Stereotypes In Video Games

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.

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

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.

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.

Du Bois’s ideas about education and economics and how it related to race influenced the construction of our storyboard and why we chose to focus so much of the game on decisions regarding the education of the user. The other text that influenced our game the most was Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. She talked extensively about the necessity of education for women and how equal education would help lead to equality between the genders. In our research we found, for the most part, that women in America today are given very similar educational opportunities to men in the high school and undergraduate areas. However, the differences seem to come more so in the workplace, both in salary and in treatment. Our game highlights the differences in likelihood of being the victim of some form of sexual crime for men and women, and this was something that we connected to Wollstonecraft. She wrote about the supposed inevitability of rape when she allows “that bodily strength seems to give man a natural superiority over woman” (Wollstonecraft). This topic of rape and its effects was one that we wanted to emphasize more during the conceptual stages of our project, but it ended up being more difficult to incorporate into the

The journals rhetors are journalist with Masters in Science and Doctors of Philosophy University of Luxembourg. The purpose of this journal is to inform gamers or the public in general, that characters may conflict with an individual, which focuses on an audience of reporters, authors in the Gaming Corporation, or just professors. The setting of this journal is that playing violent video games has negative effects on emotions and behavior. In addition to the game content itself, however, identification with violent characters increases. The message is that

In modern day, there aren’t any slaves and Blacks receive the same treatment as everyone else. But hidden in plain sight, the stereotypes regarding to Blacks still linger and one of them includes video games. Leonard (2006) mention stereotypes based on the race and Blacks were listed “as are the violent and muscular Black athlete” (p. 85). Due to their structure and history, game developers viewed them as a perfect race for enemies within the game. Deskins (2013) gave an example from Devine’s research that each participant was primed with stereotypic words such as “hostile”, “gangster”, and “Black” (p. 2). Although game developers have no ill intent towards Blacks, it was simply because it’s “default” of the discourse in society. According

More statistical evidence is provided to further extend the claim of truth that women are mistreated both in video game magazines and real life; out of 408 articles, 2.9% were written by females, 7.8% had no gender identification, and 89% were written by men. This is left to the reader to imply whether workplace discrimination exists in this field. Maybe hiring managers are specifically employing men. Women could feel too inferior to try writing these articles due to mistreatment in the gaming community. The provided statistical evidence let the reader infer what the case

In most video games, you will see that most female characters, if there are any in the game, are animated to be big breasted voluptuous women. A content analysis of images of video game characters from top-selling American gaming magazines showed that female characters are more likely than male characters to be portrayed as sexualized at a ratio of 60:1 (Dill 2). Games such as Soul Caliber and Tomb Raider are known for their display of female characters. Their female characters are on the top 10 list of the most ridiculous female bodies in video games. Common stereotypes of women include that they are whiney, wimpy, and needy.

In the mini-series of three twenty-three to twenty-six minute episodes, Anita Sarkeesian explains in full, attentive detailing, the tropes embedded in video games since the very beginning of the Video Game era. The mini-series uses a systemic, big picture outlook to ultimately examine the plots and designs in video games to explain why women have always been objectified in video games. The most well-known way the female character is objectified is through a video game is by placing her in a Damsel in Distress position, woman in the refrigerator position, or any other position that creates a trope. In the mini-series description, Sarkeesian also states that even though critical analysis of the video games will be done, it is certainly probable

Through our advancement of society, technology itself has been a big contributor to the continuation of hegemonic masculinity way of thinking. One of the ways technology enforces this ideology is through themes presented in videogames. As stated by Nina Huntemann in her 2000 film, Game Over: Gender, Race, & Violence in Video Games, video games are often filled with violence and

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

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.

Sarkeesian started a video campaign in 2009, which delineates female representation in video games and the ‘sexism’ that has been redundantly repeated throughout history to today. Her famously known videos, are focusing on the concept of a ‘damsel in distress’ which refers to a person, predominantly female, to be in a situation of distress and must rely on a hero (a male) to save her from her troubles. A ‘damsel in distress’ is a plot motivator in a story, essentially the whole motive for the story’s existence. The on-going story motivator is not as innocent as game developers may want you to think, they simply portray these women as dainty, and dependent on male assistance. Simply, of course storylines and stories in general are a figment of imagination and pure fantasy, but history has shown that the repetitive portrayal of a specific idea, or a situation (that is exaggerated to enough extent), will soon appear ‘reenacted’ in societal terms. Sarkeesian fears of the amount of sexual violence and abuse that occurs to women each year and seems suspicious of the games that consist of violent actions towards women. Aside from Sarkeesian’s main points, she represents a number of other issues that correlate to female violence and abuse that is depicted in video games such as the objectification of