Media Post Publications reports that women may own more game consoles than men do.

Of the more than 1,000 respondents to the Denizens of Digitivity survey, released last week, 44% of women said they own a gaming console such as a Wii, Xbox or PlayStation, compared with just 39% of men. The survey was conducted online from Sept. 7-11.

There are probably more than a few statistical errors in this study, but it’s still nice to see something that states very clearly that women are just as interested in gaming as men. The gaming culture has to react… but how?

As more women game, the definition of ‘casual gamer’ expands

Pai posted a few weeks ago about the problem with ‘Girl Games.’

We sneer and recoil at these “girl games,” designed by men for women. These are stupid, we think, and by extension: those who play these games are stupid. Therefore, women are stupid. Rarely do we automatically separate intended audience from the motivations and attitudes of the creators themselves. Therefore, our own prejudices arise, and the separation of “girls” from “the rest of the world” feels unfortunately familiar. It’s a social construct that molds our personal opinions in a million subtle ways until we accept things such as sexism as normal. Stereotypes formulate: Barbie, the blond-haired bimbo who loves to shop. And so, in the modern mind, women are no more than a consumerist society with nothing better to do than shop or cook or do their makeup all day.

I thought more of this as I found this article about the Agatha Christie game in the Times Online.

More than 60 per cent of gamers are male, according to a recent survey by the Entertainment Software Association. But other research shows than more than three quarters of “casual gamers” – playing games predominantly downloaded from the internet to a PC – are female.

According to IRM, 60 per cent of the purchasers of Death on the Nile are women.

The problem here is that definition of casual game. Typically, it means two things: either a game that is easy to pick up and put down (like Bejeweled) and a game that doesn’t require a lot of investment of money or knowledge of game mechanics (like solitaire). Frankly, casual gaming means: can you sit down and play this for just five minutes while you wait for a client to call you back?

The Agatha Christie games don’t appear to meet those two criteria. While they are not as expensive as most games, they still require a software purchase and install (which isn’t such a big deal anymore), and more of an investment of time than, say, Luxor. They don’t require hand-eye coordination, but the point of the game is to be immersed in an Agatha Christie murder mystery, which is going to require large blocks of time devoted to cutscenes where you watch the characters talk, and game mechanics a little more advanced than merely placing cards. It could be very easily referred to as a sort of “simplified gaming” experience, but it’s a big leap to call it “casual” gaming, as it doesn’t look like it’s a simple pick-up-put-down game.

I’m actually pretty happy that the Agatha Christie series has been doing well — it’s been heaped with scorn from traditional gaming sites and now business articles, and I didn’t think that people who would read Agatha Christie would want to play a game that just retreads the book. So it’s great that the title is doing well and reaching out to women who wouldn’t normally game.

But back to the original article: It wasn’t long ago that the concept of a “console gamer” was the complete antithesis of “casual gamer” because consoles’ only purpose was gaming. Casual gamers were people who bought computers to do wordprocessing, email, or family history on, and then discovered that it came with Solitaire. To buy a console means “I want to play games to the exclusion of real work.” While consoles now offer more robust services than simply games, I don’t think that there are many people buying an XBox so that they can watch movies, or tracking down a Wii so that they can have the Weather Channel.

The culture of anxious masculinity marries very well with the culture of gaming. To be a man is to reject all things female and feminine: beyond purses and the color pink, anything that enjoys a female following is considered less-than and men who like the same thing are open for ridicule. Movies, music, books, and videogames — if girls like it, then liking it makes your girly. Using the videogame culture to bolster one’s masculinity means further dividing manly games from girly games — hardcore games from casual games, splatterfests from music and simulation games, and PS3s from Wiis.

As women continually encroach upon sacred male gaming space, anxious males must look for excuses as to why this is happening:

She’s just trying to look cool because she wants a date.
Gaming sites love to play this up with their Real Life Hot Gamer Chicks features showing a bunch of women in their underwear holding XBox controllers. They’re out there! They’re hot and horny! They want to meet a guy… like you!

Suggesting that women enjoy men’s activities because they want access to the men themselves is such a pathetic argument one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. First off, if the games are so unpleasant that the only reason that a woman would want to play is because she wants to hook up with a guy — why do guys play them? Secondly, if you talk to most MMO players, it isn’t the female characters hitting on the male characters. In fact, it’s much more of a problem for a male player to wonder if the woman they’re hitting on actually has the hardware behind the software, if you catch my meaning.

The games they like aren’t ‘real’ games.
If DDR, The Sims, and Guitar Hero aren’t games, I’d like to know what they are. Work? Chores? Art? Playing these titles certainly causes the same player reactions as titles like Half Life and Halo — the desire to keep playing, to do better, and to score points. A ‘casual game’ like Solitaire or Bejeweled may just be a means of killing time while you wait for your friend to arrive, but games like Animal Crossing set clear goals and a lot of time and effort goes into reaching those goals.

The games offer something girly and that’s what the girls are playing for
We’ve seen this a lot already in reporting. What are they playing for? Shopping and dress-up! The MMO’s in particular are accused of this. Yes, there are a few titles that are pretty heavy on the consumer aspect (again, Animal Crossing), but somehow I don’t think that women are playing Twilight Princess just so they can go to the Malo Mart.

Also, a lot is said about the “social simulations” in games. But DDR and Guitar Hero aren’t social simulators, and they’ve got a huge female fanbase. Also, The Sims and World of Warcraft are just as popular with men — and yet no one is saying that men play because they like the social interactions of the games.

When women play games, there must be some reason other than simply “games are fun.” Men are not asked these questions.

* * *

Game reporting is starting to become more of a staple of the mainstream media, and there’s a lot of frantic reporting being done of this sudden influx of girl gamers. Most of what I’ve read is presented from a problematic angle: What do they want? What could they be? Why are they here? What can we give them to make them go away and leave us alone? And most importantly How can we move them out of our space into their own separate space so that they don’t pollute us with their cooties?

The separateness is key. If women like the same things that men do, then men won’t have an easy time showing other men how they’re not women (which are less-than). In my weaker moments, I almost feel bad for the men, because they’re retreating. Guitar Hero and Zelda used to be perfectly acceptable to play as a manly man, but now they’re becoming off-limits because they’re “girly.” RPGs and MMOs seem to be falling to the Pink Menace, and who knows what will fall after that?

Mighty Ponygirl posted this entry on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 8:38 am and filed it under Gaming News, General Feminism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.