I utilised a male in my front cover for a reactionary response as it aggress and goes along with the idea that men are typically soldiers in games.

I produced a Safari Warfare Game and I created a dominant signifying image that was a masculine soldier that fits with the reactionary idea and stereotype that men are soldiers in war. This goes against Toril Moi’s analysis of the distinction between female, feminine, feminist categories of representation (1987). Only in my production there is a clear focus on masculinity.

Further to this I have exaggerated the muscular attributes of my character by adding armour, overexaggerated arms, legs and chest. I also added a fighter jet and a attack helicopter that displays the on going theme of war, putting them behind the character, signifying his strength as a male leader. In some ways this inverts Laura Mulvey’s notion of the male gaze in that my main character is there to be objectified and looked at, in the words of Laura Mulvey he is a character “establishing ways of looking and spectacle” (Mulvey, p. 883, 1999). However, the notion of the male gaze is quite distinct as it relates to the sexualisation of the dominant signifier, which is not the case for my character.

However, I don’t think this is a positive representation of masculinity as I personally believe that the idea of a strong, leading soldier always being a man is wrong and incorrect in the current world where woman are coming to power and serving in the army. Perhaps inhabiting a range of signifiers that would connote a more feminine character, or a radical female character instead of the reactionary male character. I could do this by re-sculpting my character in terms of their physical appearance, their clothing, body shape and size, along with the hair. As such, I would be sending out a much more positive message (for me) about masculinity, ‘maleness’ one that used a positive countertype to present a radical and challenging representation which could help gamers to adopt a new ways of thinking about gender representation, with more positive role models for young people to aspire to. As Keith Stuart notes ‘the power of video games [is] a reflective, empowering and emotional influence on the lives of players’. (Why diversity matters in the modern video games industry, Guardian, 18 July 2017)