Female Characters In Video Games

The absence of women characters in video games might have many different reasons. The creators of these games are mostly males; there are not many women in the video game industry. There was even a joke about Ubisoft, one of the well-known producers in video gaming, that they do not have female characters in their games in important roles because they do not see a lot of female around –since nearly all of their workers are males. Also still today, the games are focused on the male majority although both genders are playing these games; the minority of women is mostly ignored. Even the game tagging system has “female protagonist” to describe a game, because they are rare. But there is no such thing as “male protagonist” tag, since the industry …show more content…
One example is in Dead Space, the main character’s ship lands on a mining facility to save his girlfriend, pretty similar to Mario games in that sense, trying to find the princess in the castle. Although both games have more than thirty five years between their release dates, the mentality and purpose of the games are quite similar. Women are shown as weak creatures that need strong men to fight for them to …show more content…
“…video games perpetuate the perception of women as unlikely members of a team. (…) women who were solos in a professional group of men were routinely evaluated more poorly and were less likely to be promoted” (Burgess, 429). They are seen as needy, weak or even hopeless to cooperate and work with. Stereotypically, they are believed to be better in the kitchen or house work such as cleaning. Women are taught to be less important than men in most video games, as a result they are seen as victims or sex objects. “The negative portrayals of women could make female gamers think that they should look like the women in video games. The physical attributes of the women in video games are not naturally attainable by normal females” (Burgess, 429). It is actually about the whole mass media’s representation of women, they do not have any diversity. Nearly all of them have “perfect” bodies, skin, face and this is enough for them, just looking pretty on the screen. For this reason, women are feeling insecure about themselves that they are not “perfect” enough to meet other people’s expectations or even they start having higher expectations about body image, since they cannot look like what they see in the screen, they start seeing themselves