You hear that, sexists? It's all in you. Can't blame the games. 🙂

As a dude, I exclusively use female characters to get gifts in multi-player games

if someone is not able to distinguish between fiction (regardless of the medium) and reality, then the problem is much deeper than pearl-clutching religious fanatics insist on believing, and will NOT be solved by abolishing all the "bad" fiction

i would argue that religion itself plays a large part in developing these problematic attitudes from early childhood, especially towards sex

I mean sexualized movies with skimpy ladies and jacked dudes, and smut books are not harmful broadly speaking, so I don't really see why video games would be different.

I would think repression is worse for people but it’s neat.

now do a research on the effect of lolis (young sexualized girls) in japanese media and whether it has an effect. i wouldn't be surprised if the outcomes were similar, yet lots of people still whine about it.

It's almost like there's another reason for censorship

Skimming their data tables (don't have access to the journal outside of work), it feels like a really broad hodge pdge of semi-related studies (which the authors essentially admitted).

But it also kind of misses the point. The problem isn't titties or dicks in video games. The problem is the culture around it and what it reinforces and it very much goes far beyond video games. Big jiggly titties? You are a mature game. Dick size slider so you can rock a magnum dong that needs a monster condom? You are progressive. What? Both of those are just more male gaze?

And all of that is normalized. You won't see a significant change from the baseline because that IS the baseline.

You know what you almost never see (outside of those "problematic gay games that turn the kids into litter boxes")? A sexy twink. We all made the same joke about Lies of Timothee Chalamet being one of the better souslikes of the past decade but it is also very telling that we mostly see our twinks in full stillsuits or twelve layers of Victorian clothing. Look, but have enough chastity belts that nobody needs to be worried about being able to touch. And the moment you have a woman who doesn't have an hourglass figure? See: The Last Of Us 2.

Which is the issue. We have a cult of toxic misogyny that insists everything MUST be male gaze and the only acceptable nudity is big titty girls and guys who look like Ahnold. And any divergence from that is "ruining games" or "being woke" to the point that we don't even GET those games outside of the rare case of a game nobody cared about becoming popular (I'll always cite that Yasuke was a recurring character in Nioh long before people turned him into a culture war).

Its like saying that gas stoves cause no meaningful decrease in air quality but having every study take place in the home of a pack a day smoker.