DISSERTATION PART ONE.

Introduction

Video games have gained overwhelming popularity since the launch of the Atari 2600 Video Computer System. The industry showing no signs of slowing in growth, now being bigger than all of film, television, and music combined, estimated at around £200+ billion (1). Gaming is a core hobby for many globally, as games can offer something enticing and interesting to a wide range of people (Etchells, 2019). In the UK alone, playing video games is the 5th most popular hobby, according to Statista (2), with expectations for 11.56 million gamers by 2027, making up a small number of the 2.68 billion gamers worldwide (3).

Using data from the US, there is an almost even 53/46% split of men and women who play video games and even as far back as 2006, this split was 62/38% (4), yet being a gamer has always viewed as a masculine hobby, sometimes doing everything to keep women away from the manosphere. The attacks of Gamergate (GG) were a misogynistic harassment campaign fuelled by an intense hatred regarding feminism and diversity within gaming. Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, and Jenn Frank are a few victims of this harassment to name a few. One post regarding Quinn said: ‘Next time she shows up at a conference, we... give her a crippling injury that’s never going to heal fully.’ (5)

People should’ve learned from GG's attacks, but worryingly, it seems that they're ramping up again, especially with the rise of fascism in the West. The ‘Woke Content Director’ Steam Community group focuses on warning gamers about too ‘woke’ games. As their methodology outlines: ‘any images, messages, characters, storytelling, dialogue, music, or game mechanics that include themes associated with the left side of the political aisle in contemporary western politics’ (6); they have even gone as far to make a list detailing every single game they have reviewed and put each one onto a Google Document with them not recommending games like ‘Need For Speed: Payback’ because there is a diverse cast of characters.(7)

This research focuses on the representation of women in video games over the past two decades and investigates whether there has been a shift in said representation. As video games, like other mass media, can mirror society's attitudes at the time of their creation and have played a key role in shaping certain gendered narratives. Tomb Raider and the introduction of Lara Croft as a strong, independent female lead fell shy to some critics as they argued she existed to solely attract the male gaze, which Mulvey (1975) argues. Since the release of the first Tomb Raider, there have been noteworthy advancements; Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us 2, and Cyberpunk 2077 are all games that feature well-written female protagonists/deuteragonists. Indicating a possible shift in gaming, yet the field still is highly male-dominated in production, with 70% of the workforce in the gaming industry being men which can be seen reflected in the most popular games, where 80% of the protagonists are men.(8)

This research aims to discover how far the representation of women in games (if at all) has advanced and especially discover what steps need to be taken to improve the current situation. As mentioned with GG, women within the gaming manosphere have faced countless pushbacks. Yet, as of the past decade, we are starting to see the space of game development democratising following the countless emergences and successes of indie developers.

Throughout my research within this field, many key themes spanning across many published articles and essays were revealed, such as the questions surrounding Lara Croft and her position as a strong female protagonist, the unrealistic way female characters are modelled and especially the relation towards the representation of female characters in gaming and an emergence of sexism.

With this research, I aim to prove that a shift in the representation of women in video games over the past two decades has happened, but incredibly slowly and still missing in key areas. Many games have emerged with extremely well-written female protagonists/characters, yet as mentioned previously, 80% of protagonists within games are men.

Research on Gender and Video Games

Throughout my reading, I discovered key topics that are relevant to the broader study of gender representation in gaming: the impacts of multi-media representation on self-image, links between exposure to video game representation/stereotypes and sexism, and the history of female figures in gaming and the influence of Lara Croft.

Lara Croft and her femininity

As a new female protagonist in 1996, Lara Croft was a revolutionary figurehead within the industry, among some of the earliest standalone female protagonists. Yet, Croft’s design has attracted praise and criticism since she burst into the video gaming industry.

Toby Gard, the creator of Croft’s character, said, ‘[Croft] had a real difference to the game's characters of the time... to other female game characters that were sex objects.’ (9) Following the release of the first Tomb Raider, Gard departed from Core Design, the company that produced Tomb Raider, as he objected to the ways that Core was using her within marketing:

‘She was always designed to look good – people’s psychology is that they like attractive characters of both sexes. What I objected to was the marketing which represented Lara in a way that was nothing like the character. At the time I didn’t like that and it prompted me to want to retain control of character I created in the future, so that’s why I left.’ (9)

Gard suggests that he never intended Croft to exist as a sex object primarily. While acknowledging the importance of an attractive protagonist, he also wanted her femininity to be demonstrated through her actions, as opposed to her figure. Mikula (2003) views Croft’s femininity in a similar way to Gard, viewing Croft and the formation of her femininity through the lens of the active role she occupies throughout the games as she: is the sole survivor of a plane crash, uses her wilderness skills to stay alive for two weeks, she’s a trained rock climber, expert shooter, motorcyclist, and world-famous archaeologist. Yet, Greer (1999) views Croft in a contrary fashion, criticising Croft as a protagonist and the antithesis of what she defined as the ‘whole woman’, as the femininity of Croft is formulated to reflect the male fantasy and to appeal to the male gaze Mulvey (1975). Mikula (2003) includes an excerpt from now-defunct WomenGamers.com regarding the subsequent Tomb Raider releases following Gard’s departure:

“In Tomb Raider II and III, Lara became an obnoxious sex object, more intent on stealing the hearts of men than relating to her female following. Her physique became more and more unrealistic as the series progressed. Her attitude became more deliberately sexual as well”

However, viewed under the same lens as Gard and Mikula, it is important to note how different Croft was to many pre-existing female game figures. These were

If viewing Croft in the lens that Gard and Mikula see her from, Croft blows the traditional representation of women out of the water. In other games released around the 1990s - early 2000s, when female characters were present, they were likely to be damsels-in-distress (Dill, E., Thill, K, P. 2007), e.g. Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes (2001). The main objective of the game is to save the ‘Unified Babe Resistance’, as all men on Earth have been killed and the women have been captured and enslaved, finishing the game ends with Duke (being the only surviving male) repopulating the planet.

Given these conflicting views, Croft is a contradictory figure representing both the best and worst parts of female representation in gaming. Her earliest introduction (and possibly Gard’s ambitions for the character) set a precedent to inspire future games. Half-Life 2 (2004) is an excellent example of this as Alyx Vance, despite being the game's deuteragonist, speaks more than the protagonist, Gordon Freeman, and displays a broader range of emotional depth. Arguably, most importantly, while being fully clothed.

Core Design disgraced the Lara Croft that Gard had envisioned, transforming her into a character unrecognisable from the debut, reducing her to nothing more than a sex object meant for consumers’ pleasure.

Unrealistic Character Modelling & The Real-World Effects

Women in the mass media being framed as sex objects with unrealistic figures is such a commonplace practice within the industry, that it's no surprise when we see this reflected within gaming. It is demonstrated repeatedly, whether it's Bond Girls, the aforementioned Lara Croft games, etc. Writers use the women within mass media to reflect their sexual fantasies.

Brown (2011) adds to the argument that despite many of the women being depicted as ‘masculine’ using their guns, swords, and whips, it highlights them as dominatrixes, furthering the fetishization of the female body. Despite being weapons commonly associated with power, it echoes the stock male fantasy that represents women as nothing but sex objects. Brown discussed its prevalence within Barb Wire and even Wonder Woman, with underlying implications of bondage; when men are bound with Wonder Woman’s whip, they must submit to her will.

Booth Babes were extremely popular during the early 2000s and 2010s, they were models companies would hire to cosplay as their characters and wear sexually revealing clothing to entice men to come to their booth (10) during gaming conventions. Due to bans, they have since faded out of popularity. The documentary Game Over (2000), discusses Booth Babes when used for the sequel and trilogy for the Lara Croft series. Croft’s figure was so unrealistic that finding a suitable model for her exact dimensions was impossible. In one case, they had to hire a 16-year-old to stand with grown men and take pictures.

Correlations have been shown between the effect of mass media representations and their real-world impact on the audience, as Dohnt & Tiggemann (2006) have concluded from their research that accurate representation is vital within media, especially towards developing minds as the consumption of idealised figures within media is directly linked to poor body image/appearance dissatisfaction. Such ideas link with Gerbner’s (1969) understanding of cultivation theory, which states that constant exposure to a dominant set of values/ideas within media texts can alter audiences’ thoughts and feelings.

Attitudes and Sexism

Gerber’s understanding of cultivation was mentioned in the previous section and is also highly applicable here. The dated stereotype within video games depicts women in limited roles such as the damsel in distress/sex object, such stereotyping of this kind has the power to distort the minds of young men and women. Repeated representation creates issues not just for video games, for the broader mass media, but ultimately the way that young men learn to view women.

When Begue et al. surveyed 13520 French youths in 2017, aged 11-19, their results displayed a positive correlation between video game exposure and heightened sexist attitudes. Furthermore, Dill and Thill (2007) discovered through their research that a positive correlation between violent video game playing and the endorsement of rape myths was apparent, yet non-gamers held the same certain stereotypes.

Discussing the research of Dill and Thill (2007) further, the findings that non-gamers hold the same stereotypes as gamers prove this isn’t just a gaming issue; however, games (most produced by AAA companies) tend to shy away from diverging narratives instead conforming to the typical stereotypes and cookie-cutter roles prevalent within the mass media.

Considering the research stated, this isn’t definitive proof that gaming creates poor attitudes towards women, but instead displays that such a discussion is much more than a simple yes and no. There has been a breadth of research already conducted regarding this representation of women and its impact on attitudes, as Lanis and Covell (1995) found that males exposed to adverts depicting women as sex objects subsequently show larger rape-supportive attitudes.

Within the discussion of Begue’s (2017) findings, it is detailed how sexism is related to many other social factors, with that being ‘gender inequality, social dominance, right-wing authoritarianism, and conservative values’. Linking to an article journalist Taylor Lorenz wrote for Vanity Fair:

‘sports, gaming, and YouTube prank culture are subtle ways that young people are gradually exposed to increasingly conservative ideology.’(11)

Parroting Lorenz, we can understand how these ideas may become subconsciously instilled into young people's heads, even indirectly. Initial ideas could be pre-existing, but the constant repetition of traditional representations of women supports rather than challenges, what early influence may have them believe. This influence could stem from parents, religion, and the broader mass media, as in the research Begue et al. (2017) conducted, the highest findings of sexist attitudes were: religion, exposure to TV, and exposure to video games. However, something missing from Begue’s research was the distinction between the consumption of single player/multiplayer games. Drawing on Malkowski (2017), multiplayer games are infamous for bro-culture; Dewinter and Kocurek in the chapter ‘Aw Fuck, I Got A Bitch On My Team’ investigate the forum ‘Men Going Their Own Way’ where posters detail how ‘women are taking over’ paired with outrage towards ‘strong female characters’.

All the research considered, it is evident that gaming and the consumers of said games are not the sole problem. Instead, as mentioned before, it is a much broader societal issue. Issues and stereotypes reinforced for years will take a long time to degrade, but there is clear evidence of said degradation in motion. ‘The Last of Us Part 2’, ‘Hades II’, ‘The Witcher IV’, ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’, etc., all are games pushing what it means to be a female protagonist/deuteragonist, refusing to regurgitate the same cookie-cutter female protagonist that big budget studios do, failing to find the balance to where female characters are human instead of a one-dimensional power.

Intersectionality within Gaming

I discovered a significant gap in research: little discussion surrounds the lack of intersectionality representation in video games. Many of the previously mentioned articles and publications featured discussions surrounding femininity but a lack of intersectionality discussion.

Hutchinson’s chapter:‘Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as a whole text’ in Malkowski (2017) provides analysis of the protagonist, Carl Johnson (CJ), the world he inhabits, and the games attitudes towards racial and disability stereotyping. CJ is a young black gang member whose mission is to save his brother. A young black protagonist is groundbreaking at the time of 2004 and Hutchinson details how despite much of the criticism surrounding the racial stereotyping, proves to be unfounded. GTA:SA only offers static racial representations at the surface level, and when investigating the story, those static racial representations transform into ‘an exploration of how these men negotiate racial prejudice and overcome biased attitudes’ with many critics focusing on a black-white binary narrative when stereotypes are constantly challenged throughout the game.

Continuing to discuss the character Wu Zi Mu, a blind Chinese man who seemingly has superhuman powers despite being blind: winning car races, drive-by shootings, and beating CJ while playing PlayStation, all of which are beyond CJ’s comprehension. Despite this, he is still the butt of physical comedy involving people with disabilities, as Wu Zi runs into a wall while leading CJ, and with CJ waving his hand in front of Wu Zi’s face to ‘test his blindness.’ Hutchinson mentions how ‘the depiction of disability remains static’, as not only is Wu Zi seen as super-human despite his disability, but is still ‘other-ised,’ both with his disability and his race as a Chinese man, furthering the static representations of those with disabilities.

Intersectionality within video games is critical and highly beneficial when appropriately executed, yet there is a significant gap. When gathering my findings, intersectionality will be one of the key standouts I will be looking for. Intersectionality allows players to hear a diverse and engaging array of stories with people from different backgrounds.

Theoretical Framework

Hall (2013) takes a constructionist approach to representation and defines it as ‘the production of meaning of the concepts in our mind through language.’ Butler’s (1990) argument reinforces Hall’s constructionist approach, ‘[representation] is the normative function of a language... said to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women.’

Both Hall and Butler recognise language's power within representation; as such, language plays a significant role in forming identities. ‘identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.’ Butler's understanding of gender details how ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ classifications are performative. Learned and regurgitated because of observed and repeated performances of what you see: ‘the result.’

Continuing from Butler, bell hooks and Mulvey are two notable feminist theorists beneficial to this discussion. Mulvey (1975) argues the male gaze, centred around the sexual objectification of women within media, is only present to attract the ‘gaze’ of male consumers. hooks argues for the importance of intersectionality, which I have discussed drawing from Malkowski (2017).

Bourdieu’s (1986) discussions surrounding capital complement Hall’s understanding of the power involved in shaping dominant ideologies through representation, especially surrounding cultural capital’s links to power. There are close links to cultural capital and dominant ideologies, as cultural capital lies in cultural & social reproduction, which can be used to gain social status. Representation can legitimise and illegitimise specific forms of cultural capital, especially within gaming. With an industry consisting of an 80% male workforce, the capital of apt representation for women/marginalized communities is missing throughout the production process.

Methodology

For my research, I will use a combination of both textual analysis and qualitative synchronous digital ethnography.

Textual Analysis

My textual analysis will consist of a case study of similarities/differences between ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ (2023) and ‘Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes’ (2000). Comparing their representations of women in each game while outlining their individual target audiences and possibly understanding how periods of time could play into a significant factor if there a shift of representation is discovered. Furthermore, I will be doing a less in-depth analysis spanning a plethora of games released by both AAA and indie studios, displaying the data in a table, investigating factors such as: clothing, body type, role, subservient/dominant towards men, patterns & speech time, and overall importance within the story. Collecting data, despite being less in-depth than said case studies, will prove to be vital as there will be an abundance of information spanning games released between the two time periods.

To investigate the data gathered within my textual analysis, Hall’s understanding of representation and signifiers (2013) paired with Barthes’ (1964) understanding of semiotics will prove most efficient for decoding my texts as said theories enable to be worked in tandem. Hall details there is not one ‘true’ representation, paired with Barthes’ methods of denotations and connotations, a list of potential angles/viewpoints can be discovered; Butler’s lens on gender performativity through repeated cultural norms, especially with women and the label of ‘femininity’, will provide another angle to analyse and critique the data collected. 

Textual analysis for a subject as large as gaming, is a highly effective data collection method. We know that texts can have a wide range of meanings; different researchers could approach the text with an opposing viewpoint and leave with entirely different data. As texts have no single ‘correct’ interpretation, they can be interpreted in many ways by the consumers (Mckee, 2001). Also, compared to digital ethnography/ethnography, textual analysis is a non-intrusive data collection method, with the nature of being non-intrusive removing biases that otherwise would be present within digital ethnography.

The drawback of textual analysis is that it comes from one person. I cannot speak definitively for women gamers and determine which is inherently a bad and good representation; I can investigate different angles by utilizing Hall’s perception theory to determine a dominant, negotiated, and oppositional reading. For this reason, I decided to do a mixture of textual analysis and digital ethnography.

Digital Ethnography

The digital ethnographic research will focus on women who play games. I plan to arrange multiple digital focus groups to gather various responses. To understand their experience playing games, I will investigate whether they feel that the representation of women in video games has shown any progression through the recent decades. To compare to the accuracy of my textual analysis, I will be cherry-picking those who have played Baldur’s Gate 3 to completion and prior to the focus group, send each participant a video of a Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes walkthrough to give enough time to make notes and formulate their feelings. 

The questions I have prepared will be open-ended to spark a conversation/discussion with the other participants potentially and are constructed to give me data about how they see themselves as a gamer:

• 1.     How often do you play games in a typical week?

• 2.     What are some of your favourite games, and why?

• 3.     What is your opinion of representation in gaming?

• 4.     How would you say the representation of women is within the current state of the gaming industry?

• 5.     What are your opinions on the representation of women within Baldurs Gate 3?

• 6.     Having watched gameplay from Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes, how would you describe the representation of women in that game?

• 7.     Do you have a favourite video game character? Why?

• 8.     Is intersectionality important within video games?

As previously mentioned, an advantage of using digital ethnography instead of textual analysis is that it enables a broader range of voices to be heard. Voices from different backgrounds, social classes, racial, sexual, and gendered identities can all be heard. Synchronous digital ethnography is cost and time-effective, meaning that willing participants don’t have to travel to a location and can connect from anywhere in the world, and the speed at which online focus groups can be set up allows pinpointing reactions to current events if it arises in conversation (Morrison et al., 2011). As Morrison mentions, if any complications arise from the organisation of a digital meeting, a text-based group could be just as effective. An exclusive chatroom can be set up by utilising the social platform Discord, only inviting participants, posting questions, and monitoring their answers. Morrison continues the benefits of video-calling over text-based groups ‘participants may find it easier to respond by speaking than typing, and the richness of communication can be observed.’

I will primarily use Foucauldian discourse analysis (1969) paired with Hall’s (1973) understanding of decoding texts and readings (dominant, opposed, negotiated) to extract information from the data gathered throughout my digital ethnography. Foucauldian discourse analysis will be used to identify the similarities and any emotions within the participant’s responses. Hall will determine what reading the participants have taken from the examples given (Baldur’s Gate 3 and Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes) and any others that may arise.

Digital ethnography is praised as a key research tool, but just like textual analysis, they have key disadvantages. Kang (2013) argues that digital anonymity allows users to potentially exploit their anonymity by ‘creating different personas online than they exhibit offline,’ despite being a danger, there is little that I, as the moderator, will be able to control this aspect. Something I can manage throughout the process is the mitigation of researcher biases: confirmation, selection, observer, and recall bias (12). To a certain extent, selection bias will remain in place as I am looking for those who have specifically played Baldur’s Gate 3; however, this is open to change as there will potentially be a significant group excluded from the discussion that could give valuable insights. Despite conducting this research to demonstrate a shift within representation, awareness that interviewees could bring up conversations that go against my pre-existing ideas is key to acknowledging, and such data will not be excluded from my data analysis.

Conclusion

In summary, my aim for this research project is to uncover whether there has been a shift in the representation of women within the gaming industry over the past two decades. Achieving this through thorough research into the literature surrounding gaming and gender to investigate the key themes.

Throughout the literature review, key themes have emerged that I can bring forward into my next stage of writing: the potential links of video game consumption to a rising wave of sexism among adolescents, the impacts on character modelling and body image and, finally, the lack of intersectionality within gaming.

Handling two forms of research will prove to be a challenging task, yet one that is needed to gather substantial data to begin to conclude my next piece of writing. Despite my knowledge and critical thinking skills, my interviewees will have something I will never: the knowledge and capital of what it means to be a woman, hence my decision to do part textual analysis and part digital ethnography, allowing me to cross-reference my findings of each research to see what impact proper representation has on female gamers.

My analysis methods will prove beneficial, using Hall’s understanding of signifiers and representation paired with Barthes’ semiotic theory will assist in breaking down the different messages that audiences could take from a particular character. Furthermore, Butler’s ideas surrounding gender performance will provide yet another angle to critique this data. The use of Foucauldian and Hall’s discourse analysis in tandem allows me to deconstruct the data gathered efficiently. Foucault will assist in understanding attitudes towards the industry, interrogating the ‘truths’ of female gamers created and help underpin any emotion that may arise. Hall will assist in determining what reading my participants take from each text, especially from the dominant messages.