Sex Led Marketing and the Female Gamer – Article

NOTE: Sexual Imagery has been removed for discretion, however article does contain sexual discussion.

Confused by the picture on the left? Think it belongs to some soft porn site? Don’t be silly, this is just a game advertisement. You must have been able to tell, it’s for a crime/car/action game… oh, you couldn’t tell from the picture? Silly you. This is one of the adverts for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Says so much about the game don’t you think? Don’t get mad though, this is way more common than you probably realize. As the old saying goes… Sex Sells. Period.

Advertising and sex have been inextricably linked since advertising became big business. The games industry is not outwith this successful and proven formula where sex is used as a persuasive tool, to invite the viewer to consume. The problem however seems to be that the games industry isn’t moving forward in using sex to sell games to female gamers as well. We girl gamers might not have a problem with the overt sexual imagery used in advertising games if it were less biased and incorporated the same tactics for male and female gamers. When Mulvey spoke of the Male Gaze it was with reference to film, however you need to look at any random popular game and you’ll more than likely find a female character who is positioned as a sexual object, either overtly or subtly.

The majority of games aimed at the female gamer tend to be targeted at the pre-adolescent age group. Between the ages of 4-14, there are many games out specifically for girls (Barbie, Olsen Twins, Hamtaro etc) however past this age the female gamer seems to become obsolete. Could this be the reason there are rarely any adult females in games stores buying new releases for themselves? Have they become alienated from the games industry as the trend to offer them only bit parts and walk on roles continues despite the fact that the gaming industry claims to be interested in the female market.

Don’t get me wrong, there ARE marked improvements, at least now some games will let you chose a female character, decidedly better from even a few years ago, however female gamers want to be addressed as prominently as male gamers. We don’t want to know that if we buy a game which features female characters, we will have to put up with the character being a sexual object throughout the game. There are some great strong female characters (Lara anyone?) however, even Lara Croft has her moments of overt sexualisation.

One of the most recent gaming heroines who has sidestepped any stereotypes is Jade in the excellent Beyond Good and Evil. This game is a perfect example of how to have a female character who doesn’t need to be sexed up, doesn’t need to be advertised as sexy and doesn’t have less skills than the typical male character. This said, Beyond Good and Evil was unfairly overlooked in sales terms on release, perhaps because of this choice of marketing approach.

Gaming magazines are one of the biggest perpetrators of the ‘games are only for guys myth’. Flick through any gaming magazine and you’re most likely going to be met with images of sexualised women, letters predominately from male gamers, editorials and features which often have a strong slant towards the male reader. Although the readership is primarily male, the choice to use mainly male journalists and reviewers is helping to cut out female gamers. Some front page spreads on gaming magazines are dedicated to showing pictures or photos of females in various poses which really has nothing to do with the games reviews inside. These magazines are of course not representative of all gaming mags however it is interesting to note that they choose these images to sell the mag rather than images from games, which is afterall what the magazine is about.

Amusement Factor…
In its desperate attempts to woo the female gaming market one company came up with something so completely bizarre it definitely warrants a mention. ASCII developed a gizmo that vibrated (yes you know where this is going) along to a game. The device connects to your PS2™ USB port and is suitable only for Sega’s techno shooting title “REZ”, The set includes the Trance Vibrator as well as a soft Carrying Bag. Well we couldn’t not mention it in an article entitled ‘Sexing it Up’, this is truly sex meets gaming.

In Conclusion…
Sex sells, well we knew that at the beginning didn’t we. We’re not here to criticize, that’s all been done before, feminists suggest it objectifies women, which in turn reinforces sexism (well duh!), but what does this mean in terms of the games industry? Essentially it would appear this is nothing new (anyone remember the fuss over the C64 release of Barbarian with the Maria Whitaker cover?) and the games industry is no different to many other big money markets, they’re not interested in politics or equality, what they are interested in is moving products and with the help of a double D cup the gaming audience (mainly male) will part with their money, if they didn’t believe that surely it wouldn’t be so rife, would it?. I have to play devils advocate here however and suggest that although sexual advertising will indeed spur interest in a particular title, it will not facilitate the male demographic to purchase a title…. right? (Let the Discussion Ensue in the Forum)

Think about this…
Most of the people reading this are probably guys because although here at Thumb Bandits we are lucky enough to have a large female gamer following, demographically speaking chances are even the title of this article has spurred our male visitors to click on it, so with that said….. Think of the following images and question whether you’d feel strange buying a game with photos on the cover of half naked men, or the male characters in sexualised positions. If you were bombarded with this all the time would you start feeling inadequate? Perhaps you’d feel that the game was aimed at women or gay men? Would it say much to you about the game itself? We’re not bitching guys, we can all appreciate a good looking woman, but why do we need to use this and at times only this to advertise a game in which the woman is ultimately not an integral aspect anyway.

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