Gaming: A Man's World?

After reading a very inspiring article about how girls supposedly don’t exist on the internet, I felt obliged…no, wait – I felt it to be my duty, as someone who likes to keep up with the ever changing world of Media to look deeper into this to prove it true or indeed false.

My name is Nikki Rieth. I’m a dual nationality girl who lives in Mossley and works every now and again and the level 143 HUnewearl Sylverline who can constantly kick your rear in Phantasy Star Online’s Battle mode in my spare time. I’m not quite sure why people will gladly accept the first part of that paragraph but would cry wolf at the second. Logic escapes me.

Is there a reason why we can’t be accepted? Well…Let’s take a look at some of the things which I think play a massive part in creating these stereotypes:

The advertisements: well, some of them are absolutely pathetic, to put it bluntly. Around 85% of these advertisements feature violence, gore, aggression, bling…the things which are typically associated with those who are from Mars. Yes Mr.PS2, yes Mr. Big CEO on his big leather chair thinking about the next big thing – I’m looking right at you.

Lets just use the latest PSP print ads as an example; the ones with red text on white backgrounds (which, funnily enough, have now apparently been removed from billboards and bus stops everywhere). Now these usually contained "witty" comments, which made little to no sense at all; however, one day I came across a certain one of these which infuriated me. This one said "your girlfriend's white bits here".

What's so bad about that? Well where are a girl's "white bits" anyway? Take a moment to ask yourself and think about that.

Got it? That's right: they happen to be the most intimate "bits" of a girl's body. Now comparing some shoddy little handheld to that is just unacceptable to me and this is one of many things which often make me feel like throwing all my consoles, handhelds and my laptop out of the window with a loud string of profanities.

In today’s multi-channel, multi-plex, multi-platformed world where Industry controls all, we’re seeing a constant reoccurrence of exactly what we wanted to get rid of in the past. What’s worse: most of us don’t even notice it.

Girls are being left behind in the rapidly developing gaming world with only around a third of girls owning a console to themselves compared to almost all boys ages 11-18. What the heck is going on?

The answer is simply: the Media doesn’t think girls should be playing games.

Instead, we should be reading magazines on boys and worrying about the fact that we’re 11 years old and we haven’t had our first cycle yet (be thankful, is my advice to those in that bracket). We should be wearing bright pink playboy tracksuits and caking ourselves in make-up to resemble our favourite star: Kate Moss. What does this have to do with gaming I hear you yell? It’s a long story, but trust me – it makes absolute sense.

See – the law of any business is that a product must adapt to its audiences – playing on the interests at the time. If one product creates a massive trend, it can send shockwaves through every other business, the best recent example being the introduction of those charity bracelets of every colour which mean next to nothing if you think about it. Sure I have one myself. A friend gave it to me. It’s black and it says “Intelligence Matters” – rather fitting. Then the circle starts again, with every company under the sun trying to give the same piece of plastic a different slogan.

So basically, the gaming industry is playing on our interests, or rather on the interests of the lads since they represent the majority of the audience. What do the lads of our time apparently like? Violence. Lots of it. It’s all a bit chavtastic really. Just look at 50 Cent’s game “Bulletproof” or "Dead Or Alive Xtreme Volleyball" - both reek of 'manliness'.

But its not reduced to this alone, in fact its become a trait in many other genres whether it the RPG (with Final Fantasy X-2 being borderline pornographic material thanks to the scene in the hot Springs), the RPG (Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball) and…the RPG

‘Ello…Did I just say RPG three times?

Unfortunately yes, it seems that RPG’s are becoming the main culprits of this crime, with more and more developers taking those skirts higher and higher to try and pull more of the male eyes to their games. Yay to desensitization. Again Final Fantasy X-2 is a fantastic example of this with its mediocre narrative at best put behind all its garment grids, dress-spheres and shots of Rikku’s cleavage. And it really really gets my goat. Really.

There is such a negative representation of female characters in RPG’s, just look at half the cast in Dead or Alive, look at PG tits Lara Croft (though Tomb Raider: Legend has seen Lara get a full work-over which does indeed include a breast reduction. Hurray for Crystal Dynamics!), look at the fantasticness who was Lulu in Final Fantasy X – her character lost because of THAT dress. It’s just too much for those of us who choose not to read the latest edition of Bliss to take, because if we play a game we’re either men trying to be women, we’re ugly, we’re looking for a bit of cyber-action and everything else which my good friend Teleios has already gone through.

Basically, this has been a massive rant from an angry girl who is sick to death of seeing the game advertisements which all full to the brim with the same, old, repetitive notice of crush, kill, destroy...All that mindless yapping. Stop with this segregation and give girls a slice of your attention, Mr. CEO. I am part of your audience. You have to adapt to my likings or lose me and that bit of revenue and good press I bring.

And in this business, the third of us females who own consoles to ourselves along with other blokes who just might think like me – we are legion and we thank you, Mr XBOX360, we thank you, Mr. Sega, we thank you Crystal Dynamics and Rareware. For listening to our cries.

* A massive thanks to Whitney Butts for writing the article on which this was based on.