Tuesday, September 30, 2014

female objectification in video games

I grew up watching my brothers play video games and during high school I became something of a gamer myself, so I can honestly say I have a lot of love for video games, but there's no denying that they can have a strong influence on the minds of the players. I never took any time to think about the damsel in distress trope found throughout video games and especially what the chick in the video calls the "damsel in the fridge". She says that the women in the video games essentially become a prize, an object, for the main character to retrieve or avenge in order to gain back their sense of masculinity or to punish those who dared to steal away their property. It's really awful to think about young boys and teens playing games like these and having that ingrained sort of belief that women are property and that they are to be viewed as belonging to them. I'm unsure if there's any scientific evidence of there being a permanent influence on boys but I have done research on the influence that pornography (not to go off topic) has on young boys and teens and I can't imagine this is much different. To spend many hours of every day, as I know gamer's do, playing an interactive game where the main quest is to retrieve a woman who has been taken from you can't leave a healthy impression, it simply wouldn't make sense for it to have no affect whatsoever. It doesn't help that many games are centered around stereotypical masculine accomplishments; overcoming enemies, fighting your way out of difficult situations, being the strongest etc etc. Like she says it's mostly about violence and sometimes problem solving of course if you're playing a more interesting game. Of course I couldn't help but combat many of the examples she gave of video games that exploit this trope and try and make it more edgy with games that I know and love that don't have that, if only for the sake of believing there to be some good in video games. Of course most of those video games that I thought of are about saving the world; assassin's creed, mass effect, diablo. I recently started playing the new Tomb Raider and although the main story line is rescuing your entire group of friends, including a specific female who has been captured, the fact that the main protagonist is also a female does make it seem less insulting.


Questions:
Would video games benefit from being made for both male and female gamers?
Is the damsel in distress trope used mainly as a fall back for video game producers to have something to drive the plot?

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