For today I read an article which was a compilation of thoughts about women and gaming. The article was compiled by editor Henry Jenkins. The article was composed of several women’s thoughts about how the gaming industry is so unbelievably gendered. Many of the women were flat out pissed off, as I can easily understand, about the issue of male-centricism in the gaming world. The authors bring up the point that there are whole game design companies dedicated to games for girls, but these games are based almost purely in female-stereotypes like fashion, cooking, etc. What about the girls and women who like to play shoot em up games along with the guys? The point is brought up that the majority of female gamers enjoy the same types of games that males do, but game designers, at least the well-known game designers, rarely try to appeal to women. They just create games with the pure assumption that only men will play them and then the “female-oriented” gaming corporations will take care of creating “womanly games” like Barbie, etc. Many of the authors ask, why aren’t games just being created for people? Why do they have to be created for men or women? Who care if a girl wants to play Duke Nukem and a guy wants to play a Barbie game? The gaming industry would make a hell of a lot more money if they just marketed their games towards people and not one gender or the other.
Another interesting point that is brought up in the article is that a number of women who play an active part in the gaming industry tend to be gendering video games just as much as their male counterparts. There are several quotes from female game designers etc. that basically allude to the idea that women only like to play games that are linked to stereotypical female roles. It seems that the video game industry is so gendered that many women within it don’t even realize that they are just making the situation even worse. If women think that the industry should remain gendered then why would men have any reason to think otherwise?
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