Jenkins

I’ll be using Jenkins in my paper. Jenkins focuses more on gender roles and video games. He talks about what makes a game a boy’s  game and what makes a game a girl’s game, or at least labeled as such. I am going to focus on how Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground is directed towards young males. It is directed towards males because the only gender the player can be in the game, except for one character, is male. People like to be able to relate to the character they are. If a female wants to play the game and they cannot be a character they relate to, then they most likely will not play the game, leaving it open to only being played by males. Males seem to like violence and pranks. As Jenkins mentions, guys are conditioned to prove their value through their physical abilities. In Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground pranks are performed for some missions that involve spray painting public places. Another mission involves checking people, or knocking them down. Both fit into Jenkins’s comment about guys liking to perform pranks and be violent. In Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground there are also insane tricks that a player must perform. Most of the tricks are impossible to perform in reality, due to terrain or weather conditions. Due to the improbability of the ability to perform the tricks, they become dare devil tricks, which goes with Jenkins statement of guys liking to perform pranks and do other dare devil stunts that go against social norms.

My Game

I chose to write a paper about the game Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground. The game is fairly realistic in graphics so I cannot really analyze the colors used in the game or its imagery in general. The game does have a feature that allows the player to personalize their own character. A Female model is not included as a possible choice for a character. There is also only one female skater represented in the whole game. I was thinking that I could use this angle to possibly argue that sexism exists within the game. That the game put out the idea that women cannot skate. Then on the other side of the argument, there are not as many female skaters in the actual skating realm as there are male skaters. This again could be contributed to social roles in society that would cause fewer females to be exposed to skateboarding.

The game also has different challenges that have to be completed in order for the player to move onto harder levels. There are three different styles of skaters the player can work their way up to (Career, Hardcore, and Rigger). Depending on which style is chosen, more stunts will be performed by the player to gain points toward their intended style. Some of the stunts might include checking, which involves ramming into and knocking down civilians. Another stunt might be tagging, which would involve decorating a sign or building with graffiti. It could be argued that Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground promotes violence and vandalism, which could be another argument. There are other great parts of the game though, that promote creativity and the ability to believe the impossible can happen. I’m not really sure where I am going to go with my argument yet.