In the game
Bayonetta, the main character is a girl, but is over sexualized. Bayonetta is
603 years old witch, but physically looks 26-year-old, 27 tops. In addition to
her young figure, her clothes come off when she casts a powerful enough spell. His
game has sold millions of copies between the first and second installments, and
I doubt that it was the gameplay that caught everyone’s attention.
However, in Life is Strange, a game with a female protagonist, has gameplay ranging in actions
with different outcome and an effect on the future with the ability to rewind
time. With her mysterious powers, the player watches as Max, and other
characters who are mostly female, screw something up in the first run play. And
the second. And the third. This game is different as it is mostly grounded
within reality and a majority of characters’ female. Even though with its major
success. There are just not many games like it that are as popular.
In my opinion,
most games with the main character female are like this because it is what the
majority of gamers want. Go to any gaming website and there will be article
after article and post after post, repeating that there is a lack of innovation
in video games. Games that are different and innovated just don’t sell and go unknown
or forgotten. It comes down to what people want subconsciously, a well-known,
identifiable games that they are drawn to by the popular trends and pictures sexy, attractive females
or over masculine men.
I don't think it's necessarily true to say that the majority of gamers, especially younger gamers, want to play games featuring highly sexaulized women. In a Time article titled "Everything You Know About Boys and Video Games Is Wrong," Rosalind Wiseman argues that the assumption held by publishers and developers that male players enjoy the sexual objectification of women is just an assumption. Wiseman and her colleagues conducted a study featuring over 1400 middle and high school boys and girls, and found that 47% of middle school and 61% of high school boys believed that women were treated too often as sex objects. 78% of the boys interviewed also said that the gender of a game's protagonist didn't encourage them to play it, and that it mattered less to them as they aged. 55% of boys who specifically identified as gamers thought that there should be a higher number of female heroines as well, with 57% believing that female characters were often treated as sex objects. The latter number is similar to the figure for boys as a whole, suggesting that the over-sexualization of women isn't as much of marketing boon as video game publishers and marketers would like to believe.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of AAA games featuring average, non-sexualized women might be related to the will of major publishers. While Life is Strange isn't exactly AAA, the developers, Dontnod Entertainment, remarked in a developer diary titled "A New Beginning" that Square Enix was the only publisher they went to who didn't want the game to be changed. Other publishers wanted the game to feature a male lead, while Square Enix didn't question the original decision of the creators. Dontnod's previous game, Remember Me, faced similar issues. An article for Eurogamer, titled "Why publishers refuse games such as Remember Me because of their female protagonists," recounts the experience. The game's creative director explained that some of the companies wanted to switch the game's female protagonist's gender, even though the game had already passed the point in its development cycle where that could have been changed. Rather than allowing developers to create content freely, publishers often seem to interfere with the development process.
Along with are other games like mario kart or mario party. Boys want to be Mario, Luigi, Bowser, or Wario, while girls want to be peach. Part of this goes along with masculinity. Boys want to go off as being masculine so they think if they are a girl character their masculinity will be taken away. They want to be known as the powerful one or the one in charge. Boys also want games that will make them masculine like wrestling games, Nascar games and all that. If they were to see a game with girls as the characters they won't buy it. The media along with parents have sort of drilled the mind set into kids that boys do masculine things and play with masculine games while girls do feminine things and do feminine games
ReplyDeleteI am sort of conflicted here, on one hand I completely agree that women characters are often over sexualized but I also think it has a lot to do with the type of game. In action games that are typically geared towards men you have the curvier and bustier female characters either for actual game play (lara croft) or the girlfriend/ prize types of characters (Grand theft auto.) who aren't meant for game play. But in games that are geared towards maybe a younger audience, mario party and mario kart they add a female character but she isn't over sexualized. I think it really is about the gamer, if you look close enough you learn that there are more video games than the ones that have commercials and are main stream. There way more games that don't over sexualize women than there are games that do according to an article on lolwot.com, they unpacked over 250 video games where there are normal female characters with normal game play.
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