Gender and Identity in Games

I was surprised by the direction that Thursday’s readings took. While I was expecting them to expand on the ideas covered in class on Tuesday, they opened my eyes to a new way of examining gender in video games. The main idea that I took away from the Flanagan article was related to how the player can identify with the main character. I always thought of character identification in terms of a strict dichotomy. One could either see oneself as the main character or as a spectator to the characters actions. I’ve never thought of the possibility that multiple “I” identities could exist simultaneously. I agree with Flanagan that this “double consciousness” creates some serious questions about gender in video games. In talking about the feminist science-fiction work Proxies, Flanagan is demonstrating in a more concrete way that multiple identities can share the same “body.” The reason why I’m drawn to this concept, is because I’ve never thought about how women identify with male characters. While I’ve always been well aware that gaming is highly skewed toward males, I’ve never considered how this affects the critical process of identification with the main character for women. Even after these readings, I’m still confused about how women identify with male characters. Does the existence of this double-consciousness allow women to identify with the character? Some people like Uma Narayan feel that people who aren’t members of oppressed groups cannot identify with characters that are. At least for me, I feel like I have to agree with Narayan. From my personal experience, I feel like I identify with female characters less than I do with male ones. I don’t know whether this is because it is a rare occurrence that I’m not used to or whether it is because I’m male. If it was more common, could it become something I could get used to? Do women identify with male characters in the same way that men do?

With regards to the article by Mia Consalvo, I was surprised by the problems raised by The Sims. I’ve played the game before, but never noticed most of the things that the reading pointed out. It really seems like The Sims is pushing heterosexual, white, male norms on its players. The writers of the game made conscious decisions to program the game the way they did and even write the manual the way they did. I’m not saying they should be progressive in their product or that they should push a liberal agenda. I just don’t understand why they chose to make the decisions they made. I don’t think giving players the option to marry gay characters or providing players with an equal number of character models to choose from is very radical. Making skewed decisions like this is something common to many games and something the industry should address in my opinion.