Gender Conflicts in Video Games

I'm also in the Intro to Interactive Media class where we started to talk about women's roles in video games. And how men dominate the video game world. Approximately 90% of video game covers feature men. If a women is on the cover of a video game they are usually and most often sexually displayed or portrayed in seductive ways. While men tend to be portrayed as Super Strong heroes or villains, women are shown as sexual objects, prizes or victims. When men play games they have a variety of options to choose from when it comes to picking their main character. But when women play a game they are limited to their character selection (when picking a female character). Most of the women in those games can not be identified with and are usually wearing a significant amount of less clothing then the male characters of the game. In 1998 the University of Central Florida found that of the 33 games sampled, 41% do not feature female characters, 28% portrayed woman as sex objects, 21% depicted violence against women, and 30% did not represent the female population at all. The poor representation of women in video games could be because of the significant amount of males that develop these games. As more women start to venture into the interactive media studies these statistics will start to even out among men and women.