In the world of video games, most plot lines run along the same story. A big, strong male protagonist is on a quest to rescue the beautiful, helpless and buxom female love interest. Despite the fictional trend, many of the men holding the video game controllers are threatening, not saving the women of the real world.
Anita Sarkeesian, the host of a video series “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” was scheduled to speak at Utah State University on Wednesday last week. However, after receiving rape threats, death threats and an email threat to the school to conduct a “Montreal Massacre” should Sarkeesian speak, the speaker canceled her talk the day it was scheduled.
Threats such as these, which target women, have become commonplace in the so-called “Gamer World,” which has a history of unfriendliness to females. Sarkeesian has been threatened a number of times before she even agreed to speak at USU because of her video series. Episode after episode, Sarkeesian has dared to call out the misogyny of game designers, whose games not only lack any female protagonists, but also portray the women they feature as brainless, sexy and in desperate need of saving. Such observations have not gone unnoticed in the online gamer world.
“Since I announced that I was going to be doing a video series specifically looking at the representations of women in video games, I have been attacked and ultimately terrorized for two years because of this series,” Sarkeesian said in a Saturday interview with NPR. “Everything from my social media accounts flooded with misogynist and racist slurs to trying to hack into my social media and email.”
#GamerGate all began with female independent video game developer Zoe Quinn. When Quinn released her video game “Depression Quest” in August 2014, her ex-boyfriend, a programmer named Eron Gjoni, accused her of cheating on him with a journalist from a game website in order to garner positive reviews. Quinn denied the allegations, but the damage was done. The online gamer world exploded in anger, Quinn received a barrage of death and rape threats and #GamerGate had been unleashed.
Essentially, #GamerGate has been a three-month long brawl between virtually all parties of the gamer world. Some point to the corruption of gamer journalism, in which people like Quinn can allegedly garner good reviews for the games by doing favors for the writers. Others argue that women like Sarkeesian are ruining the culture of video games by questioning the so-called good stories and masculine protagonists that result in entertaining and high-selling video games. Although not invalid points, many of these comments are markedly sexist, referring to women in a misogynist and hateful light. One could assume the members of the gamer community spend a lot of time online, and between Twitter, Reddit and 4chan, the #GamerGate thread has become never-ending, as have the threats to Sarkeesian, Quinn and other dissenters of the gamer status quo.
Obviously, there is no excuse for these threats. No one should have to fear rape, death or even hate from his or her community for daring to call attention to fundamental issues within that community. Yet there is a reason why video games are created as escapist fantasies, where men are strong, women need saving and violence is abundant. The answer, as always, is money.
Game developers, aside from expressing their creativity and design skills, create games with the goal of selling as many as possible. Thousands of video games have been made, yet the ones that continually sell are the ones filled with testosterone and sexy women. The suppliers of these games may not necessarily be misogynists, but they have to meet the demands of their buyers in order to make a profit. Judging by the tone of the threats gamers have hurled at Sarkeesian and Quinn, these customers are not exactly friendly toward women. Thus, the fantasy world of sexist video games is likely an enjoyable escape for them, one they do not want diluted by the inclusion of strong female characters.
There have certainly been attempts to make female protagonists, half-hearted as they may have been. Take Samus of Nintendo’s “Metroid” series. Samus was an intergalactic bounty hunter who traveled the galaxy in a bulky space suit hunting space pirates. She was strong, and she was female, but nobody could actually tell what her gender was until she took her suit off at the end of the game. But even when the suit came off, Samus was clad in a bikini. So much for a strong female video game role model.
#GamerGate is a mess, but the sexism permeating the video game industry is not unique to the gamer world. Women have been met with adversity in almost every “man’s world” they have tried to enter, from politics to business to journalism. Improving the culture of video games may be up to the developers, but as long as their sexist games continue selling, why should they change?
