Video gaming is some of the most fun people experience in their day-to-day lives. Video games can serve as a stress reliever after a long day at work, a form of competition among friends, and offers the ability to be someone or something one truly desires to be. The video game community is constantly expanding. However, in what appears to be such an expansive universe it seems that women are consistently left out of the loop. Women in video games are most often portrayed in one of two ways: evil and unattractive, or as the over-sexualized damsel in distress constantly in need of help from a male protagonist. This leaves many young women in the gaming community with a very distinct choice: continue to play these games and thereby support
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With most of the ads targeted to young men as well as the regular discrimination that female gamers face,it comes as no surprise that young female gamers are left feeling unwelcome. Fox and Tang, the authors of Sexism in Online Video Games, state that, “gaming has been described to be a man’s world” This causes a discrepancy as women currently make up approximately 40% of all gamers, yet there continues to be an extreme marginalization of women within the gaming community. Women are constantly being discriminated against within the gaming world, both by game designers in their attempt to over-sexualize and demean women, as well as the prejudice they face from male gamers within the community. Once again, Anita Sarkeesian helps to explain this issue with the idea of the “Smurfette Principle”. This principle states that there is only a single female character in a game otherwise dominated by males. With this ideology in mind, many games simply no longer make the cut when it comes to featuring a female character; simply placing a bow on a character’s head does not make them female. To achieve equality in the gaming industry more must be done. Female characters need to take the lead in games traditionally thought to be male-based, and they must no longer be viewed as secondary’s to their male counterparts. When protagonists are almost always male, and the few that are female are simply female copies of male characters with a few stereotypical gender identifiers added, it comes as no surprise that women easily lose interest in video games as a
With most of the ads targeted to young men as well as the regular discrimination that female gamers face,it comes as no surprise that young female gamers are left feeling unwelcome. Fox and Tang, the authors of Sexism in Online Video Games, state that, “gaming has been described to be a man’s world” This causes a discrepancy as women currently make up approximately 40% of all gamers, yet there continues to be an extreme marginalization of women within the gaming community. Women are constantly being discriminated against within the gaming world, both by game designers in their attempt to over-sexualize and demean women, as well as the prejudice they face from male gamers within the community. Once again, Anita Sarkeesian helps to explain this issue with the idea of the “Smurfette Principle”. This principle states that there is only a single female character in a game otherwise dominated by males. With this ideology in mind, many games simply no longer make the cut when it comes to featuring a female character; simply placing a bow on a character’s head does not make them female. To achieve equality in the gaming industry more must be done. Female characters need to take the lead in games traditionally thought to be male-based, and they must no longer be viewed as secondary’s to their male counterparts. When protagonists are almost always male, and the few that are female are simply female copies of male characters with a few stereotypical gender identifiers added, it comes as no surprise that women easily lose interest in video games as a