Why don’t girls play video games
2009 March 2
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A multi-disciplinary course taught by Anne Dalke and Laura Blankenship
Random
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I think that part of the problem is that messages like this can often be boiled down to “cool” and “not cool”. Often such important discussions as these are overlooked in favor of easy to digest messages that are spoon-fed to the populace by MTV or other media source.
Along with the film’s discussion, I agree that I love creating the character more than the playing the game sometimes. However, unlike the girls interviewed as wanting a “break from reality”, I do not consider navigating the social scene as a particularly “relaxing” environment. I would probably just like to go blow things up (with my friends of course). Oh wait… that does sound a bit like what they were talking about, doesn’t it?
I also believe that it does give girls choices, but at the same time, it isn’t “cool” to play “educational” video games. A common theme in the reviews I have done with men and women, they agree that “serious” gaming requires a time commitment, and emotional investment in the game. But I have also received the reply that a serious gamer is someone who plays the game seriously. One is a bit more helpful and insightful, the other… well, circular logic.
I googled Purple Moon to see what else I could find out about the company and came across this article: http://www-cse.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/projects-97-98/gender-gap-in-education/page19.htm (and on the menu on the left are more interesting articles about girls and computer science)
It talks about how the game perpetuates stereotypes: both about what is important to young girls, ethnicities, and other physical characteristics, and “capitalizes on girls’ fears about middle school and adolescence.” I don’t like that Brenda Laurel talks about the game as informing girls what it would be like to be in high school and what they can expect because it seems to be reinforcing manipulative and spiteful behavior.
I also found a site with a quiz: “Which Purple Moon Rockett’s World Character are You?” (http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=rockett). It asks questions like: “Are/were you popular in school”, “Do others trust you with secrets”, “Do you feel lilke an outcast”, “Are you into fashion”, etc. I think these questions inform the nature of the characters and the situations.
When I was a child, I loved to play Sonic the Hedgehog (which I think is a good example of a gender neutral game) and Golden Axe II (which is a masculine let’s-fight-and-kill-the-bad-guys type of game – but one of the characters you can choose is a girl and I always chose her since she had the coolest fight moves – which is interesting in itself). Although I can’t rule out that I wouldn’t have played a game like Rockett’s New School, I was perfectly happy fighting off the bad guys. I think that the problem is that girls aren’t given access to computer games, rather than that they’d rather play “girl-oriented” games. In fact, the only reason I had access was because my brother became too busy to play too often and if hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have bought it in the first place.
This game was created 10 years ago. I wonder if the advent of more gaming consoles and platforms like the DS have spawned different attitudes from girls toward games. Maybe because in 1998, WoW didn’t exist and of the games that quickly became popular were first-person shooters that appealed to a certain audience (mostly male, mostly teenage). There are certainly games for girls still out there that perpetuate stereotypes, but I’m not seeing that those games are all that popular. Animal Crossing is extremely popular and it seems like it would be “girly,” but it appeals to both genders almost equally. Certain games, like the SIMS, are more popular among girls than boys, but there’s nothing specifically stereotypical about it. Men and women can take on whatever roles the player wants them to and men can even get pregnant (something my daughter finds hilarious and appealing).
Thanks for the research Shikha–quite valuable and interesting.
Well… male seahorses can get pregnant. The day I figure out how to give my spawn to my husband to birth is the day I will actually get a husband. Or even better, like fish we could just swim around one another in circles and there would be no touching! Just like god intended ^_^!
Er… in all seriousness though… I think I had a conversation with Professor Blankenship in which we discussed the awesomeness of “girly” tank-types. For people who think DPS means “During Period Syndrome”, a “tank-type” is an armor-laden ungodly (or godly) defense-type character that will sit there and take damage so the delicate players like a healer-type won’t kick the bucket too soon in Quest-fight-type games like WOW, Everquest, etc.
In response to the question of SIMS… I think that the fact that the sims cannot kill/maim/shoot/etc each other makes it a slightly more “thinking” game. (Yes, they do set themselves on fire because they forget to step away from the stove, but this is megalomaniac behavior, not “aggressive” behavior… shoutout to Rebecca’s discussion on “aggressive behavior” and media ^_^) This type of game, SIMS, is one that is often referred to as “girly” or even worse “gay” by the teenage male population in a last-ditch effort to seem more like GI Joe and less like they might be on the fast track for a PhD and nights alone in mom’s basment. I think in a manner similar to Hlin’s comment in class about “anti-technology” the definition of gender stereotype is often defined by “it is not manly, therefore it is girly”.