Women fuel $4bn casual games industry

Reference Details:

Maryann Wright (2010), Women fuel $4bn casual games industry, News.com.au, <http://www.news.com.au/technology/women-fuel-4bn-casual-games-industry/story-e6frfro0-1225935831836> (viewed 8 October 2010)

Relevance

Importance: The games industry is considered to be traditionally a male domain. The article asserts new personal technology and new genres of games have boosted women’s participation in gaming, and developers have recognised the importance of targeting women when developing and marketing games. The article demonstrates updated information regarding women’s increasing participation in gaming, but supports old information regarding gender stereotyping.

Keywords/phrases: stereotypes; technology; computer games; female audience; casual gamer; hardcore gamer.

Issues: While it may seem an important step towards gender equality to have seemingly equal numbers of men and women accessing recreational technology, the underlying assumptions about gender remain. The article’s author and the people consulted assert women are more interested in “cooperation, negotiation, problem-solving, and reflection”, and are overwhelmed by “flashy content” and “pressure-filled situations”. Many game titles referenced demonstrate inherent gender-stereotyping: Bejewelled, Sally’s Salon, Diner Dash, Dream Day Wedding. One of the interviewed gamers was “hardcore” before having children, thus pointing out the article’s major flaw - that women do participate in non-casual games.

Use in forming argument: This article serves to show that games developers believe women play more “casual” games than “hardcore” games. From the point of view of games developers and potential profit, it makes sense to create gendered games and market them to women. This article could be used as an example of the interference of market forces in the pursuit of gender equality through technology, as marketing to women via stereotypes also reinforces them. It could also be a critical analysis of interpreting the internet news and the assumptions of gender it portrays to a non-critical audience. Many of the comments on the article are also useful, as they provide a sample of public reaction to the information. As of my viewing of this article, 8 out of 18 comments refuted the information in some way.

Relationship to other references: The article cites no references. The article quotes statistics regarding growth and worth of industry and user numbers of Farmville, but does not say how or where these were obtained, merely “Source: Supplied” at the top of the text. That women are casual and not hardcore gamers seems to be supported by articles such as this one from 2006, which provides links to several studies. However, a newer study by Nielsen showed that in 2008 over 38% of World of Warcraft players aged between 25-54 were females, and that the top 6 titles played by both genders in this age group were casual. This article appears selective in it’s presentation of data.

Critical Evaluation

1. Character:

• Title- Women fuel $4bn casual games industry.
• Type - Online news article.
• Secondary source.
• Initial edition of news story - not a revision of a previous version.
• No bibliography, although the names and position of authority of the people quoted are stated. No links to source of data.
• Scarce evidence provided, working on assumptions. Position refuted by commenters.
• Writing style is not scholarly. Style is journalistic, opinion based, biased, contains stereotypes that may be considered outdated. (commenter 1 of 118, “Who thinks most gamers are teenage boys? Only people who live under a rock...”; see also the Nielsen study)

2. Currency:

• Date is current. Location not specified, although one person quoted is a Sydney University lecturer. Website is Australian news company. Location is not very important to this topic.
• The links on this website are current.

3. Intention:

• The author has no links provided on the article.
• The audience are perusers of internet news, possibly with an interest in technology as that is the subheading this article falls under. It is not intended for a scholarly audience.
• The inclusion at the bottom of the article of a link to “news.com.au’s new games section” suggests this article doubles as an advertisement.

4. Authority:

• The author’s twitter account states “Media and communications student at the University of Sydney, junior journalist at news.com.au”. The author is not a particularly notable or credible authority on the subject.
• News.com.au is a widely read, general, popular news website. It contains articles reprinted from many local and international news corporations and sources. It does not generally contain referenced, peer-reviewed, scholarly articles, although some other articles have provided links to credible sources. It often does not provide authors or sources for its articles.

Notes

This article is best viewed with skepticism. From a scholarly point of view, this article says more about the newsmedia’s presentation of the subject than it does about the actual subject, and could be used as an example of such. I have chosen this article to highlight the dangers of indiscriminately using news articles as a source of credible information.