NAG abandons scantily-clad mascot for this year’s rAge

Just to get you up to speed, this is the scantily-clad mascot in question:

This year’s Roxy is definitely a stark departure from the Roxy’s of old.

‘Roxy’, as she’s called, has been the mascot for rAge for some time now. As a comparison, this is the commissioned Roxy poster for rAge 2012:

Does she seem different to you?

As has always been the case with these sorts of things, a relatively large group of people (primarily consisting of bloggers and columnists) got their collective, proverbial panties in a bunch and generated quite the uproar.

They were concerned that this newest Roxy was an inappropriate representative for the country’s largest gaming exhibition:

“The latest version of our rAge mascot, Roxy, caused a bit of a stir after we published updated pictures of her recently,” said Michael James, head of NAG.

As a result, online and magazine publication NAG, the hosts of the rAge Expo, have redacted, of sorts, the image by replacing it with this newer Roxy image – we like to think of it as censorship.

The new Roxy 2015 poster as commissioned by NAG and created by artist Caroline Vos.

Artist Caroline Vos, having created this newest Roxy, said that the brief she received required a “Roxy with a classic retro space pin-up feel.”

“When we commissioned the artwork this is more or less what we asked for: we need Roxy in space, wearing an outlandish futuristic outfit, fighting off some alien monster,” said James. NAG then asked that it be styled as though it were pinned to the nose of a B52 bomber, and it certainly looks it.

But the revealing, scantily-clad nature of the poster had apparently taken it a bit too far, hence its removal.

We of course realise that Roxy stands as a role model for women within the nerdy/geeky culture of South Africa, fictional or not. To that effect, and given recent issues regarding feminism and the representation of women in video games, it probably was a good idea to remove it.

What we want to know is why NAG signed off on it in the first place. They’re far from ignorant.

“rAge has always been a family-friendly show. We also should have taken into consideration all the current thinking on female characters in video games.”

On one hand, the artist was a woman and would not have given the rights of the image over to NAG if she was uncomfortable with it. It does not seem like she was obligated into making Roxy as revealing as she was.

On the other, any publicity is good publicity. And perhaps NAG predicted this outcome but signed off on it anyway, intending to change it after the controversy hit the fan, but not before some additional press.