I produced a ghost busters’ game. I used both ganders within my games cover. I used the male character as the ghost because men are considered to be mysterious due to not sharing emotions and details about themselves. The female character is used as the buster. I used a female character to go against those ideas of society that females cannot do what males do. I also decided to cover up the female to not sexualise her which corresponds to Laura Mulvey’s idea that women in video games are usually sexualised.

I used a female character as my dominant signifier of busters of the ghosts. I decided to do this because if women are presented to be lower than men I wanted to put a woman above a man in status to prove that in video games its not just men who can play the fighter character roles with male players but female characters can which helps show that female players can also do the same.

After doing wider research I came across some facts which show how the female characters in games are presented less.

“playable female characters were found to appear less frequently than male characters”

“The sexualization of women involves the use of female bodies in a way that renders them the object of a sexual gaze or perception by others; their bodies are objectified and they are reduced to that of a sex object”

These quotes can be found on Wikipedia.

Social media forms have learnt to accept these conventional ideas as its how it has been for years and video game companies refuse to change their dominant signifier from a male to a female. That’s why I made the decision to change the main character to become a female in order to change people’s opinions and views on women in video games.

 My video game is countertype; radical as it goes against what has been done before and what works in the video game community. It shows positivity towards women without presenting negativity to men due to the fact that we cannot just flip gender roles as that will be deemed as unfair and its not what people such as Jean Kilbourne works towards and works for. Jean works for equality not the flip of gender roles.

I was told my games cover had a good representation of gender roles and that I’ve created the perfect split between genders to keep it fair and just.

If I were to completely alter my representation id use the female as the ghost and the male as the buster and give back the male role of being the strong hero trying to save the town. Id also oversexualise the female character and bring back all the same representations of characters we already have no matter how unfair and unjust they are.