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Survey Shows Even Teenage Boys Think Women Are Over-Sexualized in Video Games

The ONE group sexist people bank on to back them up.
by Dan Van Winkle Thursday, July 9th 2015 at 5:02 pm

Dubious game developers and Twitter trolls will now have to look elsewhere for backup when it comes to telling us “SJWs” that there’s nothing wrong with the portrayal of women in video games. A survey found that most teenage boys—despite common wisdom to the contrary—don’t want women to be over-sexualized in their video games.

I’ll let you take a minute to readjust your entire worldview.

Frequently, when people (frequently us) complain that women in video games are heavily subjected to the male gaze to the point where it becomes harmful, a defense that crops up is, “But our audience for this product is young men/teenage boys. We’re just playing to our audience.” Setting aside how silly it is to purposefully target a potentially gender-neutral product specifically at one gender—and how deciding that certain things are “for girls” and “for boys” is a problem all in itself—that’s making a pretty big assumption about what that audience even wants. And it turns out the assumption is certainly making an ass out of someone.

In a survey of 1,400 middle and high school students by Rosalind Wiseman, Charlie Kuhn, and Ashly Burch, of Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’?, it turned out that of boys who identified as gamers, 55% said games should have more women as protagonists, and 57% felt women were treated as sex objects too often in games. Teenage boys. So all the grown-ass men on the Internet screaming about their toys being taken away just because we’d like a bit more consideration shown toward women in games might want to take a step back and realize they could get a lesson in maturity from teenagers.

Wiseman shared some more interesting statistics from the survey on Time, writing,

Both boys and girls aren’t more likely to play a game based on the gender of the protagonist

70% of girls said it doesn’t matter and 78% of boys said it doesn’t matter. Interestingly, boys care less about playing as a male character as they age and girls care more about playing as a female one.

She also noted that her results showed girls play a variety of different game genres, whether or not some people want to believe that over half of gamers being women is only because of all our moms playing Farmville—as though that somehow make them lesser gamers anyway. The group behind the survey has stressed that it was only intended to be exploratory and not a completely thorough evaluation, but the findings are pretty encouraging.

Maybe there is hope for the next generation of gamers after all.

(via Destructoid)

Everything You Know About Boys and Video Games Is Wrong

Rosalind Wiseman July 8, 2015

Here's what they really think about how women are portrayed on screen

Kids are fed up with Kate Upton.

When the ads for Game of War started showing up on my students’ phones last year—they haven’t stopped—many were annoyed. They hated that it was impossible to close the ad, forcing them instead to watch the video until the end. But what really irritated them was Ms. Upton, in a full-cleavage-baring white flowing dress. The ads are clearly effective for some, but the message is obvious: Game of War is a boys’ game, and Upton is the game’s mascot, walking through battles totally unscathed and doing nothing except looking pretty.

Action games with big battles like Game of War are incredibly exciting to kids. And kids I’ve worked with, both male and female, will put up with a lot to play exciting games. But it doesn’t mean they like the way women are portrayed. Yet the video game industry seems to base much of its game and character design on a few assumptions, among them that girls don’t play big action games, boys won’t play games with strong female characters, and male players like the sexual objectification of female characters.

You can guess what the results are: a gaming landscape that thrusts a hyper-sexualized depiction of women onto the phone, computer and TV screens of millions of boys and girls.

MORE What Boys Really Want

The issue of sexism in video games, long simmering, is sure to bubble up again during the Comic-Con convention this weekend in San Diego. (47% of attendees are expected to be women.) In collaboration with my colleagues, Charlie Kuhn and gaming expert Ashly Burch, we surveyed more than 1,400 middle and high school students from throughout the country last year. We asked them to tell us what they thought about gender representation in games, what games girls play, and more. Our survey was exploratory—we didn’t have the resources to conduct a thorough evaluation—but we believed it was an important issue to study and hope others will follow.

Here are three things we found that may surprise.

Boys believe female characters are treated too often as sex objects

47% of middle school boys agreed or strongly agreed, and 61% of high school boys agreed or strongly agreed. “If women are objectified like this it defeats the entire purpose of fighting,” Theo, an eighth-grader who loves playing Mortal Kombat, told us. “I would respect the [female] character more for having some dignity.”

Both boys and girls aren’t more likely to play a game based on the gender of the protagonist

70% of girls said it doesn’t matter and 78% of boys said it doesn’t matter. Interestingly, boys care less about playing as a male character as they age and girls care more about playing as a female one.

Girls play a variety of game genres

26% played first-person shooter games like Call of Duty and HALO, 36% played role-playing games like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto, and 17% played sports games like FIFA and Madden. (19% did not play games, compared to 3% of boys.)

We also asked kids if they identified as “gamers.” Especially in light of the “Gamergate” controversy that erupted last year and revealed intense sexism among some self-identified gamers, would the young people who identified as gamers share any of these sentiments? But very few of our respondents knew what Gamergate was and they had very different responses from what one may expect: 55% of boys who identify as gamers think there should be more female heroes in games, and 57% believe that female characters are too often treated as sex objects.

This all matters because gaming has become an important part of our culture, and it’s sending the wrong message onto our boys’ and girls’ sceens. Our kids deserve better. And it’s what they want.

Rosalind Wiseman is the author of Masterminds and Wingmen (Harmony Books, 2013) as well as Queen Bees and Wannabes (Harmony Books, 2002)

Darmalus wrote:It makes sense to me, in a way. I'm old enough to remember when the upgrade to 56k seemed lightning fast in the early teens.

When I was young, I remember loving every bit of cleavage and tight fitting outfit and drop of sexualization I could get in comics, games, tv, movies, etc. As the internet matured and the amount and quality of free porn has increased, my love of naked women has not waned, but it has shifted. When I encounter it outside porn, frankly it feels like a distraction, an annoyance. If I want to see sexy ladies, I have as much as that as I can possibly stand already. If I am not watching porn, I'm watching it for reasons other than sexy ladies, so throwing sexy ladies in my face is not a plus, at best it's neutral or useful character development.

I don't dream this attitude is universal, but for the generation growing up with 24/7 access to unlimited amounts of porn, it might be increasingly common.

article wrote:57% believe that female characters are too often treated as sex objects

Kane Starkiller wrote:

article wrote:57% believe that female characters are too often treated as sex objects

How much is too often? I don't know, this strikes me as very shoddy survey. Did they even link to the actual paper?

Balrog wrote:

Kane Starkiller wrote:

article wrote:57% believe that female characters are too often treated as sex objects

How much is too often? I don't know, this strikes me as very shoddy survey. Did they even link to the actual paper?

Just reading the initial article you could see the snideness dripping off every word; clearly someone had a point they wanted to prove. Anecdotally I can understand if even teenage boys aren't fans of oversexualization, but I'd wait until a more academic study is done on the issue.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I was never fond of gratuitously over-sexualized characters when I was a teen. I grudgingly warmed to Tomb Raider because of the platforming, but the Croft character and other tropes like female barbarians in chain bikinis always came across lowbrow to me, like an unclever fart joke.

TheFeniX wrote: Lately I've been of the mind that if all it takes is a sports bra and a change of clothes to label a character "not-sexualized," then I have a hard time believing they were over-sexualized in the first place. Obvious exceptions exist such as clothing that makes no sense and women fighting in high-heels.* Kitana is hard to pin down though because women seem to love cos-playing as her and from what I've read, she's one of the most popular character in the series with women, even though other more practically dressed character(s) exist. There's also when the camera itself is pandering to the boobs/ass, such as it having an unhealthy obsession with Miranda in Mass Effect 2.

salm wrote:I guess some women simply like sexualized characters.
Just because women like something doesn´t suddently make it less sexualized after all.

Starglider wrote:A significant part of the problem seems to be really lazy and generally creatively bankrupt marketing staff. I have been out of the industry for a while, but even still, my experience of games marketing was that they would do the minimum necessary to cash in. i.e. not bother to understand the games or the audience, just slap sex and violence and random 'edginess' on everything.

TheFeniX wrote:

salm wrote:I guess some women simply like sexualized characters.
Just because women like something doesn´t suddently make it less sexualized after all.

That's a fair point. There's media popular among women that is all about sex.

I just see term likes "over-sexualization" and "Hyper-sexualization" thrown about like either is descriptive at all. Lara Croft is described as such and I've honestly never understood it. Maybe it's because, at the time, there were so many other tertiary female characters who existed as fanservice, I'm ignoring issues with the character. This is why I ask: what is "over-sexualized" about Croft? Does it even mean anything? Is it even a problem?

I don't think it's fair to write off a character because certain aspects of that character are exploitative. If the exploitation is the primary or only reason for the character to exist, that's another story.

Starglider wrote:A significant part of the problem seems to be really lazy and generally creatively bankrupt marketing staff. I have been out of the industry for a while, but even still, my experience of games marketing was that they would do the minimum necessary to cash in. i.e. not bother to understand the games or the audience, just slap sex and violence and random 'edginess' on everything.

Lately, I've found women being flat-out ignored aside from certain games series. We give developers shit for focusing on men when it's been shown games with female leads and/or engaging secondary female characters can easily sell games. But what people ignore is that focusing on men is making publishers billions of dollars. As much as "the Internet" wants to complain about poor representation of women in video games, no (or not enough) people are actually voting with their wallets. Only when the exploitation is the only selling point do people say "no," but that's usually because the game is shit. The sexism is only another talking point, not what actually makes people close their wallets.

I bring up Dragon's Crown again because literally no one would have given a shit about the game if everyone hadn't become so worked up about boobs. What happened was, at least from everything I've read, the only "bad points" are the boobs: the game is fun if you are into that genre. Players found a fun callback to the old side-scroller beat up DnD games, which were a darkhorse at the arcades. The same thing happened with Bayonetta 2, except that game was already heavily marketed.

I fully agree with the idea that no one cares if a well-written lead is male or female. The problem is, if they don't care, publishers will continue to beat positive male stereotypes to death. Except they will not die, just as they haven't in any other media. It's just too safe a bet. So, if they can ignore women or heap some boobs on top of a polished game, they're going to do so until people stop buying it.

Darmalus wrote:Another issue is if the people upset by the lack of well crafted female characters were ever potential customers to begin with. I remember a recent Assassins Creed Whatever thread where people were talking about how having 1 out of 3 (IIRC) characters be female wouldn't get them to buy the game or even consider it because they were already mad. From a developers perspective, that's basically telling them to ignore you because you were never a potential customer anyway for that franchise and it's safe to go back to formula.

TheFeniX wrote:Mass Effect 2? I thought Bioware was the golden-boy of equality.

bilateralrope wrote:They may be that now. But the options in ME1 and 2 were lacking.

bilateralrope wrote:I haven't played the Dragon Age games, so I can't comment on them.