In our first week of “distance learning”, we focused a lot on women in video games. We specifically read Ready Player Two, by Shira Chess. Throughout this piece and lecture discussions, we talked about the role of assumptions when it comes to games and certain audiences. For this blog post, I will base my points off of the chapter titled, “Playing with Identity”.

One of the main points that Chess gets to in her work is that video game creators tend to make assumptions about certain demographics while they create games. As she puts it, “I am less interested in who actually plays a game and more interested in the assumptions that were made about a specific demographic when that game was being designed and advertised” (location 791 Kindle). Here, we can establish that video game creators can be biased and even show forms of prejudice when they are creating their work. This is true because certain groups of people are targeted with certain aspects that could correlate to them. In other words, video game creators are not open about games reaching a wide range of audience types, instead, they make assumptions about what a target audience might find appealing, and then carry on with their processes. Chess is trying to prove that it is immoral for game creators to assume what a certain group of people might like. She thinks that this puts a criteria towards who someone should be. What I mean by this is the fact that categorization makes people believe that they should be interested in certain things, mainly because others see it as normal for them to do so. This is a drawback when it comes to creating games because people should not have to compare themselves to others in order to confirm that who they are is acceptable. Just because something/some act is deemed as normal for a certain group of people, does not mean that every member of that group abides by that position.

Another point that Chess brings about in this chapter relates to my first analysis. Chess believes that game creators look at their audiences and then draw inferences about the types of games they would like. To quote it, she says, “the video game industry is increasingly trying to appeal to women and that there are specific game types and styles assumed to be the ideal design for that audience” (location 803 Kindle). Not to be confused, Chess is gratified about women being targeted by the game industry. She believes that this is a sign of progress, since most games are only targeted towards men and boys. However, she does not agree with the approach that the game creators are taking in order to gain their acceptance from women. Assuming something out of a group makes people feel limited with their choices. It makes them feel that they have a certain set of guidelines that they need to follow in order to satisfy their membership in a group. That being said, allowing the players to make choices in the game world about who they want to be is the best approach.

Overall, Ready Player Two is definitely one of my favorite works that we have read in this course thus far. I think that Chess does a superb job describing the flaws that video game creators bring about when they make assumptions about their audiences. Although there might not be too much room for improvement here, a simple way to avoid future backlash is by creating games that do not have a lot at stake when it comes to decision making, and more importantly, allowing the players themselves to be the ones making choices about how they are going to portray themselves in the game.

-Andy Kissoon