I’m a guy, let’s get that out the way from the get go.
Sexism in video games seems to on the minds of everyone these days. As an
oft-maligned media, we gamers always have made an art form out of trying to
sanitize video games for the general public. Over the last year I’ve read
probably a dozen articles from most of the major online websites lamenting
sexism in video games.
Video games are an interesting form of entertainment. While
the majority of gamers are in fact women; the more hardcore scene which is to
say console games and PC games are dominated by men both on the game development
side as well as the gamer side.
The problem with doing a real look at video games is that
there are exceptions to the rules. Games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age,
Uncharted, and Halo prove that gamers will play games that respect women. However,
these games are top tier so in many ways they could be pointed out as the
exceptions that prove the rule. For every Halo there is a God of War, or any
number of smaller, low budget games with scantily clad women on the cover and
in the game.
Let me say however, that video games are at times sexist,
just like sometimes their racist and political. Games about War rarely talk
about the effects of said war on the populace. Video games are primarily made
by Asian and Western developers and as such rarely feature any minorities let
alone as the heroes or heroines. The result of that is as obvious as it is
tragic; considering the demographics of the respective countries involved it’s
hardly surprising though. When I read articles about sexism in video games
written by women and then those written by men, I’m struck by the fundamental disconnect
between genders on what they view as sexism. Men tend to focus on the physical
while women tend to dig deeper when they feel that a game has overstepped
itself.
