There I was, fooling around in World of Warcraft and decided to make a blood elf mage (?) with penis (??). Madness! But I did so and fooled around with him; I enjoyed the goofy ‘kill them before they even touch you’ combat and being able to make my food and water so I could spam spells without worry.

I decided to take a screen shot of my bizarrely masculine self when I realized something was missing.



“My dude has no dude bits!” I said to myself. This is something I’d never noticed before as I’d never played with a masculine avatar. It was a bit shadowy in the inn, so I went outside where it’s a bit lighter to verify, and it turned out I was right: Ken doll smooth. No wonder elves breed like pandas!

I decided to look at the other races, and it was true across the board.



As a comic book reader, I’m familiar with the habit of making female lumps prominent and male lumps non-existent. The idea is, I think, though Superman can fly and toss cars around, if he’s packing more kryptonite than they are, young, male readers might get an inferiority complex. Or something. Several comic fans actually complained about Alex Ross’ depiction of Citizen Steel , calling it ‘creepy’ and complaining about the ‘over-sexualization’ of the character. That’s an issue for someone else to blog about. My question is why this would spill over into video games, specifically RPGs where your avatar is ‘you.’

I’m only a lesbian, but I was rather disappointed to find my guy avatar had effectively been neutered. I mean, if I’m going to play a man in World of Warcraft, I want hulking muscles; cool, shiny armor (with spikes!); a weapon as long as my body (with flames!), and a dick could double as a baseball bat when hard.

I understand that they can’t give me the last one, but would at least a slight bulge hurt anyone?

With this in mind, I decided to go on my own epic quest for a package. First I opened up Morrowind, created a male dunmer, after the intro I stripped naked and – whoa! It’s the full monety. I’d forgotten I had loaded the ‘Better Bodies’ mod along with improved textures. After removing it, I loaded the game, and my dark elf still had a bulge in his underwear. Oh, and a woman walked by me and insulted me. Good work Bethesda!

Thief: Deadly Shadows: This was a hard one (little penis humor there) as Garret constantly crouches; even while standing pressed against the wall, his knees are slightly bent. I spent a little time fiddling with the camera but saw no sign of a bulge.

If not, Gerret, how about the Witcher, Geralt? I don’t have the game installed right now, but I remember that having sex was a fairly prominent gameplay element. As expect, Geralt had a prominent bulge under his leathers.

Guild Wars: one of the few games where the guys are attractive. After playing through the intro with my Dervish, I stripped him down and took a screen shot. The bulges are three for five against the smoothies. I cracked open the Neverwinter Nights Toolset. After looking at my Dervish, my eyes wanted to bleed as the models were worse than even Morrowind’s, but the men were suitably equipped

Batman AA: Bulge. The demo even begins with the camera slowly panning up Batman’s muscular legs and prominent package.

Dead Space: Bulge. Blink and you might miss it, but it’s there.

Mass Effect: No bulge. I have no saves as maleshep and figured the armor might be hiding something, so I played through Eden Prime. It was all for naught; he’s as smooth as a baby’s butt. Good thing asari mate via the Vulcan mind meld. Given that NWN had bulging, the question is: will the bulge make an appearance in Dragon Age?

Drakensang: No bulge. I hear the seduction skill is useless for men anyway.

Devil May Cry 4: Bulge. A shock I’m sure to those who hate pretty guy Japanese characters.

The result is that seven out of the eleven games I looked at had bulges, so I guess the package wins by an inch. Now I’m off to contemplate why I spent the time to find this out, but I’ll leave you with a lineup of the fellows from my survey.