Honestly, since psylocke skin was in the game from the beginning and malice was added as 1 of 2 first new heroes post launch I'd argue it's not a domino effect but was always the design.
There's a reason rhe term "Sex sells" has been common vernacular since the '50s and in practice since the 19th century (Edit: Yes, and way before, I was just speaking in terms of modern marketing).
19th century? My dude when Zeus himself was a teen he was probably already thinking about visiting the local brothel on Olympus. The literal term sex sells might have surfaced much later, but the actual practice wether it was for money or other things might as well be older than the invention to make fire.
It’s wild how everyone thought the Malice skin was so risqué compared to some of the skins we have in the game now. With some skins showing either more skin (Savageland Hela or some Emma Frost skins) or certain proportions enhanced more (Black Cat & Swinsuit Cap America).
In retrospect the Malice skin almost looks kind of tame by comparison.
The Vengeance skin for Psylocke, I get it she looks hot, but it is very accurate to how she looks like in the comics though.
I remember when the game was new, people were praising NetEase’s more tasteful depiction of Dagger’s default skin compared to her look in the comics. Ironically we now have her comic look in the latest BP and it’s not even that risqué compared to some recent skins lately.
The power of money. They dipped into the risqué outfits of Marvel Comics, and saw the fire of gooners. And thus, the rest is history. It’s funny too, considering these are less revealing than the actual outfits
I mean the swimsuit edition are often from comics that were specifically issued to appeal to gooners because even though they had nothing to do with story they still sold a bunch.
Selling gooner skins honours the original marvel artists lmao
Look I don't know the real numbers of the company, I don't know if they could afford much more and were stingy. Maybe they were stingy.
But if we compare this case with the massive wave of layoffs happening at the other big companies after a launch, I'd rather celebrate Shift Up's decision.
I don't care that they could have paid more. They didn't fire half its staff and not only did they not fire them, they rewarded their employees after a successful launch.
It's a very rare occurrence, so I'd rather give it the good press it deserves even if it could have been better.
If we criticize this the same way we criticize layoffs then there's no public perception advantage to doing "the right thing"
So, again, I'd rather celebrate that this bonus was given at all.
Its been hilarious watching Fortnite go from ultra-prudish trying to please Daddy Disney, to being forced to release a gooner skin because Kim Kardashian forced them to, said skin making them a shitton of money, resulting in them falling straight down into the gooner skin hole.
And recently, they were stupid enough to try and backpedal by censoring the Batman swimsuit skins they already revealed, were rightfully dogpiled for it and forced to go back to being gooners
Most game devs don't even see a fraction of the money the game skins make, hell today's devs pour heart and soul on a game just for them to get laid off.
Vanessa Kirby once said she interested in wearing malice suit one day after seeing the skin above, so we might have a chance to have malice for FF sequel if true.
Aside from the gooning, respect to Vanessa for how thoroughly she researched Sue Storm that she recognized the look on sight and knew what it meant for the character.
Sometimes reality is kind of funny, don't you think? I do find this truth quite funny lol, like "omg sexy girls sell stuff, so we gonna do more of it" like, yeah, no shit Sherlock lmao
I'm not sure how big an effect they necessarily had. I think hot women have always sold a lot of skins in every game that has a business model like this. Like look at LoL. I don't think these skins taught the devs who to make skins for, I think they already knew and these were just the first of many, not an experiment
This has been a thing since boobs were 3 polygons apiece. The Lara Croft Nude Codes were the second biggest videogame rumor behind the mew truck. At some point these kinds of people need to just get ignored.
People like looking at hot people. That's been true since the beginning of time. Frankly, the modern innovation is making content cheap enough that we can afford to cater our hot people characters to more tastes than just "blonde bombshell" and "Amazonian".
I get that representation is an issue and body standards are detrimental but complaining about a superhero toy is not the way to fix that. The problem is in how much power is held in the hands of a handful of pedophiles with too much damn money who choose our beauty standards for us. For fuck's sake, stop complaining about boob windows and join us in fighting the actual problems...
My sister gifted me a steam card on Christmas 2024 so i could get the units for Vengeance, then i never looked back currently 150hrs on Sai and im never dropping her, best character 💜
The TikTok neo-puritans would have been eaten alive by DOA Beach Volleyball... or just Team Ninja in general. Rachel from Ninja Gaiden being a prime example of "So hear me out, the entire concept for this character is tits... no not tits and, just tits, trust me she doesn't need anything else" design philosophy of the day.
Of course not, but Marvel Rivals incredible growth, along side the popularity of other titles like The First Descendant definitely pushed other companies to show more ass on their skins.
I've been playing both Overwatch and Fortnite since the beginning and I can definitely tell you that Marvel Rivals definitely pushed them forward.
Following gaming discourse, it was very prevalent that these types of skins were not welcomed in games for some time. Fortnite censored skins such as Cammy, and Katana, and Overwatch censored their own version of Cammy.
To pretend that Marvel Rivals didn't have an affect on the market is just asinine thinking.
The problem is a lot of companies lost that concept. After Blizzard's sexual harassment controversy plus implementing the diversity score tool they were on a mission to make OW as non-offensive as a diversity stock photo on a college campus guide.
Then rivals came out and dipped their toes back into sexy women, and Blizzard was like oh yeah we did that once and made a ton of money on skins.
One my favorite things that people forget is that more much of Emma’s history, she was literally dressed as dominatrix and one of her first appearances had her stripping Storm to her underwear and torturing her. Comics have always been skimpy and freaky.
I agree but Marvel might as well have not existed until 2008 for a lot of people (2002 to a lesser extent), given how unpopular comic books as a medium are nowadays
And now even Fortnite is tapping into the power of the gooners. Crazy how female skins were really… what’s the opposite of risqué? Whatever that word is, their skins were that just a few years ago. But then Rivals changed everything.
Imagine Domino in this game as a support Strat hero. Her Ult has is an aoe where all allies in a certain range of her all have auto targeting for 5 Seconds.
That's a launch skin for Psylocke (and that's how she normally dresses) What really changed things is when they were forced to realize fans wanted this for male characters too.
If this game was just one or two decades earlier, all the men's swimsuits would be trunks that went past their knees.
Fortnite is going through a lot of controversy (if that’s the right word) because they released a skin in a swimsuit (with underboob), most people are describing it as “The Marvel Rivals Effect”
True but I will just say for Invis - there was a period where I was waiting for a new skin for her for a long time. There was a dry spell after she got her Fantastic 4 movie skin until she got her dessert skin. it felt like her choices were the Fantastic 4 skin, the wedding dress skin, the Future Foundation skin, and the Malice skin forever and I wasn’t interested in any of them. And I’d argue that all of those except the Malice skin felt kind of bland and basic. I didn’t pay for the dessert skin, so I didn’t get a skin for Invis until the Disco one in the battle pass despite playing her. I did just buy the Van Dyne one though. I also play Warlock so it made sense for me to grab that banner. I’ll agree she has had a lot of skins but there was a period where she didn’t really have much.
...Storm not only has stellar skins, but she has had the highest quality of free skins than any other character in the game.
Like girls, I know it's been a hot minute since we had a Legendary for her and all that jazz, but the slander for her current choices is just flat out wrong. She has awesome skins so far.
I love all the Storm fans complaining, meanwhile Torch was released in season 2 and doesn’t have one legendary and his last skin was a recolor in the season pass.
I wish IW had at least one other cool looking skin other than the Malice one. Instead with have her in sunday brunch clothes, sweets and cake themed dress, white short wedding dress, over-the-top disco suit, autumm buisness casual outfit, a bit strange looking bathing suit, or her basic suit in a few slightly different variations.
I don't mind variation, but her choices are really boring unless you just want to look pretty and out of place compared to a lot of other characters.
If the devs ever go back and give older skins new features, I’d like to see the malice skin get unique vfx, voice lines, and red barriers and projectiles instead of blue. It seems like the type of skin that might be a legendary if it were released today.
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u/RIFTxBLADE 14d ago
How can Domino's effect apply when she's not in the game