ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how historians’ understanding of gender’s role in the past has changed, what we now know about the roles of gender in past societies, and how well videogames portray these roles. It’s now rare for historians to publish on any facet of society without taking gender into account. For this reason, games deserve analysis in terms of how they portray gender in the past, even when the storyline involves only one biological sex. After tracing the emergence of gender as a central theme in historical scholarship, this chapter discusses gender bias in the gaming industry and among the fan base of many videogame franchises. It then analyzes in turn the presence of female, male, and non-heteronormative characters in historical videogames, particularly when they are playable. The gaming industry has received much criticism for its sexism. However, the desire to address these concerns has led some designers to depict anachronistic behavior with major female characters wearing less restrictive clothing than would have been the case in the past, and behaving as men would have in their social context. Similarly, playable male characters often appear devoid of gendered assumptions that were almost universal in the times they lived.
