This topic is very interesting to me, especially when you use gaming as an example, and the environment that comes with online games. Something that now widely happens (and is only slightly more accepted) is genders creating avatars of the other gender. So for instance me creating a male character to play as. Normally the bias is on Males creating and playing female characters, and I wonder if a lot of this is not just from society but how designers have created the female avatars. A lot of them are still based around large physical attractive features, with very little clothing. Although one comment I had from a male friend who tended to do this was: if I’m going to play a game for a while, I might as well have something good to look at! But at the same time the online world gives people the freedom to be who they want to be, without some of the backlash that can happen in real life.
As part of research and the obligation to design responsibly, how do you think around all of the implications and impact that your designs might have?
For instance, mobiles and online technology has been great and is ever advancing. But now the amount of socialising that occurs, of children that grow up playing games on iPads instead of playing outside being kids… Was this something that was ever taken into account? or was it too much of a sales opportunity?
