First off, I confess that I don't frequent many gaming forums. Only two or three with an regularity and this is one of them so my perspective is somewhat limited thought I have several friends and acquaintances in the gaming community, am on a few mailing lists, etc.  

From I've seen the subject of RPG art as "cheesecake" and demeaning to women is treated as massive issue on one forum and barely seems to come up or much of a stir on others or in the general community. But on one forum there's a thread about it seemingly every couple of weeks and they almost always blow up into huge debates/flame wars with emotion running high. What is the status of the matter? Is it really so prevalent and disputed?

I would say that it depends partly on what artistic genre you're looking at.

Sword and sorcery art can occasionally be quite cheesecakey but then again sword and sorcery has often been a very hormonally charged genre and it's possible to do that sort of thing in a more or less balanced way. (Basically, if you give both men and women similar opportunities to be rough, muscular barbarians hacking down their enemies, or soft overprivileged sorts taken prisoner by the bad guy and/or besotted with the hero/ine, you're most of the way there.)

Comic book art, and RPG art mimicing comic book art, can often be really quite bad. (See the whole "Escher Girls" thing - men are depicted in more or less physiologically sensible fighting poses, women are contorted in this weird twisted-around way so you can scope out their butt and boobs at the same time).

Hard SF RPGs and other very "realistic" sorts seem correspondingly less likely to sex up the artwork. On the other hand they also have a bad habit of forgetting to include women in their universes at all.

Some grognards are deathly afraid that they'll be thought of as fapping to cheesecake art.  So they fap to guys in full armor murdering monsters instead.

Art is art and people like to spend a great deal of time attaching everything from political ideology to psychological profiles to an individual's preferences in it.  

Basically its just another topic to bicker over.

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with sexualized artwork if that's the aesthetic you want.

I think it only becomes problematic when that's the ONLY aesthetic available (ie. super hero comics).

I think everyone benefits from a diversity of styles.

Said forum is the social justice forum, so take that for what it's worth.  That's not to say that sexism isn't an issue in modern fantasy/comic art, just that that particular forum seems to take these issues and blow them up as the most important issue facing our generation.

In my opinion, the art should portray the atmosphere of the type of fiction you're going for.  If you're doing S&S, then there's no issue with cheesecake.  If you're designing a game to appeal to a modern market, then there's no reason for cheesecake or sexism.

Welcome back, single issue poster! Fortunately, while it is true that many suffer under the iron heel of the so-called "political correctness", you will also find that porn nowadays is both plentiful and very affordable. Those "bikini witches" will bare way more than in the glory days of Clyde Caldwell and Larry Elmore, if you know what I mean! :hatsoff:

Quote from: Melan;620438Welcome back, single issue poster! Fortunately, while it is true that many suffer under the iron heel of the so-called "political correctness", you will also find that porn nowadays is both plentiful and very affordable. Those "bikini witches" will bare way more than in the glory days of Clyde Caldwell and Larry Elmore, if you know what I mean! :hatsoff:

haha, well said.

Quote from: Melan;620438Welcome back, single issue poster!

Do you mean me?

I'm cool with cheesecake, and beefcake, and cupcake, and death by chocolate decadence cake in my RPGs' art. All the while I'm partial to pie myself. I think the-forum-who-has-not-been-named doth protest too much, out of boredom; from my time there I really doubt they do as much gaming as they declare.

There are groups of people, the same kind that have existed since the beginning of censorship, that believe that everything bad people do to other people can be blamed on outside influences, be it games, pop music, comic books, RPGs, etc. One such group believes that misogyny, rape and violence against women is caused by art in RPGs that portray women as "sexual objects".

This is not a view I share, nor is it substantiated by any study done on the matter, and even if there were some influence of behaviour from media I can't concieve of it coming from an obscure hobby, but some people need their special causes for online slacktivism to make them feel good about themselves.

There is good art and crap art. The major difference between them is not how much of things that are hanging out.
I want my game art to be inspiring, cool and evoking. I don't mind crude art, as long as the art conveys some part of the game. The classical cheese/beefcake often fails here.
If designers find themselves incapable of illustrating their games with half-decent artwork, I'd rather they'd replace it with some good tables.

One thing that actually annoys me more than crappy cheesecake, is anime-style artwork. Anime-style artwork in RPG's must burn in hell! Forever!

I can't have cheesecake because it contains gluten.

Anyway, there has been analysis of the depiction of women in gaming:

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=3501

And petitions to WotC:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/522/618/587/dd-should-be-for-everyone-not-just-white-men/

Make of it what you will. I signed the petition, because I agree.

Quote from: TristramEvans;620462There are groups of people, the same kind that have existed since the beginning of censorship, that believe that everything bad people do to other people can be blamed on outside influences, be it games, pop music, comic books, RPGs, etc. One such group believes that misogyny, rape and violence against women is caused by art in RPGs that portray women as "sexual objects".

This is not a view I share, nor is it substantiated by any study done on the matter, and even if there were some influence of behaviour from media I can't concieve of it coming from an obscure hobby, but some people need their special causes for online slacktivism to make them feel good about themselves.

There is an interesting discussion to be had about how people react to different assertions about media and its effect on people.

FREX notice the different reactions to "Sexist media creates Sexism" and "Violent media creates violence".

EDIT: this is of course seperate from the discussion about how welcoming and inclusive artwork is/isn't. Which I think is also an interesting discussion if fairly poisoned at this point.

I think that the people paying so much attention to the artwork in the game, aren't bothering to play the game and are thus missing the point of the book in their hands.

The-forum-who-has-not-been-named pays so much attention to the topic of cheesecake and beefcake in tabletop RPGs because they don't get enough of either sex or gaming, obviously.