Sexism in Gaming

[SlayerRondo]

Skullwaker said:

Okay, I just wanted to throw this out there after seeing a reply to one of Nintendo's tweets. The tweet is written as follows:

"Who is your favorite Nintendo underdog? Are you a Captain Toad fan? Or do you like Little Mac's rags-to-riches tale?" to which someone replied  "My favorite "nintendo underdog are all the women who have to deal with the poisonous sexism of gaming culture @NintendoAmerica"

...Are you kidding me? First of all, how is a Nintendo tweet the correct platform to talk about this issue? Second of all, since when is Nintendo sexist? 

Nevermind that they birthed one of the most prevelant and strong woman characters in the industry, Samus Aran (who, by the way, wasn't even revealed to be a woman until the end of the original game).

Nevermind that they support other strong female leads like Bayonetta, who can literally tear apart heaven and hell.

Nevermind that most Nintendo games have options to play as female characters.

Nevermind that recently, they've drifted away from their "damsel in distress" storyline in games like Super Mario 3D World and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker by having female characters like Peach, Rosalina and Toadette as heroines in their respective games.

And this doesn't even apply to just Nintendo either. I'm super tired of hearing that all women are just sexualized and victimized in gaming culture and there aren't any role models. Take, for example, Lara Croft, who is also a strong, independent character in the Tomb Raider franchise. In fact, they've even made her more relatable and endearing as a character in the reboot. I guess you could make the argument that she's still somewhat sexualized, but it's not like women don't look like that ever. She's not any more sexualized than Nathan Drake (at least now).

Another example is Jill Valentine from the Resident Evil series. Does she have to be a female? No. Does it define her as a character? No, not really. She just is. And she isn't victimized in any way. In fact, she's gone out of her way to save a male character in Chris Redfield. 

Yes, there are cases of blatant sexism in gaming culture. Just like any culture. It's wrong, but it is so inaccurate to say that all developers are sexist and hate women. So many developers are just too scared or lazy to go out on a limb and create minority characters because it's much easier and safe to make a young, white guy as that's what the public has come to expect. This does need to change, but completely disregarding the people that do incorporate women into the gaming media in a positive way is just downright disrespectful, in my opinion.

I agree with your opinion, and believe that the way to get companies to produce games with more and better female characters is through positive methods like supporting games with strong female leads, getting more women to enter the games industry as they will have more of a passion to write female characters then men (and vice versa) and getting more women into gaming so the demand for female protagonist increases beyond what the male audience would traditionaly want.

Gaming companies/developers, contradictory to what Anita says, do not hate women or want to promote sexism, but are playing to their own and the audience taste. Most game developers are males and thus are more likely to write male characters that they can better identify with and the male gaming audience on average prefers male protagonist to female protagonist and the gaming companies provide more male characters who are better fleshed out.

I think that their is greater demand for more and better female characters then is currently being provided for gamers (including men like myself) but that will change are that information becomes more apparant, more girls play major game titles and more female get into game development.

What hurts the proponents of having more and better female characters is the negative campaigns like those of Anita Sarkesian. She takes the fact that the gaming companies offer games geared more towards men and rather than admitting its because men are traditionally the primary audience for these games calls the developers sexist at best and promoting hate towards women at worst. This is over the top and will cause people to disconnect from the issue entirely.