CoaG Returns: Episode V How Girl Gamers Conquered our World
Ladies and Gentlemen of the N-Sider reading community, to the left you will see a pink GameCube wearing a thong. Isnt it sexy?
Even though after four articles I said that the CoaG series is coming to a close, I received enough emails to sit around and think up some more topics for a new set of CoaG articles. Since that time, Ive thought up topics for no less than four more episodes of these suckers so youll be stuck with me for at least another month. Getting on track however, todays article is, you guessed it, about the growing number of female gamers out there.
Im not going to find some fancy statistic saying that 40% of gamers these days are girls (at least thats what the IDSA told us at E3), but what I am going to talk about is how its every guy-gamers dream to have a girl-gamer as their significant other, what better way to sink deeper and deeper into gaming bliss than to have a girl in your arms playing right beside you, right? I am currently in that situation, and extremely happy with it as well. With the number of female gamers growing every day, you may not be surprised to see that hot-cheerleader whos dating the football jock actually be pretty into the gaming scene. During my last year of high-school, more and more girls were showing interest in gaming, even if that interest was subtle at best.
The point of these articles, and I think its doing its job, is to let the readers (you) identify and relate to the experiences and scenarios written about here, and with that Im sure most of us have sat in the computer lab at school playing either emulators of classic NES games, or had NSF/SPC files playing of our favourite videogame music. Now, something else that Im sure some of us are noticing around the world is when were sitting there playing, people will tend to watch, laugh, or say something to the effect of Hey hes playing *insert game here*. Recently, more often than not, a girl will recognize that distinctive theme and comment on it; most notably with Mario.
Is this becoming a trend in the gaming-industry today? Will we, the male-gamers of the current generation have to suffer the consequences of female-oriented and female-focused games? For some reason I dont think so. Not to sound sexist or chauvinistic, but the majority of game developers and designers are still largely male, and until the current generation of growing female gamers break into the gaming industry, the style and type of games will stay the same. Besides, most of these girl gamers I know often mention how much they love Grand Theft Auto 3 (I touched on this a few articles back).
For the last oh, say, twenty years, gaming has evolved from the nostalgic 8-bit pixels to the stunning 3d graphics of today. And so have peoples tastes. Ask any girl to this date, now that Sony has made gaming extremely mainstream in the world of teenagers both male and females, and they will most likely confess their love for the original Mario, Zelda or Sonic games (hey, some people liked genesis *cough*). I mentioned at the beginning of this article that girl gamers are taking over our lives. I dont think its just that, it also involves us, as males, to want them to take over our gaming rituals. Im going to dive into my personal life a little bit here, because Im currently dating a gamer-girl whos just as into gaming of all forms as I am.
Many of us, when faced with the opportunity to play against a female in some sort of multiplayer capacity, will take it easy for a little bit, allowing the female player to keep up with your amazing skills at the games. But what happens when you, the male, take it easy, and get your ass totally kicked? Take it even further than that, when you start focusing and playing more heavily, and shes still keeping up, perhaps even beating you, what are you going to do? Sorry, I dont think thats the correct question, it should be more along the lines of what can you do? Not a hell of a lot, it is in my opinion that the female teenagers of the world have a secret cult. A cult in which all they do is play videogames and practise, practise, practise, until they are totally confident enough that they can play against us, and continue on to school us in our favourite games.
Thats just my opinion though, but if you really think about it Look at the girl-gamers you know already, everyone knows at least one That girl gamer is undoubtedly good; because if a girl is going to let herself play videogames, shes going to go full force into the gaming world. Shell play that game till that game cant be played no more. It is also in my opinion that the female-generation of gamers today didnt start on the console. Its those nifty arcade games called Dance Dance Revolution and their 50 bazillion remixes that got the ball rolling. Now, you may or may not be asking the question: What are girls doing in an arcade? They arent in an arcade. You see, these nifty death traps are everywhere, ranging from shopping malls to movie theatres, they are infesting our daily rituals with the sweet enticing sounds of Its raining Men (Hey, I got a friend of mine to dance to it once, now that is another story all together). So as I said, these arcade games kind of pushed the female species through the threshold of the great gaming door (ooh nice metaphor, eh?) and into our reality that is being a gamer.
My girlfriend enjoys gaming, she owns a GameCube, and even plays D&D. To top it all off she is drop-dead gorgeous. This furthers my point stated above, that every-day girls are becoming more and more interested in the gaming scene. Whereas music and movies are socially accepted as cool, gaming is still definitely one of the lesser-accepted forms of entertainment in the social cliques formed at most schools and gatherings. Imagine yourself at a hot nightclub, hanging at the bar, throwing back a couple of drinks, engaging in a deep discussion about the philosophies and the next incarnation of the Legend of Zelda series. Right now, if you even tried that, youd get a weird look and possibly even slapped. But what happens in the future? I know this might just be a pipe dream, but if the gaming industry becomes as accepted as the movie industry, those types of conversations might be in the cards.
I ask you to follow me on this one here, because it might be a bit of a bumpy ride. Imagine yourself in say, ten years, two generations from the current. And the current delivery of games is by a broadband system for which you pay for games online, and they are stored locally on your Nintendo Dream consoles hard-drive. Now, also imagine you work at a highly respected law firm, or some sort of big name Company that you have to dress up all nice for when you go into work. The clock strikes noon and its lunch/break time, you go to get a cup of coffee, and just as youre about to pour your cup, a good looking co-worker comes up to you. Youve had a crush on this woman for a while now, and to break the ice you start up a conversation about your latest game download The clincher is shes interested, and perhaps even downloaded the same game, and you have the classic water cooler discussion, not about the latest episode of Survivor 36, but about a game. Hey, it could happen.
Games have always been largely accepted by males, and now that the other half of the species is getting in on it too, corporations will find ways to make it plausible to use videogames as marketing tools, as a better form of entertainment, interactive movies perhaps, and through that, various forms of gaming will appeal to the masses and the world will dive deeper into the realm of interactive entertainment.
Think about it for a while, girls are getting into gaming, everyone who was afraid to talk about their favourite franchise is finally able to start talking about their idolized heroes, and not be ashamed to do so. For that, I thank the female species, because we, as gamers, need to be accepted, need to be noticed, and its starting to happen. Join me next week when I talk about the impact of hearing the original music from those classic videogames, and the nostalgic feeling it brings back in the bottom of our hearts, and those 8-bit butterflies flapping around in our stomach.
Dean Bergmann