EXPRESSING HIERARCHY

EXPLORATION

The Bias Within Video Games,
How Hierarchy is Created

bias of video games

RESEARCH
WITHIN BIASES

Within the gaming community there were certain biases directed to different kind of gamers. There were biases on who is expected to play the video game. There are biases in gender, age as well as race. From my study of the community I will create a game which shows the hierarchal differences created by the concept of biases.
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Through the different biases found, there seemed to a be a hierarchal status people have within the community. There would be ideas of males being better then females in the gaming community. When people think of such a way, men would believe they are better then women putting themselves in a higher status then women.
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CONCEPTS

CARD GAME

The card game is a way of representing hierarchy and the ways hierarchy is shown in daily lives. Everyone might not understand the meaning behind the bias in the gaming community but bias within hierarchy is shown in every day lifestyles. The game allows people to feel the discrimination of the hierarchy created by society. By creating a card game I am able to create the element of competitiveness as well as have people feel how hierarchal biases do exist.

RULES OF THE GAME

The rules of the game allows the players to have a structure for the game. It creates a story for the players to be more engaged with the contents and overall material for the game.

PLAY TESTING

The best way for me to understand how the game can be understood to other people would be to play test with different people. By play-testing I am able to understand everything I could change and how to develop the game. I play-tested to see if other people would be able to understand the reasoning towards the game and why the game was created in a such a way. Through play testing I was able to change the rules to make the game more understandable and add and take away elements to create the best experience for the players

CONCEPT

ENERGY BAR

The energy bar would be a way to have a physical way to show your own health bar. As you play the game the energy bar would be part of your health. The packaging would reflect back onto the marketing biases from video games and show how bias is used to market their product. The energy bar would be called boosted as a sub brand from kai-so. The brand would show the branding between a more aggressive design and colour scheme with a more welcoming and playful logo. The two would help create a balance between my personal outlook on biases and how biases would be represented through marketing.

With the card game, there would be some specific hierarchies placed to allow the player to feel the unjust of different positions. Which relate back to the thesis concept of the hierarchal unjust of created from the different biases in the gaming community. The card game focuses on giving a bias to certain characters versus others. By showing the bias to their own eyes and allow players to experience it the realization of the biases in the community could be unfolded and understand to a wider demographic.

CARD GAME

The energy bar is reflected back on to the marketing of video games and how there would be biases on who these games are directed to. The energy bar is to create the idea of reflecting back onto the branding of the energy. With the branding the goal is to make the energy bar still intriguing to a person who plays video games but create where the bias of the energy bar would not just be young males who only focus on video games. The branding has the goal of including both elements of aggressive as well as quirky to show how the video game industry does not need to be focused on one certain group of people.

energy bar
BRAND

BRAND CONCEPT

With the brand KAI-SO the brand is supposed to represent hierarchy. Kai-so is the Japanese translation of the word hierarchy. the word is suppose to represent the hieracial differences from different biases. Kai-so allows people to understand the brand as well as a small introduction that the study connects the idea of biases with the of different hierarchies created. The different hierarchies would allow people to see the difference people are treated just by the judgement of biases.

RESEARCH

Within the gaming community I found that there were certain biases I see myself getting familiar to. There were biases on who would play these video games. There are biases in gender, age as well as race. Through the different biases found, there seems to a be a hierarchal status people have within the community. There would be ideas of males being better then females in the gaming community. When people think of such a way, men would believe they are better then women putting themselves in a higher status then women.

Though my research on biases I have come to understand different parts of biases as well as the origin of biases. Through the study on "The origin of Biases in Face Perception" by Lisa S. Scott, Alexandra Monesson the study shows that faces that have appeared more allows the person to perceive as a more familiar and creates a comfortable environment for the person. Such study explored the exploration of an infant and how they react within two different situations. An infant was shown a face of monkeys for a months and then the face of animals. The infant showed instant results of being more familiar with the monkey rather then other unknown animals. With such a study, by having someone see a similar face for a consistent amount of time, they would naturally connect with such a face rather then a new face. Such study shows how biases would be used within the video game community. Since people within the gaming community has started video games by seeing males play games first. By having seen such an idea for a long period of time, men would naturally think it would be natural for males to play. But when women play video games, they would not see female faces in the community. By seeing a unrecognizable face within the community the idea would be harder to accept for men. Even for women they would not think they would be able to play like males would since they have not seen such faces occur within the community. Even though the gender biases have been explained with the development of different communities in the game, the idea of accepting a women in the gaming community would still be more difficult then a male would. By being familiar with males in the gaming industry when the community was first introduced to a new face in the community, there could be thoughts of inferiority to a face that has been familiar to the community to begin with.
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With the idea of gender biases within video games, multiple studies have been done on such an idea with the reasoning behind such topic. With the article "How gaming became sexist: a study of UK gaming magazines 1981–1995" by Graeme Kirkpatrick, the study explains how video games were not created to be a male dominated community but has just developed into such a form. The study focuses on the idea of male masculinity and how such was the largest part to why males were the majority of the community.With the idea of wanting to show their masculinity as well as over powering others created a competitive aspect to video games which allowed more males to participate in. With such ideas, women would be not considered as the demographic for a community related to masculinity. By having video games relate to masculinity men would assume themselves as superior to women for games. Even though such ideas were thoughts in the past, such ideas still have not changed. Where the hierarchy has still been developed within the community. By having such a thought be developed for years, people who have been in the community for a while would still believe in such thoughts. Even though the community has developed in large amounts from the past, when there is still people who believe in such hierarchy there would never be change towards the community.

From my own research on gaming I chose to analyze certain games to see correspondence on certain items and to see if there would be biases on such idea. Some of the items I looked into would be what is the first thing being shown once logged onto the screen. I compared different games and what kind of opening they would have. The games I used to compare would include League of Legends, Maple Story, as well as my recent addition Animal Crossing. I chose these three options since I wanted to study how the marketing aspect of the game and who would play these games. From my study I found that all 3 kinds of games give a different aesthetic towards the game. With League of Legends I find that they would try to include different affects to keep the player engaged once they log into the game. With Maple Story the main aspect for the game would be the nostalgia factor towards the game. Once you log into the game, everything would not have changed from 10 years ago to today. With Animal Crossing everything would look as though it is created for relaxation factors. With Animal Crossing the game is as though it is created to give people within the gaming community a break from the intense games.

All three games from an outside perspective seem to direct the games towards a certain audience. League of Legends seems to be directed to more younger male users. Since the games most recent additions were re worked characters and the industry chose to create characters that would not try to attract a new audience. The characters seem to be directed to current players. League would be directed to younger males since everyone within the league of legends community would use the joke of being bad with a female or someone older. With Maple Story everyone would assume your age as older since such a community would believe people would only play for the nostalgia factor. With the Maple Story community everyone would not try to talk down on each other but would rather help each other, hence the idea of creating party groups where people would help each other killing monsters. With Animal Crossing the game is very different from the other two. Everything seems to be a community game people would try to help each other and create a community within the game. For Animal Crossing the game seems to be directed to be more feminine but the results show everyone would play the game and would not be gender bias. All three games does have some biases within the game. From the biases there would people who would feel intimidated to start the game since there would already be a hierarchy created within the game.

REFLECTIONS

Through the explorations of the thesis I found that biases are created as certain demographic to get the best outcome of the product. If the product is said to be out of the norm, there would be a risk of how well can the product do in a new environment which is unseen before. Through creating the card game I had to understand how to make the game less biased about the certain demographic as well as allow the player to understand the biases.

From my own reflections from the games I found that there would still be biases and is known to most people but as well as not spoken about. Even when doing my research on the topic I would play video games with my male friends and sometimes they would just assume my skill by my gender. They would not think of me of someone equal to them rather then someone that would need help with the game. There would be hierarchal biases the more I played the game. Some would be the fact that a have a gender neutral name when playing my games. With my name everyone I play with would assume I am a male so when I do not do well they would tell me everything I did wrong and I should not play the game. But with my friend who has just started the game with a more feminine name, no matter how bad he does he would never have people telling him that he was bad. Some players would encourage him or purposely try to help him. When we would play together I would be expected to be good and take care of my friend who is not as good. Such attitude shows how people subconsciously have biases when playing the game and those biases would make these players create a hierarchy in their minds. Such incidents have happened multiple times with just the in game name I chose.

I have noticed even as I play I would sometimes create biases without knowing such thought at the time. When I am against a player that is worst then me or if the enemy chooses a certain champion I would assume their gender. For example, with the game League of Legends if someone would play an easy female character as the role of support me and my friends would assume that player to be a female. But since me and my friends know about such bias we would purposely play masculine characters in aggressive lanes since that is what we like to play as well as the idea of it being fun seeing people assume our gender. Through the thesis I have found myself analyzing the games I play and how random players as well as my own friends on how they view the hierarchal biases when playing aggressive games.

CONCLUSION

Through the gaming community, even through the community has been developing at a fast speed with the game being understood and seen in a competitive manner. The biases towards the gaming community as well as within the community still seem to have no changed. The kind of people who play video games still stay the same. People still see the community in a similar manner even with the progression of the community. Biases would still exist within the community by who is good at game and by who would be interested in the game.

FUTURE STEPS

With my current status of the thesis some of the future steps would include the creating the digital version of the card game if possible.

WORKS CITED

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Harvey, and Alison.“Twine's Revolution: Democratization, Depoliticization, and the Queeringof Game Design.” G, Ludica, 29 Mar. 2014, https://www.gamejournal.it/3_harvey/. 

Kavedžija Iza, and Harry Walker. Values ofHappiness: toward an Anthropology of Purposein Life. Hau Books, 2016. 

Kirkpatrick, Graeme. “How Gaming Became Sexist: A Study of UK Gaming Magazines 1981–1995.” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 39, no. 4, May 2017, pp. 453–468, doi:10.1177/0163443716646177.

League of Legends.Riot Games, MacOS, 2009. Patch 9.18 

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Scott, L. S., & Monesson, A. (2009). The Origin of Biases in Face Perception. Psychological Science, 20(6), 676–680. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02348.x

 STORYHIVE. GameOver, TELUS, 14 Jan. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyOLc5cl6ck.

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