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.
- Do you think video games such as Grand Theft Auto has the power of shaping how we view things?
- 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?
Sports games are a huge topic because it is something that both women and men are highly involved in. I believe sports games have the biggest pressure when it comes to portraying both men and women. I believe games will still continue to perform well when men and women are not sexualized especially when it comes to sports games. In sports it does not matter what you look like it is how you perform, and if other companies start focusing on the performance of the character other than the image. I believe users will get a better gaming experience.
2) I think they can still be very beautiful and fun but because the target audience is mostly guys there is a pressure to make them appealing to men. Maybe if they marketed games more towards the women then men could be interested in them if the games were high quality enough.
Games, just like the rest of the media, gives us unrealistic expectations of how life should be and how we should look. I think because it is an escape from reality for most people, they wouldn’t do as good if they were more realistic.
I don’t feel that video games has the power to change how we see things, but it is definitely a reflection of society and how the programmers think. By not giving a gender for you characters online, can go two ways. What it all depends on is the content of the game. We have games like pokemon that have been very succesful and didn’t need a gender description. It is sad that some programmers still believe that relying on gender and racism can bring them success, when all you need is the right concept and creativity for the game.
I think to some extent the video games as well as media has the power to shape how we view things, which greatly influences our perception on the ideal characters of male and females. However, in as much as some video games may be portraying sexualisation, a personal perception on how to treat women can not be entirely influenced by the very video games. I think the performance of video games should not be pegged on the sexualizing women but should instead embrace creativity and innovation in capturing the attention of their target audience.
Unfortunately I do not believe females video games will do well unless they are sexualized. This is much bigger than the video game industry, this concept is present all throughout the media industry. Since video games are mostly targeted to men, women are often sexualized to attract male consumers. Furthermore on the real world sports that focus on women draw in less of an audience such as the WNBA. This same idea is seen in video games, there aren’t maybe video games catered to women in sports that are not sexualized.