Our features editor over at Destructoid, Reverend Anthony, started issuing a monthly topic for both editors and community members to write about. Last month's topic was a topic regarding the 'Good Idea, Bad Idea' take on various gaming mechanisms which successfully fueled several insightful posts. This month's topic titled "...And the gamers who play them" invited the gaming community to intelligently approach the various subcultures that have spawned from videogame culture. As you might imagine, this was my opportunity to finally voice all that internalized opinion I've had about the 'Girl Gamers' out there.
I fretted. A lot. I spent over a month revising my piece until I felt it stood on its own two feet. The issue of Girl Gamers is often met with a lot of 'Stop beating the dead horse', 'Talking about it makes it worse', and 'STFUAJPG' ( aka "Shut the F*** up and just play games). I wanted to make sure my words had clarity and purpose to them, that even those who didn't entirely agree with me would at least take a moment to think about what I had said. When I set the post live this afternoon my body felt like a Butterfly garden. was terrified to see how people would react.
Fortunately, I think the piece held together and succeeded. The comments were relatively positive and supportive (particularly given the negative nature of our community), and when some disagreed they suggested relatively well thought-out counter arguments. I feel like I did justice, and while there are still a lot of questions unanswered about the topic itself I know I did my best.
For those of you who want to check out the whole article with some NSFW-ish examples of the 'Girl Gamers' I discuss head here. For those of you who want to offer a homie a little Digg-love digg here. But if you just want to take a seat and read a lotta bit of text then here goes nothing:
For this month's musing I
chose to digest the sub-culture of 'Girl Gamers' that has managed to
quickly surface alongside the increased popularity of gaming in the
mass media.
So to avoid any confusion, the term 'Girl Gamers'
is intended to define the populace of female gamers who identify with
said terminology and who particularly rely on the alienation of their
gender as a means of gaining attention from the larger gamer
demographic.
If
one attempts to dig deep within the reserves of videogame history, it's
unlikely that they'll uncover the instance of the very first woman who
graced her femininity upon a console (well, aside from the Computer Space ad,
that is). There are several reasons why this moment was never
documented -- mostly because videogame history is predominantly about
videogames (imagine that!), but partly because members of the opposite
sex playing games isn't very noteworthy in the most fundamental scope
of things. I play. You play. We all play, with or without va-jay-jays.
Facts
are facts, however, and despite the occasional news announcement
reminding the public that female gamers actually exist (apparently at
38% of gamers
strong), we all know that videogames are predominantly enjoyed by a
male demographic. That being said, there is also no denying the slender
aura of novelty that immediately adheres itself to a woman who plays
games, whether she craves the inherent attention or attempts to avoid
it.
This dichotomy, while not unique, is of interest to the
likes of marketing gurus who determinedly pervert this
gender-dissonance to their advantage. Thus, what is eventually revealed
in the history of gaming media is the attractive (and often
scantily clad)
female gaming idol embodied by such women as Morgan Webb, Olivia Munn,
and Jessica Chobot. All beautiful and consistently visual, these women
and others were the few mass-displayed female figures in the gaming
industry to be ravenously consumed by gaming's very own male
demographic.
Sex
sells, and while the rest of the female gamers remained ambivalent to
gender differentiation amidst their game playing, the few esteemed
faces of the beautiful rooted themselves as the visual representatives
of the 'Girl Gamer'. The collective reception and praise of these
visual idols by a male-dominant industry garnered an image-heavy notion
of the 'Girl Gamer', a notion which to this day has yet to be the equal
case for male gamers.
Galleries of E3 booth babes, "hot...naked...and blue" Cortana cosplays,
and any number of chicks with joysticks establish a visual narrative
for gaming women that heightens gender alienation while simultaneously
muffling the significance of the woman gamer's voice. There is no doubt
that Ubisoft took advantage of this exact instance by baiting the
accomplished, intelligent, and most importantly attractive producer
Jade Raymond to the gaming audience to steer public attention to their
game Assassin's Creed. In turn, the only surface-level 'heroes'
or 'icons' of the female gaming community are the beautifully
unattainable likes of Munn or Webb, regarded first and foremost in this
industry for their looks.
And so the standard for the 'Girl
Gamer' is set and an equation for success is discovered. Take an
attractive woman and pair her alongside a gaming device of some sort.
Congratulations! You've captured the attention of a massive chunk of
the gaming demographic. What better avenue is there to market your gaming products? Hot girls are hot, gaming boys like gaming girls, and most importantly we're all having fun with our irresponsible gender stereotypes. Nothing wrong with fun, guys!
So
what, then? Structured by the mass media as a marketing device and fed
by a surge of online egoism (thanks to social media sites such as
MySpace and the proliferation of digital cameras), the 'Girl Gamer'
specimen has, in turn, infected the masses with false promises of
niche-specific fame and glory. In the same way people fantasize about
becoming a celebrity, these 'Girl Gamers' seek the attention of
becoming the next 'it' girl of their respective gaming community
through the prolific distribution of sexually charged images and
continuously capitalizing on their sex -- both of which, consequently,
have relatively little to do with gaming itself.
What's
to follow but the Chobot wannabes slathering their tongues across
portable consoles for the camera, or the suspiciously excessive amount
of 'Girl Gamer' self-portraits involving various game-related
paraphernalia (or lack thereof)? Whatever neutral connotations of women
gamers existed in the past are overthrown with the photographic barrage
of sexually charged images brought to us by the 'Girl Gamers'. They're
beautiful, they know which side is their good side, and they're
comfortable enough with their sexuality to let us know they're proud of
it. If you've got it, flaunt it. Right?
The women who choose to
use their body to visually manifest their 'gaming experience' (by way
of game-themed suggestive photographs, for example) express themselves
via the avenue of the mass marketed 'Girl Gamer', a goal that is
altogether vapid and mediocre in its pursuit. If anything, these girls
successfully stick out as a glaring instance of the disappointing
commercialization of gaming in popular culture, their
antics for attention comparatively as bad as a common reality TV show contestant.
Furthermore,
it's one thing for females to collectively enjoy games together, but
it's another for these 'Girl Gamers' to assert themselves as leading
figures of the female gaming community when no one has asked them to do
so (unless, of course, it's a sponsored gaming company looking for cash
money). This ill-founded goal disrupts a gaming community in which
gamers can agreeably interact with each other regardless of their sex
by disturbing the space with sexually-oriented images that immediately
derail neutrality and signify more differences than likenesses.
Gamers
who prefer the absence of a gender-biased gaming community ultimately
find these 'Girl Gamers' as unnecessary and obnoxious entities
desperately seeking attention. For women gamers such as myself who
admire the well-spoken gaming female (see Jane Pinckard, Tracey John, Leigh Alexander, and our own Colette Bennett) as opposed to the gaming beauty queens, these 'Girl Gamers' are downright irritating.
It's unlikely that the trendy alliteration of 'Girl Gamer' will fade away anytime soon or that the equivalent 'Guy Gamer' (see Mega64's Sexy64
for more information) will actually be realized. Unfortunately, a
similar fate rings true with the 'Girl Gamer' herself as long as the
industry continues to cater to its male demographic, and as long as
there are women who fashion themselves alongside those same standards.
A
more pressing urgency today is the shortage of intelligent women
speakers and writers who strongly represent themselves with words as
opposed to images. While women such as Jessica Chobot have made certain
strides to leave their more exhibitionist pasts behind, as long as
there is a constant appraisal of their attractive and more visually
accessible adversaries, the battle between the pen and the larger
picture continues to rage on.
Thus, the aspirations associated
with the 'Girl Gamer' are damaging to both male gamers and female
gamers. Gender distinguishment plays little to no part in one's ability
to play or enjoy videogames, let alone define them as a gamer to begin
with. And finally, let's all remember that "gamer" is an asexual term,
a descriptor that belongs to everyone who plays games despite gender,
ethnicity, or sexual orientation, and is absolutely lovely in its
nascent ambiguity.
