Sexism in the Video Game Industry

A more in-depth study may look at video games from a Marxist point of view, characterizing the games as a modern day “opiate of the masses” with multi-billion dollar corporations publishing the games to keep the proletariat occupied and oblivious to their plights. A feminist may cite the standard role of female video game characters as being the “damsel in distress” and even strong female characters usually being relegated to sex symbol status.

Playing video games has become a norm in our society, and while games have enjoyed a nice period of prosperity, it has not come without its fair share of controversy and question. Video game addiction, stereotyping, and portrayal of violence are all problems that researchers associate with video games. Video games are also blamed on ruining people’s social lives, decreasing cognition skills, and even increasing aggressive behavior. The controversial Grand Theft Auto deserves a special mention for outlining all these problems in one video game series for our convenience! GTA covers gender stereotyping, violence, and overall graphic content thanks to its portrayal of prostitutes, murder, and crime; it goes without saying that GTA has been bashed by politicians and the media because of its

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

Imagine this. You 're in the middle of a really intense, stressful, and energetic game where it 's you against four other people. You are all alone and struggling to survive and as you 're getting shot at all you hear is some ignorant teenage boy from the other team say “you won 't win... get back into the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” Now I know you might be wondering where this is heading, but this is one of the few examples that women, when playing video games, have to deal with. What many do not realize, is how sexist many can be and how rude or hurtful the things they say can be. They also do not realize that many of these problems come from teenage boys who are not allowing any female to have a chance to show how good they could potentially be or how beneficial they could be to the team or game. Sexism is a big problem in the gaming community that needs to be changed. There have been many problems involving both men and women and it 's all because of how sexist games can be or just based on how sexist people are behind their anonymous alias. On one side of the debate, many, including those who cause the sexism, say these things are said and done because they believe it will increase sales and it will get more attention to their company or game, they believe that these type of games are what gamers want or what they believe is best for their fans, and they believe that these sexist comments are just jokes and messing around. Although some could believe these things

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.

Sexism is everywhere, even in online communities for video games. League of Legends, a fast paced real time strategy game published by Riot Games, upholds the title of “one

Video games are created from a male perspective that is exaggerating female’s sexual or feminine traits (Near, 2013). Part of the problem is the lack of diversity in the gaming industry. Most game developers are men, which result in less sexism on purpose, and more of a diversity problem among video game creators (Ferguson, 2015). If there were more females in the video game industry, there would be more realistic female avatars in video games. Royse et al. (2007) argued that the gaming industry has begun to make games for females like Dance Dance Revolution and Eyetoy but that females are still wrongly thought of as having one perspective or experience. Since the majority of video game writers are males, they create video games that interest them and their target audience. Near (2013) found that predominantly male audiences identify better with a male avatar than a female one. Thus males write a stereotypical script in which a woman is scantily clad and needs to be saved which brings them revenue and further undermines a women’s self

sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, but it does affect everybody, on the basis of sex

Women are sexually objectified through video games in several ways. Most of the time women are underrepresented in the gaming world, and when they are, they are represented in a very disrespectful manner. When female characters aren’t damsels in distress like Princess Peach from the Mario series, they’re battling for their

When you think of the average gamer who comes to mind? On television you probably see some over-weight and unemployed guy who is living in the basement of his parents’ house. The visual discourse in this is that only males are gaming “nerds” and that there is no place in the field for women. The group called The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC) try to change that narrative with a contest of their own allowing women to create their own ideas for games. Some disturbing contradictions came out of their mission, and it was criticized by game developer Zoë Quinn.

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.

Gender disparity in video games is a topic that both scholars and major gaming icons have discussed before. However, the topic recently resurfaced with the upsurging population of female gamers. The integration of females was a spectacle that caused a massive culture shock. Many members of the gaming community were unsure how to handle the change and took to discriminating females. While discrimination may seem unimportant, many scholars and icons believe it is a prominent factor of gender disparity: an environment which typically favors males, a hostile or “toxic” atmosphere, and repeated stereotypes all manifest certain behaviors of both genders that can cause a disparity to grow. Although some sources claim gender disparity is evident in gaming as a whole, others insist the novelty of female discrimination in video games is less prominent due to a more leveled percentage of male-to-females in gaming. However, both agreed that the competitive gaming community is a different story. Time and time again the competitive gaming community was mentioned for its exclusion of women due to biased and misogynistic members who sexualize and degrade females. These members believe women are inferiors that encroach on their territory with unskilled and seductive natures. Therefore, for the females in the gaming community, their actions will shape the future of women in the competitive gaming community. The change in female treatment is detrimental to gender disparity. Not only because

In a study by the Entertainment Software Association in 2014, 48% of all people who play video games in America are women, and another study by the Internet Advertising Bureau in February of 2015 stated that that number had jumped to 52%. That’s more than half of the population. So why is it that less than a quarter of all games feature a female protagonist? And in the event that the protagonist is female, most of the time they are inappropriately dressed to catch the gazes of males rather than be functional in the environment of the game. A good example of this is armor in medieval games. The males in the game normally have full armor that covers all the vital points, while female armor is more of a bikini made out of iron. And if they aren’t the protagonist, most of the time they are simply there for eye candy, serving no purpose other than

As long as anyone can recall there has been a significant underrepresentation of women in video games. Roles of women in video game has been unrecognized, unaccepted and unappreciated. In the most games like Call of Duty, Halo women are use as target of violence or object that men characters wins after winning a battle. In these kind of video games, women are victim or overly sexualized of the women body. So, the question anyone might ask is, is this sexism or are women used as object in these kind of roles? Answer is yes.

Since the first video games were developed in the 1950 – the gaming industry haven’t looked back since. Throughout the century video games has gone through a huge development where the entire planet spend more than 3 billion hours a week playing video games. In the speech “Online Harassment and Cyber Mobs” Anita Sarkeesian, who is a female gamer, talks about the stereotypes of gaming. The type of people who don’t think women should be a part of the gamer world. A world, which is dominated by men and where online harassment of the other gender is something we see everyday. This is the stereotype Sarkeesian talks about and this is the stereotype she tries to get rid of.