earn equal pay for their work. Furthermore, “crunch time” on games comes at a costly toll, especially for women with families.
6. Do you see social and digital media making an impact on awareness about the current issues facing these industries?
Representation of women in many mainstream games (and some indie games) grossly hypersexualizes and objectify women. Development teams have also said that women’s bodies are too hard to animate.
MICHAEL: Yes, I previously mentioned how women in games used #1ReasonWhy to talk about sexism in games. I would also include Kickstarter as a resource that has impacted awareness of issues of gender and sexuality in games. For instance, GaymerX has used this site to crowdfund some of their conferences. In line with the value of inclusion and diversity, Different Games also livestreams the conference talks in order to allow people unable to attend the conference to view online.
In gaming events, such as conventions and online play, women are interrogated more for not being fans and gamers in the right way. Online gaming spaces are often policed, keeping queer people and women from joining these games. When I was working on my masters, a professor challenged us to game online and hand the microphone to a woman to talk. In my experience, I heard my best friend called horrific words and receive rape threats. All of this contributes to perpetuating sexism in gaming. 5. What do you see the gaming/media industry doing to promote diversity within their industry as well as the games they develop? Are they doing enough MICHAEL: While some games do allow In short, no, the industry is not doing enough. While there are options for diversity in games, these are always at the margins of the game or bonus content. In such positions, players are not required to come into contact with this content unless they seek it out. For instance, some games allow you to change to color of your avatar’s skin, but the default is usually a white male avatar.
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7. How are people like Anita Sarkeesian advocating for change despite the out lash they get in their perspective industries for their opinions? MICHAEL: Anita Sarkeesian’s video series Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games is an accessible resource of videos that discuss misogyny and sexist representation of women in games. In these videos, she’s drawing attention to these harmful tropes and discusses the larger social values that are perpetuated in these tropes. Alanah Pearce, a games journalist, started contacting the mothers of boys she would receive rape threats from. Carly A. Kocurek created a video essay for the Journal of Digital and Media Literacy entitled “Gamers vs. Tropes vs. Women,” in which she discusses the harassment aimed at Sarkeesian specifically and women in digital spaces in general as a way to silence women and keep them out of gaming spaces.