The 21st century, although in its early stages, has given birth to a new era of gaming where players are immersed in story lines saturated with graphic violence, sexual content and offensive language.It is these story lines that we the gamer find ourselves addicted to as they are vehicles for which we can participate in acts which would certainly not be accepted in mainstream society.
We find ourselves sucked into a virtual world governed by its own rules and regulations and as a result leave the digital world having witnessed and/ or accrued labels and stereotypes not befitting to our real selves but rather to the gender groups to which we belong.
The Grand Theft Auto franchise has certainly opened up a big can of worms in the sense that it adheres to everything I have touched on so far but also may be considered in a positive light in that it also gives us things to ponder and critically analyze that we may have not done so previously.
Yes, the female is portrayed negatively, for example as a crack head, as seen by my recent experience when playing Grand Theft Auto IV where I had to fetch a female characters coke back from an abandoned hospital. But it is the decisions I made and the actions I had to take in this mission which made be think that females weren't the only ones being portrayed in a negative light in the virtual world in general.
Males to, whether some like to admit it or not, are equally if not on a larger scale portrayed negatively as well.Hell, the male character I was playing had to kill about 30 people and outrun a 3 star wanted rating to even complete the mission while also having to steal numerous cars violently throwing its occupants from them to acquire them.
If that doesn't constitute a negative representation of a male then I don't know what does. What this blog has tried to make readers understand is that although it is the negative representation of females that we largely pay closer attention to, the negative representations of males do deserve as much attention and analysis than ever because if we the gamer go on ignoring it any longer it could spiral out of control to depths which it may not recover.
BY KYLE REDPATH
DATE: 02/08/2010
In a tutorial today we were discussing another kind of male stereotype in video gaming: namely, the anti-social, uncommunicative male who would rather spend hours blowing people up in a virtual environment than having any real social interaction. All agreed that such a stereotype was thankfully waning but that it still holds some sway among people who think gaming is an anti-social activity with no cultural or intellectual merit.
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