Saturday, October 19, 2013

Direction of Females in Video Games

          My topic proposal will be about women in the video gamers community.  The early video gaming scene was dominated by males and stereotypes were formed, condemning females from joining the community.  Despite disapprovals from members in the video gamers community, the number of female gamers continue to increase.  By 2013, the percentage of all gamers that are female is 45%, nearly half of the entire population of the community.  It is evident, there are actions already taking place to contend against sexism in video games and it is imperative to understand the history and current stratagems used in video games should we want to degenderize video games.   
          The majority of lead character roles in the early history of video games were comprised by males, and perhaps due to the lack of identifiable similarities between the player and the protagonist, females tended to turn away from video games.  There was also the issue with the graphical capabilities of video games during the past; visuals were pixelated which made it difficult differentiating the gender of characters in the game.  As technology progressed, the gender of the characters became apparent by designing them to conform to the social constructs of what defines a male and female.  One of the current ruses used today in the gaming industry to cater towards female consumers is to implement female protagonists into video games.  Thus, allowing females to identify themselves with the character(s) in the games and compelling the male audience to subconsciously acknowledge the existence of females in video games.
 
          These are just some of the new information I have accrued with explicit details omitted:  The gap between male and female gamers was due to the targeted audience of game consoles in the past.  Ads for game consoles associated themselves for young boys only, rarely can you find a female holding a game console in their ads.  The prevalence of female gamers today is due to the convenience of computers.  During the 1980s to the 1990s, the number of computers sold was only in the seven digits, but now they have reached over eight digits and this doesn't even include the staggering number of mobile devices that has become mainstream in the recent years.  There are negative reactions from male gamers when another gamer identify herself as a female to the community.  The direction video games are heading with representing women and why it needs to be stopped.  Elaboration of the findings can be viewed in the links:

4 comments:

  1. I think this is a great topic, other than Lara Croft (who is super-sexualized) and Ellie from The Last of Us, there are no strong female characters in video games. And more recently, games like GTAV have gone to extreme lengths to belittle women.

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  2. There are games targeted at women, like http://www.christianpost.com/news/ellen-page-juno-actress-says-video-game-ripped-off-her-face-video-98753/ but I think even those aren't as universal as Call of Duty (which only has male characters). What I am basically saying is that a game aimed at women are portrayed sexually and games aimed at men are masculine with the few women (if any) are made into sex-symbols.

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  3. I'm doing a similar sort of thing, also about videogames but more about female players specifically. This is an enormous topic that needs to be addressed, and hopefully both of us are able to narrow it down to the point where it doesn't sprawl all over the place. You might find this useful, maybe not. Figured I'd mention it.

    http://www.reignofgaming.net/blogs/a-different-view/24508-why-there-are-no-female-lol-pros-how-to-change

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    1. And this post might have some useful images, but again its mostly about players rather than the game, so I dunno how useful it will be.

      http://www.buzzfeed.com/katieheaney/how-should-a-gamer-girl-be

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