Thats true, but the trend also occurs in women aged 20-40 also... I cannot verify this by personal experience as I have only witnessed such behaviour on programs such as Ladette To Lady [hehe]. There was one woman on there who was a 36 year old electrician and whose main hobbie was to spend a weeks wages on a friday night on alcohol .
Lara Croft: The Debate
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkdwTUU56y8
Toward the end, Alison gets asked a question about Lara's sex appeal, in which she doesn't answer so clearly.
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Why is it such a taboo? Why the denial? This essentially proves what I said about Lara's breasts and sex appeal being a money maker, given that Alison was avoiding the question.
She'd make a good politicianNah, she is 'only' the face of Tomb Raider, it is the authorities that be who should be flamed. -
How's this for efficiency?
http://business.timesonline.co…nology/article5485017.ece
Lara's getting a female-friendly makeover that we'll start to see in the upcoming games. Looks like one of my dreams has come true; now if only world peace will hurry up and get here.
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I'm really curious, i can't quite imagine how this female-friendly makeover would look like since the article didn't really say anything about that... smaller breast size, less reveiling clothes like the wetsuit in the Med? It has to be about the appearance, I guess, because there's nothing offensive about the gameplay
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Well, I read a discussion on another forum, and people were talking about how they're changing the gameplay around even more, and they might think about changing where Tomb Raider's going to make more sales. If it becomes a first person shooter and becomes nothing like Tomb Raider should be, I won't be playing the games anymore.
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I agree, if I want to play a first-person shooter that's set in a tropical environment, then I go and play Crysis or whatever.
Funny: There are so many female fans of TR already, it really wouldn't make any sense at all to change major gameplay aspects now in order to make it "female friendly"
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I totally agree with you red hell, TR should remain an action-adventure game. And her appearance, why would you want to change her again ? She looks more human-like then ever before. And to add destinations to the game that would appeal to the feminine side of the gender, where could we send Lara?
How about : New challenge. Find the original flask of Chanel No5 in " Harrods " store-rooms.
Help " Trinny and Susannah " dress up Zip for dinner.
I don't think so !
I truly think that there is no obvious difference between the male and female players ( fans ). -
It does make me wonder how Lara can become [more] female friendly. I mean, what are they going to do, make her breasts smaller? Something that should've been done quite some time ago.
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make her breasts smaller? Something that should've been done quite some time ago.
Yeah, but apart from that, what else can there be done ? Guess we just have to wait and see.
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I don't think much else can be done. Also, I think the results depend on what they think is "female-friendly"; also on what females they considered. I'll be incredibly pissed off if Lara starts carrying around a makeup kit and when her face gets dirty, she has to wash it and reapply her blush and lipstick.
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Good one. cat.
Imagine her fury if she breaks a nail, ouch!!!!!!!!!!!
Did you read the interview with Eric Lindstrom?
According to this, all the talk about a female friendly Lara is just that, talk.
And oh, btw it looks like he got the boot by CD. Hard to believe , isn't it ? I was positively shocked by the news of his departure. Let's hope they ( CD ) re-think their decision and put him back into the team. What do you say ? -
I heard that Lara might not be facing a "makeover" after all; reading an article (that I really need to find again) about it, I laughed when an Eidos employee said "How on Earth can Lara become any more female friendly than she already is? There's not much we can do...."
The man really did sound confused at the demand. I for one think it's aggravating - I want to know who decided to piss and moan about Lara needing to be more female friendly; I want to know what they want to happen to her.
As for Eric being fired, that wasn't Crystal's fault but Eidos'. Shame indeed; he was a brilliant man.
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"How on Earth can Lara become any more female friendly than she already is?
Well, that says it all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I too would like to know who on earth started THAT rumour. Then again, this person really gave us something to talk about, right ?
The other rumour ( if indeed it is one ?! ) is the sequel to AOD. Eric didn't like AOD. Is that the reason why he got fired by Eidos ?
Interesting thought -
Well the whole Angel of Darkness bit is true. It was confirmed in a press release by Eidos that Angel of Darkness is part one of a trilogy, but I have my doubts that they'll continue it anytime soon, if at all.
I found this article over at GamaSutra, and it's rather interesting:
By now you've probably heard somewhere or another that Eidos would like to make the Tomb Raider franchise and its heroine more "female-friendly."
"Female-friendly" is a well-intentioned but faintly gruesome marketing phrase that's come to be perceived as shorthand for "let's make everything pink so women will buy it."
It's almost inherently offensive -- so in order to treat this concept of a female-friendly Tomb Raider fairly, the phrase first asks us to get some words out of the way.
As a female journalist in a majority male industry, perhaps I'm owed a deck in the face from Gloria Steinem when I confess that, whenever we as a society discuss gender issues and "what women want," I get a pang of concern for the men.
I'm probably spoiled having grown up in this era instead of in a previous one, but I don't like that we're allowed to discuss what's "female-friendly" -- and yet, generally feel comfortable already assuming what's "male-friendly" (guns! explosions! boobs!), permitting girls' club attitudes while boys' clubs are conceptually frowned upon.
The "female-friendly" idea also assumes that all women are interested in the same ideals. But, semantics aside, I think it's clear what Eidos is trying to do here.
Bombshell Background
Longstanding, iconic heroine Lara Croft has a reputation as a bombshell -- okay, okay, sex object.
She's perhaps the game biz's most famous piece of eye-candy, and somehow over the years she's become iconic of the concept that 18-year-old boys drool over pixelated boobs. It's easy to see how this has made some women feel as if Tomb Raider games are not "for them."
But when it comes to why women don't feel comfortable with this or that video game, it becomes necessarily a far bigger issue than just one character's physique.
Lara could receive an extreme makeover and appear triumphantly on the set of Oprah, and yet it'd still unlikely be some magical cure for female perception of the brand -- and it might even alienate existing fans, which won't help their ends.
Eidos is forced to re-evaluate the franchise's appeal because Tomb Raider: Underworld posted disappointing sales. It may also be that Eidos would like to clean lingering skeletons -- such as this poster girl for teenage gamer boy fantasies -- out of its closet in order to pretty up for a strong buyer, but that's only speculation.
Releasing a title in a franchise that's felt if not a bit checkered, perhaps staid, for years during a packed, starkly hit-driven recession holiday would suggest that weakened sales are to be expected no matter how great this installment is.
That Tomb Raider is in need of an update may indeed be an idea with some merit behind it. But the go-to idea that making this larger-than-life heroine look mundane and conservative will make her appealing to more women is probably more than a bit flawed.
Impossible Realism
People often point out the implausibility of Lara wearing hot shorts in the snow, or having bare legs when she plans to be climbing stalagmites or obelisks or something.
Well, game characters have worn implausible clothes for ages -- none of the FFVII crew bundled up in the North Crater, and Solid Snake didn't mind lying belly-down in the snow at Shadow Moses.
Indeed, many a shirtless muscleman has braved monsters and elements for over a decade, facing nothing more than a chuckle and "that's video games for you." The argument that "we don't want to desexualize Lara, we just want her to be realistic" doesn't hold water.
Most women are smart enough to know that Lara is a video game character and not a real person. Maybe her body proportions are unrealistic -- but, uh, the fact that she leaps across chasms in the Amazon, balances on hairline ledges and discovers mysterious artifacts with ancient powers is acceptably grounded in reality?
Lara's physicality was palpable in Underworld. It had much less to do with how her body looked, and much more about how she used it, with sound design and character modeling that captured the precariousness, the breathlessness, of her acrobatic feats.
Personally, not once did I sit there feeling bad because I don't look like her, and I don't like the idea that women are so fragile that sexy fantasy women should never be allowed in video games -- especially when we allow sexy fantasy men.
Perception And Judgement
I don't believe that women have a problem with Lara, other than that we've been conditioned to blame her. I think it's Lara's social context -- Lara's perceived audience that makes them feel unwelcome.
And once again, this comes down to the longer-term history of the video game industry, which marketed itself for years as a toy for teenage boys, and now will probably take years more to get rid of that stigma.
You can even say it's the fault of society, fond of judging which kinds of things are "for girls" and which kinds of things are "for boys", that makes women feel like they ought not to try something like Tomb Raider.
Maybe it even makes women feel like they are "supposed to be" insulted by Lara, even without having taken a look at their own feelings around the issue.
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that when it comes to the relationship between women and games, much broader things need to change than the long-established aesthetic of Lara Croft.
A Real Reinvention?
"We need to look at everything, as we develop the next game," Eidos CFO Robert Brent said in a report in the Times Online. "Look at how Batman changed successfully, from the rather sad character of the Michael Keaton era to the noir style of The Dark Knight."
Such comments are actually heartening; many early comic book superheroes were vague, justice-oriented concepts at their inception and then gained greater complexity and wider appeal through repeated reinvention.
So sure, media coverage around this Lara Issue has focused heavily on her body and what the desires of a female audience might be.
But it's clear that Eidos will only refresh the franchise successfully when they focus less on guesses about what appeals to women and more on what could make Lara more than superficially appealing -- period.
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Thanks for that, cat. A very interesting article indeed. But it just shows that there is no clear way of changing Lara.
There is one way of doing this though, and that would be having a choice of character at the start-menu.
Like do you want to play: female friendly Lara ?
play : original Lara ?
But I don't think THAT would ever happen. -
I believe the question should be "Will it ever happen, or should it ever happen?". My answer, no, it shouldn't happen.
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My answer, no, it shouldn't happen.
My answer also. But, how would YOU handle it ? If given the task to make Lara more female friendly.
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But, how would YOU handle it ? If given the task to make Lara more female friendly.
I'd let her stay the way she is now, and I'm stating that as a female
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I'd make her breasts smaller, and that's it - well, that's all I think needs to be done. I mean, I'd just like to know their definition of 'female-friendly'.