Today’s Plan:
- Introducing Project Two
- Homework
Project Two: Representations of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Games
Our first project this semester approached games as aesthetic objects; that is, we treated them as artistic objects and analyzed them to learn/challenge how they operate. Our second project this semester will approach games as social objects. Rather than analyze how they operate on us (affect our emotions and/or shape our attitudes), our analysis will focus on how games represent marginalized groups (particularly in the gaming sphere, which has a notorious reputation for being white, male, and hostile to difference).
You will work together in groups to analyze representations of gender, race, or sexuality in a specific genre of video games. You will work as a team to design a research methodology, collect “artifacts” (which collectively form your “corpus”), and analyze those artifacts. As a group, you will construct a heuristic for that analysis (a list of yes/no or a likert-like scale of things you can see). Unlike our first project, we do not have time to actually play the games for this project. Your group will analyze something like:
- Game covers
- Character selection screens
- Game trailers
- Significant NPC’s
You will work collectively to gather objects and generate your data. Here’s a few projects from the past couple of years. This means developing a methodology to select games to analyze. Here’s an example of a past methodology I helped a group develop that focused on female protagonists in story-driven games. This produced a list of games. And then this lead to a refined methodology.
Then, you will (collaboratively or individually–your choice) develop a paper of around 2000 words. Drafts of the paper will be due the Friday before spring break. Final drafts will be due Friday, March 26th. The paper will follow the “traditional” outline for qualitative or quantitative research:
- Outline
- Literature Review (we will likely skip this step by incorporating it into the introduction)
- Methodology
- How did you find the artifacts in your corpus?
- How did you analyze them?
- Data
- Discussion
- How does your findings compare to previous studies?
- What didn’t surprise you?
- More importantly, what did surprise you?
- Why do you think you found what you found? What do you think you would find in 5 years [is there a trend? a reason to think some things might change?]
- Conclusion
Let Me Do the Literature Review for You (Sorta)
The inspiration for this project lies in the work of This will be built off of the work of three other game scholars. First, the work of Extra Credit–I want to watch an example of this (to plant the seed for a future project), but also stress that this is the kind of deep analysis
Second, Anita Sarkeesian, and her “Tropes in Games” project. Tropes in Games started as a kickstarter in 2013; Sarkeesian produced a series of videos examining the stereotypical portrayals of women in games. Let’s take a look. Again, Sarkeesian points to a problem that I would like to measure, but I do not necessarily believe we have the time (in this project) to replicate her method of analysis.
We might need this.
And this: Hawkeye Initiative.
Sarkeesian has done considerable work in this area. I see two ways of building off her work. First, we might explore whether representations of women have progressed: are contemporary games making the same mistakes? Are there some genres where this is more of an issue than others? Can we extend her analysis of Beyond Good and Evil to find other positive representations?
Second, we can extend her robust methodology to other representations: can we identify and develop a list of racial tropes for characters of color (for instance, “the criminal,” “the athlete,” “the minstrel,” “the black panther,” “the rapper”). Can we investigate representations of sexuality in games? Are there tropes for LBGTQ+ characters? Can we (maybe outside of the Mass Effect series) identify positive representations of non-CIS/heteronormative/binary sexuality?
The third scholar who influenced this project is Melinda C.R. Burgess, who has done a few studies on video game covers. You’ll read one of her co-authored articles tonight for homework. This is, I think, the best model for what we can hope to do in a few short weeks.
Full disclosure: I originally wrote the paragraphs above in 2018, and I just copy/paste them every time I teach this class. However, I do think there is some progress that suggests we are seeing better representation (even if Sarkeesian herself has done research that leaves her underwhelmed). This is probably a question of for what and where you want to look–if you want to find progress, then you can find it. And if you don’t, then you won’t. I don’t write this sarcastically, simply to say that the representation of race, gender, and sexuality in games reflects the fraught social and political climates outside of them.
Homework
For Friday’s class, read Burgess et al (2011) “Playing with Prejudice” in the files section of Canvas. There’s a writing assignment in Canvas called Writing a Research Annotation that you need to complete before class.
