Sea Of Thieves Research Paper

Female Character Design Done Right

Though we make strong strides forward everyday, sexism is still a major problem in our society. It is reflected in our media; our tv shows, movies, advertisement, and video games. Video games especially can be quite questionable when it comes to their own advertisement and gameplay. Since video games were looked at mostly as a “boys only club,” advertising for them exploited revealing women to grab the attention on customers, an example of this being the Dead or Alive franchise (Official Site | TECMO KOEI America.), which features underdressed female characters who can be chosen as fighters. Thankfully, most major games companies have toned this down, realizing that they have a female audience as well. However,

Sea of Thieves, released March 2018 by Rare and Microsoft, is a perfect example of what games could be, in regards to sexist marketing and characters. This brand new game not only has great diversity and exaggeration amongst its’ characters, but it also includes women in an appealing way to both genders.

Sea of Thieves is exploring new gaming in more ways than one. The game itself relies heavily on socialization with other players, and it has nearly hit the nail on the head with people loving the game to bits, although others loath it for its relative lack of content. Because this game is so dependent on socialization, having diversity among characters has high priority. Upon loading into the game, the player is given a choice of which pirate character he or she wants to play, all of them being randomly generated. With expectations from social video games in the past such as

“ In fact, of the 5,000 or 6,000 pirates marauding the Caribbean Sea in the 18th century, just a handful were women.” (Were there really women pirates? ) Unfortunately, due to the society of the time, most women who chose to sail the seas hid this fact. It was much easier for them to appear male, like pirate Mary Read (Pirate Bio -- Mary Read.), rather than fight against sexist beliefs of the time. Although, there were exceptions such as Anne Bonny (Pirate Bio -- Anne Bonny. ), a crewmate of Mary Read, who dressed in men’s clothing, but never hid the fact that she was a woman. However, when it comes to gaming, while game developers might try their best to keep their game accurate to the era they are trying to recreate, it is also important to realize customer satisfaction is worth far more than historical accuracy that would exclude an entire gender, or half of all potential sales. And in the case of Sea of Thieves, though it is a pirate game, most likely taking inspiration from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, it has a very large sense of fantasy to it. The kraken, living skeletons and more are a part of the game, so historical accuracy is not the biggest concern; Rare is clearly more concerned with individual enjoyment. If accuracy of the time was what they wanted, the game would lost most all of its content