Is Sexism Present?

Many people would argue that video games have a positive effect on the player. Some examples include making a player more creative or helping a player make decisions both quickly and strategically. If this is the case, do video games have the ability to have a negative effect on the player? The obvious argument would be related to violence, so I chose to focus on a different issue, sexism. I chose this issue for two reasons. One reason is that one of my favorite things to write about is humanity and what causes an individual to think or act in a certain way. Another reason is that this issue has been gaining popularity in recent times, both within the video game industry and outside of it.

The kind of news that I will provide in this blog are both news articles and studies. I will be using news articles to show how the media tackles this issue and to show any bias that might be present. An example of this is Time Magazine’s article "What is #GamerGate and Why Are Women Being Threatened About Video Games?" I will talk more about this article in future blogs, but this article talks about female writers, critics, and even video game developers and programmers who have been harassed and threatened by gamers for an assortment of reasons. I will use studies to show whether or not video games lead to sexist tendencies or if it depends on certain individuals.

My prediction or hypothesis is that video games do not create sexist thoughts. I think that there will be many cases where sexism in video games is present, but I don’t think that it will result in gamers developing sexist beliefs or thoughts. I’m predicting that there are people who play video games and are sexist, but these people were already sexist and they find certain elements in games to fuel these thoughts.