Nicholas Sabljak
Article Analysis 2
4/3/13
Video Game Sexism
Video
games have been popular for many decades now, and have entertained millions of
people. There are many different types of games for everybody to play such as
first-person shooters, platformers, puzzle games, and many more. Gaming became
big with Atari in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s until the video game crash
of 1982. The next few years were the dark ages of gaming until the Nintendo
Entertainment System (NES) rose from the ashes in 1985 to save the industry.
Most people who seemed to be interested in the NES were young boys with not too
many girls took notice of video games. This set the stereotype that only boys
play video games. Though today, women play just as much video games as men do,
whether it is home consoles or app games on their phones. Women have always
been on the lower side of the gaming spectrum and you can see it since the very
beginning.
Early
on, video games were targeted towards men because they were the ones who
expressed most interest in playing them. The first video game to ever be
created was titled Spacewar! which
was a two-player space shooter where one player would try to destroy the other
player’s ship in space. Action was considered more of a manly interest, and
when arcades hit clubs and bowling allies it was men who flocked to these kinds
of machines. Atari didn’t really focus on characters or stories because of how
limited they were, but I can’t think of one game where the main character was a
woman. Nintendo released an arcade
machine (eventually released for Atari 2600) titled Donkey Kong which the player controlled Jumpman (now known as
Mario). The story was Donkey Kong kidnapped a princess and climbed to the top
of a building where Jumpman would have to save her. This is the typical “damsel
in distress” that many games would tend to follow. The other game on Atari that
focused on women was a game titled Custards
Revenge, a game where General George Armstrong Custard came back from the
dead. The player would control a naked General Custard, and the objective would
be to make it to the other side of the screen by dodging arrows and raping a
naked Native American women. As a pretty knowledgeable gamer who knows the
history of gaming very well, these are the only two famous video games for Atari
that had women involvement. One was saving a princess, and the other was making
your way to a Native American woman just so you can have sex with her. Even at
the beginning of video games, women didn’t have a lead role and were nothing
more than mere objects or prizes.
After
the ages of Atari, Nintendo created its own gaming system that far succeeded
anything than Atari has ever produced. Games weren’t stuck to one screen
anymore. Now, when a character reached the end of a screen it would slide
across with the character. This made games bigger than ever before. Though,
none of these games had primary woman involvement. The most recognizable games
for the NES were Super Mario Bros, The
Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Contra, and Castlevania. The most famous one on this list is Super Mario Bros. The story of Mario is
hardly relevant, but it features an Italian plumber whose princess is kidnapped
by Bowser. At the end of the game, Mario defeats Bowser and saves the princess
who rewards him with a kiss. Just like in Donkey
Kong the game focuses on a male hero figure saving the poor defenseless
princess. She is seen only once at the very end of the game when you beat it.
The other game to mention a woman is The
Legend of Zelda. This game is more story-driven because its manual tells
you all the backstory information, yet it follows the same “saving the princess”
storyline as Mario does. Ganon, the King of Thieves, has kidnapped Zelda, the
Princess of Hyrule. The main protagonist, Link, has to save her. The gameplay
is vastly different from Mario, but the only role of the woman is to be
kidnapped and rescued time and time again. These are the stories for every
Mario game and every Zelda game that follows afterwards. Mega Man’s prime focus is a robot boy, Contra‘s main character is a war soldier, and Castevania’s protagonist is a male vampire hunter. All these games
have multiple sequels and none of them have had any female involvement until
generations later. There isn’t even a girl or princess to save. The only game
to have a main female role is Metroid. The main character is Samus Aran, who
spends the entire game in a suit of armor which doesn’t reveal her identity. So
originally, players assumed Samus was male. If you can beat the game fast
enough and get the good ending, only then will Samus take off her helmet and
reveal that she is a woman. This surprised many gamers, which shows how one
sided video games were relating to gender roles. And if you beat the game even
faster, Samus will take off her whole suit and reveal herself wearing only a
bikini.
Many gamers speculated you could even get her down to her birthday
suit, but there is no way for a player to actually do that. The NES only has
one female protagonist, which also involves her stripping down 95% of her
clothing. You don’t see Mario or Link stripping down to their underwear when
they complete their games, do you?
Today,
it is normal for games to be stereotypical for both genders. Looking at the top
selling games today, many focus around men. Such titles include Halo, Gears of War, God of War, Uncharted,
Mass Effect, etc. All these games main protagonist is a male figure with at
least one female secondary whose involvement is helping the player out by
giving them hints and normally just stands there to look pretty. Though, these
games are also very sexist towards men as well. Every single one of these games
main protagonist is a tall, mean, buff dude who is a complete badass in every
way possible. They are extremely muscular, act tough, and aren’t afraid of
anything. Though chances are, the people playing these games look nothing like
the characters they are controlling. If you look at me, I’m a 5’9’’ male who
weighs 135 pounds. I’m skinny and look nothing like these characters. And it
seems like 90% of games today has a protagonist who are unrealistically fit. Though,
it is true that male characters still outnumber female characters in games. The
only two characters in gaming today who are huge are Samus Aran and Lara Croft,
from Tomb Raider. Samus’ new game has been criticized because the writers
screwed her up by turning her into a whiney little bitch, and crying as enemies
attack her.
Playing this new game (Metroid: Other M) pissed me off as a Metroid
fan because they took a badass character and gave her a pathetic personality. And
Lara Croft is known for having unrealistically oversized breasts.
Mass Effect
is a game where the player gets to choose whether the main character is a boy
or a girl, and Mass Effect 3 has a game cover where the player can flip it
around which displays the exact same cover art, but with the main protagonist redrawn
as a female. However, all my friends I know have played this game with a male,
and the cover art is defaulted towards male. While playing any of these games
on Xbox live, 99% of people are male (who use mics). Whether it is annoying 12-year
old kids who just learned how to swear, or an older man talking shit, it is
always the sound of a male voice being heard. It’s actually so bad, that when a
girl is using a mic, everybody in the room goes crazy. You hear such phrases
as, “A girl is playing this game?” or “Will you have sex with me?” I hear this
when I’m playing over the internet, or when I watch my sister play online.
There is even a 3DS ad which shows a girl playing a game and having no idea
what to do with a man explaining how to do everything.
You know, because a girl
can’t figure something out for herself. Though, while a majority of video
gaming is focused towards a male audience, I do feel video games are sexist all
around.
Video games
have been around for decades. They provide endless hours of entertainment for
people, but I feel like the sexism in video games is out of control. Too few
games have serious female involvement. The community of gamers see women as people
who could never understand video games or technology because they were simply
born female. If you are female, you will never understand how to play a video
game without the help of a male, and even then you will never be as good as
males when it comes to skill. It’s a very silly thing to think about, but that’s
how many gamers view the stereotypical woman. As a gamer, I would love to see a
kickass woman protagonist in a game that isn’t created for sex appeal. Too bad
there are too few games out there like this.
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