In almost all of the video games I play, especially role-playing games (rpg) and action adventure games, there are almost no fat people. Even in games where you can create your own character, there are very limited options. But, these fat bodies are still rather “fit.” They’re just big and beefy if they’re male or big and curvy if they’re female. While these bodies do deviate a little from idealized Western bodies, they are still acceptable. In other words, they are larger bodies that “normal” people could still find attractive. In addition, most games that have fat people in them, like The Sims and Saints Row IV, cast those characters, as ugly and/or comical. In all of these cases, fatness is not something to be desired.
One game that I absolutely love is Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I remember that when it came out, I was so excited by how in depth character customization is in the game. And you can even customize your Inquisitor’s (Inquisitor is the name of the player’s character) body a little bit, but not a whole lot. Below are all of the different body types available in the game, which are restricted by the Inquisitor’s race. Even if you make your character a little bit fatter, the rest of the characters will look like this (except with more clothes). I find this very problematic because the world that this game presents has no fat people in it, which suggests that an ideal world should have no fat people in it. While the Dragon Age universe is far from ideal (it is a dark rpg for a reason), its creators felt that fat people have no place in their game/ world, and that continues the idea that fatness is something to be eradicated, that everyone needs to be fit and healthy, even though people do not have to be skinny in order to be healthy.
The most common justification for why fat people are not included in video games is that the player character in most games is physically active, thus they wouldn’t be fat. This is completely untrue. Exercise does not guarantee weight loss; some people are just always going to be fatter than others. Perhaps the larger problem is that if a player character were advertised as fat, that character would be seen as unattractive, and ugly doesn’t sell. Perhaps that would change if fat bodies were accepted culturally, but how does acceptance happen without representation?
Unruly Bodies 
I can definitely relate to this! Just not exactly in regards to video games. I hate the misconceptions in regards to fat people and health. Just because I’m “overweight”, it does not automatically mean I am unhealthy. Movements to stop fat and body shaming can only get so far when platforms like video games and other media are still shaming.
Wow, I really enjoyed this reading this post, and I can definitely relate to it. “The most common justification for why fat people are not included in video games is that the player character in most games is physically active, thus they wouldn’t be fat”, that is beyond terrible and unfair. I have played a lot of video games and I can’t remember one that had a fat person as the lead character. I feel like this is because society has made it seem like being fat is a sin/crime and it would be unhealthy to praise/allow it, by having them shine in these video games.
It is really funny to watch developers try to jump through hoops to explain why their characters fight one or two body types. Even this idea of the attractiveness of the model doesn’t really make sense to me for build-a-character games because you often end up constructing multiple characters and personalities for them so it actually becomes constricting to only give them so many body types. Basically until they get this figured out, I’m going to stick to my tabletop and indie games.
I think lack of representation of fat bodies and certain body shapes often gets overlooked and dismissed as being “for the sake of accuracy” when in actuality physical capacities people possess vary greatly across body types and sizes. In addition, game developers using the excuse of accuracy about physical prowess makes another argument about how bodies should be. Games usual position themselves to make the argument that bodies should fit a certain standard of size, shape, western beauty, and physical capability and when a character doesn’t fit the standard one there is too often a misconception that the other things follow suit. The game industry should put in efforts to represent and normalize a large myriad of marginalized bodies fat, disabled, different combinations of strengths and weaknesses, bodies that don’t just adhere to western beauty standards, etc. In addition it is important to give all of these varying characters with marginalized bodies wholistic personalities, depth, and importance to the game, at least to the extent that more hegemonic characters also have in the game. Perhaps there should be an well funded and wholistic assessment employed for representation of fat bodies in media like there are assessments for womens’ representation in media like the Bechdel test and queer representation in media like the Vito Russo test so that we can gain a better quantitative representation of how bad representation is (or lack thereof) for people who don’t understand or aren’t aware of how harmful these representations can be.