Representation and Ways of Seeing in Games
Sources and Significance – Blog 6
This post looks at how video games shape “ways of seeing” through representation, and how visual culture feeds into identity, power, and player perception.
Games as Visual Systems
Games aren’t only entertainment. They’re visual systems that train us to notice certain things and ignore others. Character design, camera perspective, environments, and narrative framing all work together to produce a particular viewpoint. Because of that, representation in games is never neutral. It carries cultural assumptions about what is normal, desirable, heroic, or marginal.
Ways of Seeing and Cultural Meaning
Berger’s point is that seeing is learned, not natural images come loaded with habits and power relations (Berger, 1972). Games make this even sharper because we don’t just look at images; we inhabit them. Who gets to be the protagonist, how bodies are shaped, what clothing signals, and how the camera frames characters all contribute to which identities get centred and which get pushed to the edges. Gender, race, and sexuality are not only “included” or “excluded” they’re shaped through how the game asks the player to look.
Representation and Power
A lot of mainstream games have historically repeated a narrow visual norm: white, male, heterosexual protagonists treated as default. Over time, repetition turns into expectation. It begins to feel “natural” that some identities lead and others support, appear as stereotypes, or disappear entirely. Hall argues that representation doesn’t simply mirror identity; it produces meaning about identity (Hall, 1989). So when certain portrayals dominate, they don’t just reflect culture they reinforce the power relations inside it.
Player Identification
How the game frames characters also shapes who the player is encouraged to identify with. Camera angles, control systems, and narrative attention pull the player into some viewpoints while keeping others distant. Identification can be affirming especially when a player recognises themselves in a character treated with depth and agency but it can also be alienating when representation is tokenistic, exaggerated, or missing.
Challenging Dominant Visual Norms
More recent games have started to challenge older “defaults” by widening representation and offering different perspectives. But inclusion isn’t automatically progress. It matters how characters are framed, what roles they occupy, and whether they have real agency rather than being present as decoration. A useful question isn’t only “who is visible?” but “who is allowed to act, change the world, and be taken seriously inside the narrative?”
Conclusion
Representation and ways of seeing in games shape how identities are understood and felt. Using visual culture theory makes it harder to treat games as neutral images: they are systems of meaning that organise perception, normalise certain identities, and encode power. Once you start noticing how games teach you to look, it becomes easier to question what they make seem natural and what they leave out.
References
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin. Hall, S. (1989) ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’, Framework, 36, pp. 68–81. Manovich, L. (2018) AI Aesthetics. Moscow: Strelka Press. GLAAD (2024) Where We Are on TV. New York: GLAAD. Naughty Dog (2020) The Last of Us Part II [Video game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment.