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:
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.
ReplyDeleteThere 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.
ReplyDeleteI'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.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reignofgaming.net/blogs/a-different-view/24508-why-there-are-no-female-lol-pros-how-to-change
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.
Deletehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/katieheaney/how-should-a-gamer-girl-be