Miss Bimbo Makes a Dollar
Feminists have long bemoaned the fact that the video game industry all but ignores girls and women in its single-minded emphasis on and development of games for boys and men. This, despite the fact that recent surveys suggest that as many as 41 percent of gamers are girls and women.1
Even more troubling than the exclusion of girls and women from the industry’s strategic marketing, however, is the shockingly sexist and mysogynist nature of video games themselves. In the original version of Grand Theft Auto III, for instance, players solicited sexual services from a prostitute before beating and killing her. After public outrage, an updated version was released that no longer allowed players to solicit any sex acts from prostitutes; now they just beat them to death. In BMX XXX, boys created topless female players and “unlocked” footage of naked, performing strippers.