Gamerisms

[image description: Poster for Dead or Alive 5. It shows the face from the nose down and collarbone of a female-presenting person with tears streaming down her face. The tagline reads “I’m a Fighter”]

I feel like every time a Dead or Alive game comes out, the state of women in video games goes back a step. The series that features many scantily-clad women with outrageously disproportionate chest sizes, and without a question has elements of objectification and hypersexualization. Many fighting games in general unfortunately play into those tropes, but the DOA series also brought us the horrid Xtreme Beach Volleyball spin-off.

It looks like for the fifth installment, the series is taking a different turn, trying to focus, or at least projecting that they are focusing, on the actual fighting aspect of the women in the game and not their bodies (at least, to the degree of previous games). I doubt a series such as DOA has suddenly changed its tune, but the marketing for the series does show a drastic change in how they want to present the game, and maybe it will reflect in the game itself.

- Aria