Skip to content

Video Games and Avatars: Enforcing or Breaking Down the Gender Binary and Stereotypes?

A summary of sorts of what we have been discussing in class. Hope you enjoy.

One Response
  1. Mista Jay permalink
    April 25, 2009

    Interesting presentation, great use of avatar pictures! I think the question that stuck out to me the most in your project however, was the “How many people think about their choices…and how many just play the game?” question, especially because I wonder that myself too! I think I can say that before I took this class, I would fall under the category of “just playing the game.” I’m 98% sure that if I had found and played Second Life on my own, I would have still chosen a female avatar. However, since I played the game for the class, I actually thought about WHY I wanted to choose a female avatar. In the end, for me, I think it partially boiled down to the fact that I was just more comfortable playing a girl (which brought up the question of “why,” again, which I still haven’t answered). But your project also reminds me of the fact that even those players who play as the opposite gender (as in the “Tinysex” reading that we had) can fall back into the stereotypes of their preformed gender (especially if they’re curious to see what its like) but then again, according to you, maybe it is there way of using gender stereotypes to (subconsciously?) subvert the system? I never thought of it that way before…

Comments are closed.