A Brief History of Home Video Games

Gender and Racial Inequality in Video Games
Sam Hart

It is difficult to formulate an argument about the gender and racial inequalities in video games without an understanding of where the majority of video games come from. In 1994 over seventy percent of video games released in America were originally designed in Japan.4 Despite this fact, many researchers have attempted to argue about these issues using American concepts of inequality. This is something that is clearly erroneous and will lead to inaccurate results.

To anyone researching the topic, it is quite obvious that the majority of characters in the video game universe are male. It is also obvious that the majority of human characters (excluding of course, non-human characters such as robots, beasts, vegetables and worms) are primarily white. Thus, it is easy to leap to conclusions that such video games were programmed by white males with politically incorrect values. However, this conclusion quickly falls apart when one finds a string of Asian names in the credits.

So if the games are primarily programmed by Asian programmers, why then do they contain mainly Caucasian people? The immediate answer would be that they are trying to appeal to the Caucasian market (America, Europe, etc.) However this conclusion disseminates when the fact that nearly sixty percent of the world gaming market is dominated by the Japanese gamer is brought into light.4 With that kind of majority, the Japanese gamer would have sufficient influence to alter any insulting practices of the video game producer.

So why would a Japanese programmer write into his or her games lead characters that are Caucasian? To comprehend this behavior that seems like such a dichotomy to the Western mind, I choose to take a "Popular Culture in Japan" class here at the University.

In "You Gotta Have Wa" written by Robert Whiting, we read of James Robert Homer, an American baseball player who was hired by the Yakult Swallows of Japan's Central Baseball League. Homer, who had a reasonably good season the previous year, but nothing spectacular, was treated as a bona fide major leaguer. His salary cost Yakult (a health drink manufacturer) two million dollars. The reason for this, Whiting concluded was that Caucasian persons were a significant part of Japanese popular culture. In another article about advertising in Japan 5 we find that foreign (gaijin) persons are used in a great deal of Japanese advertisements, and apparently have the potential to help sell a product. While I certainly cannot profess to fully understand this relationship between non-Japanese persons and Japanese popular culture, from my experience in this class I have come away with some ideas that help explain this. It seems that non-Japanese persons, especially Caucasian Americans, are almost seen as fictitious characters in popular culture. This aids in the understanding of this phenomenon, but does not explain it fully.

As for the gender inequalities, this too must be researched not from a Western-centric stand point, but with a clearer understanding of gender differences in Japan. In "Intelligent Elegance" by Keiko Tanaka examples of how women are treated in advertisements are given.

For example, there was an advertisement that was so successful that it won the 1984 Asahi Advertising Prize for Tokyo Gas company. The pictures depicted a large pot boiling over a gas cooker. A woman in the picture wearing an apron and holding a plate would be washing dishes. Another picture shows the same woman's reflection in a mirror, putting on lipstick. However, she is not looking at herself, she is watching the stove with the pot. The advertisements were for a gas cooker with a special sensor that automatically stops the gas supply when the fire is extinguished. A caption would read, "Toshi gasu-tie feminsuto ne?" meaning, "City Gas is a feminist, isn't it?" with the "isn't it?" or "ne?" expecting a mutual agreement. The concept behind the advertisements was that because Tokyo Gas brought out this special gas cooker, it aided the woman in her tasks. She would not have to worry about the flame going out and her house filling with gas while she did the dishes, or applied make-up. This cooker would free her from constantly watching the stove. (Pg. 81,82) While this example seems blatantly chauvinistic to American sensibilities, to the Japanese consumer it was truly an example of feminism. Tanaka concludes that when the Western term "feminism" was imported into Japanese culture, it was altered to fit more traditional Japanese beliefs, thus losing its original meaning. (Pg. 94)

Therefore it is obvious that Western-centric beliefs and morals cannot be applied to the majority of video games. However, this does not excuse the inequalities present in video games. There is still the remaining thirty percent of video games that come from America and Europe which have very similar inequality ratios. Plus, more and more gaming companies are being formed in these two countries. If the current trend of American and European game companies continues it has been estimated that they will have control of over fifty percent of the market by the year 2000.3 It follows that now is the time to affirm political correctness in the Western gaming industry.

One of the hurdles that must be overcome is that of gender imbalance among the game players. This stumbling block is made worse by biased reports that lead people to believe that video games are "men's" toys. An example of this can be found in "Video Kids," by Eugene Provenzo, Jr. through Harvard Press.

In an unfortunate chapter entitled "Gender Differences in Video Game Playing," we read of a study of college undergraduates by Morlock and colleagues concerning what motivates people to play video games. The conclusion of the study was that "women prefer more whimsical, less aggressive, and to some degree less demanding games than men."1 What makes this such a tragic misinterpretation of data is the fact that the original researchers did not fully research the games that the subjects preferred. At the time the research was conducted, the popular game genre among the male subjects was side-view fighters. The popular genres among the female subjects were role playing games and puzzle games. To someone unfamiliar with video game genres, it would seem that the male preferences required much more ability than the female choices. This, however, is very incorrect.

Side-view fighters, for example, are typically very rigorous games that require fast reflexes and contain battles that are over in minutes. While there is the odd exception, these games typically do not incorporate a great deal of strategy or critical thinking into their game play.

Role playing games, on the other hand, are enormous quests requiring patience, memorization, critical thinking, and strategy. They typically do not require quick reflexes, and when they do, it is rarely as intense as a fighting game. Role playing games require a commitment, because they cannot typically be beaten in one sitting. Some role players can take up to eighty hours of game time, and you progress through the game over the duration of weeks or even months. Puzzlers, while they do not require the patience or commitment of role players, still require strategy and logic.

Therefore, the games that "women prefer" are not "less demanding games" than those that men prefer. They are simply demanding in different ways. Some would even argue that the commitment and patience required to play them make them more difficult than the more aggressive titles. Statements like the one made in Provenzo's book can only hinder the attitudes of and towards female game players.

In conclusion, I feel that there is a great deal of gender and racial inequality in video games. This is a bad thing. However, to solve this problem, one cannot attack an industry that is dominated by persons with dramatically different cultural backgrounds. But attempting to influence the persons and companies who come from a similar background in productive ways, is an ideal thing to do. Also, we must remove ourselves from the suggestion that video games are a male market, and begin to look critically at what games are popular among the different genders. When these two items are finally accomplished, only then will this inequality be obliterated.

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