Figuring Out OKCupid Part 2: The Tools of the Trade

Last time I discussed how online dating is perceived by most people, and how participating in one dating website in particular (OKCupid) feels like for the average user at a high level. I also very briefly explained the inner workings of OKCupid's site. In this post, I will go into much further detail about the site's layout and functionality to set up for a more rigorous analysis of OKCupid user experience and lessons learned in the next post.


Let me start this post off with a highly relevant Latin quote:

fortis Fortuna adiuvat

Which, if the Wiktionary page on the phrase is to be trusted, literally translates to "(the) strong (one), Fortune helps." or is more colloquially interpreted as "Fortune favors the bold."

This mantra accurately reflects the struggle users experience on OKCupid, whether they are aware of it or not: simply sitting on your thumbs waiting for something great to possibly happen to you almost certainly gets you nowhere. It is better to have tried and failed, than to have not attempted anything at all. Similar quotes are the probably more well-known "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" by Wayne Gretzky (alluding to hockey in the metaphor) and likely even more well-known "Do or do not, there is not try" by Star Wars' own Jedi Master, Yoda. Being an active OKCupid user is a real uphill battle for every single user--you suit up in your "I'm safe behind the screen" armor, trudge into the coliseum of courting and attempt to forge your own path through the tangled-up mess of people on your quest to slay the monster in the closet that is love, and brace yourself for what can get pretty heated and hurtful. Perhaps Pat Benatar was right all along, love is indeed a battlefield nowadays. Although in OKCupid's case, it's a significantly more anonymous battlefield with limited communication and outside awareness.

Fortune or not though, it doesn't matter how "bold" you are if you aren't effective in your...boldness. Sadly, most people on OKCupid do not take initiative in an advantageous way. The desire to seek validation and approval from others, fitting in with society, is a mountain-scaling that most people are not up to the task of. They would rather hide behind what seems to work instead of do what's natural for them. While we're throwing quotes around, here's another famous (yet relevant) one: "It is better to be hated for what you are, than loved for what you are not." André Gide was onto something, because that's EXACTLY what seems to be happening to most people's lives nowadays. Maintaining one's individuality in a large society is a difficult task. This is due to various sources of social pressure, in particular due to the media, the behaviors of friends and enemies, and the Internet in our society. Analysis in the next few posts will reveal this quite a bit on the OKCupid site.

Before beginning an analysis of OKCupid's website layout and tools, I feel it important to reiterate the two primary observations I pointed out in the last post:

1. When participating in online dating, people (generally) do not adapt if they are unsuccessful. All humans are capable of changing, but almost all of them have a difficult time of it.

2. Having control on the Internet is outstanding. To clarify, this is more about having a sense of control. Feeling like you yourself have control in an otherwise wild 'n' free open online world.

With these two statements in mind, let's take a deep dive into the site!

The OKCupid Homepage

To fill this post with pretty pictures, I've unfrozen my OKCupid account so I can take you through a virtual tour of the site and explain just what the heck is going on in all this madness. NOTE: This is the computer view (laptop, desktop web browser) of the site. This post doesn't cover the mobile view (phone, tablet), which is significantly more limited.

This is what I see when I unfreeze my account and OKCupid confirms my login via Facebook: the OKCupid homepage.

Names and identities have been as far removed as possible in order to protect the (not-so-)innocent, while still preserving the site's integrity.

This is an exact screenshot from right when I logged back in after a few months of being frozen. Busy, busy! I won't waste any time, let's get right down to it. Let's take a brief tour of the home page and a few noteworthy other pages, but first the dissection of the above screenshot:

1 - Personal settings. You can view your own profile (more detail later), change your account settings (more detail later) and log out. And if you somehow happen to know someone's OKCupid username, you can look them up...or have fun searching random people's usernames, I suppose. It's fun but also...kinda weird in hindsight.

2 - Hey wait, that's me! This is your miniature profile picture--see #9 in the lower right corner? That's where it will show up to other users if you visit their profile or Like them on the site, send them a message, etc. You can also boost your profile--but as we'll discuss later, this is not typically worth your money (and yes, it costs $$$!). This area will also show you how many search results you showed up in, within the last day...what does this mean? I've found that it's not very important, only that it's an indicator of how much potential attention your profile can get, and generally how active you are on OKCupid. I had just unfrozen my account upon taking this screenshot, so no one had visited my profile in the last day.

3 - Called "Home Matches" by the site, these are 10 people that are randomly highly matched with you. Refreshing the homepage will populate it with new people, but don't be surprised if you see previous people you've seen in this section over and over after enough site use. Clicking on any of them will take you to their profile. You only get to see their age, Match & Enemy % (more details later), location and picture in this view.

4 - OKCupid news feed & events. OKC lets you RSVP to certain events it hosts so you can meet others in person safely in a group setting, and these events appear at the top of the news feed from time to time. The actual news feed isn't shown in the above image, but it will show you recent user activity. I never figured out the patterns OKC tends to use to decide whose profile updates, question answers and new photo uploads to show me, but the news feed was almost always behind chronologically so it was pretty pointless anyway. That said, I clicked on this event and this is the page I'm brought to:

Oops, not enough ladies...yet.

Hoho, this is interesting. Seems like this is a happy hour event...but there's currently a gender imbalance! Not enough women have RSVP'd to this event yet. Still, this is generally what each event page is like--you can probably glean enough information based on the above screenshot.

5 - Browse Matches, Messages, Visitors & Quickmatch. This is the heart and soul of OKCupid, and will be explored later on in great detail.

6 - "You Might Like..." & "Recently Visited". These show you profiles of people the system thinks you would appreciate (if the random 10 giant profiles smack-dab in the middle of the page aren't enough for you) and the last several profiles you've visited, in order. When I first started out, you had to answer Questions in order to unlock more slots in these two features, but maybe it's changed since then.

7 - Online Bookmarks. This is a very handy feature that allows you to keep track of the online status of profiles you've bookmarked. If someone you've Favorited (not Liked; more on this later) logs in, you'll get a notification in the lower-right corner telling you that they've logged in...and more importantly, they'll appear under this list of Online Bookmarks. Very convenient!

8 - Match Questions. This is more of a prompt to take you to the Questions page, which I'll go into further detail about later. It will contain a question you have not yet answered. As you'll learn later, answering questions is crucial to getting matched with (mostly) similar users.

9 - Notifications & Chats. Chats are not shown, but if you have an ongoing conversation with someone else who is currently logged in to OKCupid then it will be displayed here. Any time someone messages, views your profile or Likes you (or is one of your Online Bookmarks as mentioned above) then a notification will appear in the lower-right corner for about 5 seconds to inform you.

The Profile

This is your life's blood on OKCupid. Everything you want everyone to know about you, it all goes here! OKCupid divides the user profile into four distinct sections: About, Photos, Questions & Personality. They're all very self-explanatory, but how to maximize their effectiveness...well, that's the secret sauce right there.

Let's check out the About section first. Here's roughly the first half of mine, just so you can see what the layout looks like when filled out. NOTE: Since meeting my girlfriend, my profile has been tailored towards making new female friends instead of searching for a woman to start a relationship with, so it is very atypical--please keep that in mind! I'll analyze sample male and female profiles later on, and who knows, I may try to reconstruct what my old potential-girlfriend-hunting profile for some self-analysis later.

Anyway, this is a snippet of my current profile.

"These are the days of our lives..."

This is the typical layout of the profile. Again, fairly straightforward. Let's check it out more.

At the top, we've got your (my) username and your (my) mug--hovering over a user's picture will show you two more thumbnails based on the pictures they've uploaded and cropped. Clicking on any of those photos will take you to their Photos profile tab. The remainder of the profile is below the photos section.

On the left, we've got the profile "essay" sections. The sections include:

• My self-summary
• What I'm doing with my life
• I'm really good at
• The first things people usually notice about me
• Favorite books, movies, shows, music and food
• The six things I could never do without
• I spend a lot of time thinking about
• On a typical Friday night I am
• The most private thing I'm willing to admit
• You should message me if

These are free clean slates for you to write whatever you'd like in. There are practically no limits--swear words are allowed, although I have a feeling certain racist slang or extremely disgusting terms aren't. You can write an essay for each section, or just a sentence or two. It's up to you!

On the right, we've got the "I'm Looking For" and "My Details" sections. I paid special attention to these sections when I was seriously active on OKCupid, because these say quite a bit about the user--this is how users pigeonhole themselves, and it gives you a lot of power to decide if you want to further consider this user or not. Note that the most common Status is not Seeing Someone, it's Single, and most people do not like putting their income because they feel insecure about it.

Remember--anyone can view a profile at any time, and the first thing they'll see is the About page. The About page may be the deciding factor between meeting your new greatest friend and lover...and never crossing paths with them for the rest of your life. Make the most of those seconds--possibly minutes--that others may spend looking through it and getting to know you online!


I'll briefly describe Photos, since it's just what you'd expect: pictures with you in them. I'd rather not clog up this blog with more pictures of myself, anyway. Clicking on the Photos profile tab brings you to a new screen where you can see your Profile Photos, other Albums (or prompting you to add a new album if you have no others), and an Instagram album (or if you don't have an Instagram account/haven't connected it to OKCupid, a prompt to connect to Instagram). You can describe each photo briefly with a caption, as well as order your profile pictures so they appear, well...in a certain order to you and others who view your profile. And that's about it!


Next up is the Questions section. This is what it looks like:

"Any questions?"

I've answered 1,634 questions up until this point in time. Answering Questions is essential because of how you answer them, and how you want others to answer them. It defines you and who you're looking for. It's the largest deciding factor in how you're matched with others, and also generates your personality, which is the next section on the profile. You can see any questions you've already answered and how you answered them, and can even sort through them too--and any questions that are publicly answered (the lock icon in the upper-right remaining unlocked) can be viewed by anyone visiting your profile, should they choose to glance over your Questions profile section.

Here's an example question I answered, both before my answer to the question is confirmed and viewing it after I've answered it. I marked it as Very Important (blue means the option is selected, in the Importance bar).

"Dude, it's just a question..."

When presented with a question (and intend on answering it), you choose a) your answer to the question, b) how you'd like others you're interested in to answer the exact same question, and c) how important the question is to you overall, both with regards to a and b. Answering questions tends to generate more activity on your profile, so answering even just one question every few days can help bolster profile attention--you show up in other peoples' news feeds on their homepages, for example. You never know what can happen!

Here's how it works: You are not forced to answer any questions, but may answer any number of them at any time, one at a time. You may skip questions as they are presented to you. You may re-answer questions you've already answered after 24 hours have passed since you've answered the question. You may add an optional explanation to each question's answer, and may always modify a question's explanation regardless of when the question was answered. Some questions have more limited answer choices, but you can add clarification to all of them. You can only select one single answer choice to any question, but you may specify any number of answers you'd like to see from others regarding that same question. Checking every single box for the latter (or checking Any of the above) will tell the system that you find the question "Not important". You may choose to lock questions, which will make them Private, thus the system will still factor them in when considering who to match you with and what your personality shows as, but others cannot see the answer to the question in...question. Sorry, I had to do it at some point... I'm not sorry at all. :D

Questions range from ones such as the above "Is being 'in-style' with regards to fashion important to you?" to logical brainbusting ones like "Which is the day before the day after yesterday?" to silly ones such as "How do you feel about putting children on leashes?" to the typically expected sex-based questions like "Would you ever be willing to skip out on responsibilities (such as work, school, or such) to stay at home and have sex with someone?" and dating questions like "What's the best conversation material for a first date?"

It's up to you how often you want to answer questions, but they will most certainly help shape your profile and define who you are on OKCupid. But how does it affect your profile relative to others?

Direct your attention to the final fourth tab in the profile, the Personality section! This is defined by several OKCupid factors, but mostly Question answers. Below is mine.

"How, uh...charming."

So (mostly) based on the questions I've answered, this is how OKCupid judges me to be personality-wise. I'd say it's pretty accurate, although I used to have that awesomely huge More Logical positive bar towering over the rest...sigh. Oh well.

Note that you will only see the Personality tab on other peoples' profiles if you have enough in common with them, as decided by the OKCupid matchmaking system!

Browse Matches

If you recall the homepage screenshot from earlier, it's time we tackled big #5. Oh yeah, NUMBAH FIVE! Let's start with the extremely powerful Browse Matches feature.

"All thanks to YOU, and a box of matches!"

This is probably the part guys tend to spend the most time with, no doubt, but just look at all those filters! Setting filters is just as important as leafing through all the match results. Here on the--wait a minute. What's that glowing thing on the right side of my profile? I clicked on the "What's with the glow?" link and...

"All right, listen up! All the fine women on this side, right now!"

Rush hour is when the most number of people are actively using or are on the site at once. This is typically during the evening on weekdays, anywhere between 8-11:30pm (GMT-8) and just about any time on the weekends. This is your chance to get as much attention as possible, because there are more fish in the sea at the time that may be willing to nibble on any bait you might cast into the water. But I don't recommend promoting your profile--it costs money, and more views doesn't necessarily mean anything good unless you know how your profile is being promoted. The prospect of having more users looking at your profile doesn't mean much if it's a result of throwing your money at the screen for a few hours in the spotlight. But hey, I have no experience promoting my profile in such a way. Maybe it's good, who knows?

Anyway, back to matching. Let's re-examine the Match Search page. You get to choose a variety of filters and can apply as many filters as you'd like from the ones given to you. The filters are fairly self-explanatory based on the above image: Age range, distance from you, gender, sexual orientation, whether they're looking for a short- or long-term relationship or just want a fling (yes, that is a filter option!), how often they drink, how frequently they smoke, their height, their religion, their income, diet, ethnicity, astrological sign and even their OKC join date. That isn't the full list, either!

Once you've decided which Match Search parameters you want to search by, you choose how they're displayed. You can display them in a variety of ways:

• Match %
• Enemy %
• Who's new
• Last online (how long ago they were last online, including Online Now)
• Special Blend (OKC randomizes results using a special formula that supposedly tailors to you)
• Match % & Who's new
• Match % & Last online
• Match % & Distance

You can change any of these filters or the display option at any time and search as many times as you want. This is actually a good choice if you have the time and energy (and tolerance!) for it, because new matches may trickle in and out over time each day. There are also a few other search parameters and display choices that most users don't have access to, but...I'll get to that later. You gotta be a member of da club to use those.

You may have also noticed the Bookmarks tab on the Matches page. If you recall the Online Bookmarks section in the homepage screenshot from before, this is where Favoriting someone (which is only possible from their profile, which will be discussed more in the next post when I go over sample profiles) factors in.

Once you get search results and specify how you want them organized, naturally you want to then view the lovely men and/or women that meet those criteria that you hope to be interested in. Here are the first six matches based on the filters and display option I chose (Women, Age 18-32, Online Now, Looking for at least New Friends, Doesn't Smoke, Drinks only socially, rarely or not at all, lives within 25 miles, Highest Match % first):

The funny thing is, they may as well all naturally have blurred faces--that's about as well as I know them based on these previews, anyway.

Of these six women that first turned up in my match search results, I have not seen any of their profiles before. I've seen the same women for months in a row almost every day in my search results back when I was an active OKCupid user, so this is not as unlikely as it seems. But knowing that I have no background information on these women, this is all I'd have to go by if I was trying to decide if I should peer at their profiles: their picture, username, age, location and how compatible they are with me based on two percentages. Which isn't much, sadly.

Oh, and there are the traffic light colors at the very bottom of each match profile preview: Green means this person responds frequently when messaged, yellow means this person responds somewhat often when messaged, and red means they hardly respond when messaged. For example, for women this is extremely skewed: Women get bombarded by a slew of messages compared to men, and they don't usually respond to most of them as they typically aren't fantastic messages worth responding to, so this indicator is not usually very accurate towards the yellow-red side because of the skewed distribution. But if you see someone with a green indicator at the bottom of their profile preview in match search results, that's a good sign. On OKCupid, generally acceptable communication is good. Of course, the color of the indicator doesn't tell you what kinds of responses the person in question generates...that's why if you seem interested in someone based on their profile preview in the match search, you click on their profile and see what they're all about!

When you hover over someone's profile preview in the match search results, you can Like them or hide them from match search results. Liking is something that will be described in the next section. Hiding them from match search results means they will no longer show up in your search results, period. Doesn't matter what filters you use, they are GONE! That is, unless you go to your profile settings and un-Hide them.

If you Like someone's profile, the response indicator is replaced by an indicator that tells you when you last contacted them, and the color changes to grey. If they're Liked and show up in Match results, you will see that you have Liked them. Below shows the same person a) showing up normally in match search results, b) showing up in match search results when already Liked, and c) same as b but with the mouse hovered over the little grey contact indicator.

"I really really really really really really Like you..."

For the sake of this post, I sent this lovely lady a message and Liked her profile. Turns out her profile actually seemed pretty good too, but all that analysis stuff comes in the next post. Speaking of messaging...

Messages

You've got mail! Or rather, lots and lots of mail. Or maybe just 1 or 2. It depends on your gender and how active you are on OKCupid. Let's check out the first view of the Messages page, the Received tab:

Sensitive data withheld for personal reasons!

Hmm, as you can tell by the quantity of empty pictures in my inbox, many of the women I was talking with quit using OKCupid. I guess they either gave up or got boyfriends. The one thing that isn't blurred out in the above picture is my girlfriend's OKCupid username, and I happen to have permission for that one!

Here's an example of what messages look like when clicked on in your inbox. This is a snippet of conversation between me and my not-yet-girlfriend-at-the-time girlfriend on OKCupid:

Girlfriend froze her account, so she shows up as a blank nonexistent profile.

Both Received and Sent tabs look identical, but one contains the messages you've...well, received from others, and the other contains all messages you've sent to others. If it's a conversation, then they will both lead to the same conversation page. You can see that I have an extremely high message storage of 5000 possible messages, that's due to A-List--"da club" I mentioned earlier, and will describe later on in a future post. I still happen to have it for several more months on my account.

The normal message inbox size for a free basic account is 300, at least that's what it was back when I was actively using it to try to catch any woman's eye. Which seems like a lot at first, until you realize that also includes Sent messages too! The good news is that an entire conversation with just one person counts as just a single message. So you're really allotted 300 unique conversations with a free account.

Chats shows which people you've actively chatted with on OKCupid. I would show an image of this view, but I believe since I stopped actively using OKCupid the site has changed how chat works. Now whenever two people are online and have answered each other's messages at least once in the past, they may chat Instant Message style through OKCupid's site. You can always block someone from Instant Messaging you at any time. I believe the Chats page under Messaging no longer shows chat logs, and instead pushes any missed chat messages into your Received inbox. Either way, this is now a very smoothly integrated feature of OKCupid!

Filtered is an especially handy tab for female OKCupid users. It allows you to automatically filter messages out based on specific criteria. I've heard complaints from a fair handful of women about how unhelpful the filter options are. This is about as good as it gets, based on what I'm seeing today:

Now if only we could filter bad words without having to type them...

Clicking on the pencil icon for any of the filters gives you a slider that lets you further customize that particular option. For example, if you want to deflect messages from anyone below 80% Match, you can check the "Filter by Match %" filter and modify the slider to be about 79% (the slider goes between 50% and 90%).

It's clear that these filters are still not perfect. Let's say a woman wants to automatically reject all "hey hows it goin" messages, so she types those four words in. Well, "Filter specific words" doesn't help when most messages contain at least one of the four words "hey", "hows", "it" and "goin". Plus there are multiple ways to (mis)spell those words...and it just goes downhill from there. "Filter by attractiveness" is probably an A-List feature, so ignore that option. Oops.

Visitors

The Visitors page shows who has recently visited your profile. This is the most straightforward of the four side menus:

"You have a visitor! Or thirty."

The Visitors page shows the last 30 people (per page) who have visited your profile. Just like the Browse Matches search results page, you can see who you've Liked or hover your mouse over them and Hide them.

Now because I have A-List on OKCupid, I can browse invisibly. By default with a free account, you automatically notify anyone whose profile you visit, that you visited their profile. This A-List feature is an especially powerful tool for women in particular, not necessarily men--for men to try to talk to a woman without showing signs of visiting her at first? It would come across as a bit stalker-ish. Whereas women can breathe easier knowing that they can visit a male profile and not have the male in question assume she is automatically interested in him.

Quickmatch

Last but certainly not least, we have the Quickmatch page. This page is more similar to Tinder, especially on the mobile OKCupid app (which follows the swiping mechanism pretty closely). Let's get a look at it:

"...cat!"

The way Quickmatch works is as follows. OKCupid provides you with a new lineup of users (right) based on who you're currently looking for, and presents them to you one at a time. You can refresh the page at any time to get a new lineup, although like the Home Matches on the homepage, you should expect some repeats after a while. You get a sneak peak of each person's profile this way, which is more than you see of each profile in Browse Matches without having to actually, officially view profiles. If you don't like the person, press the grey "X". If you do like the person, press the gold star and that will Like them. Either way, the lineup advances and you get to see the next person's profile and pictures. You can still see the last person you examined in Quickmatch to the right of the Like/Not Interested buttons.

An interesting note about Quickmatch that I made use of occasionally: If you pass up someone, their picture now resides next to the "Passed" text to the right of the buttons. However, you can now click on their image and it will send you to their profile! This is a good way to figure out if you really would like someone without having to Like them in order to see more information about them, because the only way to actually view their profile from Quickmatch is to click one of the two buttons to move the lineup along. It's a weird situation, but it works well.

Essentially, Quickmatch is like viewing random matches without notifying those users that you've viewed their profiles, but they show up one at a time on "Special Blend" display mode (OKCupid decides who to show you and in what order).

The last two tabs, Who You Like and Who Likes You, are both similar to the Visitors view. You get to see all the people you've Liked and who has Liked your profile. I believe now it's free to see who has Liked your profile, but back when I was an active OKC user the latter was possible only if you had A-List! Otherwise you could only see how many people had Liked you.

Keep in mind that Likes are not very helpful nor hopeful to anyone besides the one who is doing the Liking. It helps the OKCupid algorithms slightly in figuring out where you fit compared to others, and who is more appropriate to show you when searching matches (if you're showing results based on Match %). Liking a certain number of people helps new users to unlock other OKCupid free account features, only further muddying the Like system. Very rarely will two people actually Like each other on the site and seriously mean it.

Conclusion

OKCupid seems pretty straightforward mechanically. The features make plenty of sense, and users are granted immense freedom. It's easy to surmise that most of the activity that goes on is arduous repetition, like I hinted at in the first post. In the next post, I'm going to analyze sample profiles and identify many trends that roam the Cupid Streets. I'll also share some personal stories and describe what I did in an attempt to make sense of an illogical battlefield. And we will see just how brutal the OKCupid rollercoaster can be--even with all these great tools that come with the immensely free sandbox territory.

And boy, can it be brutal.

Figuring Out OKCupid Part 1: Online Dating. Friend or Foe?

In the digital age, online dating has emerged as a potential weapon for single lonely folks. But is it what everyone seems to think it is? Is it what YOU think it is? How helpful can it be to you, and how can it put the hurt on you? Read on if interested, and watch me rip the general population a new one (like I always do).

This post has a lot of text! The next post has more pictures, for those of you who are more bored without visual stimulation.

I haven't blogged in quite some time...again. What excuse do I have this time? Well, working full-time and trying to throw a thesis paper together, all while still having somewhat of a life (ha ha ha ha, okay yeah but seriously...I've been trying to!) takes up a lot of time. But this time my absence is largely due to trying to find a (new) girlfriend since I broke up with my ex in April of 2014. As of last Saturday, I have been with my current girlfriend for three months. Huzzah! Great success.

But...so what? Why should you care? I consider this a big deal because I met my current girlfriend after wrangling with the online beast known as OKCupid for roughly six months. Before I discuss OKCupid further in detail, however, I believe it better to explain the truths and fallacies behind online dating, as I see things. Then we can get started with the ugly, the bad and the good (roughly in order of commonality) of using OKCupid.

***Note that most of what I discuss in this series will carry heterosexual context, as this is what I have experience with on OKCupid.

Online Dating

 "Online Dating" is a misnomer. The term is supposed to refer to the process of meeting people through a communication medium via the internet, getting to know said people through various forms of communication, and finally meeting them in person if the two are romantically interested in each other. Wikipedia, help me out here.

Excerpt from the Internet Dating Wikipedia page:
Online dating or Internet dating is a personal introductory system whereby individuals can find and contact each other over the Internet to arrange a date, usually with the objective of developing a personal, romantic, or sexual relationship. Online dating services usually provide unmoderated matchmaking over the Internet, through the use of personal computers or cell phones. Users of an online dating service would usually provide personal information, to enable them to search the service provider's database for other individuals. Members use criteria other members set, such as age range, gender and location.

(There, now I'm credible.)

Firstly, let me distinguish two terms, based on personal experience on the Internet. Internet dating is the term often attributed to two people who have not yet met in person (but may develop an intent to meet in person in the future) that are interested in each other as romantically as possible without any physical contact or affection involved, usually due to large distance and/or money limitations that separate them. These two people who are dating over the internet (hence 'internet dating') are essentially as attached to each other as possible through electronic communication, whether it be interacting with each other in an online game, chatting through text chat software such as Google Talk's messaging system or Facebook Messenger, or video talking via video communication software such as Skype.

Internet dating is, in my opinion, different from online dating. Online dating involves the certain intent to meet others in person and start dating should they click well together...but only after figuring each other out via online or telephonic communication first before doing so. And hopefully you see now why the term 'online dating' is so...bizarre as a label for this process. But it's a heck of a lot shorter than saying "Meeting people online and getting to know them and then meeting in person, the latter of which may hopefully lead to long-term dating".

But even that's not exactly what OKCupid is. So...what is it then? 

OKCupid In a Nutshell

What's a definition of OKCupid you should care about? First of all, it is one of several standout online dating sites that is self-proclaimed to be "the best free dating site on Earth." I'll skip the boring details--essentially, OKCupid is an online medium through which people may meet and get to know each other, with (usually) romantic intent. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world log in to this site to try their hand at rolling the dice, to see if they'll get lucky and meet "the one" for them.

"The best free dating site on Earth." And well worthy of that title.

All users have a profile (which will be described much more in depth in my next post) on which they can describe who they are (and edit at any time). User profiles are the heart of the site's content, and may be viewed by anyone else using OKCupid at any time--this is a user's 'face' on the site, although whether others take the time to look at it in detail is a different story. Users can view other users that match with them according to OKCupid's algorithms, and the results can be sorted via a variety of filter options. However, to actually see a user's profile and glean much more information about them, one has to click on their profile in these search results--otherwise, all they'll see is a user's username, age, matching percents and profile picture. All of which must catch someone's eyes enough to get them to click on them and view their profile. It's easy to see that this site is largely about trying your darndest to sell your strong points...or at least, what most people seem to think are their strong points.

That's great and all, but how does one use OKCupid? Not everyone is the same, but a typical OKCupid user experience often depends on gender and/or sexual orientation. Since men are designated as the "chasers" in our society, they usually pursue and attempt to court the women (keyword 'attempt', as most female OKCupid users I have had the pleasure of communicating with have informed me that men usually display absolutely ZERO tact in this department), or men if they are interested in a homosexual relationship, etc.

The storyboard is essentially as follows for a male user:

1. Create account
2. Fill out his own profile
3. Search for women they are attracted to (for whatever reasons), because so few women will seek them out
4. Look through women's profiles for stuff they like in a mate
5. If interested in a woman, introduce (I use that term loosely in this context) himself to her by sending a message to her
6. Sit and wait with fingers crossed that said female might respond with interest
7a. Repeat steps 2-6 in any order, as often as they feel like it
7b. Continue communicating with any women who have responded to him, usually through OKCupid's messaging system
8. (optional) Get mad at the lack of results, and start sending desperate messages to more women and/or change profile to reflect frustration, only to change it back a few days later to something more appealing to the twelve or so women (if that many) that would actually take the time to read it

Seems simple enough. Let's see what the typical female user experience is like (according to what I've observed/been told by female OKC users):

1. Create account
2. Fill out her own profile
3. Get message-swarmed by tens/hundreds of males a day, depending on her physical attractiveness
4a. Bite the bullet and read through aforementioned messages (possibly male profiles if she's interested)
4b. Once message inbox gets too full, empty it so it can fill up again due to step 3
5a. Repeat steps 2-4 in any order, as often as they feel like it
5b. Respond to any men she has established a genuine interest in and conversation with, usually through OKCupid's messaging system.
6. (optional) stare in bleak desperation at the screen hoping the process will ever produce some form of yield and/or add more favorites to their Favorites section on their profile and/or answer more relationship- & personality-determining questions hoping this will make her more noticeable to real gentlemen

And that's essentially how it works at face value. But I called it a beast for good reason--it ain't that simple (although it is as painful as I'm insinuating).

Since I want to do that psychological "good-bad-good" sandwich thing to make you feel like there's actually something positive about online dating (and there is, I just wanted an excuse to be blatant and sarcastic) let's cover the bad first.

The Ugly (And Bad)

OKCupid is, beyond ANY doubt, extremely frustrating to use unless you are the luckiest man/woman on the planet--which of course, none of us are.

And it doesn't matter which gender you are. It sucks. Period. Seriously, using OKCupid for a while with serious intent...it really sucks. Some will tell you that men have it hardest on OKCupid because of "all the other male competition." OKCupid has far more male users than female users...or so it seems. Gender ratio is actually difficult to tell on OKCupid due to a variety of factors that number too many to agree upon for accuracy's sake (and would put you to sleep). However, it is safe to assume that any online dating site has at least a slight surplus of male active users compared to female active users. This correlates with the earlier claim that men are the "chasers" in society, and women are most often being chased. On the other hand, some will tell you that women have it hardest because of all the pointless and superficial attention they get--AND it takes up their time having to clear it away just to have to slog through more. That they "get no respect" on a site like OKCupid, and all that after putting as much personal information as they're comfortable releasing...online. And anything that gets released on the internet is essentially public, especially on a site like this where it's free to sign up and browse profiles!

Well, it's all true. Thus, it sucks for everyone. But why exactly does it suck?

Simply put, I think it sucks because in online dating, people are (typically) not motivated to try to understand you as a person. They only look for what they want at face value, otherwise you get the cold shoulder of silence. You could be the nicest, sweetest guy or gal and be genuinely into finding someone who wants a deep, committed relationship that will probably end with marriage and children--and be casually swept aside by hundreds (or if a woman, thousands) of people who seem to take no interest in you. And if you've experienced this feeling, you know it's not fair. It isn't fair to you that others don't give you a chance. And from there, it's easy to start making assumptions about why the other gender sucks and how other guys/ladies get lucky because "they're prettier/handsomer." Thus the cycle continues, due to not knowing exactly how others perceive you. Silence is awful like that, and I'll touch more on the perception of silence from an OKCupid user's perspective in a future post in this series.

OKCupid does not show users specific guidelines of how to approach online dating on the site (although there is a public Q&A-style forum available for anyone to view, it isn't shoved in your face while you are using the site...heck, I never used it or glanced at it myself while I was still a user). Rather, it is more of a sandbox-style approach to the system--instead of offering layers of management or strictness (like what eHarmony does), you're thrown into a pool of people and have to figure out what to do to make the system work for yourself. Being an engineer, doing this essentially comes with the territory. But not everyone has the mindset of an engineer, which makes you wonder who coded--I mean, designed the site's system in the first place...

This is shedding light on what appears to be the crux of the issue: When participating in online dating, people (generally) do not adapt if they are unsuccessful. Instead, they feel pressured and limited, and feel punished and insignificant when they do not immediately succeed. Furthermore, the more they fail in an online dating medium, the more they think they're limited to what they can do about their lonesome situation instead of feeling like they can now go at the system again armed with knowledge of what did not work previously. To make matters worse, users are not shown examples of success on OKCupid--instead, they have to realize for themselves that they'll have to continue to bite the bullet and know that with enough time and effort, they can reap bountiful fruit. As if it's not awful enough, a lack of positive results often does more than just foul a user's mood: it may only further reinforce the idea (in a user's mind) that they need to do more of what they've been doing thus far, since what they've done so far seems to "not be enough." This can cause someone to become even more convinced not that their methods are more effective, but that other methods are less effective.

Given these (horribly common) circumstances, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture: the site exists for YOU to do what YOU feel like YOU need to do to make YOURSELF happy. This in and of itself will pay great dividends for those around you--being your true, honest self will cause others like you to take interest in you. You should be rewarded for being yourself. But in almost every case, that is not how the user feels.

The Good

The good news about OKCupid (yes, there are good things that can come of trying it) is extremely obvious now that we've covered the bad and ugly sides: you get to decide how to approach online dating. And you get to learn from your mistakes, or try new techniques in the hopes of getting success. The other thing that is easy to forget is that you can decide what you want within the site. You are in absolute control of who you talk to, who you try to talk to, what you put on your profile, which kinds of people/relationship(s) you're looking for...and you can always take a break from the site if it becomes too much to bear by freezing your account--and to unfreeze it, you have to log back in to the site.

Having control on the Internet is outstanding. This is the brilliance of OKCupid specifically, unlike most other dating sites, and it's also easy to forget while using OKCupid. For example, take a site like eHarmony (which I also have experience using, albeit briefly). eHarmony is a paid-subscription online dating service in which you are given the ability to view anywhere from 3-12 (or so) matches given to you by the eHarmony system on a daily basis, with maybe 1-2 others trickling in throughout the day. And that's it. You can also view user profiles that occasionally may appear in the What If? section, which is a tool on eHarmony that will show you user profiles that are almost a match with yours (according to eHarmony) and give you the chance to view them to see if you may be missing out on someone spectacular. But even the What If? section dries up quickly and only refreshes periodically. You cannot view anyone else in the meantime, whereas on OKCupid you have viewing privilege and messaging access to every single profile (as long as they have not blocked you). eHarmony also tries to put the squeeze on communication and offers you assistance on how to message others: it prompts you to request that the person you're interested in answer five closed-ended questions (pre-selected questions with pre-selected answer options) first, and then they can do the same for you...and once *that* goes through, the site says that you should now finally begin open-ended messaging. Meanwhile, OKCupid lets you do as you please and simply presents you with a blank box that you can type into. Complete, absolute freedom compared to such a closed model.

OKCupid is essentially an MMO, but for dating. Everyone starts fresh with an account that they can build upon, experiences encounters that they can remember fondly or...not-so-fondly, and it's a world that they can limit to just their screen of choice. You can use OKCupid from mobile devices as well as computers, but they amount to the same thing (well, not quite...the mobile app is a bit different and more limited): They're both a means of injecting AND removing anonymity, and the user has complete control over how much of each they can employ. Afraid of having to "resort" to online dating? Well, no one on OKCupid should know you, and you can behave how you'd best like to present yourself to others (although not being yourself is something easy to fall prey to, and will be discussed in a future post). You can also ignore any users that are being annoying in any way, or hide people matched with you in search results if you don't like them for any reason. Maybe not everyone has their heart set on being friendly to you, but you can at least blot 'em out! These actions come with their own problems (e.g. silence can reinforce bad behavior) but they provide the user with power that they otherwise usually do not feel they have when using OKCupid and falling flat on their face alongside everyone else.

The "problem" with the good side of OKCupid is...it's extremely open-ended. Which is an interesting psychological scenario: it's easy to tell what's awful and stupid about the site, but not easy to pinpoint exactly what's so great about it. If you were to ask anyone who has used OKCupid what sums up their experience, they're almost certainly going to tell you something negative. Being open-ended means it's hard to classify what's so great about it, as everyone's experiences and ideas of what's "great" are so varied. There is a typical end goal defined for everyone that means "you succeeded," which is finding the mate of your dreams, but the journey is extremely enlightening if users choose to take it that way.

Conclusion

OKCupid, (and online dating in general) has many negative stigmas that typically overpower its high points. It can both harm and hurt its users through experiences of success and (mostly) failure. As a new medium for romancing, it certainly has a long way to go, but also significant potential for those that have the patience and aptitude for iterative matchmaking. OKCupid is a sandbox, which is both its strength and the bane of its users' existence.

This post only scratched the surface of online dating and OKCupid. Next time, I'll go over the OKCupid website from a user's perspective and discuss the power of each tool at a user's disposal--and how users tend to (mis)use them and how I used them (if I used them at all). Expect lots of screenshots!

Dragon's Crown Art "Controversy" - Fantasy vs Reality

Dragon's Crown Art "Controversy" - Fantasy vs Reality

WARNING: This post contains images of proportionally-exaggerated women. If you aren't comfortable with the portrayal of characters in fantasy compared to those in reality, don't read this. Instead, please try to figure out why you aren't and try to bring yourself to a point where you are comfortable seeing it.

I haven't blogged in a while, but this topic has me so concerned that I just HAD to say something.

Dragon's Crown. This game has ruined my life in a good way for the past week. It's a beautiful 2D beat-em-up game with an addicting loot system, fantastic local and netplay multiplayer action and extremely satisfying gameplay. It also has drop-dead gorgeous hand-drawn 2D artwork displayed gloriously throughout the entire game, as a narrator takes you through the story on your quest to aid the kingdom of Hydeland. It's not an innovative game by any means, but it doesn't have to be.

Just one look at this game says it all:

Immaculate.

This is a highly addicting game boasting over 100 hours of gameplay and potentially endless adventuring throughout gloriously detailed dungeons. Atlus and Vanillaware really outdid themselves for this game and it succeeds in bringing the beat-em-up genre into the spotlight.

Now take a second look at the screencap above, right in the middle. No, not that shiny green burst of light, the woman next to it with the witch hat and long flowing hair. That's Sorceress. She's 1 of 6 playable characters in this game. She also has ENORMOUS breasts.

And now we get to the core problem people have with this game: the portrayal of women. Kotaku's Jason Schreier has taken shots at Dragon's Crown's Sorceress (and it got even more heated), and Amazon has gotten her fair share of critique in particular for showing off copious amounts of her figure. The Elf is a reasonably-proportioned, well-dressed female, so she has drawn little to no fire. And of course, the playable males (Fighter, Dwarf, Wizard) haven't drawn any fire either. Just Sorceress and Amazon, for the most part.

Let's look at these characters more in-depth.

Sorceress

Here's our mystical Sorceress' official art, drawn by Vanillaware's own President George Kamitani. I believe it speaks for itself.

There's little that needs to be said to describe this art. She's all breasts, legs, breasts and butt. And breasts. Did I mention yet how big her breasts are? Oh and they bounce in the game, in every single animation. Even idle animations. She can't even breathe without them rising and falling with slight buoyancy maneuvers. I should know because I've already spent 20-25 minutes playing as her in the game. Sorceress has a figure release planned already, but it's been cancelled, presumably because she is SO exaggerated that even Japan has issues with her.

"Sorceress gives women a bad name in games, and in fantasy. Her sole purpose in this game is to make males play this game with drool dripping down the sides of their mouths, and their pants down. She's a sex object and a sickeningly terrible representation of women, so much so that female gamers won't want to play this game. She's something straight out of an erotic Japanese visual novel and is just begging to be ravished and loved, used only to bear children and provide fanservice."

The above paragraph is a collection of opinions I've collected from many online sources who baselessly attack this game because of her. She has ridiculous proportions and a very dainty "I need protecting" portrayal, just based on what she looks like and what poses she's in. All they see is her artwork, her breasts, her breasts some more and some screenshots maybe. Then they draw conclusions. Some have even called this game sexist because of her.

Okay. OKAY. Hold on a minute. Sexist? Really? REALLY? Let's analyze her a little, shall we?

The Woman Behind the Breasts

Sorceress character in games are most often depicted as mystically alluring but cunning female mages with a penchant for defeating enemies using crafty, unfair or confusing methods of combat. They usually aren't the strongest of characters, nor the most robust, but they are very strong and sexy in their own right. Sorceresses in Warcraft were not the strongest offensive units in the Human alliance, but they were able to significantly cripple enemies, even turning them into helpless sheep. League of Legends features Emilia LeBlanc the Deceiver, a scantily-clad magical powerhouse who specializes in trickery and darting around in combat. She is particularly powerful, tricking opponents with a clone of herself and blinking all around the battlefield.

Sorceresses dress very revealing and usually have appealing bodies. Dragon's Crown's Sorceress doesn't stray from that stereotype, but her body proportions (the "hourglass" figure) are even more exaggerated. She has extremely healthy breasts, a dangerously skinny waist, and very wide child-birthing hips. Why? George Kamitani has released a statement explaining why he's made the characters so exaggerated: they wouldn't stand out amidst all the other fantasy designs in various media. He's got a point: no other game is like Dragon's Crown, at least not yet, because of how exaggerated it is.

But the Dragon's Crown Sorceress has much more up her nonexistent sleeves than just her appearance. For starters, she can inflict every status condition in the game: petrifying and polymorphing enemies into helpless frogs; she can inflict freezing, burning and stunning with her various magically elemental offensive powers. She can restore allies' health by creating food out of thin air, and she can instantly bolster the entire party's defenses. With the ability to fire homing magic shots in the air, teleport instantly a short distance away multiple times and the power to fly temporarily over great distances, she is easily one of the most nimble characters in the game. Not bad for a woman who would have a hard time maintaining her balance standing up in reality.

But her abilities don't end there. She also has powers of necromancy. She acquires the ability to animate bones of dead adventurers found very often throughout the dungeons you explore in the game, turning them into fierce skeleton warriors that fight for her behalf. Sorceress has control of life and death, and this brings up a very key point in her origins. Previous Atlus/Vanillaware games such as Odin Sphere have featured similarly themed characters. For example, here's Queen Odette from Odin Sphere:

Notice any similarities? The healthy chest, the slim proportions, the flowing mystical attire? Odette is the queen of Netherworld Endelphia in the world of Odin Sphere. In other words, she's the queen of the underworld and holds jurisdiction over life and death. She's also a strong boss full of surprises who uses an undead army to tire out the characters that fight her. In fact, she's part undead herself as is apparent in her artwork...and MUCH creepier than she seems on the outside (she hides gigantic creature-infested spider legs under that dress, let the nightmares commence).

Wow, she's so similar to Sorceress! We can see that our buxom witch has actual significance in her design, which is not noticeable if she is merely looked at.

Now as I mentioned before, I've played Sorceress almost exclusively since I bought this game. Dragon's Crown does the player a favor by not only assigning statistical ratings to each character, but also recommending certain characters based on how difficult they are for the player to use. Fighter is the easiest, Dwarf and Amazon are moderate difficulty, and the last three (Elf, Wizard, Sorceress) are for expert players. Since I usually prefer finesse characters, I figured I'd give Sorceress a spin because she can do so much. Within minutes I had gotten focused onto the action, forgetting the ridiculousness of the bouncy babe I was controlling. I was locked in a dangerous battle, a 1v1 fight against the boss of the first stage, the Harpy. I barely managed to defeat it without dying. Sorceress wasn't just sexy, she was AWESOME.

Hours later, I beat Normal mode with her using AI partners, and came to the conclusion that she is very strong, evasive and versatile. She gives off a very strong "You can only look, not touch" vibe, because she is immensely fun to play as. When you solo entire dungeons with her, you feel a sense of accomplishment, like "hey, I outsmarted EVERY enemy in this entire stage" and you're proud of it. Every so often you come to terms with how exaggerated she looks, but by the time you're into the thick of the game (the first few hours of play) it's just grown on you as a part of the game. Sorceress just IS. She is who she is. Unlike in other games that often explicitly poke fun at a female character's body (via character interaction/side quest dialogue), the game doesn't emphasize hers in any way other than letting the art and animations speak for themselves. She represents powerful but delicate beauty, someone that feels so close yet is always just out of reach. Also she holds skeletons to her bosom. IT'S SYMBOLISM No but seriously, it actually is.

Sorceress is bewitching, enchanting, untouchable, powerful and everything else a sorceress (and just about any other powerful female archetype in fantasy) should be, just with bigger proportions. When I play as Sorceress I feel extremely invaluable and effective, aiding allies and trashing enemies with a variety of spells and attacks. I can't imagine a female gamer having problems playing as her. Yes she has great flopping baggage but it clearly isn't something that should be compared to realistic proportions BECAUSE IT'S FANTASY. And apparently having even bigger-then-normal breasts is grounds for calling Dragon's Crown sexist, among other things. Because logic, right? Let's just completely ignore the entire theme of the game, okay.

Now I can see why she may seem grossly over-exaggerated as a fantasy woman overall, built to "cater to males only", and drive away female gamers. But there are two logical errors with this argument. One, IT'S FANTASY. Don't even try to compare this to real life. This game is so over-the-top that no one (except people who want an excuse to run their mouths without using their brain) can reasonably say that this game should do a better job of representing women. That's not the point of fantasy! Fantasy doesn't have to cover up the problems present in reality (women are hourglassy beautiful delicate creatures, men are savage muscular prideful powerful ones). That's not fantasy's job. That's a problem with censorship and lack of acceptance of various body sizes and shapes in reality. If you have a problem with the way the women in Dragon's Crown are represented, YOU are insecure. Fix yourself, don't blame the game's representation for your own ineptitude. There is a difference between fantasy and reality. The two are not to be compared to each other. There's even one video out there that suggests that Dragon's Crown does a terrible job of representing civil rights. Like...what? REALLY? What does that even mean? Is that really what people these days are suggesting, that video games should do a good job of representing--you know what, it's so stupidly misinformed and irrelevant that I won't even go into more detail on it.

Two, what the actual hell? Why would women be afraid of this kind of representation of females? Sorceress is powerful, she is good-looking, she can be supportive or offensive and do anything in-between. The Amazon is even MORE powerful and powerful-looking, as will be shown and discussed very soon. Why draw a baseless conclusion without even having played the game? This is a GAME too, you know. It has content, it's not just an animated artbook featuring nothing but Sorceress walking and bouncing her breasts all over the screen. I'm not a woman so maybe I don't quite fully understand, but I don't see how this logic isn't firm. And you know what's funny (but not really)? There is so much violence that is apparently acceptable in movies and video games...but the moment an overly large pair of breasts appears, people get out their pitchforks and torches (the latter of which is an actual expendable weapon found in dungeons in this game). Censorship (at least in the United States) is so nonsensical that it hurts my brain. Heaven forbid a character like Sorceress is incredibly powerful but has a huge rack, as opposed to the so-often-used stereotypical portrayal of women (dainty, put in the back of the party, soft-spoken, does almost nothing but buff and heal) in various media that we're all honestly sick and tired of. I guess we can't really enjoy something new, now can we? Gotta ATTACK IT.

And as far as this game being made mostly for males, guess what the gender percentage of gamers mostly is? And guess how games targeting females in particular have fared? Sure, Dragon's Crown depicts saving mostly if not completely helpless females and shows almost TOO much of their bodies sometimes, but it's reminiscent of the more knightly, romantic time periods in history. It's thematic. Besides, the three playable females are certainly powerful in their own right, and more than enough to make up for the lack of power shown by female NPCs in this game. Everyone should be appreciating how extremely loyal (and extreme, period) this game adheres to its theme.

Why then do people jump so quickly to attack this game? Before answering that (even though I kind of already have), let's look at the other half of the glaring problem: Amazon. And I don't mean the company.

Amazon

Amazon is also one of the six playable character classes in Dragon's Crown, and she is the only melee/physical character of the three females. She also outputs the most damage of all six, although she's a bit more fragile than the other two melee classes.

Here are the two official portrait art pictures of Amazon:

Here's a still of Amazon's in-game idle animation:

Two words: dat booty. Look how chiseled it is! Good thing it's so solid, because she uses it to beat the crap out of her opponents with a bone-shattering hip drop. When she jumps, her butt transforms into the most perfectly spherical, flawless, "I wanna reach out and grab it" backside you've ever seen in 2D. And it's fully exposed. She may as well not even wear armor--a key point in tracing her roots as will be discussed later--because you can't even see it half the time. She actually has rather large bouncy breasts too, but THAT MUSCLE attracts all the attention (also dat booty does too). Her legs are even more dangerous than Chun Li's and can easily snap enemies in half (she doesn't do this in the game though, unfortunately) and she uses them to deliver a series of fierce, swift kicks to knock opponents out cold. Lightning fast on land and incredibly potent and controlling in the air, Amazon can potentially deliver the highest amount of damage in the entire game out of all the characters. She also wields a gigantic poleaxe, scythe, and other large cleaving weapons. That's pretty important to note too, I suppose.

If anything can outdo the ridiculousness of the Sorceress, it's Amazon. Sorceress has an entire body behind worthy of being worshiped, but it's completely covered up so its actual anatomic shape is left to the player's imagination (contributing more to the alluring-yet-enigmatic theme Sorceress has, see how logical this is all becoming?). Amazon bears it all out in the open, even using hers as a powerful weapon (Sorceress instead has a weaker hip bump dash attack). What's more, Amazon wears the least clothing out of all the characters (apparently she doesn't need it, yet she takes less damage from attacks than Sorceress. Go figure). When she gets stunned, she lays on the ground with her backside directly facing the camera, and during her stunned animation it even wobbles a bit. It goes without saying that Amazon has nothing to hide. There is even unlockable in-game artwork depicting three amazon warriors--wearing next-to-nothing, of course--after an orc hunt. So it's not just her, it's the entire Amazon population.

But surely there must be good reasons for this character design, right? Right. Let's journey back in time a little...

Ancient Amazonians

The Amazon of Dragon's Crown is clearly named after and physically represents strong, powerful women that are also more primitive-looking and fundamental. I speak of course of the amazons (duh). if you're feeling lazy I'll sum up the important parts of that link in the next paragraph.

In Greek mythology, the Amazons were an all-female warrior nation that specialized in more hunter-gatherer kinds of activities, as well as warfare. They were so hardcore that they would often resort to using extreme methods to get rid of their right breast so they could throw javelins much easier. Naturally an all-female nation would have trouble keeping its population up, so they would procreate with men of other nations every so often. Depending on which version of the Amazonian myth you look at, they would sometimes keep men as slaves for procreation purposes or kill off all male babies born as the result of said procreation engagement. Yikes!

During battle they would often paint their bodies with 'war paint' to appear more imposing. This, of course, comes at the cost of wearing less clothing...and they didn't seem to mind! Dragon's Crown's own Amazon utilizes the War Paint ability as a skill--it creates clones of herself to perform extreme damage at the cost of some of her health. Some of the more Amazonian-like women in history, such as Xena the Warrior Princess, are far more armored but also emit this type of wild 'battle frenzy' behavior in battle, shouting battle cries to the tune of slaying foes. Amazon also does this as she takes a large step back, showing off her entirely muscular body in the process--and then SLAMMING her weapon down in front of her, absolutely obliterating anything unfortunate enough to be in front of her. She is wild, reckless and POWERFUL. But at the same time, she is also more vulnerable due to her lack of wearing...well, just about anything really.

Amazon also has some similar moves to the other Dragon's Crown melee characters, and shares a spinning aerial attack with Cornelius from Odin Sphere, but these are besides the point. Amazon is strong and shows off her entire body, and with great care she can become the true powerhouse in the player's hands. I played Amazon for a few hours and she is very satisfying to use, possibly the most satisfying of all the characters but at the cost of being less effective or reliable overall. She is no dainty Sorceress, and can easily brawl with the big boys. Also I believe she has the fastest dash on the ground, and gives you complete control over aerial attacks (later you can even upgrade her spinning aerial attack so its horizontal velocity can be completely controlled like Cornelius' can). Amazon is quite the woman of action, with powerful feminine beauty to boot(y).

Now, some people believe her muscular body is gross. Just like the Sorceress' body was explained above, it's just fantasy. Amazon's body build and attire represent something. A few hours into the game with her and you won't be concerned at all about her appearance, you'll be busy comboing and carving enemies in half with lightning speed, reveling in the satisfaction of her destructive moveset. Dwarf is just as if not even more muscular, which leads me to my next point...

The Male Characters

Just like how Elf is the exception to the 'exaggeration' theme for the female playable characters, the Wizard is the exception for the males. Now let's look at the two other male characters: Fighter and Dwarf.

Here is Fighter.

Here is Dwarf.

Look at how topheavy Fighter is! How does he even stay standing with those barrel-boomin' arms, scrawny legs and all that armor?! And Dwarf sports so much muscle that it's a wonder how he can swing his weapons at all. I can just imagine Dwarf being unable to even stand up, so the other party members have to take turns rolling him everywhere they need to go. It's hilarious but it's also RIDICULOUS. The male characters don't escape from this 'exaggeration' theme either. But it's okay that they look like this, because that's the accepted appearance of males in video games. Do you see where I'm going with this?

It makes absolutely no sense that the Dragon's Crown females are drawing so much negative attention, but the males don't. Both are exaggerated to the point of being unbelievable...but this is all fantasy, so why SHOULD it be believable? Why should people feel threatened by the character representation in this game, regardless of gender? What's more, the majority of gamers are male. Why would they care so much about the female "misrepresentation" in this game and not the male misrepresentation, when every single game out there has the same depiction only a bit less emphasized? In fact, why would they even care about the male misrepresentation to begin with? It's not like most of the gaming population is female anyway, so their potential mistaken perception of how males look in fantasy vs reality isn't going to become widespread to begin with. To top it off, this game doesn't toy with the idea of poking fun at a character's body like many other games have done in the past--it crosses the line and implements that idea completely, and as a result generates a nice refreshing experience.

The game is sexist? The game misrepresents females? None of these arguments make sense. So why do people run their mouths and say that stuff to begin with? Why do they start flame wars and bring up things like sexism, instead of trying to figure out why the game is made as it was like I have attempted to do in this post?

Conclusion: It's Just Fantasy. Accept It As Different.

The answer is simple. People value validity, a sense of purpose, over the truth. This could be the result of laziness, or simple immaturity. They believe what they want to believe without a need for the truth and that is sufficient for them, but it only pollutes arguments with pointless baseless accusations. The moment people laid eyes on Amazon's and Sorceress' official art and deemed it grossly over-exaggerated and therefore concluded that the entire game was ugly, or that it was not worth playing, they had to do something to compensate for an actual rationale behind their statements. So they hide behind shallow statements like "this game is sexist" or try to bring up the fact that this game does a terrible job of representing our civil rights. I say that's a bunch of hooey. They just want to feel justified in their disdain for this game (not even the game itself, just the way one or two characters are depicted) without delving into the issues behind censorship and character exaggeration. What's more, people are okay with 

There is no logical reason to make these kinds of comparisons between fantasy and reality. Saying things like "Sorceress was designed by a 14-year old boy" is completely ignoring the themes that this game embodies, and instead drawing a conclusion off of an assumption. Because we all love being right SO much that we will throw something amazing like this to the side and trash it completely, right? We love to talk and share our opinions and show how we're right (read: how we believe we are in the right) because we seek validation. Unfortunately, using immature means to do so with no facts or evidence to back it up gets us nowhere.

If you think Dragon's Crown is gross in any way via its character depiction, then I don't know how else to put this: grow up, accept that there are not only different body types but a non-comparable difference between fantasy and reality, and move on. Accept that Sorceress has giant flopping breasts, and Amazon's got a butt hangin' out, and the rest of the ridiculously fantastical things Dragon's Crown has to offer. It's fantasy, extreme exaggeration at its finest. It's a thing of beauty. Nothing else is like this. People should be treasuring a game like this, one that took risks to intensify a player's experience.

Also the game is amazing, so give it a try if you haven't yet. It's too breathtaking to pass up.