The arrival of mutant baddie Emma Frost may have led a big discussion about her being sexualized in Marvel Rivals, and the conversation has somehow evolved into not just Emma being sexualized, but every single character in the roster.
With some accusing the game of turning all the women characters into ‘gooner bait’, some argue that even the male characters have an added amount of fan service for everyone’s enjoyment.
Is Every Marvel Rivals Character Sexualized?
After the reveal of some Emma Frost skins had people complaining about how the women in the game are always put in revealing outfits, some argued that other skins for men in the game are also made to objectify them—like the incoming Iron Fist skin where his full torso is exposed.
Though some would think this would have proved the ‘men aren’t sexualized’ argument moot, one fan suggests that the bar is too low for male characters getting sexualized and ‘it’s just a guy with his shirt off.’
There is also the case that these incoming skins are an answer to the game focusing too heavily on objectifying the women, and a fan has pointed out that there have been ‘slutty’ skins for characters like Black Panther and Namor way back since Season 0 started in December.
“I’ll Do It Myself”
Even if Marvel Rivals was tame in their sexualization of the characters in-game, sometimes it’s the fans themselves that have been automatically posting their own smut of the playable heroes online. This is one of the tamer Mr. Fantastic edits when the character just got revealed in January:
With the game focused on making every hero in the roster conventionally attractive, it was inevitable that the fans themselves would start requesting some more revealing skins and even start posting dirty slutty fanart themselves.
Overwatch Did It First
If anything, the characters being hyper-sexualized (or just hyper-sexualizable) could be key to Marvel Rivals’ long life in the gaming space. The fact that Overwatch has been able to generate a massive amount of online smut is speculated to have helped its staying power and has even helped boost people’s interest in actually checking out the game.
Overwatch characters are so sexualized online that some people are even surprised that they were from a game in the first place. Many online artists have been able to make careers out of making NSFW edits of Tracer, Widowmaker, D. Va, and more. Marvel Rivals can only dream of amassing the same amount of erotica in such a short amount of time.
For now, opinions still vary on the amount of sexualization Marvel Rivals characters undergo, but at this point, some may just have to accept that it’s all part of what makes a hit game—whether they like it or not.
Marvel Rivals is now available for Xbox Series X|S, PC, and PS5.