Video games are the best form of art. Videos games can be as beautiful as any painting, or they can have better stories and plots than any movie. They also offer some element of control over what the character does.
While video games are the superior art form there are some negatives.
Video games generally treat women as objects. The industry considers women gamers to be a minority meaning that games are generally marketed towards men. This often leads to women being sexualized and objectified.
Female characters are often drawn with overly voluptuous busts or given armor that is unnecessarily flattering. They are basically drawn to entice or seduce male players.
When gaming companies are overly dependent on the sexuality of a character, they are generally under developed personality wise. They come off as seducers and there is so much more that could be done with a character.
Furthermore, this is unfair to players because it poisons their mind and gives them a false reality. The player then has it in their mind that women should look like characters from a game, but it is so unrealistic.
While this image is unhealthy for male players, it is unfair for female players. It would be easy for a female player to compare herself to an unrealistic idea of what women should look like.
According to the Washington Post, men make up 52 percent of the gaming community with women being the remaining 48 percent. However, New Media and Society published a study that shows that 85 percent of characters that are playable are male.
Aside from being over sexualized, women are an underrepresented minority in the gaming industry. A favorite female character was introduced rather wonderfully.
Introduced in 1986, Samus Aran is the protagonist of “Metroid”. This character was always treated properly because when she was introduced the player was completely unaware that the protagonist was a woman. The character was covered head to toe in armor that was realistic for the missions.
Samus could be strong and brave and the player could relate because they believed that she could be just like them. This character was not subjected to being overly sexualized because no one knew that the character was a girl.
Samus was the best female character because she had a personality that was developed and did not rely on the fact that she was a woman.
The selling point of the game was that it was a fun game and the main protagonist just so happened to be a woman.
“Tomb Raider” was a game that focused on that the fact that the main character was a girl and in the beginning that was the entire selling point.
A female protagonist that young men were excited about because she had big breasts and young girls were happy about this game because she was a woman.
Lara Croft wore tight shorts and a bra in the jungle. The outfit was only to make the character sexier and more marketable to young boys. Her game also had a few hidden Easter eggs where the player could find Lara’s bathing suit and make her finish the game in that.
Fortunately, the game has been rebooted giving the franchise new life and Lara Croft a second chance. In this new reboot, her attire is more appropriate, and the character looks more like what a woman would look like in the real world rather than a character created from the imagination of a thirteen-year-old who just hit puberty.
Of course, as the years go by, women are being represented in video games more and more. “The Last Of Us” was full of strong female characters. This game allows the player to control Ellie who is a fourteen-year-old girl.
While the game does not focus on making the female characters hot or dressing them like concubines on a scorching day, it allows players to feel their struggle and pain through immersive storytelling.
The game reels gamers in to these characters through their strength and them overcoming their personal struggle and women do that daily.
They use more than their bodies to cope with the struggles of everyday life and it would be appreciated if that would be reflected in the games that are produced.
From being objectified in video games to slowly, but surely, on their way to taking over the gaming world, women have come a long way, but there is still so much more to go until they finally reach the long awaited finish line.
