MO SADEK
Special to The Leader
It would be incorrect to say that women are just starting to become a force in the video game industry, since they’ve been here since the beginning. Women like Carol Shaw and Roberta Williams are some of the most notable women in the industry; they are responsible for creating video games as a designer and a publisher, respectively. Since then, female involvement in video games has only increased. The Entertainment Software Association reported earlier this year that 48% of gamers are females, proving video games aren’t just for guys.
Despite this fact, women still have not gained the same respect as male gamers, and, in many cases, are targets for verbal harassment and attacks in video games. Though the immaturity of male gamers and their hostile online egos contribute to the harassment, video game companies and advertising firms fuel the fire with commercials that portray women as “noobs” or completely oblivious to video game culture. Technology isn’t the only thing changing in the world of gaming; the community is, too.
However, this change cannot come full circle if game companies don’t change the way that they portray women, both in the marketing of their games and through player interactions with female characters.
Sexist Advertising Doesn’t Help
It’s no surprise when you see a woman on a billboard, looking extremely artificial, being objectified while selling something trivial. The most disturbing part about this is that it is no longer unexpected. When was the last time anyone was concerned that there was too much cleavage, and when did the standards for beauty became thinner than the pages they were printed on? It’s no shock that video games have adapted to this standard in advertisements. In a promotional trailer for the second installment of the Uncharted series, Sony scorns the image of women in gaming. In the clip, we are introduced to a gamer who tells us that his girlfriend thinks the video game he is playing (Uncharted 2) is a movie. This is done to promote how photo-realistic the video game is. Towards the end of the video, the girlfriend in question comes out of the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn ready to watch the “movie” with her boyfriend, who looks overwhelmed by her lack of understanding of video games. The entirety of this commercial promotes the video game’s looks while putting down the intelligence of the female, making her take an inactive role as a bubbly bystander. Sony makes it seems obvious that she can’t understand that he is playing a video game simply because she is a woman.
Oh, but that ad must be outdated since it’s from 2009; the gaming industry MUST have gotten the message, right? WRONG. Let’s take a look at a more recent ad for a release of one of the most family-friendly consoles around, the WiiU. One of the launch games for the console, ZombiU, has one of the most sexist campaign ads seen to date. If a user navigates to a page with the ad on it, a picture of a model shown in just her undergarments with the phrase “She’s got a body to die for” will appear, along with a prompt that encourages viewers to click on the image if they are interested in seeing more. When clicked, the woman is replaced with a heavily photoshopped and zombified version of herself. The use of ironic sexism in the advertisement is, without a doubt, still sexism. Demographics are no excuse to exploit the image of a woman, or anyone, to sell a product.
Advertisements are no longer just selling a product, but everything that comes with it. Advertisements that objectify and downplay women are becoming a norm in our culture — a representation of how society views sexuality and women. Since these strategies are also being used in the gaming industry to sell games, players begin to create preconceived notions of women and their relationship to games.
Stereotypical Female Character Design
Adding to the poor image provided by advertising, female characters in games aren’t known to be so great. When playing games, players interact with non-player characters known as NPCs. These characters are programmed with artificial intelligence systems to give them a sense of depth. Most NPCs take the role alongside the player, helping him progress through the story or adding conflict to enhance the experience. Since most video games are played from the point of view of a male rather than a female, they end up showing the male opinion of female characters.
In a study by Tracy Dietz from the University of Central Florida, females are shown to have “sexy” roles as objects in the game rather than having substance. Dietz analyzes some of the main archetypes of females in games. She boils them down to three main types. She explains them in a way to help the audience remember, saying that “the three main roles females end up taking are the ‘Trophy Girl,’ the ‘Damsel in Distress’ and the ‘Cheerleader.’”
The “Trophy Girl” is great to look at, but there is nothing there — she doesn’t add anything to the plot and her biggest contributions are her … well. Yeah. The “Damsel in Distress” is basically what she sounds like: a video game’s way of saying women can’t help themselves with anything. Therefore, you have to help them. Otherwise they’ll always keep ending up in another castle.
Finally, the “Cheerleader” ends up being the character who is always supporting the player and helping him along the way without actually taking a main role in the game. She usually ends up in the way and becomes an annoyance more than a help. Elizabeth, from Bioshock Infinite, is one of the best examples of this. Her superhuman abilities to bend space and time make her extremely powerful, but most of her time is spent supporting the main character by staying out of the fights and throwing health kits and money. Even the dialogue in between sequences usually becomes Elizabeth listing off things she hates or complaining about everything since the moment of her birth. There was a lot more potential in her character, but she was watered down by her own tears.
Poor female character design has been going on in video games for quite some time. Most of you will all remember having to rescue Princess Peach as Mario, or maybe Princess Zelda as Link. It seemed innocent enough at one time, but the cliche has escalated to a point where female characters in games have had their credibility taken away from them. Gamers are not able to confide in female NPCs and have carried this attitude to multiplayer and social gaming.
The Wrap Up
Female gamers don’t deserve to be undermined or mistreated — they are gamers just like anyone else. The media surrounding female gamers has created an image that is unfaithful and outright disrespectful. To worsen this, our culture has adapted the things we see into our lives and games. And, on top of that, men go out of their way to identify females and harass them based on stereotypes and the false sense of entitlement the gaming industry has helped to give them.
Next time you’re in a game of Call of Duty, playing Madden or stuck with no supplies in DayZ and you come across a female gamer in your lobby, just play. People play games to escape their lives, to put their troubles aside for an hour and most importantly: to have fun. No one has the right to take that escape away from someone. But if you do feel the need to put someone down, not just for their gender but for anything, put down the controller. You’re not playing for the right reasons.
Plus, girls can be just as kick-ass as anyone at video games. You’d be cheating yourself out of a good challenge – and what kind of gamer turns down a challenge?