Gender inequality has long been an issue in the workplace. While measures have been taken to abate this problem across many working spheres of our society, one industry remained a safe haven for heterosexual, white, male to thrive. Unfortunately, that industry is one of many that I love dearly, the Video Game Industry. As video games metamorphose into the next biggest form of media consumption, it is worthwhile to look at the next generation of video game developers in an attempt to predict the future of gender representation in gaming.
With the implosion of video game live streaming over the past decade, the gaming industry has garnered a crescendo of attentions from the media, academics, and professionals, alongside millions of dollar in revenue. Just last year, League of Legends World Championship set a record of more than 200,000,000 viewers simultaneously. To put this into perspective, the best NBA Finals ever (the 2016 NBA Finals, where Lebron James led the Cavaliers to overcome a 3-1 deficit at the hands of the Warriors, ran by Splash Brothers, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, to present the city of Cleveland with its first championship in 52 years) only managed a measly 90,510,000 viewers within the last 5 minutes of the game2 (not even half the viewership count that League of Legends World Championship accomplished). The sport that is video game (called E-Sport) has gotten so large that its organizer can now shed out as much prize money as FIFA did for its 2019 Women’s World Cup. Don’t believe me? Check out this article in Wired magazine on how an aggregate of $ 30 million was distributed to winner and participants in Fortnite 2019 World Cup just a couple weeks ago2.
Arm with such statistics, anyone in their right mind will soon believe that videogames will take over as the most watched media platform in the market. Unfortunately, this industry is also criticized repeatedly for its male-centric and sexist views. These are well-deserved criticisms. The gaming industry has long gotten away with hyper-sexualizing women and other misogynistic practices, in the name of “creating an immersive experience” (which is really about consumers’ satisfaction than anything else. Take Fire Emblem: Three Houses, for example. Publicly released in late of July, Three Houses quickly became a household name while effortlessly doubled worldwide sales of the first two Fire Emblem: Fates combined4. Pulling from my own personal experience, I had not felt such enthusiasm bursting from within about a game since Persona 5 (which I played for the first time in 2017). While the game’s character interactions has improved under the wake of prominent sexual harassment accusations in the U.S., misogynistic undertone remained visible in a shared conversation between two young nobles, Sylvain and Lorenz, in which they both attempt to one up one another in game of “picking up” women. Even I was bothered as a heterosexual man during this exchange, much less other women. What’s worst? This is a game created by Intelligent System, a Japanese video game developer. Which means, this is not only a national crisis, but a global one. For those reasons, it is eminently vital that we take a look at the future of gaming, namely those that will be entering its workforce. Primarily, I will be asking the question of “what does the current demographic of undergraduate videogame developers say about the future of gaming as media?” Please keep in mind that all data were taken from Amber Settle’s “Demographics of undergraduates studying games in the United States: a comparison of computer science students and the general population” at DePaul University.
Amber’s study compared a population of undergraduate students whom are undergoing a postsecondary education from 4 major public and private universities (Bradley University, DePaul University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Southern Polytechnic State University) that are offering full-time video game programs to the population of computer science majors in the United States. Using answers from a survey that her team created, they were able to performed Chi-square test to determine whether the difference between observed and expected values were statistically significant. I have included a link to Settle’s study below if you wanted to check out her team’s methodology and discussion of limitations5.
According to Settle team’s result, when it comes to sex, men dominate the future of our gaming industry, by close to a 7:1 ratio. That’s not all. When it comes to gender, white, cis-gendered men dominate the industry. A whopping 87% of the responses checked heterosexual, with 71% of the entire sample being white. According to the study, this figure very much aligns with the current demographic of the gaming industry in specific, and the science and engineering (S&E) industry as a whole. In an industry dominated by such uniformity of gender and race, of course the inevitable end products will be filled their portrait of how “the world” works (that world being white, heterosexual, empowered world). Yikes, the future isn’t looking bright at all. Now, don’t get me wrong. It may seem as if I am racist against white people. That is not the case. I just hate people who refuse to evolve from their embryonic view of the world. To put it into context, I not only despise old, white men, whom ideologies are cemented in the 1970s, but also old, Asian men, whom ideologies are also fastened in the same time period.
It is at this part that I felt most troubled. How do we fix the gender power dynamic within the industry? How do we the repair the image of video game to incorporate women interest in gaming? Fortunately, there is an answer to the last question. While women may be underrepresented in video games overall, women have been avid gamers since its initiation in the early 1970s. With the rise of feminist and equality for all movements, the numbers of women gamers, streamers and YouTube personalities are ascending rapidly. It is exactly this proliferation in the number of female gamers that attracted developers to reevaluate their designs, in order to reach a larger audience. I remembered a time, where RPGs did not see a strong female lead, or one in which they were more than 50% clothed. I also remembered a time, when you cannot choose your sex in a game. While those remained on the shelves today, producers are starting to hearken to our becks and calls. Games with strong female leads such as Horizon Zero Dawn, remastered Tomb Raider, Child of Light and Celeste not only proved to be major contemporary successes, but also corroborated the fact that successful games don’t necessarily need to cater to the cis-male audiences. As game developers continue increase their focus on women gaming experiences, I believe we will spot more gender inclusive games (similar to Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing). This will set off a benevolent cycle of increases in women enthusiasm for gaming, which will lead to more women joining the industry, which will lead to more gender inclusive games, and the cycle repeats itself.
Here’s to hoping this trend continues.
Work Cited
2https://escharts.com/blog/worlds-2018-final
3https://www.wired.co.uk/article/fortnite-world-cup-finals
5 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08993408.2013.769319
First Time Game Reviewer 