Super Smash Bros was first developed by Nintendo in 1999, but the version I played is a Web version hosted by Arcade Spot. One of the first things I noticed when I began playing Super Smash Bros was that the only female character at the beginning of the game is Samus, meaning that females are largely underrepresented in the starting cast. Samus is powerful and not as sexualized as other female characters I have seen, but she has features that perpetuate feminine figure stereotypes, such as a narrow waist and wide hips. I also had not heard of Samus, pointing to the lack of attention Nintendo has towards popularizing female characters. As mentioned in the reading as well, the game is a “consumable product in a capitalist system,” so there is little incentive for Nintendo to target women since their market is traditionally predominantly men. By playing more video games, women can become “radical disruptors” that force large gaming corporations to change who they’re targeting.
The word “bros” also certainly appeals to young male gamers. The voice that commentates is also male, creating a macho atmosphere. However, I will give Nintendo credit for creating a more neutral gaming environment that is colorful and often bright. I have distinct memories as a child of watching my brother and his friends play Smash, and the name always sounded very fitting to me. This was representative of the larger cultural tendency that Chess alludes to in the reading that gaming is for boys and men. While my brother was receiving video games for Christmas, I was receiving arts and crafts kits.
The fact that fighting is the focus of Super Smash Bros also perpetuates male stereotypes, since fighting is seen as a male-centric activity. By making this the focus, Nintendo was already taking advantage of societal norms for capitalistic purposes. However, one can make the argument that Nintendo goes against the stereotypes by creating a fighting game that is still playful and colorful enough that they’re neutralizing the stigmas surrounding fighting.
Overall, the game appears to make efforts to appeal to the feminist, via female characters and lower levels of violence, but there is no doubt that some factors only perpetuate gender norms. It turns out, only about a third of employees at Nintendo are women, with only 23.7% of managers being women, meaning that there is much more Nintendo can and should be doing to appeal to women. Not only that, but as Chess mentions, by not seeing women as a proper audience, gaming companies miss out on potential innovation in their industry. Work has been done on this, but I believe that including women more in the gaming industry can create huge opportunity for games that appeal to an untapped segment of the market and innovate in the ways they can appeal to players.
