Just the natural result of Quan(tit)ative easing.

I'm sure it said somewhere that Lara Croft was reduced a bit after it got a bit silly with her and her boobs!

Somehow that first game looks like appeals to a very different sort of audience though...

Reminds me of the Big Boob fascination during the 1950s when I was a "young 'un"

It's a technological issue as well. They probably want to make the early games with massive breasts bouncing around everywhere but the game engine and platform can't handle them. As technology improves, so does the number of polys and secondary movement (hair, clothing, and breasts in this instance) you can have on a character. Thus,previous desires of massive breasts on female characters are realised.

The breasts of LC were reduced significantly and as far as I understand, they are going to reduce them further.
Still you are dead on.
Check Girls Read Comics (And They Are Pissed) on the topic about boobs and comics.
Truly fascinating stuff.
Or there was one webisode from Feminist Frequency about one game and sleeziness in regards to female characters in games.

On the bright side, there are Portal and Mirror's edge.

This one of the criticisms of Tomb Raider that has always irked me. First of all, in the first few games, Lara did have size DD breasts, but after the transition of game studios, they were reduced to size C. Secondly, her breasts are well within realistic standards for a woman, and I see no reason why a whole range of breast sizes shouldn't be presented in video games. Thirdly, her character is hardly sexualized at all in presentation, demeanor, or dialogue. Yes, her breasts may be the feature that made her famous, but I think you should get your facts right before you make broad assumptions such as this.

Um, that first picture of Ivy looks like somebody's fanart or something, not an actual picture from the game. Here's a screen of her that's, you know, actually a screenshot from the game.

But yeah, she's gotten pretty ridiculous over the years. There are some much more small-boobed female characters in SC, but it's still pretty silly.

Lara Croft's bust size never really seemed that problematic to me. I would definitely agree that her character is sexualized in a myriad of ways. However, her physique definitely falls within the range of what is possible in reality. I've known several women whose body type generally approximated hers. Also, was it really "ever-inflating"? I too recall hearing that her designers planned on purposefully scaling her bust down but I can't say I recall the details or if that was ever put into motion.

I think there is quite a bit of merit to the theory regarding the rise in the number of cultural products when it comes to video games like 'Soul Caliber' although I'm not so sure about pornography. We have cultural works like those produced by the Marquis de Sade going back quite a ways. Also, extreme pornography has a longer history in W. Europe than it does in the U.S., dating back to a time before online porn. My thinking is much of the rise in this form of pornography could be attributed to legalization - quite simply, it is far less likely you'll get prosecuted for producing such material today than it was even 10 years ago, let alone 20 (again, in the U.S.).

A competing theory that could explain the 'Soul Caliber'-type "boob inflation" would be technological. If you look back at stuff like pin-up art from the World War II era or X-rated comics from the 70s and 80s and so on, you'll see a lot of depictions of women that are similar to "Ivy" above. Video game technology has allowed these depictions to take on a new medium and social and legal liberalization has allowed such depictions to be distributed in a mass format (at kids/teens, nonetheless) whereas before such commodities were more taboo or in a "gray area."

How about because the game market mostly consists of socially un-aware men between the ages of 10 and 40, who think “rape” is a good word to use off-the-cuff to describe them doing anything and everything.

What you just said here is the very textbook definition of "stereotype." Maybe if we're just going to throw around generalizations someone should pigeonhole feminists as upper-class lesbians trying to shock their parents.

I think this comic sums up how I feel on this topic: http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20061025

I have a slightly insane pet theory about Ivy. *Ahem*:

Ivy is something of a contradiction for a female video game characters in that she is both highly sexualised and almost masculine (as in, according to traditional perceptions) in her personality. The combination of an aggressive and confident personality, aristocratic bearing, relatively deep voice (especially given that most female characters in video games have "feminine" higher-than-average voices) and the dominatrix motif lend her an impression of power and self-control that is usually conflated with masculinity, and so only available to female characters when they adopt a distinctly less feminine presentation. This means that, as much as her presentation leads her to be objectified, her characterisation seems to challenge this, demanding at least some space for a sexual subject which is usually unavailable to female characters (certainly, she's the only one in the game that seems to be aware of the sexualised nature of her presentation- the others seem to have dressed in skin-tight leotards more or less by accident). This is both intimidating and fascinating to a lot of men (it's hardly a novel observation that part of the reason the "whore" end of "maddona/whore" is so negatively viewed is because it has the potential to represent a very powerful challenge to the male monopoly on sexual subjectivity under patriarchy) so the creators at the same time want to embrace this creation and to retreat from it. This leads them, I think, to preserving the characterisation while simultaneously attempting to ramp up the sexualisation (smaller costumes, bigger boobs, etc.), hoping that the latter will succeed in diminish the former.

Anyway, that's my theory. It's quite possibly dead wrong.

Ivy has never had a practical design - I mean, would anyone who uses a sword that separates into a chain whip not want to keep her, ahem, assets as close to her body and protected as possible? Even male gamer friends who have denied up and down that her design was sexist had to admit that Soul Caliber 4's version was too much, even for them.

There's been some debate about this issue within the gaming community because of Bulletstorm. The Lead Producer of that game is female, and she revealed in an interview that she fought hard for the female protagonist of the game to have a more realistic body than usual:

Can you see any of yourself in the game ideas, or in the gameplay mechanics?

Oh, yes. So I'm not going to take credit because this is Adrian's [the Creative Director at the developer] baby. But, a lot of the core story ideas (which we haven't talked about yet) came from me, Adrian, and Rick Remender being locked in a room for a week.

So a lot of those ideas, Trischka's character is very much a product of me because I wanted a strong female character that wasn't stereotypically hot. But still, obviously had a way about her that implied sexiness. You know, [sarcastically] the fight for boob size was an awesome one. It was probably a week of back and forth, like…

From B to D cup?

It was everything imaginable. It was width. It was the cleavage showing. It was height, from top to bottom. It was the level of bounciness. It was all of that. I'm in Adrian's office, like, "Adrian, come on. No! Are you crazy? Trishka, she's our badass. She's going kick your ass and take no prisoners! She's sexy because she has the confidence. She doesn't need to have giant breasts!" Adrian is like, "She's so hot, she needs to have a giant rack. I love chicks in video games that have giant boobs." I could see his face was kind of sad. I think we came to a good middle ground. He genuinely wanted what he considers the most beautiful looking woman in the game. What I wanted is a believable, strong, not-stereotypical fighter chick.

[Source: http://is.gd/2Tjihc]

There are definitely those within the gaming community that did not appreciate being denied yet another heroine with massive breasts. And the "compromise" is still a character with an extremely idealized body. (Picture here: http://is.gd/9RlSZL) But, as other commenters pointed out with Lara Croft, there are developers and game creators that are trying to make (relatively) more realistic female characters.

The problem with this boob size fight, is that it reminds me of the following:

We've already decided you're going to be sexualized, now we're just haggling over how much.

I think Lara Croft makes a poor example of increased sexualisation as she started off more unrealistic looking than she's ended up now. She has more realistic proportions thanks to advancements in game graphics, and I'd say her bust size looks more realistic for her body than it did back when the games first came out. I was always irked by Lara's extremely thin torso topped with extremely perky large breasts, the modern one looks much better.

While there are unequal levels of female vs. male fanservice/objectification in video games, I don't think there has been any general trend of boobs getting larger. If anything, there has a trend towards more realistic character designs as tech advancements allow for much better 3d modeling. Lara Croft's chests are mostly of similar size while her waist has gotten larger. She keeps looking less like a Barbie doll. For the next game currently in development, she's been redesigned with a much smaller chest and more clothing. The Soul Calibur series is mocked even within the gamer community for how ridiculous most of its female character designs have gotten, and has always had the reputation of being very boob-oriented.

I started gaming as a little girl back in the early 1990's. At the time, there were hardly any female characters in games. The game world has been improving by leaps and bounds since then. More needs to change, but I cannot emphasize enough that the trend has been towards less sexism overall. A lot more games have female characters, and less of them look like Ivy. Things will only get better as more women like me grow up and enter the game industry.

With the ease of internet distribution of pornography, I would argue that a lot more niche markets are being catered to and there is just more variety of porn. Material as tame as pinup photos is still common, if there were an arms race of violence I would expect to see violence and degradation in everything. Instead, there is representation of more diverse bodies and content. More queer and woman-run porn companies have started. It's also really offensive to equate consensual BDSM with victimization of women, if that was what Barron and Kimmel studied. Some women are kinky, get over it.

Yea, I agree with everyone else about Lara's boobs. In fact in TR2 her boobs were BIGGER than they are (now) in Legends. But the thing was that the game model of her differed greatly from the "CG Cut scene" model of her. I remember I had some trading cards with the "high-end CG shots" of Lara from game two, her breasts were HUGE. Like mockingly huge. To the point where there was noticeable mesh deformations happening between her breasts.

I read that after TR 1, one of the lead designers (who is a man) quit during TR2 because he did not want to turn her into a "sex symbol" while the company pushed that. I do think, even though the games were fun, they made a mistake by not listening to that guy. The Lara character was mocked endlessly for her ridiculous proportions and I think that made the game lose its popularity. After TR3 the games themselves actually became much worse as well. But before that I think it was losing its popularity for so forcefully pushing her as a sex symbol.

"Martin Barron and Michael Kimmel make a similar argument about the rise of “extreme” and violent sexual acts in pornography. The increase in the sheer amount of porn that emerged with the Internet has created a competitive market in which “sexual victimization of women is a currency” (p. 350). "

This terrifies me more than anything else. It's so true. I think this warrants its own post on SocImages in my opinion.

Like when I go to look for porn on the net lately I see more and more "brutal" stuff. It's getting to the point where I get turned off right as I start looking for porn. Or I get scared or it triggers something about my past sexual assault. I really want to know what it's doing to men too. Do they notice it? Does it bug them as much as it does me? Is it desensitizing them? Is it making them CRAVE that sort of porn? If so does that mean they'll want it in real life? For instance I remember a time when no man asked for anal, now it's practically a sexual requirement for hetero couples. I KNOW that had to be porn's influence.

And then I wonder well, do men (especially young men who view this more frequently), do they just hate women and therefore love to see this stuff? Maybe that's too simplistic or just a worse case scenario but I wonder about it. It bothers me quite a bit. I'd like to hear a man's opinion about all this and answers to my questions.

I believe Ivy will not appear in the next SoulCalibur unless she keeps one arm on her inflating mamaries. And I don't want to imagine what TAKI would be like!