Video Games and Sexism have more or less gone hand and hand since Nintendo rescued the gaming industry from the septic-explosion that was the video game crash of 1983. According to Polygon, market research in the 80s and 90s found that boys, because of their increased likeliness to pursue computer science, were more “likely” to play video games than girls. Therefore, gaming companies such as Atari and Nintendo began marketing their products almost exclusively to men as because market research ordained women as non-essential consumers, it was better to focus energy on pandering to “maleness” as much as possible. Because of this marketing strategy most video games released had young men in lead roles and often demoted the presence of women to either non-interactive sex objects or prizes to be won once the world has been saved from dragons, wizards, and wizard dragons. This is a trend that continues to persist in the gaming industry today as while women make up 52 percent of gamers, they make up only 3 percent of overall game programmers and they often end up making 10,000 dollars less than their male counterparts.

Very few video games themselves tackle sexism head on as usually there is no need to since the stories of most mainstream games tend to be about a gravely-voiced single-father who saves the world from Slovenia terrorists with a gun that shoots butcher knives and goat sweat. Also, as previously mentioned, most game developing jobs tend to be held by men and usually when a group of beef and sausage cakes get together they are not going to spend their time talking about the structural and internalized sexism that dominates their lives. Most of the time it will be coming up with an excuse to have a female sniper go into battle with nothing but a black bikini.

Yet the 2001 video game Silent Hill 2 makes sexism and misogyny its main themes of exploration, forcing many a gamer to confront these aforementioned elements that had been practically celebrated in the medium for so long. In doing so, the creators at Team Silent end up crafting one of the most emotionally resonant and terrifying video games every made. As with the films Citizen Kane and Vertigo, Silent Hill 2 explores the idea of “love” as an idea to be cultivated and the consequences of when that “ideal” pushes up against hard reality. You play as James Sunderland, a man who comes to the town of Silent Hill after being asked by a letter written by his wife Mary to go to their “special place”. The only problem is that Mary died from an illness three years ago, though this does little to deter James’ resolve to find out what Mary meant by "special place." Upon making his way to the New England-esque town, James finds it inhabited by fogginess and feminine-like demons and attempts to unravel the mystery of why exactly he was brought to the most Not-Disney World-vacation spot in existence.

What makes Silent Hill 2 so successful in using gaming as the means through which to tell its story rife with themes of depression and sexism is through subtext and detail orientation. There are little to no moments of exposition in the game as the player is forced to craft their own judgments based on the moment to moment gameplay, as well details in the game world itself. For example, dead bodies scattered around in the town can usually be found with letters dealings with some form of depression or mental anguish. All of them also happen to share James’ clothes and visage. As you learn more and more information about Silent Hill and your role in it, when you go to check Mary’s letter in your inventory, it gradually starts to fade until it becomes a blank sheet of paper by the time you reach the final boss.

Misogyny plays a role in the designs of the monsters and how the player interacts with them, in addition to how it features in the climax of the game. Most of the enemies are deformed feminine like creatures such as the “Mannequin” which is just two pairs of female legs stitched together, and the “Puppet Nurse”, a faceless woman in a short skirt wielding a cane. Much of the violence in the game is directed towards these female-like creatures and after a while it becomes possible to be disturbed not so much by the grotesque designs and movements of the monsters but rather their cries of pain as you beat them with crow bars. Your actions correlate directly with the main antagonist of the game “Pyramid Head”, a grimy butcher with a massive metal triangular mask instead of a head and the only masculine enemy you face. “Pyramid Head” is often times seen sexually assaulting the other monsters, in addition to having a rather erratic relationship with the player character. Sometimes he tries to kill James, other times he ignores James completely. Perhaps he sees James (and the player) as a kind of kindred spirit…

At the end of the game it is revealed that James murdered his sick wife in an act of frustration. Towards the end of her life, Mary is revealed to have become overbearing on James, flip-flopping between calling out for his love and verbally berating him for his lack of masculine agency. James himself became depressed and sexually frustrated with how his wife was deteriorating, missing the ideal “joy” the two once shared, and unable to face how their relationship was suffering head on. Because Mary could no longer fulfill James’ romantic ideal, James thought it better to snuff her out of his life. A major non-player character in the game is Maria, a figment of James’ imagination and the personification of his ideals of Mary as a voluptuous and sultry figure who would put James’ needs before her own. She is murdered by “Pyramid Head” and brought back to life no less than three times in the game.

Silent Hill 2 is an achievement in an industry barely 40 years old and just recently starting to become more self-aware. The game refuses to allow the player to embody a fantasized persona of bare-chested and guns blazing heroism and instead forces them to confront social and psychological realities head on in a position of abject vulnerability. The shooting is inaccurate and feels clunky and James can easily be downed with just a scratch of a monsters hands’; a far cry from Halo’s Masterchief who commits crab-alien genocide with just a shotgun and a chain smoker's growl. The game impels us to confront disgusting realities head on rather than escape from them with prostitute elves and in doing so, tells a player-driven and hands off story that really could only have been achieved through the medium of gaming. Silent Hill 2 allows us to see into the mind of a misogynist, shining an intimate light into its origins and the reasons used to “justify” it. It is an admittedly uncomfortable experience that can require breaks from gameplay sessions in order to calm oneself with deep breaths from the sheer intensity of the disturbing content. Yet the game teaches us about a particular evil in a way no film or book can; by having us inhabit that evil, we can start to better understand it and in doing so may find better ways to heal it in the future.