Gender stereotypes

Normally, game players are offered to choose their own avatar before playing the game. However, soon enough they could realise that there are not many female characters to choose than male characters. As stated by Laurel, “Engagement is what happens when we are able to give ourselves over to a representational action, comfortably and unambiguously”, and this could be enabled by an active artificial figure, avatars. However, the severe gender stereotypes of the avatars have been constantly seen in our contemporary as the main leading characters illuminated in a game text are traditionally male hero compared to female characters depicted normally as a supporter.

Even if, there are some heroin characters, such as Louise, Lara Croft, those female characters are thought to be an objective of visual pleasures rather than being a subjective as a protagonist. This is mainly due to the modes of representation, such as exaggerated breast size, tiny waist, large eyes, and large mouth. For example, male game players tend to choose a female character when they play the action games or fighting games as they could experience a greater range of emotional complexity, such as shifting gender roles as well as eye pleasure derived from those sexy and powerful female characters.

However, what is to be noticed here is that whether the game players choose female characters or not, the fundamental feature of gender has not changed: the masculinity is always prior to the femininity. In this circumstance, female game players could be excluded to enjoy the virtual space since erotic would be leaded by the severe encoding of the fantasy as a masculine preserve. My point here is that it would be implausible that female game players could feel sufficiently empowered to make a form of identification and desire unless the gender stereotypes disappear in the game text.