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Examine The Stereotype Of Women And The Roles They Have In The Video Game ...



Examine the stereotype of women and the roles they have in the video game genre. Explain the focus on women as sex objects and representation of the female body.
Abstract
The computer games industry is a relatively recent artistic phenomenon that has infiltrated almost every facet of modern cultural life. However, while computing was originally a chiefly male pursuit, and the market for 1980s gaming was overwhelmingly comprised of adolescent males, in later periods this has changed significantly and radically. The perception, however, remains the same, and this has a profound impact upon how gender is constructed in the gaming industry. As the workplace is dominated by men, women are often denigrated in the overall product, and either become symbols of male sexual lust, figures to be raped and pillaged, two dimensional characters, damsels in distress or males in female skins. The perception of girl oriented gaming is still treated with derision in gaming magazines and among reviewers. This is because a) games are seen for their technical rather than their moral attributes, b) women continue to be underrepresented in the gaming industry and c) men tend to write the reviews. This dissertation will look firstly at the abundance of female stereotypes in the gaming community. Secondly, it will look at the ways in which these stereotypes are treated in the gaming press, and at how reviews often differ dependent upon the intended audience of the product, often in discriminative ways.
Contents
Introduction p. 3
Academic Context p. 6
Argument and Analysis p. 8
Conclusion p. 22Introduction
Computer gaming is frequently seen by mainstream computer game companies as an experience that is mainly dominated by men and male discourse. As such, the role of the female characters and the interpretation of these characters in the media surrounding the phenomenon of computer gaming in the late 20th and early 21st century is one that has been significantly marred by the kind of gender stereotyping that can be seen in other pre-feminist discourse. The purpose of feminist literature was initially to provide women with an equal, albeit emasculated footing in a society that favours patriarchal methods of codification. For instance, the literature of Virginia Woolf sought to give women room to speak for themselves, as the title of her famous and, at the time, controversial essay on the role of the female in academic institutions, a room of one's own. Later, feminism became more concerned about the cognisant development of female practice alongside that of male discourse, rather than within direct competition with it. This development in feminist thought led to a number of forks in academic circles between what was later seen as American and British feminism, and French feminism. The difference was locked into the argument as to what specifically constituted a women in the new, postmodern, late-capitalist information network.

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