The content of games is an understudied area in social scientific research about video games. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the understanding of the portrayal of gender and race in games. Previous research on game content has revealed that stereotypical masculine characters dominate video games and that those characters are generally White. Nowadays, quite a few video games have women in leading parts; Tomb Raider's Lara Croft is the prototypical example. In our study we investigated the so-called 'Lara phenomenon,' that is, the appearance of a competent female character in a dominant position. We also studied the portrayal of men and the race of both male and female characters. We did a content analysis on the introductory films of 12 contemporary video games. Our results show that female characters appeared as often in leading parts as male characters did. They were portrayed with a sexualized emphasis on female features. Most game characters belonged to the dominant White race, the heroes exclusively so.Keywords Video games . Gender . Race . StereotypesPlaying electronic games on a personal computer, a game console, a handheld device, or on the Internet is a relatively new, but increasingly popular, kind of mediated entertainment. The popularity of video games 1 has arisen alongside the public's expression of serious concerns, in particular with respect to the effects of violent games (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999;Thompson, 2002). The scientific community has responded to these worries by executing dozens of studies about the effects of playing video games (e.g., Anderson & Bushman, 2001;Sherry, 2001).Far less attention has been devoted to game content. A small number of research projects have been done to analyze the way the world is represented in video games. Generally, the results of these content analyses show two things: first, the ubiquity of violence (Braun & Giroux, 1989; Children Now, 2001;Dietz, 1998;Haninger & Thompson, 2004;Smith, Lachlan, & Tamborini, 2003;Thompson & Haninger, 2001), and second, the stereotypic portrayal of gender and race -men hold dominant positions, women are submissive, and the majority of game characters are White (Beasley & Standley, 2002;Brand, Knight, & Majewski, 2003; Children Now, 2001;Dietz, 1998;Gailey, 1993;Provenzo, 1991;Ramírez, Forteza, Hernando, & Martorell, 2002).The purpose of the present study was to contribute to the tradition of research on the portrayal of gender and race in video games. Our first principal theme was gender. Anyone even slightly familiar with video games must have noted the recent advance of tough and competent female characters (Labre & Duke, 2004). The massive popularity of female protagonist Lara Croft ever since the release of the first Tomb Raider game in 1996 seems to have paved the way for a woman who contrasts the dominant Sex Roles (2007) In this paper we employ 'video games' as shorthand that includes games that are played in arcades or on game consoles (e.g., Playstation2, X-box, GameCube and the G...