Why Women Should Not Be Sexualized And Objectified The Way They Are Video Games

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.

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

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

Shouldn’t this generation be required to play Pac-Man, Asteroids, Galaga, Centipede Pit Fall or Frogger before they get to play Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or Halo? The games these days have real life graphics and by some can be considered offensive and too graphic, having an (EC) early childhood to (AO) an adult only rating (Entertainment Software Rating Board). Games went from being a nice hobby to a young kid to the average gamer now being an average age of 34 years old. The popularity of game usage is detrimental to the American society, changing our nation to

Given that association, this new study took a gander at whether exemplifying sexualized female symbols online changed ladies ' conduct. The Stanford scientists asked 86 ladies matured 18-40 to play utilizing either a sexualized symbol or a non-sexualized symbol (dressed provocatively or conservatively). At that point, specialists outlined some of those symbols to resemble the player encapsulating them. Those ladies who played utilizing sexualized symbols who seemed as though them were all the more tolerating of the assault myth, as indicated by the study. Subsequent to playing the diversion, ladies reacted to numerous inquiries with answers along a five-point scale (emphatically differ to firmly concur), including, "In the lion 's share or assaults, the casualty is indiscriminate or has a terrible notoriety." Those who played attractive symbols who looked like themselves will probably reply "concur" or "unequivocally concur" than those ladies who had non-hot symbols who did not seem as though them. Members were likewise requested that free compose their musings after the study. Those with sexualized symbols will probably self-generalize in their expositions after play. In spite of the fact that this is a little study and unquestionably not a conclusive response to the subject of how computer games influence female players, the outcomes do raise concerns. Upwards of 46% of gamers are ladies, and, as indicated by this examination, in a large portion of the most mainstream

” (Fisher 552) The articles were chosen using an online sales/reviews rating chart providing only the best selling games. By only choosing the most popular games a higher sense of credibility becomes apparent because gender was not an influencing factor, any women or men appearing in the data are not influenced by selecting or ignoring certain video games. One piece of data from the chart is later proven to be critical in supporting Fisher’s claim that women in video games are portrayed as pinup girls or sexual objects: “Protagonist’s interactions with non-playable characters (NPCs) and whether those NPCs are male or female and portrayed positively or negatively.” (Fisher 553) Before explaining why this piece of data is important to his claim he switches to providing some more history, this time about the gaming world’s male-centric history or favor towards men in the video game

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.

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

Some video games teach children wrong values such as robbing, violence, adultery and vandalism to list a view that reward gamers for acting in these ways. Many video games are sexist there is usually no main female protagonist and woman are usually submissive and mistreated or are sexually

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 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.

With in the early ages of video gaming; males were predominantly targeted by game companies, which resulted in games that were designed specifically for heterosexual males. Games were intended for male audiences such as involving overly sexualized images of women, that delivered males a sense of ‘masculinity’; such as in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto, “GTA [Grand Theft Auto] main male characters are always depicted as hyper- masculine, dominant, and aggressive men. In contrast, the female characters are portrayed as sexual objects—usually prostitutes or pole-dancers—who are peripheral to the game narrative and whose sole purpose is to entertain the main male characters [and male gamer, playing the game]” (Gabbiadini, Riva, Andrighetto,

Advertisers display women as more of a sex symbol while the men are displayed normally. In the first essay, Kilbourne points out an epidemic that still occurs today when Kilbourne states, “Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products [...] meet our emotional needs” (489). This quote unfolds the truth on how advertising and media portray women as sex symbols. Both the media and advertising have women portrayed in a sexual way, which affect the image of women drastically. In advertising specifically, Solnit points out a problem that occurs in the gaming community when Solnit states, “Women in the online gaming community have been harassed, threatened, and driven out” (528). This quote shows how women in today's world cannot even speak out of a problem of a game design without getting death threats. In those games woman characters nowadays are simply stretched to the extremes of sexualizing the women characters. An example of a specific game that has women portrayed in an overly sexual way is in the Mortal Kombat series. In the game, the women are portrayed as either sex symbols while on the other hand the male characters would be completely normal or they are a mutant monster build. The women who try to speak about the displayed images of women in such video games in result from doing so results in the women receiving massive hate, which includes death threats. Within Colombo’s essay, it