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

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 re-views from a heavily trafficked Internet site to investigate the prevalence and por-trayal of male and female video game characters. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, female characters were found to be underrepresented and propor-tionally 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 re-views as an indirect measure of video game content—shows promise as a tool for fu-ture content analyses of video games. According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), fully half of all Americans age 6 or older play video games (ESA, 2005). Despite their popularity, however, a demographic rift continues to characterize the video game audience, with more men playing video games than women. Although the ESA boasts that women make up 39 % of video game players (ESA, 2005), sizable gender differ-ences have been found in studies of children’s video game play habits (e.g., Braun