Leveling up:

The most-active gameplaying demographic is African American teenagers.

For a time, some of the only places where Black characters could be found was in sports games.

Diversity Matters:

Playstation recently sponsored Pride London, providing a joyous, hugely colourful presence in the parade.

Xbox got a new feature in settings called co-pilot. It lets console owners map a game’s controls on to two separate joypads, so two people have access at the same time.

Laura Mulvey:

She falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property losing her outward glamourous characteristics.

Once he actually confronts her his erotic drive is to break her down and force her to tell by persistent cross questioning.

Feminist Frequency Website:

The gruesome death of women for shock value is especially prevalent in modern gaming.

The Damsel in Distress predates the invention of video games by several thousand years.

levelling up –

1.”only places where Black characters could be found was in sports games,”

2.  “game development companies need to improve their diversity”

why diversity matters –

1. “people dismiss representation as a political fad”

2. “All we wanted to do is show our support,”

mulvey –

Levelling up

1. The first video game featuring a Black person was Heavyweight Champ, an arcade fighting game released by SEGA in 1976, then remade in 1987, and re-released again in the early ’90s. 
2. As technology advanced, Black and other characters of color became more prevalent, even if most often confined to the fighting genre. And stereotypes were not limited to African Americans; Latinx characters have often been portrayed as gangbangers and drug dealers, as seen in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, with ridiculous, cliched gang names like “The Cholos” and “The Cubans,” voiced in exaggerated, stereotypical Hispanic accents.

Why diversity matters

1. The industry traditionally projects an image that is young, white, straight and male, but there is growing understanding that – if only for the sake of releasing more interesting products – this has to change.
2. “We decided that we’d like to do more for our LGBTQ gaming community and Pride in London seemed like a great start for that – after all, we are based in central Soho. We quickly came together with the UK team who had separately been working on plans for Pride. From there, it just started to move forward …”

Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual pleasure and Narrative cinema’

1. A male movie star’s glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete more powerful ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front go the mirror.
2. She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualised. But as the narrative progresses she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalised sexuality, her show-girl connotations; her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone. By means of identification of him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too.

Feminist Frequency

1. As a trope the damsel in distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.
2. Disposability – When an objectified person is treated as “something designed for or capable of being thrown away after being used or used up” – a component of objectification theory.

Diversity Quotes –

“You can use it to help people with disabilities, or people who are just less experienced at games. While playing, instead of taking the controller away from them.”

“We have a very diverse staff, including a big number of LGBTQ people who went through the same challenges that many of our LGBTQ fans are going through right now,”

Levelling Up Quotes –

“Over time, representation has become more frequent, and more importantly, more authentic within the realm of video games.”

“The International Game Developers Association found that 81% of developers identified as White/Caucasian and 2% identified as Black/African-American/African/Afro-Caribbean.”

Laura Mulvey Quotes –

“She falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property losing her outward glamourous characteristics.”

“Once he actually confronts her his erotic drive is to break her down and force her to tell by persistent cross questioning.”