Sexism in Video Games

With the amount of people playing video games, both male and female, sexism should not be associated with the medium, but it is still propagated by game developers and players alike. There is a vast amount of content that can be talked about here so I’m going to narrow it down to three things; pinked-down games, “girlfriend mode” (Lincoln, “Sexism in Games: 5 Reasons It’s a Thing”), and in-game harassment of female gamers. I will also discuss what they are, how they are related, and possible solutions to all three of these issues.

Let’s start with pinked-down games. These are games that play into the Easy-Bake Oven ideal of what girls want. Generally they are very simplistic tasks such as decorating or dress-up games with a stereotypical theme of pink, there is also a pretty high chance of flowers or ponies. For example, Cake Mania has the player control a girl trying to save her floundering business, a bakery. Right off the bat the game has the player start making cakes by choosing different shapes, a circle, square, triangle, and star. The customers start out being male as well. So what’s wrong with this style of game? By itself, there are logical reasons for the art style. Simple controls allow young children to play the game well. The cutesy art style is simple and non-suggestive. There’s nothing wrong with a woman running a cake bakery. All in all, the game works. But step back a bit and try and find a game designed for girls that doesn’t fit this formula. I took a look at www.girlgames.com, one of the very first search results from Google on the subject, and guess what? Almost every game listed on the site, which is easily more than one hundred mind you, is in this same style. There’s dress up games, baking games, wedding planners, pet shop simulators, dollhouse, and more that are all pinked-down games. None of them have much substance as far as story goes. The