Beyond the Girl Gamer: Introduction | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 2.1 | 2.2
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[This post is very image-heavy and so much of it is behind a jump.]
The discussion so far, over the last six months or so, has focused on what we see inside games: how the characters, both player and non-player, are designed; how the characters comport themselves; how the scenery of the narrative world is arranged for the male gaze; that the scenery of the world is, in fact, arranged; and how so many of the game worlds we visit use the same tropes to tell the same stories with the same kind of gender problems built into them.
The umbrella of "games, gaming, and gamer culture," though, goes well beyond the in-game, narrative, digital worlds. Arguably, the biggest and most persistent problems we face aren't in the text, but rather, are wrapped around it. And so we reach the third bucket of this series: marketing.
We've looked at the existence of the Chainmail Bikini trope before (1.2), but the problems of female characters in game marketing are bigger than, well, boobs. Broken down, we're presented with two major areas of concern: the invisibility of non-sexualized female characters in marketing art, and the over-visibility of minor female characters just for the sex appeal.
A huge number of games do this. After thinking of some on my own, I put the question to Twitter and received another few dozen suggestions in the first hour. Sadly, there's no shortage of examples.
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[This post is very image-heavy and so much of it is behind a jump.]
The discussion so far, over the last six months or so, has focused on what we see inside games: how the characters, both player and non-player, are designed; how the characters comport themselves; how the scenery of the narrative world is arranged for the male gaze; that the scenery of the world is, in fact, arranged; and how so many of the game worlds we visit use the same tropes to tell the same stories with the same kind of gender problems built into them.
The umbrella of "games, gaming, and gamer culture," though, goes well beyond the in-game, narrative, digital worlds. Arguably, the biggest and most persistent problems we face aren't in the text, but rather, are wrapped around it. And so we reach the third bucket of this series: marketing.
We've looked at the existence of the Chainmail Bikini trope before (1.2), but the problems of female characters in game marketing are bigger than, well, boobs. Broken down, we're presented with two major areas of concern: the invisibility of non-sexualized female characters in marketing art, and the over-visibility of minor female characters just for the sex appeal.
A huge number of games do this. After thinking of some on my own, I put the question to Twitter and received another few dozen suggestions in the first hour. Sadly, there's no shortage of examples.
