Gender Representation in Magic the Gathering

Many different games are understood to oversexualize women, which is a major component of sexism in the gaming industry. Everywhere you look you in video games you see women with humongous breasts bursting out of their armor that can’t actually protect them. This is quite problematic and causes issues such as different expectations from the people playing the games. Body shaming becomes a major issue that cannot be dodged. Other times a game contributes to sexism just from the lack of female representation? In this post I will discuss the importance of female presence in games that mimic the real world and how this lack of representation in Magic the Gathering has contributed to sexism in the gaming industry.

            As a young boy I didn’t play many medieval card games or board games, but most of my friends did. It wasn’t until I got to college though, that games like Magic the Gathering became a very big part of my social life. I still don’t play much, but rather watch and listen and learn the rules to better understand the game. It never occurred to me that there was a quite low representation of women in the game until I started this class. After doing some research I found out that before the 1990s there were many different female characters in the game that had many powers ranging from good to evil, but later “Indeed, in late 1990s and early 2000s, Magic became increasingly focused on its tournament scene—the Pro Tour—” which in turn changed the target group for player boys ages 14 and older (Jameson Roman). This left the game with fewer and fewer female characters because the focus wasn’t to draw girls in anymore.

            Games typically mimic the real world especially the ones that are modelled after the medieval. Unfortunately, many of these games lack representation of different genders. Female characters are crucial to have in these games so that the players don’t forget that they are important contributors to society. Without this representation the players might grow to expect women to do different things just because of the lack of gender representation in the games. It can shape their minds to believe that women were “not important enough” to be included in the game so they probably aren’t important in life. This of course is false and problematic. It is the reason why inclusion of different genders is vital to a growing equal society.   

            Overall one could see that there is a lack of representation. With this, the pathway to sexism is clear and should be blocked off, but it takes the effort of the gaming companies to include these characters and allow full representation like before Magic took away all of the female cards. These things are helpful in shaping a more equal society and should be worked on to allow complete representation to lead to a more socially equal game.