Still a Man's Game: Gender Representation in Online Reviews of Video Games

Abstract

Despite the rising popularity of video games, the majority of the medium's audience continues to be male. One reason may be that character representations in video games are geared toward male players. This content analysis used video game reviews from a heavily trafficked Internet site to investigate the prevalence and portrayal of male and female video game characters. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, female characters were found to be underrepresented and proportionally more often sexualized in comparison to their male counterparts. In addition to these findings, the study's innovative method-the use of online video game reviews as an indirect measure of video game content-shows promise as a tool for future content analyses of video games.