Ew

One comment that I received from a reddit comment is that if I wanted to look at real hypersexuality, I should download a “pay to win” Chinese mobile game. So I went to my phone’s app store and searched up “asian mobile game,” and this game was one of the results that popped up. From the screenshots, the models are clearly drawn so that the Asian definition of beauty is highlighted. This includes fair skin, lightened but not unnatural hair, and large eyes for the three real models. The three game models have traditional themed dresses, with hair ornaments and made to look like an exoticized traditional princess. Compared to the men in the screenshots, all of the women featured are strongly sexualized. This is perhaps done to draw attention from a male audience. I have not actually played this game, however this game is found in the category of RPG. This is problematic because this game features somewhat sexualized content that does not really have anything to do with playing the game. It seems that for this game, perhaps because the is for an asian audience instead of a global audience, the creators are not as concerned with how women are portrayed here.

Another less popular game that I play is called Heroes of the Storm. I think Blizzard (the parent company) does a really good job of separating sexuality away from the game. I chose to look at Lunar Revel Jaina and D.Va from this game and I believe that they do not appear to be sexualized as much as they can be. First for Jaina, her model is wearing a qipao style dress. Although she has a slit in her leg robe and some of her breasts are showing, her shoulders are kept hidden and her robe goes all the way down her legs. In my opinion this dress is designed such that it has elegance without looking like a showgirl. For D.Va, although she is wearing a skin tight suit, her model rarely has any skin showing, her facial color is not overly pale and she is not exocitized in any way. Despite a few sexual parts of these models, I think that they and the game in general is overall much more aware of the sexualization of their characters and chooses to not exploit it. Similarly the community of HotS seemed to agree with me when I asked them about their opinions.

One of the most recognized games, especially in the Asian community is League of Legends.  I started to look for hypersexualized content because of its highly developed content and pervasive reach around the world. The K/DA skin line is a set of four skins designed as a kpop group. Each skin here is a female character playable in the game. All four of these skins have very skinny models, colored hair, and wore revealing and/or skin tight clothing. This type of aesthetic is basically a copy of what kpop girl groups are like in real life, save some parts of their design that are from the original models. I think these skins are problematic because they are a sexualized caricature of what kpop culture should be. I asked on League of Legends reddit what people thought about this skin line and people have said that kpop as a genre places beauty above ability to sing. However, others have said that this is just a celebration of kpop culture. There also is the theme of marketability. Some people have said that as a predominantly male game, League will choose to create more content for males.This is a look will sell because it is highly sexual. I think that some people on reddit have realized that over sexualizing female characters is a problem but I don’t think they care enough to actually do anything about it because it benefits them to have a sexualized content catered to them. After reading their comments about kpop culture, I feel that Korea perhaps should not endorse a beauty driven music industry and instead should look for talent instead of appearance as the basis.

https://kotaku.com/5980723/when-cosplay-makes-you-want-to-diet