Sexism In Video Games

The video game industry has always been known as a male-dominated industry, with most video games being marketed towards males and many video game programmers being male. But in recent years, there has been a rise in the number of female gamers in the industry. Although there are a lot of women interested in video games, there are still a lot of problems regarding sexism and the video game industry. Sexism can be found in the video games that girls play as they grow up to women who enter the industry as creators and programmers. An extreme example of this sexism can be found in GamerGate, an event surrounding women working in the video game industry. There has been a lot of progress regarding representation in video games, but there are still …show more content…
A lot of video games are known for scenarios such a male hero saving the princess, and while the stereotype isn’t going to disappear, there are some games where players can play as those princesses that used to be the damsel in distress. In the video game Super Paper Mario, Princess Peach becomes an essential character as the player can play as her throughout most of the video game. One of the most popular games known for having a female protagonist is the series Tomb Raider, but has also been known for her early image being extremely disproportional. Although the character wasn’t the greatest role model for body image, recent games in the series has changed Lara Croft’s image to look more realistic and shows that progress was made. More video games continue to be made each year with female protagonists to counter against the video games that don’t represent women as much, so while it’s a problem that the popular video games don’t represent women, there are still a lot of options for girls who want that representation. Many popular games from the past five years have had women on their box art as the main characters, such as Final Fantasy XIII along with its spin off games Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII featuring the main character Lightning and basing the story around her. Video games are …show more content…
If video games are able to look the same as movies and real live people, then it should be possible to create female characters that look realistic. “Industry and game creators tend to both repeat based on what they are used to, and to live up to what they believe are expectation for future users” (Kondrat, 189), so it’s understood that game developers may have a hard time changing their games for one part of their audience in risk of upsetting the other. But if developers did change their ways and focused on expectations of both female and male players, then it would be a big step towards improvement for other developers and video games. Sega is one of the game companies that knows that change should be made, and Kondrat explains in her article that Sega “tried to introduce a lot of new female heroines into their fighting games, which were originally targeted only to the male gender, and gave them powers which will be engaging for female and male players”. If big game companies like Sega would incorporate female characters into their video games, then it would inspire other game developers to continue the trend and it would become a normal thing for women to be equally represented as men are. Since the increase of female gamers, game companies could shift certain types of games that could appeal to primarily women