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The report found that 42.1% of women and girls steer clear of games that portray women in a derogatory way, as do 36.8% of boys and men.
Those numbers are a bit disappointing.
I'm curious about the definition of "portray women in a derogatory way". Do they mean there are games that explicitly claim that women are evil/bad, or are they games with women who are scantily clad bimbos?
Sexism is bad. Borderline pornographic games are weird, but I'd argue that it isn't sexist.
I'm willing to bet that the 36% of boys that wouldn't play a game "derogatory" towards women were asked would you play "DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball" and not asked "Would you play a game that portrays women as lesser human beings?"
The fact that they aren't making their questionnaire available is suspicious. You can see their highly polished and curated report here: https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/teens-screens-25 but note that unlike any research paper that uses established surveys for their area of research, or makes their own and makes it available as an addendum, you can't find any reference to the questions asked aside from vague references. Some you can 'reverse-engineer' such as preferences, but most are black boxed.
It also works the other way. I never minded the DOA series but I stopped playing GTA 5 over all of the main characters being misogynists and most of the women they know being based on negative stereotypes.
GTA is about being a piece of shit criminal. GTA 5 was specifically about crime films. They were not meant to be good people.
I mean, it's not just about them, I'm thinking about how, for example, Franklin's aunt was portrayed as nagging and overbearing and Michael's daughter as ditzy and naive. The game doesn't really do anything to suggest that this is only Franklin and Michael's perception of them. I found it uncomfortable, and it was sort of a trend throughout the game. The exceptions tended to be minor side characters like the hacker you could hire for the jewelry heist.
My kids play Goat Simulator and Minecraft, so yeah.
I'm currently avoiding all games that I have to pay for though. I'm down to Rocket League, Apex Legends, and retro roms. The hatred spewed through Apex is typical bigotry and racism though.
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Are there examples of such games?
This article sucks because it basically has absolutely no information about the study itself, but I wonder if its referencing games where women seem to be portrayed as these beautiful scantily clad goddesses. Even games like fortnite have slim women with tiny waists and big asses and this sets the expectation that this is what "a real woman" looks like.
I've seen a growing trend among young gamers who seem to only want "beautiful" people in their videogames, and while sure, we all don't want abominations for main characters, the standard of what "beautiful" means to gamers these days seems to be women with large breasts, big asses, and completely fake faces like as if they had a face filter. God forbid a game create a regular looking person as the main character without facing serious backlash from terminally online chuds. Look at games like Ghost of Yotei, Witcher, and Naughty Dog's Intergalactic for examples of what reactions you get for having "normal" looking characters.
All this is to say that the way people are portrayed in media has a profound affect on what they perceive they should look/act like in the real world. We've progressed for the last few decades in trying to cut down on the sexualization of women in media, only for it to ramp right back up again in the past few years as people praise eastern countries for making "Anti woke" games.
Pretty sure the men in those games are portrayed in similarly unrealistic ways.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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