Social+Contexts


 * SOCIAL CONTEXTS**

Another factor that attributes to overall computer anxiety for women is the social context in which most computer-aided learning happens. Females who experience low self-confidence in their computer skills are often affected greatly by the competitive atmosphere that is cultivated within a room where coeducational computing and gaming is required. The arcade culture, once introduced into a learning environment, isolates and intimidates females and impedes adequate performance. A study published in the //Journal of Experimental Social Psychology// in 1990 showed that girls did twice as well in digital game-based learning in private scenarios than in public. The subsequent social ridicule administered by the boys in the classroom deters girls from further pursuing better understanding of certain subjects and technologies. Women may experience anxiety towards gaming technologies, in part, because of the portrayal of females in games and in advertisements that accompany the video game industry. Game developers have tried to enhance female representation in games by creating female characters that are meant to exhibit the same performance abilities and skill levels as male characters. There are a number of problems with this initiative. Many of the female character are created with a masculine appearance, wearing slightly less covering versions of male clothing and carrying large weapons. Games that do create feminine girl characters often over-sexualize their appearance, showing large amounts of skin and designing overly full figures. In //Final Fantasy XII//, for instance, one of the prominent female characters is a scantily clad rabbit/woman humanoid called Fran whose overall appearance is reminiscent of a “Playboy Bunny.” The contrast between the hulking, abnormally strong male characters with bodies covered in impenetrable armor and the small, barely clothed, curvy female characters creates obvious preference for serious players who are trying to destroy their enemy and dominate a mission. Despite the “tough girl” apparatus available in game settings for a female character, male characters insinuate strength while the meager or merely sexual appearance of female characters suggests weakness.
 * Ridicule in Classrooms**
 * Portrayal and Role of Women**
 * Appearance of Women in Games**

The video and computer gaming industry has ballooned since the 1990s, raking in massive profits and employing the best IT designers and researchers worldwide. It now grosses multiple billions of dollars every year. Like any industry, the success of its companies would have been greatly stalled had they not advertised new games. Game advertisements, purposefully targeting a primarily male audience, devised a portrayal of females that suited the company’s goals. In video game advertising, females in the scenario are often portrayed as “others” to the male discourse of gamers. The implications made are that women are distractions from what men really //want// to be doing with their time, that they fail to understand or appreciate the gaming community, and that gaming is a release for men from the stresses of a relationship. This advertising technique, meant to excite a sense of camaraderie in men, generally isolates potential female buyers and makes them feel as if they are unwanted in that particular discourse, not because women experience less information literacy than men, but in this scenario, because they feel unwelcome to explore these new digital terrains. Without a sense of freedom and belonging, women fail to foster a digital identity – something that games are meant to facilitate. Scholar and theorist, James Gee says that the purpose of exploring and using games is “not about acquiring new knowledge but acquiring a new identity.” //(Gee, 2003)// This advertisement below illustrates the exclusionary methods of video game advertising.
 * Game Advertisements**