When reading reports on surveys and studies, it's important to consider every statement, question and response. Studies are a funny thing, you never know how the questions were asked — whether or not the individuals surveyed were baited into giving particular responses. All you usually have are bits of bolded text and percentages, no real sense of context.
Rosalind Wiseman (American parenting educator and author), in collaboration with Charlie Kuhn and Ashly Burch (the voice of Tiny Tina in Borderlands), surveyed a very limited amount of US youths — 1,400 middle school and high school students (age 11-18) — on gender representation in video games.
The study brought to light a very interesting statistic — 70% of surveyed girls and 78% of surveyed boys said it doesn’t matter what gender the protagonist in a game is. They aren't more or less likely to play a video game based on the gender of the character they will be playing as.
Lately gender has become a major theme of discussion in the gaming culture. Words like 'sexist' and 'misogynistic' are thrown around haphazardly – sometimes only to bring attention to an individual and other times to bring up a conversation on topic. So, why is this percentage so interesting?
It shows that people care less about what gender a video game character is than you would think. The topic of gender is at the forefront because people are yelling about it, not talking about it. While it may be something to be addressed, it is something that can't, and shouldn't, be shoehorned into every video game.
When it comes to the portrayal of female characters in video games, the findings aren't as surprising as you would think. 47% of middle school boys and 61% of high school boys agreed that gemale characters are 'treated too often as sex objects.' Wiseman made an interesting decision here, not surveying (or not reporting the statistic if they did question them) the females in the study.
What games, if any, do girls in middle school and high school play? Well, those responses wouldn't be too different if you asked the boys the same question; 26% played FPS games like Call of Duty and HALO, 36% played RPG like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto, 17% played sports games like FIFA and Madden, and 19% did not play games, compared to 3% of boys.
It looks as though everyone, regardless of gender, enjoy playing AAA games – most of which that are listed in the report have male protagonists (Skyrim allows you to create your own character).
When asked on Gamergate specifically, very few individuals in the survey even knew what it was. Does this show limit on the topic? Yes. This is an issue created and perpetuated by the internet.
It seems to boil down to something very simple — the argument of gender representation in video games is being run into the ground by the very people pushing the topic the hardest.
This is a topic that is not easy to hold a conversation on, things typically end up in a who can yell louder match. This is a topic much bigger and more inclusive than gender. It includes the representation of ethnicities in not just video games, but in every film, in every piece of literature and every show on television.
I'm not saying the subject is unapproachable, but perhaps we should talk about it instead of yell or force it into every conversation on a game.
Read the focused report here, watch the talk on it here.
