Women are playing more video games than ever before. Traditionally, video games were considered to be a predominantly male leisure activity1,2. However, with the introduction of new technologies, designs, platforms and distribution channels, video games have become more accessible and enjoyable for audiences beyond the traditional ‘teenage male’ demographic 1. This paper examines both the historic and current research on gender in gaming and the emerging trends within the gaming industry.
Recent studies show that woman, in addition to the general public are gaming in ever increasing numbers. A 2011 Entertainment Software Association (ESA) survey shows that currently 42% of all game players are female3. Although this rise strongly coincides with the growing popularity of mobile and social games, woman are also becoming increasingly active in the traditionally male dominated genres such as ‘Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games’ (MMORPG)4. Because of this increase, it is important to examine the historic and current research trends that address gender in gaming.
While there is a recent increase in the number of women playing video games, most of the traditional research in the field of gender in gaming examined only a limited number of issues and methods and fail to account for recent cultural developments. However, recent studies are ending this tendency, as they are starting to examine a variety of topics that are filling the voids left by older studies. Academic research has traditionally focused predominantly on the image of women in video games and their effects on the individuals playing these games. Another popular research topic focused on woman’s interests or lack thereof in video games. Although these studies do...
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...13. Kita Y. Applying Title IX to Grand Theft Auto: How Male Bias in Electronic Games Disenfranchises Girls and Women. Computer. 2009:1-23. Available at: http://web.njit.edu/~ymk4/_assets/kita-ptc603-term_paper.pdf. Accessed December 30, 2011.
14. Schröder A. We don’t want it changed, do we? - Gender and Sexuality in Role-Playing Games. Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2008;2(2):241–256. Available at: http://journals.sfu.ca/eludamos/index.php/eludamos/article/viewArticle/46. Accessed December 30, 2011.
15. Fullerton T, Morie J. A Game of One’s Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Digital Space. 2007: The 7th International Digital Arts. 2007. Available at: http://ict.usc.edu/files/publications/Morie_LudicaSpacePaper.pdf. Accessed December 30, 2011.
16. Whitson J, Dormann C. Social gaming for change: Facebook unleashed. First Monday. 2011;16(10):1-16.
Grand Theft Auto IV promotes hetronormative hierarchical distinctions between feminity and masculinity through its framing of female and male bodies, its presentation of females as objects of the male gaze and its encouragement of players to adopt and act out a hypermasculine role. It is of vital importance that we do not exclude race, gender or sexuality from discussions of videogames, because as Leonard (2006, pp. 84) asserts, doing so ‘contributes to problematic, if not faulty, understandings of video games and their significant role in contemporary social, political, economic, and cultural organization.’ Instead as players we must engage in discussion regarding videogames and, as Jenkins writes, we must ‘find a way to move beyond our existing categories and to once again invent new kinds of virtual play spaces’ (1999, pp.
Sports, Violence and Alcohol - Three things considered to be in line with masculinity, Along with alot of things considered to be primal instinct. In america the prevalence and Sports, Violence and Beer exceeds most others leading to the general conclusion that America’s men are overall muscle bound meatheads who enjoy nothing but their primal urges. Clearly this is false but still an assumption made by those who only know these three things. As technology advances a new element of entertainment emerges, containing violence, sports and entertainment, Its videogames. Video Games muster together Guns, Violence, Sex, Alcohol, Sports and more Violence. From this description its easy to see why this would be a male oriented activity. At the time girls were still expected to be relatively lady-like. Yet as the years pass by, girls begin to play the video games which guys have been playing for years this causes a disparity between male and female gamers in the upcoming years.
The world of gaming is expanding with endless possibilities of ways to play. Gaming has advanced greatly over the years by expanding over many different platforms. Smartphones, tablets, and next generation consoles are just a few of the many possibilities to play. This expansion has broadened the demographic of players and changed the way we play today. Although the demographic has widened and the games have become more advanced, there seems to be a reoccurring theme in gaming. White males make up the majority of video game protagonists, while minorities and women are stereotyped and degraded. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) recently released its 2013 sales, demographic and usage report for the computer and video game industry. “Numbers show that 58% of Americans play video games. Fifty-five percent of gamers are male while 45% of gamers are female.” These numbers should suggest a change in the look of gaming to support its wide range of gamers. Yet and still nothing is being done. I feel this is due to a lack of women and minorities in the video game development field. If more knowledge of the field were to be presented to the African American youth, I feel there would be more interest and an increase in the number of minority game developers.
“Since female video gamers are so rare, playing shooter games allows girls to be freed from feminine stereotypes and increases their confidence.” (83) The author illustrates how society thinks that women should not play video games by claiming that most girls are disgusted by violent first-person shooter games and tend to gravitate toward softer more ladylike activities. By playing these violent games, Tieu believes that girls will be able to step out of their socialized gender roles. She elaborates on how women can be made more confident in other aspects of life by playing violent video games, by giving the example that she has excelled in mathematics and science which are mostly dominated by males. “Another reason for girls to play FPS games is that it gives us a different way of bonding with
Video game playing has become an increasingly popular interest for many people. Every video game is unique in its own way and how it is shaped to the audience at hand. With all the video game playing, this gives rise to possible concerns as to how the media portrays such aspects in a game. One debate about video games that is an increasingly popular subject to talk about is how gender is portrayed in video games for both men and women. In many video games, women are shown as having a passive role, while men hold a more dominant role. In the video game Tomb Raider, Lara Croft is a character this is being talked about because she is the main character and is a female. Previous video games have created the media representation that females are
And after many researches, it been found that men are more addicted to video games, because most of games reflects their actions and behavior, and the type of games they play are usually contains violence and, action. And the male characters are always represented as a muscled and tough men. Unlike females they are less addicted to video games, because when they found most of games contains violence, and their naturality is usually calm and soft, they stayed away, so they turned to adventure, and puzzle games. But what made arguments is the representation of females, they were often shown as a sex object, and that because game designers tend to please male players, more than females because their percentage is higher. Games industries are willing to change the representation of each character from different gender in next the generation of games. but will it be more successful than the way genders are being represented now
Since the humble origins of the video gaming industry, individuals used it as a challenge of their abilities. In modern day, this industry is just a popular as any other media which exists in the mainstream world. Video games reflect society’s changing views of the normalities of which individuals and/or groups must abide to. This is exemplified in the evolving representation of the queer individuals within the virtual world. As the video game industry came into focus, so did the LGBT rights movement. This illustrates that society’s views on the LGBT community were reflected in the video games made, however, it was rare that such characters existed as protagonists until the twenty first century. Due to the extreme lack of asexual and non-binary
According to the data presented by the Entertainment Software Association, roughly 58% of Americans play video games. Worth over 20 billion dollars, the video game industry is one of the fastest growing businesses for entertainment outlets in America. With growing influence on the public, more attention is being brought to the exact content of these games and whether they have any lasting effects on individuals outside their virtual walls. More specifically, gender representation of males and female in video games and their relationship to real societal gender roles has been a topic that has instigated considerable research by social scientists. Though, female gamers make-up over 45% of the gamer population, they are often underrepresented and sexually or stereotypically depicted as characters in games. (The Entertainment Software Association) These stereotypes create extremes for “what is feminine” and “what is masculine”, that as a result, present more rigid gender roles for players and their characters. (Behm-Morawitz & Mastro, 2009) Contemporary gender representations of men and women in video games have damaging effects on men’s treatment and opinion of women, women’s self-efficacy, and female gamers’ position in the gaming public.
This journal article is entirely credible and written by two women who know what they’re talking about. This article discusses how video games form stereotypes about both genders and that they impact both gamers and non-gamers. Men are portrayed as aggressive and women are unsurprisingly portrayed as sex objects. A main issue with this is that video games are mostly played by the younger generation meaning these are the ideas being imbedded into the youth of the world. The...
Various studies have been conducted examining the role of gender representation in game design, game play and game experience, in which these studies commonly conclude that females are often excluded. Females make up forty-seven percent of gamers in the industry and although their presence is becoming more encouraged into the industries society, most games still continue to gender stereotype woman through the use of over-sexualising them reinforcing the gender imbalance in society. There are multitude of ways in which sexism in video games have seemed to mirror real-life sexism and the unrealistic, degrading portrayal of the female sex. This emergence of sexism is an ongoing issue in the gaming industry causing serious controversy over a period of years, with games or game series such Grand Theft Auto demonstrating how detrimental the problem is. Grand Theft Auto 5, abbreviated GTA 5, released in 2013 (in text) present woman in the games that have been previously released with virtually no role to the story nor are they needed in the game, they are merely ‘eye candy’ for the male players. With the females in the game either flirtatious, provocatively dressed or lovers of gang members. Much debate has raged about the degrading portrayal of woman in GTA 5 which implement sexism traits such as objectification, sexualisation, being under presented and suffering sexual violence.
Video game industry have been representing female character as sexually objectified or shown as a victim who is in desperate need of help through male protagonist, this portrayal has negative effect on the mind of our generation and the gender roles they identify with.
"In order to create an inclusive experience for women, it is imperative that game companies design and market games with female target audiences in mind." (Gonzalez, A., Gomez, E., Orozco, R., & Jacobs, S., 2014).
Social scientists have been examining the effect that video games have on behavior. From the introduction of video games in the 1980s, there have been numerous research studies to this effect (Andersen & Taylor, 2008). The issue has become even more significant in the modern context because these video games have become bloodier and more realistic than ever before. Even though boys play these games more than girls in America, the consumption of video games has generally been high. Carey (2013) indicates that 32% of these gamers are below the age of 18. Therefore, it would be crucial to evaluate the effects that these video games have on the behavior of such children.
Gaming has long been considered a male-dominated activity. There have been numerous scientific studies conducted to analyze the impact video games have on an individual and vice versa, however one of the most common discussions concerning the gaming community is sexism. With today’s growing audience and the popularity of smart phone gaming, it is a mystery as to why gaming has managed to keep its male-minded stereotypes. Most games reflect the sexist gender roles imposed upon gamers by society, however today’s response is a heated protest, some more dramatic than others. Most gamers are demanding more female protagonists, and developers are listening, but it’s a slow climb to equality in the world of pixels and fantasy. Let us discuss the surrounding influences of the video game community, some setbacks and remarkable breakthroughs in diversifying, and the ways gamers shape the games they play.
The video game market has shifted from being a predominantly male market to include the female population with games like The Sims, in which players build virtual worlds. Such games often result in online communities, where players build avatars and interact with others across the globe. My sister used to spend hours at the computer buildi...