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Are video games sexist towards women essay
Gender stereotypes in video games
Are video games sexist towards women essay
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As soon as the video game world pressed the start button on their business, they never stopped playing. Like any video game, they hit major checkpoints and beat levels. From Pac-Man with joysticks to Angry Birds on iPads, the video game industry has a consistent history of success. Today, everyone knows someone who plays or has played a video game. New games and gaming consoles are constantly being advertised and released. They are even an entertaining method of keeping people up with the growth of technology. According to Melissa Terlecki, a psychology professor, “Involvement and experience with current computerized technologies…is important to provide both men and women…Because computer video games are a seamless lead-in to the technological age, those who are not playing may be at a disadvantage.” However, as the industry got more and more successful, its target audience became narrower. Since boys were playing their games more often, the industry started focusing on its male buyers. Games were designed that made men the dominant characters and disregarded women. However, industries didn’t realize that by doing this, it was losing a huge part of its business: female gamers. This was doing more harm to the industry’s economics than good. Sexism in video games is a prevalent problem and is economically harmful because it steers girl gamers away from the video game industry. Many vintage video games had female protagonists that were financially successful without having to be sexualized. The first ever video games appeared during the 1950s, but the industry itself began in 1971 and developed its first successful games, such as the still popular Space Invaders. It was a huge jumpstart to the industry’s successful time period o... ... middle of paper ... ... Yasmin B. Kafai et al. N.p.: MIT P, 2011. 5-7. Literary Reference Center. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. Salter, Anastasia, and Bridget Blodgett. “Hypermasculinity & Dickwolves: The Contentious Role of Women in the New Gaming Public.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56.3 (2012): 401-16. EBSCO eBook Collection. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. Terlecki, Melissa, et al. “Sex Differences and Similarities in Video Game Experience, Preferences, and Self-Efficacy: Implications for the Gaming Industry.” Current Psychology 30.1 (2011): 22-33. Rpt. in Current Philosophy. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. EBSCO eBook Collection. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. Williams, Mike. “$14.8 Billion Spent on Gaming in U.S. Last Year, Says N.P.D.” Gaming Industry. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. Worley, Joyce. “Women Join the Arcade Revolution.” Electronic Games Magazine May 1982: n. pag. Archive. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
An examination of videogames in popular culture is a complicated one. There is a large debate as to what is the very first video game. The supposed earliest known video game was created by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann on a cathode ray tube in 1947. The game was a missile simulator similar to radar displays from World War II, and overlaid sheets of paper were used for targets since graphics were unknown at this time. On May 5, 1951, the NIMROD computer was presented in Britain. It used a panel of lights for its display and was used to play a game called “NIM”. Later, in 1952, Alexander S. Douglas made the first compu...
Literary Reference Center. Web. The Web. The Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
164-69. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 341. Detroit: Gale, 2013.Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 5 May 2014.
... never concretely relates to video games it is only normally assumed. many believe that video games only impact male players through these violent outburst yet a lot of research suggest that the misconceptions regarding video games such as decrease in academics, increased aggression, and a decrease in respect for women is often situation based and rare at that. it has been shown however the video games increase an individual's spatial performance. As is said in the article Gender Disparity in Video Game Usage: A Third-Person Perception-Based Explanation,
Read 59.4 (2009): 22-25. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. The Web. The Web.
Jokinen, Anniina. "Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature." Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. N.p., 1996. Web. 9 Nov. 2013. http://www.luminarium.org/
The history of video games began in early 1950s, and it continued in development until today. video games gained popularity as movies and T.V shows, and like movies which producers focus on the story plot, each character role, and the way they are being represented, videogames have the same concerns, especially character 's role and, representation, because most of players will not care about the game’s story, they just want to have fun playing the game, but the player will play as a character, or meet other characters from various gender, and that what make game designers care about the gender and, characters representation. and by the way of presenting gender, it will control the number of players of both genders, because it could connect to their life. games industry made researches about what both genders want in their game,
Since the humble origins of the video gaming industry, individuals used it as a challenge of their abilities. In modern day, this industry is just a popular as any other media which exists in the mainstream world. Video games reflect society’s changing views of the normalities of which individuals and/or groups must abide to. This is exemplified in the evolving representation of the queer individuals within the virtual world. As the video game industry came into focus, so did the LGBT rights movement. This illustrates that society’s views on the LGBT community were reflected in the video games made, however, it was rare that such characters existed as protagonists until the twenty first century. Due to the extreme lack of asexual and non-binary
Ramazani, Jahan. Richard Ellmann, Robert O’Clair, ed. The Norton Anthology Of Modern And Contemporary Poetry. Vol 1 Modern Poetry. Third Edition. Norton. 2003.
This journal article is entirely credible and written by two women who know what they’re talking about. This article discusses how video games form stereotypes about both genders and that they impact both gamers and non-gamers. Men are portrayed as aggressive and women are unsurprisingly portrayed as sex objects. A main issue with this is that video games are mostly played by the younger generation meaning these are the ideas being imbedded into the youth of the world. The...
A feminist movement in its own right has begun in the gaming community. Women are generally believed to be understand by members in many geeky, gamer or nerdy parts of today’s society. In the gaming industry women are statistical and cultural outliers. Gender stereotypes about girl gamers or ‘Gamer Girls’, the latter of which has begun to receive a negative meaning, keep many women from fully participating in the rich game industry culture. Female workers in the gaming industry get mixed signals from an industry that on the outside appears to desire gender diversity in order to attract the growing ranks of female gamers but on the inside it is resistant to change its sexist and discriminatory practices that make women feel singled out and alone. Females of the gaming community not only receive sexist and vulgar remarks from their male counterparts of the community but the very companies, making the games they love to play, single them out more than anyone else. Being that game development is a very male dominated job in the gaming industry it is understandable that women would feel a little advised not to pursue a career in gaming but the few women that do brave the doubts are met with criticism and dominating remarks. They are paid less than their male counterparts and are given less chances at promotions.
Many video games portray women as objectified beings, purely used for sex appeal and to attract the larger male gamer population. We also see men idealised in a similar way as well – the males in video games are portrayed as muscly, brawny men. However, we rarely see a scantily clad man in a game, but there is a vast abundance of games which feature women wearing ‘sexy armour’, or a noticeable lack of substantial amount of clothing. This isn’t female-friendly as these games are made for men, causing women to feel alienated and uncomfortable.
In bringing attention to the sad state of women in the video game industry and community there is no platform better than the internet, specifically YouTube. The internet is the home of many in the gaming community and has immense potential to be a source of societal change due to the capability of spreading information around the globe in a fraction of a second. In choosing this platform, I draw inspiration from YouTube content creator Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency, which is a web based video series that critically examines the representation of women in pop culture (“About”). Sarkeesian has been the subject of ire for her criticism of the video game industry, but her long running series illustrates that the web based video log format can be a great tool due to its accessibility and the ability for customization of content.
The Representation of Females in Gaming 2015 marks the release of the second game in the reboot Tomb Raider franchise, Rise of the Tomb Raider, staring Lara Croft on another one of her action packed adventures. Thus marking the chance to talk about the representation of females in gaming. Lara Croft is the most famous female protagonist in gaming from the last three generations of console but before her rise to fame, the gaming community had the Metroid series’ to play. Metroid defined gaming with the “original jaw-dropping moment”.