Sexism flaunting its ugly face in the video game industry
We are well into the 21st century and yet we are yet to rid our society of sexism, a cancer that has been there since God knows when.
If its existence in homes, workplaces, politics and even entire countries adhering to radical beliefs was not bad enough, sexism has made its way into the gaming industry as well.
For quite some time, females and males who are feminists have been raising their voice against the portrayal of a distorted and unrealistic image of females in video games, with the character being designed in an extremely shallow manner with extra emphasis
on her looks and body and little to no focus on the personality.
If you do not know what the aforementioned paragraph is in reference to, pick up a copy of Dead or Alive game from your closest video game shop and take a look at the female fighters to get a better understanding of the point that I am trying to make.
However, if anyone was under the impression that this is the worst treatment that women can get in a gaming industry, i.e. portrayed as over-sexualised beings who do not mind revealing their well-endowed bodies, they are in for a surprise.
As it turns out, people in the game making business have a belief that if the box art of a game features a female, that particular game will fail to sell well in the market.
An outrageous belief by well-educated people doing some great things with their money and technology: yes it is all happening in the gaming industry.
One of the most recent examples of sexism that surfaced was that of Naughty Dog being requested to remove the female protagonist Ellie off the cover of the PlayStation 3 exclusive title The Last of Us that is currently in development.
According to the creative director at the America-based studio, people in the gaming industry tend to believe that putting a woman on the cover of a game would ruin its chances of doing well in the market.
He even admitted being in discussions where his team was asked to remove Ellie from the cover art of their upcoming action game, which the Naughty Dog team flat-out refused to agree to as the fallacy regarding female characters on box art having deteriorating
effect on sales of games was nothing more than gibberish to them.
Ellie’s voice actress Ashley Johnson was naturally not too excited about the request that was being made to the studio and expressed this disappointing during an interview with VG247.
"I feel like they don’t put women on the covers because they’re afraid that it won’t sell," Johnson said. "It’s all gamers really know--and I don’t want to be sexist by any means--but I get the feeling, generally, that they think game’s won’t sell as well
with a woman on the cover, compared to some badass dude on the front."
It is a bit mind-boggling to find such sexism surviving despite the world becoming pretty mature over the passage of centuries. Humans have learnt to respect each other despite differences. It is indeed a surprise to see that while it no longer matters whether
you are black or white, straight or g*y, Muslim or Jew, native or immigrant, being a women and not a man is still a big deal and still brings a great deal of challenges.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely of the writer’s and do not reflect bettor.com’s official editorial policy
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