Hey Riot, Why Are The Women In Your Game Mostly Sex Objects Despite Having No Real Reason To?

GingerLoops·8/14/2019, 6:47:57 AM·6 votes·4,731 views

This was already posted elsewhere but I feel it fits better here.

So I've played 645 games this season as of this post, so I've seen some of your recent skins and played around a lot of them. I've also played as 99 champions in pvp and roughly 130~ in bots games. Now as a male player I've noticed that it seems there's a LOT of attractive females skins and champs and I never paid much attention to it because I assumed it went both ways. But it really egregiously doesn't Riot. Now It seems to me that you disproportionately sexualize female characters more than male but that seems like a broad statement so allow me to specify: You made 3 female characters whose lore literally includes and promotes being seductive and hot despite no male character even coming close to matching that lore and the fact that I can't even find one male character with some kind of seductive or even succubus adjacent lore. But ya know let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say that society doesn't really have male characters like that nearly as much as they do female. Well then I guess that's it, thank god you didn't make female characters who have no succubus-adjacent lore seem slutty or wear skimpy clothing.

Yeah so I was kidding there. At this point though I would like to focus specifically on Janna , Miss Fortune and Nidalee because I'm sitting here reading their little Bios and nowhere does it indicate a reason that Janna is in her bra and panties, you already know why Miss Fortune in there and why Nidalee is also wearing basically nothing and even her skins are almost nothing, the Pharaoh one is completely wrong and inaccurate to what female Pharaohs actually wore and then there's french maid. These three are picked out not only for the skimpy looks but also in game the voicelines and dances all indicate that these women are horny. Like to contest this? please hit Ctrl+3 on Janna and Nid and describe the dance with using the word "pole". But hey, WW does the thriller and Talon does a moonwalk crotch grab and neither of them had a "Neverland" type of documentary for their crimes so dances don't really represent a champion right? So maybe Nidalee and her pole dance aren't THAT bad, except that a lot of her lines don't sound aggressive and hunt-like, instead it sounds like she's hunting for d**(you choose whether that's for or ) and Janna also has a weirdly uncharacteristic tone that sounds more like eve than someone standing for what's right like Garen. And again, don't even get me started on. But in all seriousness these are 3 non-skimpy female champions that for some reason get really really sexually objectified(coincidentally Miss Fortune and her skins sell really well)

But hey, sometimes a female may get a little skimped up, it ain't sexist if the same thing happens to male characters right? Pantheon's how now so sexism is solved guys they're treated equal. Except it doesn't because almost every female character has something to some degree sexualized so frankly it isn't even closed to balanced because ya might be able to point out 6 or so guys that seem hot but that doesn't even compare to the female roster of hoes. But let's take it back to the holy trinity of justified hot characters, and it's fine if the lore correlates but that's not the reason these champs sorta represent the "women are just objects" mentality. These three exists but no male equivalent exists and thus it shows that when riot thinks of a champ, who has to be hot and seductive all three times they were female and they always will be, despite eve having the possibility of looking male we never see it ever. This doesn't just say "women are objects" it says "when we think of a sexual object, we just can't use men". Frankly this kinda thing seems small but it says a lot about where their heads are at and what Riot thinks of not only their own characters but their playerbase. This is clearly marketed to young men despite many female players also love league of legends and it's kinda weird to hear "man I love her but she's so slutty" whenever me and my female friends try to relate to characters because I LOVE Pyke and my friends try to relate and they had Kayle but her rework left her with thicc thighs pronounce breasts and hips that do not lie and now she seems too much like a sex object to relate to.(Also on a side note this phenomenon in video games is a common cause of dysphoria where people don't like their own bodies leading to disorders like anorexia, so good on ya Riot, the gift that keeps on puking)

Thank god we have skins and new content that improve upon that kinda stuff leaving only older stuff sexist. Except I mentioned the Kayle thing and then there was Kai'sa with a skin tight body suit and deep V-neck and then Neeko wearing little clothes despite being able to shapeshift them on and of course Qiyana, the first Latina in the game, thank god she wasn't in any way enabling a racial stereotype. By this point the sarcasm is tacky so I'm gonna get on with it. Seriously despite multiple promises and employee purging it seems Riot loves a good buttocks. Kayle was personally the most puzzling because nobody knew she was a female character and was shocked meaning her outfit didn't make it obvious, then she was reworked and is obviously a feminine champion. Now the skin line thing is actually interesting because sometimes it's real subtle like have ya ever noticed no female project character has their face fully covered? Or how all the Christmas skins have the human females in sexy Santa costumes with only Braum in one too? or If you look close enough Fiora, Caitlyn and Miss Fortune are showing massive cleavage? It's small things like that that separate men and women in the game. Men look cool and women look hot, end of story. So maybe the new content isn't all sexy bikinis but that fact that they continue to release content like that shows more than once they changed nothing when they promised less slutty characters in league.

Now I a mere Pyke and Galio main so maybe I'm the smartest guy in the world and I could come up with a few solutions like with every rework comes a quick visual update on just the base playermodel on a champ but it wouldn't be as good as team of developers within the Riot headquarters so if you can't tell what I specifically want, it's: a slow and gradual change to older champs and skins to make them less sexualized and going forward they become equally sexualized as male champs or not at all.

In the end it doesn't really matter. I could make this 50 pages long going into far too deep detail how Riot is super sexist and misogynistic but if the game is so big with 70 million players and so many of these champs are just way too sexualized one post isn't gonna do anything. So if a rioter reads this, give me a great counter argument and I'll change some parts of my post if they're wrong and if you play league and don't feel the same way you're just as free to call me wrong, stupid and a libtard despite my mostly conservative values. If you agree I ask that you just put down you own experience and give further points to talk about. All in all these are my thoughts and it's what I believe and there isn't much to be done to change it.

37 Comments

JackMcCarry8/14/2019, 6:55:26 AM8 votes

Didnt read the entire thing. But Graves Braum LeeSin Yasuo Taric Sylas Rakan would disagree with you.

Sona Ping8/14/2019, 9:28:02 AM4 votes

I read this. All of it. I took it seriously, and doubled back to make sure I have everything right. I could talk about how you've got wrong ideas about Kayle and audience impressions of her and so on but that's small potatoes and is not the big issue. I'm going to be honest. This post says more about you than it does about Riot. You're working under some really messed up ideas about women people and what others are like and you should get that sorted and talk to someone. Seriously.

Dorans Pants8/14/2019, 7:14:08 AM4 votes

And I hope they will never stop doing it.

GodlyBane8/14/2019, 1:46:58 PM3 votes

Whatsup, white knight

KestrelGirl8/14/2019, 7:40:50 AM3 votes

Hey, so, I did a post on this a while ago that may've been a little better formatted but caused just as many nasty reactions as yours probably will. The long and short of it is that the champions you're most worried about are in extreme need of redesigns and because they are both so graphically outdated as well as being sex dolls, I think it's very hard to disagree. All three of them have original designs dating back to the very earliest days of the game, when Riot was a lot more focused on pleasing horny guys. Caitlyn also falls into this category. I'm not particularly concerned about Fiora considering that her jacket actually obeys the laws of boob physics to a higher degree than most similar outfits I see (her model gives a much better idea of this than her splash). But I did list several other champions in that post who also had blatant sexualization problems, including the likes of Kai'Sa and Ashe. Kayle also makes an updated version of this list, though partially just on the basis that part of her armor would hurt her the moment she bends over. I'm not a huge fan of Qiyana's design either on similar grounds to the rest, but she is at least wearing a slightly more functional outfit than many egregious offenders that also shows her royal station (and that she's arrogant enough to not guard her heart, which frankly suits her but would be inexcusable for anybody else).

EDIT: To be clear, the angle I approach this from is not "oh no, the women are EXPOSED to the predatory eyes of horny male gamers!!!!" I feel that that's what OP is getting at and I dislike that viewpoint. My angle is more like "should she really be wearing that in a battle, or is her armor going to kill her in some way?"

P4ppino8/14/2019, 8:24:35 AM3 votes

Gey

Carach Angren8/14/2019, 2:47:42 PM3 votes

Another useless post, shocking

Next time, if you want more attention, target minorities

Just so you know, it's a video game, not real life.

Tailypo8/14/2019, 2:55:04 PM2 votes

99% of the lady skins could be renamed Pornstar, and that's ok.

Tbh, I've always been pretty embarrassed by most of the skins, and they're the actual #1 reason I would have a hard time recommending this game to anyone. But I'm older than the kiddies Riot targets with this shit.

CrazyMonkeyCZ8/14/2019, 6:50:05 AM2 votes

Having nice things? How dare you.

(why reupload? You have to copy it after clicking edit if you want champs icon to be copied as well)

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO8/14/2019, 3:50:54 PM1 votes

Hey man you have my full support. The thing is though these boards are absolutely terrible at discussing social issues, they’re filled with gamer types.

TheFoxWolf8/14/2019, 9:13:46 AM1 votes

Don't mind me.

Nasus MonkeyKing

Camille Ferrøs8/14/2019, 10:26:31 AM1 votes

Because it baits the thirsty teens into buying them.