Kyle: How has your chosen genre developed over time?

How has sexism in gaming developed over the years?

As depicted in the first post, the project we have decided to produce a documentary with its genre being gaming and sexism in gaming.

The industry of gaming itself has developed thoroughly over the years, from “Pong!” being developed and created in the early 70's to some of the most expanded gaming franchies in the last 20 years, including the Call of Duty and Warcraft series', both dominating the gaming markets. However, most of the franchises around today rarely include female protagonists, and those that do usually depict them poorly, as they are usually seen as the “damsel in distress”. Considering a good percent of the world constantly play video games, the way these games depict them are also affecting how women are seen in the outside world, especially in more violent games such as Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), where it is implied it is OK to beat up innocent women for no reason (which usually leads to sexual violence cases in courts).
It is not to be implied, however, that there are no game franchises whatsoever that do not feature female protagonists. This is shown in the Tomb Raider franchise, which has developed well since its debut to the industry in 1996. It has crossed through several industry's such as the video game industry and, subs-sequentially, the film industry, producing 2 films currently to date; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003). Ignoring the concepts of other video games, this video game features Lara Croft as a strong adventurer hunting in ancient relics, finding ways through anything she encounters on her journey (human, natural or other). Her human opponents are almost all male, who are usually defeated by Lara and are seen as helpless, which flips the sexism table so that men are seen as lower than women.

There are some games with female protagonists, and some games where women are shot for no reason. Thats right; those games ACTUALLY exist.

How have documentary's developed over the years?

As we know, documentary's dated back originally in 1895. But the term “documentary” wasn't invented until 1922, when the first official documentary was released: Nanook of the North. Nowadays, documentaries have crossed into the film industry and have been able to produce sub-genres i.e. Docudramas, docusoaps etc. Documentaries has seen a fair few theorists study them closely to try and analyse them, a good example of this being Bill Nichols, who looked at the history of documentary and identified 6 distinct modes; observational (“window on the world”), participatory (interaction between director and actors), reflexive (awareness of the process), performative (filmmakers as participant), expository (“voice of God”) and poetic (subjective, artistic expression). These mode's were used to categorise documentaries, making the range of styles between them distinct and recognisable.

Another theorist who has helped to apply theory to documentaries is Michael Rabiger. He was an expert in documentaries, considering he had written Directing the Documentary (1998), and believed that a documentary “should adhere to certain conventions in order to be considered a proper documentary”. An example of this criteria is that a documentary should “not really value neutral information like a textbook”, meaning that the documentary should not be biased in favour of either side of the story being told in the documentary.

Documentaries have also passed through into the film industry, shown through docu-films such as Senna (2010), which depicted the life and career of three times Formula 1 Brazilian World Champion Ayrton Senna.

Documentaries have developed well since their official branding 90 years ago, and still stand today as very popular, as they cover the majority of topics available, including nature-relevant documentaries (such as Bear Grylls) and (relevant to our project) gaming-related documentaries.

Past documentaries Bear Grylls: Man vs Wild, Nanook of the North and Senna