It’s a common observation that women not only play fewer digital games than men but also spend less time playing games in general. But why don’t women play more digital games? Maybe it’s because character representation is digital games are geared toward male players. This article focuses on the stereotypical portrayal of female characters in digital games, and how digital games are visually geared predominantly toward males. This may be because of wider cultural factors, such as societies different perceptions of the appropriateness of females versus males playing digital games.
However, because of the stereotypical representation of females in digital gaming, and also the advertisement of digital gaming focusing on the male market, it could be concluded that these factors play a major role in the gender differences in digital gaming.
International research has consistently found that compared to females, males play digital games more frequently. According to the article Female Gamers: A Thematic Analysis of Their Gaming Experience, researchers have argued that the gender differences reported in gaming may be related to socialization factors, video games typically being designed by males for other males, and that a study argued that fewer females were playing video games due to recognized social norms of gaming being a gender-specific activity. The idea of digital gaming being a gender-specific activity is promoted by the representation of females in digital games. In an article titled Girls as Serious Gamers, they note that research about game content reveals that almost all games portray gender in a stereotypical way (p.237). The article also notes that “although the representation of powerful women in recent games should be applauded, the overall portrayal of them has not improved significantly because the emphasis on their physical attributes and female sexuality remains” (p.237). It’s frustrating going into a game but then feeling as though you are crossing into a man’s territory, where you can’t take the female characters seriously because of their ridiculously hypersexualized image. This could ruin a game for a female player and thus be a reason why digital gaming is male dominated. One of the reasons individuals enjoys digital gaming is that they are able to identify personally and physically with the characters they are playing, but “dominant game content only promotes masculinity, providing a one-sided technology of gender” (p.238), thus excluding females.
But it’s not just the stereotypical portrayal of female characters within games that gear the digital gaming world toward men, it’s also in the advertisement of gaming. According to an article titled Women Just Want to Have Fun – A Study of Adult Female Players of Digital Games, representation in the media, in console design and in games are strongly masculine. In the article gender and Racial Stereotypes in Popular Video games, they state that “In total, there were 26 human characters on the covers of the 19 games; 22 (84.6%) were males while only four (15.4%) were females. The only four female characters appearing on the game covers were all unrealistically thin, and half of them wearing partially revealing attire such as bathing suits” (p.928). For these reasons, it’s not difficult to see why many women may not play digital games, as they are not sold to them, and are simply advertised as a male product.
The example discussed above shows that the representation, or rather lack of representation, of females in digital games may radically change women’s interpretation of digital gaming. Games don't have to be completely redone in a feminist way, they just simply need to represent the average female in a more respectful way and take females into consideration for their advertisement. If females were able to play a digital game that didn’t include stereotypical characters, and that wasn’t forcefully advertising toward males only, this might lead to a proper appreciation of the content and make digital gaming appeal more to females in general.
Citations
Jansz, J., & Vosmeer, M. (2009). Girls as serious gamers. Serious games: Mechanisms and effects, 236.
McLean, L., & Griffiths, M. D. (2013). Female Gamers: A Thematic Analysis of Their Gaming Experience. International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL), 3(3), 54-71. doi:10.4018/ijgbl.2013070105
Kerr, A. (2003). Girls/Women Just Want to Have Fun - A Study of Adult Female Players of Digital Games. School of Communications, Dublin City University.
Mou, Y., & Peng, W. (n.d.). Gender and Racial Stereotypes in Popular Video Games. Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education, 922-937.
It's interesting to me how controversial this topic tends to be when the divide in representation of women and men is acknowledged. Because much of video gaming is male dominated, people often react defensively due to the perceived threat to the content of games being altered. Although one element of female representation in video games is hyper-sexualization, there are other problematic issues such as violence toward women that often occurs as a backdrop to the larger climate of the video game. Grand Theft Auto proves to be a consistent example of violence, sexualization, and objectification of women. With how things have progressed in modern video games, I remember having the thought a few years back that it would only be a matter of time before a video game featured sexual game play. This has proven to be the case with the release of Grand Theft Auto V, where the player can have sex with a prostitute from a first person viewpoint (Source 1). Although not all video games are like this, people still get angry at the thought of anyone threatening their media content. It is noteworthy, I believe, to recognize video games that are fulfilling and exciting that do not include many elements of gender, degrade gender, or take away from any potential the game may have otherwise had. One that immediately comes to mind is Ori and the Blind Forest (Source 2) which I would highly recommend. Overall, I think this post makes good points about the need for realistic representations of women. If developers are reluctant to put these in games for some reason, at least offer the opportunity to customize characters to reflect gender, sex, race, and clothing choices.
ReplyDeleteSource 1: http://www.businessinsider.com/grand-theft-auto-features-first-person-sex-with-prostitutes-2014-11?r=UK&IR=T
Source 2: http://www.oriblindforest.com/
It's also interesting how quickly numbers change. The data used here for the number of women that make up the gaming audience is out of date. Men no longer outnumber women.
ReplyDelete