The Gender side of mods

[steelfiredragon]

I am a meat bag so the poll I can not answer

[HazaRd777]

One thing important to point out is that most female-only mods are created with sexuality in mind. Armor bikinis, body textures, stylist hair, bouncing bits, etc. Combine these with adult animation mods and it basically turns Skyrim into an erotic adult game. The only question is how far in that direction do you want to go?

 

It's not just catering to female mods, if you're looking for a lore-friendly female ranger armor for example, you're going to be searching for almost as long as the male equivalent. I noticed this when I was looking for an armor for a female follower but had trouble finding something that wasn't sexualized. I will say male oriented mods are definitely the minority, but female non-sexual mods are fairly difficult as well to find. Hair mods for instance. Very little male options. 95% of female options are something you'd see from a model. The rest are what I would consider to be either lore friendly or genre appropriate.

 

Basically I think it has less to do with male vs. female and more with appealing to a sexual fantasy.

[stuff444]

It's because of a lack of sex.

[xinate]

I think it's actually quite simple once you boil it down to supply and demand:

 

1.sex sells, always has, always will, regardless of type (straight, gay and anything else) so modders will mostly go for the ones that will make them the most downloaded, endorsed or donated (although of course there are plenty of mods out there that are simply labours of love, with no financial supported wanted)

 

2.quite a few of the people wanting said mods are young, probably straight guys, with zero to little experience with women and breasts on their mind 24/7, as someone pointed out earlier in the thread ( and I say this because 12 years ago when I first joined nexusmods, that was on my mind xD)

 

But for me personally, I usually just add some for eye candy or roleplay purposes, I don't even add sex mods at all anymore xD; and my latest playthrough I went vanilla. I guess growing up, getting a job and a serious relationship simply made it redundant for me, that and all the hassle of making the mods work well without breaking. Feeling the age after remembering I joined 12 years ago :ermm:

[NightLuna]

In my opinion, when it comes to the preponderance of female oriented mods vs male oriented mods (in all capacities, from bodies to faces to presets to armors and clothing) , quite simply, because (afaik) most players are guys, and at a guess, are overwhelmingly guys without any, or sufficient realworld female companionship for whatever reason, be it age (too young or too old), economic circumstance, looks, health. social isolation, today's preponderance of 3rd wave "fauxmen" females, or whatever), Mod authors are, afaik, going to logically cater to their audience, as well as to their own predilections.

 

I can't participate in the actual poll because neither answer really suits me.

 

edited to add missing parenthesis, fwiw

Ill say this as a creator and as part of a modding community. We mostly make mods we enjoy or have wildy fantasies for, we dont really create mods for an audience other than ourselves and just publish what we make for others to enjoy if they want to. Other people like to blame some scapegoat, oh those guys just havent had real women or companionship or just some incel. That isnt true tbh most people i interact with are married, have children and still do what they like. i know im still younger and currently having economical reasons for not looking for a marriage partner and for somewhat still recovering from an ex. When i created some of the mods i was dating. it really depends too though. youd honestly be suprised at the amount of users that have relationships. Also one of my friends, she is ya more hornier than i am and sometimes even scares me what she creates for her own fantasies and her mods and sreenshots show it.

[anjenthedog]

Well, I'm not blaming anyone. Hope I didn't come across as doing so. I'm grateful for all the creations. I just figure (by observation) that Skyrim "mod production" is dominated by male fantasy, or maybe better stated as "subjective idealization of the female form", if that's more inclusive or more explanative... As to relationship status, fair Dos. In my case, my ex wife would have skinned me alive for playing this game with all the scantily clad women (cartoon or not), and tbh, I haven't dated many women who'd be ok with it either, but I'm pretty old. Age, social grouping, idk. We ain't all so blessed.

[ScrollSerrayt]

People often will bring up how mods are "built for men", which is sorta true, but let's not forget that lesbian women also play video games at a disproportionate rate relative to straight women. In gaming circles a surprisingly large proportion of "girl gamers", at least for this genre of game, are lesbians. But yeah, most modders are straight guys, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that when people are going to spend hours looking at some armor, they would also like to be attracted to the body inside that armor. That's why a lot of guys and lesbians play with female characters with female companions, eye candy. Modders do their work for free, meaning unless they are desperate for attention, there really is no incentive to make mods to "cater" to an audience. Almost every modder is catering to themselves. There's nothing wrong with that, it just means their work is very personal.

 

That said, I totally think there is an untapped demand for cool male armor and other male content. I, even as a straight guy, find the lack of male content extreme. I still want cool and even sexy guy armor when playing as a dude, I'm not going through every play-though as a bikini armor shield maiden. If we want this, I suppose we just gotta start contributing, this is the sort of situation where a problem is best solved with our own hands. And it should be said that I do think people underestimate the potential popularity of a really good male / unisex armor mod.

[anjenthedog]

FTR, "Cater" wasn't a word meant to convey either subservience or 'chattelry'... I meant it more like "favors", "engenders" , "pleases", "has his or her mods downloaded by large numbers of people" and so forth... "keens to" is another phrase loosely related to what I tried to encapsulate with "caters", although it apparently wasn't sufficient. And yes, women can like women too. that's in part why I followed up with "subjective idealization of the female form"

 

Yeah, I agree re: male armor/etc. I'm not one to spend hours tweaking my male breasts or hips, but stock armors are pretty...stock. For my male player, I just wear steel armor, maxed with Smithing and double enchanted, along with a fur shoulder piece, and that's about as "cool" as I can make him look. Most of the higher level armors look kinda silly to me.