Sunday, 12 January 2014

The Politics in Gaming

Call me a little delayed or behind the times but when I first bought Minecraft for the Xbox 360 I was surprised about the cross platform feature. I thought it was innovative, and a genius idea, much like when you could have split screen online multiplayer, that too was an innovative idea. This led me to think if we can have split screen online multiplayer and cross platform gaming between Xbox and PC gamers, then why not make all games cross platform involving Sony’s Playstation? This has become a wasted opportunity between the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and even with the release of the next generation there is still no evidence of any cross platform.
This I like to call the politics within the gaming industry. 

An Investigation into the debates surrounding the objectification of female characters in gaming.

It is often stereotyped that it is men who are stereotyped as the “gamers” of the world as cultivated by constant broadcast advertisements from the institutions,  like from Game, IGN and Gamestation and a personal study proved my initial ideas that it is the majority of men that play the action/adventure etcetera. Does that mean that all female characters are designed with the male gender in mind? I’m a female gamer and although I may not fit with the hegemonic view of young women in society, I still exist in a niche community. When you look at female gaming characters we can see from their big boobs and little clothing (their iconography) that they are designed by men for men, whether they are independent or reliant on the male character, portraying them as heroes and desired objects. (Prop’s character roles)