As the gaming industry ponders how to draw more women into the world of gaming with discussions of content, images of women in-game, and issues with technology, I suggest that one of the largest barriers to women becoming full-fledged gamers is what I call Gamer Shame.
I’m in the airport on my way to a professional conference, browsing the magazine stand for something to flip through on the plane when I see the cover of a new gaming magazine. The cover is slick and artsy and I see there’s even an article about couples who game together – I WANT to grab it. I want to read it cover to cover and see if a game magazine might actually treat women as real gamers. Do they rely on ads that feature half naked women? Do they actually review games without discussing how “boinkable” the lead female character is? Oh how I want to find out!
But wait, there’s another professional woman flipping through Cosmo. There’s a man in a suit looking through some computer magazine. How can I grab something meant for pre-pubescent boys in front of my fellow professionals? Like a furtive man grabbing a Playboy, I swipe it up and run to the register. To the cashier I mutter something about having boys (a flat out lie) and flee, hoping the seat next to me will be empty so no ones sees me reading the gamer magazine. Unfortunately, yet another young professional plops down next to me, glances over and I blush as the headline of the article I’m reading screams “Kick Some Ass and Take Some Names in the New FPS by Sony”.
OK, this is a slight exaggeration, but only slight. Every time I walk into a game store to check out the latest, I cringe when the14 year old employee asks what kinds of games my kids like to play. I was thankful when on-line game service Game-Fly (similar to Netflix for movies) finally got up and running. I have a PhD, I teach university courses, I have a happy relationship with a sensitive, fun man – a successful life by most standards…but almost every time I tell people about my favorite hobby their eyes glaze over with a mix of pity or embarrassment for my sake. We can be talking about their love of boating, or wine tasting, or woodworking, but the second the word videogame comes out of my mouth, they smile and try to relate but suddenly their opinion of me is slightly different (though I did actually have some one laugh out loud, only to realize that I wasn’t joking). That is of course unless they lean in and whisper “shhhh, I’m a gamer too!”
My mother, now a 50-something gamer, is actually the one who got me hooked in the first place. With a room in my childhood home dedicated to a computer surrounded by maps and charts, my mother started me off in an on-line, text only adventure game at a time when most people didn’t even know there was such a thing as “on-line”. Somehow my parents saw the future of computers and to get my allowance I had to write simple programs in Basic. My first Atari was a joy to behold and I spent hours with Jumpman, Space Invaders, and the like. Back then, video games were almost a novelty item and I was young enough to play to my hearts content.
Articles on WomenGamers.Com solely reflect the experiences and perspectives of the author(s). Feel free to agree or disagree in the accompanying forum thread.
