From Quake Grrls to Desperate Housewives: A decade of Gender and computer games (2008) Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell.
This was an interesting article, about the progress of what the authors call the 'Girls Game movement' since their conference, organised in 1998 called 'From barbie to Mortal combat: Gender and Computer Games..'(later leading to their book also called this.) I will provide a quick summary of the key points!
The authors discuss the main goals and expectations that the girls game movement took shape around:
1.Economic -as a way for game companies to expand their market.
2.Technological -the shift from console games (nintendo etc) to home pc
3.Entrepreneurial
4.Aesthetic
5.Political -some argued in order to shift the computer from being coded as masculine, computer games might hold the key to getting girls engaged with computers at an early age. (I agreed with point five to some extent, however as the authors further develop this theory I was not so sure...but back to this later.)
Next the authors discuss the games that have been designed specifically aimed at the female market, such as 'Barbie Fashion Designer' and the 'Desperate Housewives' game and they ask if 'girls games where just another tool with which to construct a gender divide' rather than as a tool to enable equality for females in gaming culture.
They go on to discuss 'the Sims'- a game which may have represented a significant turning point in the relations between gender and computer games..as its female fanbase largely contributed to its top selling status, and they say it could fit into the gender-neutral catagory.
So that was a very brief summary..and these are some issues I was considering after reading and some questions:
There is not any reference to multi-player games like second life..and although I have not played these I would assume they may fit into the same category as the Sims in being 'gender neutral...' or is there even a potential for games to be completely gender neutral- both in terms of target audience and creation? (as the authors note the game design industry is also mostly dominated by males and in the 10 years since their conference they have seen no huge shift in this.)
Back to the point on computer games being a way to lure girls onto computers to become more teach savy..the authors discuss the theory that 'if girls could be interested in computer games and thereby in computers, they might be more willing to stay engaged with Science and engineering as they grow older.' I was thinking that this is quite an extreme assumption...and those girls who do chose to play games would already be tech savy, and the ones who where not tech savy may be more likely to learn computer skills via social networking sites and general websurfing than via computer games..?
The authors talk only of a western gaming culture, mainly the US…so what about Japan/asia etc? They note that 'Girls in Japan embrace games as another source of content that interests them, as they flows organically from one medium to the next…the game could be an ‘additional episode’ offering new insights into the characters and introducing new situations into the story.” My interpretation of this part of the article was that in Japan the Gender Gap in games culture is much smaller, because of the strong presence of anime and manga games in Japanese pop culture..is the authors Western view more representative of the global trend of gender and computer games? or is it possible that in fact females familiarity with games due to the idea of 'flowing organically from one medium to the next' could potentially apply to us too?
I was thinking about the discussion we had in class today about gender neutrality and the assumptions we make about what makes a video game for boys or girls. I was reminded of a really well-known psychology case study known as the John/Joan study. I'm not sure if everyone's heard of it but basically what occured was this: A woman gave birth to twin boys. Shortly after the first was born, he was accidentally castrated during a circumcision procedure. The parents had no idea what to do, so they turned to a psychologist who offered to help them, and suggested that they raise their son as a girl instead. They renamed him, dressed him in feminine clothes and encouraged him to play with barbie dolls, etc. But according to his mother, he always preferred playing with his twin brother's "masculine" toys instead, like helicopters and GI Joes and whatnot. He struggled with his identity into his teens when his parents finally told him what happened, and he decided to re-identify as a male. Anyway I was reminded of this case as we were discussing the whole nature/nurture debate and why people assume certain characteristics of males and females, or where we get these assumptions that a first-person-shooter game is for boys and Barbie-dressup is for girls. These assumptions come from somewhere, but the fact that this boy still did not feel like a girl despite his parent's heightened efforts to make him one supports the idea that it's not only from society, marketing and the media, but that there's definitely something intrinsic going on as well.
ReplyDeleteI guess it is possible to look at games flowing from one medium to the next. In the end, don't you think games are just another form of entertainment like going to the movies? Now it is quite normal for movies to be about popular games. It is all part of the idea of further exploring the characters in a different reality/form. I never really saw the games as being gendered but an assumption that we make and opening "a can of worms" as someone said in the tutorial. I remember way back in year 7 a guy being excited over Sims which is a supposedly female orientated game. At the time I was playing Doom which is about shooting demons essentially, according to this article is suppose to be a guys game. (which my dad probably should not of allowed at such age, lol!). In the end it is an individual preference what games you play not what gender you are.
ReplyDeleteA lot of games would be considered gendered towards male. But this is not outside what happens to many cultural artifacts that are produced from within society. The thing with these sorts of artifacts is that their gender position becomes irrelevant to the gamer. This was especially evident in the tutorial where so many people had engaged in games that might traditionally be considered masculine (ie first person shooters).
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a 'pink aisle' for gaming seems to be extremely problematic. It seems to be that girls who enjoying gaming are not interested in the gendered nature of the game, but rather the game play itself. To create specialised pink games ignores game play in favour of gender orientation and simply re-appropriates gender differentiation. After all, in gaming, game play is central.
I agree that the idea that computer games can produce girls more interested in science and engineering when they're older is pretty extreme.
ReplyDeleteComputers are now so accessible and easy to use in the western culture that this idea would be useless. Since computers are now used in pretty much all industries, based on this assumption computer games could lead girls into either a science/maths, creative or even sporting career.
This kind of goes into the idea of games flowing from one medium to the next. The girls playing computer games or even the ones just surfing the net or on social networking sites are likely using them as just another medium or avenue to explore their interests - same as boys. To use the stereotypes where girls are supposedly more interested in makeup, shopping, gossip etc., there are more ways to engage in these interests outside of cyberspace, whereas boys aren't exactly able to go around shooting things.