Gaming: Women and LGBT
In the Interview with Sheri Graner Ray, a long time game designer, Sheri was trying to figure out why women gamers were not playing some of the most popular games like Warcraft, halo, and other popular games. She found that it was not because they did not like the games because they all loved World of Warcraft. She wanted to look into other factors that could be preventing women from playing these games. “Things like how we structure our tutorial, how we present our female characters, how we deal with conflict and conflict resolution, how we deal with punishment and reward.” (Sheri Graner Ray, 321). Marketing also obviously is another large contributing factor but Sheri wanted to look at other game structures that prevented women from trying certain games. The class talked a lot about how games present female characters. Female characters are often wearing little clothing with busty features. The class also talked about how males are presented in video games, Muscular and violent. Outside of unrealistic appearances in most games, there are not enough games designed for the female population with lead female characters. From previous readings, I have discovered that female gamers make up of over half of the gaming community. With this being said, should more then half of the video games produced target female gamers?
The LGBT community has also been affected when it comes to relatability in games. It’s has occurred too often in television shows where someone of the LGBT community dies. “There are now 182 examples”(Khee Hoon Chan). This is referring to how many openly gay females have died in television. When it comes too video games, there has been some improvements made where characters with same-sex relationships do not die of random reasons.
Female gamers do not only struggle to fit in with the game itself. My class talked about how female gamers are also criticized online, by other players, about being a woman playing games. Women are being called derogatory terms and are even being harassed and threatened outside the game on social media.
In conclusion, games need to be more directed to the LGBT community and woman since they do make up a large part of the market. This can be done by making more players that fit similar profiles and also by marketing that is more directed to them. It is sad that women are harassed online for just playing a game they like to play. This will be a problem for some time since people online feel like they can do or say what they want behind a microphone and television. Hopefully this changes in the near future.
Ray, Sheri Graner. “Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming.” Choice Reviews Online, vol. 46, no. 12, Jan. 2009, doi:10.5860/choice.46–6619.
Perez, Ryan. “The Misconception of Masculinity in Games.” VentureBeat, VentureBeat, 17 Mar. 2011, venturebeat.com/community/2011/03/17/the-misconception-of-masculinity-in-games/.
Chan, Khee Hoon. “Why I’m Afraid Video Games Will Continue to ‘Bury Its Gays’.” Polygon, Polygon, 4 Aug. 2017, www.polygon.com/2017/8/4/16090980/life-is-strange-death-lgbtq-characters.
