A couple weeks ago our weekly feature, Question of the Week, asked “Why Don’t Girls Play Gears of War?”. While writing up my contribution to the discussion, it got me thinking about the broader issues of why girls tend to play the games they do. It’s something I touched on briefly but is an issue worth exploring.

When I first started thinking about why so few girls play games like Gears; I immediately thought of the violence, ugly colours and the generally morose visual presentation. However, I soon realized that I had simply made a few passing observations based on nothing more than common stereotypes about women like, “they hate blood and gore, but love cute things and shopping”. It’s a trap that the heavily male dominated video game industry, press and wider gamer community need to be acutely aware of when discussing issues involving gender.

While it’s a point I was quick to poke fun (e.g. lancer purse), I seriously began to question the validity of approaching “who plays what games and why?” on the basis of gender. Take my girlfriend (as an example) who does enjoy among other things, shopping, cute things and the occasional video game. Among her favourite games are Animal Crossing, Super Mario World and Space Invaders Extreme; nothing Earth shattering there. But surprisingly, she often expressed interest in titles like God of War or Dante’s Inferno. When pressed to play them or other “hardcore” games in general, she generally turns me down saying that “they’re too complicated” or that she’s “afraid” she’d be “bad at them”. So if her reaction is typical of a lot of girls that play games (as it seems to be), there is something deeper at work.

Games that break the gender barrier?

Recently, Reggie Fils-Amie, President of Nintendo of America, was boasting about Nintendo’s dominance of the female gamer demographic claiming 80% of them as their own [Kotaku.com]. At first glance, this fits in nicely with most males’ dubious notions about female gamers with the Wii’s abundance of cute, brightly coloured, family friendly games. But I contest, that it is the accessibility of these games that draws women to them.

Follow me on this one; in the history of video games most females are fairly new to games, not surprisingly so, as the industry has only made major inroads to them in the last 5 years or so (the minority being long time gamers). And we in the male “hardcore” community often forget that we’ve probably been playing games for the better part of our lives. We’re also commonly unaware of how many games like Gears, Uncharted or Resident Evil rely on preconceived notions and practiced skills that can only be learned by having played many, many games.

Normally, we don’t really think of playing games as requiring many physical skills, but it does. Most “hardcore” games demand a significant amount of manual dexterity, quick reflexes and visual tracking that is uncommon in other everyday activities. Also, there are a lot of esoteric conventions in games that seem obvious to us like “shoot the glowing parts”, “the last boss has three phases” or “red barrels explode”, but not so obvious to newer gamers. Games can also be quite punishing, with failure meaning repeating a stage, losing hard earned valuables, and defeat. Some games even incorporate death as a frequent and necessary element [Ian May Cry]. It can be very intimidating and disheartening to the uninitiated, enough to discourage them from playing further. On the other hand, regular gamers tend to treat these as challenges, often developing adversarial relationships with their games.

You have to shoot the glowing parts

So the result is that a lot of girl gamers might be choosing games, not based on men’s preconceived ideas of what women like, but on the basis of their comfort and experience level. Back to Reggie and his claim, it’s more accurate to attribute the Wii’s success with women on the basis of marketing and its predominantly fun, intuitive and non-punishing games. By no means is this an entirely accurate explanation that is applicable to all female gamers, but it’s certainly more thoughtful than passing judgments based on bad stereotypes.