I found the presentation on gender and video games intriguing and something that is important because of the large population that plays them. These video games inevitably affect their users to some degree and so it is important to make sure that they are influencing them positively. For example, some video games may negatively influence girls or women because of the lack of female characters, which may make them feel like they are not important or included. This then translates to them believing that girls who play video games are “weird” or unfeminine because those games weren’t made for them. These ideas can start being engrained early in a girl’s mind since many younger girls play video games. Representations of women on video games feeds back into society’s opinions of women as well. If all the female characters need to be saved by males, society may believe that real life women need men in their lives to “save” them. Also, this topic is important because if game developers are aware of this problem, they could help improve society in general. If there was more equality for both genders in games, people may take the equality-for-all attitude into the real world.
The biggest thing that I found interesting about this topic was how much it had in common with my group’s topic: women in film, on and off screen. Both mediums have a damsel in distress theme that creates a negative stereotype for women. Also, both of these topics are important because film and video game creators possess the power to heal the damage caused by gender inequality and create a medium of gender equality. Since both have such large user bases, they can influence masses easily. Another thing that I found interesting was the nice increase of female and genderless characters in the Super Smash Bros. game. A lot of our presentations are on the negatives of gender in different areas, but this was progress for women representation in games. This is especially nice because Super Smash Bros. is a fighting game, which can be seen as masculine, but the amount of women and genderless characters opens the game up to everyone. This game is actually one of my favorites, so I’m glad that they are expanding their character options.
After listening to this group’s presentation, I am still left with some questions. First, I am wondering if having more female characters would increase gaming participation from women. For example, I had one of the older versions of Super Smash Bros. with not a lot of female characters and it did not bother me at all. In fact, I was a big fan of all the Mario games growing up, where the only character you could be was a male. I feel that children don’t initially feel like they can’t play certain games because of the genders of the characters. It might be more because of what ideas their parents or other peers are planting in their heads. Another question I have is, what would the reaction be from society if roles were reversed in games and the plot was a woman saving a man? Would people be accepting of it or get angry because they believe in the stereotypical gender roles?
I don’t plan on going into game design, but this topic is still relevant for other technical jobs. For example, I want to go into User Experience Design and it is important to think about all different kinds of groups of people (not just gender) in order to create a positive user experience for more people. We are in a generation where technology affects society so anywhere you can promote equality and positively influence people is a good thing.