Gender Roles Of Video Games : Implications For Gender Socialization And Aggressive Behavior

Kimmel looks at both sides of the argument that video games and other media influence violence in young men in real life, but focuses on the perception that violent video games influence violent young men. In my third informal writing assignment reflecting on that chapter, I stated “I can see the side where it does have an impact of young kids, and I see it in my younger cousins when they can recite the cutscenes in the games they play, and see it when they play fight and pretend they are their favorite game heroes”, concluding with “Today’s violent games weren’t made to teach children how to kill, they’re only made for entertainment” (Brinkman-Sull). Before I took this class, and even at the beginning of the semester, I was extremely defensive of the criticism on violence in gaming, but after reading more into it, I realized just how deep in the industry the problem is– highly sexist notions in a lot of popular games. Many of them portray women as objectified beings, purely used for sex appeal and to attract the larger male gamer population. The male characters are also idealised in a similar way– typically portrayed as muscular, brawny men, with basic levels of thinking and reasoning. These brawny men are typically focused on one thing– complete the mission in whatever means possible. This kind of violent thinking is widely reflected throughout many other typically male-dominated organizations, including the

Student Carmen Tieu, in her opinionated article, “Why Violent Video Games are good for Girls” expounds upon the idea that violent video games are good for girls. Tieu explains that violent video games boost confidence in women. She goes further on to say that it makes aware of the different socialization processes of men and women.

Given that association, this new study took a gander at whether exemplifying sexualized female symbols online changed ladies ' conduct. The Stanford scientists asked 86 ladies matured 18-40 to play utilizing either a sexualized symbol or a non-sexualized symbol (dressed provocatively or conservatively). At that point, specialists outlined some of those symbols to resemble the player encapsulating them. Those ladies who played utilizing sexualized symbols who seemed as though them were all the more tolerating of the assault myth, as indicated by the study. Subsequent to playing the diversion, ladies reacted to numerous inquiries with answers along a five-point scale (emphatically differ to firmly concur), including, "In the lion 's share or assaults, the casualty is indiscriminate or has a terrible notoriety." Those who played attractive symbols who looked like themselves will probably reply "concur" or "unequivocally concur" than those ladies who had non-hot symbols who did not seem as though them. Members were likewise requested that free compose their musings after the study. Those with sexualized symbols will probably self-generalize in their expositions after play. In spite of the fact that this is a little study and unquestionably not a conclusive response to the subject of how computer games influence female players, the outcomes do raise concerns. Upwards of 46% of gamers are ladies, and, as indicated by this examination, in a large portion of the most mainstream

The video game industry thrives on its consumers, and creators are always trying to please their targeted audience. Because of this, audiences for many games are established and categorized by gender. Game creators then do whatever it takes to please their intended audience. This can lead to gender stereotyping, and often results in the sexual objectification of women. Many games portray female characters as highly sexualized objects, most likely to attract the attention of their intended male consumers. In order to decrease the ways women are objectified through such video games, the gaming industry needs to stop perpetuating gender stereotypes.

Carrie Reinhard asserts that women do not feel comfortable playing as hypersexualized female protagonists in video games, because the video game industry provides "characters modeling a body they cannot achieve, more an object for the male gaze than female empowerment (Reinhard. 6)."Personally, seeing "the sunflower with the big breasts" did not encourage me to feel empowered. I felt weak and insecure because of the stereotypes of women that are illuminated within video games. Video games represent women as a typical damsel in distress, whereas men are viewed as the hero (Brenick et. al. 3). Although, providing female protagonists in video games were supposed to appeal to more women, it subsequently discouraged women from playing video games.

Throughout the world women are depicted to be oversexualized among forms of media such as video games and comic books. The idea of oversexualization towards female characters is that they have been often drawn and animated in hypersexual ways. Even going as far as viewing them as a sex object, their revealing body images are eye candy through the eyes of men. Hence women found in comic books and video games are frequently emphasized by their excessive physical appearances, objectification, portrayal, and character role.

In 2013, the video game market brought in over ninety-three billion dollars of revenue worldwide. With such a growing popularity, the gamer profile has become new and diverse. This growing popularity caught the attention of advocacy groups, concerned about the damaging effects violent games may have. Although this led to valuable studies about correlation between violent games and a player’s aggression, not many other game trends have been brought to light. Exposure to sexualized female avatars in video games shows signs of causing a decrease in women’s self-esteem and self-efficacy. While young men observing these women with skimpy armor wrapped around giant breasts, buttocks, and a tiny waist, establish that as their expectations for women’s bodies in the real world. Sexually explicit representation like this is setting an impossible body standard, and promoting degrading sexist feelings about women, holding back the

With customers paying about $20.77 billion dollars on video games, hardware, and accessories only in 2012, the video game industry has been converted to a mass medium commonly relished by a varied viewers. 58 per cent of Americans play video games and the typical game player is 30 years old and has been playing for over 13 years (Mibba creative writings, 2013) The demographics of video game culture have evolved following the 1980s and 90s, when video games were perceived as something of interest predominantly to young men. Women constitute about half of all game players as of the 2010s. This has subsidized to industry professionals and media increasingly paying attention to matters related to sexism in video gaming (Association, April 2014).

Games like “Grand Theft Auto” and “Call Of Duty” have major potential to damage the ways young males perceive women. Young males are in fact the target audience by the industry for any game that they create. In these kinds of games they have designed women that are dressed degradingly and with unrealistic bodies. They have females dressed like prostitutes, whores, and porn stars, along in these games they condone violence directly at these girls and make it seem like it’s okay. The gaming industry knows that it’s degrading towards women but refuses to change and or do anything about it because “it’s too much work” or “women don't play these games so why does it matter to them?”. What the gaming industry doesn’t realize is that it doesn’t only matter to females it also matters to some males as well! There was a study done by Rosalind Wiseman, Charlie Kuhn and Ashly Burch. They happened to ask over 1,400 middle and high school students across the U.S. They asked both boys and girls how they felt about gender representation in video games, along with what kind of games they thought girls played. The findings were very surprising, 47 percent of the boys surveyed believe that women were far too often treated as sex objects in video game. "If women are objectified like this, it defeats the entire purpose of fighting," said an eighth-grader Theo of Mortal Kombat to the researchers. "I would respect the [female] character more for having some dignity."” (Burks)

It also problematic for future generations because the negative impact of pictures like this can only further entrench negative ideas of women, especially in youth. Since children can idolize the characters they play in video games, the roles and messages played in the game can affect their perception of many things. This includes the way young boys treat women and how women see themselves. Video games are a powerful and prolific medium. Although society has continued to evolve and women are gaining more powerful positions and becoming more independent and equal to their male counterparts many popular forms of media especially video games can distort these relations between genders. Forcing both young men and women to assume that they must conform to either being the hero of the story like Mario or the objective to be saved princess peach rather than being there own fully fleshed out character with their own storyline. Video games can have a big impact on societies but in present day video game makers are making video games need to continue to make less stereotypical games so that no one is

When discussing the role of women in video games, it is important to establish what an acceptable female character is. An acceptable female character has her own motivations that are not dependent on a male character, is not overtly sexualized, and has a multi-dimensional personality.

On her YouTube channel, Anita Sarkeesian criticizes popular culture over how they choose to represent women and women’s issues in their content. Unexcused from this list is the massive amount of video games that have been coming out since the 1980’s. Specifically in a series of videos entitled “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” Sarkeesian identifies how different commonly used tropes, like the damsel in distress and the woman in the refrigerator negatively affect women in our society today. She argues these tropes objectify women and lead to problems in our perception of women in society. The tropes Sarkeesian identifies in her videos, specifically the damsel in distress and the women in the refrigerator, objectify women by reducing

Over time video games have drastically changed its contents and through the use of media it has become very popular among the people of all ages. The article, “An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior” by Tracy L. Dietz portrays the impact of video-games in gender roles in our society. Through the usage of samples in the experiment shows that the video games tend to have more male characters rather than female characters. In this article Dietz illustrates that the video games that are being played by today’s youth present an overwhelmingly traditional and negative portrayal of women and that the development of gender identities and expectations among youngsters may be affected by these portrayals. The article also goes to demonstrate that boys and girls rely upon expectations about both masculinity and femininity to interpret interaction and to develop expectations for themselves and others. The author argues that there exists a correlation between the portrayal of women and the use of violence in the video games, and I agree with his claim, because I have been raised in a culture, where female character’s role in the gaming community have been completely overshadowed by the dominant male figure.

The portrayal of men and women in video games, as in other media, is a subject of research in gender studies. This topics is discuss in terms of sexism in video gaming. Especially, women are underrepresented or use as objectification in mainstream games. Women in video games are generally, as a rule of thumb, killed, raped, abused or rescued by the male heroes. This is extremely sad to see because the role of women in society is changing compare to ten years ago. Women has been proven themselves to be stronger and tough in different fields such as sports, politics, education but the representation hasn’t change.

Many of us have played various games on our phones, tablets, computers, or any type of video game console. There have been discussions of video games having a negative effect on players. The article, A literature review of research on video games, perception, and identity, is describing how video game literature has withdrawn analyzing and focusing on violence and other effects of video game play. Also, the topic has developed into a debate in psychology since their violent content became politicized amongst congressional hearings in the 1990s. In addition, this review of research on video games has shown or advised that over a long period of time, increased exposure and frequent gameplay has a large effect on three crucial themes, which are attachment and empathy, identification, and gender roles (Falcon). With prior studies and past practical research, this literature review analyzes major topics and issues in video game research above and beyond matters concerning violent content (Falcon).