What Boys Think of Sexism in Games
We all know the score. Boys love video games. Video games are made with a lot of action, violence, and sexy women because that's what their supposed male audience wants, and boys will not play games featuring a strong female character. That's what we think we know, but a recent study is proving almost everything we think we know about boy gamers may be wrong.
We say "almost everything" because it's still true, boys still love exciting and challenging video games and will put up with a lot to play them, but what they want in a video game may not be what the gaming industry still thinks they want. It turns out that they come for the action and challenge, but a sizable majority don't have much regard for the way the games are often marketed, or the sexist imagery sometimes contained therein. Game of War for example is pure excitement, but kids who play it are not blind to the objectifying way Kate Upton is usedin the game's advertising, and many disagree with it. This is good news, considering how sexism in video games has been shown to impair boys' ability to empathize with victims of violence.
Luckily right rearing gives us cause for hope. Here is what a study of 1,400 kids found in regards to youth and their opinion of sexism in video games:
Boys believe female characters are treated too often as sex objects: 47% of middle school boys agreed or strongly agreed, and 61% of high school boys agreed or strongly agreed. “If women are objectified like this it defeats the entire purpose of fighting,” Theo, an eighth-grader who loves playing Mortal Kombat, told us. “I would respect the [female] character more for having some dignity.”
Both boys and girls aren’t more likely to play a game based on the gender of the protagonist:
70% of girls said it doesn’t matter and 78% of boys said it doesn’t matter. Interestingly, boys care less about playing as a male character as they age and girls care more about playing as a female one.
Not only does this study challenge the notion about what exactly boys "like" in video games, but it also showed that girls like to play a variety of video games, with first-person shooters and role playing games taking up the greatest share.
We also asked kids if they identified as “gamers.” Especially in light of the “Gamergate” controversy that erupted last year and revealed intense sexism among some self-identified gamers, would the young people who identified as gamers share any of these sentiments? But very few of our respondents knew what Gamergate was and they had very different responses from what one may expect: 55% of boys who identify as gamers think there should be more female heroes in games, and 57% believe that female characters are too often treated as sex objects.
In conclusion, the assumptions the gaming industry often have about young people's interests, and boys in particular, are probably not representative of the majority of actual youths. Many more questions can be raised though, like just how much of an influence the games themselves actually have if this is true.
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