In Luna Bob’s blog post about the damaging effects that stereotypes and gender expectations have on male characters that play the role of savior for distressed damsels, she draws our attention to the inconsistency between the improving social climate for women and the stagnating sphere of men. She lays the groundwork for the idea that violence is romanticized by the physical depictions of men in games, and that this is damaging to male gamers. Beyond just that, the actions engaged in by male heroes enforce harmful ideals of behavior. Physically violent male characters in games do not make gamers into murderers, but they can inspire internal tension in many gamers between what we tout as the ultimate signs of success for the ideal man and what is legal within society.

            In the real world it is illegal to dismember our enemies when they bad-mouth our mothers, but within the worlds of videogames, violence is the go-to solution for all problems. When you are betrayed by Zeus do you appeal to a council of other Gods? No, you get two big honking swords and go around systematically obliterating half of the mythological pantheon of the Greeks. When the Locusts begin evacuating their underground world in the face of a toxic flood, do we provide a scenario in which the humans offer means for the Locusts to integrate into the sunlit world? No, we wage war to the last men and women standing. Heck, in PacMan we encourage players to get vengeance by giving them large point bonuses for eating the ghosts who’ve been hunting them all game. Now there are some games that do encourage peaceful success, but those are not the ones that I am speaking of, and they are in the minority, especially of games marketed to males, who developers believe are only interested by the body-armor and bullets of most big-name titles. If society shows that this is the most ideal way to manage problems in videogames, it should be unsurprising when males romanticize violent problem solving.

            This seems to clash with our societal ideals of peaceful conflict resolution. Violence is strictly prohibited by law, is it not? It is, but only through necessity. We cannot effectively run a country and operate within it if we expect to be ruthlessly butchered when we accidentally bump into someone’s car on the road. People would never leave their homes in anything less than suits of armor or tanks. This necessity exists in tandem with a prevailing societal fantasy of violence. We love our guns, are enthusiastic about kicking terrorists’ butts and largely support the death penalty. We do want to resolve our conflicts with violence, but we are blocked from it legally. It is not that videogames have begun this obsession with violence; it is that they help to perpetuate it. In an effort to combat this, we applaud the smart citizens and intelligence achievers within our country, telling our children to grow up and get an education so that they can be like them. We divert the idea of physical success, into an idea of mental success so that we can operate within society safely.

            Videogames have attempted to shore up their social standing and appeal by claiming that they value intelligence as well. Unfortunately when designers attempt to utilize this ideal in gameplay, it usually just means that excessive force is exerted in specific locations, thus serving only to complicate the violence rather than replace it with legitimately intelligent solutions. It’s so common that a trope has developed concerning creatures significantly more powerful than the hero: shoot for the glowing eyes. Even characters that are said to be intelligent rarely exercise this in any meaningful way. Kratos, protagonist of the God of War games, was an excellent commander of the Spartan army, according to game lore, a position that would require plenty of strategic skills, including planning maneuvers, interpersonal skills to maintain the morale of troops, and management of supply chains.  All of these skills seem to only serve Kratos in his ability to locate and attack weak areas on monstrously oversized enemies. Here he is utilizing the only tool in his toolbox that is presented in game:

           Image courtesy of Annick

            While game characters show violence as the ultimate solution through their actions, they also encourage violent ideals through their physical appearance. Muscles are attractive to us because they are a physical sign of power. Players enjoy success, and often a hero character is depicted in a manner that promises future success in the form of current power, usually taking the shape of excessive musculature. In this way, muscles on a character are promised power, even when the character is said to be in a weak position. This implies that developers believe male gamers would not think a character as appealing if they were anything less than visual avatars of violence. They, especially the bulging melon-biceps on display in the Gears of War and God of War franchises, are billboards on male bodies that shout to all who see them that their bearers have the ability to inflict destruction on their surroundings. The prevalence of these images in popular games and other media tells men that this is really the only true sort of power, and that men who are not physically over-developed are not powerful. There is a reason that weight lifters are stereotyped as overly aggressive “meat-heads,” and who can blame them for being so, when all they have done is better internalized this prevailing social ideal in the same way that game heroes have done.

            So lets take stock of what ingredients have been added to the pot so far; perhaps the problems with our potpourri will become clear. There’s an impossible expectation of men to be powerful only by being powerfully built, a belief that “smart” means excessively violent in very specific scenarios, a presiding display of violence as the master tool in any problem-solving arsenal, and a society that has made violence illegal. I think I can see the stew starting to bubble. You smell that aroma? That’s the smell of millions of men being torn between what is shown as the right way to solve their problems, the ideal and permanent solution to every dissatisfaction, and the rules, which prohibit them from enacting these skills that they are told to foster. I am not claiming that games make boys into murderers; I am claiming that violent games create tension inside boys between what they are shown and what they are allowed. I highly doubt that this can have positive effects.

Viewing Racism Through Skyrim

                  Skyrim is a land of blatant racism and bigotry, especially against elves and beastfolk. The player is confronted with these topics in an effort to build the history and tensions of the world in a more believable way and it does add what feels like a living history to the game, as many forums have discussed extensively online. No one however, seems to have discussed Skyrim's role as a game that not only promotes an equitable stance on vastly different races and reveals players’ inherent aptitude for seeing past negative racial biases, but also teaches us how fundamentally juvenile racism in all of its forms truly is, and that it negatively affects all parties involved. The open-minded, blank-canvas approach that players take to fantasy races in games is fundamental to the development of more understanding worldviews that allow players to gain the most from their playing experience and can translate into their real-world interaction with different peoples. 

A list of all playable races in Skyrim. Image courtesy of Mark Ryan.

                    Race is not a deciding factor for eventual play styles or game outcomes, but it is important that the player gets to choose between them so that they can feel as if they are more invested in the identity that they have chosen for themselves. This in turn will allow them to empathize more with the prejudices against their characters' races. In Skyrim, the player is asked to choose a race right from the beginning, with very little to go on besides some minor benefits to the various races’ proficiencies at certain things in the game. Nords get a bit of a resistance to the cold and Bretons are better at using magic, but these boosts don’t matter tremendously in the long run, because a player can increase the levels of any attribute to be equal or far above any other race’s simply by practicing. Some may be better than others at certain things right from the beginning, but no one is incapable of anything that others are capable of, and many veterans encourage new players to choose without regard to the skills of each race. 

                    Now, to expand on the idea that player choice in race has an effect on the player; the character's race can tell us something about the player when they decide it. What exactly does it tell us? If players choose their character to represent them in game as their avatar, a comparable real-world equivalent might be the candidates they elect to represent them in office in American politics. There is a clear statistical bias in voters towards candidates of their own race. Interestingly enough, in Skyrim, there is a statistical trend more towards diversity than homogeneity. Argonians, the exotic lizardmen from foreign swamps, are far more popular than Imperials, arguably the most relatable race to the demographic that makes up a majority of the US (Skyrim Races). Why would players choose to represent themselves as something so alien? They see that the character is alien, but they don’t hold all of the negative stigma against different races that they hold in real life. They view each race as an equally valid option rather than limiting themselves to the races closest to them as people do in real life. This is because in real life people are biased by the different socializing forces around them and cannot actively change bodies (and their associated roles) between their own race and another as one can do by playing multiple characters in Skyrim. This singularity of experience among people in real life often fosters a stunted view of equality because they are not normally well practiced at seeing situations from others’ points of view and must rely on the social situation they find themselves in based upon their own race and social standing. In Skyrim, a combination of the lack of initial socialization which allows players to enter with little bias for or against any particular race from the onset and the ability to change races at will allow players to both see that others are not much different than themselves and to realize how petty it would be to negatively stigmatize any one race for the minor differences that there are between them. 

               After that initial choice, players enter a rich world filled with believable characters who repeatedly compound the idea that racism is not beneficial to anyone involved. Key to the world's believability is the friction between the races in the game. High-Elves are snooty and look down on all others. A particular faction made up of High-Elves, the Aldmeri Dominion, is openly contemptuous of other races and, if the player does not act suitably subservient to them when confronted, will even become violent. The Stormcloak faction is made up of Nords, the native race in Skyrim, and they believe that all other races should get out of their country. They are often portrayed as rough-around-the-edges types, rude and boisterous to boot. The Khajit in the game are nomads who, because they are foreigners from distant lands with strange customs, are not allowed even within city limits. The player can find them outside city walls, where they try to keep warm against the ever-present chill. They greet the player warmly regardless of race, though they do delight in seeing another Khajit if the player chose to be one. All of these groups show that those who allow racism to decide their opinions of others cause conflict and misfortune for all involved. The player is hardly able to avoid sympathizing for the lovable Khajit, hating the obnoxiously pompous Aldmeri Dominion, and cringing whenever the Stormcloaks call for the eviction of every inhabitant of Skyrim that can’t claim Nordhood. It teaches players about the multifaceted nature of racism and further teaches them that everyone who elects to play a part in demeaning another person for their unalterable attributes is causing only conflict and misery. No one is happier for the use of racism to justify their actions, only temporarily absolved of their own guilt.

              Skyrim acts as a mediator between players and their inherent biases in real life by allowing them to see the effects of racism on hypothetical races through a lens unclouded by prevalent personal bias and negativity. In this it shows us that, on a basic level, humans do not behave in a racist manner but must inherit the behavior from a socializing force when they are growing up in one role rather than being able to swap between multiple to mitigate the formation of a singular superior race in their thoughts. When people really get down and think about it, hating Orcs doesn’t make much sense. After all, the only difference is skin color and a +10 buff to heavy armor. That’s nothing to hate them for.

Works Cited

Ryan, Mark. “Skyrim Races—Popularity Ranking.” IGN. IGN Entertainment, Nov. 13, 2011. Web. Sept. 30, 2013.

Turmer, Oli. "Does Race Really Matter in Skyrim?" Skyrim Hub Community. N.p., 22 Nov. 2011. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.