Mapping perceptions of strength and weakness onto games is so pervasive that it spills into games which do not, on the surface, seem to require “strength” to play. Minecraft is not a game that encourages dominant, aggressive behavior, yet boys cited Minecraft as one of the most common games where they received verbal abuse from other players, no less so than when the same boys were playing Call of Duty.
If Master Chief expressed fear rather than always being a tough guy, he could be used as a tool to teach boys that they can accept themselves as emotionally nuanced people, Wiseman argued. If boys’ only acceptable emotional outlet is anger, which is “strong,” that anger leads to hate, which helps feed into the homophobia and sexism which is endemic in the video game audience. Emotional openness is the antidote to that, she said.
Empowerment is tied to “high status” traits like those within the “act like a man” box, but it doesn’t have to mean encouraging players to act like assholes. “Culture is everything we’ve been told but never been sat down and taught,” said Wiseman. “I want you to think about this in terms of dynamics of aggression. If it is human to be a part of a group, and it is, the culture that we live in is constantly giving off messages about what we should be like. This is about the mechanisms of how we teach degradation and bigotry.
“If you have a friend who’s in the box, and he goes after someone who’s outside of the box, you are not going to want to stand up for the person who’s outside, even if you think what’s happening is wrong, because then you literally get pushed to the outside,” said Wiseman. “It is how silent bystanders become active perpetrators.”
Changing the way developers think about their protagonists is the first step to making sure video games take themselves out of the “act like a man box.” The more developers create emotionally nuanced heroes, the more other developers won’t be able to remain as silent bystanders and refuse to make the same kinds of changes.
Dennis Scimeca is a freelance writer from Boston and has been published by Salon, Polygon, and NPR. Follow him on Twitter: @DennisScimeca.