Do female characters in apocalyptic scenarios really need to pay attention to their attractiveness just so that male gamers are satisfied?
There have been many cases of male-dominated gaming communities complaining about female characters not being sexualized/attractive enough - so let's explore why so many men think they're entitled to be catered to in every game they play.
Examples Of Men Expecting Fan Service In Games
Before we start with actual arguments, we'd like to provide examples of male gamers expecting to be catered to in various games, so that no one can claim this phenomenon doesn't actually exist.
Horizon Zero Dawn
As soon as Aloy was revealed as the main character of this game, a big part of the male gaming community (not all, but many) complained about her not being attractive enough and called this woke.
Here are some anonymized posts about this character, from different platforms:
"Why is aloys character model so ugly?" - Post found on Reddit
"Aloy's ugliness explained by Horizon director" - Post found on GameFAQs
"aloy is ugly af, can someone make a mod to make her hot like in hzd plz" - Post found in Horizon Forbidden West's community forum on Steam
The thing is: She's a hunter in a post-apocalyptic world, so why would she try to meet female beauty standards? She probably has other priorities. Many men and also many gamers like to call themselves logical/rational, so wouldn't the rational conclusion be that a protagonist in this scenario wouldn't be super styled and do anything to look good?
The Witcher IV
When the The Witcher IV trailer dropped, many male gamers complained that 1) the new protagonist is female in the first place (even though she literally became a Witcher at the end of the third game and Geralt's story was finished) and 2) that Ciri wasn't attractive enough, one again calling the game woke.
Here are anonymized posts about this topic:
"CDPR managed to make Ciri ugly. Witcher 4 is cooked." - Post found on X
The Witcher 4 Trailer Gets MOCKED For Uglifying Ciri!! Geralt Gets PUSHED To The Side!! - Post found on YouTube
Ciri from The Witcher 4: Is She Really That Ugly? - Post found on YouTube
Some people are probably going to argue that Geralt is also commonly sexualized - but are they really held to the same standards? Geralt is portrayed as aged and scarred, Ciri isn't, yet she's the one who's called too ugly to be a protagonist. One could only imagine the outrage a female The Witcher character who looks the same age as Geralt would get.
The Last Of Us
Many male gamers complained about Ellie, the underage protagonist of The Last Of Us, isn't attractive enough, both in the video games and the HBO show. The question is: Why is a random female minor in a post-apocalyptic scenario expected to be attractive (or other female characters)?
Here are posts about the video game:
Why is Ellie so ugly in TLOU 2? - Post found on GameFAQs
Abby is the most ugly character. In the history of all video games. Both within and out. Change my mind - Post found in The Last of Us™ Part I community forum on Steam
Here are posts about the HBO show where Ellie is played by Bella Ramsey:
Anyone else think Ellie from the HBO Last of US is distractingly ugly? Show is great but my god that girl's face just isn't made for movies. - Post found on Reddit
Why Is It Every Young Female Lead Of The Show I'd Attractive But Ellie Looks Like A Bug Eyed Abomination - Post found on Reddit.
It's like they're forgetting that they're still talking about a human being, whether she looks like the game character or not. This got to the point where Bella Ramsay had to turn off social media because of how much she was bullied for her appearance:
Bella Ramsey on deactivating her social media following constant attacks about her as Ellie in The Last of Us HBO:"I always knew that I'd [deactivate] it one day and never even really wanted to have social media in the first place, If I just avoid Twitter and Reddit, which now... pic.twitter.com/wtSR9wFlen
— DomTheBomb (@DomTheBombYT) April 23, 2025
No Mercy
Recently, a game that enabled players to assault women was removed from Steam, and a colleague here at EarlyGame wrote an article about it.
What do the comments under this article look like, do they find it awful that a game like this was made and allowed on Steam in the first place? No, they call it "sad" that the game was removed and offer links where you can allegedly still download the game (we didn't try and advise you not to click on strange links).
The comments under an Instagram post about the game's removal look similar:
Ok nice advertisement. I'm gonna download the game rn
So how can I download the game now ?
No shit Sherlock!!! What are you expecting from a goon game.... The game is to satisfy carnal impulses and all most of the goon are around this category of course there are others too but mostly the games are based on taboo topics
And no, this doesn't mean that all male gamers praise this game, but the fact that we were barely able to find any comments from discernibly male accounts criticizing this game, but easily found many comments defending it, begs the questions: "Why are the men defending this so much more vocal than the ones condemning it?" and "Do even the men who don't endorse this not care enough to be vocal about it?"
Why Is This A Problem?
Before you write an angry comment: No, there is nothing wrong with liking attractive female characters. There's also nothing wrong with women wanting to play attractive female characters. We're also not saying that every man thinks or acts like this.
We're pointing out that there is a concerningly big number of men expecting every female character to be attractive and calling a game "woke garbage" or even calling for a boycott if they aren't attractive (at least to them) while finding it completely normal when games star less attractive male protagonists.
The problem is the privilege and entitlement that come with seeing men as the standard human (let's be honest, when most people hear the word "human", they'd probably automatically think of an adult human male) while expecting every female character to cater to male fantasies.
As if men wouldn't (rightfully) complain if they were treated the way society treats women - many already think they're being discriminated against when their favorite game stars a non-sexualized woman when the last five parts starred non-sexualized men, not considering that the other 50% of the human population may also want representation and one half isn't entitled to more than half the representation.
Sure, most male game characters are physically fit, but so are the female protagonists who are complained about here. In comparison, male characters have much less narrow beauty standards - characters are allowed to be middle-aged, scarred, etc. and still won't be called ugly.
Why Do So Many Male Gamers Feel Entitled To This Behavior?
Traditionally, gaming has been advertised as being "for men" or even "for boys", the ads already start at an early age. And unfortunately, it seems that spaces catered toward men always attract many men who feel that they're free to live out their misogyny in these communities.
Any subreddit geared towards men, such as r/MensRights, r/AskMen, r/AskMenAdvice, r/AskMenOver30, etc., are either full of blatant misogyny or full of mod posts about how misogyny isn't allowed because of the sheer number of men trying to make misogynistic posts.
You can look up horror stories about experiences women have had in male-dominated study subjects - being belittled, accused of cheating, etc. It's to the point where many women say that they don't want to study these subjects because they know that the students will be predominantly male, which then leads some men to claim women don't study these subjects because they're worse at them.
And the same thing also counts for the gaming community: It's historically geared toward men, so many men feel entitled to be misogynistic in this community, as long as they're backed up by enough other men.
This ranges from complaints about female characters being "too ugly" to straight-up harassing players who are perceived as women - example: my boyfriend lovingly tried to recreate me as his character in Monster Hunter and is now constantly being followed, stared at or even spammed by male players.
And men themselves also face negative consequences from this type of behavior, unfortunately, the innocent ones do as well. Many men feel lonely or like their mental health isn't taken seriously - but it's not women's responsibility to lower their guard, disregard their experiences with misogyny, and risk their own safety to serve as men's emotional crutches.
Instead, men need to call out other men for this behavior, instead of being indifferent or wasting their energy on complaining about always being seen as a threat, which they wouldn't be if they instead spent it on getting (more) other men to stop acting like this.
Once this behavior stops (at least for the most part, of course, not absolutely everyone can be influenced), women would stop feeling uncomfortable around men, femininity wouldn't be seen as something negative/embarassing anymore, and men would stop being seen as a threat or being seen as feminine for expressing their feelings or taking care of their mental health. But don't expect women to solve problems that other men have caused you to have, please.
Have you ever made experiences like these in the gaming community? What do you think could provide a solution?