If there is one subject in video games that can be viewed as the most controversial in the current stormy climate, it’s sexism. Video games haven’t always had the diverse community that they have today and so a lot of them are marketed to primarily cater to the male demographic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; you market to those who you will gain the most money from. The problem arises when the games themselves become demeaning or just downright cruel to those who aren't being marketed to.  When that happens, others feel as if the game (and sometimes the gaming community as a whole) isn’t meant for them. Optimistically, this problem should have been solved by now, considering that 48 percent of gamers now are female and women 18 and older represent a more sizable part of the gaming demographic (36%) as opposed to the boys 18 and younger demographic (17%).

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case and there are still games that end up heavily objectifying or stereotyping female characters.  A game will not be put on this list for only sexualizing a character because that’s not what this list is about. What's being talked about, is games that, as a whole, project a harmful image of a specific gender; in this case, we’re looking specifically at women.

If one wants us to cover a list of games that are sexist towards men, please put that in the comments below.

A special note should be made here that this list will be of a sexually graphic nature at times so reader discretion is strongly advised.

10. HuniePop

Normally, dating sims wouldn’t make it on a list like this, mainly because dating sims (or games with elements of that) are one of the few genres of gaming where many developers actively try to market to both demographics. There are plenty of dating sims for men and women with all sexual preferences. 

Then why does HuniePop make this list? The problem with HuniePop is that while it is a dating sim it is an incredibly shallow one, with a match 3 puzzle mechanic that helps raise the various levels of a woman’s “affection” for you.  Most dating Sims try to give each of the people you are trying to woo some sort of personality other than the bland archetypes.  HuniePop does no such thing; it pretty much just gives these women a type of personality and lets you talk to their bland personalities in hopes of being able to sleep with them later. They’ll send you tantalizing little sexy text messages with risqué pictures in order to seduce you.  Will you woo the athlete, the good girl, the bad girl, the cougar, the teacher or maybe the stewardess? Don’t worry because they all have as much personality as a paper bag so you should be fine.  

It’s just a bland game fanservice game for 9.99 that makes it seem like you’ve “won” these girls affections in a competitive sort of manner rather than actually earn it like in the dating sim Katawa Shoujo. It managed to make women objects to be won in a bejeweled styled puzzle game rather than someone you’d actually want to date and get to know.

9. Bonetown

Expecting more from a game called Bonetown seems silly, but leaving it off the list almost seems like a crime. How can one not put this on a list of sexist games? In Bonetown you play as some guy who’s getting peed on in the first cutscene by a frat guy and you have to beat him up for that. You then get sexually serviced by a nice blonde woman after she tells you that the point of the game is to have as much sex as possible. You of course can’t have sex in public because that would be indecent and you’d be taken to jail.

The entire point of the game is to have sex with women, but you can’t have sex with the attractive women at first, oh no, you have to have sex with the “fat,” “ugly” and/or “unattractive” women and as your testicles grow from all of your missions, then you can have sex with the pretty women.

There is of course nothing wrong with being sexually active. However, a game like this where the entire objective is to have sex and you only can “achieve” to have sex with attractive women when your balls have grown is problematic in itself. The way that this game is, it makes it seem like women are just things to have sex with and help your testicles inflate so you can become more of a man.

8. Scarlet Blade

This could technically encompasses every single  game that markets itself as “18+ men only,” but Scarlet Blade gets a special mention since it’s the one that’s had the most advertisement. This game takes the idea of female video game characters having terrible armor and multiples that by 11, making all of the female characters armor look more like bikinis then actual armor.

This game is pretty much designed entirely around making the perfect female character that you can watch run around and do her thing.  The developers have made sure to go out of their way to accentuate every possible sexual part of these female characters. These characters barely work well as female avatars because they look absolutely disgusting. The anatomy is awful and it makes the characters look deformed.  It’s like they tried to make the perfect woman but made her inhale her organs along the way. The idea of creating your potential dream wife is nice and all, but at least make sure she has her rib cage in your fantasy! The story isn’t that solid and the characters in it don’t really have any personality, they are just bland RPG stereotypes like the designated healer, the ranger, the tank, etc. Add in a whole helping anime slop that makes the game come off worse than it already does. And on top of that, the outfits only get skimpier further you go in, and the fact that you have the option to pay real money to make your character butt naked doesn’t paint the game in the best light.

While you can be a male character in this game, it’s not a cosmetic option; it’s a separate (bland) class. You’ll have to play a female character if you want something a little more creative, and if you want to play this game seriously, you won’t be able to because most people who play this game are playing it for other reasons. What makes matters worse is that it’s not even that good of an MMORPG. It’s very boring and mindless, which is a good way to sum up all of these sorts of games. You are playing as a Barbie doll of your choice with no real heart or soul, who has virtually no effect on the world around her.

7.X-Blades

X-Blades is a game where it’s not just the outfit that makes it horrible, it’s the character itself. There’s been a bit of a misunderstanding as of late on how to write strong female characters or what that term really means. Well, there is one thing it doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean the type of character that Ayumi is, whatever misshapen hunk of narrative she might be.

Ayumi is everything that’s terrible about “awesome female characters.” It’s like the writer was trying too hard to make her a smart mouthed bad girl and not hard enough to make her an actual character. She’s independent, but she has a soft side; she’s rude, but she has a heart of gold; she’s stoic, but she had tragic past. She is a paint-by-the-numbers bad girl and while this isn’t a bad thing by itself, the problem is that they don’t elaborate on any of these traits. It’s like they went to TV Tropes, hit the random button a few times and picked out the tropes they liked. 

X-Blades isn’t this high on this list because of her outfit, it’s high on this list because Ayumi is every negative thing that a female character could be. She’s a Barbie doll, like the women in Scarlet Blade but she’s a Barbie doll that tried to be a real girl but was held back by awful writing. If the game didn’t try to characterize her, it wouldn’t even be on this list.

6. Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

When you started reading this list you knew this was going to be on there, or at least something from the Dead or Alive series.  We all know that Dead or Alive loves their fanservice and, in a sense, this was the catalyst that started it all. This entire game is about playing volleyball! Oh wait, no it’s not, it’s about ogling your favorite ladies from the Dead or Alive series in various scanty outfits. All of these women have characters and backstories mind you, it’s all just conveniently forgotten in this game. It makes characters that were pretty three dimensional characters (for fighting games at least) into giggling stupid stereotypes.

Any of charm of the characters has been dumbed down in order to make them more palatable “waifu” material. You can help them build relationships with their fellow players by giving them gifts. Yes, this includes characters that tried to murder each other in the past. None of this matters here because they can all play fun minigames where they bump each other’s butts and the more money you earn from winning at volleyball, the skimpier the outfits you can put them in. This game took the once respected Dead or Alive Series, grabbed it by its hair and dragged it through the dirt to a mud wrestling contest.  This is certainly something I hope isn’t on Team Ninja’s list of things to do for the next entry in their franchise.

5. Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad

What’s funny about this entry is that it tries to emulate the style of “exploitation films” showing that it’s being deliberately exploitive and objectifying characters since it’s based off of that style of film. This doesn’t justify its deliberate objectification of its characters but it does at least explain it.  This game is similar to the entry above with characters that seem like they would be interesting, but they had their souls sucked out by the premise of the game being about breasts more than about being samurais. It’s pretty much walking Barbie dolls again with more anime stereotypes like Tsunderes that don’t develop beyond what the story provides. Oh right, the story: you are a bikini-clad babe fighting zombies. Done! While the story does have a bit more than that, that’s what most people are going to remember about this game.  

At least, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball had decent volleyball gameplay, this one ranks higher because it can’t even get the hack ‘n slash genre right. It controls horribly, and in Dead or Alive we are given explanations in-game on why the characters are dressed the way they are: they are on a beach. In this, these girls just went “I’m going to gear up and wear a stupid cowboy hat and skimpy clothes to fight hordes of zombies! That seems like a good idea!”

If this game would have controlled better and was just more pleasant to play, it wouldn’t have surpassed Dead Or Alive. But since this game is as boring as watching grass grow and controls make you feel like you are a ham sandwich with swords it deserves it’s spot at number 5.

4. Duke Nukem Forever

The girl’s in this game are all playful bimbos, but that’s not enough to get it on this list. Nor is the juvenile humor Duke associates with boobs and slapping around alien wall-breasts (don’t ask). No, what got it on this list is the comments Duke says about other women; they aren’t witty or charming in a roguish way, they are downright disgusting. Duke Nukem has always had a questionable portrayal of women in it, that much is true, but it never came off as mean-spirited. It was just reveling in the idea of its own masculinity to the point of parody. In Duke Nukem Forever though, everything came out just wrong, the timing, the jokes and everything Duke says is just terrible, especially towards his “babes”.  His worst comment is when makes fun of two female characters that are getting raped by aliens and then impregnated from it. 

“Looks like you two are… fucked.”

As soon as he makes that joke, the two girls explode, because why not. While he does vow revenge against the aliens responsible, it still doesn’t change the fact that in their last moments he decided to make a really terrible one-liner that comes off as not just insensitive, but in poor taste too.  While we know this is Duke and one-liners should be expected, there is a time and a place for everything and that wasn’t it.  Add onto that the “Capture the Babe Mode” which is like Capture the Flag but the flag has breasts (still as much personality though), and when she struggles you smack her to make her stop and you have a recipe for disaster.  Duke Nukem went from your cool but somewhat inappropriate friend that you didn’t mind hanging out with, to that guy at the party you feel nervous leaving your female friends or girlfriend around for their own safety.

3. Ride to Hell: Retribution

This game is not only one of the worst games ever created for human consumption, but it’s also one of the most sexist games I’ve ever seen. All of the female characters’ personalities in this game boil down to “sexy lady who wants a bad guy like your biker guy”. Most of the time when you meet them they are about to get raped or being harassed by some other jerk biker, who you kill right in front of her. She decides to have sex with you right then and there to thank you, with the dead guy still lying on the floor and everything, but she doesn’t care. She has no reason to call the police or anything, just take her right there on the same bed she was about to be pinned to. Trauma? What trauma? Have sex with me you big biker guy you! It happens like that almost every time too, and they don’t even take their clothes off for the sex scenes. It just looks like two dolls smashing themselves together over and over again. These women aren’t characters, they are just an occasional break from the awful combat and vehicle sections so you can see some pretty ladies getting all hot and bothered over you.

2. Custer’s Revenge.

Historically inaccurate, racist and sexist, how wonderful it is to know that this game is a part of gaming history and always will be.  It was such a big part of gaming history that it apparently warranted a fan remake. This game retells Custer’s last stand with him dodging arrows in order to make it to a Native American girl tied to a an indiscernible long object and having sex with her. That’s it, that’s the point of the game. Nothing more needs to be said about why this game is here.

1. Rapelay

The title should all that is needed to be said about this game, but it’s not. This game has fallen off the radar of many people over the past few years since it’s been banned in so many countries and removed from being purchased. People regard this game as an urban myth at times, believing it never really existed, but it does and it is very real.  The gameplay will not be elaborated on, because it’s right there in the title. What this game does need though, is to be burned into the minds of gamers everywhere as a reminder of how screwed up this industry can be sometimes. This game wouldn’t have existed or been sold if there wasn’t a demand for it. And demand there was, not just in Japan but an International demand since this game was sold in many countries besides just japan. Even if it wasn’t officially distributed or supported outside of Japan, it was still sold on Amazon. People wanted a game like this in 2006. If they didn’t, this game wouldn’t have existed in the first place. Once it was available for purchase it was promptly banned in various countries, but the damage was done.

The story of this piece of filth is a cautionary tale more so than anything else, and while there hasn’t been a game yet that has surpassed it in sheer infamy and disgust from consumers, it is up to us as gamers to make sure it never happens again. 

Angelina Bonilla, NoobFeed (@Twitter)