Video Games : An Ideal Conduit For Feminist Discourse

Sadly, the gaming industry has been criticized for lacking complex characterization, especially when it comes to female characters. While this complaint is valid, and it cannot be denied that there is a surplus of overly sexualized one dimensional female characters in gaming, the industry has begun moving away from

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.

Video games have become a massive icon that has spanned decades, technology and even cultural boundaries. Whether you play on a computer, tablet, phone, or console: at some point in your life, video games have been a part of what you do. Strike up a conversation about games and you can make lasting friendships or bitter enemies. Even if they might not know the specific game, everyone knows what the genre is, and because of this, video games have taken their lasting place in our pop

Author A.B. Harris declares a call to action in his article “Average Gamers Please Step Forward” published in 2012 as he talks about the how gamers shouldn’t settle for how the Entertainment Software Association put the average gamer into a box, Harris (2017) declares that the average gamers are far more credible and intelligent than the perceived demographics suggest (pg.503). He starts to build a bond between himself and the reader by connecting himself with the audience and asserting himself as one of them who all want the same thing, to “change the mainstream” (Harris, 2012, p.506) and show non-gamers they are more than over-sexed male adolescents with a penchant for violence (Harris, 2012, p.504). Harris uses his personal values and experiences

This text is published by a media company called Mic. Their target audience is young people and they cover a wide variety of subjects such as News, Arts, and Technology (Mic /about). The author of this article is Sophie Kleeman, who, according to her profile on Mic.com, covers the “intersection of tech and culture” (Mic /profiles/152573/sophie-kleeman)

I decided to approach the topic of gendered spaces online by focusing on video game culture, the “gamer” identity, and the Gamergate controversy, using videos of Anita Sarkeesian, an online harassment victim, to support it.

As a point of comparison, let’s consider Broken Age, a game that has a split narrative between Vella, a young girl, and Shay, a young boy, both living in different sorts of dystopias. Unlike BioShock, I consider Broken Age to be a feminist dystopian video game because Vella is a main character, possesses meaningful subjectivity, and can save herself.

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.

All people of all colors, ages and gender are represented in a similar way within the games, or do anyone stands out in all this? Someone is under-represented? How important to be represented in the media?

"Gamer" is a term that means someone who plays games like computer or video games. But nowadays, most people prefer not to use this term because of the stereotypical identity and label of ‘gamer’ in the society. In the article “Do You Identify As A Gamer? Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Gamer Identity”, Adrienne Shaw is trying to deconstruct the popular stereotype of the ‘gamer’, and she find that the identity as a gamer intersects with many factors, like gender, race, and sexuality.

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

The way one presents oneself is usually an ample enough reason to be judged positively or negatively. This factor is usually amplified by the surrounding and setting set for the subject, and it usually determines whether the subject’s self-presentation is fitting or being completely inappropriate to his or her surroundings. In video games, the issue of women being misrepresented by her role as a sex object and over-sexualized aesthetic design had always been an unsolved floating problem. While this dilemma continue to exist as a negativity in the modern video games is often overlooked as a meaningless eye candy for the male gaze, sometimes the subject of sex and sexuality in video game exists for a reason much deeper than simply objectifying women for the sake of sales or male gaze. Although not always, sex and sexuality exists to add a certain of immersion of realism to the game as the subject is a natural part of our biology as human beings.

“None of it will come as a surprise to anyone who’s remotely familiar with video games. For decades, players have been rewarded with flesh, sex and innuendo for progress in games spanning the original “Metroid” to the most recent “Grand Theft Auto.”” (Beres) The stereotype “gamer” used to be a nerdy, white, young male, in fact that image has been changing over the past couple years. Females nowadays are starting to play video games more and more but the video game industry is putting out an image of females that is just unrealistic, their bodies and or looks, their personalities and actions. Young girls could be playing the games like “Grand Theft Auto” and begin to watch the female characters and start to think and or believe that she is less than perfect in everyone else 's eyes. Young boys who play these games like “Grand Theft Auto” or “Call of Duty”, the images of the female characters have major potential to destroy their (the male 's) personal views of females. While women are not the targeted audience of action-adventure and role-playing video games. The gaming industry should have more female characters that are more realistic to women and less sexualized because women aren 't objects to be owned and the female characters on video games not only destroy females view on themselves, but also young males view’s on women.

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.