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APB: No Fat Chicks

Posted July 2, 2010 by Lewis Denby in News.

Realtime Worlds’ large-scale online shooter arrived here at BeefJack this week, and we’ve been playing it pretty extensively. There’ll be a full review up on the site on Monday, but for now, here’s something that interested me while I was playing it earlier.

APB comes equipped with extensive character creation tools. This means you can create characters of all shapes and sizes. Or, you can in theory. In practice, there’s an odd quirk.

Here is a man. As you can see, he’s a little on the large side. His ‘weight’ slider is maxed out.

Interesting. Characters in videogames – player characters, at least – are usually super-slim. Surely not representative of the real spread of sizes. So APB’s letting you craft a larger character is a good thing. Right?

Well. Half-right. Because here is a woman, whose ‘weight’ slider is also maxed out.

This is what Realtime Worlds considers reasonable for the maximum weight of a female in its game. Considering the size of the dude above, all sorts of implications start flying around here. I, however, offer this without comment. But you lot should totally weigh in.

Update: We’ve approached APB developer Realtime Worlds for comment – but since it’s the weekend, we don’t necessarily expect to hear back right away.

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Comments (43)

  1. Arrrghhhh!!!

    More evidence, of course, that all games under the sun, it seems, are designed for males, and not for PEOPLE. Specifically, a certain type of closed-minded male. Blargh.

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    Laura Michet (July 2nd, 2010)

    • Shut up you idiot.

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      WHAT (July 3rd, 2010)

      • So you identify with closed-minded males and go on to react like a closed-minded male would. Hello, stereotype!

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        rei (July 11th, 2010)

    • I think you might be exaggerating a little there… Sure, it’s certainly a problem, but maybe calling out specific instances would be more constructive than having a pop at all games under the sun.

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      Hyoscine (July 12th, 2010)

  2. WEIGH IN! GET IT?

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    Jason (July 2nd, 2010)

  3. Every dimension above her waist is quite fit, however her thighs are wider than her head. It’s a well-known fact that women only put on weight in their thighs and nowhere else. It’s like the developers have never seen a woman that wasn’t airbrushed.

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    scuz (July 2nd, 2010)

    • That is indeed weird. No stomach bump at all. I have female friends that are really rather skinny but they still don’t have flat stomachs. I guess what the developers are trying to tell us is its okay to have more curves so long as they’re only breasts, thighs or buttocks.

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      Stromko (July 15th, 2010)

  4. haha. clever observation. on the opposite side of the pc spectrum, the character creator in demon’s souls had a slider for male and female.

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    Anthony Charles (July 2nd, 2010)

  5. That bitch is a behemoth!

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    Enrique (July 2nd, 2010)

  6. They do this because they want to sell games, end of story.

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    M (July 2nd, 2010)

    • That’s not the end of the story. The question is, why does it sell games?

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      Hyoscine (July 12th, 2010)

  7. Seems skewed to me, although I’d have to see the actual weight for them. That’s actually not that fat for a guy in reality (he’s hardly obese), and the girl still isn’t a super model. It’s hard to make an accurate conclusion unless you know height and weight numbers, otherwise it’s entirely baseless speculation.

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    Firestorm (July 2nd, 2010)

  8. Actually it has most likely has nothing to do with realism and more to do with ease of use IMO. They want to keep customization open but at the same time they want to make females recognizable at a glance. Thats usually why females in games have over curvy waists, large breasts, over defined eyes and longer hair.

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    Christianity (July 3rd, 2010)

    • Are you suggesting it’s important to the gameplay that the sexes are recognizable at a glance? Why?

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      rei (July 11th, 2010)

  9. At least in Saints Row 2 you can play obese whether your man or woman, black or white – no hate, just fat!

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    James (July 3rd, 2010)

  10. La tenés adentro.

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    Diego (July 3rd, 2010)

    • Si ganás quedamos para el culo!

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      FIFA (July 3rd, 2010)

  11. I’m outraged that only males can be grotesquely overweight in this game. What is the game designer trying to say about male willpower when it comes to delicious pizza and nachos.

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    Darvon (July 3rd, 2010)

  12. Perhaps they didn’t offer large character models because it doesn’t make sense in the context of a shooting game. Why would anyone make a large character that has a large hit box when they could make someone very small who is harder to hit

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    Hyuzen (July 3rd, 2010)

    • But they DO allow large male character models. That’s the point.

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      Lewis Denby (July 3rd, 2010)

  13. I actually might use a fat man as my character, but I don’t think I would ever use a fat woman regardless of who the game is being made for.

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    Dirk (July 3rd, 2010)

  14. That is messed up.

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    Jeff (July 3rd, 2010)

  15. Don’t worry 35% of the people who bought this game still cant use it, and there is 0 customer support day 3 and counting!

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    frienz (July 3rd, 2010)

  16. Fat people aren’t really people… so who cares?

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    Durr (July 3rd, 2010)

  17. If I was going to guestimate the clothes size of the woman, I’d say she was a UK 14-16, 14 on top and 16 on the bottom. That really isn’t that big compared to the guy. A woman who’s a size 14-16 is a healthy size. And to put it in another context: Marilyn Monroe was a size 16, or so I’ve heard.

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    Emily King (July 3rd, 2010)

    • Not to take away from your point, but whilst Marilyn Monroe might have worn a size 16 in the 1950s, her measurements would put her in a modern UK size 8-10. This post goes into more depth: http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/the-body-of-marilyn-monroe/

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      Frankincensy (July 5th, 2010)

      • Reading your link, it seems by today’s standards that Marilyn was a size 16 on her top half, and an 8 on the bottom, (but that was when she wasn’t binge eating). Her bust measurement is two inches more than my own, and I’m size 14, so that would make sense.

        So my point does still stand.

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        Emily King (July 6th, 2010)

  18. seriously and the problem is what?

    A private company offers a commercial product you have the right to buy or not, and they decide they don’t want character models to be overweight? The dude looks fairly in shape

    If the point is some throwback to 3rd wave feminism, then I think you need to just get over that sexual dimorphism exists in the realworld

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    Andrew (July 3rd, 2010)

    • [Comment removed due to inappropriate remarks]

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      Doctor Acko (July 12th, 2010)

  19. I suppose it is a little sexiest, but the guy isn’t that big really, and you have to remember men and women put weight on in different areas so are bound to look different at the same weight…

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    Danny Moore (July 3rd, 2010)

  20. I think people commenting here should declare their nationality, cos in Britain that guy is fat, dunno about in America though….

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    Andy (July 3rd, 2010)

    • No, I’m in America and yes, that man is fat. Quite fat. He is quite literally obese. The people above who say otherwise are:

      A. In denial
      or
      B. clueless about the medical definition of obese

      The woman, however, is really not that fat. She’s chunky but by no means obese (unlike the guy.)

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      Danji (July 3rd, 2010)

      • Wrong. The woman is, in fact, fat. What they’re doing is quite simple; they’re going by percentages. The woman and the man aren’t the same weight, but they’re both “fat” going by what the Center of Disease Control would estimate is the correct ratio for males and females. Women can weigh as much as a man but be obese while the male would simply be slightly overweight.

        Why is it that the game developers don’t allow you to make the woman even fatter in looks to match the male? That would place her way over the physical capabilities the environment requires of the individuals within. The setting is about a new organization being created, the CSA – Enforcers. It’s about these Enforcers fighting off Criminals, both which require great physical involvement, thus why allowing someone to make either of them fatter simply wouldn’t make any sense.

        Also, there’s the issue with clipping. It takes a lot of time and effort to make items capable of being used by different sized models. More so, there’s the problem that some avatars might simply not fit right inside vehicles. Subtracting from a player’s ability to customize their character is by no means related to them being prejudice; it would simply require too much work to apply in an MMO.

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        The Dude (July 10th, 2010)

  21. First it looks like she also has max height which makes max weight not look as bad. You can make a chunkier female by giving her min height and max weight. Mainly though I think it’s a customization limit. It would make customization a lot harder to put in the game if there could be too big of a difference from one weight to the next. Right now there are outfits that are limited to male or female. If you could go too far enough with the weight there would also have to be weight restrictions on some clothing because it wouldn’t wrap around the model right.

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    John (July 3rd, 2010)

  22. Anyone who says that guy is not a overweight, are probably overweight themselves.

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    Lanmanna (July 6th, 2010)

  23. That dude is more than obese, face it HE IS FAT and if you think he isn’t then you’ve seriously got some issues.

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    Terry (July 11th, 2010)

  24. Have you ever considered how much more difficult it is to make a fat female? The way the breasts start to sag a little make them clip with the stomach, which is just just horrible to look at. Men don’t have this problem until they are hugely obese, man breasts just aren’t that until then.

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    sassy (July 11th, 2010)

  25. Playing devil’s advocate here, but APB really does try to have a “style” which is slick cops and robbers stereotypes, the sunglasses wearing FBI agent and Fat Mob Boss. Obese women do have a place in that stereotypical world, but it’s not usually on the front lines. So truly obese women may have been excluded due to stylistic consistency. Another reason may emerge from technical issues. Most players will probably want slim and sexy female characters, that makes sense right? So they would plan all her animations, items, models, and skins to fit within certain parameters. If you say expanded her belly beyond that curve some of her motions might break and items and textures might stretch beyond what is visually acceptable in terms of game glitches. I’m not saying this is a good thing, that they skimped, but it does at least make some sense if that IS the case. It could also be a coding error, causing the female weight slider to not cause expansion at the correct rate.

    Anyways, yes it is wrong, no it is not inexcusable.

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    Shnyker (July 11th, 2010)

  26. I’d be interested to see statistics on who acually uses the maximum weight sliders in mmos generally. Outside the ‘bigotry’ (not aiming that towards this article, just the implication that women in games are portrayed in a sexist manner) of APB not allowing fat women, i’d put money on around 97% of female characters being slim with oversized breasts. Maybe there is just a feeling that it’s not worth 3d artists modelling and balancing sliders for the 3% of people who want to have chubby female avatars.

    I don’t thing it is wrong if developers are merely catering for the audience for their game and I’m kind of tired of the “this is sexist and bad!!” attitude that regularly pops up in comments threads when this kind of issue is brought up. Avatars are how we (in an online shooter we can assume the ‘we’ is largely male) -choose- to represent ourselves to other people. Why would people select an obese representation that goes against every media ideal of feminimity that we are fed every day, other than for (ill judged) comedy?

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    Jockie (July 11th, 2010)

    • If you assume your audience is only straight men and you tailor your game so that it caters solely to straight men, yes, that is sexist.

      Besides, more and more women are playing video games. It seems to me making games more welcoming for women means more money coming in.

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      kat (July 12th, 2010)

      • I don’t think there is any assumption about it, to play any mmo you have to part with all your personal details. They will know their audience.

        This topic actually came up in the beta and the developers said quite simply if the demand was there for larger female models they’d consider it. Instead the thread devolved into a lot of sexist commentary about large women from the playerbase.

        I don’t think it’s particularly reasonable to expect/demand that a developer devote time better spent elsewhere into a feature their playerbase don’t care about.

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        Jockie (July 12th, 2010)

  27. Please note the other sliders in the picture for the female character: Breast size and Breast position. These attributes are apparently directly proportionate in relevance with “muscularity”, “height” and “weight”. The sexism is so obvious it’s not even worth mentioning.

    Also: hellooo thunderthighs.

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    MLu (July 13th, 2010)

  28. Hahah wow that’s a bit biased! Nice find.

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    Riccardo Bolzan (July 24th, 2010)

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