Representation Of Women In Video Games Analysis

Sexualization and Representation
Observations have highlighted a lack of female game characters. It has been claimed that the representation of females that do appear within video games is consistently sexualised and stereotyped, reinforcing objectification of women in society and the use of sexual tactics for allure. In society, male characters tend to appear more frequently and show leadership more than female characters. Men tend to lead the way, as Carolyn explains “they 've had woman characters but in the commercials and stuff they always show the men”. All respondents were able to give examples of games which they felt were more designed for men and/or had shown women in an overly sexualized manner. Nick explains “the Dead or Alive games, …show more content…
There are a handful of games out that include a female protagonists, such as Tomb Raider. When asked about female game characters and their representation, the responses were skewed. While the female respondents could not name any games that had a strong female lead and just focused on the sexual emphasis that is placed on women characters, Nick mentioned a few and that he enjoyed when a female was the lead character. Nick continued to say “For instance, there is a new game coming out called Horizon Zero Dawn, the lead character is female. Tomb Raider that has came out has got a lead female character. I don’t feel --- They do sexualize Lara Croft a little bit because she’s already got that label. But I feel in those games, in Tomb Raider the newest one, they didn’t do that bad of a job of over sexualizing.” Which can potentially be correlating back to the possibility of males liking a game more because of sexualization, whether it only be slight. All of these factors contribute to the perception that video games concentrate around masculine interests and representation, potentially making specific games unappealing to