Gender and VideogamesDr Ewan Kirkland

BCUC

Videogames are an extremely masculine medium

                             

 

overwhelming masculinity of the implied game player

male heroes rescuing helpless females

sexualised representation of female characters

Soul Calibre

Dead or Alive

Catwoman

Tomb Raider heroine Lara Croft

Donkey Kong

Shadow of Colossus

Vewtiful Joe

Cold Fear

SH4

Mario

Sonic

Dante

Grand Theft Auto

                 

  

Canis Canem Edit

Gameplay

‘Beating the prostitute, as with other aspects of the game, ties into dominant notions of masculinity and its representation, an aspect of the game that can’t be denied- even if it is contextualised in terms of a supposedly bygone retro-masculinity. The ‘70s drug culture/gangster underworld context operates to sanction the player (of whatever gender) into doing what would be, in reality, for most, unconscionable.’

Can you think of any game titles which presume a female or more feminine gamer?

How does this potentially impact of female gamers, and the female gaming experience?

In what ways does GTA, CEE, or any other videogame presume the player is a heterosexual male?

Active-male-rescue-helpless-female structure

Maximo

How relevant are issues such as narrative or visual design when you play a videogame?

What aspects of the gaming experience are not considered in concentrating on such aspects?

What are the limitations of focusing only on the visual and narrative aspects of gaming?

Context

Gender Construction

Gender Representation

Gameplay

Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Pat Harrigan (eds) (2004) First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: The MIT Press

Barry Atkins (2003) More than a game: The computer game as fictional form Manchester & NY: Manchester UP

Justine Cassell & Henry Jenkins (eds) (1999) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: The MIT Press

Geoff King & Tanya Krzywinska (2006) Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms & Contexts London, New York: IB Tauris

Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn & Gareth Schott (2006) Computer Games: Text, Narrative, Play Cambridge & Malden (USA): Polity Press

game designers

social scientists

media analysts

Narratology / Ludology

narrative or storytelling aspects

Narratologists:

Geoff King & Tania Krywinska (eds) (2002) Screenplay: cinema/videogames/interfaces London & New York: Wallflower Press

traditional forms of audiovisual and narrative media

media texts

games: chess, tag, hide and seek

Ludologists:

criticising the assumptions, arguments and methods of narratologists

rules, structure, formalism

Narratologists don’t understand games

Ludologists v Narratologists:

Narratologist, in emphasising videogames’ similarity to film, television, literature, ignore what makes games games

Narratologists want to reduce games to films

Representation

identification

representation

•history

•personality

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)

•photo-realistic

•gender, class, ethnicity

character:

cinematic

Does Lara Croft provide voyeuristic pleasure for heterosexual males

Or does the male videogame player playing Lara Croft become feminised through playing as a female character?

Does Lara Croft provide voyeuristic pleasure for heterosexual males

Is Lara Croft something to be looked at, or is she someone to become?

Or does the male videogame player playing Lara Croft become feminised through playing as a female character?

Does Lara Croft provide voyeuristic pleasure for heterosexual males?

Andrew Darley (2000) Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres London & New York: Routledge

James Newman (2004) Videogames London & New York: Routledge

Henry Jenkins: ‘The character is little more than a cursor which mediates the players’

relationship to the story world’

Helen Kennedy (2002) ‘Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? On the Limits of

Textual Analysis’ in GameStudies Vol 2, Issue 2, December

Espen Aarseth (2004) ‘the dimensions of Lara Croft’s body, already analyzed to

death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a

player, because a different-looking body would not

make me play differently… When I play I don’t even

see her body, but see through it and past it.’

Gameplay

ludologists narratologists

audiovisual media texts

remediation, convergence, intertextuality

narratives

rule-based systems

social, cultural, historical meanings of play

games