AMT Lab @ CMU: The video game industry expanded rapidly in the last decade with the U.S.A games market exceeding revenues of $43 billion in 2018. While there is growth, the industry is also facing an increasingly apparent and problematic disparity among audiences. In many traditional PC and console genres, women and non-white ethnicities are underrepresented both among the player-base as well as on-screen; furthermore, the player experience for underrepresented players is markedly different than their over-represented white male counterparts.
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I think many of us know about the gender disparity issues in video games, but to be honest, I don't think I've ever given much thought to them. There are lots of online memes about girl gamers and girl video game characters, and it can be funny to joke about, but it sometimes makes you forget there's a real problem out there.
There is such a lack of non-eroticized female characters in games, it's crazy! Especially with action/violent video games where you often see male characters in crazy suits of armor, you see their women counterparts hardly wearing any clothes. This coupled with the already few female gamers, there is a lot to be concerned with. I've heard that as soon as a girl joins a game, lots of guys over com go insane over it. And even some girl Twitch streamers wear provocative clothes and do weird things to get a decent following/audience. I think if that's what they want to do, that's definitely okay, but maybe some of them feel pressured to do so in order to be successful with a toxic community. I don't want to make any assumptions/generalizations, and I honestly don't know enough about the culture to say I've witnessed any of this first hand, but I have definitely heard of these things being problems.
I think a good start to fixing this problem would be for video game designers to rethink their clothing choices for female characters. I know companies have monetary motivations and that this may not go over well with their target audiences, but I think it's important for a decent company to be willing to try.
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