The key areas I will be focusing on:
- The sexualisation of women
- 'The damsel in distress'
- Discrimination of women in games and the gaming community
- Advertisement of games
- The impact of our dominant ideology
Ideas for my approach:
For my primary research, I would like to focus on the sexualisation of women and the 'damsel in distress' stereotype. I am thinking of backing them up with the case studies of Grand Theft Auto V and Princess Peach in the Mario series. For GTA V, I will focus on the iconography associated with females in the game (strippers, prostitutes, housewives) and I may look at the poster because it sexualises women and portrays them in a negative light. I will focus on the narrative of the Mario series and how the goal of the protagonist is mostly always to rescue Princess Peach, discussing how this may impact a young audience's beliefs on how women should be treated.
For my secondary research, I plan on looking at the audience reception to my case study games and how their responses may be triggered by the negative representation of women. I will look at a variety of websites, newspaper articles, interviews and presentations in order to triangulate my sources and to have enough evidence to back up my points.
