Semiotics of Gender in the Video Game Void: Postmodern Motifs

Abstract

Modern cultural space is closely connected with development of information technologies. Virtual reality represented by computer games penetrates topoi of contemporary culture. On the one hand, gender images presented in the narrative of computer video games become a part of everyday life, everyday practices of modern citizens. On the other hand, the images collected and replicated in various segments of modern culture and society become the material for designers of modern computer entertainment industry. These images reflect typical gender characteristics, their semiotic flexibility, rhizomaticity, saturation with intertextual references and “semiotic abundance”.

In this article, the authors analyze the semiotics of gender in computer video games, the transformation of gender, the semiotic “tools” of representing gender, the semiotics of “gender fluidity”. The authors show the complex character of gender, tendencies of apparent “naturalization of the sign”, which correlate with the postmodern and metamodern motifs of contemporary culture.