Racism and sexism in the gaming world: Reinforcing or changing stereotypes in computer games?

Advertising images reflect and shape peoples' perceptions about race and gender issues. We examined two issues surrounding how race and gender are represented in computer game print advertising. First, does imagery in computer game advertisements reinforce race and gender stereotypes? Secondly, how has stereotyping in computer game imagery changed over the last two decades? We conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses of two major computer gaming magazines, PC Gamer from 2009 and Computer Gaming World from 1992, to test our hypotheses. We found that women and minorities are represented in gaming advertisements at rates similar to their numbers in the general population. The quality of the representation of women and minorities, however, was generally lower than males and whites. We found minorities were generally limited to stereotypical roles or excluded. Women were typically depicted in sexualized roles. Our study suggests no significant gains have been made in the past two decades in terms of how women and minorities are portrayed in gaming advertisements.