Sexism In Video Games Essay

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.

Envision yourself entering a toy department and noticing numerous diverse aisles. In one aisle, you encounter toys packaged in complementary and color triads colors that include building sets (such as “LEGO”, “LEGO Super Heroes”, and “Angry Birds”) and a wide selection of action figures—Spider Man, Transformers, The Dark Knight, Power Rangers, etc. In the next aisle, adjacent to the aisle with complementary and color triads colors, you find toys packaged in shades of pink and purple. These toys range from “Hello Kitty” dolls to “Barbie Dream” house play sets. Inside a toy department, such as Toys R Us, it is extremely difficult to retrieve a toy that is not marketed explicitly or subtly by gender. If toys were marketed only according to

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 in gaming (gamergate): The Gamergate controversy began in August 2014 and concerns sexism in video game culture.

I started off the presentation by drawing from Royal’s (2008) article on Framing the Internet: A Comparison of Gendered Spaces. I explained how the Internet is not as equalizing as it seemed in it’s early days, as it in fact represents much of the same gender issues we see in the offline world. Royal’s article emphasizes this point, so I used it as a jumping off point for my case study. I think this was a useful way to begin discussion on the gendered spaces of online video games because it is important to understand and

This experiment assessed the role of videogames and hostility in young Queens College students. This experiment was based on whether video games make a person hostile towards his or her surroundings. Showing two different clips from different video games, which described the mood of young students, did it. The experiment was tested within a classroom in Queens College. The experiment was divided into two different conditions, condition one, which was hostile games, and condition two, which was non- hostile games. First, the students were shown the clip of this aggressive video game called, Call of Duty 3 for two minutes and were asked to imagine as if they were playing. Students were administered the State Hostility Questionnaire and instructed to fill out ratings before and after the experiment. Secondly, the students were shown the clip of a nonviolent video game called Pikmin and were asked to do the same as they did with the first video game. The goal of this experiment was to briefly find out if video games made a person hostile. Since, video games like Call of Duty 3 contains a lot of violent actions it does make students hostile compared to the non-violent games like

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.

It only takes a second to attach a strong feeling or idea to a character in a movie, advertisement, or video game. Many characterization used are based on the assumed stereotypes, and are usually one-dimensional characters. Typically, these characterizations usually come from inherited family values, education, and the media. While stereotypes existed long before mass media, the media machine certainly helped to accelerate the cultural growth of all kinds of stereotypes. It is beyond this paper to answer why magazines employ these gender stereotypes, instead this research is designed to analyze

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

Studies regarding gender roles in media show that the feminine essence tends to be depicted as inferior, with women often being marginalized, disempowered and humiliated through a status that is based on their youth and looks; whilst men tend to be portrayed as superior with higher and longer lasting careers

Video games in today’s society have become very popular. Every new game that comes out to be played and conquered by the average gamer has its own category. There are several other types of genres of games that people play but because of big hit titles and the new popular game systems like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, people become more interested in a game that is well known than a game they have never even heard of before. Every game has its own storyline and own way of how it unfolds and where the game ends according to game play. Some of the biggest reasons people sway to certain genres of games is because of the game titles released under them and the demand of people who want a good game under that category. The top three most

Playing video games does not cause violent behavior. Don’t get me wrong, some video games show horrific acts of violence. “A recent survey found that 92 percent of U.S. kids--ages 2 to 17--play video games, and their parents bought 225 million of them last year to the tune of $6.4 billion.” (Sider 79).What’s here to argue is that violent video games do not cause violence among children, but the blame for violence should be on the individual and people who should have taught the individual better. If kids are not able to see the difference between reality and fantasy, then they really can’t be blamed for committing acts they see in a game and then imitating, not fully understanding the consequences of doing it in the real world.

Sexism is categorized by extreme cases, but when in reality, both female and male parties execute sexism everyday even in the simplest forms. Though women tend to receive more grieve when it comes to sexist acts or sexist slurs made by men, the level of sexist disputes has decreases drastically with time. The play “Trifles” displays the major difference is the mindset of the split sexes. The setting presents a time when women were belittled and not taken seriously. Susan Glaspell’s play is evidence on the progress our society has made concerning sexism, never less the ever-existing conflict still takes its toll in our everyday life.