A few things with this. Firstly:
“Sexism pervades gaming. For example, game content overwhelmingly features male characters to the exclusion of central female or gender minoritized characters. Games that do feature female or gender minoritized characters often unfavorably stereotype and objectify these groups. In online gaming experiences, men and boys target women, girls, and gender minoritized individuals with sexist and harassing communication.”
“I want to know more about why, when, and how these kinds of outcomes happen. At the same time, many women and girls and people who identify outside of the binary enjoy gaming a great deal. I count myself among them. Understanding why these people enjoy games in spite of (or even because of!) the challenges sexism presents in gaming is fascinating to me. This study is one part of answering those big questions.”
She's talking about two different things here: games that sexualize women, and online games where male gamers target women (fuck the other genderspecial tranny shit) and harass them. She only addresses one of them, though (at least in the article), so Idk why she thinks women playing sexy characters in a fighting game would stop men from being pricks. She also talks about "the binary" which already makes me suspicious as fuck that she's got some internalized misogyny, but whatever.
The first experiment included 239 undergraduate students from a communication program, with the majority of participants identifying as female.
> the majority of participants identifying as female
So they admit that they let men into the study, thus skewing and ruining the results. So already, all these results are going to be fucked up, but let's see what we've got here.
The researchers conducted two controlled experiments to investigate how different design elements influence perceptions of female video game characters. Each experiment used unique character designs created in the fighting game SOULCALIBUR VI, providing participants with a range of female characters that varied systematically in their sexualization and strength cues.
1. The researchers created four distinct types of female characters using SOULCALIBUR VI: each character was customized to represent one of four combinations of sexualization and strength—high sexualization with high strength, high sexualization with low strength, low sexualization with high strength, and low sexualization with low strength.
After viewing each clip, participants rated the characters across several dimensions, such as perceived sexualization (e.g., if the character’s attire seemed revealing), strength (their perceived physical power), femininity (alignment with traditional feminine traits), and likability (how much participants would enjoy playing as the character). At the end of the viewing session, participants also completed a selection survey, choosing which of the characters they would prefer to play.
Wow, what a surprise, the women picked the character with the highest strength. Also, by the way, the fact that they don't SHOW what any of the pre-made characters look like is telling.
The researchers also found that high sexualization was a key factor in perceptions of femininity and character likability. Characters with high sexualization were viewed as more traditionally feminine, yet they were also less liked, particularly by female participants.
Yeah, no shit.
Female participants generally disliked highly sexualized characters but were more likely to choose characters with high femininity traits (typically associated with higher sexualization cues) when given a choice.
... Lynch told PsyPost, “That said, I was surprised to see that in our first study women still selected the most sexualized character when asked which character they would choose to play."
Yes, because they
picked the character that was the strongest. She never specifies whether they pick the character based on how she looks versus how strong she is. There's also no info given about how familiar any of the women are with fighting games, how good their skills are, etc.
Gender differences were again observed in this experiment, specifically around the competence ratings. Female participants viewed high-strength characters as more competent compared to low-strength characters, while this difference was not significant among male participants.
Not surprised by this one.
This whole "study" smells of bullshit. You make 4 different character types, don't post any of the pics (if they're in the full doc, someone can post them, but I didn't see them in the news article), give the sexiest one the highest strength, then when all the women pick her, you declare it's because women willingly chose her, therefore they're all just complaining about nothing! Checkmate!
What they
should've done was give the least sexy one the highest strength, and vice versa. Or let all the participants make their own character, not select from premade ones. Then that REALLY would've shown what women like and don't like. And this goes right back to Bioware and why women like their games (or liked, I guess). Getting to customize your own character and act like a badass (and be feared or respected) is very, very appealing to anyone, man or woman.
