All of these articles are related because they discuss gender roles in games. Gender roles in gaming has always been an issue and is still prevalent today. The first two articles discuss the roles of females in gaming more generally where as the third article specifically discusses the game tomb raider. All of the articles are still focused on gender roles and the impact they have.

The first article, “Beyond Barbie and Mortal Combat” by Jenkins & Cassell, focuses on the girl game movement. The article recognizes how this is a long standing issue, but still nothing significant had been done to fix it. There used to be a huge gender gap in gaming were it was almost completely male dominated, the gap has gotten better but still has much room for improvement. The main problem is that the men in the gaming community just don’t really care about the gender gap and are doing nothing to fix it, they can’t see females as equal in the gaming world. In order for anything to really change, women need to be fully accepted in the gaming world and be treated as equals. The girl game movement has made many improvements to the world outside gaming and has the potential for more. With success, this movement can help with technological advancements and improvement on the economic and political scale. One women are no longer treated inferiorly in the gaming world, great things will come.

The second article, “The Proteus Pradox” by Lee further discusses the problem with gender roles and gaming. The article begins trying to define what women want in a game. They are assuming in order to get more women involved in the gaming community then they will need to create games targeting specifically at women and will target the female brain. However, in most cases I dont think thats the problem. In some cases i think that will even make the problem worse because by making these targeted games they are going to feed into the female stereotype of the gaming community. I think the main problem is that women do not feel welcomed in the gaming community. They feel as though they dont belong and will be judged in the primarily male gaming world. a good example of this that the article used was the cybercafes. There have been unspoken rules about who plays video games created by social factors. The ratio of computer programmer, designers, and protagonists in the gaming world are all majority males. Women must constantly justify their existence in the gaming world. Women should be able to play games without being questioned or someone assuming that they are doing it because of a relationship they are involved in. Also, it is sad and disturbing the way that females are portrayed in the gaming community. Women are often very sexualized, which would make most women uncomfortable. Gender roles goes beyond the gaming world it is a huge social problem that needs to be fixed.

The last article by Anderson and Levene discusses the role of Lara in tomb raider and the effect she had on the gaming world. I thought it was very interesting that the designer chose to break the gaming roles. he made the protagonist a british female rather than an american male. Lara quickly became an icon in the gaming world, everyone was able to relate to her and gave the gamers a different perspective. Tomb raider was really the first game to have this powerful female heroine and it was very successful, this game led the way for other games to follow and break the stereotypes and close the gender gaps. It introduced the idea of video games being talked about as a social movement. it was impressive to see how Lara remained a prominent figure in the gaming world even after all the ups and downs of tomb raider, this shows how influential her character and the idea behind her was.

Obviously gender roles in gaming is still an issue, how can we work to fix it?