7. THE WORLD IS MADE OF DOOM AND GLOOM

You’ve only got four pages to correct millions of years worth of gender coding, evolutionary development, and entrenched perceptions, and still need to shoe-horn in your manifesto, your clever idea for an all-encompassing game that will make the girls of the word go ‘Squeee!’ in unison, the boxout about accidentally testing the state of the world by playing a female MMORPG character on All The Cliches Turn Up At Once Day, and the follow-up anecdote, where you annoyed a lady-Quaker by delivering a lengthy lecture on sexism to the guy she put on Ignore several sentences back, resulting in the bomb going off and your team losing the round but winning the war… on sexism!

Defeating sexism, one mind at a time

With this in mind, everyone will understand that you didn’t have time to mention, say, Jeanette/Therese in Bloodlines, Annah/Fall-From Grace and Ravel in Planescape, SHODAN in System Shock, Zoe Castillo and April Ryan from the Longest Journey games, Nico from Broken Sword, Farah in Prince of Persia, Grace from Gabriel Knight, Rinoa, Cate Archer, Meche in Grim Fandango, D’Arcy Stern from Urban Chaos, Starcraft’s Kerrigan, Monkey Island’s Elaine Marley/Threepwood, Angel and Spirit and Flint and Rachael from Wing Commander, Realms of the Haunting’s Rebecca Trevisard, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, Syberia’s Kate Walker, Laura Bow, the unnamed heroine of Plundered Hearts, or the princesses of Tribes: Vengeance, or Quest for Glory’s Katrina, or Thief’s Viktoria… certainly, you won’t have the space for names like Sierra designers Jane Jensen, Lori Cole, Christy Marx and Lorelei Shannon, or to point out that Everquest’s oft-criticised art design was done by Rosie Cosgrove, or that Playboy: The Mansion was designed by Brenda Braithwaite, who also chairs the IGDA’s ‘Sex in Games’ sections and has a book coming out on the subject, or Emily Short’s legendary status in the interactive fiction community, or Dan/Dani Bunten Berry, the designer Warren Spector didn’t want to meet for fear of sounding like a dribbling fanboy...

After all, none of that stuff matters. It’s more important to highlight the glaring gaps in the industry than give practical examples of just how a wider perspective has actually helped - tiresome, irrelevant junk like how damn near every game that’s had the nerve to cover sexual topics on an adult level has had a female designer at the helm.

Don’t worry though: there’s always enough space to namecheck Custer’s Revenge. Some things are just too important to slip into obscurity, and if that doesn’t include a rape-based action game for the Atari 2600, I don’t know what does.

8. EVERYONE REALLY LOVES GAMES

The only people who don’t are the ones who haven’t been fixed yet. Remember, getting a non-gaming girlfriend into Quake isn’t like you being cajoled to get into Mills and Boon - it’s like handing over the whole entire world of reading in one beautiful go! And nothing’s more fun than having someone read over your shoulder, especially when they keep complaining you’re reading the wrong way, or reading too slowly, or not appreciating the finer details of the articles you totally buy the magazine for. Which leads us neatly to:

9. THE INDUSTRY’S BOTTOM LINE IS YOUR PROBLEM

Never make the thrust of your argument ‘girls should play games because they might find them fun’, or ‘sharing the fun with a loved one’, or anything gay like that. Serve up as much data as you can find on the financial side, of how many more copies of games the companies could sell, and what percentage of the market is going untapped. It’s not about the experience, or enjoyment, but the rampant commercialism. That XX% of the market isn’t merely a shame because many people who don’t play games, male and female alike, would have a great time with the hobby we love; it’s a worldwide travesty not seen since the dinosaurs disappeared.

This may seem an odd thing to focus on, but look at it this way: the bigger the industry is, the more features you can write about it being too commercial! Everyone wins!

10. IGNORE EVERYTHING IN THIS POST EXCEPT THIS ONE LINE AND THE BIT ABOUT THE “LARA’S BACK” JOKE, BECAUSE SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, STOP IT ALREADY.

I have four feet, my bottom is bright green, and I live in an igloo on Saturn.

This article originally published in Richard's Online Journal
and has been reprinted with permission from the author.

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.