@IronStylus Data on Champions and Skins by Gender

Hey everybody,

My name's Gentleman Gustaf, I'm a writer for LoLEsportsand Cloth5, as well as my own website, and also an ex-writer for A Different View. Recently, I shifted over to making infographics, and cutting and pasting so many splash arts really struck home the way that champions are characterized by gender, so I thought I'd bring my experience with blogging and data to bear on this issue. My original post can be found here, but it is pretty long (~4500 words), so I figured I'd try to summarize it here as best as I can. My hope is to get a response from and a dialogue with reds (maybe IronStylus), because I believe that these are issues that he understands, is aware of, and has talked about in the past (specifically regarding his decision to put Leona in heels).

Because I know this is long like WOAH, I'm putting this near the top. I was asked by a forum-poster "How many champions and skins would Riot have to release in a row following your guidelines in order to balance the scales of representation?"

This is my answer.

"No well-intentioned effort is ever wasted. There's no quota which needs be enforced, a good-faith attempt to do would do wonders to destigmatize gaming as a boys-only club (something which is false; 45% of gamers are women, and the average age is 30).

TBH, If Riot made one good female monstrous champion, I'd think "exactly, they understand the concept" and trust them to handle champion releases from then on. I'd want more, but I understand the practicalities they're dealing with.

Riot has already released the vast majority of champions it is ever going to release. Honestly, the best solution I can think is small visual upgrades to Diana and Leona (like they did with Sejuani) to emphasize the aspects of their character that make them different by referencing them in their art. Make both of them a bit stronger and fuller, remove the heels from the Leona skin. Even the 'fan service' Leona skin is very good. Riot is on the right track, more than almost any mainstream game I can think of. They just need nudges to keep them going."

"Furthermore, I don't mean to imply a lack of progress by Riot. There have been consistently better female champions.

Jinx has a vastly different bodytype from most other LoL champions, inasmuch as her breasts are not the size of her head.

Lissandra's proportions are quite inhuman, and she is certainly progress towards a truly monstrous female skin.

Quinn is fully clothed in both of her skins!

Vi is a badass, and her Officer skin, while very sexualizing, is not at all bothersome due to its juxtaposition with a reasonably skinned champion.

Now back to the post!

I’m about to dive into some mountain data, and I implore you to read it all. But if you want to read my suggestions for first, before you do so, here they are.

• Diversify monsters: make some truly monstrous champions that are female. I’m sure your community (not to mention your already employed concept designers) have plenty of ideas for that.
• Change what “revealing” means. Make more revealing skins for male champions, and allow some female champions to go without revealing skins.
• Change what “sexy” means. The variety in male champions shows you understand this distinction. Some champions are sexy because they’re trying to be sexy, and are sexualizef. Some champions are just inherently sexy, but it isn’t their main attribute. Allow more female champions to fall into that camp: let them be sexy without forcing sexualization.
• Let your creations speak for themselves. Don’t overstate something when subtlety will do, because it adds depth to the overall presentation.

Why do I think this? Let's dive into some data!

Monstrous Champions

First, I divided all champions into three groups: humanoid, cute, and monstrous. The definitions can be quibbled over, but basically, I'm going by facial structure. Cute champions have HUGE heads compared to their bodies, whereas monstrous have non-human faces.

• Total: 118 – 78 Male (66%); 40 Female (34%)
• Cute: 14 (12%) – 10 Male (9%); 4 Female (3%)
• Monstrous: 36 (31%) – 34 Male (29%); 2 Female (2%)
• Humanoid: 67 (57%) – 33 Male (28%); 34 Female (29%)
• Nunu: 1 – Humanoid? Cute? I couldn’t really make a decision, but he's non-humanoid, and that's what matters to the following analysis.

What struck me as most interesting when I was going through the list of champions was how many I didn’t know the genders of with 100% certainty: Blitzcrank, Fiddlesticks, Galio, Kog’Maw, Malphite, Maokai. I checked their bios to make sure, and indeed, they were male. As well, Cho (Gentleman skin aside), Galio, Karthus, Nautilus, Nocturne, Rammus, Skarner, and Xerath could all easily be female. I don’t mean that their characters could have been designed female. I mean that, had I gone to their bios and seen “she”, I wouldn’t have thought “typo” (as I might about, say, Darius or Garen), I would have thought “didn’t see that coming”.

This is — I think — what creates the perception that the genders are ‘even’ in League of Legends. When it comes to humanoids, that is certainly true. It is just that all of the non-gendered champions are, by default, male. On the other hand, when you have a female champion who could be monstrous, like Elise, she is very clearly female. If Elise’s bio said “he”, I’d think “typo”.

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Elise_0.jpg

So basically, you have a 50/50 split between male and female champions, unless they’re non-human, in which case they’re mostly (88%) male by default. An equal number of humanoid men and women is actually staggeringly notable in the field of fantasy, so kudos to Riot there.

Ever heard of the Smurfette Principle? Basically, it says that most casts will have a lots of different characters: the funny guy, the smart guy, the annoying guy, the single guy, the sneaky guy, the woman. Notice the difference? The guys have adjectives that make them different; the woman is different by virtue of being a woman.

By and large, Riot avoids the Smurfette Principle. But arguably where it matters most, the Monstrous champions (those champions who are the most different from normal), male characters are given all of the divergence from ‘normal’.

This isn’t a new concern to voice; people have been asking for female monstrous champions for ages. The real issue is that Riot thinks they have produced female monstrous champions.

Now, you may argue that I’m being unfair in excluding Soraka or Cassiopeia, but you’ll notice that I’ve been pretty consistent in excluding Aatrox as well. When it comes to male champions, Riot has put out some seriously monstrous (and I mean that in a complimentary way) champions, like Urgot or Trundle. But when it comes to female champions, the ‘monstrous’ champions more resemble ‘sexy’ Halloween costumes than monsters.

Suggestion #1 – Female Monsters

There’s an easy solution for Riot. Next time you release a genderless champion — a water elemental, for example — make it a lady water elemental, give it lady voicing, and for the love of god don’t give it breasts because it is a water elemental and why does it need to suckle young like a mammal?

Even cooler (Riot, you can hire me for this champion), why not make a cool Void champion that has two heads, is genderless, and speaks with two voices (one male, one female). Sometimes, you can have them talk separately, but you can also have them talk together for a cool blended effect! Call it Kor’Nath, the Progenitor of the Void. Ok, but that’s all you get for free! (No really, I even have a kit written up for them. You know how to reach me!)

Revealing Skin(s)

The second area in which female skins vary wildly from male skins is in the amount of skin per skin. For now, we’ll only be looking at humanoid champions. Refer to the above definitions: a humanoid champion has a head which is significantly smaller than their torso or body, and whose bodily (but especially facial) proportions are within the realm of plausibility for a human.

To give a strict definition, I’ll be calling a skin revealing if the torso below the armpits or the legs above the mid-thigh are revealed. I acknowledge that this is a general rubric and not a hard rule, of course. After all, Blood Moon Akali is technically revealing according to my definition, but I think we can mostly agree that it’s a pretty classy skin:

Firsts, looking at the base skins, 12 of the male champions (36%) have a revealing base skin, while 23 of the female champions (68%) have a revealing base skin.

And while there are 15 male champions (45%) who have no revealing skins, only 2 of the 34 female champions (a mere 6%), Kayle and Quinn, have no revealing skins.

On the other hand, there are 15 female champions (44%) who have no skins that aren’t revealing. Male champions who fit that bill? Not a single one.

Now, I'm not saying that partial nudity in a game is problematic. And I don't just mean that in the aforementioned Blood Moon Akali sense. Some champions simply should be sexualized! Take Ahri for example:

Ahri, as a character, is supposed to be foxy and sexy. One of her ability is literally called Charm. The description? Ahri blows a kiss…the first enemy it hits…is charmed, forcing them to walk harmlessly towards Ahri. She is literally a fox lady! Everything about her character says sexy, sultry seductress who will turn around and kill you. I think there is definitely a place in the game for characters like Ahri.

That time and place just isn’t almost every female champion in the game.

Unfortunately, the data above shows that it is almost every female champion in the game.

As well, the ‘revealing’ skins for men almost all reveal some part of the chest. This is about the only sexy skin that reveals a male champion’s legs above the knee.

I made a joke above about Halloween costumes, but it is in the themed skins where we see the biggest difference between the male and female champions.

When a male champion gets a theme costume, they’re relatively serious and impersonate the role they take. When a female champion gets a theme costume? Look for yourself. Let’s take, for example, Doctor Shen and Nurse Akali.

In this case (and many more like it), the message is clear: men are there to do things; women are there to be looked at.

Suggestion #2 – Skin Variety

111 of the 152 female skins (73%) are revealing, while 35 of the 134 male skins (26%) are revealing. That’s basically an inverse value. Only 2 female champions aren’t ready to strip down. Make some badass fully clothed (maybe even armored) female champions. And then, 6 months down the line, when you feel the urge to make a skin of them half-naked, just don’t. Instead, give us a sexy shirtless Jayce. Malzahar, too. Oh, and Vladimir. Riot pls ; )

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Malzahar-381900182

Champions like Varus, Aatrox, Leona, Diana, and Vi are all great starts. But instead of making exceptions, Riot could easily start setting their own trends.

Of course, it’s not just clothing that sends the message that women are eye candy, but also the positions champions are put into. It's important to make an important note here. Sexy is a quality champions possess. Sexualization is a quality of presentation of a champion.

One can advocate for female champions to be less sexualized (on average, not across the board) while not making any comments about how sexy they are. There are a large number of sexy male champions, but a small number (Varus/Aatrox/Pool Party) that are sexualized. On the other hand, pretty much every female champion is sexy, and every female champion but for a couple is sexualized in at least one skin.

Sexy and sexualized champions are not the problem: this imbalance is.

Broken Back Mountain

If you'll look at the champions in League of Legends, you'll see that a number of female champions appear to have shattered their spines.

I’m so used to seeing women posed in ads or billboards in ridiculous positions with half of their chest photoshopped out that my judgement was horribly wrong. So I called in two friends of mine with a lot of experience drawing the human body to second-guess me.

And what did they do? I categorized each skin as “That pose is totally manageable”, “That pose is uncomfortable looking, but I bet it’s possible”, or “Dear gods, what am I looking at?”

Rarely did they disagree with me when I said “Dear gods, what am I looking at?” For example, we all agreed that Soraka has clearly just suffered an spine-shattering fall:

But almost every time I said “that looks uncomfortable, but I’ll bet it’s possible”, they turned, looked me dead in the eyes, and said “show me”. In the now four days since then I’ve had constant pain in my everything. My back feels like an elephant stepped on me repeatedly. But if you don’t believe me, ask this contortionist martial artist who has written on the same topic.

Again, this is not a female-only thing, but it is certainly a predominantly female thing. Aatrox, after all, is definitely giving us a little bit of the stock chest + butt pose:

Take note: I’m not criticizing the Riot artists for being unable to draw. Sometimes, you want a character in a certain pose, but you also want that character’s face visible. So you cheat a bit with perspective, you shave a bit here and there, and you bend your character just a bit to make the picture work. And in moderation, there’s nothing wrong with that! But it can be overdone, both in degree and in quantity.

To give an example, here is a side-by-side of how Lux looks, vs a re-worked version of Lux for less broken spine, courtesy of Escher Girls:

When you see the following data, you should know that anything that I did not always disagree with my friends. If I couldn’t manage a position, but it was close, I let it slide anyway. Only things I upgraded to “that champion literally does not fit together/is dead” got counted as “awkward pose”.

32 champions in total were posed in a ridiculous fashion, and of those 32, 27 were female, and 5 were male.

To give some data to this point, let’s narrow our search to champions who are both posed and revealingly dressed in the same skin. This leaves us with 23 of our 34 female champions vs 2 of our 33 male champions. Mostly, the men are posed to be cool, while the women are posed to be sexualized.

In Riot’s defense, they actually have a decent lineup of male champions designed to be sexy:

But with exception of Aatrox and Varus, the male champions are not trying to be sexy, they just are. Ok. They’re trying a little bit. I can totally see Graves sucking it in and walking with his shoulders back. But if that’s trying, what is this?

Now, I feel that I need to reiterate my thesis to make sure that the point is not lost at this point: I do not object to sexualized skins or champions. What I object to is the huge dichotomy of variety. Male champions exist in all varieties: macho, boyish, lithe, muscled, sexy, and monstrous. Female champions basically have thin and sexy.

Suggestion #3 – Stop Trying so Hard

You have a great team of artists. If I didn’t want to work at Riot Games already, I would want to just to meet Iron Stylus after seeing him being an excited geek about Leona's sword. Let’s not mention the wonderful champion designers you have. So trust their characters. We were compelled by Diana in her base skin.

She’s a sexy, dark, powerful, scary badass with an underexplored storyline. And then we get to her followup skin. It has potential; it highlights her massive changes from her past in ways that a story could not. But it does that whether or not she’s arching her back impossibly.

Everybody trusts Riot’s ability to make new champions, develop characters and storylines, and tell stories with skins. Y’all are badasses. So rest on that, on the variety of stories you can tell, not on chest + butt poses.

Riot really had a chance to break new ground in the representation of women in games with Diana and Leona. You already have the sexy/lithe male archetype with Varus/Aatrox.

You could have embraced the physically strong woman archetype with Diana and Leona. Unfortunately, they ended up with the same sort of stick figure bodies every other female champion has.

And that’s ok. Who am I to tell you how Diana or Leona should look? Those are your ideas, not mine. But the idea for a stronger looking, fuller, more buff female character? That can be your idea too. You only have to embrace it.

Game of Thrones did it with Brienne, and they’re about as successful as fantasy gets.

Who Cares?

Why does this matter? Because media shapes the way we see the world. Because maybe this is the reason there are so many fewer female League of Legends players. Because it’s real life, flesh and blood sports that are constrained by the old notions of male competitors and female cheerleaders. Fantasy is about imagining new and better things, and breaking the way we see the world.

Or as WhyU put it: *92% of LoL users are male, and yet, 45% of gamers are female.*

Could the sexual objectification of female champions be apart of the reason why so few girls play League of Legends (comparatively)? Could another part be the misogynistic views held by so many LoL gamers? Is there a causal link between the two?

Overall

You can have your overly sexualized female champions (male versions: Aatrox/Jayce/Varus/Pool Party Lee Sin), but next to them, you can have attractive champions who aren’t trying to be sexy (male versions: every other Lee Sin Skin). You can even have gasp conventionally unsexy female champions (male versions: Gragas and most monstrous champions).

And don’t give me that “it’s a game, it’s about fantasy” line. First, we have to consider whose fantasy it is: the male champions are designed as somebody you might want to be, while the female champions are designed as somebody you might want to look at.

There are lots of fantasies, and I grant that some of them are about attractiveness. Sometimes I just want to be a hideous troll bashing people with a club. Sometimes I want to play Draven, and nobody thinks that facial hair is attractive. I’m not even really saying “make some unattractive champions”, although I don’t think it would kill you. I’m just saying that every female champion doesn’t need to be look more concerned with the observer than what it is she’s fighting.

Check out this difference. Lee Sin looks cool; he definitely looks sexy. But his sexiness comes from the fact that he’s physically fit and in a fighting stance. You know how I know that? Because it’s the same whether he’s wearing a shirt or not.

Lee Sin is an attractive badass who will **** you up if you mess with him. And you know what? Sometimes he likes to go down to the pool, flex his muscles, and …tickle the chin of that female champion next to him… if that’s what he’s into.

But in League of Legends, female champions don’t really get a choice. Fiora, the Master Duelist, is the best fencer in all the land. Surely she gets a cool fighting pose? Oh.

Diana and Leona and Jinx and Quinn and Riven and and Sejuani Shyvana and Vayne and Vi are all super well-designed champions (I don’t see it as a coincidence that IronStylus worked on Diana, Leona, Quinn, and Sejuani’s rework). They’re badass, they’re sexy, they’re cool, and they have distinct personalities. But making them preen doesn’t improve their characters; in fact, it can diminish them by masking the elements of their character that define them.

And you know what, Ahri is a super cool champion too. She’s all sexy and seductive and that is her character. And it almost doesn’t register, because your brain is all “so what, every female character is sexy and seductive”.

All the variety that goes into your male champions’ art? Just send some of that over to the female champions! Because variety in champions actually serves to make your unusual characters stand out even more because they don’t play by the rules of the other characters.

It’s really a simple thing to improve on, and what I’ve written is anything but simple, so here’s a restatement of my points:

• Diversify monsters: make some truly monstrous champions that are female. I’m sure your community (not to mention your already employed concept designers) have plenty of ideas for that.
• Change what “revealing” means. Make more revealing skins for male champions, and allow some female champions to go without revealing skins.
• Change what “sexy” means. The variety in male champions shows you understand this distinction. Some champions are sexy because they’re trying to be sexy. Some champions are just inherently sexy, but it isn’t their main attribute. Allow more female champions to fall into that camp: let them be sexy without forcing sexy.
• Let your creations speak for themselves. Don’t overstate something when subtlety will do, because it adds depth to the overall presentation.

Thoughts? Have you been thinking this for a long time? Do you think "unsexy" female champions would be received well? What about monstrous female champions?

Champions/skins I think are really cool design:

• Aatrox - rawr
• Ahri - Like I said, there's a place for sexy champions.
• Diana - Badass
• Jayce - Captain Hammer
• Jinx - Get Jinxed was a spectacle
• Lee Sin - The Blind Monk
• Lissandra - her second skin is just silly, but she looks cool/inhuman.
• Lucian - A black champion who isn't a brute? Say WHAAAAT?
• Miss Fortune - just kidding, she seems more like a repository for sexy themed halloween costumes than a champion.
• Riven - but not Battle Bunny -_-
• Shyvana - SHE'S A DRAGON
• Varus - a really well designed sexualized male champion
• Vayne - Batman
• Vi - Another badass
• Vladimir - cool in an androgynous sort of way
• Yasuo - attractive in a sort of lithe, coiled way. Like a snake.

Sorry this is a double-post; somebody suggested this may be better suited to the community beta misc forums than GD. The original thread is here.