Sarah Rybak

If you landed here without checking out the blog post that turned into this essay, please head here! This essay from my Upper Level Writing Requirement (Comm 325) outlines a chronological account of a few different video games and the ways they deal with gender representation in terms of female characters. Instead of only focusing on criticizing what some games have done wrong, with this paper I hoped to show that in recent years, the industry is slowly improving their work with female characters and female protagonists.

 

Looking back on this essay as my favorite piece that I've written, I think it's clear that when I am engaged in a topic and have experiences relevant to that topic is when I am most likely to produce my strongest writing. I wanted to express my own perspective in a way that would teach my audience, and encourage discussion about these issues surrounding the portrayal of women in games. While I was not really able to be as creative as I may have liked with the paper (as it was, of course, an academic essay), I felt that because I was able to apply what I had learned in my Visual Culture and Literacy class to my own experiences as a gamer, the essay was a successful one. This essay in combination with my work with online publications pushed me one step closer to my final Capstone project.

 

Feel free to flip through the essay below; the figures that I reference within it are on the last few pages of the slideshow!