Despite the fact that more women are getting into gaming these days, and that video games like Rise of the Tomb Raider feature strong female protagonists, sexism in video games continues to be an issue.
And not only the old stereotype of the “damsel in distress” refuses to go away, but many video games these days still feature sexualized depictions of females, like the busty female characters of Street Fighter or the beach bimbos of Koei Tecmo’s Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 game. So without further ado, here follows a list of 5 video games which were accused of sexism.
1. Dead or Alive Xtreme 3
It is clear that Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, an Xbox 360 exclusive released back in 2006, is one of the most sexist video games released to date, as it featured bikini-clad girls whom the player could control, playing beach volleyball and engaging in other activities too. These game’s characters were the typical sexualized video game females with oversized breasts and curves that would make even a glamour model envious.
Despite the controversy though, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 wasn’t that much fun to play and wasn’t a very good game at all, but many were shocked when developer Koei Tecmo announced that its sequel would not be seeing a release in the West due to the game’s sexist content. An admission of guilt perhaps, that also goes to show the divergence in opinion between the Western public and the Japanese one regarding what’s acceptable when it comes to portraying women in video games, even if games like Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 which feature hyper-sexualized bimbos and bad gameplay are more a curiosity than anything else.