Hey everyone, I’m going to talk about videogames again except this time there will be 1000% more genitals than the last post. Why is that? Well, hyperscale games developer/publisher Ubisoft has put vaginas in their new game. Not only that, but penises too. Shocking.So first, a bit of background on the situation: a few character models in the videogame Watch Dogs 2 have their vaginas modeled. A few characters in the videogame Watch Dogs 2 have their penises modeled. Typically in videogames, genitals are never added to characters since they’d be covered up and thus be a waste of resources to include them. But WD2 has them. You may now be asking yourself, “But Andrew, why are you writing a whole blog post about this if it’s pointless fluff?” What I’m going to write about is the reaction. Specifically, the reaction of both Ubisoft and Sony to what, as the imaginary reader correctly said, is pointless fluff.
Initially, a player (Adam) was messing around in the game and discovered that one of the women NPCs (non-player characters) had a modeled out vagina. Speaking to games website Polygon, Adam said that he found it a bit humorous, assuming the inclusion of any genitalia was a mistake by the developer, and so he decided to share a screenshot of his discovery to the Playstation Network. Later, he found his Playstation account had been suspended for violating Sony’s terms of service (Source). In the same Polygon article, they make note that non-sexual nudity is common within the game, there are nudists in parks and other areas of WD2’s virtual San Francisco. Shortly after this occurrence, Ubisoft apologized for including vaginas and noted that they would be removed from the game at a later date.
Notice anything lacking here? It’s not that all genitals will be removed (not saying that’s a good solution either), but only the vaginas are getting smoothed over. This is the main thing that strikes me as off about the attitudes of the companies: Penises? Fine. Vaginas? Gotta hide ’em. Intersex? What’s that? This attitude of vaginas being a shameful thing while penises can mostly just exist is reflected in wider western culture as well. Penises are something that are joked about, used as a symbol of power, and can be discussed largely without shame. The same cannot be said for vaginas which are constantly sexualized, shamed, and apparently need to be apologized for.
It should go without saying that this is wrong, but it seems that some people need a reminder. If we as a society want to move forward and break down sexist culture then we’re going to have to do some difficult things and if that difficult thing is unapologetically modeling vaginas then so be it. Another crucial fold is for artists to push back against corporations as much as they can. Videogames are one of the most corporately controlled mediums today, even above Hollywood, in which business people are frequently able to exert creative control over developers. This then leads to situations similar to this, where policies affect creation which leads to a continuation of the status-quo.
I’ll leave this post here, though I could obviously talk for literal days about all of this, but hopefully we can mentally chew on this a bit and maybe the next time we see a vagina just hanging out, we can all chill out about it?
Unruly Bodies 
Hey,
Thank you so much for writing this post.
I never understood why people have trouble when speaking about vaginas (or genitals in general) but then I remember my 5th grade self giggling when my health teacher said penis out loud.
One thing, that I found interested was that the artists at Ubisoft were willing to apologize about this and did not push back to support the art they had spent time on making.
There are many artists, from the beginning of time that have depicted genitals and have been pushing to make their art available to the public.
If anyone is interested I can send you some links to some works of art that showcase the beauty of genitals.
Oh and if anyone knows any artists that show intersex individuals I would love hear about it.
I have to agree that Ubisoft’s response was rather problematic, but they have a very long history of reinforcing sexism. I think that video game companies as a whole, especially larger ones, have a large cultural influence that they refuse to acknowledge. Just as movie’s reinforce what is culturally acceptable, so do video games. But, their refusal to acknowledge that power means that they won’t challenge any norms. Games that challenge norms are generally small scale indie games that rarely have a wide audience.
Additionally, I’d say that while it is important for artists to push back for creative control in gaming, many companies, especially Ubisoft, view video games as a product. I do know that view is changing a little bit, but the game industry, and especially Ubisoft, are very reluctant to change.
This is something that gets me – I agree that both penises & vaginas should be equally AOK – but I did some quick research and it looks like vaginas are only rendered on prostitutes, but penises are rendered on male humans who have bodies that are not only identified as “for sexual gratification”. I think this is a strange double standard, I’d love to see a full vagina rendered on a non-MILF, on a grandma, on a woman who is actively giving birth.
In part, no one is ok with vaginas because the creators of said vaginas (and, need I say it, those creators are mostly men) have not been equal opportunity providers of genitalia to their audience. If vaginas are only included in one context, aka as sexually CONSUMPTIVE, they will only be viewed in that context. And that context is widely considered taboo – this shouldn’t actually be surprising.
for context:
http://loadscreen.com.au/2016/11/22/vaginas-weed-video-games-says-jim-sterling-nsfw-obviously/