Photo Credit: Topconzient

For the sake of this blog I asked my brother couple of questions regarding the game. I found out that there are no women in it, not even big pictures or the wall or something like that. This makes me think that CS:GO is very male dominated and it ties to the Frank Schaap’s reading Disaggregation, Technology, and Masculinity where he talks about masculinity. Not only women are totally unrepresented, but the male characters are extremely muscular and caricatures of men. Similar to Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, the terrorist and Counter-terrorists are men that seem “strained, stereotypically male” (Schaap, 240)

As for the race I found that characters in the game are white. So non white races are also underrepresented. CS:GO reinforces the idea of a “monoculture” Lisa Nakamura mentions in her reading Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction. “monocultures are posed here as the opposite of diversity.” (Nakamura, 17)
Since there are no people of color represented in the game_ this creates a monoculture, meaning it’s not diversified.
Also, white male stereotype shown in CS:GO is an example of one of the cybertypes the author talks about.

Representation: Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Video Games and Video Gaming Culture

Questions:
1) What will be the future for gender and race representation in video games?
2) What would it take for women and non white people who work in technologies to start more representing themselves?

We all love it, Basketball! I played basketball since I was in 5th grade mostly for recreational purposes, but now I could even play it from home. 2k is a very well known video game amogst teenagers that love sports. However, very little the consumer knows the details that goes into the race and gender misrepresentation. Most of the best players in 2k are black, although it does fit into the stereotype of black males being basketball players. It is mostly evident when it comes to NBA 2k,  that the best players are shown in the best of their ability. For example, Stephen Curry unanimous MVP for the year 2016 is a great basketball player and in 2k he plays like so although he is white. However there is a very big gender gap. As some of you guys might know, there are also professional female basketball players, but they are not being represented at all in 2k. Which raises the quesion do women even play basketball?

2k is a perfect exmaple of the research done by Schaap. Although, there are two different leagues; the woman’s league and the man league, 2k only choosed to portray the man’s league. Which proves what Schaap said “that online spaces in many instances are masculine spaces, where expectations of behavior and iden-tity are shaped by traditional notions of heterosexuality and standards of hegemonic 1nasculinity.” This is true because although there is a woman’s league 2k has not developed female characters within their video game. Although, one might argue that there is no reason for a company such as 2k to create female characters since the consumers are mostly male teenagers. Well, that idea feeds into the stereotype that woman are not interested or may not be as good as males in sports, which is not true. Attached is an article that expands on the idea of female basketball athletes being underrespresented.

2k also feeds into Nakamura’s concept of ” the term cybertype to describe the distinctive ways that the Internet propagates, disseminates, and commodifies images of race and racism.” Cybertype is clearly evident in 2k. In the game you are allowed to create your own player, which createsa variaty of different players. However the asian and hispanic race is not represented, they only have the white and black race. Feeding more into cybertype, even when a player chooses a white character, the story is told as if the white character comes from a black family. Again supporting the stereotype that only black males are good in basketball.

Here’s a famous basketball player talking about race and basketball:

Questions:

1)Do you think women are underrepresented in sports game?

2)How much importance do you think race and gender underrepresation have in regars to videogames?

My favorite game back in elementary and middle school was Neopets! The best way I could describe is a game within a game: You, as the player, are accompanying your “pets” to get food, play other online games, create houses and surf the Neopets community. It’s a website known to be used by kids and teens for hours. MTV had big hopes and dreams for this site, valuing at over $160 million. This game, being that it is meant for kids and teens, does not adhere to politics that are common among other online games or video games.

Source: Flickr Creative Commons

But it is pushing boundaries. “Faerieland” for example, is a location known in the world of Neopia, that is all that is sugar, spice and everything nice. But all the faeries are ladies, just like in mainstream belief, with a color scheme that was full of pinks and purples, but I guess that it stuck with purple since I last played the game. “Virtupets Space Station” is another location in the world of Neopia, that follows the space-y technological theme, which is pleasing to the norms for boys.

Then you have the newer location, “Shenkuu”, that were added in the days when my Neopets usage was declining, that follows a mystical, up-in-the-mountain-tops theme. This location follows an oriental, ancient East Asian theme. The location called “Lost Desert” follows a Egyptian, Sahara desert theme.

According to the locations, the items sold like food, clothing and weapons, cater to the theme which can be borderlining racism and gender inequality just through the usage of stereotypical naming.

So what about the pets within our ownership? There’s no way to tell what Neopet is a male or female, unless you look at the actual profile of each pet, or put on clothes for the pets. You can even use a tool called a paintbrush to “paint” your pets a certain theme, which people can conclude gender from.

Source: SD1 (http://sd1.menu-it.ru/?p=55061)

You, as the user of the website, don’t have to choose a gender or race upon making an account, based on my memory from a decade ago, therefore a profile can be generated about the user through the choices made on things like which games to play originating from one location, the food fed, products purchased, and more. This supports Nakamura’s theory of cybertypes: a stereotype within a cyberspace. Nakamura has said that “Chosen identities enabled by technology, such as online avatars, cosmetic and transgender surgery and body modifications and other cyberprostheses are not breaking the mold of unitary identity but rather shifting identity into the realm of the “virtual,” a place not without its own laws and hierarchies.” (Nakamura, p.4) This shows potential danger in the cyber community for its underlying gender and race distinctions. This would be against Schaap’s argument as he said “The potentially subversive effects of online games and social interaction prove to be quite limited, but the traditional gender conventions that were supposed to be questioned online appear to be doing quite well.” (p.239) But of course as a kid, these kinds of things pass over your head, how about now?

1. If you have played Neopets before, and were to play it now, would you notice these subtleties?
2. Is it possible for Neopets to maintain a genderfluid, non-racial website? Why or why not?

The Halo video game franchise has been one of if not the most successful video games to ever hit the market. With over ten different games being released from 2001 to current date 2017 the Halo series continues to flourish. For a short synopsis, the game has a main character by the name of Master Chief a super solider set out to defend the world from the Alien Covenant. Master Chief also has an Artificial Intelligence companion by the name of Cortana that joins him on all of his missions. Even with all the strength that Master Chief obtains he can not seem to function properly without Cortana.

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Gender roles play a huge part in this aspect of the game between Master Chief’s and Cortana’s relationship. Now even though Cortana is a product of Artificial Intelligence her developers made her in a way where she is slim, big busted, and sports a complimenting figure. The character of Cortana can somewhat be imprisoned at times. She is a essentially a computer that can be programmed to do anything while she sends Master Chief Commands while he goes out into battle. Cortana is represented through all three major platforms of visual, verbal, and technological media the developers have created her in a sexualized way while also being under strict control. I believe that this character definitely reflects off the broader social norm for many reasons. For instance it is known that a majority of video game players are male. So the video game creators had to develop a character that makes them wanting to come back and play. They used the image of what a good looking women is in the real world and turned her into a sexualized icon in a video game.

Nakamura states that “identity prosthesis to redress the burdens of physical “handicaps” such as age, gender and race” (Nakamura, 2006: 319). I feel as though this relates very well with my topic because instead of the video game developers making Cortana appear as human they made her artificial intelligence. This possibly could give them an excuse when it comes to how they develop the female character over time. What Schaap means when he says “Cyberspace, the concept of an inhabitable, electronically generated alternate reality, has become the dominant metaphor for thinking about the nonspace of electronically represented and mediated symbolic interaction.” (Schaap pg. 233) It means that the things we see out in the real world we are bringing in to a different reality and turning it into something that is not. When something like this happens characters like Cortana start to form and topics of controversy start to emerge.

1. Do you think there will be a new generation sweep of female led video game characters?
2. Do you believe it is intentional when female characters come out to be something that they are not? Or is that just how society portrays them?

Image Source

For years sport video games did not include women players in their games, but in 2016, EA Sports included women players in their FIFA series. This is because the sport gaming industry is fueled but men and modeled after popularity of sport in real life. For instance, the NBA (men’s pro league) is popular around the world and broadcasted around the world. The WNBA (women’s pro league) is not so popular and not always broadcasted on TV. This is because the viewership of men’s basketball is higher than women, resulting in women not being featured in games and receiving a significantly lower salaries. This is all controlled by the market and fans. Therefore going back to why FIFA 16 included women players? Because of the rise of U.S. women soccer and rise in number of fans. This resulted in EA including women players in the game.

In this article, it explains a study where it found that 80% of female characters in games were, “sexualized, barely dressed, or portrayed as beautiful”. FIFA however falls under the 20% of games that don’t sexualize female character. It’s inclusion of women was to expand its market and supply the demand for the increased number of women soccer fans. According to Lisa Nakamura, we should focus on the monority group and view it a potential new markets, “Commercial sites such as these tend to view women and minorities primarily as potential markets for advertisers and merchants rather than as “coalitions”” (Nakamura 9). This is what EA has done with their FIFA soccer franchise. Also EA has included women to give its current players option to choose their gender in the game contrary to their real life gender. “first, that, indeed, the gender of your online representation is a choice and that you can choose the opposite gender of your real-life gender (gender swapping)” (Schaap 238). This quote explain another example where the market dictates the outcome of the video game.

1. Do you think video games such as Grand Theft Auto has the power of shaping how we view things?
2. Do you think, that by not sexualizing women and men in video games, video games can still perform well? Or has that change become part of certain video game franchise?

 

 

Picture: Daily Mail

I did not grew up playing video games so I decided to ask one of my cousins about the games he plays and he told me about GTA. I did some research about this game and I found interesting information and critiques about this popular game.

Nakaruma mentions “while telecommunications and medical technologies can challenge some gender and racial stereotypes, they can produce and reflect them as well” (p.4). The GTA videogame supports her theory. In this video game the problem is not the absence of women. Yes, there are women characters but the women who appear play  secondary characters, prostitutes or strippers. This video-game promotes discriminatory roles and stereotypes towards women. The main character (men) can pay women to have sex with them and then kill them to recover their money. Women are presented as a sexual object with tight clothing, miniskirts and large breasts.

Video games like GTA influence people who play it because  they can explore their masculine identity and reinforce beliefs about what men are expected to be, behave, think, feel in society. These types of stereotypes affect both boys and girls negatively.

Schaap mentions “the possibilities for “playing” with gender were accessible to a growing number of people, and the general perception of the researchers seemed to be that this could lead to a shift in the popular understanding of gender, similar to the shift that had occurred in the social sciences” (p. 10). The video game GTA does not have the option to users choose the gender. The game is based on crime, and violence where the main character is always a man.  Unfortunately, GTA does  not support gender equality in this game. The women character keeps being projected as a secondary one.  In spite of the enormous violent and sexist load of the plot, the product has been one of the most successful and with millionaire profits. As I mentioned earlier. I am not a fan of videogames but I am really sure that a game where women are portrayed in the way GTA does I will not play.

Why does sexism persist in the video games industry? is an interesting article from BBC that gives some reasons about the reasons of sexism in videogames

Questions:

1. What kind of actions users can take in order to demand a more equal treatment in the role of women in video games?
2. What do you think is the main reason why some video games has not incorporate women as main characters or stronger physical qualities?