Pixelated Object or Feminist Gaming Icon
how the developers of the games present LC and how fans/players perceive her. This will be carried out via content analysis on scenes of the games, a questionnaire, the two movie adaptions and fan art posted on the Internet.
Video games are considered a popular form uk canada goose jackets of entertainment, especially among children, however, there is a distinct lack of female characters, especially female characters that act as protagonists. But the very few females within video games are often portrayed in two ways: sexy female or damsel in distress Because of these representations, and the immersive environment of video games, children may end up believing that this is how females should be labelled. Lara Croft seems to follow these two stereotypes, as will be discussed throughout this research paper.
Mark Wolf writes that history of video games now spans over four decades (Wolf, 2008, p. xv), however, it is only in the last 20 years that they have been studied academically, as Espen Aarseth stated, can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, canada goose factory outlet uk academic field. (Aarseth, 2001) Over time, video games have come to include a storyline as opposed to having two blocks hit a tennis ball between each other (Pong, 1972) through advances in technology and the demands of gamers. As Wolf explains:
canada goose clearance Not only content, but cinematic styles of composition and editing, storytelling devices and other canada goose outlet store new york conventions from film and television made their way into video games. Games became more character centered, backgrounds had more scenery and became locations, and there was often more narrative context surrounding the action of the game. By the 1990s, video games had title screens, end credits, cutting between different sequences, multiple points of view, multiple locations, and increasingly detailed storylines. (Wolf, 2008, p. 20) canada goose clearance
canada goose store The creation of gaming consoles meant that the public had better access to video games. With better access, consoles can reach a larger audience, meaning that even canada goose outlet black friday sale young children can play games for hours. canada goose store
Despite the gaming industry becoming popular, playable and non playable female characters were a rarity in these games. And even when females were included within games, they were often portrayed in a negative way, as Gareth Schott and Kirsty Horrell write:
For Provenzo, stereotyped portrayals of gender embody the culture canada goose deals in which games exist as well as reveal its prevailing attitude towards women. Indeed, examples of sexism and misogynism are easily found within the annals of computer games. An extreme case is Custer Revenge (Atari VCS), an infamous early eighties game which allowed players to have sex with an Indian squaw tethered to a pole or in less liberal terms nothing less than rape as its goal (Schott and Horrell, 2000, p. 37)
Female characters were scarce as Berrin Beasley and Tracy Collins Standley found in their study of analysing female and male clothing in video games, the 597 characters analyzed, 427, or 71.52%, of the characters were men, 82, or 13.74%, were women, and 88, or 14.74%, were of an undeterminable gender. (Beasley and Collins Standley, 2002, p. 286)
When discussing female characters in games, in this study girl gamers expressed their dislike for the portrayal of them, as evident here where the interviewer and interviewee discuss LC:
cheap canada goose uk the exaggerated physique of Lara Croft https://www.doloresnet.com also figured in girl gamers explanations for their dislike of the game: cheap canada goose uk
Adult gamer: Her boobs are too big, huhuhuhu well the Lucozade advert, I don think anyone looks at the Lucozade, well Canada Goose Parka the men don but I mean it is pathetic really, I mean I have played the games her as an individual is a bit over the top.
canada goose uk shop Interviewer: What do you mean by pathetic? canada goose uk shop
Canada Goose Parka Adult gamer: Well it like, Lara Croft is like curvy and everything, whereas the blokes that she shooting are straight figures all ugly. Anyway, I prefer games where you don have to keep shooting. (Schott and Horrell, 2000, p. 45 46) Canada Goose Parka
This suggests that girl gamers are aware that female characters are sexualised and for this reason, do not play as female characters.
canada goose black friday sale In Schott and Horrell study, they concluded that: the discussion with girl gamers did not canada goose outlet hong kong present the home as a gaming context that possesses an operational philosophy of equal access and opportunity. (Schott and Horrell, 2000, p. 41) canada goose black friday sale
canadian goose jacket But these representations of female video game characters were challenged in 1996 when Core Design developed the game Tomb Raider (1996), starring a female British archaeologist who adventures around the world searching for ancient relics as the protagonist. The game was and still is considered a huge success (Schott and Horrell noted in their study that, game such as Tomb Raider may have sold over 16 million games, (Schott and Horrell, 2000, p. 37) at the time of their study). As Melinda Burgess et al. describe LC: would be anatomically difficult to explore tombs and climb mountains with breasts the size of basketballs with legs and arms the size of toothpicks as Lara Croft is portrayed. (Burgess, Stermer and Burgess, 2007, p. 427). She was and still is the lead character, but dressed in a sleeveless blue tank top, brown short shorts and calf high boots (this changed in the 2013 reboot) with body proportions, she was seen as No clothing became an issue too a mod (an alternation of the programming of the game so that the game looks a different way or can be played in a different way) was used on Tomb Raider called Nude Patch meant that the player could control canada goose black friday 80 off a naked LC (see Figure 1). As Anne Marie Schleiner writes, popular Nude Raider patch, a pornographic add on that removes Lara clothing, is further evidence of this gender subject configuration, which posits Lara as fetish object of the male gaze. (Schleiner, 2001, p. 222) canadian goose jacket
canada goose clearance sale On the other hand, LC became one of the first main female characters within a game that could be considered a feminist role for female gamers as well as an iconic figure, as Esther MacCallum Stewart wrote: canada goose clearance sale
Analysis from both the media and academic perspectives has been applied heavily to Lara, and she is often the postergirl sometimes quite literally of a number of debates within gaming, again both formal and informal. The result of this is that Lara has remained a critically visible figure for nearly 20 years. Perhaps it can be argued that because of the Tomb Raider fandom, LC is portrayed this way due to LC outside of the games. fans and the media in this case). But with the designers and fans never really portraying LC as one consistent image or definition, it may be suggested that LC has a mixed image canada goose trenton jacket uk she is a strong female video game character but also has a (possibly unintentional) sexy side.
Jo Bryce and Jason canada goose outlet kokemuksia Rutter claim that alongside the absence of female characters, stereotypical and sexualised portrayal of those female characters which are included is another factor explaining the lack of popularity of computer gaming as leisure activity among females. (Bryce and Rutter, 2003, p. 7)
When they do appear, they are often sexualised, therefore making them unpopular. Beasley and Collins Standley continue:
The majority of female characters are dressed in such a way as to bring attention to their bodies, particularly their breasts, which carry strong sexual meaning for the young boys who predominantly play these games. As social learning theory and gender schema theory explain, children exposed to gender role stereotyping in the media, including video games, may develop those attitudes themselves. When applied to the 47 games analyzed for this study, social learning theory and gender schema reveal that canada goose outlet the dominant theme of the games is the same characters are unimportant based on the fact that only about one in four characters are women, although one half of the world population is female. Furthermore, those female characters that do appear in the games are big busted and dressed in clothing that emphasizes their sexuality by drawing attention to their breasts. (Beasley and Collins Standley, 2002, p. 289)
This suggests that female characters were portrayed negatively at the beginning of the gaming industry compared to male characters.
One example of this is Isabella Valentine from the Soul Calibur series (1996 ongoing). She is the opposite of Peach during the storyline of Soul Calibur, she is known to have protected herself without relying on anyone else and be ruthless when achieving her goal. Nevertheless, her clothing (or lack of it) is what makes her stand out (see Figure 2).
Canada Goose Online (Figure 2, courtesy of Wikipedia) Canada Goose Online
buy canada goose jacket Promotional posters for Soul Calibur V include images of IV enlarged breasts and buttocks (see Figure 3 and 4). This encourages the image that female characters have to be sexy in order to be playable. As Schleiner writes, through video games and men are permitted to develop unrealistic ideals of female body type (Schleiner, 2001, p. 223) buy canada goose jacket.