Video Games: Gender-stereotyping?

3 Pages 791 Words

Finding a suggestive or gender-stereotyping video game in a local Blockbuster Video, Rogers Video or any retailer such as Wal-Mart or Best Buy for that matter isn’t really a hard thing to accomplish. Now, finding a video game that encompasses attributes that don’t target specific gender groups is a much harder task. Most of the top video games on the market are not gender diversified. The majority of the games are generally targeted at boys instead of girls. Most of the characters are white males and females are under-represented or misrepresented in one way or another. The marketing and use of video games by boys and girls has continued to reinforce.
Typically, the role of female characters often portrays them as props or bystanders and they are the ones who usually need rescuing by a male character. You don’t even have to begin playing the game before you realize that boys are the primary target of manufacturers and merchants. Just by examining the cover of some top selling games such as Medal of Honor (Frontline), Mortal Kombat, NHL Fever, Resident Evil, Spiderman, Final fantasy, WWF, Smackdown, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Army World War Teams, it is plain to see that females are not directed towards buying them. I could name countless others. I realize that many of these games are rated for teenage and adult use but I have personally seen parents buying these games or renting them for boys that are accompanying them.
The covers show men doing what is considered to be traditional gender roles that “stereo-typical” men are supposed to portray, and this is only the covers. The games themselves, when being played, show boys situations and events that are not real but can be easily perceived as life-like or genuine because of the technology that is used. Everything is so life-like and realistic. The problem is that if you see something enough, we have a tendency of getting our views distorted or processed for us. This...