This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
A short introduction: Hello friends! I have not written an article for over a year. Life gets in the way, and writing like this is an activity that I find pleasure in. However, I also find pleasure in actually playing videogames, or hanging with my wife, or playing with the dog. On top of that, I am working at an independant videogame store and going to university full time. So, unfortunately, obsessing over writing for the internet has taken a back seat to a myriad of other things–primarily schoolwork.
Hope is not lost, however! I am taking an Introduction to Women's Studies course, and although I consider myself a feminist I have found most of the plays and articles the course is focusing on to be pretentious failures. What do I know? I don't really know, but I know what I like.
Anyway, that is neither here nor there. The point is, this course also has a few assignments that are very lax in terms of direction. I find that frustrating, but if the professor is not going to give me direction I suppose I will write about my passion–good grades be damned!
So, submitted for the approval of the Bitmob community, I have written a paper regarding gender ideology in the modern videogame. The game I chose is not exactly modern-modern (Fallout 3), but close enough. Keep in mind, I was only given 750 words to write this paper, and I mainly focused on the aspect of character creation. Also, I have not actually sat down and played the game for quite awhile so I assume there are some factual errors.
Lastly, don't go expecting any purdy pictures for your edification. This is the dull, boring, and quite unfortunate writing of a fouth year English/Philosophy student. It's really insufferable, I must say.
So, who is ready to get DULL AND PEDANTIIIIIIIC?!
On to the essay.
Gender Ideology are the set of beliefs, values, or ideas that society holds about men and women and how they are expected to act, appear, or think. Historically, videogames have been rightfully criticized for its depiction of males and females in regards to perpetuating stereotypes and enforcing traditional gender ideals. However, as the medium grows older (and necessarily matures with the aging audience) modern North American and European videogames are showing a greater diversity in representations of what it means to be male or female. While this is not true of every game released today—just as it is not true for every film or book—the amount of titles released from the game industry with more progressive outlooks on gender are on the rise.
In this essay, I will be focusing on a genre of contemporary videogame created in North America or Europe that contain progressive representations of gender. I am focusing on these regions because although Japan is heavily influential to the game industry (though this influence has been waning dramatically) the cultural differences between eastern and western gender ideology would be far too complex to explain here. More specifically, I am focusing on the popular and wide-spread genre of the open world role-playing game using the example of the game Fallout 3.
The open world role playing game is typified by a protagonist that is created by the player as opposed to a pre-set one created by the developers; as well as an environment and plot that are malleable depending on the decisions made by the player. There are key plot points that will inevitably be discovered by all players, but often these points can have multiple outcomes. Fallout 3 is a perfect example of this, which reached a wide audience and allowed for a large variety of protagonists to be created. This is especially relevant as it allows the player to experiment with gender traits that defy the norm or stereotype—such as creating a male character more likely to talk his way out of a fight than resort to violence, or a female character that is brutally strong and dressed head to toe in heavy (non-revealing) armour. In fact, when choosing the sex of your character it has no effect on the intelligence, or strength, or agility of your character; women are not automatically more intelligent, nor men automatically stronger.
With few exceptions during the majority of Fallout 3 (a game that can take up to 100 hours to complete), the biological sex of your character does not matter–or is not acknowledged much by the plot or characters in the story. While this may be a progressive way of viewing sex as an arbitrary assignment that is not relevant to how a person should be treated, it also fails to raise important questions about how gender affects people in reality. Despite this, as a means of allowing the player to explore different gender ideals, Fallout 3 (as well as the majority of modern open-world role playing games) is a success. It offers freedom for both male and female characters to have a wide degree of traditional masculine and/or feminine traits depending on how the player wishes to play the game. This allows for experimentation and twisting of the common gender ideology without punishment to the player, as success in the game is possible through a variety of methods—regardless if the protagonist is male or female. Similarly, while the game has little explicit sexual content, the character created by the player has no restrictions on whether they are heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.
Fallout 3 (and other similar games in the open world role-playing game genre) do not make overt statements about how gender ideology affects the game player or society. However, I believe that the more subtle statement that biological sex or sexual identity has no bearing on the skills, personality or natural ability of a person is far more effective at damaging harmful and pervasive gender ideologies than the common trope of an over-sexualized “strong female character”, such as Rayne in the BloodRayne series of games. While the traditional ideology regarding males and females are still pervasive in videogames (as well as films or books), the evidence of positive and progressive change from both game developers and players in on the rise.
God, that was boring wasn't it? I don't actually expect a grade, but I welcome opinions on the subject of the essay. To be frank, I suspect it is acceptable for school but not quite acceptable for the internet. Funny as that is sometimes.