Borderlands gender representation

Gender Representation in the Borderlands Games

    When it comes to gender in games there are many games that do not focus or specifically skew the ratio of the genders. In my opinion a game that represents multiple types of people and specifically gender in a great way is the Borderlands series of games.

The characters of borderlands

    One of the reasons that I think that there is a great representation of the genders in this series is simply due to the diverse list of main characters and the well written stories for each of them. in the newest game there are 4 playable characters for the players to choose from 2 being female 1 being male and the last one being a robot.

    Out side of the playable characters there are many main characters of the story that are split up between all the different races in the game and each one follows there own path beliefs and ideas as you play through the game and complete quest for them in order to get rewards.

Woman in borderlands

   As my source by Amy Alfredson talks about there are many different female characters that play strong leads in the borderlands series the main ones being sirens which are legendary Female characters that hold amazing powers. in her article she talks about how borderlands doesn't shy away from giving the characters scars and other marks even if they are female with characters like Moze and Amara both having scars and marks form previous fights and battles that they fought in

LGBTQ in borderlands

    when it comes to characters in borderlands there are a myriad of different Races, Genders, and ethnicities that you can find in the game. A good example of less well known gender in borderlands is with Zer0 who is considered non-binary due to people not really knowing what gender or race he is. In my source by Brianna Dym She states "Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford considers the Borderlands series character Zer0 to be either agender or non-binary"(Dym) this quote show's that even the CEO of the games company thinks that Zer0 has no gender and is basically non-binary

                Here is a good video to watch in order to meet more about the characters in the game

Representation in Borderlands

    In the article by Michele Zorrilla they say "Findings for gender representation in video games generally support past findings in that males are significantly more represented than females"(Zorrilla). However in Borderlands many of the main characters whether they be NPCs or Playable characters are woman with there being a very close split on which gender has more characters. It is also important to understand that many of the important people in the lore of borderlands are female due to the Sirens that where talked about earlier.

    

Citations

Amyalfredson. (2019, October 07). Rated e for everyone: Female representation in borderlands 3. Retrieved February 25, 2021, from https://uiwomenscenter.wordpress.com/2019/10/06/rated-e-for-everyone-female-representation-in-borderlands-3/

http://gamestudies.org/1803/articles/brubaker_dym_fiesler

Shoemaker, S. (2014, June 04). Researcher examines racial and gender representation in top 50 video games. Retrieved February 25, 2021, from https://phys.org/news/2014-06-racial-gender-representation-video-games.html

Zorrilla, M. Video games and gender: Game representation. (n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2021, from https://www.radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/gamerepresentation.html