Stephen Porter

2/16/18
Writing - 103

Video Games - Made In 2018 Thoughts in 1918

Video games are one of the newest mediums of art we see in the world today. They are

able to tell us powerful narratives with unique stories that the player can become deeply

immersed. However, this power can allow people to influence the player with bad morals and

ideas. So when bad morals or ideas are found in games, we must examine them and address the

flaws. One of the most prevalent issues we find in video games is gender roles among characters,

and in the opinion article, “Many Video Games Reinforce Gender Stereotypes”​ ​The author,

Roman Espejo, highlights just what are the biggest problems. By highlighting not just the

problems with the protagonists, we see in games but even how side characters can affect it. He is

able to convey this to the audience with its uses of ethos, logos and pathos. Whether it is fully

effective or not is what is left to discuss. Roman Espejo manages to develop a strong argument

with the use of logos, ethos and pathos on why games reinforce gender norms, but fails in certain

areas hat make the opinion piece slightly flawed.

Before we look at the logos, pathos and ethos of the argument, we need to summarize the

argument made. In this opinion, piece we are told that video games reinforce gender norms. He

uses three points to back this up; the hyper sexualization of both men and women, the use of

background characters, and the male to female protagonist ratios. The article is written to be read

by the average person, giving explanations to terms that people who might not normally play
video games so that they will understand.Knowing the base of the article we can now start by

looking at the ethos aspect of the paper.

Ethos is defined as an argument in which one appeals to the ethics of a person. This paper

is perfect for an ethos based argument, because most, if not all of us, can agree that the gender

norms of the past are problematic in today’s society. One of the most constantly hammered in

ideas is that by reinforcing gender norms, a child playing the games could be negatively

influenced. Roman Espejo warns us that this could not only affect what children see as the norm

for them to look like, but it’ll further affect their self esteem as they find themselves not growing

into these hyper-sexualized people. Along with imaging issues it might affect how boys perceive

women. If young boys constantly see these oversexualized (and quite often scantely clothed)

women, it might give them the wrong idea in the future and could lead to many issues. This is an

effective use of ethos as most of the readers of this article are parents, or might one day be, and it

makes them question if they want their child exposed to this. It leaves the reader concerned

wondering if their child will be so easily influenced by these unforeseen forces and then look for

a change to the problem. Outside of children, ethos is not used in other places, so we will now

look at how the paper uses logos in its arguments.

Logos is when one tries to appeal to the logic of a person, prioritizing the facts in an

argument over that of ethics or credibility. Roman Espejo is able to appeal to the logic of people

because he uses multiple sources within their paper, constantly referring to a variety of studies

done on the subject of gender roles in games. Anytime he tries to make an argument he’ll always

back it up with a statistic that helps validate their point. One of the best examples of this is when

he is discussing the male to female ratio for video game protagonists, he states not only the
number of male to female characters, but the percentages are also shown. “​Of the 874

player-controlled characters, 635 (73%) were males, and only 107 (12%) were females. Players

are more likely to have an opportunity to play a non-human character than a female.” (Section 2

Bullet Point 2) As one can see this is an excellent break down of their source for the common

viewer. He first lists the raw data, that being the 874 player controlled characters and then break

it down into two percentages which is not just more visibly appealing, but allows the reader to

understand the significance of the difference between the numbers. Roman Espejo summarizes

the statistics and pointing out its significance. This shows the audience that not only are the

points he makes valid, but he greatly understands them. Finally, we will look at the pathos aspect

of this article.

The final appeal used by Roman Espejo of this piece is pathos, or the argument of

emotions. In this essay In this article pathos and ethos are very closely intertwined. Much like an

appeal for ethics, he tries to warn us the dangers that showing only hypersexualized men and

women to children could affect their self esteem and how they perceive the opposite sex. This is

best emphasized in their language and how he describes these potential messages. He uses words

such as harmful, unhealthy, and were carefully selected. These words are meant to be more

‘fearful’ that try to hit hard how dangerous this could be. Roman Espejo ends their paper saying

that, “In both cases, these images can have unhealthy effects on children's self-esteem, behavior

and relationships with others” (Final Paragraph). The three things chosen; self-esteem, behavior

and relationships weren’t picked at random. These were specific things chosen that could make

parents concerned these problems would affect their children. With this specific word choice

Roman Espejo is able to appeal to the pathos effectively.

 Roman Espejo makes a very intriguing argument throughout this case. He uses all three

types of arguments, each in their own ways to try and win over his audience. Unfortunately, his

arguments are not flawless. The biggest problem that was found was in Logos, in which he

constantly mentions statistics but never tells us which study he used or what games were

observed in said study. If he were to add that it could give his paper much more credibility than it

currently has. Beyond that he does an excellent job of engaging the reader and trying to prove his

point. ​Roman Espejo manages to develop a strong argument with the use of logos, ethos and

pathos on why games reinforce gender norms, but fails in certain areas hat make the opinion

piece slightly flawed.

Work Cited

1. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?disabl

eHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&currPage=&scanId=&query=&d

ocIndex=&source=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&mode=view&cat

Id=&u=viva_jmu&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&actio

n=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010289210&windowstate=normal&activityT

ype=BasicSearch&failOverType=&commentary=

2. https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-espejo-77803854