Feature
1UP COVER STORY
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 18 | GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND VIDEO GAMES
OP-ED: Mainstream Gaming and the Male Gaze
Cover Story: Men, women, and chainsaws meet interactivity. Are games the next frontier for how we view how men view things?
(This article delves into critical theory and games. It doesn’t “tl;dr” well. The opinions in this op-ed are my own, and only my own. They do not represent the opinions of my employer or my employer’s publishing partners. While the temptation may be there to label the thoughts in this piece differently, please respect my opinion, and more importantly, respect the opinion of those smarter than me who disagree by properly labeling this piece as opinions from one individual. Finally, there are far more educated experts on feminism than myself, so any errors are mine alone.)
T
he fact that gaming is debated as art is evidence that, even at its best, games are “low” art. We do not share the history of music, the dedicated critical language developed over the last decade for film, nor do we have the accessibility of the printed page. We are also an inherently commercial art. It requires both a large, addressable market, and targeted marketing, for a game to survive. That is not to say we can’t learn from other types of art. Specifically, narrative gaming shares a great deal with film in both structure and composition. We share the idea of a script, a camera, and in many cases, traditional three act structure.
