Greetings! My tutorial presentation is on Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell's article (2008) 'From Quake Grrls to Desperate Houswives: a decade of gender and computer games'.
Jenkins and Cassell’s short and informative article explores the relation between gender and gaming over the past decade. In particular the article explores the types of games being targeted towards the growing number of girl gamers.
Although progress has been made the gaming industry it is still catering for a stereotypical image of girl gamers. The stereotypical girl gamer, for instance, isn’t interested in the latest action release. It is a stereotype which suggests girls need to be taught how to cook, care for pets and play virtual dress ups. Girl gamers are being conditioned into games which perpetuate images of the perfect housewife and mother. It made me wonder how many racing car games had a majority of female characters to select from. So whilst this stereotype continues to be perpetuated by the gaming industry, games haven’t become a gender free zone.
The gaming industry is a growing field. A decade ago, Jenkins and Cassell point out, a feminist conference about gaming was controversial. A lot has changed over the past decade and the article reflects the authors continued interest in this field. Jenkins and Cassell were particularly interested in what games were being made and targeted towards girls. Despite the developments made in the past decade women are still the minority in the field of digital design technology and the implications of this cannot be ignored. If women are the minority working on developing games, men must make up the difference. How profitable are girl games? What kind of benefits do these companies receive for tailoring towards a gendered consumer?
Consider Desperate Housewives verus The Sims. I haven’t played either of these games but I suspect that The Sims is kind of never ending game. Desperate Housewives on the other hand places the gamer into the community. What happens once the gamer has solved the puzzles and fitted into the community? Restarting the game won’t be like creating another sim. The game, I imagine, would simply repeat the same formula over and over again. The end result: a new game must be brought to satisfy the gamers thirst for challenges and change. It suggests the constant need for girl gamers to purchase new games, thus becoming a target audience. Is it any wonder there aren’t many girly games available or variations of existing games for the millions of girl gamers? What kind of computer or video games do we engage in? Does gender affect your choices or attitude towards the idea of gaming itself?
The article also highlighted a diverse range of opinions. The ideas presented stemmed from a feminist understanding of gaming as ‘site to right all kinds of wrongs’ (303). An idea which didn’t really seem compatible with the gaming industry catering towards established gender roles. The games for girls tended to have a softer selection of background colours (how many car rallies take place with a pale lilac track?) and interface designs which were more ‘friendly’ for the user. The smaller, newer companies on the market which could offer a potential alternative to stifling gendered games currently on the market are under strong pressure to acquiesce to the major companies. Sadly these larger companies aren’t pushing for feminist games.
I feel like the article didn’t really reach a conclusion. It felt like one long discussion. Although it did get me thinking, is it common to hear or see girls buying or playing videogames? Every time I’ve stepped into a computer store, women have been the minority. Scanning the latest games available, the gender gap seems enormous. My local target catalogue, for instance, devoted an entire page to ‘girly’ games and in a small box on the opposite page were the ‘serious’ games. All the games were from large electronics companies. The girly type games included Hannah Montana, pet animals and fashion advice. Although it appeared games geared towards a female market received more attention, the intention of the games certainly weren’t screaming pro-feminism. These are hardly the kind of games which transgress the gender divide.
The relationship between gender and technology needs to be explored further. Is the seemly large focus on girly type games in target catalogues a form of feminist backlash? The majority of games aimed at girls today seem to propagate the stereotypical image of the girl gamer. So, do you think we should be critical of the games available? Is the relationship between gender and technology something that needs more attention?
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6 comments:
Thanks for Claire's presentation! Also your responses to this article are interesting, esp. the relationship between gender and gaming, and marketing on girls gamers.
I consider myself as a gamer for more than ten years and I love Asian strategic games and "beat 'em up" games, in which these games are often associated to masculinity. I consider that gender has somewhat differ the choices and attitudes towards a particular genre of games, but not gaming itself. The attitude of gaming associated with gender difference has changed over a decade as less stereotyping on girl gamers in recent years. However, the type of "girlish" games, such as the genre of romance, are still needed, in order to fulfil the girl gamers' fantasy, and they may gain the achievement while they're enjoying the game. Recently that is a Japanese online game which targeted on girl gamers who usually spend lots of time to surf on the Internet and considered themselves as "less-socialized", to date with one of four "handsome" virtual guys. It shows that there is a potential market for selling the games which contained romantic love story, to girl gamers, and suggested that gender difference has generated and affected the different choices of games. It is unusual to see a girl gamer who favour on the horror games which contained lots of vamprie, and walking towards the screen, towards herself.
It is interesting that Jenkins and Cassell considered The Sims itself as a vigorous fan culture. It reminds me the ambiance of the game culture such as fan community and Cosplay. The costumes for female figure in many games are designed as "sexualized" or "childish"(as an accordance of one of girl figure in Russian novel, Lolita). Do you guys consider that is a kind of design to under-representing women?
is the tute is in class this week?
At least the unit guide suggests so...
Yes, the unit outline stated that the week 11 tutorial will be in class, but the presenter still need to post the presentation on the webblog.
Yeah in regards to Ka hung's question I feel a lot of games tend to sexualize women's bodies a LOT - no matter what the type of game it is(from GTA IV to the Sims 2). Of course this isn't always the case, but just looking at the covers of various video games of all genres, the females on them tend to be exaggerated and stereotypical. I actually stumbled across an article a few weeks ago on video game art and gender:
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-top-7-lazy-character-clichs/a-2008072111311385086/p-7
The obvious idea that 'sex sells' is obviously used a lot with video game marketing - and i think that may be why a lot of females are wary of these types of games.
I think a lot of girls do play video games though - even though there is a strong idea within society that it is a male oriented activity. I actually know a few people who play video games on xbox/ps3 and online games too, and I dont really think its that big of a deal. I've played halo and runescape with my friends and my brother and its funny because you do get treated differently if you present yourself as a girl(hence the reason why one of my friends plays as a male). Me and my friends used to play pokemon & digimon & the sims in primary school too - the guys didn't give us a hard time at all(they actually wanted to play too :P)
I've also played the Sims and I had heaps of fun playing it - I find a lot of people love customizing their sims though(because you can create basically anything for your sims characters) and there is a pretty big focus on how your sim looks and dresses etc. In this way I guess video games do help emphasize society's gender images - ironically with the help of individuals(males/females alike) themselves!!!
The Nintendo DS has targeted the female market with its games and design though - I was reading about this on wired(I was thinking about buying a DS haha):
http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/05/japan_games
So you can buy the DS in pink etc - obviously showing the manufacturers are thinking about girls as well as male gamers. Nonconventional markets are also being targetted - there's actually a lot of girly, iq type games for DS which is aimed for children and adults alike. You could argue the use of soft colors/interfaces/girly themes aren't 'feminist' but honestly - can you EVER truly escape society's ideas on gender??? I mean - not all girls like Hannah Montana and fashion - so they probably won't be interested in those types of games. You don't need to be a guy to enjoy car racing games either...I spose its just breaking out of that stereotype that all girls love fashion and animals. I think the DS targetting all age/gender ranges has definitely contributed to more sales worldwide anyhow...
(hope this is at least coherent enough to understand...it's late and I'm tired! :P)
See ya guys tomorrow!
I just wanted to thank you for your comments! I've noted them down for discussion at the tutorial today, so it should be good fun!
hey... I'm contributing here for this weeks discussion, because unfortunately couldn't make it for the tutorial yesterday.
I think the only video game I have ever played was some ancient nintendo mario game, which was all about picking the right mushrooms or something... So i guess my idea of video games is not that advanced. Yesterday when we were looking at the Playstation magazines though, it wasn't that surprising that they were mostly about violence, war i.e. 'masculine' topics. Why wasn't it surprising? Well, I guess I have always thought of gaming as more like a boy thing. Although I realize that a lot of this has to do with the cultural represenation and stereotyping, I also think that it is simply because women are not that interested in playing video games. And this is not to say that all women are not interested/can't or shouldn't play video games but maybe the majority just don't want to? At least I (and majority of my friends)feel that I rather do something else like read a book or go for a walk. I totally respect and understand those who love playing video games, but if as many women were very interested in gaming as men, I would expect that the market would be more equally distributed for everyone's interests.
Well, it might be true that women aren't interested excatly because their interests are not considered as much and they are always represented stereotypically in the gaming world. But this would just be stupid of the gaming companies! Why not try to reach all consumers?
I think this is where a lot of the gaming companies go wrong. They figure out: oh, hey! maybe women want to play games too! and then they create a brainless shopping or celebrity game assuming that it is what women want. Well, I'm still unimpressed. I think nintendo Wii is possibly getting there. Especially its health game sounds like a game that I could give a go. It's ineresting to think how games such as Wii are a step towards the mixture of virtual and real. I mean that video game is not just sitting on the floor anymore pressing puttons. it actually involves physical action yet it is completely virtual. That's kind of cool.
I just listened to the news and according to some new research, video games have been proven to be beneficial rather than harmful for kids. (when used in moderation) I can definetly believe this, as playing video games requires social interacting, problem solving and other skills that kids need to learn. Over all, i think video games are a good thing, it is just that the nasty, violent and sexist image needs to be wiped and recreated.
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