Women in Videogames

After saying all of that I would like to conclude by saying that I am not condemning videogames or the people who play them because despite all of their shortcomings they are a very interesting form of entertainment. I would also like to acknowledge that there are some, albeit few, games that seem to have a good sense of how to represent women in a way that does them justice without being oppressive or misogynistic. Granted there are some debates about some characters’ outfits, Skyrim by Bethesda is one game with an overall good sense of gender equality with the option to choose either a male or female character, in addition to different races and body types for characters with many other customizable features of their personality and lifestyle that allows them to be able to relate more closely to the character they have created, including equal marriage rights without discrimination against race or gender of either partner, which is surprising since the game has a very medieval setting and when it was released in 2011 there were only five states in the country that allowed for same-sex marriage. While I do believe Skyrim is a good example of a game displaying gender equality, there are many more games, as I have previously discussed, that have no sense of gender equality. Drawing from Audre Lorde’s essay The Uses of Anger and her statement, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own,” I feel that the world of videogames cannot be truly representative of our world until there are fair representations of people of different genders, races, sexuality and ability. Recognizing that this issue is not the most pressing gender-related issue, this is a pretty significant issue in the sphere of entertainment because women should not feel excluded from this amazing and ever-expanding form of art and entertainment.

In the documentary The Mask You Live In the effects of videogames on young men is discussed. They comment on the excessive amount of violence within the types of videogames played by young men and how that violence sometimes carries over into their behavior later in life. Based on this study, it can be assumed that games portraying violence against women could lead men to commit acts of violence against women. One game series, whose clips are shown in the documentary, well-known for its hyper-aggressive and misogynistic game play is the Grand Theft Auto games. In a review of Grand Theft Auto V, Tom Hoggins, a videogame editor observed that, “women in the game are either bit-part players or set dressing: strippers to throw money at, prostitutes to pick up,” and he believes that despite that awful reality, “the great tragedy of GTAV is that too much of its audience is comfortable with it” (Hoggins). Hoggins seems to carry similar feelings of outrage as the speakers in The Mask You Live In in regards to how comfortable male videogame players are with graphic depictions of violence they witness in their games. Although many aspects of this game are meant to be over-exaggerations with a satirical spin of our society, it is obviously unnecessary to include mini-games that include getting lap dances and hiring then assaulting prostitutes. Even though those parts of the game are meant as a joke, it is likely that players, especially young men, will begin to believe that those behaviors will be expected of them to prove that they are as masculine as the world wants them to be.

The Mask You Live In. Dir. Jennifer Newsom. Sundance, 2015. Film.

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has been called out in recent years for their lack of female characters After being criticized about the lack of female characters, a one programmer, Alex Amancio, claimed that creating women would significantly increase the amount of work and time to create the game; however, since these claims programmers from other companies have actually expressed how simple it would be to program female characters (Mulkerin). The use of disprovable excuses to provide reason for not including women in games emphasizes that programmers know that they should be including female characters and that they just do not think it is important to have women included in games. Another company facing questions was Nintendo after the trailer for "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" was released. This was due to observations of their character Link who displayed a more androgynous appearance which gave fans hope that there would be a female version of Link that they could play as. Nintendo denied this, claiming that making Link female would upset the gender balance between the three main characters, even though with two males and one female the game is not actually balanced equally (Mulkerin). This restriction of the main playable character’s gender implies that Nintendo believes that males are easier for people of any gender to relate to. While a character’s gender may not be very important to some people, many others feel that it is essential to have a character that is similar to them in aspects like gender and race.

Even though her creation seemed risky in 1996, Lara Croft has become the most iconic female videogame protagonist in the world over the last twenty years. The reasons for her popularity, along with her infamy, differ greatly along gender lines. One of the top reasons for her popularity with men is her hypersexualized physique and attire, but also the fact that she is a extremely tough and athletic makes her favorable with male audiences. Many girls and women find her inspirational because of her independence, intelligence, and adventurous attitude (Knight 211). Her strength of character opposes many of the stereotypical roles that women are forced into, which is the main feature of her personality that many women find so respectable. Despite her popularity with some women, many others feel that she is an overly sexual and dangerously aggressive example of a female character (Inness 31). Her extremely sexual and unrealistic appearance is clearly quite harmful. There are even ways to modify her character to make her go on her adventures completely nude, even though her regular clothes are already tight and revealing. The ability for a player to make the character naked perpetuates the idea that women exist merely for men and their desires, which further encourages and supports the oppression of women by men. Lara Croft is an interesting case of a female videogame character, however she is also an extremely unusual instance of the virtual female since she is one of the few female protagonists in a series of videogames.

Inness, Sherrie A. Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print.

For those who spend much of their time playing videogames that display unrealistic representations of women may begin to assume that non-virtual women should look and act like the virtual women in those games. Also, women who play those games may develop a negative self image regarding certain aspects of their lives, especially their physical appearance. In 2009 two communication specialists tested the psychological effect of sexualized female characters on the perceptions had of actual women. In this study videogames with either a sexualized or non-sexualized female main character were given to both men and women to play and as a result,

“participants who played the sexualized character reported less favorable attitudes toward women’s cognitive capabilities... playing the sexualized character for female participants resulted in less favorable judgments about female physical capabilities” (Behm-Morawitz).

The results of this study clearly expresses that playing as a sexualized female character gives men and women lowered opinions of the overall capabilities of women compared to men. In the case of physical ability, these results are somewhat ironic due to the fact that the female characters had extreme athletic abilities; despite this fact many of the female participants still agreed with statements that women are not as physically capable as their male counterparts. If exposure to sexualized female character lowers the opinions people have about women then the prevalence of these characters could lead to further oppression of women because of these perceived low capabilities of women. This study also illustrated that “playing a sexualized female videogame character negatively affected feelings of self-efficacy in women” (Behm-Morawitz). This result highlights that women tend to feel worse about their own ability to succeed in their own lives when exposed to a hyper-sexualized female character. By making a female character’s most noticeable and dominant feature her sexuality, female characters can counteract the potential inspiration that can come by exposing gamers to strong female characters.

While just over half of the human population is female,  that statistic is never reflected in the virtual worlds. A study from 1998 analyzed 33 popular games of the time, and their findings showed that,

“The most common portrayal of women was actually the complete absence of women at all...The second most common portrayal of women in this sample of games was the woman as the victim or as the proverbial “Damsel in Distress” (Dietz 433).

By having such a meager amount of females in games, companies are essentially saying to women that they have no real place in the world of videogames and that they should not play them. Additionally, most games do not have the option to play as a female character as the protagonist and if there is that option, the character is commonly on a team with at least one hyper-masculine male partner to journey and fight with to balance her out (Zorrilla). By giving female characters a male traveling companion, developers are implying that a woman lacks the ability to fend for herself against enemies without a male character to protect her, or that it may be necessary for him to save her which would essentially turn her into the damsel. Developers also do this because they assume that men would not be interested in playing as a strong female character without having a male working alongside her. There seems to be a lot of irony from such beliefs because that is the exact thing they do to women when they decide not to provide a female character option, leading women to play as male characters without a female character to create the “gender balance” that seems to be necessary when women are the main playable characters.

Dietz, Tracy L. An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in videogames: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior. Orlando: University of Central Florida, 1998. Print.