Video Games and Gender

The issue of gender and video games is not quite as incendiary as that of violence, but adds its own stigma to the medium. The roots of the problem stem from the fact that the game industry was started by males who made games for themselves. As the industry took off, game developers continued to build games for the audience they knew and were making so much money, they had no real incentive to change. Occasionally a title would come out that appealed to both males and females, but it was more often by chance than design. The few titles that did come out targeting females were so bad (probably because they were designed by men guessing what women would like, always a task fated to fail), they just reinforced the notion that there was no female audience for games. The industry didn’t or couldn’t realize that there were innate differences between male and female game players, differences which are described in detail in Henry Jenkins’ 2001 article From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Further Reflections.

As the industry matured, women started joining the ranks of designers, artists and programmers, the people who actually made the games, and began to bring their sensibilities to the medium. One of things that started to change was how gender roles were portrayed in games. Usually either expendable boy-toys or absent altogether, female characters started showing up as major characters who would think first and shoot later such as in the huge franchise Final Fantasy. Female villains started showing up, their cunning and intellect posing a bigger threat than their male counterparts’ ray guns and grenades. And then there is the queen of video games, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. If you can get past her playboy figure, she is an extremely strong and, in later versions of the game, a very sensitive female hero who knows what she wants and won’t let anything stand in her way. Male fantasy on looks, yes, but also a character girls liked to play. Not to mislead, gender roles still have a very far way to go in video games, but at least there’s a start.

As for who is playing games, there is growing evidence that things have started to change there, too. 39% of all game players are female and, as the USA Today article “Video Games Now Draw More Women Than Boys” illustrates, more women play games than boys. While parity may still be a long way off, the potential of the female audience has finally been recognized and games are being made that target it. The Barbie and Dora the Explorer franchises have been extremely successful among girls and older female players are flocking to play The Sims franchise and MMORPGs. Female gamers even have their own websites such as WomenGamers.com and are written about extensively in game publications such as the Gamespot.com article The Girl Gamer’s Manifesto.

The biggest problem the gender gap has on using games in the classroom is similar to the one posed by violence. Teachers need to be careful when choosing games to use in order to make sure they appeal to the age and gender of the students they are teaching.