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elidecarteretfutureworks-blog · 7 years

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DD2000 Essay research

Essay question: Do games and other creative mediums have an underlying layer of sexism in their designs?

References and research:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/07/10/the-slow-evolution-of-women-in-video-games_a_21425353/

http://www.radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/gamerepresentation.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27824701

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2014/feb/19/video-games-need-more-women-female-characters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism_in_video_gaming

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/family/playing-video-games-can-lead-sexist-attitudes-study/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/posts/242547

https://kotaku.com/5918217/these-guys-made-a-list-about-sexism-against-men-in-video-games-are-they-trolling

https://www.autostraddle.com/ubisoft-cant-have-female-characters-because-women-are-too-difficult-to-animate-one-million-eyes-are-rolled-241278/

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-dumbest-excuses-game-makers-gave-excluding-women/

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/music-and-misogyny-why-were-all-listening-to-sexist-lyrics

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4747748/Study-film-scripts-shows-sexist-Hollywood-REALLY-is.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/10568504/Lack-of-respect-and-sexism-is-daily-reality-for-female-architects-survey-finds.html

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/percentage-of-female-developers-has-more-than-doubled-since-2009/1100-6420680/

http://www.unite-it.eu/profiles/blogs/why-are-so-few-women-developing-video-games

http://theconversation.com/more-women-are-becoming-game-developers-but-theres-a-long-way-to-go-79843

https://www.polygon.com/2012/10/25/3544758/game-development-in-the-middle-east

https://search.proquest.com/openview/0a09ac42fe21f99ee2ca4fb8cc47b2b4/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41036

Essay plan sub-headings:

Introduction

Introduce what going to talk about with a couple of statistics to back up

Examples of sexism in games (using key examples)

Some examples of games which have a layer of sexism involved in them in some way, using examples to back up this point, reasons why they appear sexist and possible reasons why.

Dating Sims

GTA

Duke Nukem 3D

Mario- Princess: Woman needs saving

Ride to Hell: Using women as rewards

Witcher 3: Using women as rewards/ objectifying

How females have been represented in the past

Female video game characters of the past were mostly relegated to roles of the 'bag-carrier wearing next-to-nothing' kind. Lara Croft, and her super-tight tank top, was the poster girl for female gaming.

Research concerning gender representation in video games often focuses on a few key points of how men and women are depicted differently: frequency and playability (ability to play a male character versus a female character), physical abilities, role in the game, and physical representation (in terms of body, attire, etc)

Animating difficulties for women

Game designers have even complained that females were more difficult to animate due to bone structure and as they’re more emotional, the designers would have to animate a more expressive face. It has also been said that they were more difficult to animate due to female characters ‘constantly disrobing’.

Ubisoft can’t animate women- Article

How this sexism affects players viewing this

Links to violence

YT comments/ Reddit comments

Trolling- attempting to engage reactions

Men playing as the hero shows their fantasies as it makes them feel powerful and masculine- James Bond syndrome.

Apart from sexism in video games and under-representation of female characters in games, there is also the sinister world of real-life sexual harassment of women players and those in the gaming industry.

The #GamerGate controversy in 2014 started as an attack against one female developer, which saw her home address and phone number published and a sustained campaign to destroy her public image. Its proponents claimed to want to restore the traditional values of gaming.

Gamer rate and people in industry rate

How many choose to play as male/ female in games

Players, designers and characters mostly male dominated.

48 percent of all gamers are female. 50 percent of men and 48 percent of women saying they played video games on a console, PC, or handheld device. Despite this, men are much more likely to self-identify as "gamers" than their female counterparts, and both men and women generally assume that most video game players are men. Fully 60 percent of Americans, including the men and women who play games, assume that gaming is a male activity. That assumption is reflected in who considers themselves a gamer. Fifteen percent of men surveyed consider themselves gamers, compared to just 6 percent of women. The discrepancy between who people assume plays video games and those who actually do is likely to do with gendered assumptions about gaming reinforced by marketing and culture. Games like Call of Duty, Madden, and The Legend of Zelda consciously target boys and men while leaving girls and women out, creating the expectation that the medium itself is an explicitly male one. That strategy bears out for men ages 18-29, with 77 percent of respondents saying they play games and a full 33 percent identifying as gamers. That compares to 57 percent of women playing games and just 9 percent of female gamers in the same age group. However, Pew did also find that people's relationship to gaming changes as they age. Thirty-eight percent of women over the age of 50 play video games, as compared to 29 percent of men. (https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/15/10220440/pew-research-center-video-games-gender)

Marketing strategies:

How marketing plays a part in this split of gamers and how games are marketed to certain groups.

https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed

History

Stats breakup on audience and no. of developers 80′s/ 90′s etc

Ways that sexism is beginning to be removed from games (using key designers and studios)

Call of Duty Black Ops 3 featured a female soldier.

Female sports players are beginning to feature in games, such as FIFA and Don Bradman Cricket ‘17. "One thing we decided from early on was that we didn't want to be tokenistic about this; we wanted to ensure that, just as in the men's game, that the women's is as completely true to the sport as is possible,"- Big Ant Sudios CEO Ross Symons.

Australia's Kayla 'Squizzy' Squires became the first female to qualify for Call of Duty World League in Los Angeles, a video game tournament pitting the world's best gamers against each other. Known as an 'eSports athlete' Squires plays as part of team, Exile5. She is leading the way for professional female gamers in Australia and she's told The Huffington Post Australia the tide has certainly turned in favour of female gamers.

"When I first started playing back in 2012 I didn't know any other female gamers. But things have changed. Not only are there more and more female gamers, who are attracted to the competitiveness of the games, there's much better representation of females in the games. It's come a long way just in the last few years," Squires said.

"The rise of female gamers means that the designers have really had to listen to what we want and it's really pleasing to see some great, strong females in a variety of games."

Video games now attract celebrity fans like Cara Delevingne, who is extremely vocal about her love of the game. She even appeared in the trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.

But while there has been a lot of progress, there are still grumblings that female representation in video games has not gone far enough and that the games will never feature full gender equality. But there are games like Mass Effect: Andromeda which, as revealed at the recent E3 Expo in LA featured a female lead character. Other Mass Effect games allow players to choose the gender they wish to play by.

"It's evident in seeing the games progress to what they're like now. In Infinite Warfare the female soldier is a very high ranking officer, who is very respectfully dressed. We've come a long way from Lara Croft with her boobs and skimpy clothing. So I do believe the game developers are taking it on the chin when it comes to designing female protaganists," Grace said.

"I'm really hopeful that this will start to be the end of females in video games as the 'damsel in distress. Female gamers sent a strong message that we love gaming too and we want to have strong female characters. We've said, 'Can you please cater to us?' and many of them have listened."

Why sexism occurs

How create relatable characters when not them

How can a group of white males create a fairly represented black female character.

Audience from history of games

Other cultures attitudes:

Western, Japan, China, Middle Eastern: Rapelay

Other religious attitudes towards females: Possible reason for why occurs in other cultures.

Sexism in other mediums (films, art, interior design, music) (Lessons learned from wider contemporary design issues- Film, art, interior etc)

Music

Films

Art

Interior design

Possibly clothing/ fashion?

Conclusion

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hark-tothemusic · 7 years

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Bucks Live: Evaluation.

From a personal perspective I think I did well, however I do agree with Neil’s comment that I should push myself more. Looking back over the moodboards and ideas I came up with in the early stages of planning made me feel slightly disappointed with what I came up with. Although, I do believe that how I feel about what i did is more to do with the fact that I made it and spent so much time with it that I didn’t get chance to step back and see it from the audiences perspective, as a did get a lot of positive comments about the decor from my peers. I must also remember that I ran into issues with budget, time, environment, and equipment, which meant that I couldn’t perfectly recreate the images I had in my head. In the lead up to the event, I think I did a fairly good job at creating the artwork for posters and flyers, which I am quite proud of. I also think I worked quite well in my team, and offered some good ideas to work with. If I remember correctly, the theme of Neverland had been one of the ideas I suggested (not trying to toot my own horn here, just saying!), and I think the theme worked really well, and had a bit of something for everyone. If I were to do this event again, I would come up with a decor plan that was less ambitious, and one that would allow me to do more work in the lead up to the event, rather than having to do everything in the morning like I did.

My role during the event was to run the sideshow games we built in the workshop. I personally think a steward should have been doing this role, as I didn’t really get a chance to see any of the important aspects of putting on an event, such as the stage set up, or liaising with artists or traders etc. We didn’t have enough stewards turn up on the day, therefore they were allocated to the most important positions first. I also know that someone had to run the games, whether it was a steward or one of us, and I’m not trying to suggest that I had the worst role of the day, but I do feel like I would have been more useful in a more important position. I don’t feel like I learned anything from watching 3 year olds throw stuff at other stuff all day and pretending to be excited when they won a game. I want to push myself more as I said earlier, however this wasn’t really possible when I was basically a spare part on the sidelines occasionally being asked to go flyering or carry something around.

Additionally, I think a better break system should have been implemented. I had one 15 minute break the whole day which was just enough time to use the loo and grab a drink and my packet of biscuits from the production office before I had to relive the steward that took over from me from the strenuous 15 minutes he had standing in one space and occasionally taking a 50p from a child. On the other hand, I noticed other people seemed to have enough time to go into town and get full on takeaway meals, coffees, ice creams etc. Luckily my mum bought me a Greggs or else I would have had no chance to actually eat properly all day. This probably sounds a bit mean, but when you consider that for the 12 hours that we were onsite some of us only had one 15 minute break the entire time, it is quite bad, especially since we were not busy, and could probably have had the time for longer breaks.

I personally think I did a good job assisting with packing away. It felt good to actually DO something after being stood in one place all day, although as I mentioned before, I noticed some people pulling their weight more than others, and I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad or point fingers, but it was annoying to be busy trying to put things away so I could go home, and some people were just stood watching me. Despite this however, I do believe we packed the event down in record timing, and it felt good to work together as a team with the people who were helping out and doing stuff.

Whilst the event did go fairly well on the day, I think there were a few things that could be done differently. Firstly, I think that the posters and flyers should have been put up around town earlier to raise awareness of the event. I also think that we should have had some sort of marketing event to get people excited, such as a parade, or a character dress up in the town. I heard that the traders at the event had difficulty finding the social media pages and the website for the event, which I find hard to believe since it only takes a simple Google search, however I do think that there could have been more on the internet to promote what we were offering and the businesses we were supporting. I think if we had more of a presence in the town and on the internet, we may have attracted more people to the event.

Although we didn’t attract many people, this was probably a good thing since we did not have enough stewards to run the event, and it would have been dangerous to have so many people in an area with so few staff. There were a few near misses on the day, where kids nearly fell off of or walked into moving rides. Had there been enough stewards to run these areas, these accidents would not have even come close to happening. In addition, the fire engine needed to leave several times throughout the day, which was not good as they were in a time sensitive situation, and there were no stewards to let them out of the fences when they needed to get out. I am also aware that we only had one clicker at the entrance, therefore we know how many people entered the event, but we don’t know how many had left, and therefore we didn’t know how many people were inside the event at any time.

From a personal standpoint, I think that there could have been more things around the site to indicate that it was a Peter Pan themed event. If I were to redo this event, I would change the decor so there were more Peter Pan themed items. I would also choose more rides and inflatables that had some sort of tie in with the Peter Pan story, such as a pirate ship ride, or a mermaid themed ball pit or something. I would also ask the MC to play songs from the Peter Pan soundtrack, because although he did a good job, the songs he chose were more suitable for a rock festival rather than a children’s event. There were a few odd song choices, such as Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’, that sounded really out of place and didn’t really give a “child friendly” fun vibe.

If I were to do this event again, I would look back at my moodboards a lot more than I did, as there were loads of great ideas on there that I never used because I forgot about them, such as the boards with the story quotes, and some of the pirate themed decor. I would plan more in advance where I wanted everything to go, so that on the day it would just be a case of putting things where I wanted them to go. I would also try to be more ambitious with the decor, but in a way that would not take up too much time like my decor did this year.

Despite all of the drawbacks I have mentioned, I do think that parts of the event worked really well, such as the actors who dressed as Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, and the school band who played the last set of the day. I think that as a class, we worked well together as a team, and I think the event has bonded us really well. I noticed that everyone’s ideas were listened to and were included or built on in some way. I think that everyone was able to have a say in the planning, and I think that we all left our own little touches in some way on the event. My advice for myself in the future, and for anyone who does Bucks Live in the future is to take pictures of everything, as I realise now that I don’t have pictures of everything I did and that makes me a bit sad. I was so absorbed in the event during the day that I completely forgot to take pictures of my decor, the bunting I made, and the balloon arch etc. I would also say that you should look back at your original ideas often, as the first ideas you come up with are always the most creative and imaginative, and theres always something new to gain from them if you get stuck.

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