Geeks Freak Over Fat Princess

A beloved princess is locked inside a dungeon.

Her knight in shining armor and his army are on their way to save her. How to keep her from escaping?
Why, stuff her full of cake so Her Majesty is so fat she can’t be carried across the moat, of course!

That’s the objective in Sony’s [SNE] PlayStation3 video game, Fat Princess.

Though it hasn’t been released yet, Fat Princess already has feminists drawing their swords over the way the ‘capture the flag’-style game depicts the fattening-up of a trapped woman. The blog FeministGamers.com railed against the game’s “objectification of women” and “fat-bashing” and other blogs like Shakespeare’s Sister and Feministe chimed in.

But Fat Princess isn’t the first game to irk those who are fed up with video games that depict women and minorities in ways they deem offensive. Leigh Alexander, associate news editor of the gamer blog, Kotaku (which also blogged about the game), says much of the “sensationalism” within the scrutiny is “unfair.”

While she agrees some of the controversies are legitimate, video games are rated by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, as “M” for “mature / 17-and-up” or “”E” for “everyone / 6-and-up.” The onus is on parents to monitor what their kids are using, and it’s up to vendors to only sell children age-appropriate games.

At first glance, Alexander says Fat Princess sounds “kind of funny and creative.” But she has yet to play the actual game.

Here’s a roundup of other video games which have set geeky tongues a-wagging and may – or may not – be as offensive as Fat Princess:

The Game: Resident Evil 5
Rating: Rating pending.
The Price: Not available until May 2000                
Why It’s Controversial: Resident Evil 5, set to release in May 2009, started drawing controversy over a year ago when a trailer of the game depicted the protagonist killing zombies. What was so controversial about that? The zombies were black. Some blogs, including Black Looks, which covers depictions of black people in culture, were upset at the implications. The company says they chose to set the game in Africa because it’s the “birthplace of humanity.”

The Game: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Rating: M for “mature”
The Price: $19.99 for PlayStation2 on Amazon
Why It's Controversial: The cop-killing and prostitution in Grand Theft Auto games make the series the Big Kahuna of outrage, despite the fact it presents “a world akin to the real one where prostitutes exist,” says Alexander. But the Vice City version angered many for its depiction of violence between Cubans and Haitians, which included trash-talking about each other’s cultures within the game. The mayor of North Miami Beach even tried to get the game banned from the local Blockbuster [BBI] and Wal-mart [WMT]!

The Game: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Rating: T for “teen”
The Price: $59.99 from Xbox.com
Why It’s Controversial: The depiction of women’s bodies in video games are always a hot topic, and the lithe and buxom star of the Lara Croft series is ground zero for that controversy. Newsweek called her “equal parts Pamela Anderson and Indiana Jones.” In a later game – Lara Croft: Legend – developers toned down Lara’s sexy look, although they claimed it was to make her “more athletic.” “It’s almost a can’t-win situation,” says Alexander. “We can’t have a beautiful woman because it’s unrealistic and we can’t have an ugly woman because it’s mean.”