Task 3

What is representation in media?

The short answer to that question is:

It is the representation of ethnicities, gender, age and sexuality within video games, I would even add body features to that and that I will elaborate later.

Why does it matter?

Media is an incredibly influential thing, it is all around us as a digital format and we live in a digital world. Representation matters because everyone has the right to see an aspect of themselves in the things that influence society.

Gamers are a community and everyone in that community has the right to feel included and feel like they belong, that's what makes it a community.

Now you might think Zee, has the industry not improved. If we are looking at gender there has always been female representation in games.

To that I say yes! however, this is where the question pops up " Have you looked at how they have been represented?" - Any suggestions

Let's take a look then.

Looking at the games from the 90's the most popular series Mario. Princess peach is the female protagonist of the game and what happens to her?

She needs saving all the time. This promotes the "stereotypical" outlook females are weak, damsel in distress, they need saving they can't save themselves.

Why does this need to change and why it matters?

There is already a lack of female players in the industry compared to the male demographic and if we are to promote video games to the female target audience they need to feel represented.

Secondly if we don't represent them in a realistic manner, the whole stereotyping and hyper-sexualisation is only setting the wrong standards for the real life women to meet. It not only can influence body image issues within females who do play games but it can expectations for young male players.

When it comes to ethnic representation in games some of the same issues apply as an extension however, there are more issues here.

Representation in general: You don't have many main protagonist of different ethnicities and LGBTQ+ Backgrounds. This again is a representation of the games development plain where the dominant demographic is Caucasian male.

Stereotyping: Often games can get it wrong when they do have a character of colour, certain ethnic background or even sexuality, they are portrayed in a stereotypical light or even villainised. For example call of duty, all Arabic's are terrorists and must be killed.

Token Character: You can't just put a character in your game without them having a purpose in the plot or for them to be in the background and be discarded early; that is called token x,y,z character because they are there for the sake of checking a box in order to appeal to an audience. In the game Bully each clique will have a girl, a black boy and a bisexual boy. The nerds clique have a token Minority Black Bisexual Nerdy boy.

You will need to pick 3 games of your choice and analyse them for the following:

• How well does the game represent ethnicities

• How well the the game represents Female characters

• How well the game represents LGBTQ+ characters

  • Think about the following

    • is there any stereotypical representation

    • are there token characters

    • Give examples where possible

• In your opinion what can the game do better for character representation and how.

Now that you have learned about representation you will apply it to your own idea.

Go back to the plot of the idea and think where and how you can make your game more inclusive for your audience.

Describe in a short paragraph what changes and additions you can make.

Justify those decisions by checking the following:

• am I stereotyping

• am I hyper-sexualising or being realistic

• are any of my characters token characters

This is what the interface will look like when the template loads. It can get a bit overwhelming however, if you break it into chunks it should be easier to under stand

To get used to the controls and the engine interface I would like you to do one of the following:

Create one of the following:

• Your Bedroom

• Your Classroom

• A place from the college

You will be only using the geometry shapes. The transform tools and the additive and subtractive brushes.

I want you to go to Turbo squid and get a bunch of free assets and try to put them in your level.

Make sure that they are free and only download .obj/ .fbx format

Try and add some pizzaz to your environment