The latest on OffLineTshirts.com's funny, cool, unique & unusual swag for geeks, gamers and pop culture fans. Plus bonus gaming industry posts and game reviews!

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Yet Another Article About Games Reaching out to Girls

There's nothing particularly good, bad, or surprising about this article that hasn't been said several times before in other articles but reading this one does make me want to rant a little.

First off, stop with the "female players tend to scorn games of wanton destruction" type lines.

You know what one of my favorite old arcade type game was? Rampage. You know, the game where you control the equivalent of King Kong or Godzilla or (I forget what the third monster was)? The object of that game was to smash things and eat people: wanton destruction. I loved it and I wasn't a "tomboy" either. I wasn't a "girly girl" but I wasn't a tom boy that folks might automatically expect to love things boys did.

I will give a nod to the article writer for the comment that girls like to identify with game elements though. I first tried Tomb Raider partly because the main character is a girl. A girl who runs around stealing things from tombs while shooting at things by the way (another point against the girls scorn games of wanton destruction).

One of the games I'm playing now, First to Fight, a first person shooter, doesn't give me the choice of being a female character. It's a small thing when you don't see yourself much in the game anyway, but I would still like it better if I could pretend to run around the game as a girl. I don't mean that I would actually roleplay I was a marine, but just for little things like how the guys I game with can have avatars and screen names they use on other web applications that sort of go with their game personas but I'm walking around as a square jawed guy named "Fricka".

I suppose I should be happy that females are getting attention from the media and from game developers. Well, I am happy, but I'm also sad that the same misconceptions come up article after article, year after year. I give props to the gamers who make up groups like the Frag Dolls but I don't know if that's the answer to getting more females involved in gaming.

I think groups like that are great eye candy for guys, but I think there are also more females like me just giving a sigh and saying, "I thought I found an area in a virtual world where I could just hang out and game without having to additionally be some kind of eye candy". It doesn't seem enough that girls game well or even look good in the context of a game (eye candy Lara Croft, scantily clad MMORPG elves etc.) but now it seems like the industry will only notice or sponsor you if you game and also look like a model. If the gaming industry wants to attract more female gamers they need to allow us to feel comfortable playing any type of game we want and to look however we want to look like, in game or off. Some folks may say, "You're just jealous". Well, I've been called a Booth Babe before and I was amused and flattered, but sending the message that you can only get on a team or get media attention if you look like one means that you won't be reaching all females and your market reach is not going to grow.

Technorati Tags:
, , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home