Africa-Press – South-Sudan. Video games have for decades controlled a major portion of virtual communication. From the earliest days the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation, the mass culture of videogaming has digitally evolved. This mode of virtual communication represents a vast demographic of individuals differentiated by their age, race and gender. Mass communication is a powerful form of communication because it has the ability to change the trajectory of individuals and societies. The masses are generally influenced by the messages they constantly receive from their choice of mass media. However, the way videogame messages influence its consumers is related to the representation of characters based on gender, race and age.
In order to understand the audience of the research as targeted to race, gender and age, there is need to understand what the ‘masses’ are in the universe of videogames and what ‘communication’ means in the same context. The meaning of the term “mass” varies depending on the context of the audience in which it is applied. According to Hanson (2019), there are two meanings when referring to audiences. This could either mean the masses—that is, “the mix of ordinary people who receive the message or “the size of the audience”. The meaning of the term “communication” basically refers to the transmission of a message from a source to a receiver. In this case, the specific audience of communication is the videogaming community. Video gamers engage with game characters depending on their representation in the gender, race and age constructs.
In one study, ‘The virtual census: Representations of gender, race and age in video games’ (Williams et al., 2009), it was discovered that the characters represented in video games as a medium of mass communication, were actual representations of social realities. This was based on a sampling of 150 popular games played over nine platforms and compared to game sales in the period of a year. The researcher’s methodology and deduced assumptions were based on the impact and effects of video games on players in a way that was in correlation to that of television’s impact on its viewers. According to Williams et al. (2009), “the results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly. Overall, the results are similar to those found in television research.”
First, the results show an over-representation of male characters as ‘primary doers’or main characters in comparison to female characters in video games which is contrary to the social reality of the population. An example by Dietz (1998) is that when she analyzed 33 trendy Nintendo and Sega Genesis videogames for female representation, the results were shocking. Over 40 percent of the games that she analyzed for violence and gender stereotyping, reflected absolutely no female characters. This portrays that in video games, males occur repeatedly than females and when the latter is represented, they tend to be subjected to ‘secondary doer’ roles in comparison to the former who take up ‘primary doer’ roles.
Additionally, this perception is further cemented in a study of 70 video games with 874 characters by Heintz-Knowles et al. (2001) whose results showed that female characters were only 12 percent while male characters were 73 percent. This emphasizes that males are placed at the center of communication messages in videogames as central audience members.
Second, results from the research show that videogame characters portray particular races as dominant and in a positive light as compared to other minority races that tend to be showcased in a negative way. For example, the research findings depicted in the journal article that:
“Whites and Asians are over-represented, and all other groups are underrepresented. In proportional figures relative to their actual population, whites are 6.59 percent and Asians are 25.75 percent over-represented. All others are under-represented: blacks by 12.68 percent, Hispanics by 78.32 percent, biracials by 42.08 percent and Native Americans by 90 percent. When primary roles are considered, all groups appear less often except for whites, who appear more often than overall” (Williams et al., 2009).
This alludes to the cognitive influence of social identities that suggests that media messages are used to bring attention to a particular idea, person or group. The topic becomes relevant and important for the audience simply because the media has covered this group of the population (Hanson, 2019). In this case, the perception of white males in the US population in videogames is made relevant in comparison to other groups. Therefore, it is no doubt that race representation in videogames perpetuate a narrative of white males being dominant which is not the case in the actual US population as indicated in the highlighted figures.
Third, when the age variations of video game players were examined, statistics show that, adult characters are over-represented in videogames as compared to children. This is in contrast in the actual population statistics as exemplified here: “…the differences can be explained by the over-representation of adult characters, who appear at a rate in games 47.33 percent higher than their prevalence in the actual population. Teens appear at a rate very similar to the population, but children and the elderly appear at substantially lower rates” (Williams et al., 2009).
It is this regard that a significant correlation exists in the universe of videogames that paints a different picture on gender, race and age in contrast to the social reality in the actual population. This suggests that within the videogame mass culture, popular trends are perpetuated about gender, race and age to influence the shared ideas and behavioural patterns of players (McQuail, 2010). Also, studies confirm that the degree of representation on mass media channels is an extension of other societal factors that are deemed as valuable in everyday life (Harwood and Anderson, 2002). In other words, the repetitive and over representation of male white adult characters in videogames in contrast to characters that are female, other races and children does not reflect the social reality within any given population. This creates a stereotypical view of the under-represented groups as less valuable because they receive less visibility and are not recorded in the ‘knowledge store’ of the targeted audience.
Nonetheless, the study conclusively provides a foundation for researchers on how videogames as a form of mass media shapes the views of its audiences, particularly in regard to the representation of gender, race and age in comparison to social reality of any given population.
