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The Controversy Of Sexism In Gaming

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According to the BBC, “Online abuse has been prevalent in the gaming community for years. Notably, in 2014 and 2015, it played a major role in the so-called Gamergate controversy, when people on both sides of the furore complained of harassment” ("100 Women 2016: The women challenging sexism in e-sports" 2016). Sexism is evident in gaming. When advertisers market video games toward male gamers and ignores the female gamers, this form of sexism hurts the game makers' profits and creates an uncomfortable environment for the players. Sexism in gaming has not been around as long as people think. The first video game ever created, Pong, was advertised to the whole family (Lien 2013). Another game that would be equal to popular with females is the game Pac-Man. When it came time to renew the game for a sequel the developers of Pac-Man made a female protagonist, Ms. Pac-Man (Burns 2015). This would last until the video game crash of 1983, which happened because greedy video …show more content…

The reason it started sexism in gaming is because at first the N.E.S. was advertised towards 10-year-old boys. According to Polygon, “the video game industry created something of a chicken-and-egg situation. When it conducted market research during the '80s and '90s, it found that more boys than girls played video games. Boys were more likely to be involved with new technology, more willing to be early adopters and more encouraged by their teachers and families to pursue science, technology, engineering and math in school. Girls have always played video games, but they weren't the majority. In wake of the video game crash, the game industry's pursuit of a safe and reliable market led to it homing in on the young male. And so, the advertising campaigns began. Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No girls allowed” (Lien

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This helps give the impression that not all hard-core gamers are male, though they still are the majority. The author also uses graphs periodically through the article to help relay information that is easier seen than read. One bar graph depicts the percentage of gamers in their respective age groups with 25% of gamers under age 18, 49% between the ages of 18 and 49, with the last 26% being over age 50 as of the year 2010. The graphs do their job well and are a nice addition to the article to make it more interesting and

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This book is well supported by facts. He firstly talks about the world of video games and online “entertainments”. Here children's exposure to violent images through gaming and early sexualisation through various media

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These boys’ games can help boys learn teamwork and sense of justice, build their moral imagination, and improve their creativity and writing skills. There is no doubt that girls’ games are much less dangerous and more positive and calm, but it doesn’t mean girls’ games are better than boys, or these games could

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1059 Words | 5 Pages

When I was a child, I would play Super Smash Bros with my male cousins. When playing, I noticed the lack of satisfactory female characters and how male-orientated the game was. Besides the character, Samus, who wasn’t unlocked at that moment, the majority of the few female characters had soft attacks, poor defense, and mediocre special moves that didn’t inflict any damage. I felt discouraged as it depicted women’s role as being inferior to men as the game didn’t effectively represent women’s capability and strength. Similar to in The Odyssey traditionally ascribed to Homer, which conveys the story of a king returning home from war.

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Why can't a game be short a “girl”? There is definitely not enough representation of women in certain types of media when it certain topics especially sports, woman are being underrepresented in commercials etc. yet are

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1631 Words | 7 Pages

Although the individual may or may not accept these identities which are presented to them. These portrayals of gender norms within video games can affect the players attitude towards women and their expectations about the behaviour of women. This may have substantial consequences in relation to women obtaining gender equality with men in the future, as men will learn to believe that the acceptable roles of women include being weak, dependent of males, and subordinate. According to Bialeschki (1990), “By conforming to gender role expectations, young girls restrict their own potential because so many important skills and activities have been designated as ‘inappropriate’ for them” (Bialeschki, 1990:54). This is mainly due to gender norms which are presented to individuals within the gaming culture, this can have major consequences when it comes to the gender socialisation of individuals within society, as traditional gender roles wherein the female is viewed as subordinate are expected and rewarded.

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“ Why Violent Video Games Are Good For Girls” written by a Carmen Tieu was published in the textbook Writing Arguments in 2014. Carmen is a girl that illustrates the point of view a girl playing video games. Her thesis is that video games are actually good for girls. She starts her case by pointing out the obvious physical traits that guys favor over ladies. She then explains how the usage of video games make her more confident.

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1758 Words | 8 Pages

Patriarchal Perspective in Women Sports Women’s National Association Basketball(WNBA) has been according to the general population for nearly 22 years. Playing sports in the business is an achievement for ladies since women never had the open door for an opportunity as we do now. Despite the fact that, we are as yet not acknowledged into the sports business as equivalent to a standard male, regardless we have somewhat potential to be. As indicated by Edwina Sandys, it is a history set apart by division and separation yet additionally one loaded with real achievements by female competitors and vital advances for sex equity and the strengthening of ladies. The patriarchal society exposes the social field of games by characterized the men-centric

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Back in the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo chose which gender to market to. As you can probably guess, they chose boys. Girls were left with nothing but dolls and watching boys play 8-bit basketball games. And still, people are shocked when they are beat by a girl in a video game. My best friend plays video games like crazy, and she is a girl who knows how to win fair and square.

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1059 Words | 5 Pages

Sexism in sports is a continuing problem that our women athletes have to deal with every

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Men, especially young men, who play these games also often compare their own masculinity to how it’s portrayed in the video games making them feel as if they must act like how masculinity is shown in the games. Of course not every game is responsible for this toxic masculinity mentality. Blackburn and Sharrer found that, “...studies of genre preference and game use have shown that male players tend to express a greater preference for these hardcore action, shooter, and sports games, whereas female players tend to prefer the casual puzzle, card, and social game genres…the results of numerous content

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Outside of television, males outnumber females in video games, a popular form of entertainment among teens and young adults. While the vast majority of America spends most of their leisure time watching TV, it is not the only source of entertainment. The videogame industry is becoming increasingly popular, and, like all other media, it has its impact on the people that use it. Most of the video game industry’s leading, successful mascots are males. For example, both Banjo of “Banjo Kazooie”, and Sonic of “Sonic the Hedgehog” are males.

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Sexism in sports is a wide ranged topic that many people have ignored for most of their lives. Throughout the decades, women have been tossed away and not been allowed to do so many things in their life, that men have been allowed to do. For example, decades ago, women were never allowed to hunt, be seperate from their husbands, or even play sports til the 1900’s. Their only job was to sit home and care for the kids while the men did all the dirty work. Now, our society has separated boys sports from women sports in a big way that has changed lives, with money.

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magine being in love with someone and then having that stripped away only because of social class. From the lovers point of view, all it is, is seamless love, but the government sees disrespect among the social class system. This is one of the many ways Marjane Satrapi demonstrates a perspective in not only social class, nationalism, but in the loss of innocence as well Iranian war in the 1980s. For instance, Marjane 's perspective changes from when she was a naive respectful little girl at the beginning of the novel, to an unruly, rebellious young adult towards the end. For example, this young boy is drinking alcohol, you aren’t even allowed to drink alcohol until you are 21 years of age.

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471 Words | 2 Pages

In the recent years of gaming, there’s been quite the uprise in female gamers; taking up 48% of total gamers online in 2016, compared to the 36% of female gamers in 2011. Not only is this spike because of the generally increased interest in video games and STEM field s, but also because of the many recent games that have acknowledged their female audience. Some of these games include Fallout 4, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Mass Effect: Andromeda, which allow the player to play as a woman for the main character. However, despite this increased number of female gamers and their supporters, we still see an immense number of misogynistic instances. Because of that recent change in the culture of gaming, it is now more clear than ever to see that both modern and classic video games contain countless cases of misogyny.

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