White Privilege and Male Privilege

This is an issue which can be found in many games, and even the most innocent-seeming games often have very poor representations of race. McIntosh states that [as a white person, she] can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of [her] race widely represented. However, for people of colour, even famous games such as the Super Mario series do not include any humans with varied skin tones in order to represent a greater proportion of the general public, even though the art is heavily stylised and the environments fictional, which could easily allow for such variations. Similarly, the player characters of most games are male, with some series such as the new Final Fantasy game (XV) receiving controversy for having an all male cast, leaving little representation for female gamers.

Ways of Seeing

Ways of Seeing touches on the issues women face as they are viewed by men as sexual or vain beings, and this is often represented in game's designs. For example, male characters in Fire Emblem: Awakening are often given overelaborate, functional armor, whereas female characters are given visually appealing but functionally lacking outfits, with units such as pegasus riders and wyvern riders impractically having bare thighs.