Gender in Video Games
The video game industry is seen
as a male predominate industry and the portrayal of women in video games and
other media has been a topic of research of sexism in video gaming. Now women
in particular are extensively belittle as game characters in a large majority
of games. And in there interpretation often imply traditional gender roles,
objectification, sexual or a negative stereotypes. For example a damsel in
distress.
This has been going on from the
early years of gamming. when you had to go and save princess peach in Super mairo
and giving that bad stereotypes of sexism in TombRader. This adds up to a large
percentage of male’s gamers only playing games. But in recent studies done by “Entertainment
Software Association” only 52% of gamers are male and 48% of gamers are female
and 71% of gamers are over 18 years of age.
So what is going on in the
gamming industries are we progressing or are we regressing when the topic comes
up in women in video gamming?
Since the 1990s the percentage of
female as side characters or main characters in games has stood around the 15%
mark and since then very little has changed about that. Only Now we are seeing
big game titles now include women not to be seen as the damsel in distress but
independent strong fighters in games. Such as Lara Craft in Tomb Raider or
Ellie in the Last of Us. For the most part recent data found only that 4% of
the main characters in the top 25 selling games in 2013 where female.
So we are moving in the right
direction and we are now including women as decent and respectable characters
to play as in games. And Hopefully all video games will move in this course of
having a equivalent, sensible portrayal of male and female characters. Without
putting the emphasis on characterization, videogames will advance and the
socialization of gender rolls will act more importantly in video games on how
they are viewed and played. This will determine on how video games players view
the world.
By Christopher Kralevski
No comments:
Post a Comment