This all began to change the older I got. By high school social convention told me with great clarity that gaming is a boys world. During college, I put away my games and tried to be a “grown up woman” that was beyond those juvenile boys toys. Except that I just really, really like to play. By graduate school I had given in and was spending time back with my beloved games. I entered the new world of platform games with beautiful graphics and immersive gameplay. I began to consume every PC adventure game I could find. I learned that I REALLY like blowing things up in first-person shooters, the bigger bang the better. My favorites turned out to be stealth and survival horror games.
When I began dating my fiancé, we had known each other professionally for over 10 years. We knew about each other’s childhood traumas, relationship heartbreaks, family histories, but in all those years neither one of us ever discussed our love of gaming. It was only after we began dating that my inner game-geek-girl was revealed and he admitted his game addiction as well. Since that day we have joyfully played together as a couple and I am regularly surprised at the number of couples we meet that game together.
So why should I be ashamed of my hobby? Why do my mom and I lower our voices when she wants to tell me about the new level she just finished with her Amazon in Diablo II? Why don’t I tell people at the university where I work that I play videogames? Gamer Shame is a powerful social convention and the gaming industry really isn’t doing a very good job of combating it.
Imagine my laughter when I saw the title “Girls of Gaming” peaking out from the magazine rack – only to find that its not a profile of the top female gamers, nor a look at the women working behind the scenes in the game industry….it is a swimsuit issue version of the pixilated women of videogames. Or my horror watching the latest Video Game Awards on Spike TV that feature violence-loving boys and ditsy women barely dressed in halter-tops and daisy-duke shorts. Or my embarrassment wandering around gaming conventions that put real women on display (no kidding, women draped with snakes in glass boxes for people to wander by an ogle) or that highlight “gamer girls” that are just dolled up, pretty women there mainly to flirt with the boys and men playing in serious competitions. Game magazines are some of the worst offenders, with the most popular magazines still representing no more than one woman on the review boards. For one popular magazine, the only woman reviews games according to how they “make her feel”, a fairly condescending stereotype of why and how women play. Not to disparage the experience or emotions of game play, but it is unfortunate that the one woman is also the only reviewer who focuses almost exclusively on this aspect of gaming.
I really do understand that these are effective, time honored marketing strategies. I’m not offended by half-naked women. But it is this public face of gaming that reinforces the stereotype that most gamers are pimply faced, socially awkward boys or men that play, in part, to see boobies, with a small population of female gamers that play to socialize or to trigger an emotional response. This insults me as a gamer, and probably insults the pimply-faced gamers boys out there who want a real game, not just a piece of fluff. While I have no doubt that the buxom figure of Lara Croft contributed to her success (supported by the existence of games such as Leisure Suit Larry), I find it hard to believe that the boob-factor is really that big of a draw compared to content, graphics, and gameplay mechanics.
It’s this feedback loop between the marketing strategies of game companies and the lack of mainstream appeal to women. I believe there is a real desire to market to women, but as the executives sit around the conference table, they wonder how to make a game that women will like. I can tell them - I like a lot of games already out there, they don’t need to spend a lot of time developing games that will “appeal to women” (though of course this won’t hurt either – more tough, gutsy, smart, normally proportioned female characters with kick ass guns or ninja skills please). As a trained anthropologist, I understand the power of culture. It is our cultural attitude towards gaming that is the ultimate barrier to women gamers. We aren’t waiting for the next perfect game designed just for us, we simply aren’t involved in the community of gamers.
Just recently, I’ve started speaking out a little more openly about my hobby. I tell people at parties, I bring it up with colleagues. I’ve decided to do my part to end the impression that there’s something shameful about being an adult, female gamer. As I talk more about it, I find more and more people sharing the Gamer Shame closet with me. This breaking down of these social conventions about gamers is what really needs to happen for the utopian image of a gender-neutral, inclusive gaming community to develop. In part, people just admitting they game is a good first step, but the game industry needs to take up the mantle and make genuine efforts to market to the adults and women out there. Changing culture isn’t easy but it is possible and I hope that by the time I might have a daughter she could proclaim her love of games to the world – without any shame at all.
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