Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Gender Bending in Gaming
One missing issue from our readings--and I'm not sure if it's because it just wasn't an issue in when they were written --is the idea of gender bending in gaming. A lot of players (especially in online games and RPGs) purposely portray characters of the opposite sex: guys do it so that other characters go easier on them and girls do it for the opposite reason. It reminds me of the bit in one of this week's articles that explained why guys would choose to use a female alias in a chat room: they do it to attract sexual attention, and girls do it for the opposite reason. In any case, portraying the opposite sex in gaming is more than taking an alias, it's like that kid Jarish said, "you ARE Pac-Man" (my emphasis). The participant isn't just pretending to converse as someone else, he or she is actively engaged in BEING someone else while they play. It's not quite the same thing today as it was when a player controlled Ms. Pac-Man; in todays games the player can control every aspect of the character's appearance, from hair style and facial features to the kind of undergarments they wear beneath their armor. (My husband creates hauntingly beautiful female characters for the game Guild Wars--I'll have to ask him about it!) I'd like to see a good (and recent) study done about gender and gaming.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think it's an issue that players have control over what their characters look like yet their characters frequently end up fitting very strict gender stereotypes. When players take on the persona or appearance of the opposite sex, they frequently do so in a way that projects a particular and viciously patriarchal and contradictory definition of what "gender" is. Injecting yourself into the persona of the game is a kind of dissembodiement, and it is terrifying that once the material body is removed all that is left is an oppressive conformity to ideas of gender established by oppresive and contradictory institutions.
Post a Comment