For my final project I wanted to do something that both affects me and interests me. Also considering I'm about to declare my major in media production and I have nothing to show for it, this idea also would give me something to put in my portfolio. So I decided to make a mini-documentary-esque project, where I would explore the (mis)representation of women in one of recent years' most grossing and expanding markets: video games.
I've played video games almost all my childhood. My cousins and my sisters were some of my biggest introductions to it. What used to be considered a pastime for most, I watched evolve into a culture, career prospect, and competition across millions of people. The question I want to answer is how, despite all of the criticism the video game market as receive from its conception, from undoubted objectification of women to the preposterous claims of "promoting children to engage in Satanic practices", has this form of media become one of the most successful and pervasive ones to date? More importantly so, how it has garnered such a wide demographic of women as players, developers, and reviewers, despite the common notion of it being "a boy's activity".
There's a wide variety of material online about the subject of representation in this form of media, and in recent years, a surprising amount of academic research and books have been published; many approaching from an advertising/marketing viewpoint as well as a psychological disciplines. Books like From Barbie To Mortal Kombat and its successor Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat are written by revered, educated men and women (mostly women) in a very readable and non-convoluted manner. On top of that, I aim to include the opinions and experiences of other women through short interviews, including livestreamers and independent developers.
I've edited tons of videos before, but never one with footage that I have personally shot in real life. If all goes well, this will be a project worth sharing publicly and possibly one I could follow up on or improve as I become more proficient with these types of productions.
This sounds like an interesting topic and quite engaging in terms of your plans of pursuing media production as a major. Apart from the misrepresentation of women both in the game design (oversexualized, victimized, etc.,), and as players, you may wish to also include research on the psychological aspects of why gaming is addictive and where the female mindset fits in that space. Your topic was something that was discussed at one of my previous jobs, last year and I recall reading more on the topic and kept the links on my bookmarks. Hope it serves you well on your project. http://gamesresearchnetwork.org/the-psychology-of-gaming-are-we-still-talking-about-gender/). I'm not certain if the next link is available for free, but you can look it up at our library to see if the staff is able to retrieve it for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16374659
ReplyDeleteBest of luck!
Yes, I think it is important to choose the topic that you are into, so I think you did a great job with this one. I am also interested in the video games and I am looking forward with your topic. This topic I think will show the truth of media world and how it will impact the children.
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