DmC: Devil May Cry

Flow It, Show It, Play It: Hair in Digital Games

"Flow It, Show It, Play It: Hair in Digital Games" examines the multifaceted role of digital hair in video games, asserting that hair is not merely an aesthetic element but a potent carrier of social, cultural, and political meaning.

• Hair in video games is treated as a meaningful cultural text: the social, cultural, and political meanings hair carries in everyday life are reproduced in digital characters regardless of how realistic or stylized their rendering is.
• Hair functions as a semiotic marker in games, with examples such as Geralt's white hair signalling magical exceptionalism and hypermasculinity in The Witcher, and long hair serving as shorthand for femininity in Metroid and Bayonetta.
• A cited 2016 study of 571 games supports a correlation between female characters' sexuality and their capability, though the report's broader readings of hair are interpretive rather than quantitative.