Bibliography

This article from the National Women’s History Museum provides an overview of fourth-wave feminism, which began in the early 2010s. This source highlights the defining characteristics of the fourth wave, including its usage of digital platforms and social media to mobilize activism. It also shows the collective effort to address issues such as sexual harassment, body shaming, and gender-based violence. The article emphasizes how movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp represent the fourth wave’s ability to reach global audiences and make changes through online communities. This source is valuable for our group project because it contextualizes the broader cultural and social issues that have shaped recent shifts in female representation in video games. The rise of fourth-wave feminism parallels the rise of more complex, empowered, and diverse female characters in games, as well as the gaming industry’s increasing responsiveness to criticism about sexism and exclusion. A limitation of the article is its scope and focus on the U.S. context, which does not fully capture the global effects of the movement. Regardless, it captures the main priorities of the fourth wave of intersectionality, digital activism, and mobilization, providing important context for understanding how recent feminist sentiments have influenced media representation in the gaming industry. 

In From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, Cassell and Jenkins (1998) present a collection of essays that critically examine the intersection of gender and computer games during the formative years of the gaming industry. The volume argues that video games have historically marginalized female characters by limiting them to roles that reinforce stereotypes, particularly the “damsel in distress” trope or hyper-sexualized figures designed for the “male gaze”. This book provides valuable context about how these portrayals reflect and reinforce societal norms about femininity, power, and technology from a patriarchal perspective. Its detailed analyses of both games and gamer culture offer a foundation for understanding why female characters were framed as objects rather than agents of their own narratives. The work is highly relevant for this project as it connects early game design decisions with larger cultural patterns shaped by second-wave feminism and shifting notions of gender roles, and it allows us to understand where today’s lingering legacy of sexism and objectification in video games comes from. However, a key limitation is that the book was published in 1998, before major changes in gaming representation that came with indie games, online gaming communities, and social media-driven discourse, even before further events such as GamerGate. Thus, while the book provides strong context, it lacks engagement with developments post-2000, representing an explosion in communication technology and social media, limiting its application to modern analysis. 

This report from the Geena Davis Institute emphasizes the importance of gender representation in video games and its impact on societal perceptions of women. The report analyzes how female characters are often marginalized or stereotypically portrayed in popular games. The report also touches on the imbalance between male and female characters, particularly in lead roles. It offers both statistical evidence and cultural analysis, exploring how these portrayals affect not only the video game industry but also the wider societal view of women. This source contributes valuable sociocultural context to our project by emphasizing the power of media, especially video games, in shaping gender norms. It is essential for understanding how the lack of strong female characters in video games perpetuates gender inequality. The report aligns with our aim to analyze and critique gender representation in gaming, but its reliance on broader cultural narratives could make it less detailed in terms of specific gaming examples. It strengthens our project by framing the conversation about gender representation in games within a broader social context, making the issue more relatable to our audience.

The “Women in Video Games - Damsel in Distress” dataset on GitHub, published by GitHub user ali-ce, contains data on video games in which female characters are portrayed as “damsels in distress.” These video games are sorted by genre, with some video games encompassing multiple genres. The columns of the dataset are as follows: “Video Game,” “Profile,” “Description,” “Release Year,” “Users’ Review (stars),” “Image,” “Theme,” “Platform Manufacturer(s),” “Platform(s),” and “Developers.”

Although this dataset does contain a lot of information on various tropes in video games, the last time the dataset was updated was eleven years ago. The gaming industry is constantly changing, and it is important to have updated data for current video games. Currently, the dataset does not include any data on video games after 2014. This is definitely a concern for the sake of reporting up-to-date statistics on the tropes in the video games discussed. The creator of this dataset is Alice Corona, who does not come from any accredited university. It is difficult to confirm the accuracy of Corona’s work for this reason, because we don’t know where the data is sourced from, which is another point of concern for using this data in a scholarly paper.

Despite its cons, this dataset is still a useful source for curated data on video games. During our group’s search for datasets surrounding women in video games, my teammates and I realized the lack of data on such a specific topic. Therefore, this dataset is still useful as one of the few publicly available datasets that relate to women and feminism in video games.

This article discusses the biased representation of female characters in contemporary video games, particularly focusing on how they are often portrayed in secondary roles or through sexualized imagery. The authors argue that while the frequency of female characters has increased over time, their roles often remain constrained by traditional gender stereotypes, portraying them as passive or dependent on male protagonists. The article presents both qualitative and quantitative data to support these claims, highlighting that while progress has been made in the representation of women, many games still rely heavily on outdated stereotypes. This article is highly relevant to our project as it directly addresses the ongoing issue of gender bias in mainstream video games. It helps us understand the barriers to more inclusive and empowering representations of women. The study’s detailed analysis of the limitations in female character portrayals allows us to critically evaluate how these stereotypes affect players’ perceptions of gender roles. However, the article could benefit from more diverse case studies beyond a select number of games. Its value lies in providing a foundation for discussing the slow but ongoing shift in representation.

Tracy Dietz’s 1998 article “An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games” offers a quantitative analysis of gender representation in popular video games of the 1990s. Dietz finds that female characters are underrepresented, and when they are found, they are overwhelmingly depicted as passive, victimized, or hyper-sexualized. The study’s strength lies in its systematic coding of game content, offering empirical support to arguments that had, until back in those days, had been largely theoretical or anecdotal. For this project, Dietz’s work is particularly valuable because it provides data that heavily supports claims about the prevalence of the damsel trope and the objectification of women in games—it was the first study to holistically do so empirically. It also reinforces the idea that such portrayals reflect broader societal norms, supporting links to second-wave feminism’s critique of media representations. However, the article does have its limitations. It focuses predominantly on violence and gender roles in mainstream, action genre games, thereby overlooking genres where female characters may have had more complex or positive portrayals (e.g., RPGs or puzzle games)—however, that may be implied that the most condemning data is found in this genre which further reinforces the gender norms perpetuated by these games. Additionally, like Cassell and Jenkins (1998), Dietz’s work predates the cultural and design shifts that occurred in the 2000s and beyond along with shifts in how communication has shaped gender culture. Despite these limits, Dietz provides a critical empirical anchor that complements more theoretical or cultural critiques within the project.

This dataset, Predict Online Gaming Behavior Dataset, published by Rabie El Kharoua, contains information on players of video games, per gender and per genre. The dataset also contains information on which country the player is from, the game difficulties per game, sessions played per week, and more data on both the players and the games being played. The columns of the dataset include “PlayerID,” “Age,” “Gender,” “Location,” “GameGenre,” “PlayTimeHours,” “InGamePurchases,” “Game Difficulty,” “SessionsPerWeek,” and “AvgSessionDuration.” 

This dataset is extremely useful for determining gender ratios of various game genres, along with demographics of the countries each player is from. While other datasets may be focused more on the video game characters, this dataset focuses on the players themselves, which is also an incredibly important factor to look at when it comes to analyzing women in video games. Studying the demographics of the target audience can provide insight into why game developers may have made certain decisions about the portrayal of female characters in their video games. 

This dataset was published in 2024, which is also advantageous, because it contains generally up-to-date information on video game users and demographics. However, the video game user demographics are constantly ebbing and flowing, so it is important to acknowledge that even missing data from 2025 could be a potential source of inaccuracy in any conclusions that may be made about video game demographics in 2025.

Kumaraguruparan’s article presents a statistical analysis of gender representation in popular video games released between 2012 and 2022 by utilizing the Gender Representation in Video Games (GRIVG) dataset. The study looks at 637 unique characters from 64 game titles, exploring variables such as gender, protagonist roles, sexualization, and narrative position, as well as industry factors like development region and release platform. The findings indicate a slow but steady increase in the proportion of female characters, going from 27.3% in 2012 to 38.6% in 2022. However, the article also identifies challenges, such as ongoing sexualization and underrepresentation in protagonist roles. This source is important for our project because the study gives quantitative data until as recent as 2022, which allows us to make parallels between recent social trends and changes in female character depictions. It also provides transparency on the methods and statistical techniques used, which provide a framework for our own data analysis and visualization. The downside of the study is that its focus on popular games may overlook trends in indie games, so its dataset may not be comprehensive enough. Regardless, the article’s scope over a whole decade and detailed findings make it very useful in understanding patterns in female representation within the gaming industry.

This study analyzes gender stereotypes in the character designs of Honor of Kings, a highly popular Chinese game. The researchers investigate how female characters in the game are often designed with exaggerated physical features that reinforce traditional gender roles. Despite a rise in the number of female characters, their designs and narrative roles continue to reflect outdated notions of femininity, focusing more on aesthetics and sexualization than character depth. This source is crucial for our project as it provides a specific case study from the Chinese gaming market, offering insights into how gender representation can differ across cultural contexts. Honor of Kings is one of the most influential games in China, and its gendered character designs reflect larger cultural and commercial forces. By analyzing this game, the study highlights how global games can reinforce gender stereotypes, particularly in Eastern markets. This source will contribute to our understanding of how gender representations vary across different cultures and will serve as a critical example of the persistent issues in female character design, even in highly popular games.

In this mixed-methods study, Lynch, Dooley, and Markowitz explore how playing as female characters in video games can be a meaningful and empowering experience. Drawing from survey data from 751 participants, they identify a few key themes: players felt affirmed by humanized and complex female characters, embraced non-stereotypical femininity, reflected on male-dominated design norms and problematic gaming behaviors, and, in some cases, gained new gendered perspectives. Both cisgender and transgender women described these experiences as validating, while some men reported increased empathy and reflection. The study finds a high affective empowerment index across genders, suggesting that meaningful representation can foster emotional and psychological benefits. This article provides qualitative evidence that strengthens our project’s focus on the impact of representation. It affirms our argument that the quality of female characters’ narrative roles deeply affects player experience and identity formation. By emphasizing meaning-making and player agency, the article aligns with our commitment to understanding not just patterns of representation but their real-world implications.

A limitation of the study is its reliance on self-reported data, which may introduce perception bias. It also only focuses on subjective responses and does not examine in-game content in context. In addition, the sample skews heavily male, which may result in an underrepresentation of female-identifying players’ perspectives. The imbalance may limit the study’s ability to fully capture how women themselves interpret and respond to representation. Nonetheless, the article adds psychological and experiential depth to our narrative about why representation matters beyond mere statistical presence.

Lynch et al. conduct a large-scale quantitative content analysis of 571 video games released between 1983 and 2014 to examine how female characters are represented. Their findings show that although sexualization peaked in the 1990s and has slightly declined in recent years, it remains prevalent, especially in genres such as fighting games. The study also reveals that female characters are more likely to appear in secondary roles than as protagonists, and even primary characters often conform to idealized, objectified standards. Additionally, characters portrayed as physically capable are more likely to be sexualized. These patterns reflect persistent gender norms and objectification within gaming culture. The study provides valuable quantitative evidence for our project’s claim that while the frequency of female characters may have increased over the past four decades, their roles and agency often remain constrained. It also validates our methodology of coding characters based on narrative function and agency. 

One limitation is that the study emphasizes visual and physical attributes over narrative complexity or character development. It also does not consider player perspectives or emotional responses, focusing solely on in-game content and omitting the affective impact of representation. Moreover, it stops at 2014, while our project expands to 2020 to include more recent developments, such as the rise of indie games and fourth-wave feminist influence. Despite these constraints, the article’s longitudinal scope and statistically grounded insights make it a strong foundation for our historical and structural analysis of gender representation in video games.

Claire: This dataset compiled by Brisa Palomar on Kaggle provides statistics on different aspects of gender representation in video games, ranging from data regarding character gender distribution, sexualization scores, and game timelines. We plan on using this dataset to create visualizations for our digital humanities project, including creating a game release timeline documenting when major games were released, a graph of sexualization scoring over the years, as well as comparing the gender distribution between different genres of games. These visualizations will enable us to examine our hypothesis and research question and serve as a central piece of evidence for the argument that, despite increased inclusion of female characters in games, narrative depth and agency remain inconsistent. The structure of our dataset makes it possible for us to examine representation in terms of chronology, which allows us to align changes in the gaming industry with cultural changes, contributing to the historical contextualization section in our narrative. By analyzing game data over time, we can visualize the trajectory of gender portrayal and identify key inflection points, such as the rise of more complex female leads in the 2010s. One limitation of this source is that it does not always define the context behind its categorizations, requiring us to supplement it with qualitative interpretations. For example, we aren’t given the context behind the sexualization scoring, as the dataset will mark a character as having a sexualized character design without explaining what that entails. Nonetheless, the data-driven nature of the source makes it a key part of our methodology and provides empirical grounding for our theoretical arguments.

Mira: This annotation is for the Gender Representation in Video Games dataset, which contains multiple different tables, all containing information on 64 different video games released from 2012 to 2022. The datasets include sexualization scores on each of the characters in all the video games, along with corresponding release dates of the games, in order to construct an analysis on the correlation between release date timelines and sexualization scores.

This dataset, which is from Kaggle, was created by Brisa Palomar, but there is not much information on who Brisa Palomar is. is, and what their credentials are. A big part of digital humanities is being able to verify that data collection is done in an ethical, accurate way. Due to the fact that there is very little information on the data collection process, as well as who Brisa Palomar is, it is difficult to verify whether this data is accurate. 

Although it can be difficult to verify the accuracy of the data, this is one of the most expansive datasets on women in video games that my group mates and I found, and in a more niche field of study such as women in video games, it is a useful dataset to have, especially with quantitative data on sexualization. The metadata documentation provides more information on how the sexualization scores were determined, using a 4-point system with clearly defined boolean indicators for whether a character can be determined to be sexualized in a certain category.

Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (2013) is a series of video essays rather than a traditional academic publication, yet its influence on both scholarly discourse and popular understanding of gender in games is still sound and profound. Sarkeesian deconstructs recurring narrative patterns in games, particularly the ways in which female characters are framed as objects, prizes, or victims to motivate male protagonists. Her analysis bridges academic feminist theory and accessible media critique, drawing attention to how these tropes perpetuate sexist assertions (e.g., marginalization, sexualization, victimization, etc.). This source is highly relevant for the project because it updates and expands upon the critiques offered by earlier works like Cassell and Jenkins, showing how these tropes persisted or perished into the 21st century. Furthermore, Sarkeesian’s work engages directly with digital feminist discourses, particularly issues of intersectionality and media accountability, making it invaluable for connecting gaming to broader social movements like #MeToo. A notable limitation, however, is that Tropes vs. Women has been criticized for occasional overgeneralizations and for focusing more on problematic examples than on positive, innovative portrayals. Rather than a holistic view, a lot of the series is targeting specifically negative portrayals, which do not provide the full picture of female portrayal, but still serve to showcase one side of the industry. Additionally, as a video series, it lacks the methodological rigor typically associated with peer-reviewed academic work. The series is kickstarted, meaning it is done individually by Sarkeesian. Nonetheless, Sarkeesian’s cultural impact and sharp analytical lens make it crucial for understanding contemporary debates about gender and gaming.

Adrienne Shaw’s Gaming at the Edge offers a foundational critique of gender and sexuality in gaming, and serves as one of the key pieces of academia in this field of research. Her book interrogates how marginalized identities are represented—or excluded—within game culture. Shaw argues that positive representation cannot simply be measured by inclusion; rather, she emphasizes that portrayals must be evaluated in the context of larger power structures. In particular, our digital humanities project draws upon her argument that “[t]he relative positive or negative qualities of portrayals exist not within texts themselves but rather within the social hierarchies, disparities, and power relations to which they refer and that they support” (Shaw 20). This insight is particularly valuable for our project, which considers not just how often women appear in games but also the agency and place they hold. Shaw’s analysis encourages us to look beyond surface-level representation and to examine the structural conditions that inform how femininity is portrayed. This helps to ensure that we don’t fall victim to tokenization and can begin to analyze representation in a more nuanced manner. Her work also helps in conditioning our qualitative approach by challenging assumptions about what is “good” or “bad” representation. While Shaw’s text is more theoretical than data-driven, its conceptual depth makes it indispensable for grounding our arguments in feminist media critique. It challenges us to consider how cultural values are encoded in video game narratives and to interrogate not just who is present in games, but how they are allowed to function.

Jiangzhuo Wu’s article highlights how the indie game movement has transformed game development by prioritizing creative freedom over commercial formulas, allowing game developers to center narratives that may challenge traditional values and spotlight underrepresented stories. Wu notes that indie games, unburdened by mainstream market demands, allow creators to tell stories that center marginalized voices—including women and queer individuals. This is directly relevant to our hypothesis that recent shifts in gender representation are driven in part by indie developers, who are more willing to break from stereotypical portrayals of female characters due to their distance from profit-driven motives. Wu points out that independent creators are more likely to construct characters based on authentic narrative desires instead of mass-market appeal, and therefore, female protagonists can be constructed in more nuanced, complex ways. This insight reinforces our analysis of how fourth-wave feminism intersects with technological democratization in the game industry. Though the article is not academic, it offers a journalistic overview that contextualizes industry trends and complements our historical timeline by situating the indie movement as a cultural force. Its main limitation is its lack of empirical data; however, its anecdotal and industry-based observations provide important cultural context and help identify a mechanism for change in representation that our data analysis seeks to confirm.