Women in Video Games: Consumers and Representations

With consumers spending about $20.77 billion dollars on video games, hardware, and accessories only in 2012, the video game industry has become a mass medium widely enjoyed by a diverse audience. 58 percent of Americans play video games and the average game player is 30 years old and has been playing for over 13 years. Despite this medium’s main target audience being men, a report of the Entertainment Software Association issued in 2013 regarding consumer statistics relied that 45 percent of video game players were women, with the fastest growing rate of consumers being women over the age of 18, composing 37 percent of the gaming population. In fact, one of the main target audiences, men younger than 17, only compose 19 percent of said population. According to a survey done in 2004 by the Entertainment Software Association, women constitute 25 percent of console players, 39 percent of PC players, and 40 percent of online game players.

Despite these growing rates of female audiences and consumers, sexism is prevalent in the media (Salter and Blodgett, 2012) and in online gaming communities. In a study that measured harassment in an online gaming setting, findings showed that women were 3 times more likely than men to receive negative comments (Kuznekoff and Rose, 2012). The evidence does not stop in quantitative data, but there is also documented evidence in qualitative data through women gamers’ experiences in different online communities; these are often recorded in the form of blogs.

The portrayal of women in video games has been the subject of academic study and controversy. Early video games typically represented women in subsidiary roles and dependent on male protagonists; although nowadays women have been given active roles, an increase in sexualization and objectification is in place to appeal to male audiences (Tremblay, 2012). The video game industry relies on a variety of tropes when it comes with the representation of women in video games; these tropes present women as merely background roles that support a man’s heroic quest, as objects that exist for men’s pleasure, trophies, or simply invisible (Salter et. al, 2012). Female characters are often portrayed in the damsel in distress role and their rescue is often the final objective of the video game (see Halo 4, all Mario games, The Legend of Zelda, among a wide variety of others); other roles that women play in video games include that of sidekicks to the male hero (Catwoman in Arkham City is a good example of this, with her later being a playable character with the purchase of the DLC) or major villains(GlaDOS in Portal).

Very few video games have women as playable characters, let alone as the main characters and, as according to the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (2012), this is because of the general belief in the industry that games with female heroes won't sell; let's ignore the fact that the Metroid franchise has sold since its birth 16.69 million units and who, surprisingly, has a a woman as the main character or Tomb Raider, which is considered one of the best-selling video game franchises of all times with 31.89 million units sold across the world and, guess what? Has a woman as the main character. Even so, in main character roles, women in video games suffer from an extreme manifestation of the male gaze (tendency of works to assume a (straight) male viewpoint even when they do not have a specific narrative point of view, and in particular the tendency of works to present female characters as subjects of implicitly male visual appreciation); female characters serve male players through the systematic enforcement of sex appeal; that means they are subject to sexual objectification, which is the act of treating a person (normally a woman) as an instrument of sexual pleasure; objectification means treating the person as a commodity, an object, with no regards to their personality or dignity.

But what is the role of women representations in the prevalence of sexism in gaming communities? According to a study conducted by Dietz (1998), video game representations of women and men have the potential to shape consumers’ perceptions of gender roles. Millers and Summers (2007) concluded that women exposed to stereotypes of the “ideal woman” perpetrated by the video game industry can lead to increased levels of body dissatisfaction, negative moods and depression, as well as lower levels of self-esteem. The role of the lack of representation and use of tropes when portraying women in video games combined with the hostility toward female gamers in gaming communities, as Sarkeesian (2012) explains, lies in the fact that the end result of the sexism and harassment is the maintenance, reinforcement, and normalization of a culture of sexism where women are silenced, marginalized, and excluded from full participation.

The question to be asked about this lack of women representation (that does not fall under stereotypes and tropes) and overall sexism in the video game industry is why this form of entertainment that has a growing population of women consumers continues to be pervaded by sexism? As consumers, it is important to note that we can shape our representations in the industry by demanding the creation of female characters with their own narratives and goals and who are not simply there for the male gaze or to fill a quota of female characters (toquenism). By reshaping the representations of women in the industry, the attitudes and beliefs of gamers about women gamers will be affected and the prevalence of sexism in the media reduced.

References

D'Angello, W. (2012). Metroid: A Sales History. Retrieved from http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250223/metroid-a-sales-history/

D'Angello, W. (2013). Top 10 in Sales - Tomb Raider. Retrieved from http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250928/top-10-in-sales-tomb-raider/

Dietz, Tracy (1998). "An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior". Sex Roles 38 (5/6): 425–442. doi:10.1023/A:1018709905920

Entertainment Software Association (2012). Industry Facts.

Entertainment Software Association (2013). 2013 Sales, Demographic, and Usage Data: Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry.

Kuchera, B. (2012). Games with Exclusively Female Heroes Don't Sell (Because Publishers Don't Support Them).

Miller, Monica K., and Alicia Summers. 2007. "Gender Differences in Video Game Characters' Roles, Appearances, and Attire as Portrayed in Video Game Magazines". Sex Roles. 57 (9/10): 733-42.

O'Malley, H. (2011). Nerds and Male Privilege.

Salter, A., & Blodgett, B. (2012). Hypermasculinity & dickwolves: The contentious role of women in the new gaming public. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56 (3), 401-416. DOI:10.1080/08838151.2012.705199

Tremblay, K. (2012). Intro to Gender Criticism for Gamers: From Princess Peach, to Claire Redfield, to FemSheps.

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