ads:


Hence:

• Vote with your wallet. Don't play or buy games with sexist content or advertising - or at least consider the alternatives. There are plenty of online empire-building games that don't feel the need to insult their potential customers with the assumption they'll be swayed by boobies. If you like building things, you might also like FreeCiv - and you can typically buy a copy of Sim City 2000 or Alpha Centauri for a pittance.


• Write Angry Letters: To game mags that think casual sexism is OK, to game developers who think the same, and to websites who allow said ads to be run.

For example, I sent the following letter to LiveJournal:

Dear LiveJournal team,

I have noticed that you are showing ads for the web-based game "Evony" on your site. From their cleavage-centric appearance one would guess that they advertise porn, or perhaps strip poker, though apparently they advertise a strategy game.

Certainly, the ad's creators feel the need to insult their potential customers by assuming that the sight of breasts will make us play their game. Given that (according to your stats) some 55.3% of your readership is female, and given that the majority of your male readership (myself included) probably doesn't want to be subjected to these ads either, do you really think it's appropriate to run them?

As you may be aware, there has been quite a backlash against these ads in a number of online communities, and your display of them does taint you by association. Livejournal hosts a large number of different communities, many of whom will feel less than welcome as long as you are showing these ads.

I certainly don't feel welcome.

I look forward to hearing from you on this important matter.

I encourage you to send a similar letter, perhaps based on this one - but be sure to make it different enough so that it doesn't look to them as if someone just pasted the same thing a dozen times using different names.

Equally, I encourage you to send a letter to Evony. Now, given that they are still running these ads, it's likely that they are rubbing their little hands with glee at all the publicity the Internet outrage has produced. Try to make it clear to them that insulting their potential customers isn't going to work in the long run.

But if you only send one letter, go for the LJ one, or a letter to another site that's showing the ads. I think we have more of a chance shaming them into not showing the ads than Evony, who have already outed themselves as slimebags.

"Della"

Dear Dell,

I was very glad to see your new Della website. My wife has just bought one of your computers and can now keep track of her weight so much more easily!

I was wondering, though: I have a black neighbour, when are you going to make a website for people like him?

Regards,

- David Stark

PS Oh no, wait. Let me rephrase that: WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? Your "Della" website is a nauseating, patronising, sexist mess. Please stop insulting your potential customers with this garbage.

So Dell have recently opened a new sub-site called "Della" aimed at women in the most offensive way possible. Bereft of any technical information about their hardware, or indeed any information at all, the site instead includes "Tech Tips" about keeping track of your weight...

Unsurprisingly, most people aren't too happy about this - and indeed Dell have already backtracked a little - the most offensively stupid "Tech Tips" (like keeping track of your weight) are now gone from the site.

But the site itself is still up. It's perhaps unsurprising that Dell wanted a more "feminine" way to present itself to its customers, given the amusing "masculinity" of the main Dell site - with phrases like "engineered for maximum performance and scalability" and "HP and IMB should be very afraid". But a computer is a computer is a computer. There are no "girl computers" and "boy computers". And Dell doesn't seem to get that.

So what can you do?

In this case, it's very straightforward: go to the Della website, click on the little "Feedback" link at the bottom right, and leave them a message. Tell them that you're offended by their troglodyte sexism, mention that you're not going to buy a computer from such an unpleasant company, and tell them to shut that site down.