Twitter users shared their reactions after one gamer asked why Aloy, a female video game character, has a "beard"
Horizon Forbidden West is an open-world fantasy game that takes place in post-apocalyptic western America. The main protagonist is a huntress named Aloy, a young red-haired woman with freckles on her cheeks and nose. While she's often described as a fierce, smart, and likable hero, it seems that it’s not the first time that male gamers have attacked her appearance online.
Several months ago, one Twitter user criticized the studio behind the game, Guerilla Games. It is one of Europe's leading game development companies that’s a part of PlayStation Studios. The person wrote that the female characters they create are becoming too masculine, so they decided to share their own fan art. In the image, Aloy had glowing skin, white teeth, and full-on makeup.
Needless to say, many people felt frustrated to see such sexist complaints about the video game character. Tweets like this receive lots of attention from the gaming community since they highlight the ignorant, narrow-minded, and sometimes childish views certain male gamers have. And some people, especially women, are sick and tired of hearing criticisms aimed at the female characters, saying that it's all part of a bigger problem.
"Male gamers push their standards and expectations on these female characters," Beth, who goes by the handle @GentleBara, told Bored Panda. She shared her thoughts on the matter by tweeting that "every single real-life woman has peach fuzz like Aloy." So if someone could even ask why she has a "beard", it probably means that they have never seen a woman up close. "If there's anything [men] are not used to in a female character's design, they'll complain about it," she added.
When asked why that male gamer seemed to think that the hair on Aloy’s face was a masculine feature, Beth said they're "ignorant and immature". Otherwise known as vellus hair, peach fuzz is usually short, softer in texture, and lighter in color compared to other types of hair on a person’s body. A survey of 1,000 women conducted in the UK showed that 98 percent of those who had facial hair had negative thoughts about their looks.
Around a third of these women revealed they felt anxious if they could not immediately remove them. This only shows the lack of acceptance by our society regarding facial hair, making many women feel uncomfortable about their appearance and preventing them from discussing it out in the open.
That’s why so many people celebrate the new technologies that allow gaming companies to include more graphics. After all, making the characters look more realistic is a step in the right direction. Bastien Ramisse, the lead character artist at Guerrilla, said in a blog post that the development of the PlayStation 5 console allowed them to aim for high quality and bring more detail and authenticity to the game.
"Each generation of consoles brings extra power that lets us add even denser polygons to our character models, so we can create finer details such as peach fuzz, smooth contouring, or finer texture details and accurate materials expression, to name a few," Ramisse explained, saying that it’s a dream come true for both players and developers.
He continued: "The most noticeable differences and improvements for Aloy in terms of technology is the push of facial and body capture accuracy, allowing more realistic shapes and surface details on characters as well as the careful increase of polygon density to capture handmade and used outfits."
So even when the artists can make their heroes more exciting than ever before, some gamers still do not seem satisfied with some of their human traits. "People will always complain about a character's design and its features," Beth told us. "It's happened before with other games and will continue to happen in the future." If she would have to guess the reason behind having such a mindset, "it could be a projection or they might have standards that are ridiculous."
