“Morrowind
Elder Scrolls 3” emphasizes gender in its space, representation, and game
mechanics in a very particular and intriguing way. Not to digress off of
reality, the game was intended for and marketed to the expected regular male
age group that are technically considered hard core gamers, yet the game seemed
to have broken some very interesting gender boundaries appealing to females of
the same age group but were not expected to even enjoy the graphics of the
game. In order to preserve the producer’s point of view I would like to quote Fron
et al “… we are trying to call attention
to the power structures that surround game technologies, game production and
game consumption. These power structures perpetuate a particular set of values
and norms concerning games and game play, which tend to subordinate and
ghettoize minority players and play styles.”(Fron et al). In other words, these
games are directed to a market that already exists and is known to provide
certain amounts of profits as long as certain enjoyed requirements – sometimes ethically
wrong or demoralizing to other genders or races – are provided. Morrowind
appeals to males for all the obvious reasons it provides “role-playing
and mastery of self-control, violence, and recognition for daring stunts” (Laurel)
if put Laurel’s terms. But interestingly Morrowind also offers intriguing
features that successfully attracted female players. Referring to Jenkins, he reveals
some the things that made Morrowind attract girls. “Discovering secret things …
[and] uncovering things that were supposed to be hidden.”(Jenkins) or in Fullerton’s
terms “a key pleasure for women is exploration” (Fullerton) Interestingly enough
Morrowind has tones of secret and hidden items, and even though just about the whole
game is occupied by precarious and challenging spaces that Fullerton et al. states
women don't typically enjoy, they seemed to take pleasure in collecting those
artifacts and jewels [even within the game!] more than playing the role playing game
itself. To add to that, those hidden items tend to be special and stronger,
which enabled those girls to power level their characters instead of wasting
their time and doing silly quests that only lead to more ridiculous quests, in
turn granting them a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. When I observed
and compared female versus male friends, when we competed to show off what we
had achieved, it seemed to me that females had a greater sense of ownership
over their characters, to the guys all that mattered was stats and brute force,
whereas the girls would outfit their avatars with stylish armor and cloth of
the finest possible set. The only thing missing from my perspective was to turn
the game into an MMOG and those girls would have gone for fashion show sprees. I
personally feel that Morrowind, even though unintentionally, provided its some
sort of unexpected satisfaction for those few women that played the game. My favorite
part of it all was that players were always capable, to some extent, to control
the fate of the game, and how to play, you were never forced to do something
and winning was strictly based off of satisfaction, because even you completed
all the quests in order to achieve the basic state of triumph, there are always
more things to discover, and try, and there are always hidden tasks to complete
and weird quests that could be done over and again in different ways.
Works Cited:
Fron, Fullerton, Morie, Pearce, (Ludica): "The Hegemony of Play"
(2007). In Situated Play: Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association
2007 Conference. Tokyo, Japan.
Laurel, Brenda: Utopian Entrepreneur (2001). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
Jenkins, Henry: "Complete Freedom of Movement” (2006) The Game Design Reader, ed. Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman.MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Fullerton, Morie, Pearce: "A Game of One’s Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Game Space" (2007). In Proceedings, Digital Arts and Culture 2007, Perth, Australia.
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