Shan Lin Vanke Meisha Academy RE 303: Research Seminar II Instructor: David Junfei Wu December 6, 2022
Abstract Males have historically dominated the video game industry. However, with the proliferation of mobile phones and technological advancements, video games are now more accessible to everyone, including female players. Surprisingly, even though female players now make up a large portion of the game market population, there is still a dearth of female-friendly games on the market. By leading with the research question that “How does female characters’ representation in video games reflect a lack of female-friendly video games in today’s male-dominated video games industry?”, this study will use the male gaze theory to look at how female characters are portrayed in games. This study will show how many popular video games on the market today are designed to appeal to male gamers' preferences. In the introduction, Mulvey's male gaze theory and an overview of the currently male-dominated video game industry are presented. The male gaze theory will then be used to examine case studies of how women are portrayed in two action-adventure games, the Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider series. Key results show that most female characters in today's top video games are sexualized or objectified. Even though female video game characters are meant to be heroic figures, they still serve as male players' objects of desire. Female-friendly video games are hard to find on the market.
在历史上，男性一直主导着视频游戏行业。然而，随着手机的普及和技术的进步，视频游戏现在更容易被所有人接受，包括女性玩家。令人惊讶的是，尽管女性玩家现在占了游戏市场人口的很大一部分，但市场上仍然缺乏对女性友好的游戏。本研究将以 "女性角色在视频游戏中的表现如何反映出在当今男性主导的视频游戏行业中缺乏对女性友好的视频游戏？"这一研究问题为主导，利用男性凝视理论来研究女性角色在游戏中的表现。这项研究将显示今天市场上许多流行的视频游戏是如何设计的，以吸引男性玩家的喜好。在导言中，Mulvey的男性凝视理论和目前男性主导的视频游戏行业的概述被介绍出来。然后，男性凝视理论将被用来研究两个动作冒险游戏--《侠盗猎车手》和《古墓丽影》系列中如何描绘女性的案例。主要结果显示，当今顶级视频游戏中的大多数女性角色都被性化或物化。即使女性电子游戏角色是为了成为英雄人物，她们仍然是男性玩家的欲望对象。市场上很难找到对女性友好的视频游戏。
Female Game Characters’ Representations in Current Male-Dominated Video Games Industry
Most girls grow up in a society that tells them what they should do to be good, mild, and emotional but not rational. As a result, video games, which are strongly associated with the concept of rationality, vanish from the lives of young girls. However, the adoption of technology (computers and electronics) by men through hobbies and occupations led to the development of geek masculinity (Salter & Blodgett, 2012). Thus, the video games industry gradually became the "Man things". As a result, games have historically been associated with men; men also make up game developers' target market, player base, or potential customer base.
大多数女孩在一个社会中长大，这个社会告诉她们应该怎样做才是好的、温和的、感性的，但不是理性的。因此，与理性概念密切相关的电子游戏从年轻女孩的生活中消失了。然而，男性通过爱好和职业对技术（计算机和电子产品）的采用，导致了极客男性化的发展（Salter & Blodgett, 2012）。因此，电子游戏行业逐渐成为 "男人的事情"。因此，游戏历来与男性有关；男性也构成了游戏开发者的目标市场、玩家群或潜在客户群。
However, in recent years, games have migrated outside of the home, and the advent of mobile devices has made them constantly accessible and space-unrestrictive. Concerns about the potential effects of video games on their users have grown significantly because of this sudden growth spurt (Rajkowska). Even though the existence of female gamers is becoming more prevalent, accounting for nearly half of all game market consumers, the video game industry is still dominated by men. Female gamers can be considered as the minority of the gamers community in today’s games industry; their gaming experience is mentioned or discussed relatively rarely compared with male gamers. Most video games are designed for male gamers. For one reason, male characters are more likely to appear in video games than female characters. Typically, the main characters in role-playing games are masculine males who satisfy most male gamers' desire for masculinity; if the main characters are female, they are still presented in a way that fulfills male gamers' fantasies about females — female characters are sexualized and objectified (Rajkowska, 2014). By implementing the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey, this research will look at the game design behind video games to see how the character design for female game characters relates to or reflects the research question that “how female characters’ representation in video games reflects a lack of female-friendly video games in today’s male-dominated video games industry?”.
然而，近年来，游戏已经迁移到了家庭之外，移动设备的出现使它们可以不断地接触到，并且不受空间限制。由于这种突然的增长，人们对视频游戏对其用户的潜在影响的担忧已经大大增加（Rajkowska）。尽管女性玩家的存在越来越普遍，占所有游戏市场消费者的近一半，但视频游戏行业仍然由男性主导。在当今的游戏产业中，女性玩家可以被认为是玩家群体中的少数；与男性玩家相比，她们的游戏经历被提及或讨论的次数相对较少。大多数视频游戏都是为男性玩家设计的。由于一个原因，男性角色比女性角色更容易出现在电子游戏中。通常情况下，角色扮演游戏中的主角是男性，他们满足了大多数男性玩家对男性气质的渴望；如果主角是女性，他们仍然以满足男性玩家对女性幻想的方式呈现--女性角色被性化和物化（Rajkowska，2014）。通过实施Laura Mulvey的男性凝视理论，本研究将关注视频游戏背后的游戏设计，看看女性游戏角色的设计与 "在当今男性主导的视频游戏行业中，女性角色在视频游戏中的表现如何反映出缺乏对女性友好的视频游戏？"这一研究问题有什么联系或反映。
Like many other female characters in literacy and artworks, female game characters are created under the male gaze. The term "gaze" refers to how a viewer perceives the person depicted in a visual culture. The "gaze" category is mostly concerned with who is watching. Mulvey contends that women are frequently objects rather than subjects to be gazed at in films because one of the variables of controlling the camera (and the gaze) stems from the presumption that heterosexual males constitute the overwhelming audience for most film genres (Mulvey, 1975). Visual pleasure has been divided between active/male and passive/female in a world that is ordered by sexual imbalance. The feminine figure, which is dressed appropriately, receives the fantasy of the deciding male gaze. Women play the classic exhibitionist role of being simultaneously stared at and exhibited, with their appearances coded for the intensely erotic visual impact such that they can be said to connote stare (Mulvey, 1975). Thus, the male gaze presented in video games can be understood as a manifestation of social power inequality that is developed consciously or unconsciously in order to maintain the sexual order in the male–dominated video games industry, which is the projection of the general patriarchal society.
像许多其他文学和艺术作品中的女性角色一样，女性游戏角色是在男性的凝视下产生的。术语 "凝视 "指的是观看者如何看待视觉文化中描绘的人。凝视 "类别主要关注谁在看。Mulvey认为，女性在电影中经常是被凝视的对象，而不是主体，因为控制摄像机（和凝视）的变量之一，源于异性恋男性构成大多数电影类型的压倒性观众的假设（Mulvey, 1975）。视觉快感在一个由性不平衡所决定的世界中被划分为主动/男性和被动/女性。穿着得体的女性形象，接受了男性目光决定性的幻想。女性扮演着典型的暴露狂角色，同时被盯着看，被展览，她们的出现被编码为强烈的色情视觉冲击，这样可以说是意味着盯着看（Mulvey, 1975）。因此，电子游戏中呈现的男性凝视可以被理解为社会权力不平等的表现，它是为了维护男性主导的电子游戏产业中的性秩序而自觉或不自觉地发展起来的，而这正是一般父权制社会的投影。
To further explore the process of how the character design of female characters in video games gradually solidifies today’s games industry as male-dominated and reveals the situation that there is a lack of female-friendly games, this paper will exemplify some cases studies and analyze them by mainly using the theory of the male gaze.
为了进一步探讨电子游戏中的女性角色设计是如何逐渐巩固当今游戏业的男性主导地位，并揭示出缺乏女性友好型游戏的情况，本文将举例说明一些案例研究，并主要运用男性凝视的理论进行分析。
Result
To attract the consumer or to meet the consumer's expectations, game companies would pander to the gamers and design the game characters in such a way that the gamers would like them as much as possible. Video games can shape players' self-worth, body image, sexuality, and much more, as a case study has already demonstrated (Smith, 2006). As a result, characters’ representations in games can reflect the preferences of the mainstream games market. Even if female gamers already compose half of the population in-game markets, most game companies still intend to produce games based on the preference of male gamers. Thus, gamers are more likely to play a game that includes more characters of their own gender, as this may give players a first impression of whether the game is more suitable for males or females. For example, "masculine games" such as sports games typically feature only male characters, whereas "feminine games" such as dress-up games for girls typically feature only female characters. Under the research, in 100 video games released over the last five years, there are about 66.5% of 810 characters in games are male (Brittney, 2022). The number of female characters does not even reach the half of male characters (27.7% of characters are female and 5.8% of characters are non-binary gender). For example, GTA (Grand Theft Auto), a series of action-adventure games, only includes males as playable protagonist characters. In GTA V, which is the most famous game in the whole GTA series, there are three playable characters, and they are all males in the story mode. It is important to notice that different characters that players choose in the story mode will give them completely different storylines, which enhances players’ gaming experience. It is true that players can still choose playable female characters in the online version of GTA V; however, playable characters in the online version do not have any storyline, which means that gamers’ major gaming experiences depend on players themselves instead of the existing plots. Though 75% of gamers are male in GTA V online, 29% of male gamers prefer to play a female character (Yee, 2021). At the same time, there are much more clothes and adjustable parameters for custom faces for female characters (such as eyelashes, blusher color, lip color, etc.). Thus, the reason why those male gamers choose to play female characters and dress them extremely sexy might be that they try to satisfy their own sexual imagination of females. In this situation, female characters can be considered objects that are under the male gaze; they are gazed at, objectified, and sexualized.
为了吸引消费者或满足消费者的期望，游戏公司会迎合玩家，把游戏人物设计得尽可能让游戏者喜欢他们。电子游戏可以塑造玩家的自我价值、身体形象、性能力等等，一个案例已经证明了这一点（Smith, 2006）。因此，游戏中的角色表现可以反映主流游戏市场的偏好。即使女性玩家已经占到了游戏市场人口的一半，大多数游戏公司仍然打算根据男性玩家的偏好来制作游戏。因此，游戏玩家更有可能玩一个包含更多自己性别角色的游戏，因为这可能给玩家一个第一印象，即游戏更适合男性还是女性。例如，"男性化的游戏"，如体育游戏，通常只有男性角色，而 "女性化的游戏"，如女孩的装扮游戏，通常只有女性角色。根据研究，在过去五年发布的100个视频游戏中，810个游戏角色中约有66.5%是男性（Brittney, 2022）。女性角色的数量甚至没有达到男性角色的一半（27.7%的角色是女性，5.8%的角色是非二元性别）。例如，GTA（Grand Theft Auto），一系列动作冒险游戏，只包括男性作为可玩的主角角色。在GTA V中，这是整个GTA系列中最著名的游戏，有三个可玩的角色，在故事模式中他们都是男性。需要注意的是，玩家在故事模式中选择的不同角色会给他们带来完全不同的故事情节，这增强了玩家的游戏体验。诚然，在《GTA V》的网络版中，玩家仍然可以选择可玩的女性角色；但是，网络版中的可玩角色没有任何故事情节，这意味着玩家的主要游戏体验取决于玩家自己，而不是现有的剧情。虽然《GTA V》在线版中75%的玩家是男性，但29%的男性玩家更愿意扮演女性角色（Yee, 2021）。同时，女性角色有更多的衣服和可调整的自定义脸部参数（如睫毛、腮红颜色、嘴唇颜色等）。因此，那些男性玩家选择扮演女性角色并把她们打扮得极为性感的原因，可能是他们试图满足自己对女性的性想象力。在这种情况下，女性角色可以被认为是男性目光下的对象；她们被注视，被物化，被性化。
Even if the protagonists in video games are female, it is still possible that they exist in the representations that are under the male gaze. Tomb Raider, a video game series developed by the British gaming company Core Design, revolves around the fictional British archaeologist Lara Croft, who travels the world looking for lost artifacts and infiltrating dangerous tombs and ruins. The Tomb Raider series was the first to challenge the male protagonist's monopoly on the game market. Lara wears extremely short pants, small round glasses, and white tights that outline her body and would be translucent if she was in the water in the first game of the Tomb Raider series——this outfit is not appropriate for an archaeologist because she needs to explore archaeological sites with unknown dangers. Core Design promoted Lara as a "sexy heroine" in the early stages of the Tomb Raider series, emphasizing her feminine features such as breasts, hips, and slender waist. The deliberate design of Lara as a female character is clearly intended to fit with the male gaze. Though Lara's outfits have become more and more appropriate in recent series (for example, later series did not portray Lara's feminine features as prominently, and Lara usually wears tank tops, shorts, combat boots, and other things that are logical to wear in an archaeological setting), Lara's representation is still dominated by men in other ways. Lara is injured and needs a nail pulled out in the opening scene of the newest Tomb Raider series game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018). According to Assunção (2016), the presence of female avatars or video game characters in these spaces does not alter their (masculine) gendered nature, as Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series is "a male fantasy of Barbie kicking butt" (Fullerton). The camera focuses on her painful, tired expression repeatedly; at certain angles, she even reveals some strange "sexy" expression (kind of like the expression during sex). The camera is simultaneously focused from the bottom up on Lara's buttocks and crotch area, emphasizing her tight pants. According to Jacobsson, one way the male gaze represents is the camera gaze, which often has a male operator and sexually frames female body parts (Jacobsson, 1999). These camera shots perfectly fit Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze which is that women's representations on screen are an unconscious male desire (Mulvey, 1975). A "physically attractive" heroine is more likely to be perceived as an effective role model, whereas a "sexualized" heroine is perceived as a "sexual object"(Grimes, 2003). Therefore, even though Lara Croft's personality in Tomb Raider is strong, resolute, adventurous, charismatic, and similar to the "Big Lady," the scene of her injury focuses on her painful and even "sexy" facial expressions, reintroducing her as a sex symbol.
即使电子游戏中的主角是女性，她们仍有可能存在于男性目光下的表象中。《古墓丽影》是英国游戏公司Core Design开发的视频游戏系列，围绕着虚构的英国考古学家劳拉-克罗夫特展开，她在世界各地寻找失落的文物，潜入危险的古墓和遗迹。古墓丽影》系列是第一个挑战男性主角在游戏市场上的垄断地位的作品。在《古墓丽影》系列的第一部游戏中，劳拉穿着极短的裤子，戴着小圆眼镜，穿着白色紧身衣，勾勒出她的身体，如果她在水中，就会变成半透明的--这种装束不适合考古学家，因为她需要探索有未知危险的考古现场。核心设计公司在《古墓丽影》系列的早期阶段将劳拉宣传为 "性感女英雄"，强调她的女性特征，如乳房、臀部和纤细的腰部。将劳拉刻意设计成一个女性角色，显然是为了配合男性的目光。虽然劳拉的服装在最近的系列中变得越来越合适（例如，后来的系列没有像以前那样突出地刻画劳拉的女性特征，劳拉通常穿背心、短裤、作战靴和其他在考古环境中合理穿着的东西），但劳拉的表现在其他方面仍然是由男性主导的。在最新的古墓丽影系列游戏《古墓丽影》（Shadow of the Tomb Raider）（2018年）的开场戏中，劳拉受伤了，需要拔掉一根钉子。根据Assunção（2016）的说法，女性化身或视频游戏角色在这些空间的存在并没有改变其（男性）性别化的本质，因为古墓丽影系列的劳拉是 "男性幻想的芭比踢屁股"（Fullerton）。镜头反复聚焦于她痛苦、疲惫的表情；在某些角度，她甚至露出一些奇怪的 "性感 "表情（有点像做爱时的表情）。镜头同时从下往上对准了拉拉的臀部和胯部区域，强调了她的紧身裤。根据Jacobsson的说法，男性凝视的一种表现方式是摄像机凝视，它通常有一个男性操作者，并对女性身体部位进行性定格（Jacobsson，1999）。这些镜头完全符合Mulvey的男性凝视理论，即女性在屏幕上的表现是男性无意识的欲望（Mulvey, 1975）。一个 "身体有吸引力 "的女主角更有可能被视为一个有效的榜样，而一个 "性化 "的女主角则被视为一个 "性对象"（Grimes, 2003）。因此，尽管《古墓丽影》中劳拉的个性是坚强的、果断的、冒险的、有魅力的，并且类似于 "大女士"，但她受伤的场景集中在她痛苦甚至 "性感 "的面部表情上，重新将她作为一个性象征。
Discussion
Following the research question of how the current male-dominated video game industry's lack of female-friendly video games is reflected in the representation of female characters in these games, the result of this research focuses on two case studies of video games in which the representations of female game characters are under the male gaze. This paper discovered that most video games have female characters that are designed to satisfy the male gaze; the root cause of this may be that the producing companies have the mistaken belief that there are male gamers and only male gamers who compose the mainstream video game markets today and in the future, so they want to pander to the larger group of customers (which are the male gamers), even though doing so may make some customers uncomfortable. Because all the results are based on interpretation and data in general, it is impossible to determine whether the producing companies intended to design female game characters under the male gaze. Even if it is not companies' willingness to design sexualized and objectified female characters, it cannot be denied that the outcome of those designs is under the male gaze because the patriarchal society has existed for too long and it is difficult for people to even notice that these designs are under the male gaze. I propose that the future paper can focuses on the question of what the producing company should do to eliminate the sexualization and objectification of female character design.
在研究目前男性主导的电子游戏行业缺乏对女性友好的电子游戏是如何反映在这些游戏中女性角色的表现上的问题之后，本研究的结果集中于两个电子游戏的案例研究，其中女性游戏角色的表现是在男性目光下的。本文发现，大多数电子游戏中的女性角色都是为了满足男性目光而设计的；其根本原因可能是制作公司错误地认为有男性玩家，而且只有男性玩家构成了今天和未来的主流电子游戏市场，所以他们想迎合更大的顾客群体（也就是男性玩家），尽管这样做可能会让一些顾客感到不舒服。因为所有的结果都是基于一般的解释和数据，所以无法确定制作公司是否有意在男性的目光下设计女性游戏角色。即使不是公司愿意设计性化和物化的女性角色，也不能否认这些设计的结果是在男性凝视下的，因为父权制社会存在了太长时间，人们甚至很难注意到这些设计是在男性凝视下。我建议未来的论文可以着重讨论生产公司应该如何消除女性角色设计的性化和物化的问题。