Does representation matter in video games?

On Wednesday, Oct. 19, Dr. Adrienne Shaw from Temple University came to speak at Muhlenberg. The talk was hosted by the Media and Communication Department. The lecture was called, “Representation Matters: Reframing Arguments for Diversity in Digital Games,” and discussed diversity and the portrayal of women and members of the LGBTQ+ community in video games.

Shaw’s lecture focused on a variety of aspects of the digital gaming community and its feelings on representation. At the beginning, she posed the question, “Does representation matter in games?” That answer depends on who is looking for that representation. Studies over the years have shown that gamers prefer to control video game characters that look, behave, and interact with the world as they do. Female gamers were shown to prefer to play with female avatars more than male players actively want to control male avatars. The issues involving the LGBTQ+ characters come into play specifically in games that allow for romantic relationships among players.

Video game protagonists, Shaw said, are almost always brown-haired, 30-something white males. How did this become the standard? The diversity of the people developing the video games has a lot to do with that. In 2005, game developers were about 88 percent white, heterosexual men. When a similar study was conducted in 2014, the numbers showed variation, but not a great deal; the developers were still primarily white men.

Shaw touched briefly upon an important event in video game history: GamerGate, which took place during 2014. GamerGate, an upswell of hateful, online comments directed at women in the gaming industry, began when media critic Anita Sarkeesian was attacked by anti-feminist gamers in 2012. It surged again in 2014, when video game developer Zoë Quinn had her private sex life attacked on the Internet, lead by her ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni. Misogyny was at the heart of the GamerGate attacks, since male gamers were intentionally going after women who designed and wrote about video games. In the lecture, Shaw was clear to distance herself from GamerGate entirely; she asked that no one tweet #GamerGate with her name. GamerGate aside, Shaw moved on to why the “Representation Matters” question was so difficult to answer. “We want to see ourselves reflected in our media,” she said, “but no single media representation will ever fully be able to represent every member of a group, because of the inherent diversity of human experiences.” During certain studies, some gamers, in response to the idea of better representation, admitted that it was “nice when [representation] happens,” but they were not concerned if they did not see characters like themselves in the game. When it comes to LGBTQ+ representation in video games, studies have shown that such content has steadily increased over the years. At first, part of the problem with this representation stemmed from the fact that there were only cisgender male and female avatars for players to choose from. Another issue is that many video game villains tend to be transgender or crossdressing men and women. Shaw said this is proof that it’s not that the gay community has not been visible in these games, but it’s how they’ve been presented that leads to problems with representation. To keep the audience involved, Shaw occasionally made jokes and included memes featuring characters from “The Simpsons” and Grumpy Cat in her slideshow. “Dr. Shaw’s talk places real importance on how, why, and to what extent representation matters, not only in video games but also across media formats,” said Dr. Corzo-Duchardt of the Film Studies Department. “I think [the lecture] went really well,” Shaw said afterwards. “There was a great turnout, one of my largest audiences. During the Q&A, there were engaged questions asked, and everyone laughed at the right places!” The concept of video games is gaining increasing importance in this day and age, especially since today’s kids, to quote Shaw, “use Tumblr more than glue sticks and Facebook more than poster board.”