boys & girls

From this week’s reading, the issue of sexuality and race stood out to me. Firstly, i must make the point that I am no way near a gamer, I play the odd Tetris now and then as well as those exercise games for the Xbox, clearly from my description I am not very well educated in this field.

So, the issue of sexuality in the Sims game interested me in the way that there is freedom in this game for a player to choose his or her sexuality, and not be discriminated for it. Whatever sexuality one chooses to be whether it is bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual or even nonsexual, there is no discrimination within the actual playing field. One is not seen as any different to the other simply because of their sexuality, whereas in the “real” world this is not the case.
Kevin made the point in our first lecture that videogames are a way to tell stories just like music, art, and other forms of media. I had never thought about games doing this and this is very true in the context of how the makers of these gamers make their games. One is given the ability to explore their imagination and create a whole new world, and allow others to see things from their point of view. Videogames seems to give opportunity for people to express themselves in creating a person that they imagine or dream to be, or to create a person they never thought could exist. There are videogames that allow own to create a person from scratch, giving many options for eyes, mouths, skin colour, hair, feet, and the like. Although in stating this, not all games give the opportunity for one to choose their race. Theorist Nakamura explains in Chris Baker’s Cultural Studies text book argues that the absence of race on the internet, (which can be applied to videogames) is not about lowering racism but rather creating another form of stereotypes where one race is seen as the dominant race and the other as the inferior race. Some games, players have no choice in what race or gender they can be.

The issue of gender does arise when discussing videogames, there is a tendency to connect males to videogames. From my little experience of playing videogames, I was often frustrated in the fact that there were never many female characters to choose from, the hero in most cases, always ended up being a male character, therefore giving me no relation or connection to videogames. In discussion with a few friends of mine about videogames we realised that we as girls were more interested in adventure games such as the crash bandicoot game where the character (although still male) were able to run around collecting objects in order to stay alive. We also made the observation that males we know are more interested in playing fighting games battling one another, or war games. It can be said that the treatment of females in the “real” world can still be found in videogames. I am horrified that in Grand Theft Auto there is an option of “hooker cheat” where a player can pick up a prostitute and have sex with her to gain health points and then to regain HIS money he has to beat her up! This type of behaviour i guess can be found in films and talked about in music, but to give someone the ability to perform these actions are another dimension as it gives one the ability to choose from right or wrong. The question of morality than comes into mind.