Racism and Sexism in Video Gaming Culture

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Racism and Sexism in Video Gaming Culture

Annotated Bibliography

Video games have become a crucial media despite having an initial light connotation. Today the video gaming is an industry that employs artists and engineers and produces billions of dollars in the form of art that spans interactive games to virtual communities where millions of people reside. However, being a human product, the same fears, xenophobia, and flaws show in video games with the reflection of racism, stereotypes, sexism, and hatred that people experience every day. Further, since other media like movies and television influence video gaming and misrepresent Latinos, blacks, and objectify women, video gaming culture is destined to have racism and sexism. Here is an annotated bibliography on racism and sexism in video gaming culture.

History of Video Gaming

Nickson, C. (2019, February 18). How Video Games Became Major Entertainment. Retrieved from A Technology Society: http://www.atechnologysociety.co.uk/how-video-games-became-major-entertainment.html

Nickson (2019) provides insight into how the video game industry grew. In doing so, the author begins by writing about the history of video gaming. According to Nickson (2019), video games existed in the 1960s, but anyone hardly had a computer, and computers were so large that they were strictly used by academics. Computer Space was the first arcade video game. It was released in the United States, but a table tennis game called Pong was the first game that became popular that year. Nickson (2019) posits that 1978 was the Golden Age of arcade gaming with the release of Space Invaders, a video game, followed by many imitators. Soon after, these games and similar ones became available to people as cartridges to use at home with the first game consoles in the United States.

The first popular video game was Pac-Man, which brought children into the arcades in 1980. With the invention of computers that people could use at home, video as a form of entertainment became the norm for most people in the 80s. By the late 1980s, people could play online games. Handheld devices for gaming were also brought into the same decade by Nintendo. However, it was in the 1990s that saw the take-off video gaming, especially on computers as technological advancements were made.

Thus, the 1990s saw adventure and strategy games, and the first SimCity installment, and FPS games of the first-person shooter, which are still significantly popular. Nintendo and Sega introduced consoles for video games, which saw Nintendo bringing out its Gameboy, a gaming unit that remained popular for staggeringly about 15 years. Nintendo also introduced the Nintendo 64 console. Sony also entered the market with Playstation. But it was since the beginning of the Millennium that the video gaming industry became an entertainment huge and powerful force, with Playstations from Sony, Xbox from Microsoft, and most recently, the Nintendo Wii remarkable success, which ushered the age of casual gaming. Nickson (2019) provides essential history into how video gaming chronologically and offers insight into the size of the video gaming industry today.

Hadzinsky, C. (2015). A Look into the Industry of Video Games Past, Present, and Yet to Come. CMC Senior Theses, 1-44. Retrieved from https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/842/

Hadzinsky (2015) also takes a look into the video gaming industry. He writes about the video gaming industry’s past, present, and what he contends that is yet to come. He not only provides history into video gaming but starts by writing that the people began gaming in ancient Egypt as early as 3500 BC. In doing so, the writer defines what gaming is and what draws people to gaming. He posits that gaming forces people to make decisions, work together, and compete. For this reason, Hadzinsky (2015) writes that these are the reasons why human love for gaming has made them step into the virtual world’s boundaries. This is because people are always trying to make games out of everything they do. Hadzinsky (2015) adds that since video gaming began, many forces have been pushing the video gaming industry.

Technology, innovation, and gamers have all joined forces to make video games that no one thought was possible a reality. The author writes that the reality of video gaming today did not begin with a big bang, and it was not a miracle. However, it was the birth of something different and new. According to Hadzinsky (2015), digitalization in the video gaming industry has made it possible to open a new world that is full of endless possibilities, and that anything that human beings can imagine can become a reality. The laws of the physical world have been changed, and with this, new platforms will emerge, and the internet will play a critical role in the video gaming industry. According to Hadzinsky (2015), new perspectives have been unlocked since video gaming submerges people in new and different worlds. Hadzinsky (2015) provides an essential view of the modern world that video gaming has created, helping to set the stage to discuss the racism and sexism in video gaming culture.

Gender Marketing in Video Gaming

Hess, A. (2016, December 4). A History of Sexist Video Game Marketing. Retrieved from Slate: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/female-gamers-and-masculine-marketers-polygon-s-history-of-the-sexist-selling-of-video-games.html

Hess (2016) writes that people often ask why women do not play more video games. Perhaps it is because it is not being sold to them. When video gaming began, it appeared to be friendly to couples, as was evident by the Pong video game. Slowly video gaming became hyper-masculine with the creation of the first-person shooter. However, modern gaming has been trying to become gender equitable. When video gaming first became popular in the 1970s, the video gaming industry’s primary marketing challenge was to sell similar games to both children and adults. As mentioned earlier, Pong required two players, and it was reasonable to market it to couples in bars, then Atari consoles made it possible to market it to families. Tapper was marketed initially as Budweiser Tapper in bars.

It required those who played to take the role of customers and bartender. Soon after, the video gaming industry experienced a recession, and the financial pressures that companies in the gaming industry faced forced them to approach marketing differently. Knowing that their funding was limited, these companies could not target everyone in their marketing. The gaming companies needed to have brands that were specific and differentiated that would play into where they would be running their advertisements and the kind of ads they would run. Having a niche and target market would make it easier for them to have succinct conversations with their target audience without spending a lot of money while trying to reach every audience. For this reason, the gaming industry put all its effort into marketing to boys.

Things got worse from there, as seen in a 1998 Playstation ad. In the ad, a cast of characters in a video game ambush Brad, a target customer in a movie theatre and forces him to choose between being whipped by his girlfriend and playing games considered masculine. This marketing approach became a self-fulling prophecy as boys were raised to be playing video games, and they expressed masculinity through playing video games. Thus, when these boys became adults, they kept playing. It is important to note that women enjoyed playing video games, but the video gaming industry failed to capitalize on the interest that women had on playing video games. Marketers of video games fail to target women because targeting men proved successful. Marketers in most industries only look beyond their existing target markets only when the market has been saturated.

Jayanth, M. (2015, September 8). 52% of gamers are women – but the industry doesn’t know it. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-percent-people-playing-games-women-industry-doesnt-know

Jayanth (2015) reveals that about 52 percent of the gaming audience is comprised of women, showing that the majority of people playing video games are women. Jayanth (2015) contends that this should not surprise anyone because, since the inception of video gaming, women hardly been an insignificant minority. Women have always played video games, and women have mostly driven growth in the video gaming industry as they make up a substantial consumer base. However, Jayanth (2015) posits that the stereotype that games are a pastime for men and adolescent boys continues to endure. According to Jayanth (2015), this stereotype is perpetuated by the aggressive video game marketing of big companies in the video gaming industry. Jayanth (2015) adds that while part of mainstream culture today is made up of gaming, most of the companies in the video gaming industry still do not appreciate this fact. Not only do video gaming fail to represent women, but women in gaming are also still hardly visible. This is because men and boys are still targeted more by video game marketers.

Sexism in Video Gaming Culture

Kirkpatrick, G. (2016). How gaming became sexist: a study of UK gaming magazines 1981–1995. Media, Culture & Society, 8(3), 103-113. doi:10.1177/0163443716646177

Kirkpatrick (2016) contends that video gaming was not originally intended to be sexist. It became sexist because it was codified as an exclusive male practice as moved away from the rest of the computer culture that rapidly burgeoned in the 1980s. The article traces the development of gender bias in gaming by analyzing gaming magazines that were published from 1981 to 1995 in the United Kingdom. In the early years of video gaming, these magazines painted a picture that reflected gender issues. These publications were also concerned about including female participants in video games.

However, from the late 1980s, computer games began changing their rhetoric framing, and gamer and gaming performance started to become gender-exclusive increasingly and focused on reinforcing stereotypical masculine values, although much of the discourse had an ironic and humorous inflection. Kirkpatrick (2016) presented this as a gaming discourse’s gender-biased articulation. Further, instead of perceiving gendering in video gaming culture as something that was inherited from previous activities and games, Kirkpatrick (2016) contends that the video gaming industry’s political economy from the mid-1980s created conditions that made video gaming culture to be viewed as exclusively masculine.

Easpaig, B. G. (2019). An Exploratory Study of Sexism in Online Gaming Communities: Mapping Contested Digital Terrain. Community Psychology in Global Perspective, 4(2), 119-135. Retrieved from https://research-management.mq.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/93946828/Publisher_version_open_access_.pdf

According to Easpaig (2019), awareness has been emerging of women participating in online gaming and its culture. However, women may be experiencing significant challenges in claiming the ‘gamer identity’ in digital domains that are perceived to be masculine, spaces where activists, players, and campaigners can be hostile. Easpaig (2019) posits that video gaming is increasingly becoming synonymous with sexism in public discourse, with media reporting that female gamers and people who voice concerns sexism being harassed. These issues have a gendered dimension that tends to be disputed fiercely because online spaces have a competing understanding of the problems. Easpaig (2019) combined grounded theory and network analysis to produce an exploration that is contextualized of how sexism is understood in different online spaces.

According to Easpaig (2019), sexism in video gaming culture is widely reported, and it manifest as harassment based on gender, which is broadly documented in scholarship and the media. Here, harassment is understood to be about enacting behaviors that are unwanted such as physical, verbal, and text-based, that adversely impact people and often include sexual remarks. Easpaig (2019) writes that this has resulted in a problematic understanding of video gaming culture. This is compounded by cases where people who voice their concerns about sexism in video gaming receive backlash and threats. Research efforts and media have placed more emphasis on gender-based harassment in online multiplayer games, online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, and multiplayer first-person games such as ‘Halo 3.’ These games enable many players from different geographic locations to interact with each other via the internet in real-time. These types of gaming allow players to communicate with each other traditionally through commands that are pre-designated, text, and voice chats.

Easpaig (2019) asserts that communities that are associated with gaming environments of this kind are the focus of many investigations, and consistent with reports from the media, many scholars have identified the presence of what is known as flaming abuse in gaming environments. Flaming abuse involves comments that are sexually derogatory and directed at female gamers. Studies have found when one speaks with a feminine voice in the game, ‘Halo 3,’ negative comments that are elicited are three times more than when using a male voice, regardless of how the player performs.

Further, the video gaming world uses technology that makes it possible to obscure, express, or conceal gender identity. Hiding gender is a common strategy for female players to avoid being harassed. Research that looked into the experiences and perceptions of sexism in World of Warcraft found that female participants let other gamers to assume that they were men and pretend that they were not able to participate in voice chat because of faults in their devices. Easpaig (2019) notes that it is always assumed that the player in male unless specified. The presumption is irrespective of the body or identity of the player in real life. This is why Easpaig (2019) focused on gender perceptions and the issues that come up based on gender rather than the player’s gender offline or outside the gaming environment.

Bègue, L., Sarda, E., Gentile, D. A., Bry, C., & Roché, S. (2017). Video Games Exposure and Sexism in a Representative Sample of Adolescents. Frontiers in Psychology, 1-8. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00466/full

According to Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017), video gaming culture is full of stereotypes of women, and their contents may lead to sexism. The purpose of the study by Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017) was to evaluate the relationship between sexism and exposure to video games. The study aimed to measure the strength of the association when two other well-studied and significant sexism sources. A sample of over 13,000 French teenagers aged between 11 and 19 years participated. They completed a survey that measured weekly television and video game exposure, sexist attitudes towards women, and religiosity. Controlling for socioeconomic level and gender, the study revealed that exposure to video games and religiosity were both associated with sexism.

According to Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017), the media is a powerful agent for socializing today. Video games have become one of the most popular media for entertainment in the world. In 2015, video games had a global market of over 90 billion dollars, and one of the reasons for the popularity of video games may be because it appeals to masculinity. Sales are highest in mature games that sexually depict female characters, and they do not play significant roles in video games. (Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché, 2017) posits that the value and depiction granted to female characters are biased in conventional forms of media such as magazines, TV, and children’s books, and there is no exception with new media such as video games. It has been argued that women are blatantly represented in a sexist way in video games today.

However, while there is proof of bias depictions in video gaming culture showing women as kidnapped princesses that need to be saved, sex objects to use or win passive beings, and the impact of this stereotyping recorded, the effect of gender-based stereotype against women is still debated despite preliminary experimental studies showing that if affects stereotypes of women by gamers. Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017) used a representative sample of teenagers to analyze the relationship between exposure to video games and the endorsement of attitudes considered sexist toward women.

The study also compared the association to two other well-studies and consequential effects on sexist attitudes, as mentioned above. The first is exposure to television, which has been shown to be a critical factor that is involved in the sexist portrayal of women. As mentioned above, the other important factor is religiosity, which significantly influences beliefs in stereotypes of gender roles. The introduction of the significant determinants of sexism provided the study with the chance to have an embedded and precise perspective of the specific link between exposure to video games and sexism among teenagers.

According to Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017), since origins of video gaming, they have tended to depict women as characters that holding instrumental or passive roles or needing help. Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017) adds that in video gaming magazines, over 80 percent of female characters are depicted according to three categories: scantily dressed, a vision of beauty, and sexualized and over 25 percent of female characters fit in all the above three categories. While it seems that women are underrepresented in video gaming culture in general, they are frequently depicted as beings that are attractive, sex objects, in ways that are sexually suggestive.

Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017) references a study that analyzed top-selling games, that demonstrated that in over 25 percent of the games, women were portrayed as sex objects. Other content analysis studies revealed that women are usually displayed with clothes that are revealing or partially nude. For instance, in an analysis of 47 games that were randomly selected, female characters, it was likely that female characters would wear clothing that were low-cut and bare arms than male characters. Furthermore, male characters have normal size bodies in video games compared to the sizes of adults in real life, while female characters are portrayed as thinner. (Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché, 2017) writes that according to social cognitive theory, the world’s symbolic representation is learned through being exposed to models. People depend on such structures that are acquired to interact with and perceive others.

Advancements in media psychology attempt to show that the female body’s digital representation is not just an innocent succession of polychromatic polygons that are entertaining on a screen, but can alter the behaviors and attitudes of users offline. Previous theoretical studies also suggest that users are taught schemas that are long-term about gender, and that the schemas can impact everyday interactions in ways that are potentially detrimental to women. Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017) contends that following the cultivation theory, repeated media content exposure can influence how social realities are understood and perceived. People who play video games may model their beliefs about gender roles on the distorted reality that video games present.

Relevant to the study by Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017), given that video gaming culture has many instances of sexist and misogynistic depictions of women, the study hypothesized that when people spend more time playing video games, they will most likely have sexist attitudes. Since video games are created for frequent play and are innately interactive, they make it possible to have distributed and repeated learning about gender roles that may have effects that endure. Characters in video games can function as gender socialization agents among teenagers, and the exposure amount to video games can be used to predict gender stereotypes endorsement. According to Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017), some studies have also contended that this prediction holds. Other experimental studies demonstrated that sexualized video games have a short-term impact on the sexist attitudes of people.

These studies show that when one plays video games that are sexualized for a few minutes, between 10 to 20 minutes, it promotes the likelihood of men to back gender stereotypes, increases sexism, and increases the endorsement of sexual harassment by men. Bègue, Sarda, Gentile, Bry, & Roché (2017) concluded that exposure to video games was linked to sexism when exposure to television, religiosity, and other significant factors were controlled. The results of the study suggested that traditional sources of influence or religiosity and new media may share a few similar attributes of sexism.

Racism in Video Gaming Culture

Deskins, T. G. (2018). Stereotypes in Video Games and How They Perpetuate Prejudice. McNair Scholars Research Journal, 6(1), 19-36. Retrieved from https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=mcnair

The primary research question in this study explored the virtual space. It looked specifically at the racism networks that exist due to how games a substantial amount of space is occupied by video gaming. Deskins (2018) broke his findings into chapters, each dealing with a specific feature of how racism in video gaming is being perpetuated, while also making it possible to have an interconnected approach that can accommodate the networked structures of these types of video games. The general topics that are addressed by Deskins (2018) include how racism exists online, how it can virally spread both offline and online, and those responsible for the racism.

Stemming from the above questions, Deskins (2018) not only manages to confront the role of the developer and the player in the creation of racism but also exposes the agents that permit racism in video gaming to function in a unique space. Space where racism can openly saturate video games while maintaining a discreet view to people who are actively involved. The concern in this study is that video gaming allows racism to be widely distributed, while also creating a system of accountability that is unstable. That said, Deskins (2018) writes about racist griefing in video games and defines it as the process whereby players try to intimidate opponents using racially derogatory language. This type of racially derogatory language is usually viewed as a humorous communication that reveals how absurd racism is while evoking entertainment and competition.

Deskins (2018) posits that griefing in video gaming is the same as trash-talking to opponents that may happen in other sports such as basketball or football. In video gaming, griefing happens through online chats and interactions, and griefing becomes graphically and vividly racist. Nevertheless, the effect of racist griefing in video games and the intentions of those who partake in it is a subject that is difficult to understand. (Deskins, 2018) ask whether it is a way in which systemic racism is disseminated or if it is linked to a post-racial sensibility, where online racism is synonymous with humor.

Zadrozny, B. (2017, July 12). Can a Video Game Make You Racist? New Study Says Yes. Retrieved from The Daily Beast: https://www.thedailybeast.com/can-a-video-game-make-you-racist-new-study-says-yes

According to Zadrozny (2017), although there is no clear evidence that video gaming may make one an awful person, studies have indicated that video games are a powerful tool that can make one aggressive, unempathetic, and a fat cheater with no self-control. (Zadrozny, 2017) cites a study that demonstrated that while people who played video games that are violent with a black avatar were not only more aggressive in general than when they played with a white avatar, but they also left the video game with negative stereotypes. These negative stereotypes included the belief that black people are more violent.

In the study cited by Zadrozny (2017), 126 white participants, 60 percent male, were asked to play a video game with an avatar that was randomly assigned for 20 minutes. The build and clothing were consistent, but the white avatar was given a haircut that was conservative while the black one was given an inner-city accent and cornrows.

The participants were then given an objective. They were required to either break out of prison, kill any guard that was in the way, or find a church and try not to harm anyone. The participants were then asked questions that evaluated their attitudes about black people and found that the participants who played with black avatar had stronger negative perceptions. According to the study, taking the view of someone who belonged in a minority group is viewed as a good sign and a way of invoking empathy. However, Zadrozny (2017) concludes that people are fed a diet by media that depict black people as violent. For this reason, white people do not have a realistic view of black people.

Conclusion

The contemporary society is haunted by persistent racism, inequality, and gender stereotyping. Housing, healthcare, poverty rates, wage rates, and even video gaming all show that there are disparities between gender and race. Although gaming provides playful approaches to serious subjects and allows for intervention to reach many people quickly, it provides a space in which real-world emotions, commitments, and objects do not have the precise meaning that they do in people’s ordinary lives. That said, this paper provides detailed research on the existence of racism and sexism in video gaming culture. As mentioned earlier, However, being a human product, the same fears, xenophobia, and flaws show in video games with the reflection of racism, stereotypes, sexism, and hatred that people experience every day. Further, since other media like movies and television influence video gaming and misrepresent Latinos, blacks, and objectify women, video gaming culture is destined to have racism and sexism.

References