Race Representation, Toxic Masculinity, and Sexism in Video/Digital Games

Race Representation, Toxic Masculinity, and Sexism in Video/Digital Games
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Race Representation, Toxic Masculinity, and Sexism in Video/Digital Games
Introduction
Since their introduction, video or digital games have received much attention and have become increasingly famous in entertainment media. The gaming (mainly video games) community is highly perceived as incorporating toxic masculinity features like homophobia, misogyny, and violent behaviour. Also, it is widely known that male players have hugely dominated the video gaming space. The extensive qualitative and quantitative disparities involving color and female characters compared to White men characters have resulted in a toxic gaming society that, in turn, prioritizes White men's voices and physiques above those from other races and cultures. Moreover, there is a tendency to dehumanize marginalized groups and women and disengage them from gaming. The paper will analyze racial representation, toxic masculinity, and sexism in three selected video games: Overwatch, League of Legends, and God of War.
Analysis of Racial Representation, Toxic Masculinity, and Sexism in the "Overwatch" Game
The 2016 Overwatch video game is a shooter digital multiplayer playable on Personal Computers and consoles. The game comprises players playing in teams made up of six players, whereby they compete to acquire and safeguard control areas located on a specific map. They can also escort cargo within the map over a specified time. Every player can choose a hero from a list of more than 30 heroes, all with distinctive playing methods. The game enables players to involve in competition-based play or casual play. In the former type of play, players' skill level is estimated, and each lands at different skill levels. As players play, they can easily chat via text or voice chats. Anonymity is activated whereby only usernames show (and not their actual identity) when players are strangers (Ericsson & Bergström, 2020).
The video game is among the scarce digital plays having a balanced inclusivity of ethnicities and races, with more being added as this game continues to develop further. Since the video game's inception in previous years, Overwatch has, most importantly, changed to embrace diversity and inclusivity, ensuring that all races and societal groups are present. However, the developers still excuse themselves regarding cultural appropriation and representation issues. Specifically, the game features 8 Whites as characters. These are Zarya, Mercy, Soldier 76, Roadhog, Torbjorn, Junkrat, McCree, and Reinhardt. Despite being Whites, these characters emerge from different nations. For instance, McCree and Soldier 76 are from the United States (US), while Junkrat and Roadhog are from Australia. Widowmaker used to be a White character but was considered French due to a shade of Blue. Regarding the other parts of characterization, Overwatch incorporates multiple ethnicities, demonstrating the diversity of the video game. For example, Sombra and Reaper are Hispanic, Ana and Pharah and Ana are Egyptians, Orisa is an African, Mei originates from China, Symmetra is an Indian, Zenyatta is from Nepali, Lucio is South American, while Genji and Hanzo are from Japan. The main observation throughout these characters is that the video game incorporates an increasingly varied cast from all corners of the planet. Specifically, each planet's region has at least one character to embody them. This is among the few digital games casts with an undoubtedly unique representation of characters to represent different regions. Blizzard strategically enhanced these racial representations within the specific video game that fascinates many target audiences. There is higher diversity that incorporates nearly every person loving the game (Gramuglia, 2017; News24, 2018).
Toxic masculinity or behavior amongst online game players is not an emergent area of focus in various research since it has surfaced as a challenge for the longest time ever. Some studies have established multiple proofs of toxic masculinity where women have emerged susceptible to being majorly targeted (Santos, 2021). According to Ericsson and Bergström (2020)'s research, the thesis established that a considerable difference in how Overwatch players (men and women) face toxicity exists. Regarding their thesis outcomes, all the players in this video game, regardless of their gender, are vulnerable to toxicity and believe that toxicity is a significant issue in modern online games. However, as most men majorly experience toxicity towards their game performance, the exact toxicity affects women in many different means, facing toxicity primarily because of being a minority group in society and not mainly due to their game performance. Such a circumstance leads to many women having the urge to conceal their gender identity leading to situations whereby the female players might never utilize voice chatting to convey important information to a team. This puts such a playing style in a demerit when players attempt to call for the game's higher rank. The author's findings indicated that for most players, without gender consideration, toxicity influences them negatively, and most of them feel that they game worse than they do and drop the willingness to continue with the game. Moreover, the study outcome also proved that nearly twice the total female gamers compared to the male ones never wish to go on with the play when toxicity plays a role. This observation reinforces their survey's hypothesis that toxicity is distinct between men and women and that the problem influences the genders otherwise.
Blizzard's Overwatch has nearly forty million gamers, with a female representation of about 16% (Yee N., 2017), which implies that the game has approximately 6.4 million female gamers. Comparing this statistic to the findings made by Ericsson and Bergström's survey, only 3.9% of the women players would not mind pursuing an e-sports career that would imply Overwatch has nearly 250,000 women gamers who would wish to participate in the Overwatch league or e-sport. Glancing at the competition for a place in one of the Overwatch teams, females and males would easily compete. Therefore, considering the men's side, wherever 8.1% constitutes those wishing to seek a career in the e-sport, it would imply that about 2.72 million men gamers would wish to involve in the video game. All these lead to a player base of over 2.9 million gamers looking forward to the competition. This means nearly 8.4% of every participant who wants the esport competition constitute women, but 0.5% constitute Overwatch's female players.
Analysis of Racial Representation, Toxic Masculinity, and Sexism in the "League of Legends" Game
League of Legends, also known as league, is an online multiplayer battle video game created in 2009. Riot Games is a video game developer. This team-based digital game has over 140 champions at a gamer's disposal. League of Legends is a problematic game disguised as a simple but undoubtedly one of the most complex video games a casual player can play. According to Rhodes (2020), with about 150 characters, the video game incorporates vibrant champions from different cultural backgrounds. For instance, Senna, Lucian, and Ekko are Black champion representatives. Each champion depicts a distinct storyline in the player-centered game. However, Senna, Lucian, and Ekko are the leading roles representing the Blacks within the fascinating video game. The three characters have their extraordinary core capacities, influences, and more that the League of Legends playing experience is famous and exceptional. Today, billions of the world's human population play games. Therefore, it is wise and even more significant that every player can identify themselves in these games. Riot Games, a digital games developer, though at a slower pace, is trying hard to ensure that characters created in its plays incorporate gamers on the planet. A player's experience should be crucial to the developer, and one of its essential values should be putting players at the center of its priorities and always listening to and receiving players' feedback before converting them into action.
The primary toxic masculinity elements coming into play in the League of Legends video game are spiteful rage expressions, the power to sympathize with one's co-players due to insignificant performance, and shaming individuals who do not have specific information. From a toxic masculinity perspective, man is not blamed for the wrong character; patriarchy manifestation is to blame because it influences the man's behavior. Most importantly, this kind of masculinity under discussion influences female-based games – nobody needs to be a man to rage or be a rage casualty. Therefore, the League of Legends digital game has gained a negative reputation due to the player base's toxic be...