Student Led Lecture-Chapter 14: The Video Game Industry

 

Over the years, the video game industry has become a vital asset to the mass media industry as a whole. For instance, in 2013 consumers spent $21.53 billion on video gaming and in 2017 this increased to a high of $36 billion on video games in America alone. Media convergence also has a large role in the video game industry being that, in 2009, 20% of video games were digitally sold, which rose to 53% in 2013, and peaked at 74% in 2017. These sales incorporate a variety of hardware such as gaming consoles, desktops or laptop computers, handheld devices, interactive television, and cellular devices. For the most part, the video game industry has been on the rise and even though the popularization of the internet hurt the sale of physical games to an extent, the online gaming industry has played a large role in the prosperity industry. Video game publishers, who coordinate the production of video games, and third party publishers, who are unaffiliated with those large corporations, do a great job at making sure that all genres are reached through their games. Some of the most popular software genres include action games (Call of Duty) , adventure games (Legend of Zelda), casual games (Sudoku), simulation games (Farmville), strategy games (Halo), sports games (Wii Sports), and many others. All of these distinct genres and consoles have led to the thriving market that the video game industry has created and have influenced mass media in its entirety.

Women portrayal in video games has been a huge controversy since the first major female character (Lara Croft) was released in Tomb Raider. Statistically, 48% of video game consumers are women and the other 52% are men. With that being said, why are women negatively portrayed in video games? Women are most of the time portrayed in unrealistic ways which makes it a negative role model for young girls. The young girls who see these women in the video games, think they have to conform themselves to look like that, especially for a man. Along with this, strong female characters in video games are rare to find and are often represented as “prizes” that you have to unlock. The unlocking of this “prize” comes as a shock to most video game players because it will be a woman character, which most people aren’t used to. Lara Croft, a major female character released in Tomb Raider, was the main protagonist in the video game series. Of course, however, Lara wasn’t just a female character, she was more sexualized and wore a little amount of clothing. She wore tight pants and a midriff top, and people believe this was meant to pay attention to her sexuality, not her strength. In the office of her creators, her breasts were a joke, but were supported since her audience was mostly male. This was just the beginning of how women were negatively portrayed in video games.

Back when video games were being created, females were not really portrayed as females. You couldn’t really tell if the character was female or not, because they resembled their male counterpart. Female characters were almost always based off of a male character that always existed in the game. The women, however were never a main protagonist in video games, they were almost always the “damsels in distress.” The main objective in some video games are to kill off women. According to Kate Harveston, “There is speculation that when individuals see so much violence against women within the game, they won’t feel as shocked by it in real life.” The negative portrayal of women in video games have normalized the violence towards them in everyday life as well. Throughout the years, there are some characters that have broken the stereotypical woman in video games, characters such as “The Scythian” from Sword and Sorcery and “Jade” from Beyond Good and Evil. We have come a long way with woman characters in video games, but people still argue that we will never be able to reach full gender equality.  

The popularity of video games has evolved immensely within recent years. Two of the most popular games produced have been Grand Theft Auto and Fortnite. Grand Theft Auto is an action adventure video game series created by David Jones and Mike Dailly in 1997. The name of the series refers to the term used in the United States to describe motor vehicle theft. With a total of six levels, the objective for players is to reach a number of points by completing missions within each of the cities to advance to the next level. Grand Theft Auto is the fourth highest selling video game franchise of all time, earning $800 million on the initial release date and $1 billion in first three days. The game sparks much controversy due to the violence and adult themes presented throughout the game. In addition, the game is also known to glorify sexual harassment and degrade female characters. The three lead characters are all males, while women have to be purchased, in addition to one of the goals being to kill as many females you can. In fact, the women are portrayed as prostitutes, with one of the female characters having “skank” tattooed across her back. The twitter hashtag #onereasonwhy, which is a movement detailing the obstacles women have faced in the industry, has evolved due the way these women have been treated and depicted as. Another successful video game, Fortnite, was developed by Epic Games in 2017, and has taken the nation by a storm. Fortnite: Save the World is a shooter-survival game where up to four players have the opportunity to fight off zombies and defend themselves using barricades they build. The more popular version, Battle Royale, consists of up to 100 players fighting in smaller spaces with a goal of being the last player standing. In less than a year, the game contained 125 million players and collected $296 million in revenue. Because the game is available through many gaming outlets, such as through an iPhone, Mac, PC, Xbox, or PlayStation, it has aided the game in becoming so popular, especially amongst female gamers. 46% of the total gamers who play the mobile version are females, one reason being that Fortnite is one of the very few shooter games that features female characters in advertisements. In fact, 39 out of 111 characters listed are female.

In addition to the video games themselves taking over the world, being able to stream the players playing the games has become even more popular. Twitch, a live streaming site, allows viewers to pay for access to watch their favorite gamers in action. Created in June 2011 by Amazon, Twitch was the the time considered the fourth largest source of peak Internet traffic in the United States, generating 45 million viewers. Out of 100 broadcasters on Twitch, 8 are female. Some of the top female gamers include KittyPlaysGames, LegendaryLea, and ItsHAFU, earning as much as six figures a year. Though much of their success has been accumulated from their skill, many women are attracting viewers because of their looks. Many of the female players wear minimal clothing while playing the game in order to attract more viewers. These players are even harassed at points by viewers to flaunt their body parts. A majority of the women choose to dress like this, therefore feeling comfortable using their sexuality to attract viewers.

In conclusion, the video gaming industry has evolved in extraordinary ways. From the first Humpty Dumpty video game in 1947,  to Fortnite in 2017, video games have changed the way people interact with each other on a day to day basis. With all of the new and innovative technology that society has to offer, the video gaming industry will continue to grow exponentially. In the future, we will definitely see several more major record-breaking game releases or the next revolutionary console, because the world of video games is constantly growing and changing.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What is your favorite video game and why?
  2. How many hours do you average playing video games per day?
  3. Do you prefer playing video games or browsing through social media platforms? Why?

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