Every Monday the LeftStickRight team will take on a different topic surrounding news or interesting topics about games or the gaming industry and open it up for discussion. Our three editors will give their perspective and you are welcome to give your own. Agree? Disagree?

The topic this week is: Why don’t girls play Gears of War?

Tim’s Take

Girls don’t play Gears of War? Sorry, dude; I wouldn’t know. I don’t play Xbox 360. I play Wii, which Nintendo recently said 80% of girl gamers actually do play. It takes a ladies’ man to respect a ladies’ console, ya dig?

…Actually, at the time I’m writing this, I’m the only single contributor here. Be strong, Tim. Just move along…

Seriously, it’d be pretty easy to get away with saying, “Most girls just aren’t hardcore gamers,” except there are casual games on other consoles, too, and Microsoft and Sony have been spending a good deal of money letting everyone know that fact. The Wii has a higher concentration of games that are more pick-up-and-play, true, but maybe it’s also preferred for what it doesn’t have.

Let’s say you’re a dedicated girl gamer who wants to “show her cred” by getting into a game like Gears of War or Halo. You get online for some deathmatch play, put on your mic and utter your first sentence out to the game world in your most determined yet still naturally feminine tone. Unfortunately, there’s something about that frequency—something that will make every 14-year-old boy who hears you take momentary pause from his hobby of teabagging pixellated corpses and mutating obscenities into undiscovered hybrids to realize there is a VIDEO GAME-PLAYING FEMALE in his midst and quickly descend upon your eardrums in the world’s worst attempts to impress you.

That’s why some girls don’t play Gears of War and prefer a system that’s as long of a pole away from the “hardcore gamer” as possible. Now let me eat my Easy Mac.

Ian H’s Take

There is such a high amount of machismo associated with games like Gears of War. All the main characters are gruff, low voiced, piles of muscle and scar tissue armed with deadly weapons with equally as deadly weapons attached to them. While the story is mostly a set-piece, the focus for games like that seem to centre along a multiplayer aspect that houses a culture barely kind enough to any subsection of the human race, let alone when someone displaying obvious signs of being outside the average audience appears (vis a vis “omg a grl”). I understand why it may be a difficult environment to thrive in for someone that may not fit into the target audience, but I guess the better question is why do we always consider the target audience to be male.

Without getting too entrenched in gender issues, I’ll try and explain why I think these games miss the boat when it comes to a larger audience. For one, a lack of strong, relatable characters in a game that features story or personality quite heavily can make it difficult to get attached to quickly. That coupled with a complete lack of strong, female characters in most hit titles, and any females that try and deft that are often left with the product of over-sexualization to reach out towards the audience that has eaten up the genre in years past.

Strong female role model

There are lots of women playing games like Halo and the like, so it is a baiting question to say that no girls play Gears of War, but the way the whole environment and style of play that is associated with those games are based on a level that equates them with action-movies. Mindless gore, tenious stories with little emotional involvement in the actual characters on screen and often hostile environments online is just a mix that doesn’t hit the right buttons for a larger appeal, at least in the long term. That and the fact that marketing strategies are often pointed directly at the “core” demographics through other forms of media simply propagates a lack of interest.

Ian Y’s Take

Lets face it: girls don’t play Gears of War because it’s devoid of all those things girls love, like shopping, chocolate and hunky guys. It would have to look something like this:

Welcome to Heels of War! PUMPS, the human intergalactic governing body of fair prices is locked in an epic struggle against the Locust for control over Promenade, the galaxy’s largest shopping planet. Take on the role of Maria Fox, leader of Delta Squadron, PUMPS’ fiercest group of fighting fashionistas! Now featuring fabulous weapons like the Gucci Diamond Studded Lancer Clutch Purse!

More like ten purse loads...

Ok, I’m through being dumb. But seriously, most girls don’t play Gears because the entire philosophy behind its design, aesthetic and themes is highly male oriented. You could blame a whole host of things like the blood, violence, drab colour palate but some girls do play other games that share these same features. Where I think Gears alienates women the most is with its characters and their relationships with each other. Just look at the main characters, they’re the epitome of the stereotypical foul-mouth tough guys. And the way they relate is in that “wartime brotherhood between solders” sort of way. These might appeal to men, but I know a lot of women who would dismiss this sort of storytelling as “dumb guy stuff” along with other pillars of male culture like covenants, bro codes and watching sport highlight reels.