Are Video Games Sexist?

Video games don't encourage violence

     For my project I began by analyzing the different stereotypes and cliches which get interpreted as sexist in various video games. During this progress I was having lots of trouble finding what was wrong with some of these stereotypes. The damsel in distress trope was argued as sexist because it placed female characters in oppressed roles in which they couldn't do anything without the help of male intervention. Growing up playing games like Mario and Zelda where this trope is the main plot made my opinion skewed because I didn't realize this as a the real problem of sexism in video games. Having boys/ men play games like this and learn that you should help females in real life didn't seem like a bad thing.
     I decided that the real problem lied in the hyper sexualization where it became absurd. In some video game situations it could play into the context of the plot but when video game developers create fan service just to show off babes it doesn't make sense. Then there is sexualized violence that portray women being killed,beat, raped and abused with little to no consequences. Once  again as a conditioned gamer I found it really hard to draw lines to sexism because I seen lots of men get killed and beat, maybe not raped but they still get messed up. Why is it that women characters being placed in the position that males were in are different?
     On a more positive note I talk about how games are showing strong female characters and protagonists more. They aren't being hyper sexualized at the level that some Japanese games love going to. While they may not be showing their bare butt cheeks they are still generally very attractive. I'm sure some feminist will state that this is for the male gaze so that men can enjoy looking at who they are playing but I'm sure females like playing attractive characters as well. Video games are virtual reality and fantasy games, gamer's play video games to get a break from reality and they want to enjoy something they cant in real life.

Wii has more female friendly games

     Not enough games are female oriented is an argument that was being made. I found that this is due to the financial side of how game developers work. They create games with the goal of selling it to the general public. Some companies realize that their demographic is male dominated so they are creating games with the intent of being masculine. Then when we look at video game statistics we see that most female gamer's play Wii rather then Xbox and Playstation because that console offers more video games with female protagonists and less sexualized violence. To fix this problem I came to the conclusion that games should be created with unisex plots with the option to select you own character at the beginning, customize it however you want and that's
it. That way both men and women can relate to the protagonist they are playing.

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Will add later