As a popular media, video game industry is overwhelming with male players or consumers. On the other hand, female game audiences only take up a small portion of video gamers. In Japan the female players are fairly larger than any other countries; 39 percent of gamers are female. Because of its large female game population in many countries, some gaming industries specifically targeting their market on female gamers. A few examples of female targeted products are Ms. Pac-Man, Barbie Fashion Designer, Pink GameBoy, etc. Due to its large number of female audiences in gaming industry, many companies now market towards female consumers, resulting in great revenues.
According to the reading, another issue in gender in video game is “sexism”. Nielsen said, “girls in this study were also ware of the ssexism in games and wished gender representation was more balanced and realistic”. Some games interalisze and accept the idea that women are to be viewed as weak, as victims, and as sex objects. In The Adventures of Bayou Billiy (1989), shows a woman in a low-cut, red dress. This woman has large, well-rounded breast. In another similar example, Double Dragon (1985), a woman, also depicted with large breats and wearing a mini-skirt, is walking down the streen when a man hits her, knocking her down on the sidewalk. This is a growing problem in many video games because they view women as weak sexual victims, and these wrong messages would influence male audiences’ the way of thinking about females. Video game is a huge media today, consists of millions of audiences, however it provides them with incorrect images of females. This could also have the potential to influence how children perceive themselves and females. Most video games today are designed by men, for males. The result is that some video games, including some of the most popular M-rated games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, include content that is misogynist and may condone violence towards women, allowing and even rewarding actions such as sex with prostitutes, rape and murder. When women are consistently shown as sex objects rather than a human being, consistently depicted in humiliating ways, and consistently shown as weak, the result supports violence against women. According to the reading, women are an increasingly important part of gaming culture. Therefore, negative attitudes and ideas towards women in many video games must be fixed.
In today’s gaming market, there are many games involving inappropriate sexual contents. I am pretty sure there must be relationship between the level of sexual content within the game and the number of game CDs sold. Do you think it is morally okay for game designers to create such games?
Personally, I believe it is all right to do this. If somebody argues that female characters have abnormally long legs, large breasts, etc... then why are most males perceived as heroic, macho men? Much of this probably has to deal with advertisement, but I think it can be viewed both ways. I think that the music industry has a far greater problem with this.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that portraying women like prostitutes in small skirts with big breasts in video games are a part of an advertising plan. However, when looking at this from females’ perspectives, they feel like they are portrayed as sexual objects, weak, etc, while men are portrayed as heroic macho man. I think this question still remains unclear.
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