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Video Games and the Female Audience

06/30/2009

Posted in: Gaming

I recently spotted this video over at GTR, and was pleasantly surprised. Not to sound overly cynical, but there is a lot of girl-gamer drivel out there. Daniel Floyd delivers what appear to be the notes of Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander (formerly of Kotaku). I like what they have to say, and if you can’t spare the ten minutes to watch the snappy little vid here’s your summary: Women aren’t in constant state of taking offense at breast physics, we just know they’re not for us.

Addressed is the recently reported increase in “female gamers”, which most of us recognize as a reported flux not of gamers as we know them, but of women that bought Wii Fit, or play Bejeweled to kill time at work. I don’t like to play into the hierarchy of gaming, and should make clear that I agree that casual gaming is fun, has its place, and may be a valuable gateway drug to the harder stuff. Where I do make the distinction is briefly touched on in the video: the ability to talk, and identify, with other women who game.

Conversation is, after all, as necessary as breathing for most of us ladies, and while I enjoy discussing food, travel, politics and even the mundane hilarities of marriage and child rearing with my lady friends gaming rarely comes up as more than an idle point of fascination. It is a social anomaly, even to the most well-intentioned, and while they work hard at taking an interest I labor through explanations ranging from “No, I don’t review Tetris” to “Well you see, you enter what is called a ‘game lobby’…” It’s not pretty, and it is discouraging. While the average guy tends to be fascinated that there is a career in games, women tend to say things along the lines of “You don’t seem like a girl gamer”, which is about as backhanded as it gets. This social alienation is difficult to forbear, and may be enough to unwork the magic that casual games have wrought upon the average woman.

Alienation – or at least aliens – are something girl gamers are all too familiar with. The premise of the average game reads like a summer blockbuster with enough explosions built in to send us all to the moon. Most women just don’t feel the same inner stirring at the prospect of blood, guts and guns galore and I know that there has been the occasional game I play through enjoying the gameplay and turning a blind eye to the unappealing dialog and excess boobies. Certainly I have even enjoyed some of those games, but were they as rich an experience for me as for a male friend that soaked up every testosterone-happy moment? Probably not. Yet most of us girl gamers play games that the average woman would classify as a “guy thing”, and what’s more, we like them. Those of us that don’t relish playing the gorilla that was the female avatar in Fable II look past these largely aesthetic distractions and enjoy the real game underneath – now doesn’t that make us pretty hardcore!

Obligatory disclaimer time? Maybe. Alongside every top-heavy, under-dressed game chick is a male game character so horribly inflated that were they translated into real life counterparts no good person would pass them on the street without genuine concern for what must be a grossly debilitating defect. Neither men nor women are so fragile that we are shaken to the core by these comic idealizations, what does strike a deplorable blow is when these already ultra-feminized ladies, certainly powerful in their own right (for the most part they fight half-naked without armor!) are used as Playboy bunnies, promising men plenty of sex for their gaming buck. So while well-muscled male characters can serve as boyhood heroes with traits like courage, strength and fortitude; overtly sexualized women are reduced to naughty playthings, not role-models.

So why is it that these ramped up testosterone puppies featured on game boxes scream “I’m a guy game!!” just as much as the butt-clothes lacking cover of X-Blades? What games do we think are “girl” games then, Nintendogs and Bratz, candy colored goodies that look like they could be in a bulk bin at Claire’s? Simply, yes. Those are “chick games”, right up there with the training bra that is all things Pop-Cap. Again, not to be wholly dismissed, but I look forward to a time when in addition to the heavy handed pandering of Babyz the industry is producing more games with universal appeal, and women are a part of that equation. Gaming is still a boy’s club, but it is no longer the entertainment equivalent of Hooter’s. We are welcomed into the clubhouse, even if the club still meets every other Tuesday to dream up the next Lara.