Gendered space and perspectives in the game world &The representation of sex and cultural symbols

The phenomenon of symbolic representations such as gendered perspectives and assumptions, and cultural symbols in the game world had been critically considered by game theorists. This week’s lectures were focused on the visual appeals of sexual symbols and cultural representations in the game world, where issues of races, violence and gendered prejudice had been critically discussed.

These are major areas that game theorists had been focused on. It seems like critical game theorists tend to consider these oblique aspects that are not concerned by game players themselves. By all means, Gamers tend to focus more on the visual and audio appeal of the game rather the representations of images or meaning behind the visual images displayed. This linked to the “Aesthetic” affects mentioned in class as gamers only interested in what is experienced during the process of playing the game.  However, although those oblique theoretical concerns on visual appeal of sex, violence had been considered as critical issues, we cannot ignore the power of interpretations behind these visual images displayed that are likely to enable and fulfill desires and ambitions, and achieve the satisfaction of illusions of gamers.  For instance, Lara croft, the reveal of her female charm and sexiness emphasized male desire and ideas of voyeurism that targeted on male gamers’ interests. This also suggested that game designers had assumed that game players are male that make the logic design and development of the game focused on the male assumptions and needs.  Therefore, female gamers’ expectation and needs are weirdly been considered. The use of female figure as a tool of sexual appeal in the visual display of games generated controversies on gendered representation and inequality. For instance, the over the last two lectures, we have been looking at the advertisements of games and obviously, all of them tend to reveal masculinity, combat, sexuality, voyeurism and violence where the targeted market are more incline to male gamers, while using female sex appeal as a stunt. It is reasonable to say that the symbolic representations of sex and races in the game world is merely an extension of mainstream social perspectives and recognitions. For example, the game “Zombies” use Black people as zombies that raised races issues. The action of White men figure as a “Justice Herald”who destroy black zombies and presumed to be the hero of human, revealed the supreme belief of white precedence. The gender and cultural representations in the game world is an enormous field to look at. I think I am going to do more research on topics I discussed above for my essay assignment.