Gender Stereotypes In The Video Game Industry

Media enforces the social-cultural standards, which women are required to follow in order to look and behave in a manner that society considers acceptable. Newspapers, commercials, posters, magazines, fliers, reality shows, and cartoons only name a few of our everyday interaction with the media (Scholar, C.2011). However, these standards presented by media send a false perception of women, thus portraying women in a negative and disrespectful manner. Society views woman as mentally, morally, and physically inferior to men, and media is only highlighting this idea (Scholar, C.2011). In fact, media represents women in a stereotypical form of beauty, they display women as sexual objects, and create the illusion that women are ignorant.

As video games become more and more popular, we will inevitably see an increase in amount of video games being produced. The growth in popularity of video games is facilitated by the creation of a website known as Twitch.com. This website allows gamers and content creators to stream themselves playing video games online and interact directly with a live audience via chat. This new platform makes gaming both more accessible and more acceptable. The social stigmas that accompany video games are diminishing; in fact there has been an increase in competitive electronic sports as well. Logically, the growing interest in video games encourages programmers to make more and more games. Melinda Burgess et al presents an interesting perspective about video games. She explores the prevalence of racial stereotypes and how their effects are detrimental to society as a whole. In Burgess’s essay, “Playing with Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of Racial Stereotypes in Video Games”, she provides fantastic commentary on how top selling video games show “overt racial stereotyping” (Lunsford et al 551) and negatively affect how we think. By providing statistics and data about the videogames that she is critiquing, she effectively shows that there is may be a correlation between video games and how we think and interact with the world around us.

The findings concluded that female representation in popular games of the time were strongly based on stereotype. Of the few games that contained women, a small fraction were leads while others were found to be standing behind males, as well as being depicted wearing stereotypically feminine colours, princess dresses, or very revealing clothing. Women were commonly portrayed as victims, “Damsels in distress” (Dietz 1998), or evil obstacles to protagonists. Violence and aggression in general and towards others were also noted in the research. A significant portion of this were classified as violence towards female characters. The research suggests that these implications of gender roles and violence could be detrimental towards girls and boys, as they may accept what they see

Miss Representation conveys that media is derogative to the most powerful women in the United States. People learn more from the media than any other source because it is the message and messenger. Americans devote about 10 hours and 39 minutes daily to consuming media (Howard). The media’s misrepresentation of women in movies, television shows, and advertisements negatively shapes politics, our national discourse, children’s inquisitive minds, and ultimately society. The danger behind these stereotyped images of women is that their effect is subconscious, meaning we slowly become accustomed to a sexist portrayal of women without even immediately realizing it. To cease our unrealistic, prejudiced expectations of women, a culture change is necessary.

According to several sources around 42% of the American population plays video games, and around 1.2 billion people worldwide play video games today. Gaming has become an increasingly more popular hobby since its creation. As such the medium has obviously attracted a multitude of different people and groups, all consisting of diverse backgrounds, body types, sexes, races, nationalities and the like. However, contrary to the numerous demographics video games have come to attract, it is very evident the vast majority of them do not seem to be marketed toward many of them via game characters, and their importance, if any, in a game. Video games show an overwhelming amount of white male characters, despite the many demographics they reach. Of the characters that are not white, or male, that are represented, are often represented poorly. For example, many black characters represented in video games are often characterized as vulgar, and violent. Women represented in games are often characterized as support characters, or objects of sexual desire. Considering forms of sexism, racism, and other such types of prejudices are still prominent in modern society, and these representations obviously do not help how people see these marginalized groups. Ultimately, these representations, or lack thereof, affect people in society in a number of ways, by perpetuating prejudice and harmful stereotypes.

Contemporary popular culture influences the general publics perception of gender and family in modern society, this gives the filmmakers and show runners and incredibly powerful and socially responsible position. Not only is there a pressure to produce good content, but in these changing times it is unequivocal that representation is on the forefront of their minds. Unfortunately to many people of color, women, and those who identify as non-binary, this responsibility is not met.

Movies can confine women in many ways, whether it is villainous psychotic role or representing as sex objects. Consider how “the impossibly busty body of Laura Croft, the female protagonist of Tomb Raider, can be viewed nude on certain websites. The notion behind this is that these harmful stereotyped representations can damage the overall image inside younger generations and change their perception of (Norris, 2004). Laura Croft is the result of the imagination of someone yet that doesn’t make her any less as an idol and is believed to be perfect in every sense. Young males consider her as someone with whom they want other girls to look the same. On the other hand, teenage females think it is very hard to achieve the similar figure and personality as of the protagonist. Unaware, both the genders are

Traditional views of gamers have been often related with the negative stereotypes as males who are lazy, nerd, geek, fat, socially awkward and time wasters. Even though these stereotypes have been improving with the growing population of eSports athletes and its recognition as a collegiate sport in many campuses, participants shared their thoughts on the stigmas of gaming that are still present in our society and how they respond to these stigmas. Jeffrey, 5th year, majoring in music, shared his story of the stigmas of gaming he heard from his father, They had Street Fighter finals on ESPN 2 this past summer. I was watching it with my dad who knows nothing about the game and competitive play then he’s watching and he is constantly interrupting saying like.. When the winner was announced, this guy is a person who plays video games all day and night so he is kind of odd and dumb and does not know it better.

Some people think that video games are harmless, but some researchers would disagree. Melinda Burgess et al. writes that women are gender stereotyped in video games today. By showing how women are treated in video games as sexual objects affects how male video gamers and society treats women. There are many ways video games use women to attract video gamers.

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.

Contrary to the stereotypes, most gamers are not a socially isolated. So many of today’s games that your kids play are multiplayer games that require talking and strategizing with other people. According to research by Xbox, “70% of players play their games with a friend, either cooperatively or competitively”. Meaning that not only are they talking to people but they are meeting new people because of the random lobby system that multiplayer games use. The system also put’s you in a “match lobby” Meaning you get put with players who are at or near the same skill level as

Video games have been a way to express the ideas and creativity of video game developers’ for year now. Recently they have taken a turn for the worst by incorporating racial, sexual and violent metaphors or scenarios. Two articles that talk about this important issues “Sex, violence and video games” by Mitch Krpata and “Not a Hater, Just Keepin' It Real: The Importance of Race- and Gender-Based Game Studies” by David J. Leonard. Leonard makes a crucial argument about the importance of balck, Hispanic and latino’s stereotypes in video games that are primarly played by white gamers. On the other hand, Krpata defends the critiques made about racism, violence and sex portrayed in video games by stanting that it is just fantasy. While both, Leonard

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.

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.

There has been a lot of research done on the influence media can have on society, in particular the degrading images of women that are often seen in media. Since the second wave of the women’s rights movements these images were the object of scrutiny and an easy example of how women were viewed. In modern society where women have made many strides towards equality why are there still instances in popular media were women are negatively depicted? Have women come as far as they think? The popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory negatively depicts the female characters by reverting to a binary view of gender, in which the female characters are lacking, they can be beautiful or smart however they cannot be both.