Game and gender

-Sexy image of "Chun li" from street fighter

http://sfwsexy.com/763/


As Nielson points out that "the video game industry is overwhelmingly dominated by men," games today are generally designed for men and girls are the invisible groups that are under represented in the game industry. This topic of gender and game reminds me of the under represented images of Asian Americans in the U.S. films. Although one is related to game industry and the other is about the film industry, they are similar in many ways, such as the stereotypical images and the under representativeness among these two groups and the society as a whole.

The article points out that women usually have the stereotypes of being sexy, attractive, or even sex objects or victims of men. It is similar to the minorities as being stereotyped by the dominant media without hearing many opinions from the people of their own. And maybe this is why girls tend to play less games because they contain degrading images of female characters and no enough female game developers are working in the game industry to voice their opinions.

According to Nielson, girls tend to play less of the first-person shooting games and are also less likely to play in public spaces. I realized the happening of this phenomenon might also due to that girls are embarrassed when certain female stereotypes are presented. For example: I have seen my female friends shied out because of Chun li's clothing in the street fighter and she would never use her in the game. Of course, many guys like the style of Chun li's outfit since it is very sexy, but this kind of image can be very embarrassing and disrespectful to girls thus decrease the number of female players.

Just as Nielson points out that girls need games that do not require them to adopt the boy's culture, designing games that are suitable for girls are crucial if wanting to attract more female players into the game industry. Several psychological patterns of female players are clarified in the article that females surprisingly enjoy games that are competitive and that "they do not abhor violence." However, if games still contain stereotypes or male-dominant images female players might still remain as minorities and it is definitely a bad news to the game companies.