When Final Fantasy 15 announced the first female Cid of the game, many gamers, especially feminists, were ecstatic. Then they saw the character's outfit, and they threw a hissy fit. When the main character for Final Fantasy Mobius- a mobile phone game that no one outside Japan might get because Square Enix hates making money, it seems- was revealed, people threw a hissy fit. And then Square Enix caved and changed the character's armor design, citing the previous armor as "too sexy".
Photo taken from http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-04-07-square-enix-tones-down-its-too-sexy-male-star-of-mobius-final-fantasy
This change of design, of course, is prone to open up a can of worms, because many people will start to question WHY Square Enix would change one instance of negative feedback while ignoring another. I speak, of course, of the female Cid of Final Fantasy 15, Cidney (or Cindy). Basically, Cidney is depicted as a female mechanic (people LOVED this idea) who has an open yellow jacket that shows off her bra and breasts (feminists hated this). Now the people who hated Cidney's design will have some ground for complaint.
I had written my thoughts on sexy character designs on this entry, so if you want a refresher, click this link: http://vidgameanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/11/character-design-and-characters.html. For those with no patience to read long entries: how you react to a character's design is on you, and you shouldn't force an artist to censor him/herself just because you don't like getting turned on by a sexy design. You are free to not play a game if you don't like how the characters are designed.
I'm a straight guy, and I'll admit playing as a pretty boy in leather who shows off way too much skin isn't my cup of tea. But not for that would I demand that a company change the character's design, because guess what? A lot of people, especially women and gay men, would have LOVED this design.
That's something that ticks me off, too: this was supposed to be fanservice for people whose tastes fall onto the male. Like it or not, a lot of women and gays LIKE pretty boys in leather. Why do you think Dante from DmC is so popular?
And what, men can't be sexualized? It's OK to have girls in bikinis bouncing their boobs every other game, but let a man show off a well toned six pack and suddenly it's boy burqa time? Let there be games that sexualize men, for Pete's sake, so the people who like men can have some eye candy! We make plenty of that for the people who like women, make some for the people who like men!
We can not, should not reject our sexuality. It SHOULD be OK for gaming to have games with sexy women, just as it should be OK for games to have sexy men. It should be OK for us to find a character to be sexy, and it should be OK for a game designer to design a character to be sexy. Being a sexy vixen does not make a woman any less of a deep character (e.g Tifa from FF7, Bayonetta, Lara Croft), so being a sexy fox shouldn't make a man any less of a deep character either.
If you de-sexualize a male character due to consumer demand, then special interest groups WILL question why the female characters remain sexualize, and they'll be right to do so. Let men AND women be sexy, there's ought be no shame in it!
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