Are the virtual worlds portrayed in massively-multiplayer online games inherently sexist?

Although she believes the situation is improving, Jaime, a veteran female gamer, still sees a great deal of sexism in MMOs. In a column for MMOsite she explains her view:

From my own experience, in the early days of MMOs – looking back at Ultima Online and EverQuest – there was a definite attitude that women simply didn't play games... Female players who identified their gender... [were] ignored. Women... [had] their skills and abilities in the game questioned...

Players began to slowly accept that there were women playing MMOs... Nonetheless, the attitude itself was still low and chauvinistic. I can recount at least half a dozen times while playing Dark Age of Camelot... [receiving] requests for pictures, breast size, age, if I was available for dating, and various sexual requests and connotations...

There's also been one constant: the harassing of female characters... whispers soliciting cybersex, of course, but also more innocent gestures such as the use of emotes to flirt at, kiss, poke, tickle, tease, grope, slap, and otherwise virtually sexually harass a female character.

Not surprisingly, Jaime sees the anonymous nature of the online world as a major contributing factor in MMO sexism.

If you are a white male, the chances are pretty good that you will have something in common with the character you play in your favorite video game.

If you are a woman or ethnic minority, not so much.

At least, that's the conclusion drawn by researchers from the University of Southern California, Indiana University, Ohio University and Virginia Polytechnic. The research is published in the current issue of New Media & Society.

Study leader Dmitri Williams of USC commented on the data:

Latino children play more video games than white children. And they're really not able to play themselves. For identity formation, that's a problem. And for generating interest in technology, it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.

Ironically, they may even be less likely to become game makers themselves, helping to perpetuate the cycle. Many have suggested that games function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

According to the study, only 3% of video game characters are Hispanic; all of those noted were non-playable characters. Ony 10% of characters are women.

African-Americans are more proportionately represented, but mostly appear in sports games or titles like 50 Cent Bulletproof which represent racial stereotypes.

Via: TG Daily

Electronic Art has apparently backed off a Comic Con promotion which encouraged attendees to "Commit an act of lust" with booth babes hired for the event.

Negative Gamer reports on EA's mea culpa:

Costumed reps are a tradition at Comic-Con. In the spirit of both the Circle of Lust and Comic-Con, we are encouraging attendees to Tweet photos of themselves with any of the costumed reps[...]

We apologize for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording, and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously.

It's all by way of promoting the publisher's upcoming Dante's Inferno. GamePolitics readers will recall an earlier controversy around the game when EA hired fake Christian protesters to march outside the Los Angeles Convention Center during E3.

Is this the next RapeLay controversy?

Although interactive DVDs aren't traditionally thought of as video games, they would appear to fall into something of a gray area between movies and games.

That may be an academic argument, but, in lodging a new protest against online retailer Amazon.com, woman-centric website Feministing treats Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love as a video game:

it looks like another game involving violence against women seems to have"slipped" past [Amazon's] radar. "Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love" is a game that allows the user to experience,

    "...a terrifyingly vivid exploration of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition in which a captive falls in love with her kidnapper. And you play the part of the kidnapper. With a limited number of options, you must figure out how to make her fall in love with you."

This includes using poison gas on the victim, sexually assaulting her and using psychological abuse against her in efforts to make her "love" you. Unbelievable.

While RapeLay was offered by a third-party reseller on Amazon, Stockholm appears to shipping direct from the online retailer's inventory.

The controversial Japanese game RapeLay was cleared by a software industry screening board, reports The Yomiuri Shimbun.

According to the newspaper, the Tokyo-based Ethics Organization of Computer Software screened RapeLay without advising its publisher, Illusion, to make any edits. 235 computer game firms belong to the supposedly self-regulating organization. While an unnamed official of the group would not reveal its screening standards, he told the newspaper:

[The organization] follows the Penal Code and the law, which bans child prostitution and child pornography. Also, we ask for self-regulation of games, to ensure stories depicted stay at a permissible level from a social perspective...

 

[Given the RapeLay controversy the organization] should discuss what kind of self-imposed regulations are required to ensure [games] are acceptable to society.

The Yomiuri Shimbun also reports that RapeLay which caused an uproar when it was found to be available on Amazon.com via a third-party reseller, has been pulled from the market. The move comes in the wake of a protest lodged by New York-based women's rights organization Equality Now. Attorney Yukiko Tsunoda, a member of Equality Now,commented:

The problem isn't just about this specific game, but about all similar games still available [in Japan].

The controversy over RapeLay, an obscure but disgusting forced sex simulation, appears to be rekindling. GamePolitics readers will recall that the game sparked a furor earlier this year after it was found to be for sale by a third-party reseller on Amazon.com. In response to complaints the online retailer quickly removed the listing.

This month, New York-based women's group Equality Now has targeted RapeLay and similar games for a letter-writing campaign:

Please write to [developer] Illusion Software asking it to withdraw immediately from sale of all games, including RapeLay, which involve rape, stalking or other forms of sexual violence or which otherwise denigrate women... Please write a similar letter to Amazon Japan.

 

Write also to... Japanese government officials... calling on them to comply with Japan’s obligations under [the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women] and the Japanese Constitution to... ban the sale of computer games such as RapeLay, which normalize and promote sexual violence against women and girls.

Australian news site ABC.net reports that the Japanese developer of RapeLay, Illusion, claims to be "bewildered" by the uproar. Spokesman Makoto Nakaoka told ABC.net:

We are simply bewildered by the [Equality Now protest]. We make the games for the domestic market and abide by laws here. We cannot possibly comment on [the campaign] because we don't sell them overseas.

A Japanese Government spokeswoman to ABC.net:

[The government] realises the problem is there. While we recognise that some sort of measures need to be taken, the office is currently studying what can be done.

An experienced First Amendment lawyer warned that political correctness is a looming threat to the video game industry.

Lawrence Walters made his remarks at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco yesterday. GameSpot offers a report:

Just when the decency police and moral values groups have been all but defeated in the courts--both of law and public opinion--a new threat has emerged from our left flank: political correctness. The leftist thought police are now wanting to impose their view of propriety on modern cultural discourse...

 

Think about [a New York bill that would prevent minors from purchasing games containing racial stereotypes]... Would we ever in a million years tolerate the government passing a law that movies cannot have profanity, racial jokes, or derogatory language? That would eliminate practically every movie made.

Now we can debate all day long whether racist stereotypes or derogatory language is even appropriate in video games, but that's for us to debate, and not for the government to decide... [The video game industry] needs to reveal its enemies for who they are--radicals on the left and on the right--and marginalize them...
 

The Speaker of the New York City Council is expected to denounce a controversial Japanese rape simulation game this morning on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan.

Councilwoman Christine Quinn (middle left) will hold a news conference in protest of RapeLay at 11:00 A.M. As GamePolitics has reported, the hentai game was recently removed from product listings on Amazon.com where a re-seller had been offering it for sale.

Quinn will be joined by the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. A press release announcing the event includes the following description:

A teenage video "game" simulating brutal gang rape and other horrifying sexual violence — just pulled by Amazon.com — will be the subject of a news conference hosted by [Quinn]... who will call on all U.S. video distributors to refuse its distribution or sale...

 

The "game" is now available in the U.S. market...

We should point out that RapeLay, while despicable, is not a product of the U.S. video game industry and is not rated by the ESRB.

UPDATE: Newsday has the first mainstream media coverage of today's press conference:

Amazon and eBay have already banned the sale of the game... but New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said Monday that the game is available on other Web sites...

UPDATE 2: The photo at left is from the news conference. Speaker Quinn is in the middle. At left, holding artwork from RapeLay, is  Harriett Lessel, Executive Director of The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. Of the game, Lessel said:

Video games of this nature are beyond appalling, and people of good conscience need to speak out against them. Sexual violence is a major problem in America and video games like this send the exact wrong message to young people. It tells boys it’s okay to sexually assault girls, and it tells girls they are worthless. The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault is hopeful that American distributors will reject this game and the aberrant behavior it promotes.

Are those who rail against violence in video games and other forms of media actually hindering the natural male development of boys?

That's the conclusion of former Newsweek reporter Peg Tyre, author of The Trouble With Boys.

Mike Thompson of Ars Technica reports on remarks made by Tyre to a parents' group in North Salem, New York:

Many [boys] play and think around violence. We might see them as doing something potentially dangerous. But actually what they're doing is playing around with ideas of courage and valor, good versus evil, and teamwork. These are ideas we want to inculcate in our culture...

 

There was such media saturation about [events like Columbine]… that it seemed to people that it was happening in their communities next door, [and] it created a zero tolerance policy towards violence...

You're often playing a heroic role [in a video game]. I think that sense of heroism has been around since Greek drama. If you want to get into violence, look at The Odyssey  or The Iliad. Homer's stories are very violent… but we regard them with less suspicion.

I started off, admittedly, as a video game hater... [But] I sat down and played Halo with [my sons], and while I saw that it's very violent, I also saw that it's a very condensed form of violence… so I started to take a different view about video games: maybe I should be a little less hysterical about them.

Glass ceiling? 

Not in the British game industry, apparently...

A survey conducted by MCV UK and Develop magazine reports that women employed by the video game sector in the UK earn an average salary of £33,260 ($US48,539). That's about £2,000 higher than the average wage of their male counterparts.

From MCV:

Women working in the games industry also seem to be more optimistic about their career and job prospects for 2009. 72 per cent of female respondents said that they were confident about the year ahead, versus 66 per cent of men who said the same.

Although just ten per cent of the industry’s workforce is female, prominent women in the sector think the news shows that the market should be attracting more female talent.

Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

And my gut is telling me that a recent study dealing with gender in online games is seriously flawed. A BBC report describes the work of University of Delaware Prof. Scott Caplan, who surveyed Everquest II players with assistance from publisher Sony Online Entertainment. The University of Southern California and Pal Alto Research Center also participated in the project.

Caplan claims that about 40% of EQII players are female, but that the women are more dedicated, spending more time per day with the game that male players. Based on my MMO experience, I have a difficult time with that conclusion. But what really blew me away was this:

The survey revealed an unusually high level of bisexuality among the women who took part in the study - over five times higher than the general population.

"These are not people who are following strict gender stereotypes," said Prof Caplan.

"I think that the game itself is right now a very non-traditional activity for women, and so I think what you would find in this population are going to be people who are in other ways less traditional than the majority population."

From here, the bisexuality figure alone renders Caplan's study questionable. EQ II women are five times as likely to be bisexual? What is the statistical likelihood of that occurring? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the survey relied on self-reporting data from EQII players. Could some respondents have been pulling Caplan's chain? 

Really, it's unfortunate that this statistical anomaly mars Caplan's work. His other conclusions are generally positive, indicating that EQII players are healthier and more social than the common MMO player stereotype.

Oddly enough, the bisexuality angle did not come up in earlier coverage of Caplan's work, including ours (See: Survey Says: MMO Players Not Fat, But Have Other Issues). We also note that University of Delaware school newspaper UDaily does not mention the bisexuality angle in its coverage of Caplan's reserach.

UPDATE: Sister-site GameCulture takes me to task for my comments regarding Caplan's study. However, I'll stand by my remarks. There was a fair amount of uncorrelated self-reporting data in the study, including the respondents' own claims about their level of fitness. Beyond that, the idea of the bisexual woman is such a stereotypically male fantasy that any study which finds a five-fold increase in that population, absent any compelling explanation, is, de facto, suspect.

Fat, angry and stupid is no way to go through life, son...

At least, that's what an education consultant seems to be saying as he cautions parents against buying video games as holiday gifts for their teenage sons.

In a guest column for EdNews, Bill Costello writes:

Boys are spending more than thirteen hours a week playing video games. As a result, they're spending less time outdoors playing and exercising. Perhaps this is partially why they are four times more likely to be obese than they were thirty years ago.

Research consistently confirms that the more time boys spend playing video games, the more likely they are to do poorly in school—regardless of age. At a time when boys are already underperforming in school, video games only make the situation worse.

Many recent studies suggest that playing video games saps the motivation of boys and disconnects them from the real world... Violent video games are especially harmful. A definite link has been established between violent video games and antisocial behavior. Games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo can make your son more aggressive.

So if you're thinking of buying video games for your son this holiday season, you might want to reconsider.

To my great surprise there was a plain brown envelope from Playboy Enterprises International in the GamePolitics post office box yesterday. Inside was the November issue.

After about three hours of perusing the magazine (in the interests of giving GP readers a complete and accurate report), I figured out the reason why Playboy sent the mag my way.

It seems that Miss November, Grace Kim, is a former publicist for Guitar Hero publisher Activision. The brief bio which accompanies her centerfold pictorial discusses her connection to the game: 

I play a mean game of Guitar Hero and I'm willing to challenge anybody. I must warn you I'm a very sore loser - at any game...

 

Grace says her ideal date is a round of Guitar Hero or Rock Band with perks.

Kotaku has a lengthy interview with Grace:

I had heard of an opening to work directly with the head director of Guitar Hero, so I applied, and I didn't think I'd get the job because there were so many applicants... but I also had a lot of PR experience. I was really blessed that they brought me on board. I think they appreciated my passion...

"Activision was getting annoyed [over the time demands of the Playboy picture shoots], and I wanted to keep my job [at first]... But my boss wasn't happy and I wasn't happy, and being a Playmate is a job. I really wanted to explore that area, and see where this path would take me. And, working so much for Activision kind of killed my love a little for Guitar Hero.

The United Nations Population Fund has awarded Champlain College's Emergent Media Center a $600,000 grant to develop an interactive game aimed at preventing violence against women in developing nations. The target audience for the game will be young boys and the game will be rolled out in South Africa initially.

Toward that end, a group faculty and students from Champlain visited Cape Town in August. For more information, check out the Emergent Media Center's blog or join its Facebook group

While video games generally catch more heat for violence than sex, there have been a fair number of lust-fueled controversies in game land. Now, Playboy tech writer Damon Brown documents them in his new book, Porn & Pong: How 'Grand Theft Auto,' 'Tomb Raider' and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture.

Salon has a lengthy interview with Brown who starts with Custer's Revenge and touches (appropriately, we might add) on everything from Leisure Suit Larry to Hot Coffee and beyond. Not one to leave out the online crowd, Brown includes a section on game-related cybersex:

One of the things I write about is the first documented cyberspace rape in a text-only environment called LambdaMOO. A user found a loophole that allowed him to control the actions of other players. He could make one player hurt or have sex with another player and so on. The malicious user went rampant through the game universe, forcing players into sexual acts, and was repeatedly kicked off the game, but he always managed to come back under a different user name.

The Playboy writer also explains his theory of why most protagonists in sexually-oriented games are male:

Most of the creators of these games are straight, most are white and a portion of them are Asian. [Game designers] want to have a protagonist the player can identify with and, on a different level, the designer himself can identify with. People identify with Larry, because everyone's been desperate and had those moments where they can't pick up anyone, or they want to be Niko Bellic, this awesome tough guy who can maintain five girlfriends across the city of New York.

In the future, Brown sees erotically-charged games becoming much more, um... interactive:

Our grandchildren are going to have amazing sex lives -- I can't think of a better way to say it. Connecting vibrators and other types of tools to the computer and getting pleasured by a professional or a long-distance lover is a brilliant idea. It will connect people in a much deeper way than the Internet or a webcam that's going 15 frames per second...

 

From talking to people at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Vegas in January, I understand the basic idea is that teledildonics will take off in a mainstream way any moment now. I'd say within five years it's going to become standard equipment for a lot of people.

UPDATE: Over at Edge Online, editor Colin Campbell has an entertaining whinge at the entire subject of sex in games. Best line:

Words like teledildonics leave me dizzy with nausea.
 

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released the results of the first-ever national, publicly available look at youth and video games.

Teens, Video Games & Civics examines how and why games are played and details the relationship that gaming has to social and civic engagement among teens in the United States.

In gathering their data, Pew conducted phone interviews with 12-17-year olds along with a parent. The results of the 75-page report are a fascinating glimpse into how video games fit into the lives of teens. Major conclusions include:

• Almost all teens play games.
• The most popular games played by teens today span a variety of genres and ratings.
• Gaming is often a social experience for teens.
• Close to half of teens who play online games do so with people they know in their offline lives.
• Teens encounter both pro-social and anti-social behavior while gaming.
• The most popular game genres include games with violent and nonviolent content.
• Parental monitoring of game play varies.
• There are civic dimensions to video game play.
• The quantity of game play is not strongly related to teens’ interest or engagement in civic and political activity.
• The characteristics of game play and the contexts in which teens play games are strongly related to teens’ interest and engagement in civic and political activities.
• Playing games with others in person was related to civic and political outcomes, but playing with others online was not.
• Civic gaming experiences are more equally distributed than many other civic learning opportunities.

Pew notes that:

Video gaming is pervasive in the lives of American teens... Opportunities for gaming are everywhere... When asked, half of all teens reported playing a video game “yesterday.”

While racing, puzzle and sports games were determined to be the most popular, Pew found that two-thirds of American teens enjoyed action and adventure games, which may contain violent elements. A listing of teens' Top 10 most popular games was headed by Guitar Hero, Halo 3 and Madden. Grand Theft Auto was 8th.

Pew also concluded that gaming is a social experience for teens and that parental monitoring varies. Surprisingly, only a small (13%) subset of parents said they believed that games had a harmful effect on their kids:

• 90% of parents say they always or sometimes know what games their children play.
• 72% say they always or sometimes check the ratings before their children are allowed to play a game.
• Parents of teens who play games are generally neutral on the effect of games on their children, with nearly two-thirds believing that games have no impact one way or the other on their offspring.
• 62% of parents of gamers say video games have no effect on their child one way or the other.
• 19% of parents of gamers say video games have a positive influence on their child.
• 13% of parents of gamers say video games have a negative influence on their child.
• 5% of parents of gamers say gaming has some negative influence/some positive influence, but it depends on the game.

Civic engagement was one of the main focal points of the study. Games, however, seemed to have a mostly neutral effect in this area, with much depending on the civic-mindedness of individual gamers:

Neither the frequency of game play nor the amount of time young people spend playing games is significantly related to most of the civic and political outcomes that we examined—following politics, persuading others how to vote, contributing to charities, volunteering, or staying informed about politics and current events. There is little evidence to support the concern that playing video games promotes behaviors or attitudes that undermine civic commitments and behaviors.

 

At the same time, there is little evidence to support the idea that playing video games, in general, is associated with a vibrant civic or political life. The frequency of gaming was related to only two civic and political outcomes—political interest and protesting—with differences only emerging between the highest and lowest frequency of game play.

If you enjoy commenting on GamePolitics, the odds are that you are more aware of political and civic issues:

Teens who take part in social interaction related to the game, such as commenting on websites or contributing to discussion boards, are more engaged civically and politically.

GP: All in all, this is very positive news for gaming. Pew Internet gets it right when it comes to the pervasiveness and social elements of gaming. Moreover, parental responses show that games are perhaps not regarded as the "murder simulators" some critics would suggest.

Get the full text of Teens, Video Games & Civics here...