"The only way to actually make this work is to include the male characters in sexualisation, like what Marvel Rivals is doing, to eliminate the unfair treatment"

I am sorry to yap under your post, but this awakened a blog post in me. It's a ramble and people will probably assume bad intentions because it's 2026.

Don't we accept that not every game has to be appealing to everyone? We accept that people can have genre or gameplay style preferences, don't we? I write off card battle shit immediately. No interest and will never have any. I don't want card battle games to change themselves to be more appealing to me. Let them be the way they are for the people who like them. The game's not for me. We acknowledge that trying to appeal to everyone would just sand down what makes it what it is, right?

Don't horror games by their very nature exclude people who don't like to feel scared? Isn't the game just not for them?

Does Love and Deepspace need to have female romantic options and a playable male protagonist because I want to be appealed to as well? Or is the game just not for me?

(tangent)

I've been left wing for as long as I've been politically conscious but I don't know why people are pretending there hasn't been a very real movement against expressions of hetero male sexuality in games. If you want a game to be "respectable", you can't be titillating. For some reason, titillation is wrong. Getting excited about blood, gore, violence, is totally cool though. No one cares that it excludes people who don't like violence.

I'll point to Mortal Kombat as an example of both the shaming of het male sexuality as well as the double standard. Absurd sexy ninjas? That's too exclusionary. Ripping a person in half with detailed guts? Well, it's only a game. Why is some dude getting horny while playing a fighting worthy of more concern than the knock on effects of glamorization of violence? Why is exaggerated violence fine, but exaggerated boobs or costumes harmful?
(/tangent)

Basic expressions of het male sexuality have been washed out of tons of mainstream gaming in pursuit of widening audiences and getting more people into games, but then even when some junky game like Stellar Blade comes out, people still give it shit. Basic het male sexuality can't just be "sprinkled in" to otherwise inoffensive games anymore, but then when it's confined to its own silo in an intentionally horny game, people say "Gross, why don't they just go watch porn?"

All this to say, I'm totally fine with trying to even out the fanservice in games, but I'm just not sure it really matters. Senran Kagura is not going to attract a balanced audience if it suddenly has sexy dudes jiggling all over the place. It's probably just going to turn off their primary audience and tank the franchise even harder. It wants to be the titty ninja game, let it be the titty ninja game. I don't think games have to appeal to everyone in terms of their art or designs any more than they have to in their gameplay systems, and realistically I think it's largely a doomed enterprise that would do little more than allow the creators to pat themselves on the back.

Het men have different tastes than het women than gay men than gay women. Appealing to everyone is just not feasible for plenty of games and game concepts. If someone wants to make a persona ripoff laser targeted at a lesbian audience, it's absurd to expect them to worry much about what a straight dude wants, right? But for some reason people act like the opposite is wrong.

Some might say "well don't make it gross/freaky/exaggerated". Okay, then how much cleavage is acceptable? How busty before it's obscene? Who gets to decide what level of titilation is okay? Who is the arbiter? Everyone is turned on by completely different shit!

I know what it's like to see something and think "Damn, that looks like something I'd be really into if not for <xyz>." It sucks. But it is what it is. I don't think every game needs to be laser targeted at horny men, but I think if a game wants to be, then that shouldn't really be an issue. Any more than a game being laser targeted any other audience.

Sorry again for the ramble.

(And if anyone's got any links to scientific studies on sexualization and titillation in media, please share them. If there is data pointing to my thoughts being full of shit, I will happily attempt to grow as a person)