Gender Coding in Horror Video Games

Horror is one of the most popular genres in video games. There have been many works analyzing gender in horror films and books. Renowned horror scholar Barbra Creed wrote Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny and The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Then there are books that discuss gender in video games such as Feminism in Play by Kishonna Gray. There have even been recent writings on the horror genre in video games such as Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play by Bernard Perron and Clive Barker. But you would be hard pressed to find any writings about all three at once. Like most aspects of video games, the genre is divided by gender. This split is not explicitly stated but in this paper I will uncover the Gender Coding in horror video games. The Gender Coding branches into four categories: protagonist, type of horror, visuals, and perspective.

Works Cited

Creed, Barbara. Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny. Melbourne U.P., 2005.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

Grant, Barry Keith. Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Univ Of Texas Press, 2015.

Gray, Kishonna L., et al. Feminism in Play. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Kirkland, Ewan. “Restless Dreams in Silent Hill: Approaches to Video Game Analysis.” Journal of Media Practice, vol. 6, no. 3, 2005, pp. 167–178., doi:10.1386/jmpr.6.3.167/1.

Kristeva, Julia. “‘Approaching Abjection,’ From Powers Of Horror: An Essay On Abjection.” Classic Readings on Monster Theory, 2018, pp. 67–74., doi:10.2307/j.ctvfxvc3p.12.

Muriel, Daniel, and Garry Crawford. Video Games as Culture: Considering the Role and Importance of Video Games in Contemporary Society. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2018.

Perron, Bernard, and Clive Barker. Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play. McFarland & Company, 2009.

Wagner , Katherine  A. “Placing Horror: An Interdisciplinary Investigation.” Humanities Education and Research Association (HERA), vol. 33, no. 3, 2016, pp. 25–35., doi:search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=124564945&site=ehost-live.