On Sexuality in Video Games And Our Preconceived Notions of It As Male Designers

To many of us it's painfully clear that there's an incredible lack of diversity among certain fields of study at a collegiate level and the three of note for this blog post happen to be: engineering, programming, and video game study & design. This manifests as classrooms generally filled with 90%+ males but it also has different effects as well on things like student clubs and also, if only subtly, our preconceived notions of what women are interested in vs. what we think women should be interested in. (hint: they should be the same)

Source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/start.cfm

I don't think most men whose classes are filled predominantly with men would agree they prefer them that way however it is the scenario we find ourselves in frequently (again, when in the above fields of study). The question then becomes how does that affect both our view of sex and women in general? The answer is far from simple because few classes, if any, with CS 108 as the exception, even bring the topic up. And what happens with topics that don't get brought up? We reinforce our own preconceived notions of them inside our head and continue to go down paths which can be incredibly unhealthy to develop totally incorrect conclusions and hold them until correctly challenged.

Therefore it is rather enlightening to bring up this topic once and for all and not only see the ways in which a lack of femininity in both certain academic and professional settings changes our perspective on things but to also hear from women themselves who are in the minority in these settings. And this was the case with our most recent CS 108 class: we unabashedly brought up the topic of sex in video games and all the incorrect ways a male-dominated industry represents, or more accurately misrepresents, women.


We talked at length about stereotypical female characters which tend to dominate the video game industry and all the ways they are physically altered from equivalent male characters in order to stress their "femininity" as if in this incredibly complex age with multiple scales upon which to interpret one's own gender or sexuality, that giving a character a bow on their head would magically make them a "female" or "feminine". Not only is this stupid in a superficial manner and also a huge cop out by designers but it's also an insult to any women who doesn't think a character with a bow on its head is an archetypical model of them.

All the ways in which pac man developers thought a "woman" needed to be differentiated:

Source: http://n7ugc.disney.go.com/item/Golden7934/199_2gs11k6X4Tn100001004wQo0-h-9782c5-as/Pacman%20and%20Mrs.%20Pacman__600_450_q50.jpg

I think there are multiple reasons why video game designers do the ridiculous things they do in order to feminize (is that a word?) characters and none of them are good. They all stem from the fact that women just don't have enough presence in the video game industry either as players, programmers, or designers. And again, it's not like us video game playing men are sitting here wishing it was this way. It's merely the scenario we find ourselves in. But it does affect us. And the ways it affects us are quite simple: we make terrible decisions about how to represent women merely because we aren't women ourselves and we don't have enough input from them in the first place. We could hardly call ourselves experts on the incredibly complex subject of being a female. The phrase "out of sight, out of mind" comes to mind when contemplating this problem and why it exists.

The solution I feel then is two fold. Men should take a more active approach to correctly representing any character or characters in a more fair way based on sex and try not to typify them in physical, outdated, or stereotypical ways like adding bows to their heads or huge breasts to their chest but to consider that life is nearly a perfect mix of 50/50 male:female and thus women deserve not only equal representation but also equal depth when it comes to characters and their development or backstory. This isn't even purely an argument from fairness and sexual equality: shallow characters suck no matter what sex they are. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for any of these crappy characters in the future that's for sure.

I'll end with one of my more favorite female characters I've played in recent memory: Mona Sax from the Max Payne series. She's not perfect, even sexualized a bit heavily at points, but her and Max Payne, the main character, do develop a relationship based on mutual respect and acknowledgement. While Max might get more screen time as the main character, he isn't necessarily above her in any way. Mona's even using the bigger gun! She's using a desert eagle while Max's gun of choice is a 9mm Beretta:

Source: Max Payne 1. Remedy Games. http://remedygames.com/