Video Games And the Male Gaze

Logical Fallacy

I've had a few discussion in here about gaming and I know that a few of the ladies are dedicated gamers so I figured some folks might find this interesting.

It touches on a lot of things from the representation of women in games to how women are treated in the industry, and online if they try and speak up about this treatment.

As an avid gamer and someone with a presence on many different gaming forums I would sadly have to agree, as I have seen it happen plenty of times.

I don't want to say too much other than I agree with this article and am delighted that a well known and busy gaming site like Gamasutra is running it. I'll be getting pretty vocal on other forums, but I'm expecting some great sense and insight here and am curious to see where the thread goes.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/173227/Opinion_Video_games_and_Male_Gaze__are_we_men_or_boys.php

krudler

Gaming does need to grow up, if it wants to be taken seriously as an artform it needs to have more female characters who don't all fall into the typical big titted villain, screaming needs to be rescued ditz or same old tired slutty/vixen characters.

I play Call of Duty online which is full of lobbies of screaming homophobic idiot teenagers, if a girl gamer is in the mix its just constant abuse and mysoginistic comments. I'd love if more female gamers played stuff primarily played by guys but you can see why they don't.

baby and crumble

I love gaming. Love it. But I never play online, because I can't deal with the crap. The amount of women who are gaming now is increasing, but it's still embarrassing sometimes when guys look at you surprised when you can talk to them properly about games. Then again I get the same treatment when I go into computer stores and comic book stores. It's also embarrassing when you play a game and the female characters are there simply to be oogled over. Moreso because I feel weird about looking at boobs I know aren't real- and I like boobs!!

There are some studios that create powerful, non sexualised female main characters, but they are few and far between, which is a huge shame.

I have noticed though the folks in the vintage/ retro scene are a lot less assumptive (??) about women gamers. Which is good.

Helix

krudler wrote: »

Gaming does need to grow up, if it wants to be taken seriously as an artform it needs to have more female characters who don't all fall into the typical big titted villain, screaming needs to be rescued ditz or same old tired slutty/vixen characters.

what about all the male characters that are perfectly chiselled machismo machines, often with little more about them than a braindead desire to blow crap up while spouting complete nonsense? that's every bit as bad

videogame characters, male or female, tend to be quite close to the accepted "perfect" form, just like hollywood prefers the good looking leads to the pug ugly ones - otherwise philip seymour hoffman and steve buschemi would be leads in everything

the issue isnt gaming

Rynox45

I was drawn here by the mention of games

There are really silly problems with genders in games in my opinion. Most of it I think is pandering to the audience, even if the audience doesn't want it. There's such a perceived desire to see idealised people on the screen, but I don't think that's anything new. That's been around in cinema for decades.
I try to take games with a pinch of salt now. A lot of them are just interactive action movies so it's okay in some situations to subscribe to stereotypes, within reason ofc.
Then again, there are weird cases where it gets taken too far. There was a lot of fuss recently over the new Tomb Raider game in which Lara is threatened in a way (I'm assuming you know already )
After considering it, I came to the conclusion that it's too early to claim that to be sexist as some people were claiming. If it turns out to be a part of the character's story arc, it's fair enough but if it turns out it was a group of people thinking "How can we add drama to a female character?" and that's what they came up with, it's fairly sketchy.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the alpha male machismo guys. They just seem like they're playing to the hero archetype which is okay to an extent, though some games take it too far and that's when you end up with horrible over the top crap.

I hope that games are still evolving just as cinema has and that we're heading somewhere more interesting where stories are less predictable and characters are more unique.