Inclusive Video Games

As a male, I don't think I've ever had to worry about inclusion in gaming. When I was a kid there was no online gaming so if I was playing with a friend, that friend was there in the room with me. Now, when I was in elementary school most of my friends were male. Whether I was playing games with Marc or Nathan or Jason, it was just the boys. Then when the Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, and especially when GoldenEye was released in 1997, suddenly our gaming sessions became much more of a big deal because you could connect up to 4 controllers instead of the standard 2. As I was in high school, my circle of friends was becoming larger than just those that lived in the same neighborhood as me and girlfriends started becoming a regular mix into the gaming group. This was perfectly OK.

Whether we were playing GoldenEye or Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros., we never excluded anyone simply because of their gender or for any other reason. My first semester in college I lived in the dorms at Shasta College and we would regularly gather in the Commons to play WCW/nWo Revenge and there was always a mix of male and female ready to mix it up. Later, when I bought my first Xbox and started playing Halo, we were also an inclusive group. This continued when I moved to Denver and met many new groups of friends. Whether it was the karaoke crowd meeting at Burtt's house to play Halo or Mortal Kombat, or work friends meeting at Tim's house to play Soul Caliber 2, there was always a mix of male and female in the room and playing the games. Again, these were always couch multiplayer sessions and everyone was in the room together which I think usually inspires people to be polite.

For me, inclusion has always been about being allowed to be a part of something. In my circles of friends, no one has ever been excluded from participating and I hope that no one has ever felt excluded based on actions or words from other people in the group. However, after discussing video games in our unit in class and reading the article on Medium, I have to think that inclusion means so much more. Inclusion can also mean being able to relate and connect to characters in games because they look like you. Most video game protagonists have been white males and women in particular have been objectified in video games or treated like trophies. In the original Mortal Kombat arcade game released in 1992, there was only one female character, Sonya Blade. You could also argue that there was only one Asian playable character in Liu Kang. Granted there were two ninja characters in Scorpion and Sub-Zero, but both characters were portrayed by Daniel Pesina who is an American-born martial artist of Mexican decent. While other female characters were added in later releases, the objectification of their bodies was prominently on display in the rebooted Mortal Kombat (2011) with their body proportions and skimpy costumes. This has seemingly been addressed with the last two releases, Mortal Kombat X (2015) and Mortal Kombat 11 (2019).

Inclusion can also mean healthy and friendly in-game chat experiences. I think with the growing popularity of online gaming, unhealthy in-game chats have become alarmingly normal particularly towards female gamers. I do not personally game online. It has never been something I have been interested in and as I am a casual gamer, I likely do not possess the skill level that many online gamers have from hours and hours of practice. I am also not a huge fan of First Person Shooters which make up a large portion of online games. That said, I have not witnessed nor had to experience some of the toxic comments that are regularly directed at female gamers. I'm not sure how or when I became aware that this was happening but it has definitely been reinforced by some of the material we have discussed in class. I personally think it's disgusting that a person would say some of these things to another person. I would like to reiterate a comment I made in a discussion post. I think the more we interact with people online, the more it dehumanizes the people we interact with. People see them not as an individual but as a profile or an avatar. In much the same manner as cyber bullying, they fail to make the connection that the things they are saying are not in a vacuum and that they are being directed at another person. As there are currently not a lot of consequences for this type of behavior, there is no incentive for them to stop which emboldens them further. In some cases I think it almost becomes a challenge to see how much they can get away with.

In 2017, only 21% of game developers were female but 42% of gamers were female. In 2019 females made up 46% of gamers. This means that the number of women making games is disproportionate to the number of women playing games. I think we need to do a better job at closing that gap. As we are seeing more and more female protagonists in games with Horizon: Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy released over the last few years, and The Last of Us Part 2 releasing later this month, I would hope that this would inspire more women to not only play games but also to be a part of the industry making those games.