AmericanWiki: Cultural Practices: Women as Characters in Video Games: Sexual Objects

Women as Sexual Objects

This is a sub-page of Women Characters in Video Games

Women have long been objectified sexually in mass media and stories, but the level of explicit content and interactivity in popular video games makes it particularly insidious

Tomb Raider was notorious for the main character’s impossible proportions and the tendency for the camera to hover near her buttocks, even though the character was a strong woman, doing what is traditionally a man’s fictional job (extreme archaeology)

Games like GTA 4 and Saint’s Row 2 (a series “cloned” from the GTA series) portray a large number of the women in the game as prostitutes

The player-character may engage in sex with these women

In the case of Saint’s Row 2, the sex is performed by the player through a mini-game

GTA: San Andreas almost had a similar mini-game, but it was cut early on. However, hackers found the basic code for it still on the disc, and were able to release the “hot coffee modification” to much media uproar

In neither case were the actual bodies visible, just the sounds of sexual intercourse

The God of War series took this to extremes, making sex mini-games a(n optional) part of the storyline.

Few women appear in God of War, and most are topless, though this is supposedly historically accurate.

Some are nymphs (literally and figuratively) and others simply human, but nearly all of them comment on the main character’s “power” after the fact.

Works Cited

This is a list of works cited on this page. To see a list of works cited for the whole article, as well as short annotations, click here.

SCE Santa Monica Studio. God of War III. Tokyo, Japan: Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., 2010. Video Game.

DMA Design. Grand Theft Auto III. New York: Rockstar Games, 2001. Video Game.

AmericanWiki: Cultural Practices: Women as Characters in Video Games: Sexual Objects