Audible Efforts: Gender and Battle Cries in Classic Arcade Fighting Games

Abstract: Video games are demanding work indeed. So demanding that our screen heroes and heroines are constantly making sounds of strife, struggle, or victory while conducting surrogate labor for us running, fighting, saving worlds. These sounds also represent the very real demanding labor of voice actors, whose burnout and vocal strain have recently come to the fore in terms of the games industries' labor standards (Cazden, 2017). But do heroes and she-roes sound the same? What are the demands - virtual, physical, and emotional - of maintaining sexist sonic tropes in popular media; demands that are required of the industry, the game program, and the player alike? Based on participatory observations of gameplay (i.e., the research team engaging with the material by playing the games we study), close reading of gendered sonic presence, and a historical content analysis of three iconic arcade fighting games, this article reports on a notable trend: As games self-purportedly and in the eyes of

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Media and Communication ; 7 (2019) 4 ; 186-197

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR - Social Science Open Access Repository
• (when): 2019
• Creator: Droumeva, Milena

Further information

• DOI: 10.17645/mac.v7i4.2300
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2021020515295000020380
• Rights: Open Access; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:43 PM CET