According to data presented by the Entertainment Software Association, approximately 58% of Americans play video games. Valued at over $20 billion, the video game industry is one of the fastest growing entertainment businesses in America. With growing influence over the public, more attention is being paid to the exact content of these games and whether they have lasting effects on individuals outside of their virtual walls. Specifically, the gender representation of men and women in video games and their relationship to actual gender roles in society has been a topic that has attracted much research from social scientists. Although female gamers make up over 45% of the gaming population, they are often underrepresented and portrayed in sexual or stereotypical ways as game characters. (The Entertainment Software Association) These stereotypes create extremes between "what is feminine" and "what is masculine", which, therefore, presents more rigid gender roles for players and their characters. (Behm-Morawitz & Mastro, 2009) Contemporary depictions of men and women in video games have detrimental effects on men's treatment and opinions of women, on women's self-efficacy and on the position of female players in the video game public. other forms of social media have created a median of gender roles in order to visualize the social realities people believe in (Dill & Thill 2007). In video games, female characters have traditionally been underrepresented and misrepresented as non-playable supporting characters serving to please men. According to USC's 2009 "Video Game Minority Report", only 10% of female characters were playable in games. In the article “The effects of sexualization...... middle of article ......d Video game characters on tolerance of sexual harassment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(5), 1402-1408. http://dx.doi.org.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.06.002 Ivory, J. D. (2006). Another man's game: Gender representation in online video game reviews. Mass Communication and Society, 9(1), 103-114. doi:10.1207/s15327825mcs0901_6Lamphère, L. (2013). The domestic sphere of women and the public world of men: the strengths and limits of an anthropological dichotomy. In Brettell, C. and Sargent, CF (6th ed.) Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective. (81-87) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. O'Connor, A., Henning, A., Killen, M., Collins, M., & Brenick, A. (2007). Social evaluations of stereotypical images in video games: unfair, legitimate or “just entertainment”? Youth and Society, 38(4), 395-419. doi: 10.1177/0044118X06295988