============================================================ From: "Dennis Redmond" <dredmond at efn.org> Date: 2004/10/15 Fri PM 07:45:21 EDT To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Grand Theft Video-Killing prostitutes for fun?
Way too high. Most of the numbers I've seen put the figure at 60-40 or 65-35 male-to-female. Sports and action game are very male-dominated, but other genres are not -- the Sims games, for example, are gender balanced: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5113554/
More to the point, videogames are much more than testosterone-fueled fantasies of destruction. They're complex aesthetic documents, with all the contradictions of the society which produced them.
The IGDA, the game developers' trade association, has some info on gender equity here: http://www.igda.org/women/
-- DRR ============================================================
Found this recent study the other day...
"Many top-selling video and computer games are fundamentally more attractive to men and consequently uninviting to the opposite gender, according to a new theory forwarded by Trinity Western University’s Kevin Schut, PhD.
In his recent PhD thesis, Schut investigated how digital fantasy role playing games (FRPGs) mediate different social pressures. He argues that the games contain subtle but powerful themes that appeal to male players, allowing them to play out different perceived roles of masculinity, which, in ordinary life would be difficult.
“What I argue,” says Schut, who recently completed his PhD at the University of Iowa, “is that men simultaneously experience the pressure to be (1) a respectable man who’s the all around “good guy”, (2) a rough and tough man who’s the athletic bad-boy, and (3) a grown-up boy who’s not supposed to take anything too seriously.”
Schut says men can rarely fulfill all three roles at the same time, particularly in an office setting, where most middle class men find themselves.
“As I began to look at fantasy role playing games (FRPG) more carefully,” says Schut, a self-professed gamer himself, “I noticed that there are parts of the game going on that allow the user to simultaneously engage these male stereotypes. While playing a game that is very much like a playground, the user is the romantic hero who forcefully rids the village of evil, participating as both the rough and tough man and the ‘good-guy.’ That’s a very powerful thing in terms of masculinity.”
Full: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/507434/