The Controversy Of Sexism In Gaming

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

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