The “Boy’s Club” of the Gaming World

By Nikki Clemons

The world of gaming has often been classified as a “boy’s club,” with girls and women often absent or underrepresented. The popular view is that games are usually made by men, bought by men, played by men and star men. However, this perception of video games being mostly dominated by the male audience is undermined by studies that show that women make up nearly half of the gaming demographic. According to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2013 “Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry,” nearly 45% of all players are female. So why is it with this high percentage of women are women themselves so absent or misconstrued in the world of video games?

The most popular place for a female character in the gaming world is as a sexual object. Whether cast as hookers and strippers in gritty gangster games, pedestrians in open world games like Grand Theft Auto, or just skimpily dressed secondary characters, women exist in the virtual world for sex or as embodiments of sex. Even traditionally non-sexual characters, like DC’s Harley Quinn, are redesigned in the gaming world to be sexier and skimpier. Harley’s design went from a one piece jumpsuit in the comics and cartoons to a series of revealing and tight fitting dresses in the Arkham series. Even nameless females suffer the same objectification— the all powerful healing fairies in the famous Legend of Zelda games are garbed in only thin vines and leaves.

The Great Fairy ~ Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

This sexualizing of female characters ties into the lack of diversity and fetishizing of the diversity that is there. In any game with a character creator, the player has the option to design their own character, including hair style, eye colour, clothing options, and body type. In the fighting game Soul Caliber V, the body types for male characters can range from the hilariously muscled to the painfully thinned. The body types for females, however, range from thin to average weights. It is very rare to find a game with a character creator that allows for the creation of a “fat” woman, and games with non-revealing outfits can be equally difficult to find.

In the instances of games without character creators, if the player even has the option to play as a woman, getting the chance to play as a woman of colour is pretty much non-existant. When women of colour are present in games, usually as NPCs (non playable characters), they are stereotyped or fetishized. They are either stereotypes of “sassy” black women, sexual Latinas, or guiding mammy figures. The Gerudo race in the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, are racist depictions of Middle Eastern-resembling women in croptops. Similarly, any presence of gay or bisexual females leads to fetishizing and sexualizing.

In addition to being sexualized, video game women are also subjected to specific and gendered types of violence. In the 2006 open world game Bully, the male main character can break into several restricted buildings on his campus, one of which is the girl’s dormitory. He can then hide and spy on the female NPCs, and if caught can beat the dorm headmistress with his choice of fists, bricks, baseball bats, or a variety of other weapons. Similarly, in the very popular open world series, Grand Theft Auto, the player can pick up prostitutes, throw money at strippers, and run any female down with their car and beat them to death with their fists. This open promotion of violence against women, sexual harassment, and even undertones of rape, are not just degrading, but also can drive women away from playing games. Playing any game online as a woman, like Call of Duty or Halo, can be uncomfortable since players on the other end of the line tend to threaten rape or sexual degradation, especially upon discovering their opponent player is a woman.

In the few instances where female characters don’t fit any of the above roles, they are often in the role of a dependent. Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite is constantly in modest clothing and is independent and powerful in her own right. However, the player has no chance to actually play as her. Instead they play as Shepard and spend the game toting Elizabeth from place to place and protecting her from attackers. Similarly, Ellie from the apocalyptic The Last of Us requires protection and exists mainly as a secondary character. And of course, there are the typical depictions of women as damsels in distress, often princesses captured by horrible beasts and waiting for rescue from the main male protagonist (see the Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda series). In these instances, women are given personalities, powers, and are more independent and less mindless than women in other games. However, they are still submissive and powerless within the confines of the plot, and dependent on the male lead and the presumably male player.

Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite

And all of this is assuming that women are present in the game at all. During 2014’s E3 conference, an annual conference for the presentation and discussion of video games, James Therein of Ubisoft confirmed there would be no playable female characters in the new Assassin’s Creed games. He explained this absence saying that putting the women in as playable characters would have “doubled the work” to produce the game. This created an outrage and general confusion amongst the fans, as there were previous games where the player could be female assassins.

Women are so often denied roles even in industries where they nearly dominate sales and play time. The few times they are granted roles, they’re empty background characters in skimpy clothing, there for the male player to protect, objectify, or destroy. Women have no agency in the very open world games that are supposed to give them just that. Video games are still a “boy’s club,” ultimately, even though half of those boys are girls.

Nikki Clemons is a WIFP staff writer.