Gaming for Girls: Female (Mis)representation in Video Games

When people think of a typical 'gamer' most people imagine a teenage white boy sitting in their basement with a headset telling their mother to get out of their space. Yet according to recent surveys women make up roughly half of PC gamers and even a majority in the mobile gaming industry. Despite this, female representation in video games is lackluster both in quantity and quality. Most female characters fit into a few select tropes that often objectify, sexualize and dehumanize women.

Classic games like Mario and Zelda use a damseling trope that reduces female characters, Peach and Zelda, into a trapped and helpless damsel in need of rescuing. This trope essentially turns the female character into a plot device to keep the protagonist, who is usually male, going. She has no agency of her own, no skill set to increase her chances of survival and in some cases of damseling, like in Castle Crashers, it isn't even important who the damsel is.

In other games, more blatantly problematic tropes are used, such as "women as background decoration" and "women as reward" tropes. The first of which is basically what it sounds like, the women are functioning as a visually appealing prop piece to entertain and sexually arouse the assumed straight male gamer. This trope manifests both inside and out of the game itself, being seen in advertising through commercials, on the game box or in online trailers and previews. Then inside the game itself, games like Grand Theft Auto, Watchdogs, the Witcher, God of War and countless others, women are used to decorate various scenes with images of their almost, presumed or actual naked bodies for no purpose other than eye candy. As for the "women as reward" trope, this references a trend for games and gaming companies to use women, or more accurately, women's bodies as a reward system for players' in game achievements, monetary purchases or simply for completing the main storyline. A classic example is from the Metroid series where at the end of the game it is revealed that the main character, dressed in a full armor body suit, is actually a woman, Samus. But if you complete the game at faster times or using certain cheat codes, you can play as Samus in increasingly fewer articles of clothing depending on your skill as a player. This trope also manifests in other games in purchasable DLCs (downloadable content) in the form of costume packs where original characters' clothing is replaced with something else, often silly or costumey, but for female characters, such as Rebecca Chambers from the Resident Evil series who's original clothing can be replaced with a 'sexy nurse' outfit, these costumes often become a sexualized mockery of their gender.

These tropes represent an industry attempting to maintain an identity of a boys' club, where the players are assumed to be straight males and the characters in the games are either idealized versions of masculinity or a display of stereotypical feminine ideals and while there are definitely games that attempt to break this mold it can be difficult to see them amidst all the 'bad ass bombshells' or 'damsels in distress.'

References

"Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" web series, Anita Sarkeesian feministfrequency.com

"The Male Domain: Exclusion of Women in Video Games," Kayleigh Conner; http://www.digitalamerica.org/the-male-domain-exclusion-of-women-in-video-games-kayleigh-connor/

"Why does sexism persist in the video games industry?" Kim Gittleson; http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27824701