Sexism In Video Games

Sexism in video games is something that has been mentioned a lot recently, but is it really as rife as is claimed? 

Sexism In Games and Their Characters

Let's face it, there aren't enough female characters in video games, in fact out of all of the characters from the top 25 best-selling games of last year only 4% were women. On top of that, the ones that do exist are too often over-sexualised, boring, and unimportant. There also aren't enough games that offer the option of playing as a woman. All in all, games themselves can be pretty sexist. Can't they? Let's compare a sinner that calls itself a Saint to a game that's heralded for it's positive portrayal of women and contains some of the best female characters out there.

 Saints Row

Saints Row could be considered one of the most sexist video games there is, for it's overly-sexualised women. After all, this is the game that brought us adjustable sliders for setting our character's breast size. This is the game that lets us dress up in nipple tassels, a thong, and suspenders and watch those adjustable boobies bounce. The game also puts strippers in our houses, has us walking into hookers on the street, and in the third installment it introduced us to the lovely Zimos, a pimp who never seems to be far from a half-naked woman or twelve.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is a series that no one can accuse of being sexist - which is exactly why I've included it. BioWare's masterpiece gave us an all-female alien race (who just happen to be the richest, most advanced and most powerful race in the Mass Effect Universe), it gave us multiple strong and powerful female characters and it gave us the option of a female main character, FemShep as she came to be known, who is now considered one of the best female video game characters out there. In fact, FemShep grew to be so popular that there was a campaign for BioWare to make a trailer for Mass Effect 3 featuring FemShep rather than the default male Shepard featured in the others, and it resulted in this:

 Most importantly, the Mass Effect series has a huge amount of female fans, far more than just about any other game of it's kind. All in all, it looks like Mass Effect is one of the least sexist games out there, so what's the difference?

The President vs. FemShep

Saints Row is the only urban sandbox game to allow a FEMALE player-character. That's a female leader; a female president; a woman saving the world. And not only does the game allow you to play as a woman, it actually encourages you to do so. There's an achievement, one of those super-must-have-them-all-shinies, that's only obtainable by playing as both genders. In it's own words, Saints Row is an equal opportunities offender. Although you can dress President Mass Murderer up in all manner of lewd outfits, you can do that to characters of both genders - and personally I think it's much more humiliating to dress a man up in tiny pink panties and make him run around an imaginary city than it is to do that to a woman.

Mass Effect introduced what has become one of the most iconic female figures in gaming. Her face chosen by fans, her voice provided by the insanely talented Jennifer Hale, her fate decided by you; it's hard to deny that FemShep is awesome. So just how popular is she? Well, uh...18% of players choose her. That's less than one in five. And the reasons? Yes, for some players it's about being a woman, but for a lot it's down to either preferring Jennifer Hale's acting to Mark Meer's male Shepard, or a fairly sexist "FemShep's ass is nicer to look at." So it would appear that FemShep's successes aren't down to the romantic idea that she empowers women. 

But what about the rest of the women?

The Ladies of Saints Row

(L-R That's Shaundi, Asha, Viola & Kinzie)

Let's face it, they look like a bunch of strippers. And that's putting it politely. Except:

Asha is an MI6 agent. She's strong, intelligent, ten steps ahead of everyone else and takes crap from no one.

Viola has a masters degree in economics.

Kinzie is a computer genius and former FBI agent who saves the lives of the entire gang multiple times. She also much prefers a hoodie and jeans to skirts, heels, low-cut tops...heck, even make-up. The picture I used above is the only time in the two games that she appears in where she wears anything 'sexual'.

Shaundi...well. Shaundi is well known in-game for sleeping around. A LOT. Shaundi also went from being the relaxed hippy chick on the right to the surgically-enhanced supermodel on the left (a move that upset a lot of fans). That being said, like the rest of the women she's strong, independent and intelligent, in addition to being an incredibly loyal friend.




None of the women in Saints Row are beta personalities (people who will follow but not lead) and none of them are made a mockery of. Most importantly, they are significant to the story - too many games have female characters that feel like token women, only there so the developers can say, "But we had a woman in it!"

The Ladies of Mass Effect

Mass Effect has some incredible female characters, something you don't see very often, and is noted for it's positive portrayal of women. It's not like any of these characters have been over-sexualised in any way, is it? It's not like Samara (the lovely and formidable blue lady in red) is wearing an incredibly low-cut top, or any of the girls are wearing skin-tight outfits? I

   mean, Jack is always fully-dressed.

Nice belts!

And you can't receive a lap dance from a member of that all-powerful female race I mentioned earlier...

...and their honoured advisors certainly don't walk around with their boobs virtually hanging out.

In fact, the ladies of Mass Effect aren't any less sexualised than the ladies of Saints Row, so why does the former get praised while the latter gets judged? Is it ok for a game to be a bit sexist as long as it wraps it all up in a nice bow? Are we allowing our perceptions to be skewed because we expect some games to be more or less sexist than others? 

Why Don't Women Play 'Hardcore' Games?

Although the majority of gamers are now women, most of those are playing Facebook or mobile games. When it comes to 'hardcore' games such as FPS's, women are a minority, and that it's time the industry did something about it. More needs to be done to attract and accommodate female gamers, right?

I have a ten year old daughter who loves gaming, so I asked her a couple of questions. I started by asking her if she thinks that girls playing video games is weird, and if the boys at her school think that girls playing games is weird. Her answers to both questions were a big resounding no. Then I asked what she would do if a boy told her that girls shouldn't play games or were any worse at games than boys are just because they're girls, and her answer made me laugh so hard I gave up on my informal interview: "I'd punch them in the face." 

The reason I did this? Because it proves that being a female gamer really isn't a big deal - this is something we're led to believe, not unlike what Always proved with their #LikeAGirl ad. Therefore over-reacting to female gamers differently is, quite frankly, pointless and nothing needs to be done to accommodate female gamers. We don't need special attentions to be given, because we're no different to male gamers. Maybe the reason that women are less likely to play hardcore games than men is just that women are less likely to want to play them; my best friend doesn't play The Sims instead of Call Of Duty because she feels like she should, it's because it's what she wants.

But What About The Ones Who Do Play?

Studies like this show that women apparently receive a lot of abuse while playing online multiplayers. There's even an entire website dedicated to snapshots of sexist messages received by female gamers. However, it's often made out as though women are specifically targeted when actually gamers trash-talk each other all the time. Additionally, it's hard to blame a whole group of people for something that's only being committed by a minority. Although neither of these points justify (or are intended to try and justify) the use of sexism it does prove that gamers aren't as inherently sexist as the world is being told.

As a woman who has spent more time on these than is healthy, I have NEVER been on the receiving end of any gender-based harassment, or witnessed it being used towards someone else. I have never felt the need to hide my gender. In fact, when revealing my gender I've never been met with any response other than a positive one. So why, if gender bias is as common as we are led to believe, have I never once witnessed or been subjected to it? Is this another area where we could be seeing sexism where it doesn't really exist, or exaggerating it's severity? For example, do we assume that if a male gamer calls a female gamer a 'bitch' then he's being sexist, and if so, would we make that assumption if he had said it to a man instead? Similarly, was I being sexist the countless times I yelled "You absolute (insert string of expletives here) bitch!" at the screen after dying at the hands of a male gamer?

(Wait, did I say countless times? Because I never die...honest... )

Rant Over 

While different people will have different experiences and different opinions, in mine gaming and gamers aren't sexist. While a lot of games have a long way to go in creating good female characters that actually feel valued (I'm looking at you, GTA), or in creating female player-characters (*cough*Assassin's Creed*cough*) the industry overall isn't necessarily in as bad of a situation as we are often told that it is.