The document discusses representations of gender, race and other groups in video games from the early 1950s to present day. It notes that early game development was dominated by white heterosexual males, resulting in stereotypical portrayals of women, racial minorities and other groups. While more inclusive in recent years, concerns remain around objectification of women and normalization of violence. The industry has also been slow to include diverse groups in design and development roles. Overall, the document examines how representations in games both reflect and help shape cultural attitudes.

1. Video games &
Representation
MAC129 - Cyberculture

2. Economic success: GTA IV
 Released April 2008
 Day 1 sales: 3.6 million
($310m)
 Week 1 sales: 6 million
(£500m)
 August 2008
 Sales: 10 million
 June 2009
 Sales: 13.2 millionSource:
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/index.php?name=grand+theft+auto+IV

3.  Released November 2009
 Day 1 sales: 4.7 million
($310m)
 Day 5 sales = $550 million
 January 2010
 > $1 billion
 November 2010
 > 20 million copies sold on
console alone

4. Historical business
 A struggle to define a place for early
games
 No guarantee that games would be
successful
 (see Marvin, 1988; Poole, 2004)
 Historical accounts tend to be lists of
names and dates

5. First game?
5
Spacewar! 1962
(Steven Russell)
Tennis For Two 1958
(William Higginbotham)

6. Cold War kids
1950s….
 Emerged during a period of intense socio-economic
and geo-political changes:
 Space Race (USSR)
 Cold War paranoia (nuclear anxiety)
 Decline of heavy industry
 Major changes in life style
 Advent of domestic mass communication
 Consumer confidence

7. Game development…
 Largely due to
 “university computing departments, the military, the
interest of the first game developers, the first games and
the subsequent development of game playing as an
activity embraced largely by young males”
 (Kerr, 2006: 14; see also Haddon, 1988; 1993)

8. The console wars

9. The console wars

10. The console wars

11. The console wars
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars

12. The console wars today (Oct 10)
41.6
75.9
44.6
Sales (millions)
PS3
Wii
Xbox 360

13. Controversial claims about video games
 Negative associations – health and violence
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCuKQIMg0I4
 Columbine shooting: Doom
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1295920.stm
 Car-jacking: Grand Theft Auto
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3680481.stm
 Stabbings: Manhunt
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3936237.stm

14. (Un)popular claims about video games
 Positive claims?
 Surgeons who played games for at least 3 hours a week
made ‘37% fewer errors, were 27% faster’ than surgeons
who did not play games. (Hall, 2007)
 Safe environment to enact fantasy
 Creativity of ‘modders’

15. Games emerge from a cultural context
 US military funding?

16. Always a ‘politics’ in every representation
 Representations are never innocent.
 Representations are always a ‘construction’ in
accordance with the producer’s politics.
 Representations reflect cultural attitudes and beliefs.

17. Under-representation = social inequality
 “In television, it was always a landmark moment
when some minority or disenfranchised group
appeared on the screen for the first time”
 “That kind of visibility is really the first step toward
leading to public consciousness and equal
treatment. These cultural markers matter.”
 D. Williams et al (2009), New Media & Society

18. Representation and race
 Black culture as
animalistic,
subservient, sexual,
violent and dangerous

19. Resident Evil 5 Race Row

21. Representations of Arabs and Muslims
 Post 9/11 Islam portrayed as a
threat; linked with terrorism;
ordinary Muslims marginalized

23. Depictions of ‘Others’
 Games set against the backdrop of current real-world
conflicts?
 The narratives help shape understandings of the conflict:
 its morality
 Hero-ification of some groups
 Dehumanising others
 Normalizing warfare
 “These types of images […] reinforce the perception of
Arabs and Muslims as racialized Others, bloodthirsty
terrorists whose acts of aggression are inherently
illegitimate, while any by the Coalition forces are, by
definition, moral and justifiable in the face of such an
enemy.”
 Gwen Sharp, 2010, Sociological Images

24. Representations of gender
 1950s
 Women as domestic,
maternal, naïve,
consumers, etc

26.  http://www.feministgamers.com/?p=466
 http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-
write-letters.html
 http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/07/23/wel
l-that-was-bound-to-happen/

27. Representation of gender
 Feminist critics have argued that many media texts
represent women as:
 Sex objects
 Dutiful housewives / virginal daughters
 Mad, bad, dangerous women who need punishment
 Are video games any different?
 Jiggle physics?
 http://archive.gamespy.com/fargo/january02/jiggle/
 See also:
 ‘Top 10 Boobies in Video Games’
 ‘Sexy Video Game Babes’

28. Game design
 Studies of digital games have noted a ‘consistent
pattern of male technocratic privilege’
 Williams, cited in Kerr, 2006: 19
 Game development & design, production, marketing
& construction, dominated by heterosexual
masculine fantasies
 Gansmo et al, 2003

29. Gender in games
 Traditional stereotype of femininity evoked
 Relationships
 Romance
 Emotions
 Role-play
 Gansmo (2003): little understanding within the
industry about how game design might be linked
to gender socialisation

30. Consequences of stereotypes…
 Games are a ‘prime example of the social
construction of gender’ (Cassell and Jenkins, 1998:
37) and they may significantly influence people’s
attitudes towards the use of computers in school or
later career choices

31. Women do play games!?
 Funk (1993):
 75% of females play games at home (90% males)
 Colwell and Payne (2000):
 88% of females aged 12-14 play games regularly
 ESA (2004):
 39% of US gamers are female and females account for 40% of
online players.
 Krotoski (2004):
 approx 25% of gamers are female in Europe, compared to 70%
in Korea
 Crawford & Gosling (2005):
 Women much less likely to play the older they get
 Alexanda (2009):
 Female console gamers grew from 23 to 28 percent in 2009

32. Krotoski, 2004: 10
32

33. The Wii and women?
 ‘Nintendo's Wii console captures new game market’
 John Sterlicchi, Oct 2007
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/oct/10/usnews.i
nternationalnews

34. Domestic access
 Access to gadgets in home is not gender neutral
 Highly masculine and potentially hostile to females
 Is this changing?
 www.girlzclan.com
 www.everground.com
 www.girlgamer.com
 http://female-gamer.com/

36. Domestic context
 Space
 a greater percentage of girls’ play has been centred in or
around the home
 Time
 females still spend more time engaged in domestic labour
than males (typically 1.5 hours per day more than males
in the UK)

37. Gaming spaces outside the home
 Predominantly masculine
environments
 arcades, pubs, motorway service
stations
 Women at LAN parties tend to be in
a supportive role
 When they do compete the media
portrays them as:
 Exotic
 Sexualised

38. Game content
 Relatively low number of playable female characters
 Abundance of stereotypes
 Masculine themes
 The damsel in distress?

39. Positive moves?
 1991: Nintendo release Barbie Game Girl for
Game Boy
 1996: Mattel release Barbie Fashion Designer
 2000: The Sims
 2003: Linden Research launches Second Life
 2004: The Sims 2
 2004: SCEEurope release karaoke title SingStar
on PS2
 2006: Sony launches pink PS2 and PSP
 2006: Cooking Mama released
 2008: Wii Fit released
 2009: Farmville success on Facebook

40. Children Now study (2000)
 92% games have a male lead (54% female)
 50% women portrayed in a stereotypical way.
 38% displayed women with significant body
exposure (23% breasts; 31% thighs; 15% backsides;
31% stomachs/midriffs)
 Female characters defined by ‘disproportionately
large’ breasts (38%) and ‘excessively tiny’ waists
(46%)
40

41. See: http://www.remedialthoughts.com/2008/11/can-women-in-games-ever-be-
more-than.html

43. Positive figures?

44. ‘Truly unique’?
 Chloe Frazer in Uncharted 2
 See Tom Cross, 2010, Gamasutra

45. Conclusion
 History of games has been male dominated
 Industry can be conservative and not welcome
change (can be risky)
 Women increasingly more important to the industry
 Positive changes ahead?

46. Sources and further reading
 Leigh Alexander, 2009, ‘NPD: Female Gamer Population Increasing On Consoles’, Gamasutra,
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24245
 Jo Bryce & Jason Rutter, 2003, ‘Gender dynamics and the social and spatial organisation of computer
gaming’, Leisure Studies, 22: 1-15
 Jo Bryce, Jason Rutter and Cath Sullivan, 2006, ‘Digital games and gender’, in Jason Rutter & Jo Bryce
(eds.), Understanding Digital Games, London: Sage.
 Judith Butler, 1990, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge.
 Children Now, 2000, Girls and Gaming: A Console Video Game Content Analysis, Oakland, CA: Children
Now
 J. Colwell & J. Payne, 2000, ‘Negative correlates of computer game play in adolescents’, British Journal of
Psychology, 91: 295-310.
 G. Crawford & V. Gosling, 2005, ‘Toys for boys? Women’s marginalization and participation as digital
gamers’, Sociological Research Online, 10, (1), http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/1/crawford.html
 M. Cundy, 2009, “Absolutely terrifying ‘sexy’ images of 8-bit ‘babes’”, Games Radar,
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/absolutely-terrifying-sexy-images-of-8-bit-babes/a-2009093014448271099
 T.L. Dietz, 1998, ‘An Examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games’, Sex Roles, 38
(5-6): 425-42
 J. B. Funk, 1993, ‘Re-evaluating the impact of computer games’, Clinical Paediatrics, 32: 86-90
 Aleks Krotoski, 2004, ‘Chicks and joysticks: an exploration of women and gaming’, ELSPA white paper,
http://www.elspa.com/assets/files/c/chicksandjoysticksanexplorationofwomenandgaming_176.pdf
 Carolyn Marvin, 1988, When Old Technologies Were New. Thinking about Electric Communication in the
Late Nineteenth Century, New York: Oxford University Press
 Steven Poole, 2000, Trigger Happy: the inner life of videogames, London: Fourth Estate
 Steven Poole, 2004, Trigger Happy: videogames and the entertainment revolution, New York: Arcade
Publishing
 G. R. Schott & K.R. Horrell, 2000, ‘Girl gamers and their relationship with the gaming culture’
Convergence, 6: 36-53
 D. Willams, N. Martins, M. Consalvo & J.D. Ivory, 2009, ‘The virtual census: representations of gender,
race and age in video games’ in New Media & Society, Vol 11, No 5.

47. Some questions to consider?
 What are your earliest video game memories?
 Have you ever played a game where the
represented characters seem problematic?
 Has gender/race/sexuality ever caused you to question
the representation?
 Do games evoke stereotypes and cliches, and
should we be concerned about these?
 Games are often regulated (ratings system). Does
regulation work to protect people?