Video games are a relatively new format, and as such have not been explored to the same extent as film or television. This led me to take a closer look myself at some of the common themes in representation between video-games. While an increasing number of women play video-games, males unarguably hold dominance over the industry, with 60% people who play video-games being male.

Who’s Wearing The Pants Here?

The consequence of this dominant group is that women are likely to be represented and implemented in a way which would primarily serve the wants of said group, and the same can be said for how men are represented. I would like to explore two examples myself and see what impact patriarchal leadership over the industry has made; looking at two examples which each have a focus on male and female protagonists respectively. Throughout the course of this investigation, I hope to either prove or disprove the hypothesis “Gender is represented in video-games in such a way that appeals primarily to the male audience.” I hope to discover whether the male dominance over the games industry is really as prominent as is suspected through these representations.

The dominant group not only affects people of different gender, but also children. Representation in video-games is almost as important as representation in children’s television due to the amount of 15 and unders who engage in this new pass-time. It seems that games have a large impact on the lifestyles of people in this age group, and the social representations would, then imprint on the young mind and help build the representations they hold in their mind in later life.

If there’s one thing that video games offer, which is unique to the format, it’s the element of control. No other medium offers the level of control and user interaction within the content as much as video-games. This is a large factor in itself which influences how the content will be constructed so as to satisfy the uses and gratifications of the audience and thus is likely to dictate the way female characters/NPCs may be represented. I will make sure to analyze this in my study.

Sex Sells, Guys Like That

In my first example, Tomb Raider, you take control of heroine Lara Croft; exploring ruins located across the world searching for priceless relics and combating a mixture of mercenary groups and natural predators. The main elements of the game are action, and puzzles; the former of which being a male-oriented genre.

This suggests from the beginning that the game is aimed at a male audience. Because of this, it is not instantly recognizable why the developers chose a female lead. From a design perspective, we notice that the protagonist, Lara Croft, is designed to appeal sexually to a male audience; with physical proportions which exemplify this statement (and evidently have no purpose in the course of the game or story).

This claim of patriarchal design is also evident in the character’s dress code, wearing a tight outfit comprising of high-cut shorts, a sleeveless shirt and boots – all contradicting any claims of practical purpose in the environments featured in the game (apart from the boots). While she is often featured with a ponytail, a hairstyle often associated with women and femininity, the practical considerations also play a role in this design decision. This may represent the character’s mix of strong independence, while still retaining her femininity. As this physical appearance is implemented to gratify the male audience and is purely a visual feature, it is used heavily in the marketing of the series. This may have contributed to the massive success of the series.

Controlling The Opposite Sex

In terms of gameplay, the uses and gratifications present lead back to the unique feature of this media format, control. Unlike television and film, rather than finding insight into other identities or confirming one’s own, video-games act as a form of escapism where the audience can become another. In Tomb Raider, the prospect for the male audience differs from this idea, where instead of becoming another – you can control another. I have come to this conclusion as it is in many ways difficult for a man to empathize with a character of the opposite gender, but may rather sympathize. The prospect of controlling another, as is made possible by video-games, acts as a form of interactive voyeurism as the male gamer may not feel as if they themselves are implemented within the game which may change the way they react to different situations. Unlike in games such as Mirror’s Edge, where the character carries out actions in the first person, which creates more of an intimate bond between the hero/heroine and the player, often allowing the player to ‘become’ the character they are playing as.

One example of gratification then, which the male audience could derive, is control over the life and death of said character. This is apparent in many of the situations found in the game where the heroine has to face a variety of deadly traps. The gruesome nature of some of the traps (spike pits, being eaten by a giant snake) raises intrigue in the mind of a male audience as to what the nature of these deaths would be and people would be interested in discovering the nature of such scenes much in the same way people choose to see horror films. This interest in such scenes from the game is backed up by the presence of several videos produced by individuals on such social resources such as Youtube which contain montages of different deaths of the character. These themes are strongly tied to masculine urges and only go to help support my earlier hypothesis, “Gender is represented in video-games in such a way that appeals primarily to the male audience.”

This level of control could also act as a means for the male audience to self-assert an attitude of dominance over the opposite sex both directly and indirectly. Directly, it would satisfy the male gamers’ satisfaction of control and leadership by directly having control over the female character, and the actions she performs, to the extent where you can choose whether she survives or not. Indirectly, the game reinforces the patriarchal ideology of male dominance through choice of the enemies Lara faces. Most of the enemies you face throughout the game are much larger and posses more masculine qualities than the heroine (e.g. the large boss characters such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex), and particularly in the first game; Lara is represented as a much weaker individual physically, being more vulnerable to damage. Another interpretation of this, however may be that Lara Croft is strong enough to overcome all of said masculine obstacles, which would suggest that there are less patriarchal undertones.

Getting Down And Dirty

Interestingly, despite all these decisions in the development process which appear to assert the patriarchal views of the video-game hegemony, there are some decisions which defy stereotypical design which would be expected of a game which contains these other features. Unlike the majority of modern video games featuring male heroes, the hero-character being female and helpers being male. The female protagonist also possesses qualities which contradict stereotype, such as a strong sense of independence and from that, a willingness to pursue her own goals even when outside the advice of her mentors/helpers becoming more of a maverick. She also presents herself as intelligent, being in the professional capacity of archaeology.

You could also say that the character isn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty, being that most levels are dirty ruins and treacherous environments. These features build Lara up as more of a masculine figure in personal qualities and could even be considered a “tom-boy”. It is possible perhaps that these features are present because it would be impossible to realistically portray a woman in an action-oriented video game without them, and so they must possess masculine qualities themselves in order to succeed amongst the masculine dangers surrounding them.

Asking For Help

My second example is an action game (unlike Tomb Raider, which is an action-adventure) which features women far less prominently that in Tomb Raider. This results in a game in which the male audience is constantly alongside, and is interacting with male (AI) comrades. It could be argued that the masculinity present in this game in itself addresses the uses and gratifications of the male audience, allowing them to play the role of one of the (almost hyperbolically) masculine heroes and by including female comrades.

The audience may themselves feel less masculine – seeing a female character performing the same actions which are so strongly associated with masculinity (which is supported by the theories of Karen Horney expressed in her paper “The dread of woman”, in which she theorizes that “The threat posed by woman is not castration but humiliation; the threat is to his masculine self-regard.”). The male audience may be distracted from the escapism they may be playing for because of this, and could result in lower sales for the game on behalf of the male consumers.

In Gears of War, you are Marcus Fenix, a convict broken out of jail when alien-like creatures attack human colonies. Both the action genre and sci-fi elements are strongly aimed at a male audience which already suggests the hegemonic influence. Unlike Tomb Raider, the uses and gratifications the audience may be looking for in the game are a more a mix of identity; where the audience can identify with some of the aspects of the characters, but mainly gain entertainment from the escapism of gaining characteristics admirable in a patriarchal hegemony. As such, the characters are presented somewhat as role models despite what flaws would be more apparent in real-life situations. Another gratification which may be derived from this game is the assertion of the gamers’ power, with the emphasis in the game being the overcoming of a large enemy and practically shooting anything that moves.

Are Online Toys Just For Boys?

Unlike Tomb Raider, Gears of War features multiplayer modes. The two main modes are coop and versus. Coop allows two players to shoot their way through the single-player mode while versus allows players fight against each other. It is versus which presents elements unique to multiplayer (and elements not present in Tomb Raider). Versus mode presents the opportunity for the male audience to compete against real people in the contest of eliminating all of the other players. It allows the player to establish themselves as the alpha-male in one sense, which is also apparent by the presence of world leader boards, to establish who the best at the game is. While you can select from different character designs to fight as (no story-lines are present in versus/deathmatch), there are no female characters which you can play as.

While the aims within versus mode are those which would more presumably be featured amongst the uses and gratifications of a male audience, the lack of choice over the gender of character limits how much the female audience may relate to the character (an element which I feel appeals more to the female audience than the male). The cooperative mode would appeal to both female and male audiences in theory, with the game taking on more social aspects. This is something which may attract more interest from the female gamer than the male (games with more social and management oriented goals targeting the female gamer or a unisex audience more than others such as: The Sims).

While this cooperative option may hold some relevance to the female audience, it is still at its heart an action game. Action games appear to be aimed primarily at a male audience, and I feel that the designers may have determined that including female characters may result in “castrating” the male audience in one sense, removing the satisfaction of proving their masculinity against others by adding the possibility that they may get “beaten by a girl”.

Beat By A Girl

The protagonists of this game are all male, which in itself suggests patriarchal design decisions. Decisions such as this further deter the female audience from accessing video-games, which would, in turn, limit the diversity of the audience and further influence the industry to continue to either under-represent women or simply misrepresent them in such a way as to engage the male audience and address their use and gratification needs. This is particularly relevant amongst the culture of the audience, expectedly comprising of male teenagers; a group which would have more of an urge to prove their masculinity perhaps than older males.

Little is known about each character, substituting their stories for a brief overview of each alongside a large bundle of one-liner remarks which fill you in on their attitudes in various situations. Remarks such as (after performing a violent execution on an enemy during gameplay) “Ugh, I think I got some on me, now I got the cooties.” These aim to represent the male lead characters as strong and cool, in the sense that they are making jokes and showing no fear. The connotations of these attitudes, however may be interpreted differently depending on the audience as the target audience may see serious, strong and cool figures while others may see them as caricatures, and thus slapstick characters through the prominent and excessive representation of these traits (“Yeah! Wooo! Bring it on, sucka! This [warfare] is my kinda shit!”).

The straight to the action gameplay (and lack of storyline) is another trait commonly associated with male-oriented games (Dead Rising, Sports games, Doom) where unisex games are known to feature a heavier emphasis on the storyline (Elder Scrolls series, The Longest Journey, Assassin’s Creed). I would undertake further research into the content of female oriented games, but due to the nature of the industry currently, it is nigh on impossible to find any which aren’t aimed at children and couldn’t be considered unisex.

“Gender is represented in video-games in such a way that appeals primarily to the male audience.”

Taking all of these factors into account, I would have to conclude that the evidence found in my investigation helps support the hypothesis “Gender is represented in video-games in such a way that appeals primarily to the male audience.” This is not to say, however that the evidence supports the hypothesis wholly, even though many elements are considered patriarchal, there are characteristics present which cannot be described as such (the intelligence, strength and independent nature of Lara Croft for example). Yet there are many examples of games which represent gender somewhat realistically such as Mass Effect.

Like all genres, there will always be mainstream games which offer fine-tuned misrepresentations, addressing the uses and gratifications of the majority audience. However due to the increasing number of games which attempt to represent many aspects of society as realistically as possible, as well offering a diverse range of representations, serve no gender-oriented representation. Another conclusion that I have found is that the representation of gender in most of the video-games industry attempts to directly mirror (as well as develop in young minds) the views held by that particular hegemonic group.