Abstract
This chapter offers a historical analysis of how graphical trends in the video game industry affect the gender and sexual politics of video game representation. Our interest in graphical trends means that we are less interested in specific visual representations but rather the broader question of visual regimes. To this end, this chapter first explores how the sexual politics of visuality evolved across the Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System. We then focus on the Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider franchises to illustrate how the transition from the realism of the PlayStation 1 era to the photorealism of the PlayStation 3 era resulted in a convergence in sexual representation. Our argument is that the visual structures of contemporary gaming are negatively impacting how games represent women.
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- 1.
The comparison between Myst (1993) and Doom (1993) warrants clarification. Some will argue that Doom had a larger install base because it was available as shareware. While true, perhaps a better comparison would be Myst against Doom II (1994), which sold roughly 2 million copies in contrast to Myst’s 5.5 million. See: Giantbomb. “Doom.” Giantbomb, http://www.giantbomb.com/doom/3025-156/; NPD Intelect. “Npd Intelect: Myst Franchise Continues Success with Myst III: Exile”. https://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_010619.htm.
- 2.
It is important to note that this sexual fetishizing does not extend to male characters for the simple fact that the design of male characters does not often rely upon reductive gender markers. Whereas a range of aesthetic types exist for male characters, female options are often limited. This disparity in options between male and female character designs is the video game equivalent of Simone De Beauvoir’s (1949/2010) famous observation that “one is not born, but rather, becomes woman” (330). In essence, gender manifests in three-dimensional video games precisely through the presence of women: female characters bear the burden of gender.
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Mejia, R., LeSavoy, B. (2018). The Sexual Politics of Video Game Graphics. In: Gray, K., Voorhees, G., Vossen, E. (eds) Feminism in Play. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_6
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