Saturday, December 7, 2013

Females and Video Games

    My final project will be about the direction of females and video games and possible solutions to change it.  The first part will be a brief history of how and why females are represented in video games in the past and present.  One of the reasons why there were a lack of female gamers is because advertisements for early game consoles targeted young boys only.  The second reason is because it was difficult for females to identify themselves with male-dominated lead roles in video games.

    The next part shows the increase in female gamers in present time with speculation that the cause is due to the large influx of computers over the years.  With an increase of computers available to modern society, video games are easily accessible to consumers regardless of gender.  The continual increase in female gamers also signify some strategies are employed by game companies in attempt to break the gender barriers established in the past.

   One of them being the implementation of female protagonists and the other being the video stream of female gamers.  However, these solutions are not without defiance; female leads are represented the same as with females in mainstream media and female streamers are humiliated and sexually harassed.

   The last method offered is changing the persons of the game development staff, particularly being female.  By offering a different gender to the development team also offers a different perspective on how the game is presented.  Although a possible solution, the absence of females in the software engineering field inhibits this process from following through.

   It is vital to transform the current video game community now while it is still young and growing before it reaches a state which it becomes genderized and an entertainment geared towards males only.

http://yourrandomblackdude.tumblr.com/

No comments:

Post a Comment