Art and Culture # 122: Anti-Feminine Beauty “Video Game Aunties” in Video Games
What’s odd for me, as a video gamer, is to see unattractive women be given such a high role in video games. Granted, video games like Naughty Dogg’s “The Last of Us” series is committed to realism while tackling genre related questions of death, mortality, and disease, beauty is left by the wayside. The outcome isn’t that defying beauty is a virtue, but a demand, in the video game industry.
Del Walker, former Naughty Dogg, Respawn, employee, expressed on June 19th, 2024 that “There’s been a handful of times I’ve pitched black women characters [this], then after 10 years of iterations the concept or model comes back without a speck of original beauty I pitched” as he quotes the term “grocery store aunties.” The outcome isn’t that this is a wide spread conspiracy theory, but a reality. The answer isn’t complicated. And it seems nature is healing itself.
Stellar Blade saw wide spread fan acclaim for keeping their main character, Eve, as beautiful as she is determined. What makes beauty far more acceptable is that nobody in their right mind wants ugliness. Even if it does create a sense of realism, beauty itself should be cherished and protected, as well as the realism the story can present.
(source: https://www.reddit.com/r/stellarblade/comments/1aoo9iu/whats_your_favorite_stellar_blade_outfit/)
Beauty is a natural aesthetic of what people crave in their minds, heart, and souls. It’s a fantasy not even promoted by the male gaze, but nobody wants to play a game where they are an ugly character. There’s no reason to pretend that this is true, or not. The gift of being beautiful is that you have to work hard and train and become the beautiful person you want to be. In video games, it may take a few simple brush strokes, but the digital artists themselves are people, and want beautiful characters, too. Such as Del Walker argued in his post on X.
It’s not out of the realm of impossibility that beautiful characters, in major AAA video games, can be beautiful, as Lara Croft’s barrel chested self represented peak video game beauty spanning from 1996 to 2013. It means that beauty, in video games, is as important as beauty in novels, films, and youtube films, explore depravity but also beauty through struggle and purpose. As beauty is being challenged, there are those that oppose it and as we see, nature is healing itself. But there will definitely be more battles to fight, too. And Del Walker is one of the very few speaking out against an industry conforming against aesthetic beauty in the video game industry.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 21 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline Part 2: Chaos, The Data Chase, The Disintegrating Bloodline part 3: Solvè, The Disintegrating Bloodline (and the original text re-released in 2019), Apocalypse Soldier, The Data Chase, Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga, and Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep, The City of Sand, The God of Curiosity, To the Moon and Back, The Villain Lives and The Villain Lives: The Divided Pinpoint, Come Home, Young One, City of Sand: Book 1: The Holy Terror, and The Voices Are Alive, and The City of Sand: Book 2: Jerusalem Ignited. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English from University of Phoenix. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. X: https://x.com/ReallouisBr1. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. His newest books, The City of Sand: Book 3: America the Free, is out now.