Female gamers have been seen as sexual figures within the gaming community, but that is not true.
Female gamers, for the most part, aren’t sexual figures; female gamers are simply gamers like anyone else. When people think of a female gamer, they automatically think of the stereotype. And that is to be an attractive female that always plays Call of Duty.
That’s only a stereotype; for the most part female gamers are just like guys. They play all types of video games from all different types of genres. While some of these girls may be attractive, others might not just like some guy gamers out there and are also as geeky as any male.
The fact that most guys out there see a girl gamer as a sexual figure and a Call of Duty junkie is insulting to all female gamers out there. It’s also insulting the way the video game industry sees its female audience.
The way some video games portray women is aggravating. They create the women with revealing clothes and some sort of sexual look. For example, the game “Lollipop Chainsaw” depicts a young attractive blonde cheerleader that mows down zombies with a chainsaw.
If you were to see this character you would see that it degrades females in a way that only depicts them as sexual figures and nothing else.
It is unfortunate that the gaming industry views women like this, but there is some hope.
Over the past couple of years, different developers have illustrated a variety of new female characters. These characters are seen as strong women who fight for honor and respect, but still show compassion that women have toward others.
An example of one these strong female characters is the female Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy.
She is portrayed as a strong and courageous leader who defends the galaxy from utter annihilation. She also saves a variety of different alien races from extinction and helps the different races to compromise so they can work together to fight off an invasion of evil synthetics that are trying to kill off the organic species.
It’s great to see this because it doesn’t deteriorate women from playing video games. In a way it gives females a voice within the video game industry.
If video game developers keep portraying strong women within video games, the female audience will only grow and it will destroy the stereotype we have toward female gamers. Not only that, but advertising needs to be neutral so that way more women will be pulled it to the great entertainment medium which is video games.
