Representation of Primary Characters in Narrative-based Games

Sammanfattning: A quantitative study is performed on protagonists from games that have accumulated the most retail sales between 2007 and 2016, with this case particularly focusing on the categories of gender, physical characteristics, sexuality and age. Results show that white male leads are almost half of all characters in the study and are a much larger group than any other. Close to all characters show signs of being heterosexual or have unspecified sexualities. The small number LGB-characters are bisexual, meaning that there is no homosexual lead. Further, a large majority of protagonists are young adults while elderly people are absent. Correlations among these results, game genre, and developer location are examined. Lastly, the effects of representation on identification, world view and game enjoyment are discussed to express the importance of diverse representation in the medium and across all of entertainment media.