A Debate On Male And Female Gamers Media Essay

The purpose of this report is to highlight the biasness which has become popular in the designation of most of games that are of much interest to almost everyone in the world. This report will encompass the game makers and who play games and how this is increasing attention in the current world. The report will address games that have been observed to present biasness between men and women in the world. Since there exist several sources of games, this report will have an over view of some sources that are popular and famous in the modern world. How the biased is present or perceived will be an area of interest in this report. The question “is game design gender biased?” will enable the report to succinctly explain the steps that should be taken in order to fight gender biasness in designing of today’s games. Effect produced by this kind of biasness in game field will be also an area of concern in this report. In order for this report to highlight the gender bias found in the designation of today’s games, it would be of much important to understand what gender bias is.

Discussion

Gender bias refers to a situation whereby one sex is favored over the other. For instance you might find that men are given more priority than women in certain activities. During 1970s, men were highly favored than women in most of career fields. For example only men were allowed to take part in economic activities while women were branded as housewives. This is to mean that the act of considering one sex over the other is what counts for gender bias. From different researches that have been conducted it is shown that game design is gender biased. Game industry has been faced by several questions based on girls and women in gaming. Questions such as why girls and women have been neglected by the game industry has captured the attention of many people in the world more so the game developers individuals. The emergence of pink games movement took its roots in late 1990s whose emphasis was based on designing games around gender specification (Tavani 2010)

The intention of this movement was to provide females; girls and women with what they desired. This was a way of encouraging girls and women to develop positive attitude toward games. The most popular games are computer games whose directory of playing is based on commands or set of instructions. The pink games movement had intent of motivating females to embrace the ever changing technology in the world. If girls and women are allowed to participate or play computer games, they would become active players of such games and also got involved in the advanced technology and also what today is known as computer science. Through games, girls would solve problems associated with disenfranchisement. This has enabled many games developers to understand the importance of equity or fair treatment when it comes to the issue of designing games.

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As per concern to this report, it is therefore crucial for games developers to embark on or consider fairly homogenous and stereotypical ideas of gender. Games designing biasness have made games industry to experience a long period of recess. This has resulted from the fact that many of the titles of popular games have less taste to women. Only men are favored although they have been said to spend little time in playing such games. Games design is the only known product for the games industry and therefore in order to capture a diverse market for its product, it should therefore take into consideration various issues based on game designing. For instance it should ensure that the titles for the games are free from gender bias. These titles should also have same levels of taste to all sex this is to mean that they should be universal to all. The game developers need to focus on titles that are in a capacity to cater for a variety of tastes of people without catching a certain part of population and ignoring the other (Garner, 2004).

According to Garner 2006, the reason why game industries were confronted by recess more than boom is because of failure to diagnose game tastes of various people in the world. For example some of computer games could only capture the attention of a small portion of the population in steady of covering the entire population in the society. The only portion of population targeted is men meaning that women are ignored or not taken into consideration. This has resulted what is known as gender bias in game designing. Researchers have discovered that ladies have little interest in computer games simply because the titles of these games don’t provide or encompass their tastes (Garner, 2004).

The most common computer games include; internet heart, solitaire, pin ball, spider solitaire, free cell, hearts, internet spade and also minesweeper. Games designers and developers should therefore be in a position to come up with different styles of conflict resolution in games industry in order to fight gender biasness. The design teams should focus on dominating market through production of products that are of universal tastes to all people without any discrimination whatsoever. Through the work of Graner, evolution based on game characters and the industry workplace practices has observed to have had taken place from back in 1990s into the current. Game designers and developers are the main causes of gender biasness in gaming since most of them are men and usually rely on what they like and also what is enjoyable to them.

They therefore need to revise the varieties of play styles which they draw for their games. The only important point to consider is how different players interact or understand the play styles set by the game developers. A hunter is one of such games that have been said to portray difference between sexes this is because its men oriented in that no culture in the world which advocate for female hunting. Men find it interesting to play this game more than women because they believe hunting is a good institution in which they could learn new tactics of attaching invaders. Pin ball is a computer game which captures a lot of attentions to men than women because men learnt how to play this game at bars as they took beer hence developing the interest. Stories of human activities view women as gatherers while men are hunters this fact demoralize women hence setting them off.

Other reason as to why there exists gender bias in designation of games is the way gender roles in video games and also in computer games have been portrayed since the start of 1980s up to the current time. Through the study that was conducted in 1996, games such as tomb Raider and the Grand Theft Auto were said to include female characters meaning that female characters were engaged in play. There was an argument that when women characters participate in video games, they only take backseat part or role of the game. It was also discussed that many of video games portray women as victims of violence as opposed to men in any video games. In addition to this many women characters appear in an overly sexual way in most of video games hence deviating from moral responsibilities (Sears & Jacko, 2003 )

Most of the designers are after money and thus why they tend to hold no moral responsibility when portraying sexual females in video games. This sort of biasness is declining due to the reason that many women have become designers of games hence increasing females playing games. There are several things that can influence designing of software one of these things being social expectations. This is to mean that designing of any piece of software has been influenced by what referred to as designer’s social stereotypes based on the user. In educational software it is of much important to look at gender stereotypes for this will highlights on the biasness presented by game designers. From the educational software it has be been noted that gender stereotypes has a lot of influence on software designing. Software designing can e viewed as a social process meaning that gender stereotypes can have a great influence on it. The effects of software designing are said to fall on those individuals who normally use them. Since the issue of gender biasness in game designing has become an interesting area of study even in the current world, many companies have said to design new educational software’s that are geared toward the exploitation of gender differences mainly to encourage girls to use and play computer games (Greenfield, 1996.)

Gender bias in game designing based on computer and video games began early 1980s when the video game activities were initiated. The target here was young males by the game industry and it was then when computer games were discovered to have different impacts on both male and females. Video games have or present effects on children’s behavior meaning that when boys and girls are assigned to a certain video game, the impact of this video game will be of much different to the boys and girls. Video games that are aggressive increase the likelihood of girls to play or use aggressive toys as opposed to boys. In other hand video games that are less aggressive tend to decrease the activity of girls. In this connection, boys were less affected by the aggressive video games hence meaning that game designing influence gender difference in each and every society (Henry & Cassel, 2000).

Therefore game developers should produce games or videos that will have less impact on gender although social expectations of the user has been termed as the major factor which motivates game developers. The research on aggressive video games have shown that boy’s tendency to choose aggressive toys was hired than that of girls and it was not affected by the act of observing aggressive video games as opposed to girls. The research based on the impacts of video games on both males and females have shown that females are more affected by video games related to violence than males. It has been observed that age cannot be used to rate the amount to which video games affect gender different. According to Tavani ( 2010) argued that gender representation in video games demands a greater attention because in most of computer games female characters are not included. Examples of such games include virtual sports games and many others. There are other video games that have reinforced what is referred to as traditional cultural stereotypes along with gender lines. For instance Barbie fashion is one of these video games which are said to have had strong influence on gender. Through several researches the issue of gender bias in game design had been dismissed since it is argued that women have little concern on video games therefore eroding the argument of this report. The argument still holds since video or computer games are made for all people meaning no discrimination. If those computer games are purposely designed and marketed for men only, then women would be disadvantaged hence unable to enjoy both computer games and its benefits. One of such benefits being computer literacy which a crucial quality in our market today due to advanced technology. According to Tavani 2010, computer industry has promoted or contributed to gender difference which exists even today. The reason being that males are the most developers of computer games and that they had little interest in developing suitable games for women. The gender difference is also highlighted through the fact that only few computer games with a suitable role model for women (Tavani, 2010).

Females characters is computer games are presented as strippers or prostitutes and are said to possess body images that are termed as being unrealistic. The contribution of gender bias and the reason unto why the bias is of moral significance have been the role or the work of game developers and designers. The number of females characters presented in computer games or video games has been used as a good indicator of gender bias in game designing. How gender bias in game designing will cease has been a question posed by many people since 1980s to the current period. The appropriate solution to this question is that the government should pass or enact a policy to regulate the amount of video or computer games that must be produced and marketed by game developers and their companies. Through this there will be no issue of gender gap as long as computer games are concerned. The policies will also en courage women to become involved in computer games and technology as being able to utilize computer benefits based on high levels of literacy (Henry & Cassel, 2000)

Conclusion

Game designing has been considered as an important factor contributing to gender bias in the world. This factor came into existence as from back 1980s up to the current or todays world. Females are the major targeted victims of gender gap since most of computer games present few or a small number of women characters. Game designers or developers embark on titles that have low taste to the people in the society. Gender bias presented by game designers or developers has impacts on women more than in men. It demoralizes women hence making them less active in computer games as characters. Women when participate in video games as characters they are portrayed in overly sexual manner than men. By so doing, game developers are said to be of no moral responsibility since their aim is to produce and market the games. The only way the government could eradicate this gender bias is through enacting of policies to regulate designation of computer games and video. Game developers companies will only hit boom when they concentrate on titles that posses the taste of various gender in the society.