WEEK 11 TUTE PRES
RACHEL BENN
“From Quake Grrls to Desperate Housewives: A Decade of Gender and Computer Games” Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell.
Gender and Games: (article)
- Debate about how to ensure that young girls had access to the technologies that would shape their futures
- Debate about how much more women could participate in the emerging digital industries
- Past decade: increase in number of women playing games
- Why women play vs why men do: women: to spend time with a boyfriend, tend to play less diverse games and play games for a shorter period of time per session.
Do you think gaming is gendered?
- The article refers to computer games for example as “masculine technology” despite “decades of feminist intervention”
- Games generally appear to be by men for men (Halo, COD etc); women are hyper-sexualised (Desperate Housewives game)
- Gender is “a continuum rather than a set of binary oppositions: one is never going to design games that adequately reflect the tastes, interests and needs of all girls”
- “The girls game movement failed to dislodge” the idea that “computers were boy’s toys and that true girls didn’t play with computers”
- What do you think about the ‘pink box’ thinking, whereby the idea that gossip and cooking games are said to be “what women like”
Will there always be a gender division when it comes to computer games?
- Article states that there is “no more pink aisle at most local games stores”
- One can be “a feminist or a gamer but not both”
- The Sims may have represented a turning point in the relations between gender and computer games. à more than half of the people who purchased the game were female – Sims is a more family orientated game
- Today, games are coming out that are targeted for a female audience ie Wii Fit/Balance etc – not just appealing to stereotypes
- The game industry is still designing games primarily for men with women seen as a secondary market and more of an afterthought. If a mainstream game attracts women, it is viewed by most game industries as a happy accident.
- What kinds of games should be designed for girls?
Agree/Disagree with the response of British newspaper critic:
“Women are scarce in our industry because they are less attracted and inclined to our industry on a historical, cultural and personal level.” (Referring to gaming industry/ ‘our industry’ – male dominated)
Following our tutorial discussion about gaming being gendered, I asked my brother who works at EB games (a gaming store) if there is an equal amount of girls that come into the store and is there a difference in the games bought by men and women? From his personal gaming experience and working in a gaming store he thinks about 20% of people that come into the store are women. Its not a large amount but more than I originally would have thought. I think it is very much about what each individual persons interests are as to whether they are going to be interested in gaming and 'male' oriented games such as Halo.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes do like to play games, but prefer the ones where there are multiplayers and I must admit my attention span is not great when it comes to gaming. I think that gaming is opening up much more to both male and females but I still think it is perceived as a males past time in Australia.
I agree with the statement gender is “a continuum rather than a set of binary oppositions: one is never going to design games that adequately reflect the tastes, interests and needs of all girls”. It is even more evident from our tute discussion that the binaries between female and male are becoming blurred. Matching games to genders in a yes/no, male/ female fashion isn’t going to increase female involvement in games. Instead, I think the gaming industry should relax the set notions they have on what is a ‘male’, and what is a ‘female’ game. Not all women enjoy games associated with cooking, dancing and singing. In the same respect not all men enjoy car racing, sports and violence. The key is to combine these elements to introduce more games with variety so that they can be enjoyed by both sexes playing together. It shouldn’t be an obligation for a girl to play Fifa Soccer with her boyfriend. Wii games are heading in the right direction, advertising men and women playing together in a comfortable, fun environment.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was young I played the computer game Age of Empires, which (if any of you have played this game) know it's not really a 'girly' game. My Dad is a real gaming nerd and taught me how to play. He would connect the 3 computers we had in the house so my sisters and I could all verse each other.I think that the influences we have growing up heavily impact our attitude towards gender/gaming.
I think it's interesting to look at gaming and gender in terms of how women are represented in video games. For example, I think there are games where the girls are prostitutes - Grand Theft Auto maybe? (Obviously I'm not very knowledgeable on games haha). And most games with girls either portray them as hyper sexualised (Lara Croft for example) or, as someone said in the tutorial, as less powerful (Peach in Mario). I found an extract from an article that stated "Males were more likely to be heroes and main characters, use more weapons, have more abilities, and were more muscular and powerful. Females were more often supplemental characters, more attractive, sexy, and innocent, and also wore more revealing clothing." I personally think this is worrying as it works to reinforce gender stereotypes and the sexualisation of women in society.
ReplyDeleteThis is the link for where I found the quote (I can't see how to link a URL in a comment post)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j7173455721414x3/
Is gaming gendered? I think that society would like it to be. Humans have a tendency to simplify their worlds so that they are easier to understand. One of the ways they do this is through what is considered masculine and feminine. Boys do this and girls do that. And then, you will always find groups who oppose these "box-like," social roles. In much the same way, there will be groups who oppose the ideas that gaming should be or is gendered. Personally, I think that no matter how much games are designed and directed towards specific genders, it will never work out. There will always be girls playing "masculine" games and guys playing "feminine" games. I think it comes down to a matter of preference. For example, trousers were designed for men way back when and dresses for woman. I love wearing trousers, I think they are most often more comfortable than dresses. Just because I wear them, it doesn't make me less feminine. Feminine is how I feel on the inside and the ideas I have about myself. So, whether men play "woman" games or woman play "men" games is doesn't make them more or less gendered. I think games are designed gendered but I think that the experience of gaming, playing those came can never be gendered.
ReplyDeleteLike a few of the other comments made I agree with the idea of gender as “a continuum rather than a set of binary oppositions: one is never going to design games that adequately reflect the tastes, interests and needs of all girls”. I think that "gaming" as a medium itself, is simply more popular among boys that with girls, generally speaking. It's evident in the number of failed attempts to generate a girl gamer market with games that involve gossip, shopping, make-up etc, aimed primarily at teens and tweens. A Majority of girls this age are interested in these things, but it's obvious they don't manifest this interest in games. Why play with virtual makeup, boys, discos and pets, when you can play it all in real life?
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I think the success of marketing and advertising within games reflects the gaming culture as typically male orientated. Advertisers have recognised the game medium as a very successful outlet for reaching males aged in their teens and twenties. I'm looking at this online Game America's Army, an explicit recruitment tool used my the US military and Govt, for my essay, and I thought this kind of relates. "These dedicated gamers caught the eye of the US Army in the 1990s when it first realized that the long hours spent in virtual gaming worlds could be an ideal medium to introduce potential young recruits to the military and help train them" (VOA News online, 2010).
Building on the idea that gender is a continuum, I think, as a medium, games could potentially facilitate the breaking-down of this archaic binary.
ReplyDeleteIn adopting a character with some degree of gender, there is room for a player to ‘role play’ and experience the game world with a tinge of some gender position other than the one they are assigned in ‘real life’. This gives way to numerous new possibilities for self exploration and expression.
Whether the opportunity to use game design as a medium in this way will be utilised is a whole other matter. With a few notable exceptions, sign-up proforma info for games, and the characters within the games, are inflexible in terms of gender. The ‘real life’ gamer can be either male or female, and the character they choose to play can be either male or female, both choices being hyper-sexualised and usually heterosexual. Room for change? I think so.
The people at Women Gamers have done some interesting research on whether gamers see female characters as an opportunity to roleplay or simply as pawns, available: http://www.womengamers.com/articles/editorials/gender-bending-games-part-ii/
Gaming is still considered a male pasttime. For example, in professional gaming, women are a rarity and are usually dismissed as nothing more than a novelty. Even the media regard on women gamer teams in game competitions as oddities, usually asking them questions like "how do you feel being a female in a male-dominated environment?"
ReplyDeleteEven in games like World of Warcraft, where the population of women are actually almost equal to men, women are still treated as minorities, with women gamers being seen as either treated like goddesses or classified as being unskilled, both an extension of the female stereotype. I know of female friends who are able to get free gifts from random males in-game purely because of their status as females, and other females who get denied entry into guilds because the leaders believe females will either cause trouble or perform badly or both.
Just from the situation in World of Warcraft alone, I would say that the gender division in computer games is still wide, although it's starting to narrow now.