Hearthstone is an amazing game that I played very seriously for about two years before quitting due to my feeling that it was too pay-to-win. I still consider it one of the most fun games I’ve ever played. The gameplay is simple, but deep and addictive. The art is rich and beautiful.
I say this because my analysis of this game from a feminist perspective is going to mostly be negative. For this review, I rated every single piece of card and hero art in the game on multiple points to compare the gender representation. My analysis shows that despite how great the game is on many levels, Hearthstone does not exemplify gender equality.
Nevertheless, in the course of preparing for this review, I was reminded how much I love the game and decided to get back into it, just in time for the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion.
So my goal in writing this analysis is not to make anyone hate the game, or feel bad playing it. In fact my goal is the opposite. I hope that in reading this, people will gain a greater appreciation for the game as worthy of deep analysis, while also gaining greater understanding about its social assumptions. I hope that like me, people will read this and be reminded of how much they love the game, despite the flaws it has from a feminist perspective.
I spent a lot of time working on this analysis, and there is a lot to cover, so this is the first in a series of posts on Hearthstone.
I say this because my analysis of this game from a feminist perspective is going to mostly be negative. For this review, I rated every single piece of card and hero art in the game on multiple points to compare the gender representation. My analysis shows that despite how great the game is on many levels, Hearthstone does not exemplify gender equality.
Nevertheless, in the course of preparing for this review, I was reminded how much I love the game and decided to get back into it, just in time for the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion.
So my goal in writing this analysis is not to make anyone hate the game, or feel bad playing it. In fact my goal is the opposite. I hope that in reading this, people will gain a greater appreciation for the game as worthy of deep analysis, while also gaining greater understanding about its social assumptions. I hope that like me, people will read this and be reminded of how much they love the game, despite the flaws it has from a feminist perspective.
I spent a lot of time working on this analysis, and there is a lot to cover, so this is the first in a series of posts on Hearthstone.
The Method
Hearthstone, unlike the other games I’ve covered so far, does not have much in the way of story or characters. Mostly, it involves cards with attack numbers, health numbers, and various mechanics, with names and art added for flavor.
Thus, the game provides a great opportunity to do a more statistical kind of feminist analysis, based more on numbers than my own interpretation. So the method I planned involved creating a spreadsheet of every single card and hero, and then rating them on several gender-relevant points.
Next, I would tally up all of the ratings and compare them on the basis of gender. That way, I would have a somewhat objective basis to say whether male and female characters were being represented equally.
Thus, the game provides a great opportunity to do a more statistical kind of feminist analysis, based more on numbers than my own interpretation. So the method I planned involved creating a spreadsheet of every single card and hero, and then rating them on several gender-relevant points.
Next, I would tally up all of the ratings and compare them on the basis of gender. That way, I would have a somewhat objective basis to say whether male and female characters were being represented equally.
Expectations
A common metric for evaluating the gender neutrality of any media is to see the proportion of each gender within the characters present. I had some expectations going into this of what results I would find, and I designed the rating metric to test these expectations. First, I was interested in just the basic numbers of female characters versus male characters. I expected that males would be represented slightly more than females. In playing the game, I noticed many female characters, so I didn’t expect this to be too much of a problem.
I expected, however, that females would be represented much more often as very human-looking. In contrast, I expected males would be represented more as less-human creatures, such as monsters and animals. This would be consistent with the theory that male is default, while female is specific. In other words, according to this theory, “femaleness” is represented visually by specific human traits, such as breasts, long hair, eyelashes, and sexual attractiveness. So monsters, who don’t usually have anatomical or attractive details like the ones mentioned would be associated by default with maleness. Humans, however, can more easily be depicted with these details, and so female characters would more often be human.
Also, since the female gender role is associated with weakness as well as cooperation, empathy, and submissiveness, and since the male gender role is associated with leadership, aggressiveness, and violence, I expected that male characters would more often be depicted as different types of monsters instead of humans.
The strongest gender difference I expected to see was in sexualization. I expected to see female characters depicted with a lot of cleavage, skin-tight clothing, and nakedness.
As you will read in this series, some of my expectations were met, while some ended up being wrong in surprising ways.
I expected, however, that females would be represented much more often as very human-looking. In contrast, I expected males would be represented more as less-human creatures, such as monsters and animals. This would be consistent with the theory that male is default, while female is specific. In other words, according to this theory, “femaleness” is represented visually by specific human traits, such as breasts, long hair, eyelashes, and sexual attractiveness. So monsters, who don’t usually have anatomical or attractive details like the ones mentioned would be associated by default with maleness. Humans, however, can more easily be depicted with these details, and so female characters would more often be human.
Also, since the female gender role is associated with weakness as well as cooperation, empathy, and submissiveness, and since the male gender role is associated with leadership, aggressiveness, and violence, I expected that male characters would more often be depicted as different types of monsters instead of humans.
The strongest gender difference I expected to see was in sexualization. I expected to see female characters depicted with a lot of cleavage, skin-tight clothing, and nakedness.
As you will read in this series, some of my expectations were met, while some ended up being wrong in surprising ways.
Cards and Heroes Analyzed
For my list, I used Hearthhead (http://www.hearthhead.com/) and listed every individual card, including uncollectible cards, plus heroes and bosses. I assigned each a number in the order I reviewed them. Even though they included cards as well as heroes and bosses, I am going to refer to them all as “cards ” during this analysis.
There were a few card duplicates on Hearthhead, but I included all duplicate card art if it was on a different card (with different attributes).
There were a few card duplicates on Hearthhead, but I included all duplicate card art if it was on a different card (with different attributes).
Gender
Because this is a gender analysis, the first question that had to be answered for each card was what gender to categorize it as. This simple question proved to be more complicated than anticipated. (This served as a lesson for me that gender is not as simple as I took for granted!)
I looked for whether there was a binary gender presentation the artist chose for a particular card. Before listing a character as “male” or “female,” I looked for clear gender clues:
Anatomical: For females, I looked for any clear indication of breasts, which ended up being the most reliable indicator of a female character. In some cases, there were obvious female facial features, such as exaggerated eyelashes and small tusks/teeth for Trolls (who in the Warcraft universe have different tusks than males.) However, I was still very conservative about this, and did not automatically assume that eyelashes made a character female unless the whole context of the character was obvious enough that I felt confident listing the character as female. For males I looked for unambiguous male body types, like male pectoral muscles. If I did not find any clear anatomical gender clues, I moved onto the next category.
I looked for whether there was a binary gender presentation the artist chose for a particular card. Before listing a character as “male” or “female,” I looked for clear gender clues:
Anatomical: For females, I looked for any clear indication of breasts, which ended up being the most reliable indicator of a female character. In some cases, there were obvious female facial features, such as exaggerated eyelashes and small tusks/teeth for Trolls (who in the Warcraft universe have different tusks than males.) However, I was still very conservative about this, and did not automatically assume that eyelashes made a character female unless the whole context of the character was obvious enough that I felt confident listing the character as female. For males I looked for unambiguous male body types, like male pectoral muscles. If I did not find any clear anatomical gender clues, I moved onto the next category.
Hair: For males I looked for any obvious facial hair, such as beards and mustaches. This was the major factor in most of the cards I listed as “male.” Long hair was not a reliable clue of femaleness or maleness, so I ignored it as a factor.
Other clues: If I still couldn’t determine the gender, I would try to see if I could find clues from the voice used in the sound clip, the flavor text for the card, and sometimes the canon background lore if the card involved a named character. This was a deciding factor for a minority of cards, but it was important for characters who were completely non-human, such as Ysera, for example.
If I couldn’t determine the gender objectively, I listed “unknown.”
I erred on the side of caution in identifying gender. If there was no obvious, unambiguous sign of gender as described above, but I still had a “hunch” about the gender, I still listed “unknown.” There were about one or two cases where I thought the character may have been intended to be female, and still listed “unknown,” but there were far more characters I thought were male that I listed as “unknown.”
I erred on the side of caution in identifying gender. If there was no obvious, unambiguous sign of gender as described above, but I still had a “hunch” about the gender, I still listed “unknown.” There were about one or two cases where I thought the character may have been intended to be female, and still listed “unknown,” but there were far more characters I thought were male that I listed as “unknown.”
If the entity depicted had no male or female gender, I put “NA.” This applied for inanimate objects as well as things that logically should not have gender, such as robots, slimes, and elementals. I also knew that in Warcraft lore, Old Gods and their minions are not supposed to have gender.
However, there were multiple instances of characters that logically did not need to have gender, but did anyway. For example, there were many robots and statues that had beards and mustaches, or male musculature. Also, for example, C’Thun, an Old God and supposedly existing outside of gender, has a male voice and is referred to as “him” in some lore text.
Which character?
In many cards, multiple characters and entities were depicted. Some characters were in the foreground, and some were in the background. However, I counted every single character I could see, regardless of whether it was in the foreground or background. When there were both males and females clearly depicted, I listed the gender as “both.” This was pretty rare and only accounted for less than 1% of cards. When there were multiple characters, but only some or one of the characters was clearly gender identifiable, I listed that identifiable gender for the card.
Humanness
Next, I had to determine if the character was “human-looking.” To try to come up with a somewhat objective method, I made three categories of “humanoid:”
3 - Very Human. The most human-looking category. I put this if the character basically looked like a human, even if it was short, as in the case of dwarves and gnomes. I also put this if the character was human-looking and had a human-looking face, but only had minor non-human features, such as blue skin, pointy ears, wings, or hoof feat. Draenei, elves, and goblins were in this category.
3 - Very Human. The most human-looking category. I put this if the character basically looked like a human, even if it was short, as in the case of dwarves and gnomes. I also put this if the character was human-looking and had a human-looking face, but only had minor non-human features, such as blue skin, pointy ears, wings, or hoof feat. Draenei, elves, and goblins were in this category.
2 - Somewhat human. I put this if the character had some human features, like a human head, but non-human body parts, such as a centaur or a naga. I also put this if the character was upright and had human-like limbs, such as robots and monsters. Orcs, trolls, and tauren were all automatically in this category, as they didn’t have human faces.
3 - Not human at all. I put this if the character had no human features, such as an animal, or tentacle monster, or a hat.
Results
Looking at gender representation alone, the results are pretty dramatic. Female characters are extremely underrepresented, and are less common than both genderless characters and characters with unknown gender.
These results surprised me because while playing the game, I didn't notice any severe under-representation of women. Some of my favorite cards feature female characters. Why hadn't I noticed that female characters were actually very rare in comparison to other characters?
I believe the answer is that since maleness is default, female characters are more noticeable. Male characters are expected and feel normal, so they fade more into the background. This is a selective perception formed by gender roles. Even those of us who actively reject gender roles aren't immune to this. That is why even in a game like Hearthstone, which I truly believe was intended to have good representation of women, unintentionally minimizes the presence of women. Also worth noting, a game where women seem "special" or "noticeable" while men fade into the background is not really a positive representation of men, either.
I believe the answer is that since maleness is default, female characters are more noticeable. Male characters are expected and feel normal, so they fade more into the background. This is a selective perception formed by gender roles. Even those of us who actively reject gender roles aren't immune to this. That is why even in a game like Hearthstone, which I truly believe was intended to have good representation of women, unintentionally minimizes the presence of women. Also worth noting, a game where women seem "special" or "noticeable" while men fade into the background is not really a positive representation of men, either.
The results of the gender differences in degrees of humanness were dramatic as well. Though female characters are underrepresented as a whole, when they did appear, they were far more likely to be represented as very human. Interestingly, both male and female characters were about equally likely to appear as non-human. But because there are so many more male characters in the game, there are still about five times more non-human males as non-human females. (50 non-human males to 13 non-human females)
These results are consistent with the gender role theories I described above. Because female characters are not default, they are represented with specific human attributes (eyelashes, breasts, hourglass figure, etc). Thus, to have these attributes, they need to look like humans. Also, since the female gender role is associated with attractiveness, female characters need to look human to look attractive. This issue will also be explored more in the next parts of this series.
On the flip side, male characters are more likely to look "somewhat human" than female characters. This makes sense because the "somewhat human" category includes ugly and monstrous creatures like ogres and elementals. Because the male gender role is associated with violence and aggression, it seems more natural to people that the gender of monsters is male. Needless to say, making the majority of monstrous characters male is not a positive representation of men.
A positive representation for both genders would be roughly equal proportions of gender, and roughly equal proportions of genders as attractive, monstrous, and non-human. This is not easy to do, as it would require game developers to constantly question their gender assumptions. Hopefully, as society evolves, and the gaming industry becomes more aware of gender representation, these issues will not exist as much.
These results are consistent with the gender role theories I described above. Because female characters are not default, they are represented with specific human attributes (eyelashes, breasts, hourglass figure, etc). Thus, to have these attributes, they need to look like humans. Also, since the female gender role is associated with attractiveness, female characters need to look human to look attractive. This issue will also be explored more in the next parts of this series.
On the flip side, male characters are more likely to look "somewhat human" than female characters. This makes sense because the "somewhat human" category includes ugly and monstrous creatures like ogres and elementals. Because the male gender role is associated with violence and aggression, it seems more natural to people that the gender of monsters is male. Needless to say, making the majority of monstrous characters male is not a positive representation of men.
A positive representation for both genders would be roughly equal proportions of gender, and roughly equal proportions of genders as attractive, monstrous, and non-human. This is not easy to do, as it would require game developers to constantly question their gender assumptions. Hopefully, as society evolves, and the gaming industry becomes more aware of gender representation, these issues will not exist as much.
Please check my work
There were a lot of cards to go through for this analysis and I'm sure that I made some mistakes. So please let me know if you see anything that needs to be changed. Also please let me know if you disagree with the way I categorized the gender or humanness of a card.
Next - Sexualization scores
In my next post, I’m going to talk about sexualization as a gender issue in Hearthstone, and how I analyzed it.